Note the assortment of arms – a Polish variant of the BAR, a Mauser rifle, Luger pistol, and what appears to be a Mauser 1910/1914/1934 pistol.
Vintage Saturday: Government Shutdown
Prototype
Bechowiec: Polish Teenager Makes a Resistance SMG
The Bechowiec (or Beha) is a fascinating SMG produced in small numbers in southern Poland under German occupation during World War Two. It was made for use by the Bataliony Chłopskie (Peasant Battalions) by a […]
Anti-Tank Rifles
Vintage Saturday: Antitank Rifle
German soldier in France with a captured Polish Maroszek wz.35 anti-tank rifle.
Bolt Action Rifles
Presentation Walther VG-1 (Video)
We took a look at this rifle with a few photos a while back, but I do now have some video of it as well – a VG-1 last ditch rifle with an inlaid plaque […]
It appears that the resistance fighters above may have taken advantage of a pause in combat to pose for the photographer. With that wide and disparate range of weaponry, I wonder how they coped with the ammunition re-supply situation? It could not have been easy under the circumstances surrounding Warsaw at the time.
Reading the combatants memoirs clearly shows, that lack of ammunition was, besides the biggest plague of whole Uprising, namely the lack of waepons, a major problem. They were always short of rounds, it was extremely hard to replenish them. The were so desperate, that the e.g. tried to fire Mauser rounds from Hungarian 35M rifles they obtained with only internal magazine loaded. But even the pistol with only 8 rounds was much better than the standard equpiment of more than 80% (at best) of insurgents: courage, hope and bare hands.
So, was it to start the Uprising? I doubt it…
That makes the resistance fighters’ ability to hold out even more remarkable. They had probably hoped to capture adequate stocks of enemy weapons and munitions at the beginning, and some may have partially succeeded.
Very simple – they just husbanded it and aimed carefully, as everybody was fending for himself. Warsaw fighting had a highest kill-to-wounded ratio in German WW2 records, coinciding with the highest percentage of headwounds. No spray-and-praying, like…
Thanks for your input, Leszek. However, I was already aware of the conservation of scarce ammunition resources and the need to make every round count when I posed the question. Perhaps I should have clarified this at the beginning of my post. What I was getting at was the organization of supply lines during the Uprising, and the logistics that helped support it under the most difficult of circumstances. The Polish resistance fighters, regardless of affiliation, appear to have been tremendously resourceful and adaptable, and it would be interesting from a historical and human standpoint to understand how they did it when every man’s hand was against them.
The fellow on the far left seems to have a WWI vintage Gewehr 98, judging by its straight bolt handle and lack of a sight hood. Did that just pop out of his cellar just in time to kill Germans in a display of irony?
The WW1 Mauser very well could have been hidden away.
Short version, someone my family knew came from Poland after WW2. He said that his father had picked up a rifle & ammo from a battlefield during WW1. He carefully hide it in a wooden beam in his barn. He got it out & shot it on occasion.
The Polish police searched the farm several times, but never found it. Might still be there. I don’t know which army had used the rifle.
Sharp eyes, Andrew, but the Polish wz.29 had no sight hood, and only cavalry models had a turned-down bolt. Infantry rifles had a straight bolt. So my guess is that it’s a Polish gun.
However, German police and second-line forces, and their quisling auxiliaries, were armed with all kinds of German and captured weapons. So almost any Mauser, especially any 7.92mm gun, and almost any handgun or SMH chambered for 9mm or a Browning cartridge, could turn up anywhere in occupied Europe. While the Western Allies tried to air-deliver weapons to the Polish underground, their main sources of supply were cached Polish guns and looting/battlefield recovery from German or auxiliary forces.
Judging from the full World War I length, tangent sight rather than Lange “roller coaster” sight, no wood between receiver and rear sight, half-length upper handguard, German-style bayonet lug (although it is hard to exactly tell which model of bayonet lug it is), and finger groove in the stock it’s most likely a Polish Kb wz 98a. There is also the possibility that it is a German G98 converted post war to have tangent rear sights – I know that this was done in the Reichwehr or the Wehrmacht, although I have never really understood why.
*Reichswehr.
Why? That’s simple for a change – flat sights were more handy, less vulnerable, and had to be exchanged anyway, since in 1920s a decision was made to make the sS (schweres Spitzgeschoss = heavy spitzer, green primer annulus) a standard ball instead of the lighter S (Spitzgeschoss = spitzer, black PA) – which necessitated a newly graduated sight leaf anyway. And so, a decision was made to change them. That’s why.
