J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 1141

Liveblogging World War I: October 4, 1914: Manifesto of the Ninety-Three

Manifesto of the Ninety-Three:

As representatives of German Science and Art, we hereby protest to the civilized world against the lies and calumnies with which our enemies are endeavoring to stain the honor of Germany in her hard struggle for existence—in a struggle that has been forced on her.

The iron mouth of events has proved the untruth of the fictitious German defeats; consequently misrepresentation and calumny are all the more eagerly at work. As heralds of truth we raise our voices against these.

It is not true that Germany is guilty of having caused this war. Neither the people, the Government, nor the Kaiser wanted war. Germany did her utmost to prevent it; for this assertion the world has documental proof. Often enough during the twenty-six years of his reign has Wilhelm II shown himself to be the upholder of peace, and often enough has this fact been acknowledged by our opponents. Nay, even the Kaiser, whom they now dare to call an Attila, has been ridiculed by them for years, because of his steadfast endeavors to maintain universal peace. Not till a numerical superiority which has been lying in wait on the frontiers assailed us did the whole nation rise to a man.

It is not true that we trespassed in neutral Belgium. It has been proved that France and England had resolved on such a trespass, and it has likewise been proved that Belgium had agreed to their doing so. It would have been suicide on our part not to have preempted this.

It is not true that the life and property of a single Belgian citizen was injured by our soldiers without the bitterest self-defense having made it necessary; for again and again, notwithstanding repeated threats, the citizens lay in ambush, shooting at the troops out of the houses, mutilating the wounded, and murdering in cold blood the medical men while they were doing their Samaritan work. There can be no baser abuse than the suppression of these crimes with the view of letting the Germans appear to be criminals, only for having justly punished these assassins for their wicked deeds.

It is not true that our troops treated Louvain brutally. Furious inhabitants having treacherously fallen upon them in their quarters, our troops with aching hearts were obliged to fire a part of the town as a punishment. The greatest part of Louvain has been preserved. The famous Town Hall stands quite intact; for at great self-sacrifice our soldiers saved it from destruction by the flames. Every German would of course greatly regret if in the course of this terrible war any works of art should already have been destroyed or be destroyed at some future time, but inasmuch as in our great love for art we cannot be surpassed by any other nation, in the same degree we must decidedly refuse to buy a German defeat at the cost of saving a work of art.

It is not true that our warfare pays no respect to international laws. It knows no indisciplined cruelty. But in the east the earth is saturated with the blood of women and children unmercifully butchered by the wild Russian troops, and in the west dumdum bullets mutilate the breasts of our soldiers. Those who have allied themselves with Russians and Serbians, and present such a shameful scene to the world as that of inciting Mongolians and negroes against the white race, have no right whatever to call themselves upholders of civilization.

It is not true that the combat against our so-called militarism is not a combat against our civilization, as our enemies hypocritically pretend it is. Were it not for German militarism, German civilization would long since have been extirpated. For its protection it arose in a land which for centuries had been plagued by bands of robbers as no other land had been. The German Army and the German people are one and today this consciousness fraternizes 70,000,000 Germans, all ranks, positions, and parties being one.

We cannot wrest the poisonous weapon—the lie—out of the hands of our enemies. All we can do is to proclaim to all the world that our enemies are giving false witness against us. You, who know us, who with us have protected the most holy possessions of man, we call to you:

Have faith in us! Believe, that we shall carry on this war to the end as a civilized nation, to whom the legacy of a Goethe, a Beethoven, and a Kant is just as sacred as its own hearths and homes.

For this we pledge you our names and our honor:

Adolf von Baeyer (1905 Nobel Prize in Chemistry), Peter Behrens (architect and designer), Emil Adolf von Behring (1901 Nobel Prize in Medicine), Wilhelm von Bode (art historian), Aloïs Brandl (philologist), Lujo Brentano (economist), Justus Brinckmann (art historian), Johannes Conrad (economist), Franz von Defregger (artist), Richard Dehmel (poet), Adolf Deissmann (theologian), Wilhelm Dörpfeld (architect and archeologist), Friedrich von Duhn (classical scholar), Paul Ehrlich (1908 Nobel Prize in Medicine), Albert Ehrhard (historian), Karl Engler (chemist), Gerhart Esser (theologian), Rudolf Christoph Eucken (1908 Nobel Prize for Literature), Herbert Eulenberg (poet), Henrich Finke (historian), Hermann Emil Fischer (1902 Nobel Prize in Chemistry), Wilhelm Foerster (astronomer), Ludwig Fulda (playwright), Eduard von Gebhardt (painter), Jan Jakob Maria de Groot (Sinologist), Fritz Haber (1918 Nobel Prize in Chemistry), Ernst Haeckel (biologist), Max Halbe (playwright), Adolf von Harnack (theologian), Carl Hauptmann (playwright), Gerhart Hauptmann (1912 Nobel Prize in Literature), Gustav Hellmann (meteorologist), Wilhelm Herrmann (theologian), Andreas Heusler (medievalist), Adolf von Hildebrand (sculptor), Ludwig Hoffmann (architect), Engelbert Humperdinck (composer), Leopold Graf von Kalckreuth (painter), Arthur Kampf (painter), Friedrich August von Kaulbach (painter), Theodor Kipp (jurist), Felix Klein (mathematician), Max Klinger (painter), Aloïs Knoepfler (art historian), Anton Koch (theologian), Paul Laband (professor of law), Karl Lamprecht (historian), Philipp Lenard (1905 Nobel Prize for Physics), Maximilian Lenz (painter), Max Liebermann (painter), Franz von Liszt (jurist), Ludwig Manzel (sculptor), Joseph Mausbach (theologian), Georg von Mayr (statistician), Sebastian Merkle (theologian), Eduard Meyer (historian), Heinrich Morf (linguist), Friedrich Naumann (pastor), Albert Neisser (physician), Walther Hermann Nernst(1920 Nobel Prize in chemistry), Wilhelm Ostwald (1909 Nobel Prize in Chemistry), Bruno Paul (architect), Max Planck (1908 Nobel Prize in Physics), Albert Plohn (professor of medicine), Georg Reicke (playwright), Max Reinhardt (director), Alois Riehl (philosopher), Carl Robert (philologist), Wilhelm Roentgen (1901 Nobel Prize in Physics), Max Rubner (physiologist), Fritz Schaper (sculptor), Adolf von Schlatter (theologian), August Schmidlin (theologian), Gustav von Schmoller (economist), Reinhold Seeberg (theologian), Martin Spahn (historian), Franz von Stuck (painter), Hermann Sudermann (novelist), Hans Thoma (painter), Wilhelm Trübner (painter), Karl Vollmöller (playwright), Richard Voss (novelist), Karl Vossler (linguist), Siegfried Wagner (composer), Wilhelm Waldeyer (anatomist), August von Wassermann (bacteriologist), Felix Weingartner (conductor), Theodor Wiegand (archeologist), Wilhelm Wien (1911 Nobel Prize in Physics), Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (philologist), Richard Willstätter (1915 Nobel Prize for Chemistry), Wilhelm Windelband (philosopher), Wilhelm Wundt (physician).

Weekend Watching: Bárðarbunga

For the Weekend: "Gird Up Now Thy Loins..."

YHWH: Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me.

Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.

Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it?

Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof;

When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

Or who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb?

Noted for Your Afternoon Procrastination for October 3, 2014

Over at Equitable Growth--The Equitablog

Afternoon Must-Read: Martin Wolf (2012): The German Response - Washington Center for Equitable Growth
Five Slices at the Dynamics of the Employment-to-Population Ratio since 1990 - Washington Center for Equitable Growth
September Employment Report... - Washington Center for Equitable Growth
One of Those Mornings When You Wake Up... - Washington Center for Equitable Growth
Afternoon Must-Read: Financial Times: ECB’s Mario Draghi and His Misguided Malcontents - Washington Center for Equitable Growth
Inflation Hawks Unrepentant and Zombified Watch!: (Early) Friday Focus for October 3, 2014 - Washington Center for Equitable Growth
Lunchtime Must-Read: Ta-Nehisi Coates (2012): We Are All Welfare Queens Now - Washington Center for Equitable Growth
Lunchtime Must-Read: Jared Bernstein: How the Jobless Rate Underestimates the Economy’s Problems - Washington Center for Equitable Growth

Plus:

Things to Read on the Afternoon of October 3, 2014 - Washington Center for Equitable Growth

Must- and Shall-Reads:

Rick Perlstein: http://www.thenation.com/blog/174160/eye-pyramids-part-1-how-it-works | | http://www.thenation.com/blog/175349/eye-pyramids-part-3-mlms-and-conservative-republican-infrastructure | http://www.thenation.com/blog/176913/eye-pyramids-part-4-incredible-bread-machine
Matt Bruenig: The Universal Basic Income As Social Insurance's Insurance
Jordi Gali: The Effects of a Money-Financed Fiscal Stimulus
Nick Bunker: Are the advantages of a college degree declining? - Washington Center for Equitable Growth | How important is the inequality in educational spending on our kids? - Washington Center for Equitable Growth | Who are the top 1 percent and 0.1 percent of income earners? - Washington Center for Equitable Growth | Waiting for wage growth - Washington Center for Equitable Growth

And Over Here:

Five Slices at the Dynamics of the Employment-to-Population Ratio since 1990 (Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality...)
One of Those Mornings When You Wake Up... (Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality...)
Liveblogging World War II: October 3, 1944: The defence line stiffens on the German border (Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality...)
One of Those Mornings When You Wake Up... (Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality...)
Liveblogging World War II: October 3, 1944: The defence line stiffens on the German border (Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality...)
Inflation Hawks Unrepentant and Zombified Watch!: (Early) Friday Focus for October 3, 2014 (Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality...)

Martin Wolf (2012): The German Response: "Mr Ludger Schuknecht: 'Sir, Martin Wolf... voices a fundamental critique of the European fiscal and economic policy strategy in the context of the current debt crisis. He argues that the “eurozone is now on a journey towards break-­up that Germany shows little will to alter”.... Mr Wolf’s solution for the current problems is risk transfer via eurobonds (of some sort), and demand stimulation via cheaper money and less fiscal consolidation in Germany. But the public and markets have been led to believe in short-­term measures for far too long. And they know there is too much moral hazard already. Eurobonds would only make it worse and the healthier countries--mainly Germany and France--cannot even afford them.'... The aim is not risk transfer, but rather substantially to reduce the problems members of the currency union now have in retaining liquidity in their sovereign bond markets. Mr Schuknecht argues that such multiple equilibria are impossible. There is good reason to believe he is wrong.... I do not know what 'short-term measures', Mr Schuknecht is referring to. But the public presumably expects the eurozone at least to hit its inflation target. At present, there is good reason to doubt that it will.... 'Moral hazard' is not the clincher Mr Schuknecht believes it is. We have fire brigades, despite moral hazard, because it is bad for the neighbourhood for a house to burn down..... Deep economic collapses are very dangerous. Mr Schuknecht, with his emphasis on the long term, completely ignores these dangers.  If trying to avoid such a dire outcome is 'short-termism', so be it. I think of it as trying to find a practical exit from the current trap. Without it, the eurozone may never reach the long term..."

Jordi Galí: The effects of a money-financed fiscal stimulus: "The implications for output and inflation of a money-financed fiscal stimulus are highly model-dependent.... When that fiscal intervention is analysed in the context of an ‘idealised’ classical monetary economy with perfect competition in all markets and fully flexible prices and wages, the money-financed fiscal stimulus has a very small effect on output and employment and a huge, frontloaded impact on inflation.... When I deviate from an ideal classical world and use instead a more realistic model allowing for imperfect competition and nominal wage and price rigidities to evaluate the impact of a money-financed fiscal stimulus, the effects are very different... very strong effects on economic activity with relatively mild inflationary consequences spread over several years...a crowding-in of private consumption and investment, caused by the persistently lower real interest rates due to higher expected inflation. The debt-GDP ratio is also predicted to go down over time..."

Financial Times: ECB’s Mario Draghi and his misguided malcontents: "Two years ago, Mario Draghi pledged to do 'whatever it takes' to save the euro... to use the full monetary policy arsenal to revive the stalling eurozone economy. On Thursday, the European Central Bank president primed his latest weapon.... Yet misguided opposition from inside and outside the bank continues to prevent him firing at will. His colleagues should pass him the ammunition and move out of his way.... The feeble eurozone recovery has stalled. The inflation rate in the currency area is down to 0.3 per cent and the core economies of Germany, France and Italy are at or close to standstill.... Mr Schäuble is not wrong to emphasise the need for structural reform within eurozone economies, but liberalisation and asset purchases are complements.... Reality must at some point impinge upon the monetary theocrats: the threat of outright deflation in the eurozone is not a sign of rising competitiveness--it is a menace.... Since the onset of the eurozone sovereign debt crisis in 2010, the standard pattern has been to do the right thing between six and 18 months too late, the delay generally originating in Frankfurt or Berlin. Now is another opportunity to ditch faulty analysis and wrong-headed policy and arrest deflation before it takes hold. Mr Draghi has shown the right instincts since he took over the ECB presidency. Those critics who have been proved wrong again and again in the eurozone crisis should stop standing in his path."

