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WASHINGTON – The prostitution scandal at the Secret Service claimed its first casualties Wednesday. The agency announced three agents are leaving the service, even as separate U.S. government investigations were under way. The tawdry episode took a sharp political turn when presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney said he would fire the agents involved.
The Secret Service did not identify the three agents leaving the government or eight more it said remain on administrative leave. In a statement, it said one supervisor was allowed to retire and another will be fired for cause. A third employee, who was not a supervisor, has resigned.
The agents were implicated in the prostitution scandal in Colombia that also involved about 10 military service members and as many as 20 women. All the Secret Service employees who were involved had their security clearances revoked.
"These are the first steps," said Rep. Pete King, R-N.Y., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, which oversees the Secret Service. King said the agency's director, Mark Sullivan, took employment action against "the three people he believes the case was clearest against." But King warned: "It's certainly not over."
King said the agent set to be fired would sue. King said Sullivan had to follow collective bargaining rules but was "moving as quickly as he can. Once he feels the facts are clear, he's going to move."
The scandal, which has become an election-year embarrassment for the Obama administration, erupted last week after 11 Secret Service agents were sent home from the colonial-era city of Cartagena on Colombia's Caribbean coast after a night of partying that reportedly ended with at least some of them bringing prostitutes back to their hotel. The special agents and uniformed officers were in Colombia in advance of President Barack Obama's arrival for the Summit of the Americas.
A White House official said Wednesday night that Obama had not spoken directly to Sullivan since the incident unfolded late last week. Obama's senior aides are in close contact with Sullivan and the agency's leadership, said the official, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
In Washington and Colombia, separate U.S. government investigations were already under way. King said he has assigned four congressional investigators to the probe. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, led by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., sought details of the Secret Service investigation, including the disciplinary histories of the agents involved. Secret Service investigators are in Colombia interviewing witnesses.
In a letter to Sullivan, Issa and Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the committee's ranking Democrat, said the agents "brought foreign nationals in contact with sensitive security information." A potential security breach has been among the concerns raised by members of Congress.
The incident occurred before Obama arrived and was at a different hotel than the president stayed in.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said news of the three agents leaving Secret Service was a positive development.
"I've always said that if heads don't roll, the culture in a federal agency will never change," the Iowa lawmaker said in a statement. "Today's personnel actions, combined with the swift removal and investigation, are positive signs that there is a serious effort to get to the bottom of this scandal."
New details of the sordid night emerged Wednesday. A 24-year-old self-described prostitute told The New York Times that she met an agent at a discotheque in Cartagena and after a night of drinking, the pair agreed the agent would pay her $800 for sex at the hotel. The next morning, when the hotel's front desk called because the woman hadn't left, the pair argued over the price.
"I tell him, 'Baby, my cash money,'" the woman told the newspaper in an interview in Colombia. She said the two argued after the agent initially offered to pay her about $30 and the situation escalated, eventually ending with Colombian law enforcement involved. She said she was eventually paid about $225.
Romney told radio host Laura Ingraham on Wednesday that "I'd clean house" at the Secret Service.
"The right thing to do is to remove people who have violated the public trust and have put their play time and their personal interests ahead of the interests of the nation," Romney said.
While Romney suggested to Ingraham that a leadership problem led to the scandal, he told a Columbus, Ohio, radio station earlier that he has confidence in Sullivan, the head of the agency.
"I believe the right corrective action will be taken there and obviously everyone is very, very disappointed," Romney said. "I think it will be dealt with (in) as aggressive a way as is possible given the requirements of the law."
When asked, the Romney campaign would not say whether he had been briefed on the situation or was relying upon media reports for details.
At least 10 military personnel who were staying at the same hotel are also being investigated for misconduct.
Two U.S. military officials have said they include five Army Green Berets. One of the officials said the group also includes two Navy Explosive Ordinance Disposal technicians, two Marine dog handlers and an Air Force airman. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is still under way.
Secret Service's Office of Professional Responsibility, which handles that agency's internal affairs, is investigating, and the Homeland Security Department's inspector general also has been notified.
Sullivan, who this week has briefed lawmakers behind closed doors, said he has referred to the case to an independent government investigator.
Col. Scott Malcom, a spokesman of U.S. Southern Command, which organized the military team assigned to support the Secret Service's mission in Cartagena, said Wednesday that an Air Force colonel is leading the military investigation and arrived in Colombia with a military lawyer Tuesday morning.
The troops are suspected of violating curfews set by their commanders.
"They were either not in their room or they showed up to their room late while all this was going on or they were in their room with somebody who shouldn't be there," Malcom said.
Lawmakers have called for a thorough investigation and have suggested they would hold oversight hearings, though none has yet been scheduled. The incident is expected to come up next week on Wednesday when Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee for a previously scheduled oversight hearing.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said that for now, he is interested in what actually happened. He did not address how much responsibility Obama should bear for the scandal or whether Congress should hold hearings on it.
Associated Press writers Laurie Kellman, Julie Pace, Ken Thomas and Steve Peoples in Washington and Frank Bajak in Bogota, Colombia, contributed to this report.


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God, Hope & Helping Others
This group is for residents of West Virginia to meet each other, plan and take action with solutions.
Location: West Virginia
Members: 1
Latest Activity: Jun 29, 2012
This group does not have any discussions yet.
We need leaders to step up and get the ball rolling by seeing if you can organize people in your state by searching our member database and then inviting them to join the action team here. Action team leaders will coordinate with other leaders and begin to implement solutions for people in the area. This group should be used to schedule local meetings, organize petitions, implement recall drives. Instead of protesting with no clear goals, use your time getting petitions signed and distributing educational material.
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Solutions for Northern Business
Bus Parcel Express (BPX) is Northern Ontario's best kept secret. Ontario Northland offers affordable, reliable, station-to-station parcel shipping.
Businesses rely on our services everyday to connect to their customers and suppliers. We offer collect and pre-paid shipping. Advance purchase waybills may also be purchased at a reduced cost.
Ontario Northland can ship bicycles, automobile parts, tires, recreational vehicle parts and much more (at a maximum size of 24"x40"x84"). ONvelope Plus carries shipments of all shapes and sizes from 0-20 lbs. As long as it fits in our ONvelope, you can ship it!
Benefits to our Customers include:
- Same day shipping service from Kapuskasing to Barrie (over 900 km!)
- In some locations, we partner with door-to-door delivery services
- Competitive shipping rates
- Friendly northern service and shipping advice from our ticket agents and agency representatives
Insurance coverage is included up to the first $100 of declared value (except those accepted at 'shipper's risk'). Packages with a higher declared value of $100 may be insured at an additional charge of 3% for the declared value above $100.00.
Contact your local station or agency for more details on the services we provide.


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The Latest: UN climate conference begins in Paris
By Yahoo News
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, right, and French President Francois Hollande arrive to welcome world leaders for the COP21, United Nations Climate Change Conference, in Le Bourget, outside Paris, Monday, Nov. 30, 2015. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena, Pool)
PARIS (AP) — The latest news from the U.N. climate conference that began Monday in Paris. All times local:
10:10 a.m.
High-level climate talks have begun in Paris with the goal of a long-term deal to reduce man-made emissions.
Peruvian Environment Minister Manuel Pulgar Vidal, who played host to the last U.N. climate conference in Lima, declared this year's meeting open Monday morning.
A total of 151 world leaders have converged on Paris to launch the two-week talks in hopes of giving an impetus for an ambitious agreement.
Vidal said a deal would show the world that countries can work together to fight global warming as well as terrorism. The talks are occurring just two weeks after deadly attacks in Paris by Islamic State extremists.
10:05 a.m.
President Barack Obama says nowhere has coordination between the United States and China been more fruitful or critical than on climate change.
Obama says 180 nations followed the lead of the U.S. and China on climate change. He says "our leadership on this issue has been absolutely vital."
Obama is meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the climate conference.
Xi says climate change is a huge challenge. He's calling for the U.S. and China to build a new model of cooperation, using diplomatic language long preferred by Beijing.
China emits about 30 percent of the world's greenhouse gases and the U.S. about 16 percent.
9:20 a.m.
Paris police say 317 people were detained after an unauthorized protest seeking to call attention to climate change, which ended with police firing tear gas at protesters throwing bottles and candles.
The Paris police department had said Sunday night that 174 were detained in the protest, then said Monday morning that the figure had grown to 317. It did not give a reason for the growing number.
France is under a state of emergency after Nov. 13 attacks that killed 130 people. It banned protests ahead of landmark climate talks opening Monday, citing security concerns.
But thousands of people formed a human chain along the route of a long-planned environmental march Sunday. It was largely peaceful.
President Francois Hollande denounced the violence as "scandalous."
8:20 a.m.
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and French President Francois Hollande are greeting heads of state and government from around the world for high-stakes talks aimed at fighting global warming.
One by one, some 150 leaders are arriving at the conference center near the Le Bourget airfield just north of Paris. Ban, Hollande, the head of the U.N. climate change agency Christina Figueres, and French Environment Minister Segolene Royal are standing in front of the conference center to greet them.
Afterwards, each leader will give a speech laying out their countries' efforts to reduce man-made emissions and cope with climate change.
The event opening Monday lasts through Dec. 11 and is under extra-security after Nov. 13 extremist attacks in Paris.
7:30 a.m.
Wide Paris-area highways usually packed with commuters are cordoned off to clear the way for President Barack Obama and 150 other world leaders joining critical talks about fighting global warming.
Riot police vans and plainclothes officers are stationed around the capital and the northern suburb of Le Bourget, where the U.N.-led climate conference is being held Nov. 30-Dec. 11.