Thanks for the clarification. Although personally I’ve always loved the look of the Lange sight.
On a similar note, do you know how frequently G98 receivers were blued postwar? I know I have definitely seen them with blued receivers rather than the bizarre white ones they had in WWI.
Kev, Polish it might be, but this definitely a rifle, with 29″ bbl and short upper handguard. Polish Army had thousands of these inherited from WW1 stocks and subsequent purchase – as well as restarted manufacture in 1938 as “kb wz.98a” (kb = karabin = rifle). Most of the German WW1 rifles were overhauled either at Radom or Warsaw, fitted with a flat leaf tangent sight instead of the hunchback Lange-Visier – which is basically what that rifle look like. So it might be a Polish one – but rather a wz.98a or overhauled German WW1, than wz.29 which was an “infaterized” Kar.98AZ / kbk wz.98 (kbk = karabinek = carbine). The differences were straight handle, and shorter handguards to expose the muzzle so that a rifle bayonet can be fitted in a normal way (handle on rail, ring on the muzzle) rather than the AZ carbine’s “Achilles heel” mounting – chosen to retain o/a length of the bayoneted rifle with the 98/05 (“leaf”) bayonet.
sorry to feel this way but the home army got as much outside aid as they gave the Warsaw Ghetto fighters in their heroic fight. What goes around comes around.
As much as possible, the AK (Home Army) did supply weapons, ammunition, and fighters to the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Since the Germans had cordoned off the Ghetto, this was particularly challenging and little got through. Germans summarily executed Poles found to have weapons, so most of the AK supplies were in remote areas far from Warsaw and other major cities.
ZOB, the primary Jewish Combat Organization, was composed of dedicated left wingers who spent the period from 17 September 1939 to 22 June 1941 fingering AK fighters to the NKVD east of the Molotov-Ribbentrop line. The AK fighters so compromised were executed or exiled to the wastes of Siberia. This did not encourage cooperation between the AK and the ZOB.
ZOB also neglected to inform AK of the Ghetto uprising, so weapons and ammunition were not prepositioned ahead of time. Once the Ghetto uprising began, it was exceptionally difficult to smuggle weapons past the German SS Police cordon.
ZZW, the right wing, Pilsudskist Jewish Military Union, did receive substantial supplies from AK well before the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Mostly veterans of the Polish-Soviet War, they were the last fighters against the Germans in the Ghetto and many escaped to joint the AK for the remainder of the war.
Accounts of AK forces not supplying Warsaw Ghetto fighters are mostly drawn from ZOB partisans who joined the communist Lublin group during the 1944 – 1947 Polish Civil War in which Soviet forces destroyed the last remnants of the AK. This propaganda was intended to discredit the AK and their superiors in the London Government in Exile, so Poland would accept Soviet satellite status.
When the Russians ceased fighting in World War I, the Germans left about one million troops holding positions in the east as part of the ‘Ostfront’ Many of these German troops remained in place until the conclusion of the Polish-Soviet War of 1920, when the Poles disarmed them and shipped them to Prussia and Germany proper. This was retaliation for German support of the Red Army in said Polish-Soviet War. The Germans provided sanctuary for about 500,000 Red Army troops fleeing the Poles in September 1920.
The weapons recovered from the Ostfront forces were added to Polish war reserves and issued to the Polish populace in the August 1939 mobilizations. Kar.98a carbines had actually been issued as front line weapons to Polish cavalry units in the west during the 1920’s. About 250,000 Gew.98 long rifles were issued to militia formations in 1939 which later formed the nucleus of the AK (Home Army).
I’d say the Mauser rifle is either a Gew.98M or a Polish Wz.98a; they are virtually identical.
There had been underground manufacturing of arms in Poland during the occupation, a submachine gun at least that was designed by the resistance. But was there any underground manufacturing or remanufacturing of ammunition in Poland or in any other occupied country?
