Comment du Jour

New York's Steuben Day Parade

The 60th annual German/American Steuben Day parade marched up Fifth Avenue in New York.   The parade honored the famed Prussian officer General von Steuben, a key foreign participant in training the fledgling American army during the Revolution 1776-1783.

The parade involving thousands of marchers both from Germany and Austria not to mention the
German/American and Austrian/American communities went up the Queen of Avenues and then
turned on 86th Street and into Yorkville, once a hub of "Little Germany."

Grand Marshals of the Parade were Admiral Manfred Nielson of the German Navy and Heinz Buck a German/American personage.

The festivities are all part of events during German/American Friendship Month.

Yes, there were the beloved and trademark Brass Bands.

And the theme floats.  This one form the German Embassy reminded us that the
bicycle was invented in Germany 200 years ago!!   Amazing!

Of course the Beer Floats!!!

Not everybody rides in a BMW or a Mercedes!

The German International School White Plains New York joined many of the German language schools also in the parade.

Taking a break during the Parade.   It was hot outside!!

Auf Wiedersehen until next year!!!

Comment du Jour

“Lafayette, We are Here,” Commemorating U.S. Entry into WWI

St. NAZAIRE, France—“Lafayette, We are Here,” became the clarion call upon the arrival of the American Expeditionary Force to France in 1917. The USA had just entered the hostilities, three years into the Great War, and the commanding battle hardened General John Pershing was in a sense returning the favor of French military assistance during the American Revolution.  

On 26 June 1917, a flotilla of American troop ships arrived in the Atlantic port of St. Nazaire, a well situated staging center situated hundreds of miles from the Front.  Over the next few years 198,000 Americans would disembark here. 

The Sammies, as they were affectionally called by the French as a play on the words Uncle Sam, were also known as the Doughboys in the USA.

President Woodrow Wilson’s decision to join the Allies after 32 months of  neutrality was as  controversial as it was militarily complicated.  On the one hand, the young American Republic had by choice stayed away from European conflicts and overseas engagements. On the more practical side, when Wilson declared war on Germany in April 1917, the regular U.S. army stood at an understaffed 140,000 troops and with an additional 200,000 in the National Guard.

Mobilization would be nothing short of extraordinary with a combination of mass conscription and an amazing American industrial might to support the war effort.  

After all it was U.S. military assistance which decisively tipped the military balance on the  Western Front, the site of three years of unmitigated carnage for the French and British forces facing Imperial Germany.  The battles of Verdun, the Somme, Passchendaele, and Vimy Ridge were nothing less than a grinding abattoir of killing; all sides were literally bled white and      exhausted. 

Germany’s unrestricted submarine warfare and the Russian Revolution decisively changed the political calculus. The Allies; the British Empire, France and Russia were slogging it out with the Central Powers; Germany, Austria/Hungary and Turkey.  Once the Czar was overthrown, Russia would later withdrew from the war and the balance of power decisively tipped against France in the West.  

As 1917 wore on, American troops flooded into France, first through St. Nazaire which became a

logistical hub which saw delivery of 2 million tons of equipment ranging from disassembled steam locomotives from Philadelphia, to cars, trucks and horses.   The logistical genius of the U.S military was on display with more than 500 transport ships bringing everything from tons of beef to cigarette rations for the troops.  Supply depots and bases dotted the Loire River region.

On a lighter side, the Sammies would introduce the French to basketball, chewing gum,  the    infectious Jazz music, and the “American Way of Life.”   

The American Expeditionary Force would see action mostly in 1918 during the bloody battles of 

Chateau Thierry and Belleau Wood among countless others.  When the hard won victory came with the Armistice in November 1918, over 53,000 Americans were killed and 210,000 wounded in this War to End all Wars.  

Tragically, the Peace of Versailles, signed a few years later, would merely set the stage for the Second World War.  

A century has passed since the Sammies disembarked at St. Nazaire and elsewhere in France.  Two million American troops were sent to France during the relatively short but sharp U.S.   intervention. 

While the centenary of America’s entry into WWI is being acknowledged in the USA, in France its meaning is far deeper with a year of commemorations and exhibits which highlight a friendship through conflict now usually only recalled by the mournful statue of a French soldier, a Poilu which graces every village with the words “Died for France.”

At the end of the war, the region commissioned a beautiful statue by the American artist Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney which showed an American Doughboy gracefully arriving, sword in hand, on the spread wings of an eagle.  That statue was destroyed by the Nazis in 1941.  In 1989,  a replica of the monument was placed back in the harbor where it majestically stands today. 

On 14 July, the French National Day, President Donald Trump visited Paris for the annual      military parade which featured some U.S. military units marching in WWI uniforms.  Weeks  earlier in St. Nazaire, the Cunard ocean liner Queen Mary 2,  made a transatlantic voyage to New York commemorating the “Bridge” linking France and America. 

