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John Smoltz

John Andrew Smoltz (born May 15, 1967), nicknamed "Smoltzie" and "Marmaduke", is an American former baseball pitcher who played 21 seasons in Major League Baseball from 1988 to 2009, all but the last year with the Atlanta Braves. An eight-time All-Star, Smoltz was part of a celebrated trio of starting pitchers, along with Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine, who propelled Atlanta to perennial pennant contention in the 1990s, highlighted by a championship in the 1995 World Series. He won the National League (NL) Cy Young Award in 1996 after posting a record of 24–8, equaling the most victories by an NL pitcher since 1972. Though predominantly known as a starter, Smoltz was converted to a reliever in 2001 after his recovery from Tommy John surgery, and spent four years as the team's closer before returning to a starting role. In 2002, he set a National League record with 55 saves and became only the second pitcher in history (joining Dennis Eckersley) to record both a 20-win season and a 50-save season. He is the only pitcher in Major League history to record both 200 wins and 150 saves. He is also the only pitcher in Major League history to record both 200 wins, 150 saves, and 3,000 strikeouts.

Smoltz was one of the most successful pitchers in playoff history, posting a record of 15–4 with a 2.67 earned run average (ERA) in 41 career postseason games, (and in two of those four losses, he surrendered only unearned runs). He was named the Most Valuable Player of the 1992 NL Championship Series; Andy Pettitte later broke his record for career postseason wins. Smoltz led the NL in wins, winning percentage, strikeouts and innings pitched twice each, and his NL total of 3,084 strikeouts ranked fifth in league history when he retired. He also holds the Braves franchise record for career strikeouts (3,011), and the record for the most career games pitched for the Braves (708) since the club's move to Atlanta in 1966; from 2004 to 2014, he held the franchise record for career saves and has the single season record. Smoltz left the Braves after 2008 and split his final season with the Boston Red Sox and St. Louis Cardinals. Since retiring as a player, he has served as a color commentator and analyst for both Fox Sports and MLB Network. Since 2016, he has provided color commentary during baseball's biggest televised events, notably the All-Star Game and World Series. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility in 2015.

Early life
John Smoltz was an All-State baseball player at Waverly High School in Lansing, Michigan, where he played two seasons after transferring from Lansing Catholic High School. He was also an all-conference basketball player as a 6 ft guard in high school, drawing some interest from college coaches. He elected to concentrate on baseball.

Following his high school career, Smoltz committed to play baseball at Michigan State University but elected to sign a professional contract after being drafted by the Detroit Tigers and receiving a substantial bonus offer.

Draft and minor leagues
The Detroit Tigers selected him in the 22nd round of the 1985 amateur draft. He was the 574th selection of the draft. Smoltz played initially for the Class A Lakeland Tigers minor-league team, and then moved on to the Class AA Glens Falls Tigers in 1987, posting records of 7–8 and 4–10. In 1987, the Tigers were in a three-team race, chasing the Toronto Blue Jays for the AL East division lead; in need of pitching help, Detroit sent their 20-year-old prospect to the Braves for 36-year-old veteran Doyle Alexander on August 12. While Alexander did help the Tigers overtake the Blue Jays for the division title, going 9–0 down the stretch, he was out of baseball by 1989. Smoltz, in contrast, became one of the cornerstones of the Braves franchise for the next two decades.

Early years (1988–1997)
Smoltz made his major league debut on July 23, 1988. He posted poor statistics in a dozen starts, but in 1989 Smoltz blossomed. In 29 starts, he recorded a 12–11 record and 2.94 ERA while pitching 208 innings, and was named to the NL All-Star team. Teammate Tom Glavine also had his first good year in 1989, raising optimism about the future of Atlanta's pitching staff. Over his career, Smoltz threw a four-seam fastball that was clocked as high as 98 miles per hour, a strong, effective slider and an 88–91 mph split-finger fastball that he used as a strikeout pitch. He also used a curveball and change-up on occasion, and in 1999, he began experimenting with both a knuckleball and a screwball, though he rarely used either in game situations. He admitted in 2016 that he never learned to throw sliders until he reached the Majors, nor does he recommend to children to throw sliders.

Smoltz began the 1991 season with a 2–11 record. He began seeing a sports psychologist, after which he closed out the season on a 12–2 pace, helping the Braves win a tight NL West race. His winning ways continued into the 1991 National League Championship Series. Smoltz won both his starts against the Pittsburgh Pirates, capped by a complete game shutout in the seventh game, propelling the Braves to their first World Series since moving to Atlanta in 1966. Smoltz had two no-decisions against the Minnesota Twins, with a 1.26 ERA. In the seventh and deciding game, he faced his former Detroit Tiger hero, Jack Morris. Both starters pitched shutout ball for seven innings, before Smoltz was removed from the scoreless game during a Twins threat in the eighth. Atlanta reliever Mike Stanton pitched out of the jam, getting Smoltz off the hook, and Morris eventually pitched a 10-inning complete-game victory.

The next year, Smoltz won 15 regular-season games and was the MVP of the 1992 National League Championship Series, winning two games. He left the seventh game trailing, but ended up with a no-decision as the Braves mounted a dramatic ninth-inning comeback win. In the World Series that year, Smoltz started two of the six games in the series, with a no-decision in Game 2 and a win with the Braves facing elimination in Game 5. Before the 1993 season, the Braves signed renowned control pitcher Greg Maddux, completing — along with Smoltz and Glavine — what many consider to be the most accomplished starting trio ever assembled on a single major-league team. Smoltz again won 15 games, but suffered his first postseason loss to the Philadelphia Phillies in the NLCS despite not allowing an earned run.

Smoltz had a 6–10 record in the strike-shortened 1994 season, and during the break, had bone chips removed from his elbow. Returning as the Braves' No. 3 starter, he posted a 12–7 record in 1995. Ironically, the year the Braves won their one World Series title in their long run of division titles was the one year Smoltz had shaky postseason numbers. He did avoid being tagged with any losses despite a 6.60 ERA, but his Game 3 start in that World Series was his only poor World Series start in his career, getting knocked out in the third inning. But Smoltz and the Braves won the franchise's first World Series in Atlanta, thanks in great part to Maddux and Glavine, who had begun to overshadow Smoltz. Smoltz would have been the Game 7 starter had the series gone that far.

In 1996, Smoltz went 24–8 with a 2.94 ERA and 276 strikeouts, including winning a franchise-record 14 straight decisions from April 9 to June 19. His wins and strikeout totals led the majors that year. Smoltz continued to pitch brilliantly in the postseason, winning a game in the Division Series, two more in the League Championship Series, and somehow ending up only 1–1 in the World Series despite a 0.64 ERA, losing Game 5 1–0 on an unearned run. He won the NL Cy Young Award with 26 of the 28 first-place votes. Smoltz's effectiveness in 1997 was only slightly less than in his Cy Young season, but frugal run support limited him to a 15–12 record. Smoltz also received a Silver Slugger Award for his batting, as he led all pitchers with 18 base hits.

Injuries and move to the bullpen (1998–2004)
Smoltz continued to post excellent statistics in 1998 and 1999, but he was spending significant time on the disabled list and missed about a quarter of his starts. In 1999, Smoltz began experimenting with both a knuckleball and a three-quarters delivery, though he rarely used either in game situations. He underwent Tommy John surgery before the 2000 season, and missed the entire year. When he was unable to perform effectively as a starter in 2001, Smoltz transitioned to the bullpen, replacing John Rocker as the Braves' closer.

In 2002, his first full season as a closer, Smoltz set a National League record with 55 saves, topping the previous mark of 53, shared by Randy Myers (1993) and Trevor Hoffman (1998). Smoltz finished third in the Cy Young Award voting; Éric Gagné equaled his record a year later with the Dodgers. Injuries limited Smoltz slightly in 2003, but he still recorded 45 saves with a 1.12 ERA in $64 1/3$ innings pitched. In 2004, Smoltz finished with 44 saves, but was frustrated with his inability to make an impact as a closer during another Braves' postseason loss. That year, he broke Gene Garber's franchise record of 141 career saves; his final total of 154 saves was eventually surpassed by Craig Kimbrel in 2014. By this point, Smoltz was the final remaining member of the Braves' dominant rotation of the 1990s. Glavine had moved on to play for the Mets, a divisional rival, while Maddux returned to his old team, the Chicago Cubs.

