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Minnesota Cold


 

I grew up in Minnesota. Winters could be brutally cold. Twenty or 30 degrees was virtually balmy. But zero or below zero was fairly common, sometimes by a lot, like minus 20. We had an indoor/outdoor thermometer in the living room. And the weather was frequent, by which I mean incessant, the topic of conversation. Periodically, my father would ask what the temperature was.

And one of us would check, and announce to the room, 18 below, or whatever it was. Almost invariably, at some point shortly thereafter, Dad would get up, and check the thermometer himself. I want to say it was in 2-degree increments, but I could misremember. Dad would then provide a corrected announcement of the temperature, as in, ‘I think it’s closer to 16 below.’

Good news, right? 16 degrees below. The wind would be howling, as it often does in the Midwest. The cold seemed like it was flying into the room, through the old, poorly insulated walls and windows in our farmhouse. The oil-burning stove in the living room would be at its top setting; the wood stove in the kitchen would devour everything we could put in it.

The Desmond-Fish Library’s board on Jan. 21 asked the library’s Racial Equity & Social Justice Committee “to present recommendations for steps the Library should take in response to recent reports in the news media that our co-founder, Hamilton Fish III, took actions that were in support of Hitler and his regime during the years leading up to World War II. The RE/SJ Committee has formed a special subcommittee to carry out this charge.” So far, no further updates have been posted by the library. Photo, Douglas Cunningham

The Desmond-Fish Library’s board on Jan. 21 asked the library’s Racial Equity & Social Justice Committee “to present recommendations for steps the Library should take in response to recent reports in the news media that our co-founder, Hamilton Fish III, took actions that were in support of Hitler and his regime during the years leading up to World War II. The RE/SJ Committee has formed a special subcommittee to carry out this charge.” So far, no further updates have been posted by the library. Photo, Douglas Cunningham

But hey, 2 degrees is still 2 degrees.

 

I took a call from a subscriber on Saturday, who wanted to talk about my column last week, on Hamilton Fish III, the former Congressman from Garrison, who styled himself an isolationist. Less well known – and more alarming – was the significant and material help he and his chief of staff provided to one of the top secret agents for the Nazis in America, George Sylvester Viereck, while he was in Congress and ahead of World War II. Fish, and a number of other Congressmen and Senators, allowed Viereck access to their mail franking privilege, meaning the Nazis were able to send hundreds of thousands of pieces of unmarked propaganda into the homes of unsuspecting Americans, at virtually no cost, save for the cost of bribing some of the lawmakers and staff. All of them, including Fish, made out like they were just trying to keep American boys safe from war. And, oh yes, to stop FDR from covering up the supposed many horrible failures of the New Deal.

This reader was alarmed, damned alarmed, and thanked us for our aggressive coverage. She was pretty horrified about the whole situation. She had downloaded and listened to all 8 episodes of the podcast that brought this to light, “Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra”, about the multipronged effort by the Nazis to essentially enlist our own lawmakers as assets of Germany and to sow dissension among the American populace.

And there is this: That’s his name above the entrance to the Alice Curtis Desmond and Hamilton Fish Library, the very nice library in Garrison, just off Route 9D. It was dedicated in 1980, and the two, married for a time, had provided significant financial support. That’s just 35 years after World War II ended. So far, his name is still there, though some patrons have called for its removal.

Know that I am digging further into this, and into contemporary accounts of Fish and his activities in the 1930s and 1940s. I will report later in more detail, but so far, I can tell you this: Fish’s Nazi ties were well known locally in the late 1930s and, by 1942 and 1944, and were a significant factor in his Congressional races in those years. There were full-page advertisements in the Putnam County Courier, and the Courier and PCNR both had extensive coverage of the war and of Fish. And this: Fish’s Nazi ties went on for much longer than was generally known, certainly generally known until Maddow’s podcast. And this: His bald-faced denials about what had occurred continued for several years into the 1940s, even after federal agents had tilted to the scheme by Viereck and were building a strong case.

Yes, we can give Fish the “isolationist” anti-war tag he so craved. But make no mistake, he was more than that, so much more. I’ll be back with new details shortly on Putnam’s own Nazi sympathizer and his actions in Congress.

Anyway, I commend the podcast to your attention. It’s powerful. It carries significant parallels to our politics today. It is amazing how close we came to World War II being even worse. I know, winning, in the end, counts for a lot. But it was close, mighty close. Two degrees, we could say.

Until next week. I’m Doug Cunningham, and I’m editor of the Putnam County Courier and the Putnam County News and Recorder, in Cold Spring. Reach me at editor@pcnr.com, or at 845- 265-2468. I’m in the office most Wednesdays and Thursdays, but reachable at almost any time via the office phone. By snail mail, our address is PO Box 185, Cold Spring, NY 10516. This column, any letters and the editorial cartoons are all opinions. They are protected speech. They are not intended to be objective, and we don’t present them as such. Our no-contact newsstand is out virtually every Wednesday in Cold Spring on Stone Street, barring inclement weather. If you are a subscriber and want an early copy of either paper that day, feel free to grab one at no charge in front of our office (we have enough; we won’t run out).

 

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