Back in March of this year, a peculiar teenage girl by the name of Lesley Hornby stepped off the tarmac at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City and, predictably, changed the world.
Miss Hornby was “discovered” by Deirdre McSharry by chance and coined her “The Face of ‘66.” She’s since then been on the cover of US Vogue three times in a single year.
At seventeen years old, Twiggy, as she’s more commonly known, has captured the lenses of every camera and magazine in the world. And while many critics claim that she’s taken fashion by storm, I have been awaiting her arrival for some time.
Despite my foresight, I’m no soothsayer! No, I’m simply a fashion historian watching the pendulum of humanity swing ever closer to its amplitude of enlightenment. It’s a dance as old as civilization, and I’ll happily reveal the steps.
Twiggy for Vogue, Summer 1967.
Twiggy is known mainly for her adolescent figure: a straight waist, lanky limbs, big lash-lined eyes, and diminutive chest. These youthful traits are the ideals of revolutionary beauty, and crop up during the political changing of the tides in which the next generation wants to wash away the structures of the past. When these sorts of proportions become mainstream, they signal upheaval that challenges tradition and demands social revolution.
What better indication do we have than the Long Hot Summer of 1967, in which we’ve already experienced over one hundred fifty race riots alone? Pictured here is tension leading to bloodiest challenge to the status quo so far, the 12th Street Riot in Detroit from July 23-28.
Eras such as ours set aside the domestic feminine figure with child-bearing hips and gentle curves in favor of androgyny for the express purpose of rebelling against standards young people no longer have faith in. Anti-beauty, as it were, pushes society to view women as more than the dichotomy of the Gibson Girl they’re often prescribed (combining two female archetypes: the voluptuous woman and the fragile lady rolled into one woman).
Thérésa Tallien was known for cutting her hair in celebration of Marie Antoinette's execution and foregoing undergarments and sleeves. She also wore cothurnus, or Greek sandals.
Louise Brooks is credited with introducing the sleek bob worn by so many Flappers in anti-prohibition America and also celebrated her sexual power in a modern world.
Twiggy joins the ranks of women such as Thérésa Tallien of the French Revolution and Louise Brooks of 1920s Hollywood fame. Not only do these revolutionary beauties reflect the daring spirit of their times, but also the search for truth. As miniskirts and monokinis find popularity, I’m reminded of the Neoclassical era, in which revolutionary women hung up their stockings and went bare-legged in thin muslin gowns to reflect the bareness of truth through nudity. And as drugs such as LSD gain influence in art, I have deja vu of the Dadaists, who sought to unravel reality after The War to End All Wars.
From my high vantage point, the arrival of Twiggy has been expected for quite some time. In fact, it would be more surprising if Miss Hornby hadn’t risen as the star of the 1960s. Now that she’s taken up the mantle of revolution, I suggest we all prepare for cultural turbulence. The voice of the generation has spoken.
It finally happened; the Golden Age of Pirate Radio has come to an end around the British Isles. After three and a half years of pop music coming from the high seas, they have (almost) been completely silenced. British music fans are primarily reduced to listening to middle of the road requests on Housewives’ Choice or popular songs as interpreted by the BBC Scottish Radio Orchestra.
Sam Costa. A 57 year-old band leader from the 30s, one of the Light Programme’s top DJs.
So how did we get from the country being surrounded by radio stations back to 3 BBCs stations and a signal from the continent?
Journey Out of Limbo
The legal loophole that Pirate Radio had operated in was not one that could continue on indefinitely. As I noted in my first article back in 1965, the UK was a key signatory of European Agreement for the Prevention of Broadcasts transmitted from Stations outside National Territories and so had to find a way to bring things to an end.
There had also been complaints from various different directions about these broadcasts:
* Foreign embassies were complaining that the signals were interrupting official broadcast channels (although others have claimed those signals were coming from behind the Iron Curtain)
* Shipping companies made the case that the pirate ships did not have set routes nor pre-agreed transmission frequency so were a hazard to transport
* Musicians unions argued that the amount of gramophone records played meant their live performances were being impacted
* Some record companies complained they were not receiving royalties from these stations (a fact that is disputed)
It also probably did not help when Reginald Calvert, owner of Radio City, was killed by Oliver Smedley, the former owner of rival station Radio Atlanta, in a row over transmitter parts in June of ’66.
So, a solution needed to be found. Obviously, the Pirates wanted to move towards legalization of their activities. I think you would have been hard pushed to find DJs that enjoyed being on rusty old ships or hanging out in abandoned sea forts, and the move towards an American style proliferation of commercial radio stations was probably their preferred option.
This was the proposal presented by Paul Bryan MP: to try to have around 200 local commercial stations throughout the UK, with major cities able to enjoy a choice of seven or eight different channels if there was enough demand.
Public show of support
Trafalgar Square during the Free Radio rally
The Pirate radio groups have been trying to drum up support for their cause in various ways. These have included measures from a single, We Love the Pirates, to a letter writing campaign to MPs, to the Free Radio rally in Trafalgar Square at the end of May.
Perhaps the most audacious has been the attempts to influence politics. During the April council elections in London, ads were run in support of the Conservative Party on Pirate Radio (due to the party’s support of legalization of commercial radio) and subsequently the Conservatives won 82 out of the 100 seats. Not only was this the first time they had held control of the London council since 1931, it is also the largest majority held by one party in the council’s almost 80 year history.
Political show of Opposition
Edward Short, Postmaster General
If the Pirates and the Free Radio Association thought this kind of activity might exert pressure on the Postmaster General, Edward Short, they were sorely mistaken. If anything, it seemed to harden attitudes, with questions raised of whether further legislation was necessary to prevent any other kind of political broadcasting. Legislation has also been included to make it an offence for writers and artists to provide any kind of material or for the preaching of sermons on unlicensed radio (nicknamed “plastic gospels”).
Even a compromise proposal from Left wing MP Hugh Jenkins to allow for a smaller number of local commercial stations under a public authority, acting as a parent station, was rejected. Instead, the Marine Offences Bill or Marine Broadcasting (Prevention) Act was passed, making it illegal for anyone in the UK to provide any kind of support to these pirate radio stations. The law came into force on 16th August.
By then almost all the pirate radio stations had been shut down. Some had already begun to close earlier in the year, with advertisers wanting to jump ship before legislation went into effect. Others were able to survive a little longer, due to space being bought by the tobacco industry (who used it as a way to get around restrictions on their industry) and right-wing groups such as the Monday club (for whom this has become a cause célèbre).
However, as the deadline got closer, stations began to realize the game was up. The government had already begun to bring prosecutions where they could claim broadcasts had happened in British waters and rather than face a clampdown, they are silent. Now ships are being sent the scrapyards and forts are being dismantled.
There was even an investigation of the Amateur Athletics Association for making use of free advertising space on Radio Caroline. Although no prosecution followed I think this shows how strongly the government has taken the job of stopping the Pirates.
However, there is one last station determined to find a way to fight on…
The Rights of Man
As I noted previously, there are two legal radio stations you can try to listen to, if your signal allows. The night broadcasts of Radio Luxembourg from the continent, and the low powered broadcasts of the UK’s only legal commercial station, Manx Radio.
Chamber of the House of Keys, Manx’s Lower House
The Isle of Man’s relationship with the UK is a complex topic I could easily do an entire article on itself, but needless to say, the Tynwald (Manx Parliament) objected to the imposition of this legislation on an island with its own commercial radio station and without any consultation and so it was rejected.
This created a constitutional crisis because it meant that Pirate Radio could simply park up and get the operational support they needed from an island just Sixteen Miles off the British coastline and have the perfect venue to keep broadcasting. Which is exactly what Caroline North did when they dropped anchor there in early August.
At the same time, proposals were discussed to significantly increase the power of Manx Radio’s transmitter, to be able to compete with Radio Luxembourg and cover most of Britain and Ireland.
As you can imagine this caused a lot of anger in Westminster, and talks were held to try to resolve the crisis. Eventually the legislation was forced to come into effect at the start of this month. Plans for an extended transmitter are shelved and Caroline North is once again isolated (although they say they are stocked with supplies and will continue broadcasting).
On the other side of the country, Caroline South is officially operating out of The Netherlands, with several DJs moving there to avoid any risk of prosecution. How long this tactic will last is the question. The Dutch parliament is considering legislation similar to that of the UK, to come into force in 1968.
Common Ownership of the Means of Production
So, is that it? Pop music is banished from British airwaves? Not quite, whilst the government may be engaged in what Paul Channon MP called:
unreasonable, dictatorial, a killjoy, pettifogging socialist nonsense.
Mr. Short and Mr. Wilson are also not stupid. There is clearly a demand for pop music radio and if something isn’t done to address that fact, it won’t be long before other illicit means are deployed to provide it.
The government white paper came out in February outlining the new approach which, perhaps unsurprisingly for a socialist government, outlined the plans for a new national BBC pop radio station. This will broadcast at least six hours of records per day, along with live performances from the artists and special recordings. In addition, there are plans for 9 experimental local BBC stations, subsidized by local services.
This new radio station is to come in as Radio 1, as part of a reorganization of BBC Radio. The Light Programme (Light Music) is to become Radio 2, The Third Programme (classical) is to become Radio 3, and The Home Service (talk and scripted) is to become Radio 4. However, at least initially, no extra funds will be assigned to the radio service, so Radio 1 and Radio 2 will be sharing programming.
The new Radio 1 DJs
In a further sign of this as a form of nationalization, the new Radio 1 DJs are former Pirate Radio alumni, from big names like Tony Blackburn, to the hippy’s favourite John Peel. So, even though we may not be getting a continuation of multiple stations giving us 24 hour hit records, there will at least be some continuity.
Will the crown ever appeal as much as the Jolly Roger?
In 1718 over 200 pirates accepted the King’s Pardon and gave up their life of piracy. However, a number of them, most famously William “Blackbeard” Teach, soon grew bored and went back to a life on the high seas.
The question now remains, which way will things go today? Will the new “Radio 1” replace the Pirates in the hearts of the nation’s youth? Or will many of them follow Caroline’s lead and return to life under the Jolly Roger?
The new service debuts on 30th September. Until then, you will have to stay tuned to the Light Programme. As this issue is being stapled and sent out, you should be able to hear the sounds of Bernard Monshin and his Rio Tango Orchestra and extracts of The Val Doonican Show from the pier in Great Yarmouth …. groovy…
[Please enjoy this next installment of the travels of the Journey's resident aesthete, Vicki Lucas. I can't think of a better way to tour our American land in 1967 than her articles…]
by Victoria Lucas
No Time!
I’m just starting to get used to the pace. New York is not San Francisco or Berkeley. I feel as if Alice’s rabbit is screaming “No time! No time.” We are on the go all the time, except for an hour or two hanging with friends.
Alice's rabbit
Like last weekend. It was too hot to stay in NYC, so we made our way to New Jersey, where our VW bus is garaged. We brought some things but had planned to do a little shopping on the way, partly because it would have been too much trouble to carry very much with us on public transportation. We can cook on our little camp stove, and we thought we would check out a couple places as we drove to Mel’s folks’s summer home in Maine, overnighting there before returning. It’s about a 6-hour drive from where our bus is parked.
We stopped briefly in New Hampshire. Wow! What we found there!
Shaker houses
Have you ever heard of the Shakers? A sort of cult of “Mother Ann,” a British woman who prophesied that her religious organization would die out, and it is clear that is happening. After nearly 200 years in the United States, and a peak of around 6,000 Shakers in 21 communities, the streets of these celibate communities are empty, and the few remaining members are sustaining themselves mainly by selling handmade furniture and some of their other first-ever products, such as seeds! I was fascinated to learn that their group was the first to package and sell seeds! They are also the authors of the Shaker spiritual “‘Tis the Gift to Be Simple,” appropriated in Aaron Copland’s “Simple Gifts,” and used in his “Appalachian Spring.” We stopped and toured one of the communities briefly, like a sort of living museum, finding out that they adopted orphans to carry on their traditions, but too many of these adopted sons and daughters decided not to stay.
