Thursday

                This Date in History   March 4

1861 Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as President. Immediately after he was elected in November seven southern states seceded from the Union. A few years before the Republican Party was formed for the expressed purpose of freeing the slaves. Old Abe knew that he was stepping into a quagmire of Civil War but he thought he was ready for the job but after his United States Army received two or three ass-kickings from the outset and he could not find a field commander worth a damn. But as I said in a past lesson, Abe finally found Ulysses S. Grant who knew had more replacements than the Confederates and was not bashful about sending in his troops against an almost impregnable Confederate position just so he could kill just a few of them because they had no replacements and he did. Four years later Lincoln was inaugurated again after being re-elected for a second term. Shortly thereafter he and his wife Mary decided to see the play “My American Cousin” at the Ford Theater in Washington. A Confederate sympathizer, an actor named John Wilkes Booth, was waiting near the box seat where President and Mrs. Lincoln would be seated. We all know what happened next.

1944 Previously the British Bomber Command had been making night bombing raids on Berlin along with other major German cities that manufactured the tools of war. The United States Army Air Corps, the 8^th Air Force in particular, flying out of various bases in England had been making daylight on cities other than Berlin. On this date the 8^th Air Force made its first night raid on Berlin giving the exhausted British a breather. The 8^th Air Force had a variety of commanders such as General “Hap” Arnold, General Carl Spaatz and Medal of Honor winner General Jimmy Doolittle who had led the raid on Tokyo early in the war. The defenses around Berlin had stiffened since other military targets had been destroyed and the Air Force was looking for other targets of opportunity and Berlin was prime. The bombing of Berlin was effective but did not do anything to disrupt the morale of the German people. What happened later was this:

Later on in the spring of 1945, the allies sealed off the western side of Berlin and Germany as a whole and waited not accepting any surrenders. They were giving the Russians coming in from the east and southeast a chance at their “pound of flesh”. The Russians had lost about 26 million of their countrymen to the Germans during Operation Barbarossa. Hundreds of Russian towns and villages were razed and the citizenry were unceremoniously murdered in the German onslaught. Not only that, when the Russians finally began to gain ground back toward Germany, it was the Russians that liberated the hell on earth places like Dachau, Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. One can imagine the frame of mind those Russians were in after seeing all of this horror along with the death of so many of their own. The Russians struck Berlin from the east and southeast with unparalleled ferocity that will probably never be repeated in history. They killed and literally ground into the soil anything they confronted including men, women, children, dogs, cats and any thing else that was in their path. There was one story of a German anti-tank gun in Berlin being manned by German boys about 13 or 14 years old. They took a shot at an oncoming Russian tank and missed, the Russian tank commander sent a round their way killing all of them then rolled over the gun and the boys repeatedly until there was nothing left that could be identified as human. War is hell y'all, especially if one side has nothing on its mind except revenge.

1944 As a child Lepke Burkhalter would run up and down the streets of his neighborhood in New York and rob the poor guys selling fruit and produce off of their pushcarts. A little later he met up with a hoodlum name Jacob Shapiro and they formed a relationship and began to expand their business into extortion, prostitution and bootlegging. His organization became so large that it attracted the attention of the likes of Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky and “Dutch” Schultz. This group formed a loose business partnership. That is until Dutch decided he was going to cap the District Attorney of New York, Thomas Dewey. The group knew that this was a bad idea so they sent Burkhalter to take care of the problem. So he shot and killed Dutch, end of problem. It was after this that Burkhalter organized his own individual service known as “Murder Incorporated”. It is estimated that Burkhalter had over 250 men and women working for his at one time or another. All it was that if you wanted someone capped, you just contacted Lepke or one of his associates and after they investigated to see if the hit was legit and enough money changed hands, your problem was over. Anyway, Lepke was arrested and convicted of murder and on this date he went to meet his maker extra crispy courtesy of “Old Sparky” in Sing Sing.

Answer to the trivia question:

Steve McQueen's girlfriend in the movie “Bullitt” was played by Jacqueline Bissett.

                       Thanks for listening   I can hardly wait until tomorro