Return to the rotation (2005–2008)

After three years as a closer, Smoltz returned to the starting rotation entering the 2005 season. His renewed career as a starter began inauspiciously. He allowed six earned runs in only 1$2⁄3$ innings—matching the shortest starts of his career—as the Braves were blown out on Opening Day by the Marlins. Poor run support contributed to an 0–3 start despite stronger pitching performances by Smoltz. After these initial difficulties, though, things fell into place. At the All-Star break, Smoltz was 9–5 with an ERA of 2.68 and was chosen for the 2005 NL All-Star team. Smoltz gave up a solo home run to Miguel Tejada in the second inning of the American League's 7–5 victory and was charged with the loss. For his career, he was 1–2 in All-Star games, putting him in a tie for the most losses.

Smoltz finished 2005 at 14–7, with a 3.06 ERA and 169 strikeouts while allowing less than one hit per inning. Smoltz had answered the critics who doubted he would be able to reach the 200-inning plateau after three years in the bullpen. Nonetheless, Smoltz's increased workload caused him to wear down toward the end of the season.

Despite a sore shoulder, Smoltz pitched seven innings in the Braves' 7–1 win over the Houston Astros in Game 2 of the 2005 NL Division Series; it was the only game the Braves won in the series against the eventual National League champions. The victory over Houston gave Smoltz a 13–4 record as a starter (15–4 overall) with a 2.65 ERA in the postseason. In two of those post-season losses, he surrendered only unearned runs. He has the second-most postseason wins (15) behind only Andy Pettitte with 19. They are followed by Glavine (14) and Maddux (11).

In 2006, Smoltz finished the season with a record of 16–9, an ERA of 3.49, and 211 strikeouts. He was one of four pitchers tied for the NL lead in wins, and was third in strikeouts.

On September 21, 2006, the Braves announced they had picked up Smoltz's $8 million contract option for the 2007 season. On April 26, 2007, Smoltz agreed to a contract extension with the Braves. The extension includes a $14 million salary for the 2008 season, a $12 million vesting option for 2009 dependent on his ability to pitch 200 innings in 2008 and a $12 or $13 million team option for 2010 dependent on his ability to pitch 200 innings in 2009.

2007 was a year of reunions and milestones for Smoltz. On May 9, he faced Maddux for the first time since July 10, 1992. Smoltz earned a win in a 3–2 victory over the San Diego Padres; Maddux received no decision. On May 24, exactly 11 years to the day after recording his 100th win, Smoltz recorded his 200th win against Glavine. He faced Glavine three other times, faring 3–1 overall against him. On June 27, Smoltz, Glavine and Maddux each recorded wins on the same day. On August 19, Smoltz set the Braves strikeout record by striking out the Arizona Diamondbacks' Mark Reynolds. It was his 2,913th strikeout, passing Phil Niekro on the club's all-time list; he struck out a season-high 12 in the game. He finished the year 14–8 with a 3.11 ERA and 197 strikeouts. The stalwart pitcher was the only holdover on the Braves roster from their 1991 worst-to-first season until Glavine returned to the Braves after an absence of several years following the 2007 season.

On April 22, 2008, Smoltz became the 16th pitcher in Major League history to reach 3,000 career strikeouts, and the fourth pitcher to strike out 3,000 batters for one team, joining Walter Johnson, Bob Gibson and Steve Carlton.

On April 28, 2008, Smoltz was placed on the 15-day disabled list due to an inflamed right shoulder.

Return to relief (2008)
On May 1, 2008, Smoltz indicated that he intended to return to being a relief pitcher. After coming off the disabled list on June 2, 2008, he blew his first save opportunity in three years. Two days later, the Braves placed him back on the disabled list. Smoltz underwent season-ending shoulder surgery on June 10, 2008. His contract expired at the end of the season, and the contract offer from the Braves was not sufficient to keep him.

Boston Red Sox (2009)
In December 2008, several members of the Boston Red Sox organization, including pitching coach John Farrell, vice president of player personnel Ben Cherington and assistant trainer Mike Reinold, flew to Atlanta to participate in a 90-minute workout with Smoltz. Throwing for only the second time since having surgery on a torn labrum in his pitching shoulder, Smoltz threw a 50-pitch side session and showcased his progress since the surgery. He impressed the Red Sox enough during the workout that less than a month later, a one-year contract was offered by the organization.

On January 13, 2009, Smoltz signed a one-year contract with the Red Sox for a reported base salary of $5.5 million with roster time incentives and miscellaneous award incentives which could net as much as $10 million. He made his first start in the Red Sox rotation on June 25, allowing seven hits and five runs through five innings. Smoltz posted a 2–5 record over eight games with an 8.32 ERA and no quality starts. He was designated for assignment on August 7 after a 13–6 loss to the New York Yankees, giving the Red Sox ten days to release or trade him, or send him to the minors. The Red Sox offered Smoltz a minor league stint in order to prepare him to be placed in the bullpen, but he rejected the offer. On August 17, the Red Sox released Smoltz.

St. Louis Cardinals (2009)
On August 19, 2009, Smoltz signed with the St. Louis Cardinals; he made his debut against the Padres on August 23. In his first game for the Cardinals, he went five innings, striking out nine and walking none, while setting a Cardinals franchise record by striking out seven batters in a row.

That win against the Padres was his only win with St. Louis that season. Smoltz finished 1–3 with an ERA of 4.26 with the Cardinals. He was 3–8 with an ERA of 6.35 overall with the Red Sox and Cardinals. In Game 3 of the 2009 NL Division Series, Smoltz pitched two innings of relief in a losing cause, allowing four hits and an earned run while striking out five.

Post-playing career
In 2008 and 2010, Smoltz served as a color analyst alongside Joe Simpson for Braves games on Peachtree TV. Nationally, Smoltz has been an analyst for MLB Network and called regular-season and postseason games for TBS. In 2014, he was hired by Fox Sports as a game analyst. He was paired with Matt Vasgersian and called games in the No. 2 booth. He has also joined Fox Sports South and SportSouth to be an analyst for select Braves games during the 2014 season. Smoltz replaced Harold Reynolds and Tom Verducci, his colleagues from MLB Network, as the lead analyst for Major League Baseball on Fox for the 2016 season, teaming up with Joe Buck and, later, Joe Davis. In 2021, Smoltz won his first Sports Emmy Award as an Event Analyst. Smoltz was forced to end his in-studio work for MLB Network after he refused to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, which is required for the company's employees.

On April 16, 2012, the Braves announced that they would retire Smoltz's number 29. The ceremony, which took place before a June 8 game against the Toronto Blue Jays, included speeches by former broadcaster Pete van Wieren, former teammate Matt Diaz and former manager Bobby Cox.

Smoltz was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility in 2015. He was the first starting pitcher since 1987 to be elected despite having fewer than 250 wins and only one Cy Young Award, the first such starter ever elected on the first ballot, and the first pitcher to have Tommy John surgery and be elected to the Hall.

Personal life
Smoltz met his first wife, Dyan Struble, at the Omni Hotel in downtown Atlanta; the couple had four children before divorcing in 2007 after 16 years of marriage. Smoltz lives in Alpharetta, Georgia and also has a home at Sea Island, a golf resort. On May 16, 2009, Smoltz married Kathryn Darden at his home with 70 friends and family in attendance. Smoltz is a Christian.

Smoltz is a good friend of pro golfer Tiger Woods; the two often play golf together. Woods has stated that Smoltz is the best golfer outside of the PGA Tour that he has seen. Smoltz has stated that he once had a plus 4 handicap. In 2018, Smoltz qualified for the U.S. Senior Open, one of senior golf's major championships. He is also involved in the sport of bowling.

Smoltz plays every year in the American Century Championship at Lake Tahoe. He won the Diamond Resorts Tournament of Champions in Orlando in January 2019.

Smoltz counts Doc Rivers as a personal friend dating back to Rivers' playing days in Atlanta. In the January 12, 2008, edition of the Boston Globe, Rivers is quoted as saying, "I offered him my apartment... I just told him about Terry (Francona) and the Red Sox organization. I told him it's a no-brainer."

Smoltz is also an accomplished accordionist and has starred in a television commercial for The Home Depot.

Smoltz is a distant cousin of fellow Baseball Hall of Famer Charlie Gehringer.

Politics
Smoltz produced an automated campaign phone recording on behalf of the candidacy of Ralph E. Reed, Jr. for Lieutenant Governor of Georgia during the 2006 primary.

In a 2004 interview, Smoltz was quoted as comparing the legalization of gay marriage with bestiality, saying "What’s next? Marrying an animal?" per the Associated Press. Smoltz later stated the article had portrayed his quote inaccurately.