A smoking mother-in-law
It was weird seeing Mel’s parents. I will never forget waking up the next morning in the sofabed on their lower level, noticing that Mel was up–and that his mother was sitting by herself on a hard armless chair, smoking and looking at me. All I could think of to say was, “Good morning.” (Does it have anything to do with the fact that I’m his 3rd wife? Or that I’m 19 years younger than he?)
Abbie Hoffman
Oh! I almost forgot to tell you. Among the meetings with places and dates emblazoned on mimeographed sheets handed out on the streets of the Lower East Side was one back in July during the Newark riots. We spent 2 days going to meetings to decide how to help the people trapped behind barricades without water and food. But the meetings were anarchic, and everyone had a different opinion and was willing to let the meetings drag on and on as no decisions were made. Finally, after enduring meetings starting Friday at 6 pm and continuing on Saturday, Abbie Hoffman stood up to his full height (quite intimidating, actually) and announced that he had a plan and he was going to carry it out and anyone who was willing to help was welcome. He was going to get a truck, stuff it with food and water and other necessities for those in need and drive it to Newark, going as far as he could into needy neighborhoods. He would only want a few people to distribute the goods, but he would need money. We gave him a few bucks and gratefully departed. Thank goodness someone is willing to step up! The two of us had had no idea how to help.
Aspen, no. 5+6
My man Mel works full time, and I am only part time at Phillis’s place but loving it! When she finally releases the new Aspen “magazine” (culture in a box in the form of a film on a reel and many other bits and pieces) issue (numbers 5 and 6 combined) it will be a square white box with only a little printing on it–in fact, just like the picture above. I had never worked for anyone before whose office was in her bedroom. It’s like this, as far as I can tell: Phyllis (Johnson Glick, but she seldom uses her married name) works as a journalist and editor for Nebraska State Journal, Women’s Wear Daily, Advertising Age, and American Home Magazine (and probably others), so when she is not working at a publisher's office, she works from home. So she gets up, makes her bed, and immediately starts using it as a desk as she finishes her coffee. She does have a little hard writing surface on a bedside table with a lamp, when she needs to write something. She calls me when she is going to work on her new creation, has set up her paper piles on the bed, and is nearly ready to start telling me what to do. I've never met her husband–he is probably gone long before I get there.
About the stapled, wholly paper "magazine" we are used to, Phyllis wrote this in 1966: "Last year, a group of us enjoying the sun, skiing and unique cultural climate of Aspen Colorado, asked ourselves, ‘Why?’" So she started creating something completely different, a magazine in a box with every piece (including ads) separate. Mostly I work the telephone or do the typing at a typing table with a (I think) dining-room chair–she dictates or tells me what needs to be said. If she has dictated it she signs it. There is a lot of telephoning and mailing to do to get the writers to write, the musicians to record, the recording studios to send recordings, and the film people to get their stuff to the copiers and then to us, etc. At the end of the day, Phyllis begins stacking the papers on her bed with sets perpendicular to one another, so she can tell where the different sets begin and should be in a different location in the morning. The stacks are put away off the bed. She tells me when she’s done, and I leave then. She pays me regularly (we both keep track), but I think that if I could afford it I would work for her for nothing–it's such fun to work for such an innovator!
John Cage
Since Mel is not particularly into music, I went by myself to a concert of John Cage’s music in a church. It was free. That is, it was free to me, because I stayed the whole 4 hours. The longer you stayed, you see, the less you paid. If you left immediately, it was pretty expensive. A few people did. There were a lot of silences.
Ed Sanders's Peace Eye Bookstore
And we went to the Peace Eye Bookstore on the lower East Side, Ed Sanders’s place. We met Sanders there but never saw anybody else famous whom we recognized, like Tuli Kupferberg or Peter Orlovsky. We did see an art piece from Allen Ginsberg: a large jar of cold cream, mostly empty. It swung in a small wooden frame from a rafter in the store, which was on the other side of Tompkins Square Park from our place on 3rd Street.
The Tompkins Square Park "Massacre"
We enjoyed the park and went there as often as we could manage. Once when we were passing through, we noticed a large number of hippies with their dogs and children sitting on grass labeled “Do not walk on the grass” (or thereabouts), and as we continued to walk we saw police engaging with some of the people on the grass. Whatever was happening appeared to be escalating. Voices were raised. We decided it would be a good time to go back to our apartment and have some dinner.
When we came back to the park, it was empty, there was debris where the hippies had been, and in a minute there was suddenly a young man handing out mimeographed news sheets, perhaps from the Peace Eye, which had a mimeograph. There had been a large number of arrests, and our presence was invited outside the police station at a given address. It was within walking distance, and we hied ourselves over there, joining a crowd from whom we heard the story: the police brought a van to the park and started arresting people and throwing them into the van. A pregnant woman protested and received the same treatment–everyone was afraid she might have miscarried. Some who didn’t cooperate received blows to the head and were bleeding. As part of the crowd we demanded the release of these peaceful people. We were there about an hour as it got darker and darker. Finally the battered and bloody “criminals” were released, and there was rejoicing. We went back home.
Simon and Garfunkel
As bad as NYC gets sometimes-–the trash, the crime (not hippie protest crime), the police, the subway, the homeless–-there are moments when I feel as if I’m in the right place. Like last evening when we had been visiting Central Park and were headed to our bus stop not far from the East River before going home. Someone had a radio on as the twilight descended. As we neared the 59th Street Bridge, guess what song was playing. Yes, it was. It was “The 59th Street Bridge Song.” And we were "kicking down the cobblestones.” And we were “feeling groovy.” Thank you, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel!
Well, we’re here! Months have gone by, I know, since my last report to this newsletter about my usual shenanigans, damped last time by my mother’s death but buoyed by anticipating the journey my sweetie Mel and I just finished to New York City.
To me, NYC is “The” City, the literary and musical and cultural center on the East Coast that outshines even “The City” where Mel and I met and where I had lived for a few years, San Francisco. I salivated at the thought of working at a publishing house, going to concerts of new experimental music, and getting involved in the protests here against the Vietnam War.
Route 66
It was exciting, too, because I had never been east of Arizona, or indeed visited any other state except California, or any foreign country except Mexico. Now Mel and I are living in New York City and planning – in a year or two – to travel to Europe. On our way here we spent many hours on Route 66, and yes, and there were some “kicks,” such as going through the Petrified Forest, and eating at diners along the way, but Mel is the one who likes to drive. He will drive just about anywhere just to check it out. In this case there was a lot of the US to check out: from coast to coast.
To avoid getting lost, we visited our local AAA office and consulted with them about the best way to get to New York from our apartment in North Beach. After some deliberation, we asked for a TripTik that took us to Route 66 at Barstow via 101, 152, and 99. From there to Oklahoma City, our little spiral-bound book said, we could experience the historic highway, but the last leg to Chicago seemed a waste of time since we had no business there, so we dropped off 66 at OK City and followed 40 till we could pick up Highway 81 just east of Knoxville. Mel had never been in the south, so it was an adventure for both of us.
Aliens among them
Not that kind of alien.
Just a little anecdote about how alien it was to be in the south, even though we are both white and didn’t have to worry about where to sleep or eat as we tooled along in our green and white VW bus – nothing bad, just alien. We pulled into the parking lot of a hamburger joint – maybe somewhere in Tennessee (it’s all starting to melt together in the summer heat). It was evening and we were looking for a motel to spend the night, since our expenses were being paid by Mel’s company for whom he is now working (with a promotion) in NYC. We both ordered hamburgers. There were few condiments on the table, including salt and vinegar, but no ketchup or mustard. When the burgers arrived, we asked for ketchup.
The waitress looked at us as if we had just walked through a wall. “Ketchup?” she repeated, as if even the word were foreign to her. (Did she want it spelled “catsup”?) Yes, we reiterated that we wanted ketchup. She left and returned with a bottle of the red stuff. We were almost the only people in the place since it was after dinner time, and we heard a lot of giggling of the staff behind the counter. Mel and I looked at each other. In what corner of the world did we find ourselves that ketchup was an unknown and ridiculous accompaniment to a hamburger? This one, evidently.
Ketchup! (or is it Catsup!)
New York City turns out to be alien too, even though there are concerts (YES!), and we have joined something called LEMPA (Lower Eastside Mobilization for Peace Action–spelling out “lamp” in Spanish) to protest The (Vietnam) War. The streets here in the Lower East Side where we found an apartment (we are saving for Europe) are full of trash, and parking is problematic because any car left on the street overnight is lacking something in the morning that it had had only the night before. Including our van. Watching the van out the window isn’t helpful, because what would we do if we saw someone stealing something? We hear screams at all hours of the day and night. We do not see any police near our apartment. We are looking for a place where we can park and leave the van without its being dismantled like other cars we see on the street, and that won’t be too expensive. Think want ads. Think New Jersey.
The first thing we did after getting Mel to work, finding a place to stay, and moving in, was visit our friends' pad and their business. They share an apartment as a little commune, and on opening the outer door a waft of patchouli incense, dog, and whatever they're cooking caressed our nostrils, with just a hint of grass (shhhh, don't tell anyone about the marijuana) not covered by the other odors, even the incense sticks.
The dog is a St. Bernard puppy. Ideal for a teensy New York City apartment, right? With the dog in the room and more than a couple of people, even in the living room, it's hard to maneuver around it. Its paws are huge for its size, indicating that it's going to be a much bigger adult. They are paper-training it, and it's a very congenial dog. They have that going for them. And they know the "Mamas and the Papas" and have a business relationship with them of a sort I'm not prepared to disclose.
That is a puppy?!?
Their legitimate business, The Bead Game, used to be a pharmacy. There are hundreds of little drawers lining the walls that – up to the day they occupied it after acquiring it – still held herbs and drugs. Now the drawers hold beads of every shape and variety imaginable. Of course I had to buy some. Everybody needs beads, yes?
Sgt. Pepper & friends
And everybody needs Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Ask me how much I love it and whether we brought our record player! I don't know why I love such a peculiar eclectic mix: I don't like Dixieland, blues, soul, gospel, or most popular music, but I love John Cage, The Beatles, Morton Subotnik, Pauline Oliveros, Van Morrison, Jefferson Airplane, The Mamas and the Papas, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Moody Blues, and a bunch of other, less popular bands. Why? Who knows!
New York The Movie
A few blocks from our apartment
When Mel's not working, we're not home listening to music and cooking, visiting friends, etc., we go for walks, sometimes with our friends, sometimes without. We learned not to take notice of the people living in cardboard boxes, the shit on the sidewalk, and to laugh at the evidence of what we started calling "The Mad Pisser." You see, we would get to a corner and there would be a puddle of urine there. We would look around the corner, into the street, back in the direction from which we came–and see no one. No dogs. No humans. Whodunnit!?
But in general there are so many people: people with signs, people without signs, people with and without dogs, adults with children, children without adults. We learned to look at it all as if it were a movie set. This isn't real–not the people living in boxes, not the small gang of children running down the sidewalk and tugging on my purse strap (just in case I was holding it lightly), not the man with dark skin sitting on a park bench as if it were his home porch swing and addressing us as "dude."
Be cool till next time
Stay tuned for the further adventures of Mel & Vicki as we cruise the streets of the Lower East Side evenings and weekends, shower frequently, use pounds of Gold Bond powder to keep the sweat from soaking our clothes, and get together with friends and friends of friends to (smoke dope and . . . ) –oh! I didn’t say that, did I? Not aloud. Not in print! (Speaking of print, we read the East Village Other and the street handouts from somebody’s mimeograph.)
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released on May 27th, 1967 and has kicked off the album art era as well as bolstering the influence of psychedelic and progressive rock. This album is the flag ship of the Summer of Love.
