“A”-10

10 June-31 July 1940

112.1    Paris: Paris fell to the invading German army on 14 June 1940. During 1940, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini met in March to form an alliance against France and Britain, in April Germany invaded Denmark and Norway, in May the Netherlands, Belgium and France were invaded and quickly fell; from July through October the Battle of Britain took place during which England came under daily bombings.

112.5    The wire service halted: as journalistic reports from continental Europe ceased with the Nazi takeover, radio communication became the last precarious source of information and contact.

112.8    raid over Tours: Tours, south of Paris, was briefly the seat of the French government in June 1940 before the signing of an armistice with Germany and the establishment of the collaborationist government at Vichy (see 114.15).

112.23  Pius blesses the black-shirts: at the time the Pope was Pius XII, pontiff from 1939-1958, who as Papal Secretary had signed a Concordat with Nazi Germany in 1933, and as Pope during World War II pursued a policy of neutrality and maintained relations with both sides. In LZ’s mind it is quite possible that this Pope was more or less indistinguishable from the preceding, Pius XI (1922-1939), under whose reign official agreements were signed with both Mussolini (the Lateran Treaties, 1929), as well as with Hitler.

112.24  Kyrie / Kyrie eleision: Gk. Lord have mercy upon us. As Comens points out (154), “A”-10 ironically follows the structure of and picks up key words and phrases from the fixed parts or Ordinary of the Catholic Mass: the Kyrie, the Gloria (113.27-29), the Credo (116.3), the Sanctus (121.11f), the Benedictus (123.8) and the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God, 123.14). The text of the Kyrie as follows:
Kyrie eleison; Christe eleison; Kyrie eleison.
Lord have mercy; Christ, have mercy; Lord, have mercy.

113.27  Christ! / Glory on high / and in earth peace: the Gloria is sung immediately following the Kyrie (see 112.24) in the order of the Mass. The full text of the Gloria is as follows:
Gloria in excelsis Deo,
et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis.
Laudamus te, benedicimus te, adoramus te, glorificamus te,
Gratias agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam,
Domine Deus, Rex caelestis, Deus Pater omnipotens.
Domine Fili unigenite, Iesu Christe,
Domine Deus, Agnus Dei, Filius Patris,
Qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis;
Qui tollis peccata mundi, suscipe deprecationem nostram.
Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris, miserere nobis.
Quoniam tu solus Sanctus,
Tu solus Dominus,
Tu solus Altissimus, Iesu Christe,
Cum Sancto Spiritu in gloria Dei Patris. Amen.

Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace to men of good will.
We praise You, we bless You, we adore You, we glorify You,
We give thanks to You for Your great glory,
Lord God, heavenly King, almighty God the Father.
Lord Jesus Christ, only begotten Son,
Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father,
You who take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us;
You who take away the sins of the world, hear our prayers.
You who sit at the right hand of the Father, have mercy upon us.
For You are the only Holy One,
The only Lord,
The only Most High, Jesus Christ,
With the Holy Spirit in the glory of God the Father, Amen.

114.15  Henri Philippe Pétain: Marshall Pétain (1856-1951), became Prime Minister of France after the country’s fall to Germany as head of a puppet government that nominally controlled the southern region of France with its capital in the spa town of Vichy, famous for its sparkling spring water—thus the “effervescence” of 123.16.

114.19  Spain’s dead…: Spanish Civil War 1936-1939.

114.29  Sedan: the German army first entered France on 13 May 1940, crossing the River Meuse at Sedan just north of the Maginot Line, which may be what LZ refers to with “your generals / unpinned that hinge.” This area was relatively undefended because the Germans came through the Ardennes Forest, which the French generals considered impassible to tanks.

115.2    Frenchmen resist flee to Britain…: the remnants of the French army unwilling to compromise with the victorious Germans in 1940 escaped at Dunkirk to England, where General Charles de Gaulle organized the Free French Forces.

115.6    Let the English seize your ships…: with the fall of France and the establishment of the Vichy government, Britain ordered the seizure of all French ships in ports under British control on 4 July 1940.