It was speculated that Smoltz might run for Congress in 2010 as a Republican candidate to fill the departing John Linder's seat in Georgia's 7th congressional district.

On April 22, 2012, Smoltz hosted a fundraiser for Andrea Cascarilla, a Democratic candidate for State Representative in Michigan's 71st House District. The 71st District encompasses Waverly Senior High School, where Smoltz was an All-State baseball and basketball player.

Philanthropy
Smoltz and his good friend Jeff Foxworthy hosted the charity event "An Evening With Smoltz and Friends" on November 9, 2008, at the Verizon Amphitheater in Alpharetta to raise money for the John Smoltz Foundation, which has supported numerous charitable endeavors in the Atlanta area over the past decade.

Smoltz is the Atlanta host for Big League Impact, an eight-city fantasy football network created and led by longtime Cardinals pitcher and former teammate Adam Wainwright. In 2015, the organization raised more than $1 million for various charitable organizations.

Smoltz and fellow former Atlanta Braves first baseman Ryan Klesko were named in a tax dispute involving conservation easement for a 1,546-acre non-cash donation the two made on behalf of a partnership the two formed in the early 1990s. On 25 April 2024, the court cleared the two of fraud charges, but reduced the assessed value of the donated easement to one-tenth of the claimed amount, and imposed a 40% penalty.

Accomplishments

 * Elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame with 82.88% of the vote (January 2015)
 * Eight-time All-Star (1989, 1992–93, 1996, 2002–03, 2005, 2007)
 * National League Championship Series MVP (1992)
 * Led the National League in Strikeouts (1992, with 215)
 * National League Cy Young Award winner (1996)
 * Atlanta Braves record for most wins in a season (1996, with 24)
 * Led National League in wins (1996, with 24)
 * Counting his wins in the playoffs and All-Star Game, amassed 29 wins in 1996; the only higher total in the last 70 years is Denny McLain, who had 32 in 1968.
 * Led major leagues in strikeouts (1996, with 276)
 * Led National League in winning percentage (1996)
 * Silver Slugger Award winner for pitcher (1997)
 * Finished 4th in National League Cy Young Award voting (1998)
 * Led major leagues in winning percentage (1998)
 * National League Rolaids Relief Man of the Year Award winner (2002)
 * Finished 8th in National League MVP voting (2002)
 * Finished 3rd in National League Cy Young Award voting (2002)
 * Second in Braves history for saves in a career (154)
 * Braves record for most saves in a season (2002, with 55)
 * Led National League in saves (2002, with 55)
 * Tied for National League lead in wins (2006, with 16)
 * Only pitcher to compile 200 wins and 150 saves
 * Holds Braves record for most strikeouts in a career (3,011)
 * Given the Branch Rickey Award for exceptional community service (2007)
 * First pitcher in modern era (since 1900) to pitch exactly five shutout innings, strike out ten, and get the win (April 17, 2008, in the Braves' 8–0 win at Florida)
 * 16th pitcher in the major leagues to reach 3,000 strikeouts (April 22, 2008)
 * Holds Cardinals record for most consecutive strikeouts (7) in a single game (August 23, 2009)
 * Only major league pitcher with more than one postseason stolen base (3)
 * Awarded Roberto Clemente Award (2005)

title: John Smoltz


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Down These Mean Streets

Down These Mean Streets is a memoir by Piri Thomas, a Latino of Puerto Rican and Cuban descent who grew up in Spanish Harlem, a section of Harlem with a large Puerto Rican population. The book follows Piri through the first few decades of his life, lives in poverty, joins and fights with street gangs, faces racism (in both New York City and elsewhere), travels, succumbs to heroin addiction, gets involved in crime, is imprisoned, and is finally released.

One of the major themes of Down These Mean Streets centers on Piri Thomas's identity as a dark-complexioned Puerto Rican. Although he is of Puerto Rican and Cuban heritage, he is seen as black rather than Hispanic or Latino. His own family rejects the African aspect of their Latino-Caribbean ancestry, causing Piri to spend much of his youth and early adult life contemplating his racial and ethnic identity.

The book was originally published in 1967. A special Thirtieth Anniversary Edition in 1997 included a new afterword from the author. A sequel, 7 Long Times, gives more depth to his prison years.

Plot summary
The story begins in Harlem, 1941, where Piri is living with his family. Piri's father has a job with the Works Progress Administration, while his mother stays at home with the children. After the death of Piri’s baby brother Ricardo, the family moves to the Italian section on 114th Street. Piri has various encounters with the local kids in the street, and despite various fights, Piri earns the Italians' respect by not ratting on them. When the family moves back to Spanish Harlem, Piri joins a Puerto Rican gang called the TNT’s.

Piri and his family move to the Long Island suburbs. Piri plays baseball with classmates and attends a school dance where he flirts with a girl named Marcia; however, Piri is shocked to hear a group of girls talking about his skin color. This, along with Poppa seeing another woman, makes Piri very upset.

Three months later, Piri returns to Harlem and finds himself homeless. Desperate for cash, Piri searches for work and goes after a position as a sales representative. He begins a relationship with Trina Diaz and makes a new friend named Brew, who forces Piri to further question his own identity. Piri and Brew discuss heading South so that Piri can discover what it means to be a black man.

Piri argues with his brother José because José does not understand why Piri wants to go South; in his view, Piri is Puerto Rican, not black. Poppa makes an effort to relate to and comfort Piri, but Piri still decides to leave, despite the objections from his family. Through his various encounters down South, Piri realizes that every place he goes to, no matter what language you speak or where you come from, if you are black, then you are black.

Shortly after Piri heads back to New York, Momma dies and Piri goes back to living on the streets. He develops an addiction to heroin and begins to sell everything he can to have money for heroin.

While Trina is in Puerto Rico, Piri impregnates a different Puerto Rican woman, Dulcien. Piri buys tickets for Dulcien to go back to New York with the baby. Piri also convinces Louie to get into business again; they, along with Billy and Danny, carry out a robbery in bar/discotheque in downtown New York. During the robbery, Piri is shot in the chest, and upon trying to escape back to Harlem, he shoots the police officer who shot him.

Piri wakes up in the hospital, is questioned by police and is transferred to prison to await trial. He is sentenced to no more than 5–15 years for armed robbery. In prison, he studies masonry, works in construction, gets his high school diploma as well as other educational certificates. Piri describes his encounters he has with other inmates. Piri is paroled after serving six years. Piri is granted three years' probation; finally a free man, he decides to get a job, but he also immediately breaks one of his parole rules by sleeping with a woman who is not his wife. Yet Piri misses Trina and ends up attending a dinner that she is at; he immediately regrets attending after he realizes she wants nothing to do with him. Piri goes back to visit his old building and claims that the mood hasn’t changed one bit. He runs into Carlito who offers him drugs, but Piri tells him he is clean and the memoir ends as he walks out onto the street.

Racial Identity
Racial identity is a prevalent topic in Down These Mean Streets. The book tells the story of Piri, a Puerto Rican black man, who has to navigate through a complex system of discrimination and racial prejudice in the USA. Piri’s story portrays the difficulty of navigating through different racial identities. He has a Latino identity because of his Puerto Rican origin. However, he also has a black identity because his physical features relate him directly with the black community. The conflicting positions of both identities put Piri in the difficult choice to affirm both identities in the strict racial binary formation of the US. Piri struggles in how he should identify himself in order to be accepted by his community. For the most part, he identifies himself only as a Puerto Rican, maybe because his "momma", who is from Puerto Rican ancestry affirmed this racial origin to Piri since he was a child.

However, there is also the chance that Piri is aware of the privilege that the Latino heritage has in contrast to the black one. This awareness would have made Piri to use his Latino ancestry in order to prevent any discrimination that could arise because of his condition as a black man. In the book, there are various scenes where Piri claims his Latino identity in order to prevent further discrimination against him. For instance, when the Italian children were bullying him in the Italian part of Harlem; or when a white girl in his high school asked him about his identity in an almost derogatory way. Also, with Brew, Piri constantly tries to denote his Latin identity over the black one. At the end, however, Piri realizes that “his personal racial identity does not matter when faced up to his physical appearance.”