The Beatles’ eighth album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, was released two and a half weeks ago, and it continues to top the North American and European charts with no end in sight! The album is a fascinating journey from beginning to end, with a story woven into every aspect of the experience. This includes, of course, the costumes.
The album’s cover will live on in notoriety for decades, I’m sure. It’s colorful, optimistic, and draws from a rich history of live performance and influential figures. More than that, though, it’s a call to arms. Paul McCartney was inspired by Edwardian military bands for the title track, a concept which bled into the rest of the production, and when a theme such as this permeates an entire collection organically, it often suggests that the creators hit on a message of timely significance. With the Summer of Love upon us, The Beatles are setting themselves up as battlefield drummers leading an era of peace and optimism against modern warfare and exploitative economics.
A bold assumption on my part, I know. Let me convince you of my point of view.
The Beatles in their Sgt. Pepper uniforms, designed by May Routh.
On the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the four band members are wearing neon color officers’ uniforms inspired by the military bands of WWI and standing behind an upright marching drum. These imaginative costumes were designed by May Routh as a celebration and a challenge. The celebration is the color palette, a symbol of mind-altering psychedelic drugs, and the materials, all shine and showmanship. The challenge, by comparison, is the blatant lack of attention to ranks and insignias. All four band members wear symbols of rank and power, but not in any way that pays homage to actual militaristic order. This is a conscious choice meant to commandeer the power and authority of wartime for a counter-culture defined by its vehement opposition to war.
At first, I thought this could be a direct mockery of the military, but then I considered that drum again, standing upright with the band turned in towards it. For over four thousand years, from China to the Americas, drums have been used on the battlefield as a way to keep in step, to make advances on the field, and to work in sync regardless of visibility. As recently as WWI, soldiers would time the reloading of their weapons to the beat of a drum. These brave drummers were often the first target of the opposing army. In the modern media, this analogy holds true: the monoliths of youth culture simultaneously lead the charge with the beat of their music and are subject to intense media scrutiny.
It's not a huge leap to see that The Beatles are calling on the world to embrace this new age, to fight back against injustice, war, and prejudice. Whether they’d planned to from the beginning, their message has become: Reload your hearts to the beat of our drum. The irony of using a militant image to convey an anti-war message has made their point of view far sharper, and is inspiring others to wield their visibility and influence – their drums, if you will – to the same end.
On the left, see a hussar in uniform astride his horse. The garment pictured center is a hussar's pelisse of the late 19th century, customarily worn over one shoulder as a mantle rather than a jacket. Note that Hendrix wears his pelisse as an open jacket and bare-chested.
Jimi Hendrix has also adorned himself in militaristic garments after his own experiences as a soldier. Hendrix has chosen the image of a royal hussar. These cavalry officers were prized for their unparalleled effectiveness on the battlefield for much of the past millennium, but disbanded after WWI in which they faced insurmountable odds. Regardless of being obsolete in the face of weapons of mass destruction, the hussars continue to be a symbol of militaristic supremacy and sophistication. By wearing an officer’s pelisse open over a bare chest, Hendrix supplants the power of the hussar and assumes their authority in defining himself as a sex symbol, an effortless master on the guitar, and icon of the Summer of Love. He challenges the role of The Beatles as the generals of the New Age while leading his own troops onto the battlefield of cultural change.
Left, a drummer boy of the 1st Scots Guard. Flaunting the same rules of rigmarole as The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, Mick Jagger is wearing the uniform as if it's a casual garment.
The boldest (or perhaps the most blunt) symbol of the anti-war, peace-loving army, is Mick Jagger, who is also this year wearing the uniform coat of a drummer boy of the 1st Scots Guard. Let’s remember the call to arms in the drum of the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover. Their choices of fashion and costume aren’t coincidental. These rock stars are gathering their army to affect change in society.
They also reach beyond the military, looking to symbols of wealth and sex, redefining upperclass fantasies as symbols of equality and empathy. They dress in frock coats and cravats rather than suits and ties. The Hippie Movement even denies the use of modern notions, such as snaps and zippers, in favor of simple cords or buttons.
Jean-Honoré Fragonard, The Shepherdess, ca. 1750/52. This is a pastorale genre painting of the French court which glorifies the countryside life without acknowledging their struggles. The genre of painting is now a symbol of how tone-deaf the French courts had become to their people's strife.
Marie Antoinette's le Petit Hameau on the grounds of Versailles.
As a historian, I see a direct correlation between these choices and the pastorals of Rococo France in the 18th century (back when buttons were fairly modern technology). Before the French Revolution, the nobility romanticized a countryside, working class life, glorifying shepherdesses and minstrels, farmers and hunters. Marie Antoinette’s le Petit Hameau is the perfect example: an extremely expensive designer cottage based on rural French homes, in which she held exclusive soirees and fed impeccably groomed farm animals as an escape from the pressures of the royal court. Fashion and portraits played a big role in this blind fantasy of the nobility as well.
Jimi Hendrix often wears stripes, frothy necklines, cravats, and even a carmagnole jacket. The carmagnole was a symbol of the French Revolution. Striped pantaloons and a loose cravat were also symbols of the Sans Culottes (or anti-nobility) movement of the late 18th century. Interestingly, this type of cravat was popular in France because of the Battle of Steenkerque, in which French troops were taken by surprise and had no time to tie their cravats properly. The French won the battle, making a disheveled cravat immensely popular thereafter.
Left, Jimi Hendrix in a carmagnole, stripes, and frothy neckline. Right, Mick Jagger and John Lennon bedecked in frock coats inspired by the habit à la française, menswear of the French courts in the 18th century.
How does that relate to the music scene of the Summer of Love? It’s no different than using militaristic imagery to disseminate an anti-war message and ridicule the institution. These musicians that speak directly to the youth movement are pulling down images of traditional wealth, power, and escapism to the level of working class people. The intent is to break down the barriers of social propriety and offer an alternative to the machine of tradition. They fully believe that their message of equality and empathy is more powerful than money or gender or race or religion. They are anti-wealth, and so equalize the symbols of wealth. They are anti-corporate, and so dishevel men's suits and grow their hair long. They are anti-division, and so adopt softer fabrics, lace, and makeup to challenge the definition of masculinity and femininity.
Mark my words, a cultural revolution is underway, and the generals at the forefront of the war know how to use the establishment’s symbols against them. Extremely narrow and rigid views on issues such as gender, race, and national identity are going to be challenged in the years to come. What an exciting and volatile time! Now excuse me while I flip my album over.
Even now, it's hard to believe. Little Israel, surrounded, outnumbered, and all but written off as doomed a week ago, has emerged triumphant over its neighbors, occupying an area unequalled in size since the days of King Solomon.
How did we get here?
Prelude to a Clash
A month ago, this conflict hardly seemed inevitable. Yes, the Syrians and Israelis had tangled. IDF planes shot down six Arab MiGs in a single dogfight after Israeli forces raided to stop the flow of terrorists into the country. After that, it seemed things would calm down. Certainly, Defense Minister Dayan seemed relaxed during Israel's 19th Independence Day celebration.
But behind the scenes, the Syrians were panicking. Convinced that some eleven Israeli brigades were poised at their border (there were likely not as many companies), Syrian strongman Salah Jadid pleaded with Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser to agitate a preemptive invasion. The timing was perfect: the Soviet Union could secure greater influence with its Arab client states, and Nasser could regain stature, his support flagging dangerously over his expensive boondoggle war in Yemen vs. Saudi Arabia.
Nasser quickly ordered the UN peacekeeping forces stationed on the Egyptian/Israeli border to leave, which Secretary General U Thant unilaterally ordered. Then Nasser deployed the better part of 100,000 troops to the Sinai. On May 31, he invited Jordan's King Hussein, whom he'd only three weeks before derided as an imperialist puppet, to join the alliance. Hussein, who had been succored by American support late last year, must have been a reluctant partner. Yet, there he was in Cairo, all smiles for the camera.
All Arabia was inflamed with a passion to "drive the Jews into the sea" and "erase Israel from the map". Nasser just needed a pretense to invade. He aimed to provide it. Late last month, Egypt and Saudia Arabia closed off the Strait of Tiran, the southern end of the Gulf of Aqaba. This is one of Israel's crucial lifelines, and Prime Minister Levi Eshkol made it clear that this blockade constituted an act of war.
Shut down Aqaba
Arab exiles, enthusiastic to wipe Israel off the map
Of course it was. But Israel, now virtually abandoned by its former allies, the French, and receiving tepid support from America (tied down with its own foreign conflict), seemed at long odds to win this fight.
Strike first
There is a maxim among wargamers — it is better to strike first at 1 to 2 odds than second at 3 to 1. On the morning of June 5, 1967, Israeli planes sortied over the skies of Egypt and Jordan. It was an unprecedented tactic: fully 100% of the IDF's planes were committed, and no targets of opportunity were allowed. They were to destroy the Arab air forces on the ground. Not the support facilities, not the pilots, just the planes.
They did just that, guaranteeing uncontested control of the sky for the remainder of the operation. When Syrians launched a raid on Haifa, and Iraqi planes tried to penetrate Israeli air space, those nations, too, were savaged.
An Israeli armored column made a frontal assault on Egypt's defenses in Sinai, bolstered since the '56 war. Simultaneously, Israeli forces headed toward Kabanya, Jenin, and Latrun in the West Bank. This latter did not have to have happened. Indeed, that morning, Eshkol made an impassioned plea to Hussein not to honor his commitment to the Egyptian alliance. Jordan entered the war anyway.
The cream of Jordan's might
By the next day, it was clear the Egyptians had underestimated the Israelis. The IDF tanks under General Tal made it halfway across the northern coast of Sinai while other columns broke the Egyptian lines, savaging the artillery positions behind. In Jordan, the Israelis pushed further into the northern West Bank, and east to Deir Nizam and Ramallah. But their primary target was the ancient capital of the Jews: Jerusalem.
The IDF plows into the Sinai
The next morning, Israeli paratroopers (including my niece-in-law's brother) aided ground troops in a daring assault on the city. By early morning, Jews were once again at the foot of the Wailing Wall after nearly two decades of enforced separation. That evening, a bedraggled Jordanian King, a man who had lost half of his country, agreed to a UN ceasefire.
Heading for the West Wall
Israeli parachutists gaze in wonder at the remains of their Temple
King Hussein announces a cease-fire
In Egypt, Tal's forces reached the Suez while Israeli planes and armor savaged Nasser's vehicles in the Mitla Pass. By the next day, the IDF had secured all of the Sinai.
Egyptian wreckage in the Mitla Pass
Only one tragedy mitigated the exult of victory–on the 8th, Israeli jets attacked the U.S.S. Liberty, a communications ship close off the Mediterranean coast of the Sinai. What it was doing there is still unknown, but at the time, the IDF believed it to be a Soviet ship guiding Egyptian guns. 10 Americans were killed in the strike. The Israeli government immediately apologized for the error.
The Liberty limps home
With Egypt and Jordan out of the fight, now it was the turn of Syria, regarded in the West as the instigator of the whole affair. At first, it seemed Israel might not invade, fearing Soviet reprisals. But the threat of the Golan Heights was too great, and the Syrians at the border too hostile to ignore. On June 9, with the other two fronts of this latest conflict wrapped up, Israeli forces plunged toward Damascus. By the next day, the Syrian forces were smashed and the Golan was in Israeli hands.
Israelis in the Golan Heights
Syrians surrender
Whither the Holy land
Which brings us to today: the Arab world is humiliated, Israel controls twice the land it did a week ago (though I can't imagine they'll keep any of it if '56 be any precedent). Several hundred thousand Arabs exiled and born of exiles from the former mandate, identifying as Palestinians and whipped into a fury at the prospect of reclaiming the Holy Land, now find themselves under Jewish authority.
Israelis clear the "Gaza Strip", home to 300,000 "Palestinian" Arabs
At the UN Security Council
Moreover, the Egyptians have already received new planes from the Soviets by way of other Arab countries. There are concerns that Nasser may launch round two later this month or next month.