115.19  Alpine Chasseurs / Who held out in the Jura…: elite French mountain troops who effectively resisted the German advance in the Jura Mountains along the French-Swiss border.

116.1    Fought Franco together / In the International Column in Spain: the International Column, the same as the International Brigades, consisted of foreign volunteers who fought on the side of the Republicans against Franco’s fascist troops in the Spanish Civil War.

116.3    Credo: L. I believe; see 112.24. The longest section of the Mass, the text of the Credo as follows:
Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentem,
factorem caeli et terrae, visibilium omnium et invisibilium.
Et in unum Dominum Iesum Christum,
Filium Dei unigenitum, et ex Patre natum ante omnia saecula.
Deum de Deo, Lumen de Lumine, Deum verum de Deo vero,
genitum non factum, consubstantialem Patri;
per quem omnia facta sunt. Qui propter nos homines et propter nostram salutem descendit de caelis.
Et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Virgine, et homo factus est.
Crucifixus etiam pro nobis sub Pontio Pilato, passus et sepultus est,
et resurrexit tertia die, secundum Scripturas,
et ascendit in caelum, sedet ad dexteram Patris.
Et iterum venturus est cum gloria, iudicare vivos et mortuos,
cuius regni non erit finis;
Et in Spiritum Sanctum, Dominum et vivificantem,
qui ex Patre (Filioque) procedit.
Qui cum Patre et Filio simul adoratur et conglorificatur:
qui locutus est per prophetas.
Et unam, sanctam, catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam.
Confiteor unum baptisma in remissionem peccatorum.
Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum,
et vitam venturi saeculi. Amen.

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty
Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible:
And in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds;
God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God;
begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father,
by Whom all things were made;
Who for us men and for our salvation came down from Heaven, and became man.
and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man:
And was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; he suffered and was buried:
And the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures:
And ascended into Heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father:
And he shall come again, with glory, to judge both the quick and the dead:
Whose Kingdom will have no end;
And I believe in the Holy Ghost the Lord, and Giver of Life,
Who proceedeth from the Father (and the Son)
Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified,
Who spake by the Prophets.
And I believe in One Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church,
I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins.
And I look for the Resurrection of the Dead:
And the Life of the world to come. Amen.

116.8    China Ethiopia Spain Austria…: chronological catalog of nations invaded or taken over by the Axis powers: Japan occupied Manchuria in Sept. 1931 and later invaded China proper in Sept. 1937, Ethiopia by Italy in Oct. 1935, Spain by Franco in 1936-1939, Austria annexed as part of Germany in March 1938, Germany invades Poland in Sept. 1939, and in 1940 Denmark (April), Norway (April-June), Holland (May), Belgium (May), Luxemburg (May) and France (May-June) fall in that order.

116.19  A vicar of Christ…: see 112.23.

116.27  “For Labor, Family and Country”: this was the national motto of the Vichy government; Marshal Pétain suspended the French constitution and replaced the national motto, Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité (Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood) with Travail, Famille, Patrie.

117.17  geishas: class of professional women in Japan trained in conversation, dancing and singing for the entertainment of men.

117.26  French and British concessioners consort / with Japanese greed…: reference no doubt to Shanghai, which was divided up into various foreign concessions or areas of control—the French, British, Americans and Japanese all had their separate concessions.

117.29  scorched earth of China: the Japanese practiced a scorched earth policy in much of China.

117.30  Eighth Route People’s Army / Holding …: the Chinese Communist army, who under the leadership of Mao Zedong made the Long March in 1934-1935; usually estimated to be approximately 8000 kilometers or 5000 miles.

118.13  International Brigade: same as International Column; see 116.1.

118.15  lightening attack: = Ger. blitzkrieg.

118.17  Four columns of the enemy converged on Madrid / One column of the enemy / Blistered inside: apparently the term “fifth column,” meaning a clandestine group working within a country in support of an invading enemy, originated with the Spanish Civil War. As four military columns of Nationalist troops converged on Madrid, one of Franco’s generals boasted in a widely reported radio broadcast that a “fifth column” of fascist sympathizers were active within the city. Hemingway’s play The Fifth Column was first performed in NYC in 1940 and helped popularize the term. 

