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Ernesto “Che” Guevara (Volume 1, Podcast 5)

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Ernesto “Che” Guevara, Revolutionary Poster Boy

Che Guevara, El Guerrillero Heroico, by Korda
Che Guevara, El Guerrillero Heroico, by Korda

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna was born in Rosario, Argentina on May 14, 1928.   His upper class parents forged his birth certificate to read June 14 to conceal the fact that Ernesto was conceived out of wedlock.  Ernesto Guevara Lynch and Celia de la Serna y Llosa both came from socially well-connected families.  Despite Ernesto Sr.’s attempts at several money-making ventures, the family lived on Celia’s inheritance.

Original Photo, before Masetti and Palm tree werecropped out.
Original Photo, before Massetti and Palm tree were cropped out.

On March 4, 1960 Che Guevara was meeting with industrial management associates in downtown Havana, when a massive explosion ripped through the wharf area of the city.  A French freighter, La Coubre, had been unloading armaments directly onto the dock when a momentous explosion occurred.  Thirty minutes later, with a massive emergency aid effort underway, another explosion went off, killing even more people.  Approximately seventy-five people died and two hundred more were injured in an incident that Castro immediately charged was planned and carried out by the CIA.  He ordered a state funeral with a procession through Havana to a speaker’s platform set up in front of the city’s prominent Colon cemetery.  Castro used the occasion for a typically lengthy and aggressive speech.  Alberto Korda, a former fashion photographer who had joined Castro’s entourage and recorded such events began to photograph various government officials standing in Castro’s vicinity.  He suddenly noticed Che Guevara standing off to the side, gazing introspectively into the crowd.  Korda had only a few seconds to take two photographs before Che Guevara sat down behind Castro.  Although Korda immediately knew he had taken two excellent photos, neither would be published in any newspaper accounts of the memorial.  He cropped the palm tree and profile of another individual out of the picture, tilted Che’s head slightly and tacked the photo to the wall of his studio.

Che on his honeymoon with Hilda Gadea
Che on his honeymoon with Hilda Gadea

Seems like a rather tense occasion.

Che and Aleida March on their honeymoon
Che and Aleida March on their honeymoon

For Che Guevara personally, the grim reality of his marriage also reared its head early in the first days of the Cuban revolutionary government.  His wife, Hilda, and daughter arrived from Peru but Che Guevara immediately told her of the “other woman” and asked for a divorce.  Hilda later wrote an unverifiably sentimental account of their discussion but the divorce was granted and Che Guevara quickly married Aleida March.

Che in Red Square
Che in Red Square

The Bay of Pigs combined with a disastrous Kennedy-Khrushchev summit meeting at Vienna to prompt the most dangerous episode of the Cold War.  Thinking that his American counterpart was a weak intellectual who could be intimidated, Khrushchev began negotiations with Castro regarding the installation of nuclear missiles in Cuba.  The Soviet Union had been forced to accept similar American missiles in Turkey and the Soviet leader saw an opportunity to humiliate the US and also guarantee Cuba’s security.  Castro, with Che Guevara’s enthusiastic urging, agreed, in principle.  As an indication of Che Guevara’s importance in the Cuban government hierarchy, it was Che who was sent to the USSR in August of 1962 to finalize the deal.

Tamara Bunke, aka "Tania"
Tamara Bunke, aka “Tania”

Much of the success of the Cuban revolution was due to a well organized courier underground that allowed the Cuban rebels to communicate their needs at all times.  Tamara Bunke aka “Tania” was attempting to serve this purpose and  connected with Che’s unit in early January.  She had brought with her two agents from Cuban intelligence, Ciro Bustos and Simon Debray.  Unfortunately, a Bolivian communist informer tipped off the government as to her true identity and she could no longer return to La Paz where she had been able to inform Havana by coded radio messages as to the progress of and whereabouts of Che’s mission.

Patty Hearst aka "Tania", Symbionese Liberation Army
Patty Hearst aka “Tania”, Symbionese Liberation Army
Che and Felix Rodriguez in front of La Higuera schoolhouse, minutes before Che's execution.
Che and Felix Rodriguez in front of La Higuera schoolhouse, minutes before Che’s execution.

The following morning local senior officials of the Bolivian military as well as Felix Rodriguez arrived in La Higuera by helicopter.  Rodriguez would eventually recount his encounter with the captive Che.

“He looked like a beggar, He did not even have a uniform, he did not have any boots, he had some pair of leather tied down to his foot.  He was very filthy and it was a tremendous shock to see the way this man looked at this point in time.”