Israel is alive. Israel is triumphant. But what now?
An Undeserted Desert
by Jessica Dickinson Goodman
The beaches in Gaza smell like San Francisco, except the water is warmer and no great fog banks cloud the views of the rolling Mediterranean Sea. But the feeling of a bustling city, full of creative minds, just on the brink of something incredible – it's the same. Families fish for squid and sardines here, frying them in open-sided kitchens right on out the sand. Some fishermen go out at night, turning on floodlights to lure them to the surface, tentacles drifting up as they seek the stars. The call-to-prayer echoes over the city; some people stop what they're doing to pray, and some do not. It's a mixed city, mostly Muslim with an Orthodox church dating back to the 1100s, named for St. Porphyrios, a 4th century CE bishop of Gaza.
1967 Postcard from Gaza.
People here feel a deep connection to this soil, whether they were born here or flew in on the morning El Al flight from SFO. There's a reason the unofficial Palestinian anthem is Ibrahim Tuqan (1905-1941)'s poem "Mawki" or "My homeland." ("Glory and beauty, sublimity and splendor / Are in your hills, are in your hills / Life and deliverance, pleasure and hope / Are in your air, are in your air.")
There are few things that everyone agrees about, when it comes to fights over this bit of dirt. Three major religions – four if you add in Baháʼí folks – call it "the Holy Land," so when I was traveling in the region, I sometimes took to calling it that to avoid fights.
One thing everyone agrees on is that the current modern fight over this land is asymmetrical. Now, no one will agree in whose favor it is asymmetrical. Is it "little Israel" against the eight Arab League nations? Is it a tiny Palestinian village now trapped in territory suddenly controlled by an Israeli army that, 19 years before, forced 750,000 Palestinians to flee their homes during what that community calls the Nakba or Catastrophe? The same army that has now conquered land where about a million more Palestinians and other non-Israelis currently live – many of whom are fleeing by the tens of thousands as I write?
(Many of my Palestinian friends still carry the keys to the homes they were forced out of, hanging by cords around their necks. I think about that a lot.)
A Premeditated War
In 1955, in a speech before the Knesset, former Israeli Minister Menachem Begin said:
"I deeply believe in launching preventive war against the Arab states without further hesitation. By doing so, we will achieve two targets: firstly, the annihilation of Arab power; and secondly, the expansion of our territory."
Menachem Begin speaking in 1948 about the Haret, the major conservative nationalist political party he founded. Note the borders of the map behind the assault rifle. Credit: Benno Rothenberg / Meitar Collection / National Library of Israel / The Pritzker Family National Photography Collection / CC BY 4.0.
"Expansion of our territory" brings to mind colonialism; up until fairly recently, some of the founding advocates for a modern state of Israel comfortably used the language of colonialism to justify their project. In Nachman Drosdoff's fascinating 1962 self-published biography of Ahad-Ha'am (one of the foremost pre-state Zionist thinkers) Drossdoff describes a "Lovers of Zion" meeting in Odessa in 1901 where the colonial intentions of those meeting were clear and central to their work.
"The principal reason given for the unsuccessful colonization was that the settlers had too many supervisors and trustees who do not give them the opportunity of becoming self-sustaining and independent. Therefore, the Conference worked out a new, more modern economic system of colonization, according to which every settler would be in a position, during a certain period, to repay his debts and become owner of his own land."Ahad-Ha'am, biography by Nachman Drosdoff. The copy I have has had its cover stripped off and is marked in Hebrew and English: "Not for Sale." It's also dedicated by the author's son, which was a treat to find.
The problem is, there is no part of the Holy Land that is empty: empty of history, empty of culture, empty of language, and certainly not empty of people. A desert is rarely deserted; though the Negev or Sinai can look barren, there are families who traverse it, who know the wells, the stories, the wadis.
Families Flee Fighting
Those families watched as Israeli fighter pilots zoomed overhead in those lovely pictures in the piece above, blasting away at air fields; just as the families in Gaza watched soldiers from the United Arab Republic retreat before Israeli forces last week, leaving terror and questions in their wake.
A family flees Gaza in 1967. Source claims photo was taken on April 29 and labels family as Egyptian. Source: This is available from National Photo Collection of Israel, Photography dept. Government Press Office (link), under the digital ID D328-054.
Just as Minister Begin hoped for 12 years ago, "Arab power" has in many ways been annihilated; and Israel's territory has certainly been expanded. But for the close to a million Palestinians and other non-Israelis now living under Israeli control, what does that mean? Will families no longer be able to fish? Will the call-to-prayer be silenced? Will Israel force more families out of their homes, into camps, into neighboring countries, doubling the number of people made stateless by the what impacted communities would call the Nakba?
Dark Days Ahead for Poets (But Still There is Starshine)
And what will it mean for the poets? For Khairi Mansour, who friends expect to be deported from the West Bank this year? For Salma Khadra Jayyusi, who has stopped writing her second poetry collection because of this war? For Rashid Husain or Tawfiq Zayyad, who have already spent time in Israeli prisons?
There are no available photos of the prison cells where Palestinians are being held in Israel today that I could find; this is of an Israeli-run psychiatric hospital in Acre. Photo taken between 1964-65. Source: Reportage / Serie: Israël 1964-1965: Akko (Acre), Citadel-gevangenis.
It is not just Palestinian poets who I worry for, but Israeli poets and writers too. When Nathan Alterman wrote "Al Zot" ("On That") in the Israeli newspaper Davar in 1948, he was speaking out against violence against Palestinians during the events they would call the Nakba. He wrote:
"Across the vanquished city in a jeep he did speed–
A lad bold and armed, a young lion of a lad!
And an old man and a woman on that very street
Cowered against a wall, in fear of him clad.
Said the lad smiling, milk teeth shining:
"I'll try the machine gun"…and put it into play!
To hide his face in his hands the old man barely had time
When his blood on the wall was sprayed.
We shall sing, then, about "delicate incidents"
Whose name, don't you know, is murder.
Sing of conversations with sympathetic listeners,
Of snickers of forgiveness that are slurred."
When Alterman published his poem, David Ben-Gurion asked for permission to reprint it, to send it as a cautionary tale to Israeli Defense Forces soldiers; could Prime Minister Levi Eshkol do the same today? I worry for Moshe Erem, a Tel Aviv City Councilman, who in 1948 protested against thousands of Palestinian residents being held in barbed-wire encircled camps, saying:
A Palestinian man in Jaffa is trapped behind barbed wire in the neighborhood of al-Ajami. Credit: Israel Defense Forces and Defense Establishment Archive.
"This arrangement will instantly compare Ajami to a closed, sealed ghetto. It is difficult to accept the idea that evokes in us associations of horror…Barbed wire is not a one-time project; it will always be in their vision and will serve as an inexhaustible source of bubbling poison. And for the Jewish residents the wire fence will not add social 'health.' It will increase feelings of foul superiority, and perpetuate separations that we do not want to erect."
Those separations seem even higher than ever, 19 years later, after the battles detailed so carefully above. I wonder how much higher still they will climb with the triumphalist, with-us-or-against-us narratives Israel is spinning about this war. I wonder what room those victory stories leave for peace; for protest; for poetry; for any light to get in at all.
I don't know what will come next. But as I've watched my friends' countries get bombed this past week, I've been thinking a lot about one of Fadwa Tuqan's poems (the still-living sister of the Palestinian poet I quoted at the top). The poem is titled "Face Lost in the Wilderness" and ends:
"A rush and din, flame and sparks lighting the road – one group after another falls embracing, in one lofty death. The night, no matter how long, will continue to give birth to star after star and my life continues, my life continues."
Translated by Patricia Alanah Byrne with help of Salma Khadra Jayyusi and Naomi Shibab Nye.
Recovery work and investigations regarding the cause of the fire are ongoing. The exact number of the dead is still not known and identifying the victims of the fire is difficult, since many were burned beyond recognition. The unidentified dead were interred in a mass grave on a Brussels cemetery.
Unidentified victims of the À l'Innovation fire are being buried in a mass grave in Brussels
On May 30, a memorial service for the victims of the fire was held at the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur church. The young Belgian King Baudouin and Queen Fabiola attended the service. Earlier, King Baudouin had also visited the site of the fire only a few minutes from the royal palace.
King Baudouin and Queen Fabiola of Belgium attend the memorial service for the victims of the À l'Innovation fire.King Baudouin of Belgium visits the site of the À l'Innovation fire
I had hoped to have a more cheerful article for you this month – especially since I found Lin Carter's latest novel Flame of Iridar in the spinner rack of my local import store. However, this was not to be, because not quite two weeks after the Brussels fire, another terrible event struck West Germany, specifically West Berlin.
Fairy Tale Princesses and Dictators
On May 28, 1967, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, and his third wife Farah Diba arrived in West Germany on a state visit. Normally, this would not be particularly remarkable, since foreign heads of state regularly visit West Germany.
However, the West German tabloid press has a particularly interest in the royal house of Iran, for Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's second wife Soraya Esfandiary-Bakhtiary is the daughter of the Iranian ambassador to West Germany and his German wife, grew up in Berlin and was educated in Switzerland. And when the barely eighteen-year-old Soraya married the Shah in 1951, the tabloid press eagerly reported about "the German girl on the peacock throne".
Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, his second wife Princess Soraya and Princess Shanaz, the Shah's daughter from his first marriage.Soraya Esfandiary-Bakhtiary after her divorce
The marriage did not last long and the imperial couple divorced in 1958, when Soraya failed to produce an heir, which did not diminish the tabloids' interest in her at all. However, the gossip press also quickly focussed on her successor, Farah Diba, another young western educated Iranian woman from an upper class background.
Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi marries his third wife Farah Diba in 1959.
Again, this is not particularly remarkable, because the tabloid press likes to print gossip about royalty. However, most of what West German citizens know about the Imperial State of Iran is gossip of questionable veracity about its royal house, filtered through the eyes of two privileged western-educated upper class women. What these gossipy articles – a remarkable number of which are published in the magazines and newspapers of the Axel Springer Verlag – ignore is that Iran is not just a fairy tale land of princesses and peacock thrones. It is also a brutal authoritarian state, ruled with an iron hand by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, especially since the coup against the democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953, which was backed by the US and the UK, because Mossadegh intended to nationalise the Iranian oil industry, cutting out British and US oil companies.
One of the rare critical articles about the Iranian regime appeared in the June issue of the student magazine konkret, where Ulrike Meinhof, a brilliant young investigative journalist, penned an open letter to Farah Diba criticising the situation in Iran in response to a fawning interview with the Iranian Empress in the gossip magazine Neue Revue. This was not the first frank article Meinhof has written about the Iranian regime. Three years ago, she reported about a hunger strike of Iranian students in West Germany to protest human rights violations in their homeland as well as a state visit of West German president Heinrich Lübke to Iran.
Journalist Ulrike Meinhof at her desk at the student magazine konkret
Students versus the Shah
In 1960, Iranian students in West Germany founded the Confederation of Iranian Students (CIS), a leftwing group critical of the Shah and his government. Encouraged by his friend, writer Hans Magnus Enzensberger (whose former wife and brother are members of the leftwing Kommune 1 and were responsible for the disgusting pamphlets about the À l'Innovation fire), CIS co-founder Bahman Nirumand published a critical book about the Imperial State of Iran entitled Persien, Modell eines Entwicklungslandes oder Die Diktatur der Freien Welt (Persia: Model of a Developing Country, or Dictatorship in the Free World) earlier this year. While the book received little notice among the wider West German society, it was widely read among politically interested students and together with the open letter to Farah Diba in konkret galvanised the students of the Free University of (West) Berlin.
On June 2, the Shah and his wife were due to visit West Berlin. Therefore, the student parliament of the Free University organised a panel discussion about the Iranian regime on the day before. Among those invited to speak at the meeting was Bahman Nirumand. The Iranian embassy in West Germany was incensed and demanded that the panel discussion be cancelled. However, the chancellor of the Free University refused, citing the rights to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. This is not the first time that the Iranian government has tried to suppress criticism in West Germany, by the way. They have also repeatedly invoked a lese-majeste law dating from the days of the Second German Empire (which ended fifty years ago) in order to have unfavourable news articles retracted.