Ta-Nehisi Coates (2012): We Are All Welfare Queens Now: "Thinking some more on Mitt Romney's high-handed claim that one in two Americans will vote for Obama simply to better ensure their own sloth, I was reminded of Lee Atwater's famous explanation of the Southern Strategy: 'You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger".... So you say... forced busing, states' rights.... You're getting so abstract... talking about... economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.... If it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other... a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger."'... I think what's often missed in analyzing these tactics is how they, themselves, are evidence of progress and the liberal dream of equal citizenship before the law.... As tactics aimed at suppressing black citizenship become more abstract, they also have the side-effect of enveloping non-blacks.... At each interval the ostensible pariah grows, until one in two Americans are members of the pariah class.... When the party of white populism finds itself writing off half the country, we are really close."

Jared Bernstein: How the Jobless Rate Underestimates the Economy’s Problems: "Why not just look at the unemployment rate and call it a day? Because special factors in play right now make the jobless rate an inadequate measure of slack. In fact, at 6.1 percent last month, it’s within spitting distance of the rate many economists consider to be consistent with full employment, about 5.5 percent.... First, there are over seven million involuntary part-time workers... up two percentage points from its pre-recession trough... the unemployment rate doesn’t capture this dimension of slack at all.... Second... participation.... Economists have scurried about trying to figure out how much of the three-percentage-point decline in the labor force participation rate... to attribute to... structural... factors.... Jan Hatzius... another 1.6 million people worth of slack..."

Should Be Aware of:

Charlie Jane Anders: The Top 100 Star Trek Episodes Of All Time!
MaxSpeak: For lack of social insurance
Gnod Laptop Comparison
Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig: Medieval Insights into Modern Charity

 

Josh Barro: Inflation Hawks’ Views are Independent of Actual Monetary Outcomes: "23 reasonably prominent economists, fund managers, academics and journalists signed a coalition letter opposed to quantitative easing.... The letter warned that it would 'risk currency debasement and inflation' and fail to create jobs; as such, they argued, quantitative easing should be 'reconsidered and discontinued.' Four years later, inflation is still low (lower even than the 2 percent the Federal Reserve is supposed to be aiming for), unemployment has fallen, economic and job growth has been modest but present, and the stock market has soared. Despite the authors’ insistence that quantitative easing faced 'broad opposition from other central banks,' the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan have undertaken similar programs. So... Caleb Melby, Laura Marcinek and Danielle Burger went back to the letter’s signers with a simple question: Have you changed your mind? And pretty uniformly, the signatories said they had.... Ha-ha, I’m just kidding. People who obsess over inflation don’t change their minds.... 14 had the good sense not to comment. The other nine told Bloomberg their views were unchanged.... Their explanations are pretty creative.... Grant... [said] we have had inflation--it just hasn’t shown up in consumer prices.... Holtz-Eakin... explained that the letter was correct because it didn’t set a date... [and] noted that inflation would surely someday exceed 2 percent. Several other signatories similarly rested their arguments on the lack of a date in the letter, and warned that high inflation could still come. Among them is Niall Ferguson, the Harvard history professor, who wrote a 2011 op-ed for Newsweek proclaiming that 'double-digit inflation is back.' (It wasn’t.)... I am not surprised.... It’s hard to admit you are wrong--whether you’re Niall Ferguson or Jenny McCarthy."

Steve M.: Rand Paul is an Ebola Truther: "[Rand] Paul thinks it's a huge mistake to downplay the threat of an epidemic, and believes political correctness is what's hampering a real discussion from taking place.... 'It's an incredibly transmissible disease that everyone is downplaying, saying it's hard to catch. Well, we have physicians and health workers who are catching it who are completely gloved down and taking every precaution and they're still getting it.'... Of course, that's not what's going on. Here's the truth: 'Health care workers in poor nations often do not have enough protective gear to keep them safe from being infected with blood-borne viruses such as Ebola and HIV, a new study shows.... "In many cases, medical staff are at risk because no protective equipment is available--not even gloves and face masks," the WHO statement added.... In Liberia, only 56 percent of hospitals had protective eyewear for doctors and nurses and only 63 percent had sterile gloves. In Sierra Leone, those figures were 30 percent and 70 percent....' The mainstream press hates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and is just dying to anoint someone, anyone, as the modern, hipster embodiment of a rejuvenated GOP. Rand Paul, with his groovy dudebro libertarianism, is the one the insider journos have pinned the most hopes on. Well, yeah, this Ebola trutherism is hip, but it's hip the way vaccine skepticism is hip..."