The security measures are especially tight after Islamic extremists killed 130 people two weeks ago in Paris and targeted the national stadium Stade de France, near the climate conference venue.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and French President Francois Hollande will greet each of the leaders Monday morning then each will give a speech about what their countries are doing to reduce emissions and slow climate change. (YAHOO NEWS)
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BMD disapproves homosexuality
The newly elected Botswana Movement for Democracy (BMD) Executive Committee led by Pastor Reverend Thuso Tiego has declared their disapproval of homosexuality saying it is anti-Christianity and Botswana culture.
Speaking at a Media Briefing this past week, BMD President Tiego said Botswana has been a country that respects culture hence endorsing homosexuality will be catastrophic.
"Our young generation grew up being taught about types of families, if homosexuality is passed, at what age will our children be introduced to homosexuality?" he rhetorically asked.
He continued: "If we are going to allow homosexuality then the next day, another person will come and say he wants to practice bestiality. What are we going to do because we have already allowed for this one (homosexuality) and at the end it will be a total mess." Bestiality is sexual relations between a human being and an animal
This according to Tiego will give those people an opportunity thus disrupting known Botswana beliefs. He however dismissed any notion that the decision to condemn homosexuality should not be linked to the top two of the committee who are men of cloth. "This is a decision by the whole committee which respects the culture of Botswana and it should not be perceived that because we are clergymen we are influencing them, but even if we do, politics and religion are inter-related."
Of late the church and the human rights organization have been up in arms because of the high court decision to allow for same sex marriages. Ministries ganged up, petitioned parliament and threatened to vote out any legislator who will support the idea. The ruling party, BDP which was to table the amendment in the constitution, ended up deferring it.
BMD President further revealed that he is aware of what really led to the split of the party and he is on course to transform as they approach 2024 elections.
"There are so many factors that led to split of party amongst others being leadership disputes, personal egos and ambitions, toxic factionalism and ideological difference just to mention a few, but we are transforming the party and I am confident that we will do well in the coming elections.
In addition, Tiego is hopeful that they will take the government as they feel it is time to rebrand Botswana politics and bring in fresh blood of leaders.
He further hinted that they are coming with positive transformation as they eye to better the lives of Batswana.
"When we assume government, we promise to be transparent, free and fair electoral processes and encourage pluralism as way of getting back to our roots of being a democratic country as it seems like the current government has forgotten about that important aspect," Tiego explained.
North Korea diplomats in suspected illegal ivory trade
Reeling under the increasing barrage of stinging international sanctions, the isolated North Korean regime is reportedly up to its old trickery, this time in a more complicated web of murky operations that have got the authorities of five southern African countries at sixes and sevens as they desperately try to tighten their dragnet around Pyongyang's spectral network of illicit ivory and rhino horn trade.
It is an intricate network of poaching for elephant tusks and rhino horns that spans Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe, with the main sources of the contraband being Botswana and South Africa.
The syndicate running the illegal trafficking of the poached contraband is suspected to be controlled by two shadowy North Korean government operatives with close links to one Han Tae-song, a disgraced North Korean career diplomat who, while serving as the second secretary at his country's embassy in Harare, Zimbabwe, was expelled in 1992 after he was fingered as the mastermind behind a similar illegal ring that was busted by the country's authorities.
This disturbing tale of malfeasance by North Korean state actors is as real as it gets.
Recent reports indicate that authorities in the source countries are jointly battling to plug holes created by the shadowy syndicate which allegedly has on its payroll, park rangers, border officials and cross-border truck drivers.
Even more disturbing are allegations that some wildlife officials are conniving in misrepresenting numbers of retrieved rhino horns and ivory from poachers and getting kickbacks for their involvement in the pilfering of ivory and rhino horns from government stockpiles especially in South Africa.
In a shocking and well-orchestrated movie-style heist in South Africa, thieves in June this year made off with 51 rhino horns after breaking into a very secure government stockpile facility of the North West Parks Board (NWPB).
While some suspects from South Africa and Malawi were nabbed in a government sting operation, none of the rhino horns – 14 of which were very large specimens that can fetch serious money on the black market – were recovered.
A report of the heist said the police were lethargic by eight hours in responding to an emergency alert of the robbery which was described by North West police spokesperson Brigadier Sabata Mokgwabone as "… a case of business robbery…"
Thabang Moko, a security analyst in Pretoria says the military precision in the burglary, delays in police response, and failure to recover the stolen rhino horns is dubious. "This development lends credence to suspicions that some government officials could be part of a shadowy syndicate run by foreign buyers of rhino horns and ivory," Moko says.
It is understood that in light of the rhino horns heist in North West, South Africa's Minister of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries, Barbara Creecy on 1 August, shared her concerns to her counterparts in Botswana, Zimbabwe and Mozambique calling for greater regional cooperation to combat the illegal wildlife trafficking which she believes is being masterminded by the Far East's buyers of the ill-gotten horns and ivory.
It is believed that foreign kingpins involved in perpetuating the illegal trade are mainly North Koreans vying against Vietnamese and Cambodian buyers in the quest for dominance of the illicit trade in rhino horns and ivory sourced from southern Africa.
Creecy's concerns, which she also shared to South Africa's state-run broadcaster SABC, echoed Moko's worries that the North West heist may have been an inside job.
According to Creecy, there was a need for the International Criminal Police Organisation (Interpol)'s greater involvement in joint investigations by affected countries as there were indications of 'local knowledge' of the North West job and that syndicates, "Higher up the value chain actually recruit park rangers to the illegal ivory trade network."
Botswana's Environment and Tourism Minister Philda Kereng is on national record admitting that poaching was a source of headaches to her government, especially considering that the daring poachers were making successful incursions into secure areas protected by the Botswana Defence Force (BDF).
This came after poachers gunned down two white rhinos at the BDF-protected Khama Rhino Sanctuary in August 2022 despite Kereng putting the time frame of the killings between October and November 2022.
Kereng hinted at the existence of Asian controlled syndicates and acknowledged that the surge in poaching in Botswana is driven by the "increased demand for rhino horn on the international market" where in Asia rhino horns are believed to be potent in traditional medicines and for their imagined therapeutic properties.
Botswana has in the past recorded an incident of a group of an all-Asian reconnaissance advance team teams being nabbed by the country's intelligence service in the Khama Rhino Sanctuary.
Masquerading as tourists, the group, with suspected links to North Korea and China, was discovered to be collecting crucial data for poachers.
Also according to reliable information at hand, an undisclosed number of wildlife parks rangers were arrested between September 2022 and January this year, after information surfaced that they connived in the smuggling of rhino horns and ivory from Botswana.
One of the rangers reportedly admitted getting paid to falsify information on recovered horns and ivory which were smuggled out of the country through its vast and porous eastern border with South Africa, and making their way to their final destination in Mozambique via back roads and farmlands in South Africa and Zimbabwe.
"We are aware that in the past year, some rhino horns and ivory illegally obtained from Botswana through poaching activities and shady deals by some elements within our wildlife and national parks department, have found their way out of the country and end up in Mozambique's coastal ports for shipment to the Far East," a Department of Wildlife and National Parks (DWNP) source says.
Independent investigations reveal that two North Korean buyers, one of them only identified as Yi Kang-dae [confirmed to be an intelligence official in the country's state security apparatus], acting on behalf of the disgraced Han Tae-song, financed the entire operation on two occasions between 2022 and 2023, to move at least 18 rhino horns and 19 elephant tusks from Botswana, including pay-offs – mostly to border patrol and customs officials for safe passage – along the knotty conduit across South Africa's north western lands, then across south-eastern Zimbabwe into Mozambique.
According to a trusted cross-border transport operator in Zimbabwe, the rhino horns and elephant tusks were illegally handed over to smugglers in Mozambique at an obscure illegal crossing point 15km north of Zimbabwe's Forbes Border Post in November 2022 and February this year.
The end buyers in Mozambique? "It is quite an embarrassment for us, but we have solid evidence that two North Korean buyers, one of them who is linked to a former notorious diplomat from that country who has been in the past involved in such illegal activities in Zimbabwe, oversaw the loading of rhino horns and ivory onto a China-bound ship from one of our ports," a top government source in Maputo said before declining to divulge more information citing ongoing investigations.
Yi Kang-dae and his accomplice's whereabouts are presently unclear to Mozambican authorities whose dragnet reportedly recently netted some key actors of the network. Han Tae-song currently serves as North Korea's ambassador to the United Nations in Switzerland.
North Korean diplomats have in the past used Mozambique as a final transit point for the shipment of rhino horns to the Far East.
In May 2015, Mozambican authorities nabbed two North Koreans, one of them a Pretoria-based diplomat and political counsellor identified as Pak Chol-jun after they were caught in possession of 4.5kg of rhino horn pieces and US$100,000 cash.
Pak's accomplice, Kim Jong-su, a Taekwondo instructor also based in South Africa, was fingered as a North Korean spy and returned to North Korea under suspicious circumstances on the heels of Pak's expulsion from South Africa in November 2016.
A security source in Zimbabwe closely following current developments says there is a big chance that Han Tae-song may have revived the old smuggling network he ran while posted in Zimbabwe in the 90s.
"The biting international sanctions against North Korea in the past decade may have prompted Han to reawaken his network which has been dormant for some time," the source says. "There is no telling if the shady network is dead now given that Han's two front men have not been nabbed in Mozambique. More joint vigilance is needed to destroy the operation at the source and at the end of the line."
North Korean diplomats have, as early as October 1976, been fingered for engaging in illegal activities ranging from possession of and trade in ivory pieces, trade in diamonds and gold, the manufacture and distribution of counterfeit currencies, pharmaceuticals, and the sale on the black market, of a paraphernalia of drugs, cigarettes, alcohol and other trinkets on the back of protracted and biting international sanctions against the reclusive state for its gross human rights abuses against its own people and flagrant nuclear tests.
These illegal activities, according to a US Congressional Research Service (CRS) report, have raked in at least US$500m annually for the Pyongyang regime. Other global studies estimate that North Korea's illegal earnings from the black market are around $1bn annually, and are being channelled towards the country's nuclear weapons programme, while ordinary North Koreans continue to die of mass starvation.