Race and gender
Down These Mean Streets explores how race and gender intersect and influence on the life of Piri Thomas. One indication of how this intersection is at play is where Piri embraces the “black macho” persona in an intent to adapt himself to the urban American landscape of New York. In this attempt, Piri appeals to the “hypermasculinized performance of black masculinity as an object of fear and desire.” This means that Piri has a dual sentiment toward the black macho persona. On one side, this archetype is something he rejects since he thinks that by accepting his black identity, he is denying his Puerto Rican heritage. But, on the other hand, this archetype is also desired by Piri, since this mold is the only one that will permit him to be accepted in the US binary racial culture. These both representations, that Piri either embraces or rejects, come from the very hierarchical racial structure that Piri attempts to navigate.

Another perspective that this memoir permits to analyze in terms of race and gender, is how characters continually struggle against racial oppression at expense of women and queer subjects. The struggle in search of recognition makes not only Piri but also characters like his father, and Brew, to neglect women and impose chauvinistic attitudes that only hinders more women and queer folks into the hierarchical structure of the United States. Thomas’s autobiography suggests a kind of heteropatriarchal privilege through the presence of sexual encounters between dominant and subordinate identities. It is paradoxical that while this book shows how Piri enjoys of his sexual encounters with women of color, white prostitutes, or queer people of color; those sexual encounters do not affect his internalized racism and sexism. In other words, these sexual contacts do not change Piri's mind, or other’s people minds about women, queers and queer people of color. Thomas’ testimonial story positions males as active and females as passive, enabling only to males subjects to invigorate their masculinity. Piri in Down These Mean Streets is a black heterosexual man, who redirects his struggle against his own racial discrimination and impose it on women and homosexual men. An example of this is how Piri and his black friend, Brew, make women and queer folks their sexual targets.

One key scene is where Piri and his friends go to buy weed from some transvestites. This scene is very ambiguous since it is difficult to say if the transvestites feminize Piri and his friends or vice versa. For instance, it could be argued that transvestites put Piri in a passive position since in this scene they are the clients, while Piri and his friends might be serving the role of prostitutes. The transvestites are the ones that as a mode of payment, provide liquor and marijuana in exchange of a sexual favor. The response of Piri to this scene is anxiety. Nervous about his feminization, Piri splits his mind from his body, allowing only his body to experience pleasure. On the other hand, in his imagination, he places himself and his friends far from this apartment, at a rooftop party where music, young women and rival gangs occupy the atmosphere.

Barroom sociology (Chapter 18)
In Chapter 18, Piri and Brew have an encounter with another black man in a nightclub in Norfolk (the South of the US). This new man is Gerald Andrew West, a college student from Pennsylvania that is a light-skin African American Gerald introduces a very interesting topic into the conversation, a topic that for Piri is highly contested (and the reason why he went to the South in the first place). Gerald complains that white people allow him only to be a negro (a black man), but negroes do not allow him to be white. Gerald perception of identity reflects that he sees race as a “burden.” He states that white men and black men have the burden of their own skins, respectively. However, he has the burden of both (white and black) skins. Gerald believes in his “right to identify with whatever race or nationality approximates his emotional feelings and physical characteristics.” On the other hand, Brew, who is a dark-skinned African American from Harlem, represents more the vision of “an angry black nationalists of the 1960s.”

This chapter captures the underlying problem that Piri introduces in the whole book, the search for an identity. Some interpretations can be made with regard to this chapter. For instance, it can be said that Gerald’s research book about Blacks can be understood as the book that Piri himself ends writing (the memoir of Down These Mean Streets), which permits Piri to resolve his own identity crisis. In the whole book, Piri struggles between being a Puerto Rican born and raised in New York and being a black man in the eyes of the US society. However, his identity crisis is resolved once Piri decides to write his memoir. Similarly, Gerald’s intention to research about the history and lives of black people in the South of the US, could be also seen as a way to reconcile his crisis of identity. In this way, Gerald’s decision to go to the South and research about Black would be a metaphor of Piri’s decision to write Down These Mean Streets.

Another interpretation of Piri’s decision to go to the South, sustains that Piri does so in order to know “what’s shaking” or what is happening down there. His trip to the South would have meant for Piri, an increase in his solidarity sentiment for Afro American people against white supremacy. This trip has also served him to reinforce his resistance toward the white and black binary that obliterates distinctive elements of his identity.

Analogy
There is a variety of narrative styles used in Down These Means Street and analogy is a significant one. Growing up in Harlem, Thomas witnessed drug dealers in the apartment he lived in, which had an impact on him. He compares the belt his father used to discipline him to the belt the drug dealers used as a tool to help inject drugs into their bodies. It is evident that Thomas had a heart of morals, and to the benefit of both responsible parents living with him, he urged to be different. Even when he was influenced by Harlem's streets, he remembered his parents' discipline, which led him back on the right track. "While in prison his parents teachings came to mind making him realize that 'a person is born a criminal.

Nuyorican literature
The classification of Down These Mean Streets as one genre rather than another is a point of contention among literary critics—both from the time the autobiographical novel was initially released and in current academic discourse. Down These Mean Streets is a “book claimed by [many] literary traditions, such as U.S. Latin[@] literature or Hispanic literature of the U.S. and Puerto Rican literature written in English.” Anne Garland Mahler of the University of Virginia, on the other hand, classifies Down These Mean Streets as “an autobiography and bildungsroman that chronicles the childhood of Piri Thomas, a Harlem-born son of a Puerto Rican mother and a Cuban father, in Spanish Harlem in the 1940s.” Clearly, Down These Mean Streets fits all of these descriptions, depending on which point of view the critic takes in their analysis.

Most commonly, however, Down These Mean Streets is recognized as part of the Nuyorican literary canon (Nuyorican is a portmanteau of the words ‘New York’ and ‘Puerto Rican’, blending both the Spanish and English rules of orthography—‘nu’ instead of ‘new’ and the suffix ‘-ican’ without a final vowel). Just as Nuyorican, which defines an entire canon of literature from over the past several decades, blends the linguistic rules of Spanish and English, it serves as a representation of multiple cultural traditions. Carmelo Esterrich states that “‘Nuyorican’ writing has always been caught in the critical crossfire between two national spaces—Puerto Rico and the U.S. and between their literary and linguistic borders.” With his brief description of the complexity of the Nuyorican canon, Down These Mean Streets, however, seems to fit neatly into place. It contains a great many Spanish words surrounded by an English narrative—so many that Thomas includes a glossary for his monolingual readers to uncover their meaning within the bilingual context of the narrative. The context of the origins of Nuyorican literature, Esterrich affirms, stems from “a very specific social and historical context of Puerto Rican migrations to the United States” which resulted in “the literary movement created in New York in the sixties and seventies by Puerto Ricans who were either born in the city or moved there when they were very young.”

The Nuyorican movement is based on a concept of hybridity of Puerto Rican and North American culture. In her analysis of race and gender within Thomas’ book, Marta Sánchez argues that Down These Mean Streets is “a hybrid text of testimonial and imaginative literature” which “initiated the nuyorican stage of continental Puerto Rican writing” to create a “cross-pollinated identity.” Thomas’ narrative includes, as Sánchez observes, “many subjects society stereotypically associates with Latino minorities: poverty, educational failure, gang membership, drug addiction, welfare, petty crime, sexual ‘perversity’, and prison life.” By attributing these stereotypes as themes within his narrative, Thomas establishes the North American context as the setting wherein his Puerto Rican heritage struggles to adapt. Moreover, Sánchez states that Thomas “rejected the paradigms of black or white that dominated the period when Down These Mean Streets was published by generating intercultural linkages among Anglo-Americans, African Americans, and Puerto Ricans years before the concepts of hybridity, heterogeneity, and difference gained academic and social repute.” At the time it was first published, in the late 1960s, the civil rights movement was well underway. However, Down These Mean Streets overlaps the cultural division of Black and White that was the societal norm of the time. Thomas’ narrative tells of experiences that straddled multiple racial and cultural identities: his father was Black and his mother White; his parents were Cuban and Puerto Rican, respectively, which didn’t clearly fit the niches carved out by North American society. As Piri Thomas states in an interview with Ilan Stavans, “[a]lthough I was born in el norte my soul is Puerto Rican.”

Down These Mean Streets is seen by many scholars to be a foundational work of the Nuyorican literary canon. Thomas has been described as “the best known of his generation of writers and is generally considered the chronicler of the barrio since he was the first to describe his experiences as a second-generation Puerto Rican in the United States.” Indeed, Ilan Stavans notes that Down These Means Streets is “now considered a classic and has never been out of print.”