Iranian activist Bahman Nirumand speaks at the Free University of (West) Berlin.
In the days running up to the panel discussion and the state visit, pamphlets condemning the Shah appeared on the campus of the Free University, including a Wanted poster accusing the Shah of murder. The Kommune 1 felt compelled to interrupt their cheering about the deaths of more than three hundred people in Brussels to publish a pamphlet in which they threatened to pee on the Shah, which is a step up from threatening to throw pudding at US Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey. In another pamphlet, the Kommune 1 also condemned other leftwing groups for not being radical enough. Anti-Shah pamphlets had also been distributed by students at a protest in Munich during the Shah’s visit there.
An anti-Shah pamphlet in the form of a Wanted poster accusing the Shah of murder.The Kommune 1's pamphlet about the Shah visit mostly criticises other leftwing organisations of being not radical enough.
The leftwing student organisation Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (SDS) had been planning a protest against the war in Vietnam on June 3. However, Nirumand's speech during the panel discussion at the Free University of Berlin galvanised the roughly five thousand students in attendance and it was spontaneously decided to bring the planned protest forward by a day and protest against the Shah's visit. Because – as radical student activist Rudi Dutschke said – fighting against oppression in Iran is also a fight against the war in Vietnam.
No Worries
Among the five thousand students at the panel discussion inside the Audimax auditorium on the campus of the Free University was also Benno Ohnesorg, a 26-year-old student of German and Romance languages and aspiring writer. Ohnesorg had only just married his girlfriend Christa six weeks before and the couple were expecting their first child. Like many students present, Benno Ohnesorg had read Bahman Nirumand's book and was galvanised by the man's speech at the panel discussion.
Happier times: Benno Ohnesorg and his friend Uwe Timm in Hannover.
Benno Ohnesorg was politically interested, a pacifist and member of the Lutheran student church. He had only attended a single protest in favour of education reform before. However, Nirumand's speech persuaded Ohnesorg to take part in the protests planned for the following day. His wife Christa was worried, because there were reports about increasing police brutality during political protests. Ohnesorg (whose surname means "without worries" in German), however, dispelled her fears. It certainly wouldn't be that bad. And so the young couple agreed to attend the protest.
Shah Mohammad Rez Pahlavi and West Berlin mayor Heinrich Albertz walk past a parade of West Berlin police officers upon the Shah's arrival in West Berlin.
Cheering Persians
However, the students of the Free University of Berlin were not the only ones planning a rally on the occasion of the Shah’s visit to West Berlin. A pro-Shah group of Iranian expats filed for permission to hold a rally outside the Schöneberger Rathaus, where the Shah and his wife were due to sign West Berlin’s official visitor book. This group was remarkably well organised and bussed in some 150 Shah supporters, many of them young men in dark suits. They were carrying placards and portraits of the Shah attached to wooden sticks. It later turned out that these Shah supporters were not regular Iranian expats at all, but members of the Iranian secret police SAVAK who had been explicitly flown in. Others had been paid to attend the rally and cheer for the Shah. The press has since called them "Jubelperser", i.e. cheering Persians.
The pro-Shah Iranian expat group since dubbed the "cheering Persians" outside the Schöneberger Rathaus.
Meanwhile, the student protesters were also congregating outside the Schöneberger Rathaus, on the very same spot where John F. Kennedy held his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech almost four years ago. Several of the students wore paper bags with stylised portraits of the Shah and Farah Diba over their heads. Also present were many overwhelmingly elderly Berliner housewives hoping to catch a glimpse of the tabloid empress Farah Diba.
Elderly ladies hope to catch a glimpse of Farah Diba outside the Schöneberger Rathaus, while student protesters unroll a banner criticising the torture of political prisoners in Iran.Student protesters stage a sit-in outside the Schöneberger Rathaus, wearing paperbags with stylised portraits of the Shah and Farah Diba over their heads.
The key to managing protests by rival groups is to keep protesters and counter-protesters separated to prevent clashes. The West Berlin police completely failed in this, even though they had orders to keep Shah supporters and anti-Shah protesters apart. Furthermore, the West Berlin police were on edge, because there had been rumours about a planned attempt on the Shah's life as well as the Kommune 1 threatening to pee on the Shah. And so the John-F-Kennedy-Platz in front of the Schöneberger Rathaus quickly descended into scenes of pandemonium.
Students protesters and spectators mingle outside the Schöneberger Rathaus.
When the Shah and his wife arrived, the cheering Persians did what they had been hired to do and cheered on the Shah. The student protesters countered by chanting "Murderer, Murderer", while the elderly housewives still hoped to catch a glimpse of Farah Diba. So far, it was still a normal, if lively and noisy protest.
The cheering Persians begin to clash with the student protesters.
But then, the Shah supporters tore the placards from the wooden sticks, broke through the police lines and started beating up the student protesters, seriously injuring many protesters and even bystanders, while the West Berlin police stood by and did… absolutely nothing. The only people arrested were five student protesters. None of the cheering Persians were arrested. There even are reports that some police officers cheered on the battering Persians and started beating up students themselves.
The cheering Persians show their true face and attack students protesters with wooden sticks.The cheering Persians attack the student protesters outside the Schöneberger Rathaus.
Up to this point, I had been fairly neutral about the Shah of Iran and his visit to West Germany. Make no mistake, the Shah is a dictator, but there are many terrible regimes and dictators in the world and when they chance to visit West Germany, they have to be treated like any other head of state. However, when a foreign politician visits West Germany, they also have to accept that we have freedom of speech and freedom of assembly here and that yes, there might be angry protesters chanting unpleasant things.
A West Berlin traffic cop escorts an elderly lady who was injured during the riot outside the Schöneberger Rathaus to safety.
But once I saw footage from the riot outside the Schöneberger Rathaus and heard reports from a friend who was there, I found myself seething with rage at the Shah and his cheering Persians. For while no one in West Germany can stop the Shah and his secret police from beating up protesters in Iran, they have no right to beat up protesters here in West Germany. The West Berlin police should have arrested those cheering and battering Persians and put them on the next plane back to Iran. And they should have sent the bloody Shah and his wife back as well, since royalty or not, even a Shah can't just flaunt our laws.
But things got even worse…
Fox Hunting Outside the Deutsche Oper
That evening, the Shah and his wife were due to attend a performance of Mozart's The Magic Flute at the Deutsche Oper opera house together with West German president Heinrich Lübke and West Berlin mayor Heinrich Albertz. Given Lübke's nigh legendary lack of education, I would almost have felt sorry for the Shah and Farah Diba for having to endure such a stupid man, if not for the terrible scenes in front of the Schöneberger Rathaus.
The Shah and Farah Diba at a reception of the West Berlin mayor in Schloss CharlottenburgThe Shah, Farah Diba, West German President Heinrich Lübke and his wife as well as West Berlin mayor Heinrich Albertz enjoy a performance of "The Magic Flute" at the Deutsche Oper, while all hell breaks lose outside.
The student protesters congregated outside the Deutsche Oper, among them Benno Ohnesorg and his wife Christa. The West Berlin police were also there in force to cordon off the area in front of the opera house, so the honoured guests could enter without being troubled by chanting students. Shortly before the Shah himself appeared, the cheering Persians arrived at the opera house in two rented busses, once again remarkably well organised for an expat group that had only been founded one day before.
Student protesters behind a police barrier outside the Deutsche OperThe police attempt to hold back student protesters outside the Deutsche Oper.
The student protesters chanted slogans and some of them threw eggs and tomatoes taken from a van parked at the curb as well as rubber rings "borrowed" from a building site onto the road outside the opera house, though none of the missiles even came close to hitting the Shah or any of the other opera guests. The cheering Persians started a counter chant, as the Shah and his wife entered the opera.
Student protesters argue with the West Berlin police outside the Deutsche Oper
This time around, the West Berlin police did not just stand by and do nothing, but actively grabbed individual student protesters, alleged ringleaders, from the crowd to beat them up on the street, a tactic that the West Berlin police had also employed during previous protests. Infuriated, some students started hurling stones from a nearby building site at the police. A police officer received a cut to the scalp, which bled heavily.
West Berlin police officers carry off a student protester outside the Deutsche Oper.West Berlin police officers beat up a student protesters on the Bismarckstraße in front of the Deutsche Oper.
Once the Shah was inside the opera house, many of the students prepared to go home, since the performance would take three hours and few wanted to wait so long for the Shah to emerge. Among the students heading home was also the five months pregnant Christa Ohnesorg, who was appalled by the violence and feared for her safety and that of her unborn child. Her husband Benno stayed behind. It was the last time Christa would see him.
Around this time, rumours spread that a police officer had been stabbed by a protester. This rumour was false, but nonetheless all hell broke loose, as the police decided they would go "hunting foxes" as they put it.
A student falls over a barricade, while trying to flee the aggressive West Berlin police.West Berlin police officers arrest a student protester outside the Deutsche Oper, holding him in a choke hold.
The police officers surrounded the students and began indiscriminately beating up the protesters with the cheering Persians joining in. Hereby, the West Berlin police did not care whether the students were ringleaders or bystanders, male or female, whether they were aggressive or cowering in fear. They beat everybody they could get their hands on with their truncheons. Even passers-by who had not been part of the protest at all were attacked, when they tried to help injured or fallen students or simply if they got in the way of the police officers. Not even nurses and paramedics trying to help the wounded were safe from attack. Meanwhile, protesters who were taken to hospital often found themselves subjected to further abuse, particularly young women, who were called "sluts" for daring to wear short skirts, the mini-skirt apparently still being a new and shocking thing in the isolated enclave of West Berlin.
A bleeding young woman who was injured during the protest.A police officer escorts a bleeding young woman, whether to jail or hospital is unknown.
Erich Duensing, a former officer in Hitler's general staff who is now chief of the West Berlin police, cynically described the actions of his officers as "liverwurst tactic" – puncture it in the middle and the contents will be squeezed out on the sides. Cynical as it is, this is also an accurate description of what happened. Horrified by the violence, the student protesters ran away and the police gave chase, beating anybody they could grab hold off.
Erich Duensing, former Nazi officer turned chief of the West Berlin police, with former mayor Ernst Reuter.
A Shot in the Night
Among the students who ran away was also Benno Ohnesorg. Together with other students, Benno Ohnesorg found himself driven into a narrow street opposite the opera house called Krumme Straße (Crooked Street). He witnessed police officers grabbing a student and carrying him off into a backyard just off the Krumme Straße, beating him all the way. Together with other students, Benno Ohnesorg followed in order to help or at least try to persuade the police to leave the student alone.
Police officers beat up fleeing students.
One of the reporters on site noticed the group of students following the police officers into the backyard and informed other police officers – whether maliciously or out of genuine concern for everybody's safety is not clear. At any rate, the police cordoned off the backyard, trapping the students, including Benno Ohnesorg. Then they began beating up their prey. Nine-year-old Hansi B., who witnessed the entire scene from his bedroom window, later reported that it was like a real life game of cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians.
According to eye witness reports, Benno Ohnesorg hung back and did not attack or provoke the police officers. He then attempted to flee, but was held back and beaten up by the West Berlin police. Benno Ohnesorg raised his hands and on a tape recorded by the radio station Südwestdeutscher Rundfunk SWR, someone – likely Ohnesorg himself – can be heard saying, "Please don't shoot." Then, around half past eight, a shot rang out in the Berlin evening, and Benno Ohnesorg collapsed onto the pavement of the backyard off the Krumme Straße. The young witness Hansi B. said that only when "the man in the red shirt" did not get up again, did he realise that what he'd just witnessed from his bedroom window was not a game of cops and robbers at all, but deadly serious.