In February 2014, Botswana, citing systematic human rights violations, severed ties with North Korea with the former's president Mokgweetsi Masisi (then vice president) calling North Korea an 'evil nation' on 23 September 2016, at a United Nations General Assembly forum in Washington, USA.
Botswana has close to 132,000 elephants, more than any of its four neighbouring countries, namely Angola, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe, according to a 2022 Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA TFCA) Elephant Survey.
The rhino population in Botswana has significantly dwindled, with poaching a leading cause of the decimation of the country's rhinos. Despite dehorning and relocating its diminishing rhino population from the extensive Okavango Delta to undisclosed sanctuaries, Botswana has since 2018, lost 138 rhinos to poachers.
The sharp spike in rhino poaching in Botswana came after the country's government made a controversial decision to disarm park rangers in early 2018.
In a statement delivered in November 2022 to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) CoP-19 in Panama, the Botswana government instead blamed the surge in poaching to a shift of foreign-sponsored organised poaching organisations from South Africa to Botswana.
"This increase in rhino poaching in Botswana coincided with a decline of rhino poaching in South Africa from 2018 to 2020, suggesting a displacement of the poaching syndicates from South Africa to Botswana," the statement reads. "The recent decline in rhino poaching in Botswana (2021 and 2022, relative to 2020) coincides with the increase in rhino poaching in Namibia and South Africa, further suggesting displacement of the poaching syndicates across the sub-region."
According to the Botswana government, as of 13 November 2022 the country has secreted its shrinking rhinos (only 285 white rhinos and 23 black rhinos) in undisclosed locations within the country's borders.
South Africa has close to 15,000 rhinos. Between January and June 2022 alone, poachers killed 260 rhinos in South Africa for their horns. The country is home to the majority of Africa's white rhinos, a species whose existence remains under threat of extinction due to poaching.
The major threat posed by foreign state actors including those from North Korea, to southern Africa's rhino and elephant population remains grim as the bulk of the rhino horns and elephant tusks reportedly continue finding their way to the Far East, where China is being used as the major distribution centre.


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The Halitosis Of Foul Breath
Foul Breath or Halitosis may be the expression used to explain uncomfortable smell exhaled in breathing. There are various kinds of Halitosis. Transient foul breath is quite common and it is caused because of dental dryness, stress, hunger, consuming foods that contains garlic clove and onions, smoking and poor dental hygiene. Morning breath and chronic foul breath would be the other forms. The second affects 25% of people at different levels. This problem is because the overpopulation of certain kinds of dental bacteria like streptococcus mutans, and needs special therapy. Fetor hepaticus is a kind of foul breath brought on by chronic liver failure.
There are various factors affecting the mouth area and cause foul breath. Dental decay, gums and teeth, food stagnation between your teeth, xerostomia, excessive microbial activity around the tongue, throat or tonsil infection and catarrh are a few of them. The standards affecting the airways and cause foul breath are sinus problems, polyps, dryness, foreign body, mucus flow, bronchitis, pneumonia and bronchiectasis. Food stagnation, gastric and bloodstream increase cause foul breath. Foul breath is yet another manifestation of a substantial overall health problem.
Over 400 kinds of bacteria are based in the average mouth. Huge amount of these naturally-occurring bacteria are frequently located on the posterior from the tongue, where they're undisturbed by normal activity. The top of tongue dorsum being rough offers an ideal habitat for anaerobic bacteria, which flourish within constantly-developing tongue coating of food debris, dead cells, and a large number of bacteria, both living and dead. The anaerobic respiration of these bacteria can yield either the putrescent odor of polyamines, or even the "rotten egg" odor of volatile sulfur compounds (VSCs). When these compounds mix with mouth air, they produce uncomfortable breath.
You are able to prevent foul breath by preserve an advanced of dental and oral cleanliness. It takes cleaning of tongue to the rear, utilizing a mouthwash suggested through the dental professional, consuming lots of fluids and staying away from an excessive amount of coffee. Sugar-free gum and fresh and " floating " fibrous vegetables are come to prevent foul breath. Cigarettes and tobacco products ought to be prevented. Brush two times each day with fluoride tooth paste to get rid of food debris. Mouthwashes and mints give temporary release given that they mask the smell for any couple of minutes. Rinses that contains chloehexidine, zinc gluconate or swimming pool water dioxide ought to be used. Alcohol, as being a drying agent, ought to be prevented.
Maintaining an effective level in your body by consuming several portions of water each day is essential to avoid the mouth area from being dry. Adding fresh lemon juice towards the water before consuming is recognized as advantageous. Eating yogurt, consuming eco-friendly tea or eating cinnamon or sugarless cinnamon gum can help to eliminate foul breath.


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The article is 'The Other Ultra: Signal Intelligence and the Battle to Supply Rommel's Attack toward Suez' by Vincent P. O'Hara and Enrico Cernuschi. The authors are critical of the view that codebreaking allowed the Brits to sink Rommel's supplies and stopped the Axis advance towards Egypt.According to the authors: 'This article examines the impact of intelligence in the war against Axis shipping in the two months leading up to the battle of Alam el Halfa, which concluded on 2 September 1942. It demonstrates that Ultra information was not always accurate or timely and that Hinsley overstates Ultra 's impact by crediting it with sinkings that had nothing to do with either signals intelligence (SIGINT) or traffic to Africa. It also casts light on the role of the Italian navy's intelligence service, the Servizio Informazioni Segreto (SIS). The SIS provided intelligence that often offset the timely and relevant Ultra SIGINT that Britain did possess. Its code breakers enabled Supermarina, the operational headquarters, located in Rome, of the Regia Marina, the Italian navy, to read, often in less than an hour, intercepted low-grade radio encryptions from British aircraft, and, more slowly, first-class ciphers from warships and land bases. Supermarina's communications and command system disseminated information in near real time, thereby amplifying the operational value of its SIGINT. This is a fact that the British were unaware of at the time and that has remained virtually unknown since.'
Military and intelligence history mostly dealing with World War II.
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
New article on ULTRA in the Med
A very interesting article regarding the effects of ULTRA intelligence against the Italian Navy's supply convoys is available from the Naval War College Review.
Monday, April 29, 2013
Biographies of famous codebreakers
Well it's true that you can find anything online if you search for it! Site janeckovokrypto has pictures and short biographies of countless WWII codebreakers (Americans, British, German, Polish etc). Interesting site.
Saturday, April 27, 2013
Decoding Prime Minister Chamberlain's messages
In the 1930's Hitler's foreign policy was focused on dismantling the Treaty of Versailles that was keeping Germany militarily weak.
First compulsory military service was reintroduced in 1935, then the Rhineland was remilitarized in 1936 and finally the Sudeten territories of Czechoslovakia were annexed by the Reich in 1938.In the diplomatic field the Germans were able to outmaneuver their British and French adversaries mainly thanks to two factors.
One was a disinformation campaign that convinced Western leaders of the Luftwaffe's destructive power.The other was their success in acquiring secret intelligence. The Forschungsamt, Goering's personal intelligence agency, was able to decode French diplomatic communications (probably physically compromised) and eavesdrop on telephone conversations of politicians and diplomats (especially Czech president Benes and his ambassador in London Masaryk!). Thus Hitler was always one step ahead of his rivals.
In addition to these successes 'European Axis Signal Intelligence in World War II' volumes 1 and 7 reveal another very interesting case. Apparently during the negotiations regarding the fate of the Sudetenland German codebreakers were able to solve Prime Minister Chamberlain's messages to London. EASI vol1, p21 says that 'Hitler once delayed a conference with Chamberlain for several hours in order to get such decodes'.
The source for this information is listed as IF-132 'Das Forschungsamt des Luftfahrtminsteriums' - Hq USFET Weekly Intelligence summary # 12, 4 Oct. 1945'.
Unfortunately page 5 of that document repeats the same story without giving more details.
Unfortunately page 5 of that document repeats the same story without giving more details.
A clue regarding the cipher system used is available from the TICOM report DF-241 'The Forschungsamt - Part IV', p40
'Of the numerous examples which might be adduced, the following may serve as an example: The additive number used by Great Britain, which ran to 40,000 elements and served for the encipherment of the 5-digit code and was replaced at definite intervals of time, offered as a rule adequate assurance of security. But if in periods of greatly increased diplomatic activity with telegraphic traffic many times the usual volume the additive is not replaced correspondingly sooner, especially since increased security is desirable in such periods, then this is a sign of deficient control'.
Thus it is possible that the German codebreakers were able to solve the British Foreign Office cipher in the 1930's.
The official history 'British Intelligence in the Second World War' - vol2, p642 says that:
1. Main Cypher Books
Despite an extensive attack in 1938 and 1939, the Germans failed to break the long subtractor system used to re-cypher the Foreign Office's basic cypher books. Against similar tables that were in force from November 1940 to January 1941 they had some limited success, but not enough to enable them to reconstruct the book before both the basic book and the tables were again changed. There is no evidence of later success, and according to German testimony after the war the main Foreign Office systems were never broken'.
However in the notes it also says:
'The discovery after the war in the archives of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs of a 90-page volume of British diplomatic signals for the immediately pre-war period led to a Foreign Office enquiry in 1968. This established that a number of the signals had been dispatched en clair. It also noted that there was reliable evidence that the Italians had obtained temporary possession of the cyphers of the Rome Embassy in 1935, and had photographed them, and that they had had fairly regular access to the cyphers at the Mission to the Holy See during the war, so that they might have read all telegrams to Rome up to the outbreak of war and telegrams to and from the Mission to the Holy See from the outbreak of war to the autumn of 1943. After the war the cryptanalysts of the German Foreign Ministry asserted that they obtained no information about British cyphers from the Italians'.