Pro-Growth Liberal: Public Infrastructure Investment: IMF v. Mankiw: "Abdul Abiad, David Furceri, and Petia Topalova... sensibly state: 'Many advanced economies are stuck in a low growth and high unemployment environment, and borrowing costs are low. Increased public infrastructure investment is one of the few remaining policy levers to support growth. In many emerging market and developing economies, infrastructure bottlenecks are putting a brake on how quickly these economies can grow.' Greg Mankiw responds: 'The IMF endorses the free-lunch view of infrastructure spending. That is, an IMF study suggests that the expansionary effects are sufficiently large that debt-financed infrastructure spending could reduce the debt-GDP ratio over time. Certainly this outcome is theoretically possible (just like self-financing tax cuts), but you can count me as skeptical about how often it will occur in practice (just like self-financing tax cuts). The human tendency for wishful thinking and the desire to avoid hard tradeoffs are so common that it is dangerous for a prominent institution like the IMF to encourage free-lunch thinking.' Did Mankiw miss the memo? We are far below full employment and monetary policy alone has not restored full employment. Even if fiscal stimulus is not self financing, the IMF case is still solid. Funny how times change. Back in 2001 Mankiw was endorsing all sorts of budget busting fiscal stimulus on the grounds that we were below full employment. And back then we were not in a liquidity trap so using monetary policy alone was a more viable option."

Afternoon Must-Read: Martin Wolf (2012): The German Response

Martin Wolf (2012): The German Response: "Mr Ludger Schuknecht: 'Sir, Martin Wolf...

...voices a fundamental critique of the European fiscal and economic policy strategy in the context of the current debt crisis. He argues that the “eurozone is now on a journey towards break-­up that Germany shows little will to alter”.... Mr Wolf’s solution for the current problems is risk transfer via eurobonds (of some sort), and demand stimulation via cheaper money and less fiscal consolidation in Germany. But the public and markets have been led to believe in short-­term measures for far too long. And they know there is too much moral hazard already. Eurobonds would only make it worse and the healthier countries--mainly Germany and France--cannot even afford them.'...

The aim is not risk transfer, but rather substantially to reduce the problems members of the currency union now have in retaining liquidity in their sovereign bond markets. Mr Schuknecht argues that such multiple equilibria are impossible. There is good reason to believe he is wrong.... I do not know what 'short-term measures', Mr Schuknecht is referring to. But the public presumably expects the eurozone at least to hit its inflation target. At present, there is good reason to doubt that it will....

'Moral hazard' is not the clincher Mr Schuknecht believes it is. We have fire brigades, despite moral hazard, because it is bad for the neighbourhood for a house to burn down..... Deep economic collapses are very dangerous. Mr Schuknecht, with his emphasis on the long term, completely ignores these dangers.  If trying to avoid such a dire outcome is 'short-termism', so be it. I think of it as trying to find a practical exit from the current trap. Without it, the eurozone may never reach the long term..."

Five Slices at the Dynamics of the Employment-to-Population Ratio since 1990

September Employment Report...

Bureau of Labor Statistics" Employment Situation Summary "In September, the unemployment rate declined...

...by 0.2 percentage point to 5.9
percent.... The civilian labor force participation rate, at 62.7 percent, changed little.... The employment-population ratio was 59.0 percent for the fourth consecutive month.... The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) was little changed in September at 7.1 million.... 2.2 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force, essentially unchanged from a year earlier....

Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 248,000 in September, compared with an average monthly gain of 213,000 over the prior 12 months.... The average workweek for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls
edged up by 0.1 hour to 34.6 hours.... The average
workweek for production and nonsupervisory employees on private nonfarm payrollsedged down by 0.1 hour to 33.7 hours.... Average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls, at $24.53,
changed little in September....

