By Edwin Cooney
Nineteen thirty-nine, which began on a Sunday, couldn't be called terrible for all of humanity, but it was a pretty tragic year indeed for too many people! At the outset, the result of the 25th Rose Bowl was more of a baseball rather than a football score. The University of Southern California beat Duke University seven to three. Of course, some good things occurred such as the debut of the "Superman" comic strip in nationwide newspapers, or the birth of little Carl Michael Yastrzemski on Wednesday, August 22nd, who would go into the Baseball Hall of Fame exactly 50 years later following a long career with the Boston Red Sox. George VI of the United Kingdom and his Queen Elizabeth, whose eldest daughter would in 1952 become Elizabeth II, visited the United States to, among other things, eat hotdogs with Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt at their Hyde Park home on Sunday, June 11th.
Every year has an occurrence that's horrifying yet fascinating. On Thursday, April 13th, 1939, little Lina Medina of Peru becomes the youngest mother known in world medical history when she delivers a child at age five.
Adolf Hitler, the head of the group of Big Bad Wolves of whom I write, broke the infamous Munich agreement of the previous September 30th by occupying and annexing Czechoslovakia on Saturday, March 15th. In a speech to his home constituents in Birmingham, England on Thursday, March 30th, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain makes it clear that should Hitler attack Poland, Great Britain would come to Poland's aid. On April 6th, the Soviets suggest a treaty between themselves, France and Britain to limit German expansion. However, the opposite would occur on Wednesday, August 23rd with the German and Soviet non-aggression pact signed in Moscow by Soviet Dictator Joseph Stalin and German Foreign Minister Joachim Von Ribbentrop. That treaty would free Hitler to invade Poland from the west and Stalin to invade Poland from the east.
Meanwhile, here at home the New York Yankees were off to doing their, by then, usual thing, but suddenly Lou Gehrig, known as "The Iron Horse of baseball" for his 2,130 consecutive games, took himself out of the lineup on Tuesday, May 2nd while the team was in Detroit, due to an obvious physical decline. In June, Lou Gehrig would be diagnosed at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota as suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. That July 4th, between two games of a double header, Lou Gehrig would declare, although he had less than two years to live, himself "...the luckiest man on the face of the earth!” (Few could understand how that could possibly be!) However, a brighter day in baseball was that of Monday, June 12th, when the Baseball Hall of Fame opened in Cooperstown, New York during a ceremony narrated by Commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis containing acceptance speeches by Connie Mack, Walter Johnson, Babe Ruth and Grover Cleveland and a number of other baseball greats.
The year 1939 was, many insist, the biggest year in Hollywood history. Films such as "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," "Gone with the Wind" and "Young Mr. Lincoln" constitute just a portion of the movies that captured America's love for drama.
Economically, America was recovering from the recession of 1938 and on Sunday, April 30th, FDR opened the 1939-1940 World's Fair, the theme of which was "The World of Tomorrow." The fair dramatically demonstrated the coming "tomorrow" when the RCA Corporation showed FDR on its latest wonder called television.
As for what it cost to live in America in 1939, the average wage was $1,730, the average rent was $28.00 per month, and gas was10 cents a gallon. A loaf of bread was 8 cents. Hamburger was 14 cents a pound. A new car cost an average of $700. You could get four cans of Campbell's tomato soup for 25 cents. Sharp Wisconsin cheese was 23 cents per pound.
Those born in 1939 in addition to Carl Yastrzemski include: Hockey Hall of Famer Bobby Hull, Tuesday, January 3rd; singers Marvin Gaye, Sunday, April 2nd; Neil Sedaka, Monday, March 13th; Tina Turner, Sunday, November 26th; Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei, Saturday, July 15th; and Lee Harvey Oswald, Wednesday, October 18th.
Nineteen thirty-nine will always be remembered for the outbreak of World War II. Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Joachim Von Ribbentrop, and Vyacheslav Molotov conspired to launch World War II which commenced on Friday, September 1st, 1939.
Thus, Hitler, Von Ribbentrop, Stalin, and Molotov are "The Big Bad Wolves of 1939?” Stalin, as far as we know, originally was interested in containing Hitler as late as April, 1939, but in May, when he dismissed his part-Jewish Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov, whose Jewish heritage and marriage to an English wife was sure to be a problem for Hitler's government, it clearly signified that something was up. The British government which announced it would come to the aid of Poland if it were invaded by Hitler, was strategically ill-equipped to effectively carry out that announced intention. Meanwhile, Stalin became convinced that while in time Soviet and Nazi forces would clash, he needed two things to be prepared — time, and the rebuilding of his armed forces in the wake of his purge of his own military establishment between 1937 and 1939.
I've often written and even spoken of the contrast between little Polish and American children during the weekend of Thursday, August 31st and Monday, September 4th, Labor Day in the United States. For children in America it was the weekend they must give up the happiness and carefree traditions of summer and get ready for school. It was the time for the boring task of trying on new clothes and the purchase of school supplies, etc. For Polish children however, it was a time of agonizing fear. What might stop Adolf Hitler from invading their farms and villages, slaying their brothers, uncles, their fathers and even their grandfathers who would bravely face Hitler's mechanized armies on horseback? Where could they go for safety? Would God Almighty possibly come to their aid? Certainly they prayed such might be the case! But, alas, it wasn't to be! Can you imagine the helplessness of that fear that turned into absolute reality?
Yes, good things happened in 1939 to good people, but ultimately the worst thing that could happen to other equally good people did occur in the one thousand nine-hundred and thirty-ninth year of our age.
Thus, the Nobel Peace Prize committee in Oslo, Norway was right not to hand out peace prizes in 1939.
No one, insofar as I'm aware, not even "we of the land of the free and the home of the brave" deserved a prize for peace!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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