The British statements may have been accurate about the work of the decryption department of the German Foreign Ministry but they do not mention the Forschungsamt effort…
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
The German bombe and the M-209 cipher machine
Back in April 2012 I uploaded TICOM report DF-114 'German Cryptanalytic device for solution of M-209 traffic'.
'A cryptanalytic party, numbering about 20 men, under Wm. ENGELHARDT also worked with Senior Signals Recce Commander Oberst KOPP. The ENGELHARDT party worked on British and U.S. systems, using, among other things, an electrically driven apparatus constructed by themselves. (This was a heavy, black-painted metal box, measuring approximately 50 x 50 X 40 cm, composed of two parts of about equal size. In front of the machine was a keyboard, like a teleprinter. The machine was fitted in the upper part with a set of indicating lamps; when a key was depressed, a letter was illuminated above, as on the German cypher machine). The construction and function of this apparatus, and the systems with which it dealt, are unknown to us. It is alleged that complete solutions (not breaks-in) were achieved by mean of this machine.'
This report is a translation of a German document retrieved in 1947. It describes a cryptanalytic device used by German codebreakers against the US M-209 cipher machine.The only other reference in TICOM documents is in I-149 'Report by Uffz. Karrenberg and Colleagues on Allied Cipher Machines' which says:
'A cryptanalytic party, numbering about 20 men, under Wm. ENGELHARDT also worked with Senior Signals Recce Commander Oberst KOPP. The ENGELHARDT party worked on British and U.S. systems, using, among other things, an electrically driven apparatus constructed by themselves. (This was a heavy, black-painted metal box, measuring approximately 50 x 50 X 40 cm, composed of two parts of about equal size. In front of the machine was a keyboard, like a teleprinter. The machine was fitted in the upper part with a set of indicating lamps; when a key was depressed, a letter was illuminated above, as on the German cypher machine). The construction and function of this apparatus, and the systems with which it dealt, are unknown to us. It is alleged that complete solutions (not breaks-in) were achieved by mean of this machine.'
Thankfully an article in a German magazine had an interview with one of the persons who designed and used it during the war:
So when I posted that report I expected that people would be interested in the fact that the Germans had their own bombe. I also thought that someone would be able to explain the operating principle of the machine but again this hasn't happened. What's up with that?
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
The secret messages of Marshall Tito and General Mihailović
The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was one of the states that were created when the old Austro-Hungarian empire collapsed at the end of WWI. The country covered a large area in the Balkans but was politically unstable since it was made up of a diverse group of peoples (Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Montenegrins).
Yugoslavia was part of the Little Entente organized by France. Although its foreign policy was pro-Allied it did not declare war on Germany in 1939. The defeat of France in 1940 caught the Yugoslav leaders by surprise and forced them to adopt a pro Axis policy. This change however was opposed by a group of military officers and in March 1941 a coup replaced the regent Prince Paul with General Dušan Simović. This maneuver (thought to be organized by the British) infuriated Hitler and he ordered that the country was to be destroyed as a political entity. In April Yugoslav troops were quickly overrun by German forces and a period of occupation and internal strife began.During the occupation the old antagonisms between ethnicities (Serbs vs Croats) and political movements (Right vs Left) resurfaced and led to a multisided civil war. The Chetniks of General Mihailović fought the Communist Partisans of Marshall Tito and both attacked the collaborationist government of Milan Nedic, the German and Italian occupation troops and the Croat forces of Ante Pavelić.
All sides took to heart the motto 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend'. This meant that at times some resistance group would make a deal with the occupation authorities and agree to leave them alone so both could attack another group. The results of this widespread conflict were mass destruction of property and loss of lives as each group attacked the villages that supported their enemies.During the period 1941-44 the Germans mounted major operations against the resistance movements but they could not destroy them. In their war against the Chetniks and the Partisans however they took advantage of signals intelligence. The resistance groups used codes that could not withstand a serious cryptanalytic attack and their cipher clerks made many mistakes that facilitated solution. By reading the traffic of Tito and Mihailović the Germans could build up the OOB of their organizations, identify important personalities and anticipate enemy operations.
At the same time the British also used cryptanalysis in order to monitor the internal Yugoslav situation and decide which resistance group they should give supplies to. Their ability to decode the Enigma cipher machine meant that they could use German military messages to see if the information coming from the Chetniks and the Partisans was corroborated by official German reports. They also read Chetnik and Partisan messages including the clandestine traffic between Moscow and Tito (this program was called ISCOT).
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Time for some new reports:
I-103 'Second Interrogation of Reg.Rat Hermann Scherschmidt of Pers Z S Auswaertiges Amt, on Turkish and Bulgarian systems' - 1945
CSDIC/CMF/Y36 - First detailed interrogation report on one German army intercept PW (Reudelsdorff) - 1945I-23 'Interrogation of Major Ernst Hertzer, German Army Signals Intelligence Service (KONA 1)' - 1945
I-103 'Second Interrogation of Reg.Rat Hermann Scherschmidt of Pers Z S Auswaertiges Amt, on Turkish and Bulgarian systems' - 1945
Monday, April 15, 2013
WWII Myths – Crimea evacuation 1944
Books relying on Soviet sources claim that in the fighting in the Crimea in 1944 most of the Axis troops were killed or captured with only a handful escaping.
In total during the first phase of the operation, between 14 and 27 April 1944, 73,058 people left Crimea by sea:
For example 'When Titans clashed: how the Red Army stopped Hitler' by Glantz and House says in page 191 'Somewhat less than 40,000 men of Seventeenth Army's original force of 150,000 made it out of the Crimea.''World at Arms: A Global History of World War II' by Gerhard L. Weinberg says in page 671 'By mid-May the 120,000 men formally organized as the 17th German Army had been crushed. Only a small proportion was evacuated, there was no long siege as in 1941-42. The Soviet victory was one of the most complete, if least known, of the war.'
These statements are not correct. The Germans and Rumanians were able to evacuate 121.000 men by sea and 24.500 by air.Rumanian website worldwar2.ro has a detailed overview of the naval operations:
'The Romanian Royal Navy named the evacuation of Crimea Operation "60,000", because the number of Romanian troops still found in the peninsula was around 62,000 – 65,000 in April 1944. This operation was executed in two phases: the first one between 12 April and 5 May and, the most dramatic, between 6 and 13 May.…………………………………………………………………………………………………….
In total during the first phase of the operation, between 14 and 27 April 1944, 73,058 people left Crimea by sea:
- 20,779 Romanians, of which 2,296 wounded
- 28,394 Germans, din care 4.995 wounded
- 723 Slovaks
- 15,055 Russian volunteers
- 2,559 POWs
- 3,748 civilians
In this second phase of the evacuation, 47,825 de men were transported by sea to Constanta: 15,078 Romanians, 28,992 Germans and 3.755 Soviets (volunteers, POWs and civilians).About 10,000 men were lost during the crossing , of which some 4,000 were Romanians.……………………………………………………………………………………………………..
In total, between 14 April – 13 May 1944, 120,853 men and 22,548 tone of cargo were evacuated by sea from Crimea:
- 36.557 Romanians, of which 4,262 wounded
- 58,486 Germans, of which 12,027 wounded
- 723 Slovaks
- 15,391 Soviet volunteers
- 2.581 POWs
- 7.115 civilians
In addition to these numbers 21.457 men were evacuated by the Luftwaffe and 3.056 by the Rumanian AF. [Source: 'Eagle in Flames: The Fall of the Luftwaffe', p201]How do we know that the aforementioned statistics are correct? During this period the codebreakers of Bletchley Park were able to follow the military operations in the Crimea by reading messages enciphered on the Enigma machine. The official history 'British Intelligence in the Second World War', volume 3 part 1 page 41 says: 'The evacuation was covered in great detail by Sigint. It was carried out by the Navy and the GAF, the decrypts showing that 121.000 men were taken off by sea and 21.500 by air.'
Friday, April 12, 2013
Victory through airpower
When the United States entered WWII in 1941 there were many discussions regarding the correct strategy that the US leadership should follow. Books and articles appeared that promoted whatever the author believed was the correct response, from a larger airforce at the expense of Army and Navy to a Germany first strategy.
One of these books was 'Victory through airpower' by aviation pioneer Alexander de Seversky.
Seversky was born in Georgia that was then part of the Russian Empire. His father was one of the first Russian aviators and he taught him how to operate the aircraft. In WWI he became a naval aviator but was seriously wounded in a mission and his leg had to be amputated. Despite this he continued to fly and became the leading naval ace of the war.
With the collapse of the Tsarist regime and the communist revolution Seversky left Russia and immigrated to the US where he continued to work on aviation projects and in the 1920's he founded the Seversky Aero Corporation which later became Republic Aviation. In 1928 he became a major in the Army Air Corps Reserve.
Seversky was a passionate advocate of airpower and strategic bombing. His book came out in 1942 and became a hit with the public. One of the persons who read it and was impressed by the reasoning was the legendary animator Walt Disney. He was such a supporter of Seversky's ideas that he financed an animated film based on the book and had Seversky narrate parts of it.
The main point of the book was that aviation and long range bombers would allow the US to destroy the Axis production centers without the need for costly ground campaigns.
I found the movie to be both entertaining and thought provoking. You can download it or view it on archive.org.
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
The American SS Sturmbannführers
A very interesting WWII espionage mystery is mentioned in the book 'The German Penetration of SOE: France 1941-1944', p155. The source of this story was Ernst Vogt, an interpreter at the Sicherheitsdienst HQ in Paris.
According to Vogt in late 1944 - early '45 Allied agents were parachuted into Germany as a result of a 'radio-game'. It seems the organization sending the agents had not realized that their network was under German control. Vogt says that it was probably 'an American espionage service in London' (OSS?).
One day three agents were parachuted and immediately taken into custody. These men spoke perfect German and they claimed that they were SS Sturmbannführers and should be released.