There sure were some initiatives to manufacture ammunition, as there were main three prewar ammunition plants: PWU-FA in Skarżysko (eagle in headstamp), Pocisk SA in Warsaw (Pk in headstamp) and military Ammunition Plant No.1 in Warsaw (used Norblin cases, hence N in headstamp at 12 o’clock). The case head was divided into four slash-bisected fields, with case manufacturer {NOT round assembly plant} indicated at 12 hrs, year millesime at 3 hrs, metal furnisher at 6 hrs and finally material code {mostly 67 for depleted 67% copper brass}. Now, to our issue at hand: there were three rifle ammunition factories, only one of them was making 9×19 Luger (PWU-FA), so there plenty of experienced workforce, which did not returned to work after German occupation. The Germans operated only one of the prewar plants, the PWU-FA (headstamp “HASAG-logo”, them from 1941 – “kam”), dismantling both Warsaw plants, as too close to a resistance hotbed. However, a new plant was installed in Głownie by Częstochowa (“nbe”), at the former Norblin case manufacturing plant. The components were smuggled out of both, but as any handloader knows, there’s only a limited amount of components you can smuggle out, and these are exhausted rather fast – so it was found to be ineffective. Smuggling Radom pistol part kits out of FB Radom was WAY more effective, and by using it to kill one bad guy with pouches full you have several dozen rounds in no time – compare that to workload of loading these several dozen rounds on a single-stage press, as the progressive, multi-station presses were then not available. So even if cartridge components were smuggled out, the amount of such production would have been minimal. There is one widely known case of clandestine ammunition manufacturing in Warsaw, in late 1943/early 1944, when ca. 1000 rounds HPT ammunition was commissioned – and delivered – to test the clandestine manufactured Radom pistol barrels. The Germans were only manufacturing part kits (complete slide with return spring + complete frame) without barrels, to discourage the underground from stealing them, as the barrel-making machinery is not readily available in best of circumstances, not to mention German occupation and wartime rationing of steels and cutting tools. OK, so they skipped the bbl, which speeded up manufacture, and were delivering these part kits to Austria, where they were mated with barrels, finally assembled and proofed. And of course Polish underground found ways to smuggle the part kits out of Radom factory – now the problem was to make bbls. At first they used Polish bbls smuggled out of factory in a Black Hole period of power vacuum at Radom plant, after the German front line units exited the site, and German occupation unit didn’t arrived yet. This was just several days, but they were able to stash enough bbls to be able to assemble all the kits smuggled within the period from 1941 (when the manufacture of part kits commenced after almost two years of hiatus)- 1943, when the bbl stash dried up. Teofil Czajkowski of Warsaw has started a centralized AK manufacture of the 9 mm bbls for all AK-organized small arms manufacturing programmes, including the Radom bbls, Sten-clone bbls or Błyskawica bbls. These were not only tested at the manufacturer, but the AK Material HQ have organized a formal testing facility for HPT to be made on all assembled weapons! The procurement of the HPT ammunition proved troublesome, and before the first ordered batch was delivered, someone at the HQ must have finally facepalmed himself and experience an epiphany that clandestinely opposing the foreign occupation forces poses many occupational hazards more serious than untested barrels blown up in the process, and the whole shabang was rested. Most of the ammo used by the resistance was captured from the enemy, and not handloaded for the exact reasons given above – which I hope anyone intimately familiar with reloading would be able to understand. Oh – BTW, these cases were all Berdan, integral anvil, twin (later into the war – single eccentric) flash holes and mostly steel, so if anyone is going to ask, whether somebody collected casings shot in the street for reusing, let him first reload several like these and ask himself an important question of “why bother”?
Very good information, thanks for posting it. As a handloader myself I don’t like using Nickel plated brass (hard on the dies), and I’d never risk using steel cases even with carbide dies. And while recyling Boxer primers would be tedious (have heard of it being done with strike-anywhere matches), recyling Berdan primers would be nearly impossible
The interesting part of it is that it seems that it is easier to make guns from scratch than it is to make ammo from scratch. Given that a good machinist with a mill and and lathe could make a simple blow back submachine gun with some mild steel sheet and one pound or two of high-carbon steel, I suppose that should not be surprising. Finding coils of sheet brass and punch presses, and making the proper dies to stamp out cases,and then heat treating them, would be out of the question. But if brass stock were available it seems that maybe a Swiss Screw machine (closest thing to CNC those days) could turn out machined cases, at least straight wall cases like 9mm. Bullets could be cast out of lead, which was pretty common back then (pipes, flashing, printer’s type, etc.) But, that leaves propellent and primers, which would be a puzzle. Strike-anywhere match primers and home-made black powder would pretty much be it, and that would not likely cycle a 9mm gun and make-shift primers might leave the person with the gun-to-get-a-gun with a missfire standing next to the person whose gun he wanted to get.