Today, little strings of American and French flags drape towns in this region in tribute to 1917.   Yet, sadly forgotten in the pages of a turbulent history, the Sammies of the Great War still stare out to us from the faded black and white photos. But few remember them.

Comment du Jour

In wake of Barcelona...

France Calmer, Safer Year After Terrorist Attacks

A year ago France was on edge.  Islamic Jihadi terrorists had killed 86 people with a truck ramming incident at a Bastille Day celebration in Nice.  Shortly thereafter a elderly priest was murdered as he said Mass.  These attacks following a spate of earlier shootings in Paris killing over 130 put the country on edge.  The tension and expectation impending attacks        enveloped France like the hot and humid summer air.  

A year later France feels calmer.  Camouflage-clad Soldiers still patrol in the airport and train terminals and on some boulevards but there far less tension and nervousness.  Both the Parisians and throngs of foreign tourists feel far more secure in Cafes and the crowded streets.

The good news is that the French security services seem to have broken or at least neutralized many of the terrorist networks which have often been linked to the radicalized foreign fighters in  Syria.  Most of the “home grown” terrorists were French born and coming from rundown      suburban towns les banlieue, where a toxic mix of petty crime, drugs, and radicalized mosques have served as a breeding ground for radicals.  This is not an entirely new phenomenon but has been supercharged by the “cause” and the war in Syria.  

Intelligence estimates that 25,000 foreign fighters are in Syria.  West European militants be they from France, Belgium or Germany have become both radicalized and more importantly have learned deadly military skills while fighting in the Middle East.

Equally the political climate has changed.  The drawn out Presidential campaign contest ended in 

May with the improbable victory of Emmanuel Macron, a young, dynamic and totally different figure from the staid French political class.  Macron represents far more of a populist movement than a traditionally rigid right/left political ideology.  Still just months after his landslide election victory, Macron’s poll popularity has fallen below 40 percent. 

Paris has been selected as the site of the 2024 Summer Olympics. Significantly the Olympics present an extraordinary plus for Paris and naturally the image of France.  Interestingly the Games will coincide with the centenary 1924 Paris Olympics.  Yet the majority of Parisians are not in favor of the sporting spectacular; they fear cost overruns, widening traffic gridlock, and making themselves a terrorist target.  

President Macron will be phasing out the emergency imposed after the bloody 2015 attacks.   Operation Sentinelle, the domestic deployment of the  Army inside the country for security     details, represents the military's largest operation anywhere. 

Nonetheless the terrorist threat has hardly passed.  As Islamic State is being defeated in Iraq and Syria by a U.S. backed military coalition, the shattered remnants of the foreign fighters may drift back into Western Europe posing a clear and present danger to states from where they came.

Vigilance remains prudent.

Comment du Jour

Happy 4th of July!!


Freedom, Liberty and Friendship with our
Transatlantic Partners!

Comment du Jour

Helmut Kohl—Architect of German Unity 

Thirty years ago this week in 1987, President Ronald Reagan visiting Berlin, made his famous challenge,  “Mr. Gorbachev, Tear Down This Wall.”  Alongside the American President stood German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. 

A few years earlier I met Helmut Kohl campaigning in his native Rheinland.   Kohl, a towering but slightly awkward provincial politician, was often described to Americans as an amicable Gerry Ford type-character, evoking our own president of a decade earlier.  It was not totally a compliment.  Yet through perseverance and fate, this man from a small Western German city became a statesman on the world stage not just because of German unity, but because that singular achievement came about in peace, liberty and freedom. Kohl has died at the age of 87.

His formal election as Chancellor came in early March 1983.  I vividly recall watching the fog lift over the river Rhine in the great Cathedral city of Cologne that Sunday election morning.  By evening in Bonn the capital, I witnessed the landslide of his Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and the Free Democrats (FDP) which ushered in the opening act of the Helmut Kohl era.  His  political tenure would continue through sixteen years. 

Kohl was deeply committed to the Atlantic Alliance.  Yet standing shoulder to shoulder with the USA in NATO in the early 1980’s was not as popular as it was assumed either inside Germany or on the American Left where a loud minority “Peace movement” created an atmosphere where many people viewed the U.S. as looking to start a nuclear war.   Kohl stood fast against left wing political theatrics. 

Though the summer and fall of 1989 saw political rumblings in the Soviet Empire in Hungary and Poland, even otherwise hardline East Germany witnessed large and vocal  demonstrations against the ruling communist regime.  

Yet it was in Berlin where the anvil of freedom would strike against the Soviet Imperium.   The Joshua trumpet which sounded in 9 November 1989 heralded the historic events which would release a tsunami of liberty sweeping across Central Europe.  By the end of 1989, it  had torn through the old Iron Curtain and had shed the bright light of freedom. 

But contrary to the accepted narrative, the fall of the Berlin Wall did not see the immediate demise of the  “German Democratic Republic” whose Stasi and Soviet enforcers did not disappear with the November mist.   Kohl advanced a democratic ten-point plan for reunification.  Ambitious and costly yes, but one which would integrate 17 million East Germans as equals.     