Che Guevara's body on display at Vallegrande, Bolivia hospital
Che Guevara’s body on display at Vallegrande, Bolivia hospital

As the sergeant entered, Che supposedly said “I know you have come to kill me.  Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man.”  It was ten after one PM on October 9, 1967.  Ernesto “Che” Guevara was thirty-nine years old.

Leather shoes of Che Guevara worn when he was executed. Blood is from the leg wound suffered in combat.
Leather shoes of Che Guevara worn when he was captured. Blood is from the leg wound suffered in combat.

Che, the man was dead.  The Bolivian government would do everything possible to diminish his memory.  After unceremoniously displaying his body to the international press in a hospital in Vallegrande, Bolivia, they cut off and preserved his hands lest anyone claim that Che had not died and then they buried the body in a secret location in Vallegrande.

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Friedrich Nietzsche (Volume 1, Podcast 4)

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Friedrich Nietzsche: I am not a Man! I am Dynamite!

Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche was born in Rocken, Germany on October 15, 1844.  In July of 1849, Nietzsche’s father, a thirty-five year old minister, died of an indeterminate brain condition, forcing the family to move to the nearby town of Naumburg.  Both of these locations are in the Saxony region, former German Democratic Republic, approximately thirty miles southwest of the city of Leipzig.

Paul Ree, Lou Salome and Nietzsche
Paul Ree, Lou Salome and Nietzsche

Ree and Salome quickly began to discuss establishing their own intellectual cadre with the participants literally living together in a bohemian utopia, this in an era where a male and female living under the same roof for any reason would be considered scandalous.  Into this intrigue, Friedrich Nietzsche finally arrived and a meeting with the   couple ensued at St. Peter’s Basilica.  His alleged greeting to Lou Salome while Ree was preoccupied with recording his impressions of the cathedral was “From what stars have we fallen here to meet?”

The (in)famous photo of Salome, Ree and Nietzsche
The (in)famous photo of Salome, Ree and Nietzsche

In her self serving memoir written many years later, Lou Salome would claim that in Lucerne, Nietzsche would make his second marriage proposal, the type of awkwardly unrealistic action that probably guaranteed Nietzsche lifelong bachelorhood.  Realistically, since Lou Salome’s only income came from her inheritance, a small amount meant only until she married, she wasn’t going to marry anybody, at least not then.  From this afternoon also emerged a famous photograph of Lou Salome with a whip of lilacs driving the two philosophers who are tethered to a make believe cart.  From there, this strange group scattered, Nietzsche to his home in Naumburg, Ree to his family home near Berlin and both Salome’s to Zurich

Nietzsche, with Elizabeth, one year before his death.
Nietzsche, with Elizabeth, one year before his death.

Elizabeth didn’t have the office space in Weimar to accommodate her brother so she quickly persuaded a very wealthy patron and former acquaintance of Nietzsche, Meta Von Salis, to buy a three-story villa as a suitable setting for her brother’s last years.  Once the house was purchased, Elizabeth decided it needed some appropriately luxurious improvements and without telling the new owner, went ahead with the new construction.  Von Salis was stuck with the bill but at least got the satisfaction of accusing Elizabeth of exploiting the archive for her own benefit.  By then, Friedrich Nietzsche was installed as the centerpiece of his sister’s shrine to his work, trotted out occasionally for especially wealthy potential patrons and responding to any visitors with a blank stare.  Mercifully, he succumbed to a heart attack on August 25, 1900.

Hitler, visiting Elizabeth at the Nietzsche Archive in Weimar.
Hitler, visiting Elizabeth at the Nietzsche Archive in Weimar.

Elizabeth Nietzsche would enthusiastically support the ascendance of Adolf Hitler, inviting him in 1934 to the Nietzsche Archive for a photo op and proclaiming that her brother would have been just as supportive.  Hitler had probably read little of Nietzsche’s work but he certainly grasped what the purported endorsement of an internationally famous intellectual would mean to the image of his inner circle, generally perceived as a motley crew of unsophisticated thugs.

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Mildred Harnack and the Red Orchestra (Volume 1, Podcast 3)

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Mildred Fish Harnack, the Only American Female Ever Executed For Espionage by Nazi Germany

Mildred Harnack, courtesy, Eric D. Carlson
Mildred Harnack, courtesy, Eric D. Carlson

Mildred Fish Harnack was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on September 16, 1902.  Her parents, descended from a New England, protestant background, separated when Mildred was a teenager and she was primarily raised by her mother.  After her father’s death in 1918, the family relocated to the Washington, DC area but Mildred returned in 1921 to attend the University of Wisconsin.