Regarding rifling barrels, there is a fascinating book, the 5th book in the “Foxfire” series by Elliot Wigginton, that describes the process used by blacksmiths in rural Appalachia to rifle the barrels of home-made flint lock rifles, barrels that they also made from flat strap. They may have been back woods hill billys, but they sure were clever at some things. The rifling “machine” being hand made out of wood with just a bit of steel for a cutter. But it was a slow process used on soft barrels.
There’s a series of photos of a lady gunsmith turning a wooden guide bar on a pole lathe (no pun intended) then laying out the helix and cutting it out with a chisel, for a primitive wooden guide bar rifler in here: http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/Guns-Gunmaking-Tools-Southern-Appalachia-John-Rice-Irwin/9780916838812
Some of the prices on Amazon now are way lower than I paid for my copy about 25 years ago.
The methods the lady is using are similar to those used by the teenage Henry Maudslay, in Joseph Bramah’s shop, to produce the first accurate lead screws for lathes. Bramah had poached Maudslay from Enfield, where he was already a foreman, and highly respected for his abilities.
On the theme of rifling, there’s a newish book out by Cliff LaBounty, on rifling and rifling machines.
http://www.border-barrels.com/labounty_book.htm
I still haven’t finished my first read through, but my impressions are very positive, unlike some other books about barrel making, LaBounty actually knows from many years experience, what works and what doesn’t
and where he doesn’t know first hand, for example with hammer forging, he has guest writers who do know, contribute their expertise.
LaBounty has a very good writing style, with a very dry sense of humor.
a complete contrast to some of the poorly recycled boilerplate on this field that I’ve been foolish enough to pay for in the past.
One problem that may have existed for the manufacturing effort of the underground was that most machines and tooling for gun parts would be generic machine tools. But a lathe repurposed as a sine-bar rifiling machine would scream gun-making to any Nazi who inspected a machine shop, unless there was some way to tear it down and reassemble it after ever session. A book that has a lot of info on rifiling tooling (but not the rifiling machinery) is the second volume of Howe’s Modern Gunsmith (what was modern up to 1941 at least).
The determination of the Poles was certainly amazing, and was it not the solidarity movement that started things to bring freedom back to them. Hope that the Poles still have it. This century may well be the deciding moment if the human race’s experiment in self-governance will survive.
Hi Jacob,
It’s an interesting one
It stands to reason that anywhere there are gun controls and the demand for guns is higher than black market imports, or previously stashed guns can satisfy, there will be some home brewing going on.
For the characters who’ll be doing the home brewing, there is the interesting problem of how to get the highest number of acceptable guns produced for the least outlay in scarce resources (machine tools, skilled labour, materials like steel tubing, springs, high tensile steel) and with the least chance of coming to the attention of anyone likely to arrest them – or snitch.
Assuming that they are going for rifling, rather than using aerodynamically stabilized projectiles, along the lines of a Brenneke slug, a Minnie type bullet with a long thin skirt, or a scaled up diabolo type airgun pellet (scroll down here for some examples http://guns.connect.fi/gow/gunwriters.html )
Then there are several means of obtaining a helix for rifling, some are easier to assemble and disassemble quickly and to hide.
Unless the occupying force has its operatives well trained, briefed and alert, then they are unlikely to be able to recognize what they are looking at, and even then, with a strategically placed distraction, he might not even look – of all the thousands of Polish girls I’ve seen, I don’t think I’ve yet seen an ugly one…
And if the place is say a workshop right next to the base, and doing maintenance for the base – it might never even come under suspicion.
@ Jacob Morgan :
That was a perceptive and probing question.
@ Leszek Erenfeicht :
A very informative response with many little-known technical details of history and a good analysis, too.
Many thanks to the both of you for bringing it up!
I beg to differ with the caption of the photo. It seems to imply that the Nazis and the Soviets ar at oposite ends of the political spectrum. They are not. Nazi stands for “National Workers SOCIALIST Party”. USSR stands for Union of Soviet SOCIALIST Republics. The Progressive revisionist historians continue to propetuate this lie.
It is best (IMHO) to imagine the political spectrum in a circle. If we take the traditional “left” and “right” and then start going into extremes, the lines start bending backwards until they meet in the end, forming a circle. Nazism and Communism has differences, for example in their imagination of the economic sphere, but in the end they are remarkably similar when it comes to the tactics of holding on to power, and how they generally treat their own people.