On the SWR tape, the voice of a police officer can be heard shouting "Are you crazy shooting in here?" "It just went off," another voice answered. This voice, as we now know, belongs to Karl-Heinz K., a 39-year-old plainclothes officer of the West Berlin police. "Go to the back. Quickly," the first voice ordered.
While the police officers were arguing, Friederike Dollinger, a 22-year-old student of history and Latin, bent over the fatally injured Benno Ohnesorg, put her handbag under his bleeding head and yelled at the police officers to call an ambulance, a scene that was caught on camera by photographer Jürgen Henschel.
22-year-old student Friederike Dollinger holds the dying Benno Ohnesorg in her arms.West Berlin police officers, among them shooter Karl-Heinz K., stand around the dying Benno Ohnesorg and refuse to help.A police officer and a nurse carry the fatally wounded Benno Ohnesorg into an ambulance. The nurse was beaten up for her attempts to give Benno Ohnesorg first aid.
The police officers refused to call an ambulance and even attacked a nurse and a medical student, who attempted to give first aid to Benno Ohnesorg. And so it took twenty minutes after the fatal shot, until an ambulance finally arrived to take Benno Ohnesorg to hospital. And because two nearby hospitals were already filled to capacity with injured protesters, it took forty-five minutes until Benno Ohnesorg finally arrived at the Moabit hospital. By that time, he was dead.
Lies and Cover-ups
The death certificate of Benno Ohnesorg lists a basal skull fracture, sustained as he fell to the pavement, as the cause of death. However, a post-mortem carried out the following day revealed a bullet wound in the back of Benno Ohnesorg's head, fired at a distance of approximately one and a half meters. During the post-mortem, it was also discovered that a part of Benno Ohnesorg's skull, the part with the bullet hole, had gone missing during the night, most likely to cover up the true cause of death, though the bullet itself was still stuck inside Ohnesorg's brain.
Meanwhile, police officer Karl-Heinz K. came up with a new explanation for why he shot an unarmed man in the head every other hour. Initially, Karl-Heinz K. claimed that he had fired a single warning shot, then it was two warning shots, then one warning shot and a second shot, which accidentally went off. Finally, Karl-Heinz K. claimed that several students were threatening him with knives, whereupon he drew his gun, fired and hit Ohnesorg. However, according to Hansi B., probably the closest thing to a neutral witness in this case, there were no students armed with knives. Instead, "the man in the suit [Karl-Heinz K.] drew a pistol and shot the man in the red shirt [Ohnesorg]".
The West Berlin police, aided and abetted by the West Berlin senate and the tabloid press, tried to portray Benno Ohnesorg as a ringleader and aggressive radical, who brought his fate upon himself. Once again, this is demonstrably wrong, since everybody who knew Ohnesorg described him as a quiet pacifist, politically interested but not a radical. And even if you don't want to believe the people who actually knew Ohnesorg, the fact that he was shot in the back of the head belies claims that he threatened Karl-Heinz K.
Students in West Berlin and all of West Germany were understandably furious both at the police violence and at what many of them consider a political murder. Protests and solidarity marches were held in many West German cities, except for West Berlin itself, where the police and the courts banned all public protests. They also tried to ban meetings and protests on the campus of the Free University, but once again the chancellor and several deans refused, citing the fact that freedom of assembly and freedom of speech are guaranteed rights in the West German constitution.
Students in Munich protest the shooting of Benno Ohnesorg.
A Dark Day
June 2, 1967 was a dark day for the Federal Republic of West Germany. Not only were peaceful protesters beaten and attacked by the very police force supposed to protect them, but the secret police of a foreign country was also allowed to run riot in the streets of a West German city. Even worse, a 26-year-old young man, an aspiring writer and teacher, a new husband and father-to-be, senselessly lost his life.
There are fears that the shooting of Benno Ohnesorg will further radicalise the student movement. These fears are not without justification. Because more and more students realise that their protests are not only ignored, but met with violence. So far, those who call for more radical actions are fringe elements, like the Kommune 1. But their numbers might well grow.
Furthermore, West Germany needs to rethink its relationship with dictators like the Shah of Iran. Because right now, even the worst dictator is welcomed with open arms, as long as they are not communist and have something to sell that West Germany wants or needs, oil in the case of Iran. Foreign heads of state must also accept that when they visit West Germany, they are bound by our laws and cannot just have protests banned or have their own secret police beat up West German citizens in the streets of a West German city.
We also need to tackle the problem of former Nazis in positions of authority in West Germany more than twenty years after the end of the Third Reich. It is well known that the West Berlin police force, probably the most militarised in the country, consists to more than fifty percent of former Wehrmacht members and officers who already served during the Third Reich. And the fact that many of the student protesters reported that police officers hurled not just anti-communist but antisemitic slurs at them shows that these leopards have not changed their spots.
Moreover, we need to discuss the role of the tabloid press, particularly the newspapers and magazines published by the conservative Axel Springer Verlag, in both fawning over the Shah and his wife and demonising the student protesters as Communists, terrorists or worse.
Finally, the shooting of Benno Ohnesorg must be investigated thoroughly and without bias and police officer Karl-Heinz K. must stand trial for shooting an unarmed man in the head. Because only justice for Benno Ohnesorg will calm the enraged Left in West Germany.
Students in Munich place a wreath for Benno Ohnesorg as well as a banner calling him a victim of police terror at the official monument for the victims of the Nazi terror.
Regular readers of the Journey may remember that I occasionally visit Belgium, particularly the beautiful cities of Antwerp and Brussels, on business. Whenever I'm in Brussels, I try to find the time for a stroll along the Rue Neuve/Nieuwe Straat, the city's main shopping street and home to trendy boutiques, elegant movie palaces and luxurious department stores.
The Rue Neuve a.k.a. Nieuwe Straat in Brussels, looking towards Place de la Monnaie a.k.a. Muntplein.
The foremost of the department stores along the Rue Neuve and also the most beautiful is À l'Innovation (For Innovation), "Inno" for short. Built in 1897 by the famous architect Victor Horta, the À l'Innovation store is a stunning Art Noveau building with a glass-covered façade. Inside, the various departments are arranged around an open atrium that is crisscrossed by walkways and topped by a skylight.
The À l'Innovation department store on Rue Neuve in Brussels shortly after its opening in 1897.
The atrium of the À l'Innovation department store in Brussels with skylight.A more recent photo of the atrium of the À l'Innovation department store.
The last time I was in Brussel in April, I stopped at the Standaard Boekhandel book shop directly across the street from À l'Innovation to pick up the latest comics. The venerable weekly comics magazine Tintin has launched a slew of new strips to keep up with the competition of Spirou and particularly the French comics magazine Pilote. Several of the new series are promising such as Bruno Brazil, a James Bond inspired spy adventure by Greg a.k.a. Michel Régnier with artwork by William Vance a.k.a. William van Cutsem, Howard Flynn, a Horatio Hornblower style naval adventure set in the 18th century by Yves Duval and William Vance, and Bernard Prince by Greg and Hermann a.k.a. Hermann Huppen, which combines spy and sea adventures. Tintin even has a new science fiction comic called Luc Orient, also written by Greg with artwork by Eddy Paape, which seems to be inspired by the Flash Gordon comics of the 1930s.
A selection of recent issues of Tintin.
A page of Bruno Brazil.
After I bought the comics, I headed across the street to À l'Innovation for a stop at the marble-tiled bathrooms. Then I went to the top floor restaurant to flip through my new purchases under the Victor Horta designed skylight, while enjoying a remarkably good meal for a department store restaurant. Little did I know that this would be the last time I'd ever see this store.
The neon sign on the expansion of the À i'Innovation store, "Inno" for short.
Smoke over Brussels
Smoke from the burning Inno store rises into the sky over Brussels
For when I switched on the evening news on May 22, I was greeted by footage of the rooftops of Brussels engulfed in smoke. A massive fire had broken out around lunchtime at the À l'Innovation store and completely gutted not only the beautiful Victor Horta building, but the neighbouring Priba supermarket and the entire city block as well. The final death toll is not yet known, as firefighters are still combing through the wreckage and many victims are still fighting for their lives in Brussels hospitals, but more than three hundred are feared dead.
In the end, the beautiful Art Noveau architecture, which I had always admired so much, was what doomed the building and the more than three hundred souls who perished. The polished wooden floors and wall panelling not to mention the merchandise, much of which was flammable, burned like tinder, while the stunning atrium acted like a chimney and fanned the flames. And since the building was seventy years old, it was not equipped with modern fire-suppression measures like a sprinkler system. There were fire extinguishers, of course, and standpipes, but the standpipes did not function and the fire extinguishers were not sufficient to stop the fire. And so the grand staircase with its ornate banisters, which I had walked up and down so often, was engulfed in thick black smoke within minutes, making escape impossible for those on the upper floors.
The burning À l'Innovation store, seen from the Rue de Pont Neuve.
The blazing À l'Innovation store and the firefighters, viewed from the upper floors of a building across the street.
The Brussels fire brigade was quickly on site and more than 150 firefighters risked their lives to fight the flames and rescue those trapped inside the burning building. However, there were many challenges such as the non-functioning standpipes or the fact that the Rue Neuve is a narrow street, which makes manoeuvring difficult for large fire trucks, particularly the ladder trucks that were so vital to saving those trapped on the upper floors.
Firefighters attacking the blaze inside the Inno department store.
Two firefighters walk along a ledge outside the burning À l'Innovation store.
Brussels firefighters tackling the blaze inside the À l'Innovation store.
The blazing ground floor of the À l'Innovation store seen from the relative safety of a shop across the road.
Scenes of Horror
Eye witnesses describe horrifying scenes. People burst out of the exits with clothes and hair on fire, molten synthetic fabric fused with their skin. A woman who had been shopping with her young daughter grabbed the girl's hand and ran for the exit. She managed to escape, but once she stumbled onto the Rue Neuve, she turned around and realised that the child whose hand she was clutching was not her daughter at all.
Young children are evacuated from the in-store nursery of the À l'Innovation department store.
The most terrible scenes, however, happened on the upper floors, where hundreds of shoppers and staff were trapped by fire and smoke, unable to escape. In desperation, people broke the window panes of the glass façade on their quest to flee the flames. Many were rescued by firefighters with ladders, but others fell or jumped to their deaths, including a woman and her three young children. A few lucky souls managed to make it to the roof of the store and scrambled to the safety of neighbouring buildings, from where they could be rescued.
People waiting for rescue on the upper floors of À l'Innovation.
People scrambled to safety onto the roof of the burning À l'Innovation store.
Firefighters evacuate people trapped on the upper floors of the blazing Inno store.
Firefighters escort an elderly lady to safety.
In spite of the best efforts of the Brussels fire brigade, the blaze also spread to the neighbouring shops, which had to be evacuated as well. Robert Dehon, a clerk at the Priba supermarket next to Inno helped survivors to safety and only narrowly escaped himself, when the fire reached the supermarket. Meanwhile, the staff of a furrier's shop desperately tried to save their merchandise from the flames, throwing expensive fur coats from the upper floors to the Rue Neuve below, into the waiting arms of fire fighters and civilian helpers.
A man holds on to a young woman who is precariously dangling from a ledge.
A woman is hanging from a wire, which some of the people trapped inside the burning store used to escape the inferno.
A man sliding down a wire to escape the fire, while an injured woman is carried to safety.
A man is holding on to a wire, while a woman jumps from a window of the burning building. She survived and is now being treated in a Brussels hospital for a broken leg.
Because the fire broke out around lunchtime, the top floor restaurant under the glass skylight was bustling with shoppers and diners. The fire alarm was not heard by many people in the busy restaurant or they were reluctant to leave the food and drink they had paid for behind. And by the time the smoke and fire reached the restaurant it was too late for most. In fact, it was here – in the very restaurant where I had lunch while flipping through the latest comics barely a month ago – that many of the victims died.
Firefighters rescue injured people from the upper floors of the burning Inno store.