Arvid Harnack
Arvid Harnack

While a student at the University, Mildred met a German Rockefeller scholar, Arvid Harnack, in 1926.  In September they were married and Mildred continued with her studies and taught literature.  Having been immersed as a youngster in the deeply German immigrant culture of Milwaukee and subsequently exposed to the radical political atmosphere of Madison, Mildred’s attraction to a German intellectual would be completely predictable.  From the very beginning, the Harnack’s marriage was atypical.  Although Harnack’s uncle was the esteemed German theologian Adolf Von Harnack, Arvid’s father also died when he was a teenager and his immediate family was struggling with the disastrous German economy of the twenties.  When Harnack’s academic stipend ran out in 1928, he was forced to return to Germany.  Mildred Harnack obtained a teaching position at Goucher College in Baltimore and the young couple hoped to reunite quickly.

Harro Schulze-Boysen
Harro Schulze-Boysen

Horst Heilemann, a young member of this German cryptology unit was also a former student of Harro Schulze-Boysen and regularly socialized with the couple.  After Harro confided that he worked with Russian intelligence, Heilemann mentioned that his group had successfully intercepted some communications and identified some Russian agents.  When Heilemann returned to his office and reviewed decoded messages he determined that the Schulz-Boysens had been compromised.  He unsuccessfully attempted to telephone Harro and was forced to leave an urgent message.  Later, when Harro returned the call, instead of Heilemann he got a senior colleague on the line.  Confused by the cryptic message he had received, he unfortunately identified himself.  Heilemann’s stunned colleague figured out what had happened and immediately informed the secret police.  The Gestapo did not want to risk further warnings to other members of the group and Harro Schulze-Boysen was arrested on August 31, 1942.  Convicted by a military court, he was hanged in Plotzensee Prison, Berlin, December 22, 1942

Libertas Schulze-Boysen
Libertas Schulze-Boysen

Libertas Shulze-Boysen was in the unique position of having access to film footage that was used by the propaganda ministry.  She was able to produce photographic copies of atrocities that were being committed against Jews and others on the Eastern Front.  Unsuccessful attempts were made to get this information to the West.  She was guillotined in Plotzensee Prison, Berlin, December 22, 1942, one hour after her husband was hanged.

Mildred Harnack, May, 1938, courtesy of Eric D. Carlson
Mildred Harnack, May, 1938, courtesy of Eric D. Carlson

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George Smith Anthony and the Voyage of the Catalpa (Volume 1, Podcast 2)

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Captain George Smith Anthony and The Voyage of the SS Catalpa
Captain George Smith AnthonyIn 1874, rebel leader John Devoy received another letter from Fenian prisoner James Wilson that he chose to read aloud at a national meeting of the Clan Na Gael.  Part of it read:

     “Think that we have been nine years in this living tomb since our

       first arrest and it is impossible for mind and body to withstand the

       continual strain that is upon them.  One or the other must give way

       …We think that if you forsake us, then we are friendless indeed.”

This missive, the “Letter From the Tomb”, compelled the Clan to understand that to rescue the military Fenians was their moral imperative.  Devoy was officially urged to devise a plan of escape and he immediately proceeded to Boston and a meeting with John O’Reilly, the only man ever to successfully escape from an Australian penal colony.  O’Reilly was still in touch with members of the New Bedford, Massachusetts whaling community, including some of the former members of the crew of the Gazelle.  This close knit group quickly sold Devoy on the idea that any rescue attempt should also try to fund itself by engaging in a legitimate whaling expedition.  They also agreed that there was only one man for the job, Captain George Smith Anthony.

The S. S. Catalpa

Recruiting Anthony was merely a start.  Devoy, O’Reilly and Richardson began to scour New England for a suitable ship.  Although the Clan Na Gael had secretly raised some money from a national base of contributors they were still short of the purchase price of an appropriate vessel.  It took Richardson fronting thousands of dollars and another Clan Na Gael member, James Reynolds, mortgaging his home to provide the funding for the purchase of the ”Catalpa”, a ninety foot merchant ship that had recently returned from the West Indies.  In March of 1875, the ship was towed to New Bedford where Captain Anthony could personally supervise its repairs and reworking as a whaler.

By the end of April, a twenty-two man crew had been selected with only one man, Dennis Duggan, aware of the true mission of the Catalpa.  Duggan, Irish, was also a carpenter by trade so he would not arouse the suspicions of customs officials about any atypical crew aboard a whaler.  On April 30, 1875, Captain George Anthony raised anchor in New Bedford and began the first leg of the mission to rescue the six Irish rebels.

Fremantle Prison today.
Fremantle Prison today.