Kohn’s miscalculation was that he said basically the old East Germany would need a fresh coat of paint and before long the landscape would be blooming.  But decades of socialist mismanagement and  repression had created a deeper challenge.  Over the past quarter century since, the cost of reunification  has been over a trillion dollars in massive infrastructural and social benefit transfers.

Chancellor Kohl was the architect of German unity on 3 October 1990, but the supporting cast included statesman and women who allowed it to happen.  George H.W. Bush, Francois Mitterrand. Margaret Thatcher and Russia’s Mikhail Gorbachev.  In other words, the allies of WWII, who had defeated the Nazi regime in 1945, had to legally sign off on the occupation and allow the reunification of both West and East Germany.  The Cold War had ended.  

Here at the UN, reunification meant that the two German delegations awarded membership in 1973 representing two separate states, namely the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, would merge into one representing a united German nation.  

After reunification Kohl kept close links with the USA and especially stressed the importance of Transatlantic ties through NATO.  Within Europe Kohl was close to French President Francois Mitterrand and is well remembered for a moving and mournful ceremony in Verdun, the killing field of the First World War.    

He was especially committed to Germany’s European identity within the emerging economic and political power of the European Union (EU).  His protege Angela Merkel became Chancellor in 2005.

Helmut Kohl’s bold decisiveness and political vision helped achieve both German and indeed European unity.  These extraordinary events,  now a generation ago, were underscored by former President George H. W. Bush who called Kohl “One of the greatest leaders in post-war Europe.”

Comment du Jour

May Day for Britain's Theresa May

It’s political May Day for Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May after what appeared as a massive miscalculation in calling a general election which she narrowly won.  

Though the ruling Conservative party gained the largest share of seats and votes in the 650 seat Parliament,  the party fell sadly short of a majority, thus causing the “Hung Parliament” in which a coalition must again be formed. 

Theresa May’s roll of the political dice to call for early elections were based on her gamble to win a powerful majority strong unified government which was needed in the wake of last year’s still reverberating BREXIT vote for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union.  BREXIT talks on the UK/EU separation begins in mid-June amid an uneasy instability in London. As May predicted prior to the vote, “Now more than ever, Britain needs a strong and stable government to get the best deal for our country.” Indeed, but now there’s more confusion both in Britain and throughout the European Union concerning the complicated pattern of EU separation. 

Tragically Theresa May’s snap election was shadowed by the specter of terrorism, both the appalling attacks in Manchester and London in which Islamist jihadi terrorists hit soft, civilian targets killing 30.  Concerning the terrorists she said, “They are bound together by the single evil ideology of Islamist extremism that preaches hatred, sows division and promotes sectarianism…Defeating this ideology is one of the great challenges of our time.”

The Conservatives won 318 seats but that’s eight seats short of a majority.  The Labour Party, which has lurched dangerously leftwards under current leader Jeremy Corbyn gained seats and now has 262, a gain of 31 seats.  Labour has posted the most socialist and left wing manifesto since the early 1980’s prompting even many former luminaries such as former Prime Minister Tony Blair to distance himself from the current party.  

Theresa May will forge a “Government of Certainty” with Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).  Yet May’s call for a “government of certainty” somehow lacks the ring and the rhetoric of steely Thatcherite resolve or for that matter anything more than a stopgap solution for a very complicated political problem of her own making.   She is viewed as “a weak and wounded leader” according to a good source in London.  Her credibility even among the Tories is weakened and recriminations abound. 

So what does the Hung Parliament realistically mean for Britain and her standing abroad?  Again the albatross of BREXIT talks begins with a shadow over the outcome of the proposed break.  Yet while the UK may be formally renegotiating its trade patterns with the continent, Britain has striven for reinvigorated bi-lateral trade pacts with many key nations European states such as France and Germany as well as with countries such as India.

Yet, May’s conservatives hardly possess the political gravitas of the former Thatcherite party which was far more philosophically wedded to free markets than to wider governmental regulation.  

When it comes to NATO and defense the current government will hold to the agreed 2 percent GNP military spending.  Interestingly Labour supported this point as well.  The government will equally keep its high levels of overseas development aid spending at 0.7 percent making Britain one of the highest foreign aid donors in the world.  

Britain will remain a strong player in the United Nations.

There’s no question that May will remain close to the USA and shall be a reliable partner in the international arena.  That’s the good news. 

But will Theresa May’s “Government of Certainty” bring the needed stability and confidence both to markets and to citizens?  Sadly, I feel the UK may be facing another election before too long.  

Comment du Jour

JFK Airport/JFK Anniversary

Opened as New York International Airport in 1948, was commonly known as Idlewild Airport.
Following the tragic assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963, the airport
was renamed JFK Airport a month later.

Given this is the 100th anniversary of President Kennedy's birth, signs at this global transportation portal commemorate its namesake.