In another interview, with Lisa McGill, Thomas himself admits “I was one of the first Puerto Rican writers in the U.S. to write about the conditions we were living under. Other Puerto Ricans wrote, but they wrote about Puerto Rico and their home. I wrote about what was happening to us—or at least to me—and the surroundings in those years.” Further on, McGill asks Thomas of his opinions on the term ‘Nuyorican’ and how his book has thus been categorised. Thomas replies, saying “I didn’t want to be categorised. With Nuyorican I was given a name. I really wanted to be a citizen of the world. I wanted to be free because all of my life they were putting me in categories”. When asked if he has since become comfortable with this term, he again replies “No, it’s like when you buy a pair of shoes. If you want to wear those shoes, you wear those shoes. Everyone has accepted Nuyorican, so I just go along with it.”

Critic Regina Bernard-Carreño states that “Nuyorican biographies, novels and poetry, spoke directly to [the] misrepresentations of a people and their anti-colonial struggle. An important factor in Puerto Rican immigrant writing and the Nuyorican experience is the articulation of difference and anger [. . .]. Puerto Rican writing exposes anger towards Americanization and assimilation”, just as Thomas does in his book. Bernard-Carreño also asserts that “Nuyorican writing became the genre that included the dynamics of language (bilingualism), bicultural identity (the island vs. the mainland), and the sociopolitics contained therein. While all these dynamics inform Nuyorican writing, language is perhaps one of the critical constructors of the Nuyorican experience and identity…Nuyorican identity became its own culture composed of bicultural and bilingual people.”

Censorship
Down These Mean Streets has either been banned or challenged in Salinas, California; Teaneck, NJ; Darien, CT; District 25 in Queens, New York City, New York and in Long Island, New York. Especially in the latter in 1982.

According to Regina Bernard-Carreño, “Piri’s Puerto-Ricanness brought him success and enough of an insider perspective to have his book banned by the New York City Board of Education during the 1960s. Due to its explicit depiction of homosexual and heterosexual acts between and among people of color, who are impoverished and live in a ‘ghetto’ full of drugs and other downfalls, Down These Mean Streets was yanked from junior high school libraries in 1971.” While for modern eyes, Down These Mean Streets provides a raw account of life in El Barrio, at the time of its first publication in the late 1960s, the subject matter of homosexual sex acts and sexual interaction between races was taboo. Bernard-Carreño later explains that Thomas’ book has since been “used as a major ‘classic’ in courses of anthropology and sociology and excerpted in English literature courses as well” and that Thomas’ writing style categorised Puerto Ricans “through a literary and non-traditional academic lens” which was, perhaps, too contemporary for its time of initial publication.

An article from the New York Times 9 May 1971, “Book Ban Splits a Queens School District”, describes a passion-fueled debate at board meeting of Community School District 25 in a neighborhood in Queens County, New York, which lasted nearly five and a half hours. The article reports that there are some who seem to perceive a threat to their social values, specifically because the portrayal of New York’s Puerto Rican community in Down These Mean Streets includes “vulgarities and descriptions of sexual acts.” One parent at this meeting stated that she felt Down These Mean Streets “is a beautiful book—full of feelings” and that she views the book as “a learning tool [. . .] [t]he author was willing to expose his gut feelings so we could better understand the problems he faced. It promotes understanding.” Another parent, on the other hand, stated that she wanted her children “to have social awareness and I want them to know what they can do to correct social ills. But they are not ready to be exposed to sexual perversion [as depicted in the Thomas book].” Meanwhile, the article presents the position of the United Federation of Teachers, who “fought the ban and has requested the New York Civil Liberties Union to initiate litigation to remove it.”

In an interview, Thomas acknowledges that Down These Mean Streets “was censored all over the place.” Specifically, Thomas mentions Darien, Connecticut where a bond was issued unless the book was removed from town’s shelves. Thomas continues, stating that the censorship was due to a worry that it “was going to poison the children’s minds.” While speaking at a college in Darien, Thomas said, “Listen, you can’t keep your kids in a greenhouse. This is the reality of what’s happening.”

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Down These Mean Streets


text:
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title: User:Noldoaran/Utilities


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Commando Order

The Commando Order (Kommandobefehl) was issued by the OKW, the high command of the German Armed Forces, on 18 October 1942. This order stated that all Allied commandos captured in Europe and Africa should be summarily executed without trial, even if in proper uniforms or if they attempted to surrender. Any commando or small group of commandos or a similar unit, agents, and saboteurs not in proper uniforms who fell into the hands of the German forces by some means other than direct combat (by being apprehended by the police in occupied territories, for instance), were to be handed over immediately to the Sicherheitsdienst (SD, or Security Service) for immediate execution.

According to the OKW, this was to be done in retaliation for their opponents "employing in their conduct of the war, methods which contravene the International Convention of Geneva". The German high command alleged that they had ascertained from "captured orders" that Allied commandos were "instructed not only to tie up prisoners, but also to kill out-of-hand unarmed captives who they think might prove an encumbrance to them, or hinder them in successfully carrying out their aims", and that commandos had been ordered to kill prisoners.

This order, which was issued in secret, made it clear that failure to carry out its directives by any commander or officer would be considered an act of negligence punishable under German military law. It was issued on October 18 by Chief of the OKW Wilhelm Keitel, and only a dozen copies were distributed by Chief of Operations Staff Alfred Jodl the next day, with an appendix stating that it was intended for commanders only, and must not under any circumstances fall into enemy hands. However it was sent as an Ultra message, intercepted, and translated.

It was in fact the second "Commando Order", the first being issued by Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt on 21 July 1942, stipulating that parachutists should be handed over to the Gestapo. Shortly after World War II, at the Nuremberg trials, the Commando Order was found to be a direct breach of the laws of war, and German officers who carried out illegal executions under the Commando Order were found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to death, or, in two cases, extended incarceration.

Background
The Commando Order cited alleged violations of the Geneva Conventions by Allied commandos as justification, following incidents at the recent Dieppe Raid and on a small raid on the Channel Island of Sark by the Small Scale Raiding Force, with some men of No. 12 Commando.

Dieppe Raid
On 19 August 1942, during a raid on Dieppe, a Canadian brigadier took a copy of the operational order ashore against explicit orders. The order was subsequently discovered on the beach by the Germans and found its way to Adolf Hitler. Among the dozens of pages of orders was an instruction to "bind prisoners". The orders were for Canadian forces participating in the raid, and not the commandos. Bodies of shot German prisoners with their hands tied were allegedly found by German forces after the battle.

Sark Raid
On the night of 3–4 October 1942, ten men of the Small Scale Raiding Force and No. 12 Commando (attached) made an offensive raid on the German-occupied isle of Sark, called "Operation Basalt", to reconnoitre the island and to take prisoners.

During the raid, five prisoners were captured. To minimise the task of the guard left with the captives, the commandos tied the prisoners' hands behind their backs. According to the commandos, one prisoner started shouting to alert his comrades in a hotel and was shot dead. The remaining four prisoners were silenced by stuffing their mouths, according to Anders Lassen, with grass.

En route to the beach, three prisoners made a break. Whether or not some had freed their hands during the escape has never been established, and it is unknown whether all three broke at the same time. One was shot and another stabbed, while the third managed to escape. The fourth was conveyed safely back to England.

German response and escalation
A few days after the Sark raid, the Germans issued a communiqué claiming that at least one prisoner had escaped and two were shot while they were escaping, having had their hands tied. They also claimed the "hand-tying" practise was used at Dieppe. Then, on 9 October Berlin announced that 1,376 Allied prisoners (mainly Canadians from Dieppe) would henceforth be shackled. The Canadians responded with a similar-in-practise shackling of German POWs in Canada.

The tit-for-tat shackling continued until the Swiss achieved agreement with the Canadians to desist on 12 December and with the Germans some time later after they received further assurances from the British. However, before the Canadians ended the policy, there was an uprising of German POWs at Bowmanville POW camp.

On 7 October, Hitler personally penned a note in the Wehrmacht daily communiqué: "In future, all terror and sabotage troops of the British and their accomplices, who do not act like soldiers but rather like bandits, will be treated as such by the German troops and will be ruthlessly eliminated in battle, wherever they appear."

