Hi Folks! While perusing my March '42 Collier's I happened upon this article with the title "Don't Lynch Them." Enjoy!

It may come to pass as has been predicted, that enemy airmen may fly over here occasionally during this war, drop bombs on important industrial spots, then bail out, let their planes crash, and give themselves up.

In case such things do happen, we'd like to put in an earnest plea now, to any civilians who may reach these airmen before any police or soldiers, not to obey the human impulse to lynch them, shoot them, or kick them to death.

Such acts will draw reprisals in enemy countries against American prisoners held there. Further, to kill one of these individuals will deprive our military intelligence service of a source of information ranging anywhere from valuable to priceless. Just don't let him get away; see that he is taken into official custody. What if Rudolf Hess had been lynched in Scotland before his identity was learned?

Leave the plane alone too, if it lands intact or partially so. Let the military come for it and take it away for close study of all it's materials, parts, and gadgets.

Mob action in cases of this kind can only injure our cause.

-End

What a different world it was back then! I couldn't help but notice that the author of this article made no mention at all of possible criminal charges being brought against you if you strung one of these fellows up!

Dogdaddy

This Day in History - FDR dies 4-12-1945

As stated in our Other Wars section, this was quite a day in history because the Civil War also started on this date in 1861!

April 12, 1945 : FDR dies

On this day in 1945, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt passes away after four momentous terms in office, leaving Vice President Harry S. Truman in charge of a country still fighting the Second World War and in possession of a weapon of unprecedented and terrifying power.

On a clear spring day at his Warm Springs, Georgia, retreat, Roosevelt sat in the living room with Lucy Mercer (with whom he had resumed an extramarital affair), two cousins and his dog Fala, while the artist Elizabeth Shoumatoff painted his portrait. According to presidential biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin, it was about 1 p.m. that the president suddenly complained of a "terrific pain in the back of my head" and collapsed unconscious. One of the women summoned a doctor, who immediately recognized the symptoms of a massive cerebral hemorrhage and gave the president a shot of adrenaline into the heart in a vain attempt to revive him. Mercer and Shoumatoff quickly left the house, expecting FDR's family to arrive as soon as word got out. Another doctor phoned first lady Eleanor Roosevelt in Washington D.C., informing her that FDR had "fainted." She told the doctor she would travel to Georgia that evening after a scheduled speaking engagement. By 3:30 p.m., though, doctors in Warm Springs had pronounced the president dead.

Eleanor delivered her speech that afternoon and was listening to a piano performance when she was summoned back to the White House. In her memoirs, she recalled that ride to the White House as one of dread, as she knew in her heart that her husband had died. Once in her sitting room, aides told her of the president's death. The couple's daughter Anna arrived and the women changed into black dresses. Eleanor then phoned their four sons, who were all on active military duty. At 5:30 pm, she greeted Vice President Harry Truman, who had not yet been told the news. A calm and quiet Eleanor said, "Harry, the president is dead." He asked if there was anything he could do for her, to which she replied, "Is there anything we can do for you? For you are the one in trouble now."

Indeed, Truman had rather large shoes to fill. FDR had presided over the Great Depression and most of World War II, leaving an indelible stamp on American politics for several decades. He also left Truman with the difficult decision of whether or not to continue to develop and, ultimately, use the atomic bomb. Shockingly, FDR had kept his vice president in the dark about the bomb's development and it was not until Roosevelt died that Truman learned of the Manhattan Project. It was also not until FDR died that Eleanor learned of her husband's renewed affair with Lucy Mercer. Eleanor, in her own words, was "trained to put personal things in the background." She swallowed the shock and anger about Mercer and threw herself into FDR's funeral preparations. Thousands of Americans lined the tracks to bid Roosevelt farewell while a slow train carried his coffin from Warm Springs to Washington, D.C. After a solemn state funeral, he was buried at his family's home in Hyde Park, New York.

Quite a DAY in the history books. The Civil War Began today and I'm also posting a note in the WWII section regarding the passing of FDR. A lot of dark clouds attached themselves to April 12.

The American Civil War begins when Confederates fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.

The fort had been the source of tension between the Union and Confederacy for several months. After South Carolina seceded, the state demanded the fort be turned over but Union officials refused. A supply ship, the "Star of the West," tried to reach Fort Sumter on January 9, but the shore batteries opened fire and drove it away. For both sides, Sumter was a symbol of sovereignty. The Union could not allow it to fall to the Confederates, although throughout the Deep South other federal installations had been seized. For South Carolinians, secession meant little if the Yankees still held the stronghold. The issue hung in the air when Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office on March 4, stating in his inauguration address: "You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors."

Lincoln did not try to send reinforcements but he did send in food. This way, Lincoln could characterize the operation as a humanitarian mission, bringing, in his words, "food for hungry men." He sent word to the Confederates in Charleston of his intentions on April 6. The Confederate Congress at Montgomery, Alabama, had decided on February 15 that Sumter and other forts must be acquired "either by negotiation or force." Negotiation, it seemed, had failed. The Confederates demanded surrender of the fort, but Major Robert Anderson, commander of Fort Sumter, refused.

At 4:30 a.m. on April 12, the Confederate guns opened fire. For thirty-three hours, the shore batteries lobbed 4,000 shells in the direction of the fort. Finally, the garrison inside the battered fort raised the white flag. No one on either side had been killed, although two Union soldiers died when the departing soldiers fired a gun salute, and some cartridges exploded prematurely. It was a nearly bloodless beginning to America's bloodiest war.

Gibraltar Vet Discusses Secret Lair

More than 60 years after the end of World War II, a former British navy doctor is shedding light on a mission to safeguard the Rock of Gibraltar.

Dr Bruce Cooper, 92, is the sole surviving member of a six-man team that volunteered to be sealed inside a hidden cave should the rock be captured by the Germans. Provisioned with canned food and a freshwater cistern, the "Stay-Behind-Cave" was to serve as an observation post and radio realy station. A bicycle linked to a generator would provide electricity and drive a ventilation system while affording the men a means of exercise.

Fortunately, the Germans never did capture the rock, the war ended and the team returned to civilian life. Their concealed aerie remained a secret until, 1997, when a caving group chanced upon it. Only now has Cooper broken the seal of his own silence.

Collection Details Nazi Persecution

In February, London's Imperial War Museum www.iwm.org.uk was gifted a private collection of memorabilia that documents Nazi persecution of Jews during WWII. The collection belonged to Gianfranco Moscati, an Italian-born Jew who fled to Switzerland during the German occupation.