Wow. Thanks for bringing out politics when it was TOTALLY uncalled for. If you actually believe that the NSDAP held any left-wing pretensions after the Night of Long Knives, you are an even greater fool than you appear. If the Nazis were actually Socialists, why did they repress ALL OF THE OTHER SOCIALIST PARTIES IN GERMANY? Hell, they repressed the Social Democrats, the political philosophy to which I subscribe. And we’re basically just super liberal Democrats.
Go read an actual history book, you ignorant stooge.
Did the Bolshevik suppression of all socialist parties which were not its own subsidiaries, render them any the less socialist?
I’d recommend this one, and it’s even free to download because the author doesn’t believe in intellectual property.
http://mises.org/document/431/Theory-of-Socialism-and-Capitalism-A
Wow. Thanks for bringing out politics when it was TOTALLY uncalled for. If you actually believe that the NSDAP held any left-wing pretensions after the Night of Long Knives, you are an even greater fool than you appear. If the Nazis were actually Socialists, why did they repress ALL OF THE OTHER SOCIALIST PARTIES IN GERMANY? Hell, they repressed the Social Democrats, the political philosophy to which I subscribe. And we’re basically just super liberal Democrats.
Go read an actual history book*, you ignorant stooge.
(Here’s a link to Heinz Höhne’s brilliant The Order of the Death’s Head: The Story of Hitler’s SS. It is one of my all-time favorite history books. And even a dolt like you might understand it. But probably not. ESBAM.)
One (Germany) belived in state leadership of their national economy.
The other ( Soviet Russia) believed in total state control of their economy.
There is a difference.
Dean
They’re different flavours of the same, centrally planned collectivist theme.
Hayek’s road to Serfdom and Mises’ omnipotent government have very good contemporary analyses and descriptions of the simillarities and differences between those national and international flavours.
Of the two, Mises has the better prose style and is the more perceptive thinker – having previously identified the “calculation problem” in “economic calculation in the socialist commonwealth” which he later extended into a full book length analysis “socialism”
Hayek’s “the use of knowledge in society” identifies the other critical flaw in central planning; “the knowledge problem”.
The essays and books are available as free downloads from the mises.org site
Interestingly, following the Anschluss, the national socialists removed Mises’ papers and library from his apartment in Vienna, to a secret archive. following the defeat of the national socialists, the international variety took mises posessions to Moscow, where they were guarded in the NKVD and later KGB’s secret archive until the collapse of the system, which Mises had predicted. such was the perceived threat to socialism, by that one man’s thoughts. I gather scholars can now get access.
Keith, there is nothing collectivist about Hitlerism. There was a collective element to Strasserism, but I wouldn’t expect you to actually understand the difference. It’s not like Adolf Hitler order the left wing of his party to be liquidated or anything.
And the USSR collapsed due to Gorbachev’s capitalistic Perestroika reforms.
You need to go back and read your history.
Hi Aron,
Internal purges and liquidation of similar competing parties are features of all systems of politics which consider extreme violence to be a legitimate tool. Examples from the Soviets include the liquidation of their larger fellow marxist grouping the Mensheviks, and the numerous and well documented purges within the Bolshevik party.
D’oh
forgot to close the HTML
The subtle differences between nationalist and internationalist socialists aside (kind of like asking me to debate the merits of several of my psycho ex-girlfriends)I just thought it was neat to see a picture of the wz. 1928 BAR in use. In the US, e are so used to the “GI Joe” imagery that it is easy to forget how widespread the design was – Belgium, Poland, Nationalist China, and especially the Swedes. I’m a nut about the 6.5×55 cartridge, just loved every gun chambered for it I’ve shot. So as someone who prefers the Swedish Mauser to the Springfield and the AG-42 to the Garand, my nomination for a FW field trip would be the Kg m/37 BAR. (Might require Ian making a trip to Sweden – what a sacrifice! – as it doesn’t appear that very many of the “obsolete” BARs got out of their hands and I’m sure the Home Guard still have a few thousand around “just in case.”)
Thanks to Leszek for the fascinating story about the underground Radoms. More of a legend than a gun – several informed sources rate it as one of the best service pistols of all time – and I’d love to see the Poles bring it back in all its solid-steel single-action glory. And a new 1935 Radom in .45 ACP would certainly make the endless internet debates on just which (of the dozens being made) service-grade 1911 is best more interesting.
I can tell you that every Radom I’ve ever used has felt much more natural in my hand than any 1911. I would be curious to see it in .45ACP.