Text
On 18 October, after much deliberation by High Command lawyers, officers, and staff, Hitler issued the Commando Order or Kommandobefehl in secret, with only 12 copies. The following day Alfred Jodl distributed 22 copies with an appendix stating that the order was "intended for commanders only and must not under any circumstances fall into enemy hands". The order itself stated:

"# For a long time now our opponents have been employing in their conduct of the war, methods which contravene the International Convention of Geneva. The members of the so-called Commandos behave in a particularly brutal and underhanded manner; and it has been established that those units recruit criminals not only from their own country but even former convicts set free in enemy territories. From captured orders it emerges that they are instructed not only to tie up prisoners, but also to kill out-of-hand unarmed captives who they think might prove an encumbrance to them, or hinder them in successfully carrying out their aims. Orders have indeed been found in which the killing of prisoners has positively been demanded of them.
 * 1) In this connection it has already been notified in an Appendix to Army Orders of 7.10.1942. that in future, Germany will adopt the same methods against these Sabotage units of the British and their Allies; i.e. that, whenever they appear, they shall be ruthlessly destroyed by the German troops.
 * 2) I order, therefore:— From now on all men operating against German troops in so-called Commando raids in Europe or in Africa, are to be annihilated to the last man. This is to be carried out whether they be soldiers in uniform, or saboteurs, with or without arms; and whether fighting or seeking to escape; and it is equally immaterial whether they come into action from Ships and Aircraft, or whether they land by parachute. Even if these individuals on discovery make obvious their intention of giving themselves up as prisoners, no pardon is on any account to be given. On this matter a report is to be made on each case to Headquarters for the information of Higher Command.
 * 3) Should individual members of these Commandos, such as agents, saboteurs etc., fall into the hands of the Armed Forces through any means – as, for example, through the Police in one of the Occupied Territories – they are to be instantly handed over to the SD To hold them in military custody – for example in P.O.W. Camps, etc., – even if only as a temporary measure, is strictly forbidden.
 * 4) This order does not apply to the treatment of those enemy soldiers who are taken prisoner or give themselves up in open battle, in the course of normal operations, large-scale attacks; or in major assault landings or airborne operations. Neither does it apply to those who fall into our hands after a sea fight, nor to those enemy soldiers who, after air battle, seek to save their lives by parachute.
 * 5) I will hold all Commanders and Officers responsible under Military Law for any omission to carry out this order, whether by failure in their duty to instruct their units accordingly, or if they themselves act contrary to it."

Allied casualties
The Commando Order was invoked to order the death of an unknown number of Allied special operations forces and behind-the-lines operators of the OSS, SOE, and other special forces elements. "Commandos" of those types captured were turned over to German security and police forces and transported to concentration camps for execution. The Gazette citation reporting the awarding of the G.C. to Yeo-Thomas describes this process in detail.

POW Allied airmen were also killed via the "Commando Order":
 * The first victims were two officers and five other ranks of Operation Musketoon, who were shot in Sachsenhausen on the morning of 23 October 1942.
 * In November 1942, British survivors of Operation Freshman were executed.
 * In December 1942, British Royal Marine commandos captured during Operation Frankton were executed under this order. After the captured Royal Marines were executed by a naval firing squad in Bordeaux, the Commander of the German Navy Admiral Erich Raeder wrote in the Seekriegsleitung war diary that the executions of the Royal Marines were something "new in international law since the soldiers were wearing uniforms". American historian Charles Thomas wrote that Raeder's remarks about the executions in the Seekriegsleitung war diary seemed to be some sort of ironic comment, which might have reflected a bad conscience on the part of Raeder.
 * On 30 July 1943, the captured seven-man crew of the Royal Norwegian Navy motor torpedo boat MTB 345 were executed by the Germans in Bergen, Norway on the basis of the Commando Order.
 * In January 1944, British Lt. William A. Millar escaped from Colditz Castle and vanished; it is speculated he was captured and killed in a concentration camp.
 * In March 1944, 15 soldiers of the U.S. Army, including two officers, landed on the Italian coast as part of an OSS operation code-named Ginny II. They were captured and executed.
 * After the Normandy landings, 34 SAS soldiers and a USAAF pilot were captured during Operation Bulbasket and executed. Most were shot, but three were killed by lethal injection while recovering from wounds in a hospital.
 * On 9 August 1944, a U.S. airman POW was killed in Germany; postwar 4 involved were executed; others served prison terms.
 * In September 1944, seven British Commandos (along with 40 Dutch members of Englandspiel) were executed over two days at KZ Mauthausen.
 * On 21 November 1944 U.S. airman and prisoner of war Lt. Americo S. Galle was executed at Enschede, Holland by SS-Unterscharführer Herbert Germoth by order of SS General Karl Eberhard Schöngarth.
 * On 9 December 1944, five U.S. airmen of the 20th Bombardment Squadron were captured and executed near Kaplitz, Czechoslovakia. Franz Strasser was tried and executed on 10 December 1945 for participating in the murders.
 * Between October 1944 and March 1945, nine men of the United States Army Air Forces were summarily executed after being shot down and captured in Jürgen Stroop's district. Their known names were Sergeant Willard P. Perry, Sergeant Robert W. Garrison, Private Ray R. Herman, Second Lieutenant William A. Duke, Second Lieutenant Archibald B. Monroe, Private Jimmie R. Heathman, Lieutenant William H. Forman, and Private Robert T. McDonald. When Polish journalist Kazimierz Moczarski reminded him that the killing of POWs was defined as criminal under the Hague and Geneva Conventions, Stroop responded, "It was common knowledge that American flyers were terrorists and murderers who used methods contrary to civilised norms... We were given a statement to that effect from the highest authorities. It was accompanied by an order from Heinrich Himmler." As a result, he explained, all nine POWs had been taken to the forest and given "a ration of lead for their American necks".
 * On 24 January 1945, nine OSS men, including Lt. Holt Green of the Dawes mission, others of the Houseboat mission, four British SOE agents, and AP war correspondent Joseph Morton, were shot at Mauthausen by SS-Hauptsturmführer Georg Bachmayer on orders of Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Morton was the only Allied correspondent to be executed by the Axis during World War II.
 * In 1945, Lt. Jack Taylor USNR and the Dupont mission were captured by the men of Gestapo agent Johann Sanitzer. Sanitzer asked the RSHA for instructions on a possible deal that Taylor proposed, but Kaltenbrunner's staff reminded him "of Hitler's edict that all captured officers attached to foreign missions were to be executed". Taylor was convicted of espionage, though he claimed to be an ordinary soldier. He was sent to Mauthausen. He survived, barely, but gathered evidence, and was eventually a witness at the Nuremberg trials.
 * On 13 February 1945, eight survivors of a B-17 crash 48163 of the 772nd Bombardment Squadron in Austria were captured; four survived the war while four were executed.
 * On 20 February 1945, OSS agent Roderick Stephen Hall was murdered by the SS in Bolzano, Italy. In 1946 his murderers, who used the Commando Order as their defence, were executed for the murder of Hall, pilot Charles Parker, SAS officers Roger Littlejohn and David Crowley as well as U.S. airmen George Hammond, Hardy Narron, and Medard Tafoya.

War crime
The laws of war in 1942 stated, "it is especially forbidden... to declare that no quarter will be given". This was established under Article 23 (d) of the 1907 Hague Convention IV – The Laws and Customs of War on Land. The Geneva Convention of 1929, which Germany had ratified, defined who should be considered a prisoner of war on capture, which included enemy soldiers in proper uniforms, and how they should be treated. Under both the Hague and Geneva Conventions, it was legal to execute "spies and saboteurs" disguised in civilian clothes or uniforms of the enemy. The Germans claimed in paragraph one of their order that they were acting only in retaliation in a quid pro quo for claimed Allied violation of the Geneva Convention regarding the execution of prisoners and other heinous acts; however, insofar as the Commando Order applied to soldiers in proper uniforms, it was in direct and deliberate violation of both the customary laws of war and Germany's treaty obligations.

The execution of Allied commandos without trial was also a violation of Article 30 of the 1907 Hague Convention IV – The Laws and Customs of War on Land: "A spy taken in the act shall not be punished without previous trial." That provision includes only soldiers caught behind enemy lines in disguises, and not those wearing proper uniforms. Soldiers in proper uniforms cannot be punished for being lawful combatants and must be treated as prisoners of war upon capture except those disguised in civilian clothes or uniforms of the enemy for military operations behind enemy lines.

The fact that Hitler's staff took special measures to keep the order secret, including the limitation of its printing to 12 initial copies, strongly suggests that it was known to be illegal. He also knew the order would be unpopular with the professional military, particularly the part that stated it would stand even if captured commandos were in proper uniforms (in contrast to the usual provision of international law that only commandos disguised in civilian clothes or uniforms of the enemy could be treated as insurgents or spies, as stated in the Ex parte Quirin, the Hostages Trial, and the trial of Otto Skorzeny and others). The order included measures designed to force military staff to obey its provisions.