The remains of the À l'Innovation restaurant, viewed from the Rue de la Roses. This part of the building completely collapsed.
Protests and Sparks
So far, it is not certain what caused the fire. In fact, is not even certain, where it started. There are conflicting reports by survivors and since the building was completely gutted, fire investigators have difficulties locating the exact ignition source. Most survivors agree that the fire was first spotted in the children's department on the first floor, though some also claim that it started in the camping department on the third floor and that exploding butane gas cylinders fuelled the flames. Yet others report that the fire started in the kitchen of the top floor restaurant
After the fire, only the steel frame of the Victor Horta facade is left standing.
A look up at the burned out atrium of the À l'Innovation store.
The entire interior of the store was gutten by fire.
A look down Rue Neuve at the burned out Inno store. To the left, you can see the Priba supermarket, which also was destroyed.
Inside the burned out offices of the Priba supermarket.
In the ruins of the À l'Innovation store, a staircase leads to nowhere.
But no matter where exactly the fire started, a very dark picture is beginning to emerge regarding its cause. For though the Brussels police and fire brigade are investigating all possibilities, including a gas leak, an overheated light bulb or faulty wiring in the old building, there is a good chance that this devastating fire that cost the lives of more than three hundred people was due to arson.
In early May, À l'Innovation launched a special promotion called "US Parade", where American products such as jeans, barbecue equipment and toys were offered for sale. Such promotions are nothing unusual, many European department stores run them to showcase products from a specific country. They are also popular with shoppers, because it is a chance to purchase international products that you cannot normally get.
Firefighters enter the burning À l'Innovation department store. The stars and stripes decoration for the "US Parade" promotion which so incensed the protesters is clearly visible.
The stars and stripes decoration in the display windows of the À l'Innovation store on fire.
However, the US is not exactly popular in Europe at the moment due to the ongoing war in Vietnam. As a result, some people viewed a promotion campaign called "US Parade" not as an exciting shopping opportunity but as a provocation. And so anti-war protesters took to picketing the store and distributing pamphlets. Why those protesters felt that picketing a department store selling American goods would be more effective than protesting outside the US Embassy only four Metro stations away is a question only they can answer.
The overwhelming majority of those anti-war protesters were peaceful, if noisy. And indeed, most of the young protesters were horrified at the scenes unfolding before them, as the store went up in flames. Some protesters had firecrackers, which according to Inno staff members kept going off on the Rue Neuve outside and sometimes even inside the store. In fact, a surviving sales clerk later reported that she had become so used to the cries of protesters and the sound of firecrackers in the street that she initially mistook the cries for help and the crackling of the fire for yet more firecrackers and yelling protesters.
Burning mannequins and collapsed letters spelling out "US" inside the À l'Innovation store
As everybody should know, firecrackers need to be handled carefully and kept away from flammable materials. Did one of the protesters enter the store, ignite a firecracker and accidentally set the building ablaze? Or – worse – did someone deliberately set the fire inside the store? At any rate, survivors report seeing a man inside the store crying, "I'm giving my life for Vietnam," when the fire broke out. Furthermore, store manager Willy Bernheim reported that À l'Innovation had been receiving bomb threats.
As someone who opposes to the Vietnam war, I agree with the message of the protesters, if not their methods, since harassing shoppers and department store employees will certainly not stop the war in Vietnam. Therefore, I was horrified when I first heard about speculations that the fire my have been due to arson.
"Surely it was an accident," I thought, "An idiot playing with firecrackers, who intended to cause a small nuisance and had no idea what he or she wrought. Surely nobody dedicated to peace would deliberately burn down a building filled with hundreds of people."
And then I saw the latest pamphlets published by the Kommune 1…
The Kommune 1 and Their Shocking Lack of Empathy
The Kommune 1 is a group of leftist activists who believe that the nuclear family is the root of fascism and therefore want to experiment with alternative forms of communal living. This group–eight young men and women, as well as two of their children–moved together into an apartment in West Berlin earlier this year.
Members of the Kommune 1 during a sit-in.
This experiment in alternative living was political from the start and so the Kommune 1 quickly became notable for their creative but also extreme protests such as scaling the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church to throw pamphlets and Mao Bibles onto the street below or the plan to hurl pudding at US Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey during his visit to West Berlin last month, which brought them to the attention of the police.
Kommune 1 member Rainer Langhans is arrested by the West Berlin police, following the foiled plot to throw pudding at US Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey
The members of the Kommune 1 claim to have been in contact with the organisers of the protests in Brussels, a Maoist group named "Action for Peace and Friendship between Nations", and their spokesperson Maurice L. And so a pamphlet published by the Kommune 1 two days after the fire quoted Maurice L. who admitted not only to organising the protests, but also to setting off firecrackers inside the store to "accustom the staff to explosions and screams" and sending bomb threats to the store management to gauge police response. In fact, the pamphlet implies that the fire was no tragic accident, but a meticulously planned attack.
All this is very disturbing, but even more disturbing is the reaction of the authors of the pamphlet (credited to Dagrun Enzensberger, former wife of writer Hans Magnus Enzensberger and mother of a nine-year-old daughter, and her former brother-in-law Ulrich Enzensberger) who fail to show any empathy at all for the more than three hundred victims of the fire. Instead, the pamphlet proudly notes that the effect of the "great happening", which is how they refer to the protest, exceeded expectations.
The disgusting pamphlet published by the Kommune 1 two days after the fire.
The next pamphlet, published on the same day, was even worse. Herein, the Kommune 1 explicitly cheers about the deaths of more than three hundred people (referred to as "overfed bourgeois consumers"), because "a burning department store with burning people will provide – for the first time in a European metropolis – that prickling Vietnam sensation (being there and burning) that we in Berlin are still missing."
To say I was disgusted is putting it mildly. In fact, the members of the Kommune 1 should count themselves lucky that I only received the pamphlets in the mail from a friend who lives in West Berlin (and was just as horrified by their content as I was), because otherwise I might well have rung the doorbell of the apartment on the corner of Stuttgarter Platz and Kaiser-Friedrich-Straße and punched whomever opened the door in the face.
At home with the Kommune 1. Hard to imagine that these people can cuddle their own children, while cheering the deaths of other young children in Brussels.
But it gets even worse, because the Kommune 1 did not stop at cheering about the deaths of more than three hundred people, they apparently enjoyed the horrifying TV footage of the fire so much that their next two pamphlets explicitly call for setting department stores in West Berlin on fire or maybe blowing up a military base or causing the collapse of a stand in a sports stadium filled with spectators. There were also threats against the Shah of Persia, who will be visiting West Germany in early June.
Now I have sympathy for the frustration felt by anti-war protesters that their peaceful protests seem to have little impact, though more and more people around the world are turning against the war in Vietnam. However, violence is not the answer, let alone violence on such a horrifying scale as what happened in Brussels. And calling for violence, even if meant satirically, as the Kommune 1 claimed once the West Berlin police knocked on their door, is utterly despicable, especially since someone might take those calls seriously and cause the next large-scale fire.
Let's be clear, so far no one truly knows what happened at À l'Innovation and what caused the fire. It's quite possible that the mysterious Maurice L. is blowing hot air or that he is merely a figment of the Kommune 1's imagination.
However, no decent human being, let alone someone who considers themselves on the left or anti-war, should ever cheer about the deaths of others. And make no mistake, the more than three hundred people who died at the À l'Innovation were innocents. They were people who were at work or shopping or having lunch. Many of them may well have been opposed to the war in Vietnam themselves. Several of the dead were young children, about the same age as the daughter of Dagrun Enzensberger, or even younger.
This whole thing is utterly disgusting and I do hope that the broader Left will make it very clear to groups like the Kommune 1 or the ironically named "Action for Peace and Friendship between Nations" that such behaviour is neither acceptable nor welcome. I also hope that if the À l'Innovation fire was indeed due to arson, the perpetrators will be caught and brought to justice soon.
Twisted steel beams after the À l'Innovation fire.
Not so for the wargaming world. A year and a half ago, Avalon Hill released its biggest, most complex title to date, and it still remains the monster amongst its hex-and-counter brethren. Blitzkrieg is a truly impressive beast: three mapboards instead of the usual two, 100+ pieces per side (compare to chess' 16 or Afrika Korp's ~50), 16 pages of rules.
Yes, it's sure a big'n–but is it fun? Read on!
Red vs. Blue–2
Nine years ago, Charles Roberts kicked off the board wargaming hobby in a big way with his Tactics 2 (there had been a Tactics (1) released a few years before, but its impact was slight). Tactics 2, like chess, featured two more-or-less identical opponents with no geographical ties to any real world nations. They fought with abstractions of regular forces, all army units. So primitive was this game that it used squares instead of the now-standard hexes (still, paradoxically called "squares") that were a revolution in simulating movement.
Tactics 2 was not a fun game. It was a boring, endless slog.
Blitzkrieg is Tactics 2 done right.
You've still got the two generic countries, in this case "Great Blue vs. Big Red", but now the map is a lot more interesting. In between the two titans are seven "minor countries" that can be occupied for more production potential. There are beaches to land on, deserts to cross, mountain ranges to hole up in, oceans to sail.
And the other armed services aren't just abstractions anymore. The Navy still is, with transport represented simply by the number of troops which can be at sea at any time (and fleets can't shoot each other as they pass by), but now there are Marines (well, Rangers) that can land anywhere as opposed to their GI cousins who must make assaults on beaches only. And there is a profusion of Air Force units: three types of bombers, from the short-ranged assault type to the long-ranged strategic variety, not to mention escorting fighters. There are also airborne units that can fly from airfields and land great distances away–critical to taking farflung strongpoints behind the lines.
Even the Army is heterogenous, with units representing infantry, armor, and artillery (though functionally, they all work the same–the only difference is their movement and combat factors).
Cities are essential to the game: a player can only support 12 combat factors of units for every city controlled. A player who loses cities may find his or her units evaporating without a shot being fired.
The game is won one of two ways: either one side completely destroys all of the other side's units, or (more achievable), one side occupies all of the other side's cities for a turn. A third option says the game can end by negotiated surrender, just like real life. In practice, this is the most common outcome. There comes a point when the end is inevitable, even if it be far off.
Easy to learn, hard to master
Taken individually, none of the rules in Blitzkrieg is particularly challenging. At the base of it all is the standard move, fight sequence of all other Avalon Hill games. The Combat Results Table (CRT) is novel–instead of the standard "Defender/Attacker Eliminated", "Defender/Attacker Retreats", "Exchange" results, both sides have the chance to lose strength points. This means that after every fight, a player is usually "making change", exchanging full strength units for depleted ones. This is more realistic as individual battles rarely destroy entire units.
There are stacking limits (no more than 15 combat strength to a square), terrain modifications (units doubled on defense in towns and mountains), zones of control (units going next to others must stop and fight), replacement units and reinforcement units–all standard stuff.
The new rules aren't too onerous. Invasions work kind of like in D-Day where assaulting units line up on the beach and fight their way ashore. If there's no one defending the beach, they get to zoom inland.
In addition to the aforementioned parachuters, a player can also move 12 units of Army from one city to another–including ones just taken from the enemy that turn. This can be huge.
The Air Force adds a completely new dimension…literally! Tactical bombers add their strength to an attack while strategic bombers bomb completely separately, interdict supply, or reduce towns to rubble. Medium bombers can do either! Fighters engage bombers or each other.
There are even weather, nuke, and sea-based aircraft rules!
Again, none of these are particularly difficult to apprehend. But in order to win the game, all must be employed, and skillfully. Neglect the air capabilities of an opponent in favor of the human wave tactics that won you Stalingrad or Waterloo, and you'll soon find troops behind your lines eating your supply. Neglect the threat of naval invasion, either to your shores, or as a thrust to throw the enemy off balance, and you lose a powerful component of strategy.
So, that's the game, but I haven't answered the original question, have I?