Vogt's superior was Hans Josef Kieffer, commandant at the SD HQ at 84 Avenue Foch in Paris. Kieffer was also SS Sturmbannführer. When the men produced their id cards Kieffer showed them his and pointed out that they were different. This did not faze the captured men. They responded that 'yours is out of date. All SD identity cards are renewable three-monthly now.'
In order to solve this mystery Kieffer sent Vogt to Berlin to report to his superior Horst Kopkow. When Kopkow saw the identity cards he said: 'it had been intended to call in the existing ones and to issue new ones in this form' 'but none in this form had been issued yet'.
So there you have it! A genuine mystery. Who were these men? Who did they work for? and how did they manage to find out about the new SS id scheme?
Posted by Christos T. at 10:41 PM No comments:
Sunday, April 7, 2013
Speer and the one factory shift story
Several sources (books, magazines, sites) mention that the Germans could have produced more armaments in WWII if they had forced their workers to work more than one shift per day. The belief that the Germans underutilized their workforce is supposedly based on a statement by Albert Speer.
The actual statement is the following from 'Inside the Third Reich', p304:'Of all the urgent questions that weighed upon me during my early weeks in office, solution of the labor problem was the most pressing. Late one evening in the middle of March, i inspected one of the leading Berlin armaments plants, Rheinmetall-Borsig, and found its workshops filled with valuable machinery, but unused. There were not enough workers to man a second shift. Similar conditions prevailed in other factories.'
The reason for the manpower shortage was that there was also demand from the armed forces. The same person could not be at the front and in the factory.The Germans tried to solve this problem by using forced and slave labor.
Thursday, April 4, 2013
Recurring problems of Soviet tank design
In my piece on the T-34 tank I said that postwar Soviet tanks (T-55, T-62, T-72, T-64, T-80) were built on the same principles as the T-34 with unfortunate consequences for the countries that had to use them in combat.
Turret size
The T-34/76 had a very cramped turret. An evaluation by US personnel noted:
'The main weakness is that it is very tight. The Americans couldn't understand how our tankers could fit inside during a winter, when they wear sheepskin jackets'
Postwar Soviet tanks had a new hemispherical turret design. This had excellent ballistic protection due to the sloped design but it was very cramped and it seriously affected crew performance and gun depression.
The T-34 had a low reload rate of about 4 rounds per minute versus 2-3 times that in German and Western tanks. The same problem was noted in postwar Soviet tanks of the T-55 and T-62 type.
The Soviets tried to solve this problem by installing an autoloader in the T-64, T-72 and T-80 tanks. This equipment however has a bad reputation due to many cases of malfunction when it was first introduced.
Sources: various Osprey books including 'T-34-85 vs M26 Pershing: Korea 1950', 'Centurion Vs T-55: Yom Kippur War 1973', 'M60 Vs T-62: Cold War Combatants 1956-92', 'M1 Abrams vs T-72 Ural: Operation Desert Storm 1991', T-34 Aberdeen evaluation, WWII Myths - T-34 Best Tank of the war
Soviet tanks have performed poorly in WWII, Korea, in the Middle East wars between the Israelis and Arabs and in Gulf War I, in the sense that they have suffered disproportionate losses against tanks that were comparable to them in general characteristics.
It is fascinating to see that the same problems are mentioned in US and Israeli reports separated by decades and referring to different vehicles. From the T-34 in the 1940's to the T-62 in the Yom Kippur war the same limitations are noted!
Hull size
The T-34 had a huge problem with internal space due to several factors:1). a large engine that took up roughly half of internal volume
2). its Christie suspension3). the sloped armor on the sides and back of the vehicle
Postwar tanks did not have these faults but they also suffered from limited internal space since it was a design choice to limit the weight and size of these vehicles.The result was that all the Soviet tanks were smaller and lighter than their Western contemporaries like the Centurion, M-48 and M-60. This supposedly gave them an advantage in mobility and presented a smaller target at long distances.
However there was a price to pay:1). The smaller hull affected the performance of the crew and led to fatigue. For example an Israeli evaluation says: 'As regard to human engineering the best were the Patton tanks (M60/48), then the Centurion and way behind the T-62/55 tanks. The meaning is that the crews of the Patton and Centurion tanks could fight longer periods of time without being exhausted relative to the crews in the T-62/55 tanks.' [Source: 'M60 Vs T-62: Cold War Combatants 1956-92', p39]
2). Compared to Western tanks a smaller number of rounds could be carried. For example the T-34/76 carried 77 rounds but the T-34/85 carried only 56 and 16 of these had to be stored in the turret. In comparison the Pz IV had 87 rounds and the Panther 82.The Centurion, M-48 and M-60 had about 60 rounds compared to about 40 in the T-55, T-62, T-72. The ability to carry more ammo meant that tanks did not have to leave the battle in order to resupply often. This was noted by the Israelis:
'The amount of gun rounds inside the Patton (M60A1, M60, M48) and the Centurion tanks is remarkably higher (about 60 rounds in each) than in the T-62 and T-55 tanks (less than 40 rounds). The meaning is that on average the T-62 and T-55 tanks should leave their active fight and firing positions for refilling of gun ammunition [more often] than the other tanks, which means that on average the percentage of effective tanks in each moment is smaller in T-62 and T-55 units than in the units of the other tank types.' [Source: 'M60 Vs T-62: Cold War Combatants 1956-92', p38]
3). By having ammo and fuel in a small space any penetration of the tank usually led to catastrophic loss of the vehicle and death of the crew. As Zaloga puts it in 'T-34-85 vs M26 Pershing: Korea 1950', p23:
'Armor data provides only part of the picture of a tank's protection. Other factors in assessing the vulnerability of a tank include the internal arrangement of fuel and ammunition. The T-34-85 is a clear example of the trade-off between the benefits and drawbacks of steeply angled protective armor. Although the T-34's sloped sides reduced the likelihood of the tank being penetrated by enemy projectiles, it also led to a decrease in internal hull volume. In the event that the T-34 was penetrated, the projectile was far more likely to produce catastrophic damage among the fuel and ammunition stored in such a small space. The side sponsors of the T-34's fighting compartment in particular contained fuel cells that if penetrated could lead to fire and the destruction of the tank.'
'Armor data provides only part of the picture of a tank's protection. Other factors in assessing the vulnerability of a tank include the internal arrangement of fuel and ammunition. The T-34-85 is a clear example of the trade-off between the benefits and drawbacks of steeply angled protective armor. Although the T-34's sloped sides reduced the likelihood of the tank being penetrated by enemy projectiles, it also led to a decrease in internal hull volume. In the event that the T-34 was penetrated, the projectile was far more likely to produce catastrophic damage among the fuel and ammunition stored in such a small space. The side sponsors of the T-34's fighting compartment in particular contained fuel cells that if penetrated could lead to fire and the destruction of the tank.'
The same problem was identified by the Israelis after the Yom Kippur war. According to 'M60 Vs T-62: Cold War Combatants 1956-92', p39:'Survivability: The silhouette of the T-62 and T-55 tanks is smaller than [that] of the other tanks and the same is true with the silhouette of their turret. One of the most [sic] disadvantages of T-62/55 tanks is their small internal volume. The meaning is that all the internal systems are too close and when one system is hit after penetration, in most cases another system or systems are also damaged or getting out of action. Because of the small internal volume there is in the T-55 tank a fuel tank combined with gun ammunition stowage in the right front corner of the hull (I am not sure if it is the same in the T-62 tank)[it is]. The meaning is absolute destruction and explosion of the tank in case of a penetration. Analysis based up tests and war analysis showed that the improved Centurion and M60A1 were more or less on the same level survivability. Next came the M48 and Tiran 4/5 and finally the Sherman.'
This problem became worse and worse as tank gun calibers grew and more powerful ammo was carried. Zaloga says in 'M1 Abrams Vs T-72 Ural', p27 that the T-55 carried 220kg of propellant, the T-62 310kg and the T-72 440 kg.
The result:
The T-34/76 had a very cramped turret. An evaluation by US personnel noted:
'The main weakness is that it is very tight. The Americans couldn't understand how our tankers could fit inside during a winter, when they wear sheepskin jackets'
Postwar Soviet tanks had a new hemispherical turret design. This had excellent ballistic protection due to the sloped design but it was very cramped and it seriously affected crew performance and gun depression.
Reload ratesThe cramped interior of Soviet tanks limited the speed with which the crew could operate the gun.
The T-34 had a low reload rate of about 4 rounds per minute versus 2-3 times that in German and Western tanks. The same problem was noted in postwar Soviet tanks of the T-55 and T-62 type.
The Soviets tried to solve this problem by installing an autoloader in the T-64, T-72 and T-80 tanks. This equipment however has a bad reputation due to many cases of malfunction when it was first introduced.
Gun depressionSoviet tanks from the T-34 onwards had poor gun depression which meant they could not fight in hull down position. Western tanks used this tactic with success especially in the Golan front during the Yom Kippur war. From various Osprey books I collected the following statistics:
Gun elevation
up (+)
down (-)
Pz III 50mm
Pz IV KwK 40
Sherman M3
Sherman M1
An Israeli report noted: 'The T-62 and T-55 tanks have [limited] depression of their gun, up to about -6 to -7 degrees, whereas all the others have gun depression of about -10 degrees. The meaning is that in many cases the T-62 and the T-55 tanks, while in firing position (behind a fold or a small hill) did not have enough depression and so had to expose themselves more and be more vulnerable to the other side.' [Source: 'M60 Vs T-62: Cold War Combatants 1956-92', p38]
Gun performanceSoviet tank guns of WWII developed lower pressure than Western ones with the result that their accuracy and penetration at long ranges suffered. Did the same problem affect postwar vehicles?