In January of 1868, after three months at sea, their prison ship reached western Australia.  On the tenth, it dropped anchor in Fremantle and the prisoners were transported to the jetty at Victoria Quay.  From there they marched through the town to the Fremantle Gaol, a forbidding stone edifice with a practically medieval appearance.  Nicknamed “The Establishment” this prison confined over three thousand human beings,  fifteen per cent of the western region’s twenty thousand inhabitants.  Escape was considered impossible.  If a convict even made it outside of the walls of Fremantle Gaol, he would have to circumvent thousands of miles of shark infested ocean or an equally lengthy trek through the desert like conditions of the Australian bush country.  He would  probably die of thirst before aboriginal trackers found him and dragged him back to be hanged in the prison yard.  The military members of the Fenian group were placed in one man cells that were three feet wide, seven feet long and nine feet high.  Here they were doomed to service on a work gang, eventual death and burial in an unmarked grave along some Australian road.

 

 

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John Paul Jones-American Admiral, (Volume 1, Podcast 1)

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John Paul Jones, Admiral and Patriot

John Paul Jones
John Paul Jones

Considered a hero of the American Revolution, John Paul Jones was born in Scotland, carried out most of his naval exploits in the British Isles and died in Paris.  His most famous encounter, a victory over the British warship, HMS Serapis, took place off of the coast of Yorkshire, England, thousands of miles from the American colonies.

Artist's rendition of the Bon Homme Richard vs. HMS Serapis.
Artist’s rendition of the Bon Homme Richard vs. HMS Serapis.

It is now a matter of historical debate as to when or even if John Paul Jones actually uttered the famous phrase “I have not yet begun to fight”.  But if there ever was a moment for him to say it, now was the time.  Some of his crew members, fully aware of the damage done below, unlocked the dozens of British prisoners on the verge of drowning in the hold, clambered on to the deck and not seeing the captain began to shout for quarter from the other side.  Paul Jones was intent on knocking down the Serapis’ main mast with his personally manned nine pound gun.  Upon hearing his own crew attempting to surrender he first tried to shoot at them with an unloaded pistol and then hurled it as the startled sailors fled below deck.  Knowing his fate to be either imprisonment or even the noose, the captain had clearly adopted a much more modern outlook.  Failure was not an option.  Hearing the commotion, Pearson asked if the American ship had struck.  Most likely Paul Jones’ response was not as theatrical as chronicled but he certainly made it clear that he would rather sink than surrender.

Plaque in front of the building on the Rue de Tournon, Paris where Jones died.
Plaque in front of the building on the Rue de Tournon, Paris where Jones died.

The American ambassador, Gouverneur Morris, found John Paul Jones to be a tiresome pest.  However, when he received a message in July of 1792 that Paul Jones was gravely ill he proceeded to the captain’s rented apartment on the Rue de Tournon.  There he had Paul Jones compose a modest will and hastily left for a dinner engagement.  When he returned later that evening he found John Paul Jones dead, face down on his bed, his legs in a kneeling position on the floor.  He curtly informed Paul Jones’ landlord that the deceased should be buried as modestly as possible, most likely because he feared that he personally would be stuck with the bill.  Luckily, officials of the French government became aware of the naval hero’s demise and incredulous at the ambassador’s response, took charge of John Paul Jones’ burial.

John Paul Jones sarcophagus, in the crypt of the US Naval Academy Chapel.
John Paul Jones sarcophagus, in the crypt of the US Naval Academy Chapel.

John Paul Jones languished in obscurity for over one hundred years.  As the city of Paris expanded, it covered over the small cemetery with full fledged urban dwellings.  It took a determined American ambassador and the patriotic fervor of President Theodore Roosevelt to congressionally underwrite an archeological dig.  This needle in a haystack proposition at least had the knowledge that Paul Jones’ undertakers, presuming that eventually America would come calling, buried him in a lead coffin, sealed in alcohol.  It took five years and the exhumation of dozens of graves but, in 1906, when his coffin was opened, John Paul Jones was so well preserved that his face was instantly recognizable.  Dimensions from the Houdon sculpture confirmed his identity and following an autopsy that attributed his death to a combination of kidney failure and pneumonia, John Paul Jones began the lengthy journey back to his adopted homeland.  His casket, now encased in polished wood and the American flag, was paraded through the streets of Paris, accompanied by hundreds of American and French military personnel.  Transported to Cherbourg, it was loaded on to the USS Brooklyn and accompanied on its transatlantic voyage by a flotilla that swelled to eleven warships by the time it reached the Chesapeake Bay.  It would take seven more years to construct a suitable repository for the mortal remains of John Paul Jones, appropriate for a man who spent much of his career impeded by the indecision of others.

Houdon marble bust of Jones, crypt at the Naval Academy.
Houdon marble bust of Jones, crypt at the Naval Academy.

 

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