118.20  Teruel: city in Aragon, east of Madrid, where a brutal two months battle was fought and finally won by the Nationalists in Dec. 1937-Feb. 1938; see CSP 79.

118.20  Guernica: town in Basque Spain infamously attacked by German aircraft on 26 April 1937, which  provoked Picasso’s famous painting as a response.

118.21  Barcelona: fell to Franco’s forces on 26 Jan. 1939.

118.27  The Fifth Column: see 118.15.

119.5    Anti-semites in Italy…: although Italian fascism did not initially include racial policies as a part of its ideology and was generally tolerant toward Jews, under pressure from the Nazis’ systematic discriminatory laws against Jews were introduced from 1938.

119.7    In Berlin “clear street” is the signal to loot: refers to Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) on the night of 9-10 Nov. 1938, when there was widespread looting and destruction of synagogues and Jewish-owned stores throughout Germany, as well as the rounding up and deportation to concentration camps of many thousands of Jews. The particular details LZ gives are clearly from an AP report, published in The New York Times on 11 Nov., in which a correspondent describes the scene in Berlin the day after: “Around another corner in the center of the city a tailor shop was looted. In the doorway, a tailor's dummy with a hat on its head hung with a rope around its neck.” And speaking of the organized gangs that were continuing the looting: “In the late afternoon fire broke out in Israel's department store near Alexanderplatz, but firemen soon extinguished the blaze. About the same time a well-organized window-smashing crew did a thorough job in Berlin's downtown textile center in Krouenstrasse. The crew's shout of ‘clear street’ was the signal to a madly cheering crowd that entry had been forced into ‘just another Jewish store.’"

119.10  Prague / Overnight the new phrase: perhaps refers to the bitter phrase, O nás bez nás (about us, without us), expressing the Czech response to the Munich Pact (see 119.20).

119.20  Czechs can go back to the Reich…: in the Munich Pact of Sept. 1938 the European powers agreed to allow Germany to absorb Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia, but more generally this stanza concerns the racial basis for the argument for the Third Reich. The Munich Pact is usually viewed as the ultimate diplomatic cave-in to Hitler’s expansionist ambitions on the naïve belief he could be contained, and Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister of England, made the infamous remark that the pact assured “peace for our time.”

119.30  Rotterdam into the earth…: Rotterdam was severely and indiscriminately bombed by the Germans as a terror tactic when the Netherlands was overrun in May 1940.

121.7    Molotov: Vyacheslav Molotov (1890-1986), Soviet diplomat who as Stalin’s Foreign Minister negotiated the Molotov-Rippentrop Pact, more accurately known as the Hitler-Stalin Pact, a “non-aggression” treaty signed on 23 August 1939, in which Germany and the Soviet Union agreed to carve up northern and eastern Europe into spheres of influence. This included the partition of Poland, which was invaded by Germany a week later on 1 Sept., effectively marking the beginning of WWII, with the Soviets shortly following from the east. This pact is also referred to at 12.203.18.

121.12  Holy is Sylvie / A little girl…: this section is analogous to the Santus of the Mass (see 112.24):
Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Domine Deus Sabaoth; pleni sunt coeli et terra gloria tua
Hosanna in excelsis

Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts; Heaven and earth are full of Your glory.
Hosanna in the highest.

122.5    La fenêtre: Fr. the window.

122.5    tar: sailor

122.9    matelot: Fr. sailor.

122.10  Lord   earth is full of Sylvie’s glory: see 121.12.

123.7    Vichy: see 114.15.

123.8    Blessed is the new age…: echoes the Benedictus of the Mass (see 112.24):
Benedictus qui venit in nominee Domini.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

123.13  And the people / Grant us the people’s peace: analogous to the Agnus Dei of the Mass (see 112.24):
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi,
miserere nobis
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi,
dona nobis pacem.

Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world,
have mercy upon us.
Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world,
give us peace.