The Israelis found the gun of the T-62 to be quite powerful. However a US test of its accuracy showed that after 1km its ability to hit targets was limited. The M-60's 105mm was significantly more accurate at long ranges. [Source: 'M60 Vs T-62: Cold War Combatants 1956-92', p50-52]
SuspensionThe T-34 had poor stability over rough terrain due to its Christie suspension. Postwar Soviet tanks had torsion bar suspension but the ride continued to be uncomfortable and tiring for the crew.
The dogma of quantity over qualityWhy did all the Soviet tanks suffer from the same limitations? The answer is that the Soviet military doctrine emphasized the importance of numbers and the inevitability of heavy casualties. If you expect your tanks to be destroyed quickly then it doesn't make sense to build expensive ones lavishly equipped with armor and with an emphasis on crew comfort. Instead their goal was to keep weight and size down so they could out produce the West.
The factories of the Eastern bloc churned out thousands of tanks during the cold war and certainly had a big numerical advantage against the West. They also succeeded in building vehicles that were well armed and armored for their time. However their emphasis on production numbers meant that soft flaws (cramped interior, poor gun depression etc) limited their performance in the battlefield.Western tanks were built on different lines and although they usually had comparable weapons and armor 'on paper' in the field of battle they outperformed their Eastern counterparts.
Sources: various Osprey books including 'T-34-85 vs M26 Pershing: Korea 1950', 'Centurion Vs T-55: Yom Kippur War 1973', 'M60 Vs T-62: Cold War Combatants 1956-92', 'M1 Abrams vs T-72 Ural: Operation Desert Storm 1991', T-34 Aberdeen evaluation, WWII Myths - T-34 Best Tank of the war
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Support the cause
Time for a social experiment. I've seen that many sites have added a donate button and I have to say that I'm intrigued.
So far I've written countless essays on various aspects of WWII. A lot of the information that I have presented is not available anywhere else. I've also uploaded a large number of original archival material that you can enjoy for free but cost me a four figure sum. With additional funds I could hire a researcher to find more TICOM reports and related documents.
So how much is this blogsite worth to you? A coffee costs around 5 euro, an academic article 33 (!!!). A good book even more.
Vote with your wallet dear reader!
Monday, April 1, 2013
Book review - A Hard Way to Make a War: The Allied Campaign in Italy in the Second World War
The Italian campaign of WWII featured important battles and involved hundreds of thousands of German, Italian, American, British and French soldiers but for some reason authors usually devote little attention to it.
'A Hard Way to Make a War: The Allied Campaign in Italy in the Second World War' is a single volume history of the Italian campaign by Ian Gooderson who also wrote 'Air Power at the Battlefront'.
This book covers the fighting in Sicily, the invasion of mainland Italy and all the major battles (Salerno, Gustav line, Anzio, Gothic line). In addition there is analysis of the political and strategic situation guiding the Allies and the Axis leaderships, the tactics that both sides developed and the overall cost of the campaign.
After defeating the Axis forces in Tunisia in May 1943 the Anglo-Americans were faced with the difficult choice of what to do next. The British favored a peripheral strategy with the aim of attacking the soft underbelly of the Axis but the Americans did not want to invest resources in a secondary theatre, especially since they had to prepare for the invasion of France.
In the end there was a compromise whereby powerful forces would invade Italy in order to force Italy out of the war and draw German units from Western Europe. However these operations were not to interfere with the planning of operation 'Overlord'.
In July 1943 the Allies landed in Sicily and after hard fighting moved inland and took over the island. The German forces in Gela put a fight and came close to overrunning the invasion beaches. It took massive aerial and naval support to throw them back.
After the loss of Sicily the Italian Army and the King had decided to exit the war but the secret negotiations that followed were inconclusive. Unfortunately the Germans came to realize that the Italians were double crossing them and started moving units into Italy. When the Italians finally announced their surrender in September 1943 the Germans were ready to pounce and they quickly disarmed the Italian formations.
The Allies landed again in Salerno and this operation was heavily opposed by German units forcing the Allies to once again rely on airpower and naval fire in order to keep the Germans from overrunning their forces.
Once this operation succeeded the Allies expected the Germans to evacuate their forces from Southern Italy. In this aspect the Allies were betrayed by their faith in signals intelligence. Through diplomatic and military decrypts they learned that once the Italian mainland had been invaded the Germans would retreat to the north of the country. This was actually Hitler's first response.
However General Kesselring was determined to fight the Allies in the south and he did not want to give up ground without a fight. Obviously this was a strategy that appealed to Hitler and when the German strategy changed this caused a crisis for the Allied planners. As the author puts it 'had the Germans been working to an elaborate deception scheme they could not have better misled the Allies and set them up for a complete and unexpected overturning of their strategic hopes in Italy'.
The fighting in Italy was hard for the Allies since the terrain did not favor mobile operations. This meant that their superiority in tanks and vehicles could not be brought to bear. Instead the Germans were able to dictate their rate of advance through demolition of roads and bridges and heavy mining of the roads.
Under the command of General Kesselring the German forces established defensive positions in the South and blocked the Allied advance. The Allies tried to bypass the Gustav line by landing in Anzio. Their plan did not work since the Germans rushed units to the area and were able to contain the bridgehead for several months. Eventually attrition from the Anzio battle and the Allied offensives against the Gustav line forced the Germans to retreat farther north.
After mid '44 many Allied formations were withdrawn for operation Dragoon and the fighting slowed down. In April 1945 the German forces in Italy surrendered.
In the end the fighting in Italy was hard both for the Allies and the Germans.
For the Allies the Italian geography negated their advantage in mobile warfare and forced them to advance slowly. Efforts to bypass the German defenses with naval landings were only partially successful due to lack of landing ships and troops, as they were needed for the invasion of France.
The Germans engaged in one of the most successful defensive campaigns in history but on the other hand the whole theatre was a drain on their limited resources.
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The Brain Is a 'Prediction Machine'
Our brain activity is more similar to that of speakers we are listening to when we can predict what they are going to say, a team of neuroscientists has found. The study, which appears in The Journal of Neuroscience, provides fresh evidence on the brain's role in communication.
"Our findings show that the brains of both speakers and listeners take language predictability into account, resulting in more similar brain activity patterns between the two," said Suzanne Dikker, the study's lead author and a postdoctoral researcher in New York University's Department of Psychology and Utrecht University. "Crucially, this happens even before a sentence is spoken and heard."
"A lot of what we've learned about language and the brain has been from controlled laboratory tests that tend to look at language in the abstract — you get a string of words or you hear one word at a time," added Jason Zevin, an associate professor of psychology and linguistics at USC Dornsife and one of the study's co-authors. "They're not so much about communication, but about the structure of language. The current experiment is really about how we use language to express common ground or share our understanding of an event with someone else."
The study's other authors were Lauren Silbert, a recent Ph.D. graduate from Princeton University, and Uri Hasson, an assistant professor in Princeton's Department of Psychology.
Traditionally, it was thought that our brains always process the world around us from the "bottom up" — when we hear someone speak, our auditory cortex first processes the sounds, and then other areas in the brain put those sounds together into words and then sentences and larger discourse units. From here, we derive meaning and an understanding of the content of what is said to us.
However, in recent years, many neuroscientists have shifted to a "top-down" view of the brain, which they now see as a "prediction machine": We are constantly anticipating events in the world around us so that we can respond to them quickly and accurately. For example, we can predict words and sounds based on context — and our brain takes advantage of this. For instance, when we hear "Grass is …" we can easily predict "green."
What's less understood is how this predictability might affect the speaker's brain or even the interaction between speakers and listeners.
In The Journal of Neuroscience study, the researchers collected brain responses from a speaker while she described images that she had viewed. The images varied in terms of likely predictability for a specific description. For instance, one image showed a penguin hugging a star (a relatively easy image of which to predict a speaker's description). However, another image depicted a guitar stirring a bicycle tire submerged in a pot of boiling water — a picture that is much less likely to yield a predictable description: Is it "a guitar cooking a tire," "a guitar boiling a wheel" or "a guitar stirring a bike"?
Then, another group of subjects listened to those descriptions while viewing the same images. During this period, the researchers monitored the subjects' brain activity.
When comparing the speaker's brain responses directly to the listeners' brain responses, they found that activity patterns in brain areas where spoken words are processed were more similar between the listeners and the speaker when the listeners could predict what the speaker was going to say.
When listeners can predict what a speaker is going to say, the authors suggested, their brains take advantage of this by sending a signal to their auditory cortex that it can expect sound patterns corresponding to predicted words (e.g., "green" while hearing "grass is …"). Interestingly, they added, the speaker's brain is showing a similar effect as she is planning what she will say: Brain activity in her auditory language areas is affected by how predictable her utterance will be for her listeners.
"In addition to facilitating rapid and accurate processing of the world around us, the predictive power of our brains might play an important role in human communication," noted Dikker, who conducted some of the research as a postdoctoral fellow at Weill Cornell Medical College's Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology.
"During conversation, we adapt our speech rate and word choices to each other — for example, when explaining science to a child as opposed to a fellow scientist — and these processes are governed by our brains, which correspondingly align to each other."
The research was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (numbers P01-HD001994, R01-MH094480), Chinese Academy of Sciences Fellowships for Young International Scientists (2012Y1SA0004) and a Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research Innovation Scheme Veni Grant (275-89-018).


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Spender Pouch with Early 1900s Quilt Block: Ame
This a some of a kind pouch. These pouches are final sale and are not eligible for coupon code discounts.
Constructed from an early 1900s quilt block. Each is lined with waxed canvas and finished with a Black YKK zipper.
These pouches are perfect for art supplies, make-up, or anything else that needs organizing in your bag or on your desk — they're hard to be without and you can never have too many!
- 15 oz. waxed duck canvas (19 oz. with wax) (Slate)
- Early 1900s quilt block
- Black YKK zipper with brass teeth
- Brand from vegetable-tanned leather
- Brass rivets
About the Spender Pouch
Small and simple, our Spender Pouch is a great wallet for the minimalist who doesn't want the bulk! Fits easily into your pocket.