Some German commanders, including Erwin Rommel, had refused to relay the order to their troops since they considered it to be contrary to honourable conduct.

Aftermath
German officers who carried out executions under the Commando Order were found guilty of war crimes in postwar tribunals, including at the Nuremberg trials. Many claimed in their defence that they themselves risked execution if they had disobeyed the order, but this was disproved.
 * General Anton Dostler, who ordered the execution of 15 U.S. soldiers of the Ginny II operation in Italy, was sentenced to death and executed on 1 December 1945. His defence that he had only relayed superior orders was rejected at trial.
 * The Commando Order was one of the specifications in the charge against Generaloberst Alfred Jodl, who was convicted and hanged on 16 October 1946.
 * Likewise, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel's endorsement of the Commando and Commissar Orders was one of the key factors in his conviction for war crimes; for the same reason, his request for a military execution (by firing squad) was denied, and he was instead hanged like Jodl on 16 October 1946.
 * Another officer charged with enforcing the Commando Order at Nuremberg was Admiral Erich Raeder. Under cross-examination, Raeder admitted to passing on the Commando Order to the Kriegsmarine and to enforcing the Commando Order by ordering the summary execution of captured British Royal Marines after the Operation Frankton raid at Bordeaux in December 1942. Raeder testified in his defence that he believed that the Commando Order was a "justified" order, and that the execution of the two Royal Marines was no war crime in his own opinion. The International Military Tribunal did not share Raeder's view of the Commando Order, convicted him of war crimes for ordering the executions, and sentenced him to life imprisonment; he was released in 1955 and died in 1960.
 * Another war crimes trial was held in Braunschweig, Germany, against Generaloberst Nikolaus von Falkenhorst, Supreme Commander of German forces in Norway from 1940–44. The latter was held responsible, among other things, for invoking the Commando Order against survivors of the unsuccessful British commando raid against the Vemork heavy water plant at Rjukan, Norway in 1942 (Operation Freshman). He was sentenced to death in 1946; the sentence was later commuted to 20 years' imprisonment, and he was released in 1953 for reasons of health. He died in 1968.
 * High-ranking intelligence officer Josef Kieffer was sentenced to death at a court-martial hearing for ordering the executions of five SAS prisoners and hanged in 1947. Two others, Karl Haug and Richard Schnur, were likewise executed for participating in the massacre on Kieffer's orders, while Obersturmführer Otto Ilgenfritz received fifteen years in prison.

title: Commando Order


text:
Fifth Business

Fifth Business (1970) is a novel by Canadian writer Robertson Davies. First published by Macmillan of Canada in 1970, it is the first installment of Davies' best-known work, the Deptford Trilogy, and explores the life of the narrator, Dunstan Ramsay. It was the novel that brought Davies to international attention.

Plot summary
Dunstan Ramsay, an aging history teacher at Colborne College, becomes enraged by the patronizing tone of a newspaper article announcing his recent retirement, which appears to portray him as an unremarkable old man with no notable accomplishments to his name. Hoping to prove that he has lived a worthwhile and fulfilling life, Ramsay pens an indignant letter to the school's headmaster relating the story of his life, beginning with a childhood memory of an incident that occurred in his hometown of Deptford, Ontario in December 1908.

During a quarrel with a ten-year-old Ramsay (then known as "Dunstable Ramsay"), Ramsay’s wealthy friend Percy Boyd Staunton angrily hurls a snowball (inside of which is hidden a stone) at him, but accidentally hits his heavily pregnant neighbor Mary Dempster, causing her to prematurely give birth to a sickly child called "Paul". Apparently afflicted with severe mental trauma by the incident, Mrs. Dempster's behavior grows progressively more erratic until she is ostracized from polite society after being found having sex with a homeless tramp in a gravel pit, leading Paul Dempster to become an outcast in the village. While Ramsay takes pity on Paul and often keeps him company, Staunton refuses to take responsibility for throwing the snowball. The rift between the two deepens after Staunton begins a romantic relationship with Ramsay's crush Leola Cruikshank.

When Ramsay's gravely injured brother Willie apparently makes a miraculous recovery after Mrs. Dempster prays at his bedside, Ramsay comes to suspect that Mrs. Dempster is capable of performing miracles, which is seemingly confirmed after Ramsay himself has a vision of her shortly before miraculously surviving an artillery blast at the Battle of Ypres in World War I, losing his left leg in the process. Upon awakening in a military hospital from a six-month coma, he learns that he was initially presumed dead and posthumously won a Victoria Cross, and that his parents died from Spanish Influenza before learning that he was still alive. While recovering in the hospital, Ramsay has an affair with nurse Diana Marfleet, but breaks up with her after rejecting her marriage proposal, prompting Diana to playfully nickname him "Dunstan" after the 10th-century English saint who supposedly resisted the temptations of the Devil; this conversation later inspires Ramsay to have his first name legally changed to "Dunstan". Upon returning to Deptford, he learns that Staunton has become engaged to Leola, while Mrs. Dempster has been taken in by a relative after apparently going insane, and Paul Dempster has run away from home to join the circus.

After becoming a schoolteacher, Ramsay earns a reputation as an eccentric due to his interest in hagiology (the study of saints). Meanwhile, Staunton—now known as "Boy," shortened from his middle name—becomes a fabulously wealthy businessman. Despite tacitly resenting Boy for his money and status, Ramsay maintains an uneasy friendship with him and Leola, often accepting his financial assistance. Later, Ramsay becomes convinced that Mrs. Dempster is a saint following a chance encounter with Joel Surgeoner—the man who had sex with her in the gravel pit—who miraculously turned his life around after his sexual encounter with her. After successfully tracking Mrs. Dempster to Toronto, Ramsay offers to become her caretaker.

Following the birth of her son David, Leola becomes increasingly unhappy with her marriage to Boy, finding herself unable to adjust to high-society life due to her provincial upbringing. The Stauntons' marital difficulties culminate in Leola unsuccessfully attempting suicide on Christmas Eve in 1936 after a fight with Boy. When Leola dies of pneumonia a few years later, Ramsay suspects that she intentionally brought about her death by leaving her window open.

Ramsay's deepening obsession with hagiology leads him to travel to Europe to meet with the Bollandists (a society of Jesuit scholars who chronicle the lives of saints) after they agree to publish one of his articles. During his trip, he develops a close relationship with elderly Jesuit priest Padre Blazon, who specializes in chronicling the earthly side of saints' lives, believing that most saints are much more flawed and human than history might choose to remember them.

While in Mexico City on a six-month sabbatical from Colborne College, Ramsay attends a magic show put on by the mysterious illusionist Magnus Eisengrim, who is revealed to be an adult Paul Dempster. Intrigued by Eisengrim's spectacular illusions, Ramsay joins his entourage as he tours the world with his magic act, and gradually becomes close to Eisengrim's wealthy patroness Liesl, an eccentric woman with a bizarre androgynous appearance. Liesl, who becomes Ramsay's lover, senses that he has never been truly happy, having spent most of his life being overshadowed by other people whose lives have intersected with his own. To help him make sense of his role in the world, Liesl suggests that Ramsay is fated to play the part of "fifth business," a term for a supporting player in a stage show whose role can’t be easily classified, but nonetheless plays a vital role in resolving the plot.

Ramsay's recollections ultimately reach their climax in 1968 after Ramsay and Eisengrim both cross paths with Boy following a show in Toronto. In a tense conversation, Eisengrim reveals his true identity to Boy, and Ramsay tells Eisengrim about the events in December 1908 that led to his premature birth. Recalling the incident, Ramsay states that the snowball that Boy threw at Mrs. Dempster had a rock concealed in it, and claims that he still has the rock. Boy, however, still refuses to admit to throwing the snowball, denying any responsibility for Mrs. Dempster's misfortunes. After Boy and Eisengrim storm out of the room, Ramsay finds the rock missing.

Hours later, Boy is found dead in his car after apparently driving into a river, leaving the police unsure whether his death was murder or suicide. Curiously, a stone is found placed in his mouth, which Ramsay believes to be the rock that Boy threw at Mrs. Dempster as a child. Later, while watching a fortune-telling display at Eisengrim's magic show, Ramsay collapses from a sudden heart attack after someone in the audience cries out "Who killed Boy Staunton?" Onstage, the fortune-telling "Brazen Head" cryptically replies that he was killed by five people: by himself, by the woman he knew, by the woman he did not know, by the man who granted his inmost wish, and by "the inevitable fifth, who was keeper of his conscience and the keeper of the stone."