In Practice
At the beginning of the year, we set up the behemoth that is Blitzkrieg for a try. Nominally a two-player game, we decided to make it a four-player game by having two people per side. This makes a match both competitive and collaborative, which I find more fun than a straight head to head. Plus, Janice is smarter than me, so she ensures we don't make dumb mistakes.
Against us were two Travelers, Lorelei and Elijah. Would youthful vigor defeat aged wisdom?
Because of Great Red's proximity to more minor countries, and also because of somewhat better planning, Janice and I were able to take four of the seven minor countries with fewer losses and more quickly than our opponents. This was not decisive, but it didn't help the kids.
Now, with both sides directly facing each other, with troops at sea threatening each other's shores, the question was where the first blows would land.
We quickly identified the largest concentration of Red troops that could be "bottled up". If they could be taken out of the fight, Red would lose much of its offensive capabilities. Accordingly, we landed in force on the middle south, around Curry Bend. A titanic battle began that would take several turns to resolve and suck up more and more forces from both sides.
But what's this? Elijah and Lorelei had paid more attention to the rules than we did. They parachuted across the desert into one of our vacant cities in the northeast and promptly flew in another 12 points of units, which went on to occupy even more of our hinterland! Our rear was open to the wind, our supply threatened.
Well, two could play at that game. We took two of their cities in the northwest and set up hedgehog defenses in the home country. While it was scary to lose several cities, the fact was, we had plenty of formerly neutral nations to supply our units. We were never in any danger of losing troops to supply restrictions.
Great Blue, on the other hand, could not withstand the loss of dozens of combat factors in the south. With their main offensive strength crushed on Turn 5, it was clear that their days as a fighting force were ended. And so we adjourned to watch Star Trek.
After Action Report
I took three things away from this session of Blitzkrieg. The first is what every good general has learned: to crush the enemy, you must destroy their armies in the field. Taking cities is all very nice, but so long as one side is losing more troops each turn than the other, and the number of troops lost exceeds the four replacement units per turn, an inexorable imbalance grows until defeat is inevitable.
Secondly, we determined that Big Red has an inherent advantage over Great Blue. Having a contiguous nation with greater access to more minor countries is an incontrovertible advantage. Not insurmountable for Blue, but worth noting.
Thirdly, yes, this game is a lot of fun. Highly recommended. Just know that it'll take longer than most games! Each team's turn took about half an hour to plan followed by half an hour to play out. Thus, our five turn game (plus setup and learning), took about 12 hours played over several sessions.
But it was worth it!
Join the Fun!
If all this talk of playing general stirs something your bones (and hey, it's a lot more fun and less harmful than actual fighting), you are warmly invited to join our Galactic Journey Wargaming Society. We have been facilitating several play-by-mail games so that even players remote from each other can enjoy a contest: over the summer, we had a smashing good time killing each other in a friendly game of Diplomacy.
And you get a spiffy newsletter! What are you waiting for?
Giant worms and spacefaring spice addicts in Frank Herbert's Dune introduced many genre readers to the fantastical potential of vaguely Islamic-themed fictional settings. But there's so much more to the real-life worlds and cultures he lightly touched on, so many more exciting, complex, beautiful places writers could be taking us.
Take Yemen.
The mouth of the harbor sits at the bottom a giant volcanic rock face, the black stone caldera soaring up around it on 3 sides. For centuries, the 53 Cisterns of Tawila held nearly a million gallons of water for the port city of Aden. Generations used these deep, carefully engineered pools to not only manage monsoon seasons that would break and slide over the volcanic cliffs surrounding the city, but provide a bustling community with fresh, clean water even in the hottest months.
Aden: the only major city in the world sitting in the mouth of an extinct volcano. Can't get much more sci fi than that. (Image via Mac9)
Travel north, past Queen Asma (?-1087 CE) and Queen Arwa (1048–1138 CE)'s great palaces and you can find the Marib Dam, from which people used successfully to irrigate 25,000 acres of farmable land 2000 years ago. Keep going east to the city of Shibam and you'll find skyscrapers over 10 stories tall, made from what this Californian could call adobe bricks, one and two room floors connected by sudden staircases and adorned by sweet little balconies. During your travels, you'll hear a local language influenced by a dozen indigenous languages, with a healthy smattering of the best bits of various invaders' tongues. The food is hot and plentiful, the oases well-loved, the stars unending, the many mountains steep, and the local politics as complex as any you've followed. Just off the coast is an island where most of the plants and animals exist nowhere else in the world and hold names like "Worm Snakes" and "Dragon's Blood Trees."
To me, this setting begs for a novel or a TV series. Frank Herbert or Stanley Kubrick, are you listening?
Write Beyond What You Know
The problem is, outside Frank Herbert and the sadly departed Cordwainer Smith, our fantasy and fantastic SF all tend to be written by people who know nothing but the European historical tradition. Any overly optimistic writer who tells a stranger she enjoys writing fiction will probably hear the advice to "write what you know." And this can be true for internal beats, for emotions, for arcs and compelling endings. But when writer after writer sets novel after novel, episode after episode, in the same gloomy castles, writes knights riding the same bridled horses over the same musty moats to fight the same stale dragons, I think this old advice has turned into a trap. And what's worse, it's a trap that reinforces a European-centric view of the world, of history, of culture, and when used in science fiction, of the future.
It's been close to a century since anyone in my direct family called Europe home, but still, when I was growing up and I imagined writing a fantasy, the setting was staffed by maidens fair and knights gallant. That frustrating limitation on my own imagination is why I started to travel in college and after, why I learned Arabic and bits of Hebrew, Spanish, French, and enough Japanese to sound-out street signs in Japantown in San Francisco or San José. I particularly enjoy traveling to the Middle East, to Doha and Ramallah and Gaza, to Muscat and Cairo and Istanbul.
I'm not the first western woman writer to be curious about the Middle East, or to travel alone through large parts of it. From 1937-1938, 44-year-old British-Italian travel writer Freya Stark spent a winter in Yemen and wrote a detailed, sympathetic, hilarious diary about it titled, as one might expect, A Winter in Arabia. She went to the port city of Aden, to Queen Arwa's palace, to the mud-built skyscrapers of Shibam. She went out into the world to know more about it, and then she wrote what she knew. Like any good writer, she didn't try and own or warp the cultures she saw, but tried to tell the truth, as she saw and understood it. She had little patience for people who did less.
“I began to wonder again why I, and so many others like me, should find ourselves in these recondite places. We like our life intensified, perhaps. Travel does what good novelists also do to the life of every day, placing it like a picture in a frame or a gem in its setting, so that the intrinsic qualities are made more clear. Travel does this with the very stuff that everyday life is made of, giving to it the sharp contour and meaning of art: and unless it succeeds in doing this, its effect on the human being is not, I believe, very great .. . . Most people anyway try to avoid having their feelings intensified: for indeed one must be strong to place oneself alone against the impact of the unknown world. ” — Freya Stark, Riding to the Tigris, 1959. (Image via Atlas Obscura)The Middle East: Not a Homogenous Lump.
The same ignorances she highlighted 30 years ago still infect most people's understandings of the region. A friend might read about one country's struggles in the newspaper, and assume they know about every other country. Even worse, they might hear about a conflict between two countries and assume that conflict encompasses the whole of what there is to be known about both countries. It would be a bit like someone being taught United States history and having their first fact about us be that we're a country in conflict with Cuba. And that is part of who we are, but it is certainly not all of it; and there are many perspectives on that topic, particularly within Cuban American communities. As writers, we have the opportunity to see more, to learn more, not just passively, but actively – to learn more about the world so we can write more about it.
The few Americans who know anything about Yemen today tend to know about Operation Magic Carpet, where from 1949-1950 American and British airlines worked tirelessly to help about 49,000 Yemenite Jews from Yemen and nearby countries get to Israel after they faced credible threats of violence and some actual violence from their neighbors and states. The discrimination those Yemenite Jews have faced in Israel has been less well-publicized, but is worth understanding, as well as the the way that Mizrahi Jewish people (those who moved or fled to Israel from Middle Eastern and North African countries) view and understand their own histories of diaspora differently than Sephardic, Ashkenazic, or Ethiopian Jews.
Yemen is a Kosher Topic
I'll pause here. Most Americans have a big ball of complicated emotions in their chests about Israel, the U.S. relationship to Israel, the relationships between Israel and her neighbors, and the future of the region. Some have very simple emotions, for good or ill; some don't care at all. Many Christians I grew up with don't know any more than they were taught in Sunday school. But the gravitational force that Israel exerts on most conversations about the region is something anyone curious about the Middle East must come to contend with.
Ancestor of Dhū Nuwās: Dhamar Ali Yahbar ruled in the late third or early fourth century CE. One of the 13 Jewish Kings of Yemen. Exhibited in the Sana'a National Museum. (Image via Kendite).
That's why I like learning about Dhū Nuwās, 13th ruler of the Jewish Kingdom of Ḥimyar in Yemen in the 500s. The Himyarite Kingdom had had Judaism as its de facto state religion for over a century at that point. The Byzantine Emperor, Justin I asked Ma'dīkarib Yafur, the ruler of the Christian Kingdom of Axum in Ethiopia to invade Yemen and overthrow Dhū Nuwās.
Talk about a setting for a fantasy novel. No musty moats or drippy castles, this story has armies crossing the stormy Bab al-Mandab Strait; it has intrigue as we don't know who started the war or why. It has oasis cities razed to the ground; transnational alliances from Constantinople to Ethiopia; countries in the throes of mass conversion; and tragedy, as Dhū Nuwās is overthrown and the ruler of Axum takes over in Yemen. It has real people, widows and soldiers, farmers and fishermen, people who carved the stone steles which tell us this story and people who had to find a new way to preserve their faith in spite of the rulers who took over.
1959 Map of Yemen and Arabian Peninsula. Publisher: John Bartholomew & Son LTD. Lots of those pink lines Freya Stark complained about (Image via David Rumsey's Map Collection).
Fantastic Yemen
Whether your tone as a writer is epic or epistolary, intensely personal or wide-sweeping, there are just as many stories to tell in this tiny slice of Yemeni history as there are in any given year of the War of the Roses or the Battle for Agincourt. And as readers, we can demand to see these kinds of stories. We can write to our magazines and ask for a view beyond what the BBC World Service is willing to provide. And when we find stories that satisfy our freshly whetted palates, we can share and recommend them.
Reading and writing fantasy and science fiction that respectfully includes the people and places in the Middle East isn't going to end the North Yemen Civil War, nor address the Soviet Union, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, or Jordan's encouragement of it, nor Egypt's heavy commitment of ground troops to it. But I believe that learning and writing and reading teaches us empathy, teaches us to question, so when the nightly news asks us to accept violence or hatred as a region's due, we know that's just not true. We know there are histories and complexities beyond "centuries of conflict." We have a right to learn, to help ourselves and our communities better understand the world and our place in it. And perhaps, help to build a more peaceful world. Not to mention, enrich our fantasy and science fictional worlds!
Vacation photos from Aden, 1966. Yes, Yemen. (Image via Yvonne Thompson).
Bibliography
If you're curious about this region, below are a few recommendations – and I would love to hear more from readers if you have them!
A Winter in Arabia, by Freya Stark.
Enjoy some Yemenite folk music (your local record store should have Mohamed Al-Harithy and Geula Gill discs or be able to order them from the label)
and
Consider subscribing to some magazines that will bring in-depth, alternate views on current affairs. I like Foreign Affairs for a sense of what government leaders want me to think, Jewish Currents for what leftists want me to think, and The Economist for what capitalists want me to think.
Reach out to your local mosque, or if you don't live near one, find one in a nearby city. Ramadan starts on August 25th this year, and many masjids may open their doors for community dinners. Get to know your neighbors and ask them what newspapers they think you should subscribe to to learn more about the region.
Then share that knowledge with your friends and write to learn!
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John Cage
Ed Sanders's Peace Eye Bookstore
Simon and Garfunkel
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