Inches: 3″ tall by 5″ wide
Metric: 7.6 cm tall by 12.7 cm wide


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What to Expect – Neurological Care
Your brain and nervous system are delicate, complex and extraordinary. That's why we take a team approach to neurological care. Our focus is the same as yours – effective, long-term outcomes.
Your brain and nervous system are delicate, complex and extraordinary. That's why we take a team approach to neurological care. Our focus is the same as yours – effective, long-term outcomes.
When you come to us for your first visit, you can expect your provider to review your medical history and ask questions about your symptoms. During this visit it is likely you will have a physical exam, focusing on your brain and nerves.
Your doctor will assess:
It helps to prepare for your first exam:
At the end of this exam your doctor may have a good idea of your diagnosis, but you will probably have other tests to confirm it. Depending on your symptoms, these might include blood tests, urine tests, imaging tests, EEGs, EMGs, spinal tab or lumbar punctures or even a biopsy.
Learn more about neurological screenings and diagnostics.
From your first visit through treatment and recovery, expect us to support you through every step. Our team coordinates your care, arranging for tests and procedures, consulting with other specialists and collaborating on the treatment that's right for you.
If you're having surgery, we'll help you and your family prepare and know what to expect. We'll take care to control your pain and begin rehabilitation to get you moving as soon as possible. We'll help you navigate paperwork, insurance and billing, as well as your transition home or to another care center.
Make sure you know why your doctor is recommending surgery and ask if you might need follow-up treatment. Ask how long it will be before you can get back to your normal routine so you have realistic expectations. Plan to take plenty of time to recover. Most importantly, follow your doctor's instructions before and after your surgery.
Many neurological procedures can be done while you are awake. Ask in advance so you're not surprised. Our surgical and neurological team is dedicated to making this surgical treatment is painless; however, you may have a headache or feel uncomfortable after surgery. Ask your doctor how you can expect to feel and about your pain management options.
Understand how long your hospital stay might be or if this is an outpatient procedure.
Make sure you understand any long-term effects you can expect from surgery. Brain surgery can sometimes affect normal brain tissue so you may need additional physical therapy, speech therapy or occupational therapy to help you return to your day-to-day activities.
Learn more about rehabilitation you have after surgery.


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Valtteri Filppula notches 3 assists as Bolts top Blues
ST. LOUIS (AP) -- Valtteri Filppula assisted on three of Tampa Bay's four goals, and the Lightning beat the St. Louis Blues 4-3 on Friday night for their third NHL preseason win in three days.
Artem Sergeev, Brett Connolly, Ondrej Palat and Pierre-Cedric Labrie had goals for the Lightning (3-0), who will host the Florida Panthers on Saturday night.
Ben Bishop, who grew up in St. Louis, and Anders Lindback split time in goal for the Lightning. Bishop stopped 14 of 15 shots. Lindback made 13 saves on 15 shots.
Corey Locke had a goal and assist for the Blues, who were beaten by the Lightning 4-3 in a shootout on Wednesday. Alexander Steen and T.J. Oshie added goals.
Jaroslav Halak made his first preseason start in goal and played the entire game, making 19 saves.


text: Hoping to understand what a new generation of mobile malware could resemble, security researchers will demonstrate a malicious "rootkit" program they've written for Google's Android phone next month at the Defcon hacking conference in Las Vegas.Once it's installed on the Android phone, the rootkit can be activated via a phone call or SMS (short message service) message, giving attackers a stealthy and hard-to-detect tool for siphoning data from the phone or misdirecting the user. "You call the phone, the phone doesn't ring, and when the phone realizes that it's being called by an attacker's phone number, it sends him back a shell [program]," said Christian Papathanasiou, a security consultant with Chicago's Trustwave, the company that did the research.Rootkits are stealthy programs designed to cover up their tracks on the operating system in order to evade detection. They have been around on Windows and Unix for years, but lately security researchers have been experimenting with them on mobile platforms.The hard part of writing an Android rootkit is figuring out how to take advantage of new mobile features while making sure the software runs smoothly on the new platform, Papathanasiou said. Because the rootkit runs as a module in Android's Linux kernel, it has the highest level of access to the Android phone and can be a very powerful tool for attackers. For example, it could be used to reroute a victim's 911 calls to a bogus number. The rootkit could also track a victim's location or even reroute his browser to a malicious Web site. "Because we interface with the kernel, the opportunities to abuse this are limitless," Papathanasiou said.On its own, Trustwave's rootkit isn't much of a threat to Android users. That's because a criminal would first need to figure out how to install the software on a victim's phone. This could be done by building the rootkit into a rogue application sold via the Android Market, or by exploiting a new, unpatched bug in Android's Linux kernel that could allow the program to be installed.Those are pretty big barriers, however. Google, like other mobile operating system makers, has spent a lot of effort making it hard to get root-level access to the kernel in the first place. "Once someone gets root, the game is essentially up," said Rich Cannings, Android's security leader. "So what we do is prevent people from getting full control of the kernel."Android has a variety of ways of doing this. It uses application "sandboxing" to prevent one compromised program from gaining access to other parts of the system. It uses other tricks to prevent any undiscovered bugs in the way Android manages its memory from giving hackers a foothold in the system. If the rootkit spreads via the Android Market, Google can get in touch with victims and help them fix the problem.Security geeks will want to know how the Trustwave team managed to get its rootkit running on Android, but the software won't have much effect on mobile users -- at least for several years -- said Robert Graham, CEO of Errata Security, in Atlanta. Today's mobile phones usually don't ship with good malware detection tools, so developing a rootkit program would be excessive for a typical cybercriminal, he said. One of the main features of a rootkit is that it's very hard to detect, but if the phone isn't looking for malware anyhow, "why not just have your normal malware run on Android?" Graham said.Malicious software does pop up on mobile devices every now and then, but the vast majority is written for the Windows desktop operating system. Still, Google's Cannings was careful not to disparage the Trustwave talk. "It's interesting from a theoretical sense that they ported a Linux rootkit to Android," he said. "I think that it helps show that these mobile operating systems are extremely powerful. They're just as powerful as your desktop computer."


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Requested Product
|- FPL's Mission and Strategic Plan -
FPL's mission is to identify and conduct innovative wood and fiber utilization research that contributes to conservation and productivity of the forest resource, thereby sustaining forests, the economy, and quality of life. ... ..more »
|- FPL Research Emphasis Areas -
Advanced Composites
As an integral part of the FPL mission, we improve the long-term sustainability of our Nation's forests by creating valuable composite products from biobased materials ... ..more »
Advanced Structures
The FPL has been in the forefront of wood-frame housing research since 1910 and has long been recognized as a world leader in such housing-related areas as engineered wood ... ..more »
Forest Biorefinery
We all know the compelling reasons that the United States needs to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels. Historically, the greatest increases in energy demand have been for transportation fuels ... ..more »
A leader in wood products research for over a century, the FPL is positioning itself to become the lead Federal research facility for the application of nanotechnology in forest products ... more »
Woody Biomass Utilization
Forests in the United States contain a substantial amount of small-diameter, overstocked, and underutilized material.FPL research projects are exploring the potential of the small-diameter ... ..more »


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If you listen to USA Gymnastics and NBC, it's one of the most important Olympic tune-ups. If you listen to the rest of the world, it's a glorified showcase for American athletes. So maybe it's fitting that the American Cup's highest-scoring female gymnast wasn't even entered in the competition.
Sixteen-year-old Gabrielle Douglas was only there as an exhibition athlete, given the opportunity to test out her routines in front of a 12,000-strong crowd at Madison Square Garden on Saturday, since the two slots allotted to the U.S. were already filled by defending world champion Jordyn Wieber and Alexandra Raisman, who finished 1-2 as expected. But when Douglas finished her final floor exercise, she asked her coach Liang Chow, who also coaches Olympic champion Shawn Johnson, for a calculator, presumably to add up her scores and see where she would have placed. At the end, she was nearly three-tenths ahead of Wieber, who picked up her third American Cup title.
That three Americans would land atop the scoreboard was hardly a surprise to those who have followed the competition over the years and have noted with occasional derision that the meet often feels like a domestic meet to which a few foreign athletes happen to be invited. In 2008, half of the eight-person field was American and they captured the top four spots. Saturday's competition felt a lot like that (at least on the women's side)—a late winter re-ranking of the American girls.
Among dedicated fans the event is often called the "Scam Cup" or, more the point, the "Scamerican Cup." The real "scam" isn't any sort of outright cheating—the American judges haven't colluded with the Germans to produce a favorable result—but instead the lopsided nature of the event, in which the very best U.S. athletes at the peak of their game are pitted against a group of up-and-coming gymnasts that have been sent by their federations merely to gain experience and exposure. Seasoning for them; a victory lap for us. The whole event, not just Douglas's routines, feels like an exhibition.
"In the past, Scam Cup was the American TV event where other nations sent specific athletes for whom it was no issue to lose to the American star of the day," says Rick McCharles, a Canadian coach and former FIG judge who runs the Gymnastics Coaching blog.
With the exception of Larisa Iordache of Romania, no foreign female gymnast with legitimate Olympic aspirations showed up at the Garden this year. Iordache, a favorite to win medals in London, only came of senior age this year and needs as many chances as she can find to get her competitive feet wet. It's the only reason Romania sent her to New York, and she took bronze behind the Americans.
To hear the NBC hype machine tell it, this isn't a small international meet nearly five months before the Games; it is a prerequisite to winning the Olympics later that year. "No pressure Jordyn," Tim Daggett, one third of the network's commentary team, said as Wieber began her floor exercise, her final performance of the competition. "The last two Olympic champions from the United States won this in the year of their Games in Madison Square Garden."