I apologize for my snappiness. But few things irritate me more than people who equate the NSDAP with Communism. It reeks of ignorance, and frankly completely destroys the otherwise excellent discussions of historical topics on this site.
Those who made that statement should know better, and as such should be ashamed.
Hi Aron,
I’m well aquainted with the post hoc fallacies usually described as history.
I am also familiar with the attempted use of shame as a tool to prevent people from enquiring further.
If I were susceptible to the use of that tool, then I would never have followed my interest in guns.
I am certainly not going to imply that the NSDAP was in all ways identical to Soviet bolshevism, or that Soviet bolshevism was in all ways identical to the more syndicalist form of socialism which Marshall Tito employed. They were however variations on the same extremely violent, coercive, collectivist theme.
Tom, in his earlier comment has very perceptively noted that a one dimensional spectrum between “left” and “right” does not explain what we see.
Those sons of proletarians, who grew up in abject poverty, and who transitioned from the one true chuch of international marxian socialism to nationalist varieties – show no evidence of having passed through the peaceful shire of classical liberalism on their ideological journey – I talk of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler.
Mussolini, Trotsky and Lenin corresponded throughout their lives, with each taking an interest in the others “social experiments”. Following Lenin’s death, Trotsky appears to have made the same journey from “left” to “right”, again without any evidence of having passed through the “centre”.
My own preferred explanation is to view the area open for political debate/disagreement as diamond shape, with left and right as the x axis and coercive violence as the y axis.
Where violent coercion (and aggressive violence) is zero, there is no debate about which areas of life should be coerced – such coercion is totally unacceptable.
If violent coercion (synonymous with state central planning) is accepted into some areas of life / human action. then a debate over which areas it should be applied to can open up, perhaps one side says violence should be used to prevent people eating certain food stuffs e.g. trans fats, but should not be used to prevent people from consuming stimulants and hallucinogens and vice versa the space for “left” and “right” opens up.
That space for “left” vs “right” debate reaches its widest potential where violent coercion is considered acceptable for around half of the scope of human action.
If violent coercion is considered acceptable to control more than half of human action, then the potential for differences between “left” and “right” decreases apace
As you approach the extreme – where violent coercion is applied to all aspects of human action (the GULAG, the death camp, the lunatic asylum, the Holodomore, the mass grave) then there is very little room for political difference, it is the area of the “totalitarian” (the totallity of life) the “cradle to grave” central planning:
Is the chosen stock to breed the “new man” selected on the basis of income bracket or national or ethnic/religious grounds?
Are owners of business and property kept on in name only, and made to follow the detail orders of the central planning bureau – and perhaps a sycophantic few co-opted into that bureau, or are they all to be publicly de-humanized, humiliated and then consigned to the mass grave?
Who is to be todays scapegoat for the failures of central planning to deliver what was promised to or by our dear leader?
Excellent summary, Keith. Kudos for making a rational, intelligent exposition on a rather contentious subject (politics). I also applaud you for referencing Mises and Hayek. I suspect we would have somewhat similar views on personal liberty and the efficacy of central planning.
Because we all know how well Austrian School economics are working out for Europe. Look at all that growth!
Mises and Hayek were cranks. At least you didn’t bring up Rand.
(And Keith, what was that comment about our ‘dear leader?’ Are you actually implying President Obama is a Communist?)
Aron,
Latvia and Albania aside(populations respectively 2M and 3M ie, smaller than many cities), please cite examples, with supporting figures over time of which European states you have in mind as currently following Austrian economic policies.
please also provide support for your assertions about Mises and Hayek. Your view of Hayek in particular, is a curious one, as Hayek was a mild social democrat, and that comes across very clearly in his writings, including Road to serfdom
I certainly mentioned Lenin, Trotsky, Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin, Please show me where I referred to Obama.
Keith, I asked if you had IMPLIED that the President is a Communist. I am glad you do not think that.
I am currently at an historical conference at the moment, and I shall get back to you as soon as I am able.
Hi Distal Radius,
I’m afraid I’m veering OT for war history comments, but today, 10/10/2013 is the 40th anniversary of Ludwig von Mises death, at age 92.
His younger brother, the mathematician and professor of aeronautical engineering, Richard von Mises, who’s total stress failure criterion for metals is used in gun design, had died 20 years earlier.
Ciao, …. among the assortment of weapons, I think you forgot to mention a lot of courage…
Normann