The Postcard
A postcard bearing no publisher's name that was posted in Bognor using a ½d. stamp on Monday the 6th. September 1915. It was sent to:
Miss Pallett,
72, High Street,
Plaistow.
The pencilled message on the divided back was as follows:
"Dear Alice,
Arrived safely. Lovely
weather. I wouldn't
mind if I was going to
stay a month.
Sending letter later.
Fondest love from
May & Percy & Dave."
The Ottoman Empire
So what else happened on the day that the card was posted?
Well, on the 6th. September 1915, Bulgaria signed alliance treaties with Germany and the Ottoman Empire.
Franz Josef Strauss
The day also marked the birth in Munich of the German politician Franz Josef Strauss. He was the son of a butcher.
Strauss was Minister President of Bavaria from 1978 to 1988.
Franz Josef Strauss in WWII
In World War II, he served in the Wehrmacht on the Western and Eastern Fronts. After suffering from severe frostbite on the Eastern Front in early 1943, he served as an Offizier für Wehrgeistige Führung, responsible for the education of the troops, at the antiaircraft artillery school in Altenstadt Air Base, near Schongau.
Strauss and the Lockheed Bribery Scandal
When Strauss was Minister of Defence, former Lockheed lobbyist Ernest Hauser admitted during a U.S. Senate hearing that Strauss and his party had received at least $10 million in remuneration for arranging West Germany's purchase of 900 F-104G Starfighters in 1961.
The party, its leaders, and Strauss all denied the allegations, and Strauss filed a slander suit against Hauser.
Strauss and Hauser had met after World War II in Schongau, Bavaria, where Hauser was stationed. Hauser worked for U.S. Intelligence, and Strauss was Hauser's translator.
They were good friends, which Strauss later denied, despite the fact that Strauss was said to have attended Hauser's wedding. As the allegations were not corroborated, the issue was dropped.
It was known at the time that a Senate hearing in the U.S. revealed that Lockheed associates paid Strauss a bribe to purchase the planes, due to Boeing suing Lockheed over the lost German business.
In a Senate hearing in the U.S., it was admitted by Lockheed associates that the funds were disbursed to Strauss. In spite of this fact, Strauss was never indicted in Germany due to his influence.
Lockheed at that time was on the brink of collapse; the German contract was key to the company's survival. The F-104G's development had been expensive, and the U.S. Air Force refused to purchase the plane due to its unnecessary features.
The German contract proved to be a windfall for Lockheed. After Germany ordered the fighter planes from Lockheed, many more European governments started to place their trust in the Starfighter and ordered more planes, saving Lockheed from financial ruin.
The Death of Franz Josef Strauss
On the 1st. October 1988, Strauss collapsed while out hunting with Johannes, 11th. Prince of Thurn and Taxis, in the Thurn and Taxis forests, east of Regensburg.
He died in a Regensburg hospital on the 3rd. October without having regained consciousness. He was 73 years of age.
The Legacy of Franz Josef Strauss
Strauss shaped post-war Bavaria and polarized the public like few others. He was an articulate leader of conservatives and a skilled rhetorician.
His outspoken right-leaning political standpoints made him an opponent of more moderate politicians and of the entire political left.
His association with several large-scale scandals made many politicians distance themselves from him.
Strauss's policies contributed to changing Bavaria from an agrarian state to one of Germany's leading industrial centres, and one of the wealthiest regions of Germany.
According to British diplomat Richard Hiscocks:
'Strauss is without doubt one of the most remarkable
personalities that has yet emerged in Germany since
the war and, from a democratic point of view, the most
dangerous.
He has great ambition and combines with it the
advantages of considerable intellectual gifts, an
exceptional memory, immense resilience and capacity
for work, and the ability to make quick decisions.
On the other hand, these positive qualities are offset
by equally pronounced defects. The unscrupulousness
of his political methods exceeds even Adenauer’s, and
is not counterbalanced, as with Adenauer, by good
judgment and serenity of manner.
Above all he is lacking in self-control and knowledge
of men, and has the habit of picking weak and
sycophantic companions. His quick decisions therefore
have often been the wrong ones. Martin Walser once
wrote of him: “He can defend us against everything,
only not against himself.”'