This came shortly after a fluff piece, which had Carly Patterson, the 2004 Olympic all-around gold medalist saying, "whoever wins the American Cup going into the Olympics, wins that gold medal." While I have no doubt that the victory for Patterson as a 16-year-old was personally significant and a wonderful shot of confidence, the competition itself can hardly be characterized as a bellwether. What about the winners of the 1988, 1992, 1996 and 2000 titles? None earned gold at their Olympics.
The way Patterson and the NBC trio described the American Cup trophy made it sound like a lucky rabbit's foot—win it, hang it on your backpack, rub it for good luck and then win the Olympic all-around title five months later. To prove this point, on hand at the meet were Patterson, Nastia Liukin, Mary Lou Retton and Nadia Comaneci—Olympic champions all, and all winners of the American Cup. (In fact, when Comaneci won the inaugural American Cup in 1976, she scored her first international Perfect 10s, several months prior to that famous performance in Montreal.) The Romanian-born Comaneci is a rare exception in another way: over its 36-year history, there have been only a handful of non-American winners on the women's side. (Click here to see a full list of winners and an awful lot of American flags.) The last time a gymnast from abroad won the meet was in 2001 when Russian Elena Zamolodchikova, a double Olympic gold medalist from the Sydney Games only six months prior, took the overall title.
So why isn't there a strong field of foreign competitors at the American Cup on the women's side?
A big part of the problem is timing. This meet is held early in the season and most top gymnasts are still in the midst of preparations for the Olympics and the major competitions that immediately precede the Games. "I'm not surprised China declined," McCharles says. "They have a very exacting game plan for winning the Olympics and they like to keep some cards hidden."
The Cup's organizers have had better success attracting a big name foreign gymnasts during "off" years. Last year, Russia sent 2010 World Champion Aliya Mustafina. This year, she and all of the other Russians, the U.S.'s main competition in London, stayed home.
(The Russians were also said to be angry after last year's competition when Wieber was inserted at the last minute to sub for an injured American athlete. According to the rules, athletes are supposed to be invited to the American Cup based on their respective all-around finishes at the 2010 World Championships, a competition that Wieber had been too young to even compete at.)
The Americans have no right to complain; they don't exactly make a habit of hopping across the pond to compete at the other events on the World Cup circuit.
"It is a well-known (and much deplored) fact among gymnastics fans that the U.S. does not travel to many meets throughout the year," says Brigid McCarthy, an Australian journalism student who helms The Couch Gymnast, another popular gymnastics site. "It interrupts their somewhat centralized training system, and they tend to focus solely on attending big meets such as Worlds and Olympics, and their domestic meets."
The men, on the other hand, have always managed to attract a deep international field to the American Cup and, about one-third of past winners have come from other countries. This has lead to the perception that the men's meet is fairer to foreigners, which might have encouraged top male athletes to agree to compete. This year American Danell Leyva narrowly defeated an impressive international roster that included Britain's Daniel Purvis, Germany's Marcel Nguyen, and runner-up Nikolai Kuksenkov from the Ukraine, all top ten finishers in the all around at the most recent world championships.
"American girls, not guys, were often over-scored at the American Cup," says McCharles. His assertion—that scores, which are subjective by nature, were unfairly high for the U.S. women—is virtually impossible to prove. But just the perception that that the meet doesn't treat foreign women fairly has acted as a self-fulfilling prophecy, harming the prestige of the American Cup. Though the U.S. women mostly deserved their last decade of wins, the damage had been done long before the current crop of gymnasts even started competing.
So once again, after Saturday's competition concluded, some fans were crying "scam" online. Wieber's and Raisman's bar marks were too high and Iordache's were too low, they claimed. But meddling with the marks to the tune of a few tenths wouldn't have changed the overall results, so why the suspicion?
It's in part due to the nature of the sport's fans, says McCarthy. "Gymnastics fans have quite the habit of reading conspiracy into a lot of things and I think it has come from gymnastics having been such a secretive world of behind closed doors training for so long."
But perhaps anyone would suspect mischief and favoritism after enduring NBC's commentary. Aside from the unrelenting jingoism, their banter was rife with mistakes and unkind words for foreign competitors. Al Trautwig decided that Marcel Nguyen, one of the top all-around gymnasts in the world, hails from West Germany. The trio cruelly suggested that Rebecca Tunney of Great Britain was "damaged" and in need of some time with Dr. Phil after her disastrous beam set in what was only her second international competition as a senior. And as Iordache performed, they claimed that she's the first Romanian to come along in years that can swing bars, seemingly forgetting that Ana Porgras actually medaled at the 2009 Worlds. Yet no matter what these three say, they never seem to endanger their jobs. Like Supreme Court justices, these guys have received a lifetime appointment to the broadcast booth.
If their aim through all of this hyperbole and dramatization was to confer international significance upon this meet, they utterly failed. The Americans shocked no one by taking the top spots. The U.S. women may be dominant right now and the clear favorites for London, but American Cup success doesn't prove it. The drama is purely made-for-TV. The only genuine surprise on Saturday was Douglas' "unofficial" first place finish. She may not have left the Garden with the talisman Cup but she got something even better in a reputation-based sport like gymnastics—buzz.
Dvora Meyers is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Slate, Tablet and elsewhere. She writes about gymnastics and Judaism at Unorthodox Gymnastics. She also blogs about woman-y stuff over at The Anti-Girlfriend.


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Stephen Fry, the actor, writer and raconteur, has told of his disgust after a quest to trace his Jewish ancestry ended with the discovery that his great-grandfather's grave had been desecrated by robbers.
In a village in Slovakia, he found the cemetery had been targeted by anti-semitic vandals who dug up his great-grandfather's remains to steal gold from teeth and rings. He described the act as 'a desecration' and 'a kind of blasphemy', which had made him re-examine his views on whether the law should recognise blasphemy as a crime.
Fry was speaking at a debate with the journalist Christopher Hitchens at The Guardian Hay Festival last week. Among the issues raised was the government's proposed Incitement to Religious Hatred Bill, which has been criticised by civil liberties campaigners and comedians, including Fry's friend Rowan Atkinson, who warned that it could be used to ban jokes poking fun at Islam, Judaism or the Christian church.
Fry, whose films include Gosford Park and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, admitted: 'I'd never believed that there was any problem with blasphemy; it was an obvious nonsense to have a law suggesting that blasphemy be a crime. It's often an offence against good taste, it's often unkind, as so many things humans do are, but we don't necessarily have to make them outlawed.
'But I was doing a BBC programme a couple of weeks ago in a small village south of Bratislava. I was in search of my mother's grandparents and managed to track down a Jewish graveyard... surrounded by concrete walls and somewhere apparently my great-grandfather was buried there.
'All the graves were broken and destroyed, and it was a ruinous thing. The bodies had been disinterred. I discovered they'd been disinterred for two reasons: one was simple anti-semitism, the other simple greed, trying to get gold from teeth and rings. This had happened within the last five years: not a Nazi crime but a recent crime.
'A part of me then, eventually finding my great-grandfather's broken grave, did think: this is a desecration. If this happened in Britain this would be covered by laws of racial cruelty or so on. It's also a kind of blasphemy against something more than the Jewish faith though. It made me question whether I really was quite so sure that blasphemy was an old-time law for an old-time statute book.'
Fry went to Slovakia for a new series of the BBC's Who Do You Think You Are?, in which celebrities go in search of their roots. He wrote briefly about his Jewish heritage in his 1997 autobiography, Moab is My Washpot. His mother's great-grandfather, a Hungarian Jew named Neumann, lived for a time in Vienna 'and it was always said of him that he was the kind of man to give you the coat off his back'.
Fry wrote that his 'blood ran cold' when one day, reading about Hitler, he came upon this passage: 'He [Hitler] wore an ancient black overcoat, which had been given him by an old-clothes dealer in the hostel, a Hungarian Jew named Neumann, and which reached down to his knees... Neumann... who had befriended him, was offended by the violence of his anti-semitism.'
Fry added in his autobiography: 'I suppose there were many Hungarian Jews in Vienna in 1910, and I suppose many of them were called Neumann, but one can't help wondering if it really might be true that one's great-grandfather might have befriended and kept warm a man who would decimate a large part of his family and some six million of his people.'
During the debate in Hay-on-Wye, Fry described his own religious history: 'When I was about 13 I became enraptured by the Anglican church. I was born technically - if one can be technically - a Jew: that's what I am, because my mother is all Jewess, with Jewish parents as far as one can tell, and certainly grandparents.
'I wasn't brought up in the Jewish faith. I was brought up in no faith at all. My father's a physicist, but not an angrily atheistical one. I became enraptured by the Anglican communion, as we used to call it, and also by the English mystics... I don't know why, I can't explain it: I was a child of fads. But simultaneously I managed to immerse myself in Wagner and PG Wodehouse and Sherlock Holmes - there is no special pattern that I can discern.
'I've always believed that everything that is said from authority is either the authority of one's own heart, one's own brain, one's own reading, one's own trust, but not the authority of someone who claims it because they're speaking for God and they know the truth because it's written in a book. That, essentially, is where I come from. In a sense, tolerance is my religion. Reason is my religion.'
The Incitement to Religious Hatred Bill was announced in the Queen's Speech last month. Under the proposals, it would become a criminal offence to use threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour if one 'intends to stir up religious hatred' or if their conduct is 'likely to stir up' religious hatred. Prosecutions could be brought only by the Attorney-General and a convicted person would face up to seven years in prison.
Fry refused to go as far as Hitchens in combatively denouncing the bill, but made clear he 'couldn't possibly obey a law' that allowed prosecutions of comedians or writers who caused offence.
He said: 'It's now very common to hear people say, "I'm rather offended by that", as if that gives them certain rights. It's no more than a whine. It has no meaning, it has no purpose, it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. "I'm offended by that." Well, so fucking what?'


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