It is February 25, 1956, the last day of the annual Communist Party conference in Moscow.

Fifteen hundred delegates from across the globe have gathered in a closed session to hear Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev, deliver an unscheduled address.

Stalin has been dead for three years.

During his thirty-year rule, he was venerated as an all-knowing, all-powerful leader.

His image was everywhere, and public recitations of his greatness filled Soviet media:

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Life in 1990.

President George H.W. Bush, in his second year in office, is named Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year.”

Having launched the invasion of Panama in late 1989, Bush declares the operation a success with the detention of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, an operation which the UN and Organization for American States condemn as a violation of international law.

Iraq invades Kuwait, annexes it as an Iraqi province, and establishes a puppet government there, setting the stage for the first Gulf War in 1991.

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It is June 10, 1863.

Former Yale senior Matthew Miller, from Galena, Illinois, is writing a letter to his aunt from Milliken’s Bend, Mississippi, where he commands a Federal unit of Black troops.

Miller’s unit is one of several Federal units encamped there.

Their mission is to guard a depot supplying Grant’s troops who are besieging Vicksburg fifteen miles away.

Most of the troops guarding this Federal depot are Black men.

Many of them were enslaved laborers until just recently.

They have had little military training.

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Making cornbread.

“ALREADY had the night completed ten Of winter's hours, and by his crowing had The winged sentinel announced the day, When Symilus the rustic husbandman Of scanty farm, solicitous aboutThe coming day's unpleasant emptiness,

Doth slowly raise the limbs extended onHis pallet low, and doth with anxious handExplore the stilly darkness, groping forThe hearth which, being burnt, at length he finds.

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Reading the paper on February 15, 1943.

With the crumbling of the German line in the Soviet Union, reports say Hitler has relinquished his role as the supreme commander of the German army.

The job of planning Nazi military strategy in the east will be returned to field commanders, who have conditioned their acceptance on Hitler agreeing to the shortening of the German front and acknowledging responsibility for the ongoing German retreat.

Hitler had assumed command in December 1941, telling the Reichstag he did so based on his ‘intuition.’

Meanwhile, the German civilian population is being mobilized to counter the unrelenting advance of the Soviet army, which seems able to draw upon an unlimited supply of reserve troops.

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Carl Sandburg gets it.

Some of his words from 1936:

The people will live on.The learning and blundering people will live on.

They will be tricked and sold and again soldAnd go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds,

The people so peculiar in renewal and comeback,You can't laugh off their capacity to take it.

The people so often sleepy, weary, enigmatic,is a vast huddle with many units saying:

“I earn my living. I make enough to get by and it takes all my time.

“If I had more time I could do more for myself and maybe for others.

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Some thoughts on leaders and culture.

Hitler had wanted to become a painter when he was young.

But his drawings and paintings were mediocre, and he failed to gain entry into Vienna’s prestigious art school.

He applied twice and they rejected him each time.

Yet, Hitler nevertheless considered himself a preeminent authority on art and culture.

And he recognized the power of art to mold public opinion.

So, as he grabbed the reins of power, he used it.

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Life in 1961

President Eisenhower, age 71, leaves public life, warning in his farewell speech to the nation of the military-industrial complex and its pervasive role in formulating US policy.

President Kennedy, age 43, is in his first year as president.

Kennedy executes plans begun during the Eisenhower administration for the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba; but the invasion fails, further hardening relations between the US and the Soviet Union.

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It is March 20, 1912.

Theodore Roosevelt, the former president, has been out of office for three years.

Tonight, he is opening his campaign for reelection with a speech in Carnegie Hall.

Three thousand people have come to see him.

Political activists and social workers fill the balcony.

And men and women in evening dress fill the main floor.

As Roosevelt walks across the stage,

the crowd fills the Hall with cheers of “Teddy, Teddy.”

And when the cheers subside,

Roosevelt makes an impassioned plea for social justice.

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It is January 1, 1942.

A little book has been published, entitled “You Can’t Do Business With Hitler.”

In simple terms, the book explains the folly of Charles Lindbergh and other “America First” isolationists who argue that America could survive and ‘do business’ in a Nazi-dominated world.

The book’s author is Douglas Miller.

He served as the commercial attaché in the US Embassy in Berlin for fourteen years, promoting American businesses in Germany during Hitler’s rise to power.

At the time, American isolationists were asserting that Nazi Germany, with its robust economy, could serve as a good economic partner for the US as it emerged from the Great Depression.

Some within the US isolationist camp also argued that ‘white’ Germany was ‘one of the family’ who should not be seen as an adversary.

Instead, with its military might, they argued, Nazi Germany could be trusted to hold back Asian invaders seeking to replace the white race in Europe.

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