Blood and Honor
Page 75
5 The Beech Aircraft C-45 Expediter was a small (six-passenger) transport aircraft, powered by two Pratt & Whitney ‘‘Wasp Junior’’ 450-horsepower engines. It had a maximum speed of 215 m.p.h. and a range of 700 miles.
6 José de San Martín, ‘‘The Great Liberator’’ Manuel Belgrano, and J. M. de Pueyrred ón are revered as the fathers of Argentina.
7 The Focke-Wulf 200B Condor, first flown in 1937, was a twenty-six-seat passenger airplane, powered by four 870-horsepower BMW engines, built for Lufthansa, the German airline. The 200C was a military modification, turning the aircraft into an armed, long-range reconnaissance/bomber aircraft.
8 A photo-identification card in a leather wallet issued by the Argentine Foreign Ministry.
9 White breeches, dark-blue coats, high black leather boots, and what resembles a silk top hat. The hat dates back even earlier, to 1806, when a volunteer force was recruited and led by thirty-year-old General Juan Martín Pueyrredón to resist a British attempt to occupy Buenos Aires. Pueyrredón seized a British merchantman in the harbor. Its cargo included top hats, which Pueyrredón issued to his troops—primarily gauchos from the Pampas—as the only item of uniform he had available. Four years later, together with generals Manuel Belgrano and José de San Martin (revered as El Libertador), he led the war for liberation from Spain, which concluded with the July 19, 1816, Proclamation of the Congress of Tucumán, declaring the United Provinces of La Plata to be free of Spain and to be the Argentine Republic.
10 The dress uniform of the Húsares de Pueyrredón—Pampas horsemen turned cavalrymen —features a bearskin hat and a many-buttoned tunic bedecked with ornate embroidery clearly patterned after that of the Royal & Imperial Hungarian Hussars of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
11 Porteño: Sweetheart, darling, or equivalent.
12 Berlinerische: Sweetheart, darling, or equivalent.
13 The day-to-day Spanish of middle- and upper-class Argentines is heavily laden with British terms. Living rooms are called ‘‘the living’’; dining rooms, ‘‘the dining’’; reception rooms, ‘‘the reception,’’ et cetera.
14 In Argentina, as in Europe, the term is equivalent to ‘‘President’’ or ‘‘Chief Executive Officer.’’
15 ‘‘The Mouth,’’ so called because it is the mouth of the Riachuelo Industrial Canal opening in the River Plate. Shipping tycoon—and second husband of Jacqueline Kennedy—Aristotle Onassis got his start operating a small ferry across the Riachuelo Canal.
16 The Basílica of Our Lady of Pilar (completed 1732), on Recoleta Square, is considered the most beautiful church in Buenos Aires.
17 Buenos Aires’ Teatro de Colón, on the Avenido 9 de Julio, is one of the world’s largest opera houses.
18 The huge Argentine military complex just outside Buenos Aires. In 1943, Campo de Mayo held a Cavalry Regiment, an Infantry Regiment, and Engineer Battalion, the School for Equitation, the Artillery School, the Military Prison, a number of support units, plus the campus of the Military Academy and the buildings and air fields of what was later to become the Argentine Air Force.
19 My Struggle was written by Adolf Hitler while he was imprisoned in Landsburg Prison following the failed Munich coup d’état. It was in as many German homes as the Bible, and the royalties therefrom were the major source of Hitler’s personal wealth, used, among other things, for building his mountain retreat at Berchtesgaden.
20 Under the Versailles Treaty of June 28, 1919, Germany lost 25,550 square miles of its land and 7 million of its citizens to Poland, France, and Czechoslovakia. Its major Baltic port, Danzig, became a ‘‘Free Port’’ administered by Poland. Most of the Rhineland was occupied by Allied troops. The Saar was given ‘‘temporarily’’ to France, and the Rhine, Oder, Memel, Danube, and Mosel rivers were internationalized. Austria was prohibited from any future union with Germany.
All German holdings abroad, including those of private German citizens, were confiscated. Almost the entire merchant fleet was expropriated. More than 140,000 dairy cows were shipped out of Germany as reparations, as well as heavy machinery and entire factories. And vast amounts of iron ore, coal, and even livestock were requisitioned by the Allies.
Billions of marks were assessed annually as reparations, and German colonies in Africa and elsewhere were seized by the League of Nations and then mandated to the various Allies, excluding the United States.
21 German V-1 and V-2 rockets were developed at Peenemünde under Wernher von Braun.
22 An herbal tea, also favored by Arabians, who for well over a century have been the best export customers of the Argentine Mate plantations in Corrientes Province.
23 So called by detractors of the OSS, a reference to the fact that many OSS senior officers and agents had been recruited from the upper echelons of business, the Ivy League schools, and society.
24 The SS rank equivalent to lieutenant colonel.
25 Reichs minister for Armaments and War Production.
26 Homosexuals in concentration camps were required to wear a pink triangle affixed to their clothing in the same manner as Jews were required to wear a yellow six-pointed star.
27 The SS rank equivalent to major.
28 The SS rank equivalent to brigadier general.
29 General Francisco Franco, the Spanish fascist leader, was known as ‘‘El Caudillo,’’ ‘‘The Leader,’’ much as Adolf Hitler was known as ‘‘Der Führer.’’
30 The military crest of terrain is that point closest to and immediately below the actual crest at which soldiers cannot be seen (and thus fired upon) by the enemy.