The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for July was revised from +212,000 to +243,000, and the change for August was revised from +142,000 to +180,000. With these revisions, employment gains in July and August combined were 69,000 more
than previously reported...

I believe that, counting revisions, this is the fourth-best monthly establishment employment game performance of this recovery, exceeded only by the April to May 2010 jump, the March to April 2011 jump, and the December 2011 to January 2012 jump. The big lesson is that the fact that this is a strong relative report in this recovery underscores how weak the recovery has been. The little lesson is that we may be, finally, on a track to see recovery of the employment-to-population ratio to where it demographically should be.

One of Those Mornings When You Wake Up...

...late, just ending a dream about how you run into Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger at the Pilot Travel Center truckstop on I-29 in Council Bluffs. They then buy you beer for two hours and tell you everything they know about how asset pricing works in the real world. When you wake up, you hasten to write it all down. But because you woke up late you have to rush to the gym, and by the time gym finishes it's all gone...

Hopefully not an omen for the weekend...

Death Panels!: Live from The Roasterie!

Overheard:

I was talking to my neighbor across the street yesterday. He said:

I'm 74. I have to get my knees rebuilt now. I have to get my knees rebuilt before I can't do it anymore. I heard it on the radio. There's going to be no more medical procedures for you after 75. It's because of ObamaCare. It was designed by the mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emmanuel. And he says--he put it into the bill--that nobody should get any medical care after they are 75.

Ya think maybe Rahm Emmanuel's brother Zeke Emmanuel's musing in public right now that he doesn't want any treatment after he is 75 because he doesn't want people in the future to remember him as anything less than sharp as a tack might not have been the smartest thing for him to do if he wants to increase the American public's understanding of our health-care dilemmas?

Liveblogging World War II: October 3, 1944: The defence line stiffens on the German border

The Wehrmacht Digs in: Georg Grossjohann: Five Years, Four Fronts: A German Officer’s World War II Combat Memoir:

With more leap I stood next to him. He was a very young officer, not Algerian or Moroccan, but a blond Frenchman. I had hit him in his thigh, close to his torso, and I saw right away that any help would be too late. He still managed to ask me for his morphine needle, which every American – and therefore French — first-aid kit contained. I stayed with him for a few moments and tried to give him some encouragement, but then I had to go on. In more than four years of war, our souls became callused, although without this protection, we probably could not have endured so much!

The more deeply we moved into the thick forest, the more dispersed our lines became, because we had to secure our western flank at least scantily. Yet, in the end, I had to give up. With barely 150 men, one could not mop up an extremely clever opponent, presumably superior in numbers, in five to six kilometers of thick forest. We also had an uneasy feeling that the Algerians or Moroccans had already passed us in the north, and that it was only a flank guard that we were fighting. This feeling would become an extremely unpleasant reality by the evening.

It was, therefore, not feasible to advance any further. It also appeared to me to be extremely risky to leave my thin line of defense in this dense forest during the night. My aide-de-camp and I noticed at dusk how clever and dangerous the opponent was. For some time, there had been total silence and we had a short exchange of thoughts as we were standing in a clearing. Suddenly, a shot was fired, and a messenger who had come with us stood for a second as if frozen, then fell to the ground. Upon my rather frightened call, “Fiege, what’s the matter?” he answered in clearly understandable words, “I am dead, Herr Major!” Seconds later, that’s what he really was. One could move only with the most extreme caution. Comrades carried the dead back as usual, wrapped in his ground sheet. During the long war I had experienced many things, but a messenger reporting his own death was one of the more macabre.

Shortly before complete darkness, I ordered to pull back and only kept outposts on the clear hills outside the woods, facing north and northwest. A patrol confirmed our concerns from late afternoon. The opponent had practically encircled us; Some houses were in flames in Ramonchamp, situated some five hundred to one thousand meters south of us in the valley. One could clearly hear the bustle of vehicles and voices in the clear night. We were surrounded.

After my return to the command post, I heard the rattle of shovels in the dark. When I questioned what they were doing there, they answered, “We’re digging a hole for Fiege!” Exhausted and depressed as I was, I just could not control myself anymore and yelled, “This is not a hole, you idiots, this is a grave!” Right away, I regretted my outburst, since the poor guys were at least as depressed and worn out as I was. Their irreverent expression was only a kind of cover for their stress. , This nocturnal episode was always one of those especially deep impressions I had of the war.