With that, Ramsay concludes the story of his life, saying only, "And that, headmaster, is all I have to tell you."

Themes
Davies discusses several themes in the novel, perhaps the most important being the difference between materialism and spirituality. Davies asserts religion is not necessarily integral to the idea—demonstrated by the corrupt Reverend Leadbeater who reduces the Bible to mere economic terms.

Davies, then an avid student of Carl Jung's ideas, deploys them in Fifth Business. Characters are clear examples of Jungian archetypes and events demonstrate Jung's idea of synchronicity. A stone allegedly thrown at Ramsay when he was a child reappears decades later in a scandalous suicide or murder. Ramsay's character is a classic introverted personality, contrasted throughout the book with the extroverted sensuality of Boy Staunton. Ramsay dedicates his life to genuine religious feeling as he saw it in his 'fool-saint' Mary Dempster, whose son grows up to be the very archetype of the Magician.

Robertson Davies' interest in psychology has a massive influence on the actions in the book. The prominence of matriarchs in Dunstan's life can be linked to Sigmund Freud's Oedipus complex (Dunstan loves Diana and Mrs. Dempster, despite their motherly positions in his life). Carl Jung's concept of individualisation plays a role when Liesl discusses Dunstan's yet-unlived life and the idea that he must have balance in his life. Erik Erikson's stages of psychosocial development can also be seen in the choices Boy makes compared to the choices Dunstan makes (e.g. Boy chooses intimacy while Dunstan chooses isolation).

A genuinely learned man, Davies wrote a prose that both poked fun at pretentious scholarship and enjoyed joking allusions, as in the names of Ramsay's girl friends, Agnes Day, Gloria Mundy and Libby Doe. He explained these later as "Agnes, the Sufferer – a type well known to all men; Gloria, the Good Time Girl, and Libby, the energetic go-getter". Agnes Day is a play on the Latin religious phrase agnus Dei, "lamb of God". Libby Doe is a play on the word "libido", borrowed from Latin by Freud to mean the inner impulse-driven part of the psyche. Gloria Mundy is a play on the Latin religious phrase Sic transit gloria mundi, or "Thus passes the glory of the world."

Religion and morality
There is sectarianism in Deptford dividing the frontier townsfolk between five Christian churches that do not associate with each other under normal circumstances. It takes emergency situations for them to lend aid to each other, but this is conditional aid based on the assumption that certain moral codes will be preserved regardless of faith. For instance, Mary Dempster is a daft-headed girl who habitually flouts the norms of the society, and so she finds herself ostracised and ridiculed by it, evidenced by the fact that no one comes to her aid when her son runs away. However, she is the only member of Deptford society that Dunstan views as truly 'religious' in her attitude because she lives according to a light that arises from within (which he contrasts with her husband's 'deeply religious' attitude, which 'meant that he imposed religion as he understood it on everything he knew or encountered' (46)).

As a boy, Dunstable is raised as a Presbyterian, but he also takes an avid interest in Catholic saints. He grows up to develop a more spiritual mode of life that is not reliant on external structures. For Dunstan Ramsay, religion and morality are immediate certainties in life, and the events of the novel show how moral lapses have a way of 'snowballing' and coming back to haunt one.

Myth and history
Davies and Dunstan are at pains to illustrate just how fluid the concept of historical fact really is, and that it is not so distinct from the suppositions of mythic thinking. Dunstan questions the extent that he can provide an accurate account of the events of his childhood or his participation in World War I campaigns, because what he recalls is surely distinct from the 'consensually accepted reality'.

One aspect of this blurred distinction between myth and history is Ramsay's lifelong preoccupation with the lives of the Saints. The fantastic nature of their stories were always grounded in actual events, but their miracles were given attention and focus based on the psychosocial attitudes and needs of the day, so that what the public wanted had a large measure of influence over what became the accepted canon.

The novel and Davies' life
Some readers thought that Fifth Business was intended to be semi-autobiographical. Davies projected some of his life experiences (childhood in a small Ontario town, family connections with the social and financial elite) into many of his works. He thought of this novel as "autobiographical, but not as young men do it; it will be rather as Dickens wrote David Copperfield, a fictional reworking of some things experienced and much re-arranged."

Davies allows us to peer through a window into his childhood in Thamesville, Ontario and through his young life into higher education and beyond through the character of Ramsay and the novels of the Deptford trilogy. In Fifth Business, Davies provides an account of his spirit, his memories, and his deeper life experiences. Or, as Diane Cole wrote in the New York Times soon after Davies' death, "Davies used his personal myths and archetypes to probe the possibilities of human good and evil, but always with a wickedly humorous wink."

Some of the elements of character Percy Boyd Staunton's life resemble that of Davies' friend Vincent Massey. Both men became rich from their father's agricultural businesses. Both men enlisted in World War I, went into politics afterward and held cabinet positions, and strengthened Canada's ties with the mother country. Massey was appointed as the first Canada-born Governor General, Boy is likewise appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario. The most convincing parallel is that Boy becomes the chair of the board of Governors which runs the school at which Ramsay teaches, much as Robertson Davies spent his career at the University of Toronto as the Master of Massey College. But the Staunton character is highly fictionalized. Davies has said that aspects of the character are more reflective of his father.

Title
"Those roles which, being neither those of hero nor Heroine, Confidante nor Villain, but which were none the less essential to bring about the Recognition or the denouement were called the Fifth Business in drama and Opera companies organized according to the old style; the player who acted these parts was often referred to as Fifth Business."

Pressured by his publisher to define "Fifth Business," Davies added this opening quotation. Queried later by the book's Norwegian translator Sigmund Hoftun who failed to find the quotation in the (authentic) Danish book, Davies wrote to him 13 August 1979, "it is not from Overskou, because I invented it."

Principal characters

 * Dunstan (Dunstable) Ramsay – The protagonist and narrator. Ramsay has been offended by his retirement notice in the College Chronicle and intends to prove he has had an interesting life. He served in World War I and received a Victoria Cross. He becomes a scholar of saints and myths, and spends time with Bollandist scholars.
 * 'Boy' (Percy Boyd) Staunton – Ramsay's "lifelong friend and enemy" who throws a snowball at him which instead hits Mary Dempster, thereby precipitating the premature birth of Paul Dempster and her subsequent slide into madness. Staunton changes his name from Percy to Boy. A talented businessman and investor, he becomes fabulously wealthy in the sugar-processing business in Canada, eventually owning a conglomerate involved in many different industries (Alpha Corporation). A charming man, he has an immense need for sex.
 * Mary Dempster – Ten years older than Ramsay, she plays a pivotal role in his life. She has some saint-like qualities and is held in an insane asylum.
 * Paul Dempster – Son of Mary Dempster. Ten years younger than Dunstan Ramsay, he outshines Ramsay in conjuring. He leaves town with a travelling circus. He becomes the magician known as 'Magnus Eisengrim,' and is the protagonist of World of Wonders in this trilogy.
 * Diana Marfleet – The nurse who cares for Ramsay after he is wounded during World War I. She is his first sexual partner. Diana introduces him to musicals in England. He refuses to marry her, believing that she has too maternal a role in his life.
 * Leola Staunton (née Cruikshank) – The first love of Ramsay, she marries Boy Staunton. Beautiful but volatile, she cannot live up to her ambitious husband's expectations.
 * Liselotte (Liesl) Vitzlipützli – Daughter of a millionaire Swiss watchmaker, she assists Magnus Eisengrim in his traveling magic show. She is bisexual, and unusually tall and with large features. She becomes Ramsay's confessor, lover, and critic.

title: Fifth Business


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User talk:Cataclysm12

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title: User talk:Cataclysm12


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Gilukhipa

Gilukhipa, or more probable Kilu-Hepa in Hurrian language, in the Egyptian language Kirgipa (fl. early 14th c. BCE), was the daughter of Shuttarna II, king of Mitanni. She was the sister of Tushratta (later King of Mitanni), Biria-Waza and Artashumara.

Biography
For political reasons, Gilukhipa was sent to Egypt to join Amenhotep III in marriage. The Egyptian pharaoh made a special issue of commemorative scarabs on the occasion of his marriage to Gilukhipa in his 10th regnal year (ca.1378–1376 BCE), where he recorded that the princess was escorted by 317 ladies-in-waiting, women from the Mitanni king's royal palace. Gilukhipa became known as the "Secondary King's Wife," meaning she was secondary to Amenhotep III's chief wife, Queen Tiye.

Twenty-six years later, her niece Tadukhepa also became Amenhotep's wife.

title: Gilukhipa