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All archived articles written and/or edited by Mike Haas, Retired CPD, B.A. Sociology, University
of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, 1977; M.A. History, DePaul University, Chicago, 1998; GAPA Chicago's Secretary Editor and Webmeister.
To access articles password protected: point and click on title of article: P/W is gapa1975
“A man whose courage and ability had pushed him up through the ranks to become and be hailed as the greatest police
chief Chicago ever had. . . His integrity and honesty as a public official were never assailed. . . Hermann Schuettler left
behind him as priceless heritage a name untainted and a record of achievement that time will not dim. . . . Chiefly notable
is the fact that through his whole career, there was never suggested the smallest hint of dishonesty, an item most noteworthy
in connection with a business that has caused the downfall of many men.” (Chicago Tribune, 23 Aug 1918
A glance back at the Chicago Police Department Hermann Schuettler rose through the ranks from and eventually commanded.
Schuettler's 3,200 man CPD seems rather small compared to today's CPD stated strength of approximately 13,000, especially
when considering that it served a population of only 700,000 citizens less (2,185,283 per the 1910 US Census) than Chicago's
present population of approximately 2.8 million. What we can also note is that despite all the technological advancements
and modern training methods employed now, many similarities in police work from that day and age still exist today.
Chicago
was growing exponentially throughout the course of Hermann Schuettler’s career,
its more refined and sophisticated citizenry in tandem with a burgeoning
Prohibition movement were also becoming preoccupied with reforming the city’s
reputation as a bawdy, brawling and uncouth den of corrupt politics and vice.
These late 19th and early 20th century reformers were making
considerable efforts to shut down saloons, gambling and prostitution via state
law and municipal ordinances. Getting
the laws enacted were easy enough, enforcement was the real problem.
Behind the material veneer of the world in
which we live and work, a spiritual battle between good and evil is raging, as it always has since God created man. Police officers serve on one of the many fronts in this war, and as
much as police officers may think they need pay raises, promotions and more days off in fighting it, they may need
much, much more, spiritual fortification! Along with their body armor, police officers must also put on their spiritual armor
(prayer) daily and without hesitation. St. Michael and our guardian angels are always ready to go lights and sirens for us
when our soul's (and others') survival demands it!
With the American economy in a downward spiral for the last several years, fears of the potential for rampant inflation
are causing some to recall the hyper inflation that devastated the Weimar Republic in Germany in the aftermath of World War
One; a dire economic situation many historians agree left Germany ripe for the Nazis or quite possibly the Communists
during the early 1920s. This also marks a time in which many of our German parents, grandparents or great grandparents
fled Weimar as economic refugees by immigrating to the United States years before Hitler even came to power.
Much has been made about the low birth rates that presently exist in the developed lands of the Western World, i.e.,
the United States, Europe, Canada, and Australia including Japan. Far less known, however, is that this trend has actually
evolved into a global phenomenon. Both of these extraordinary developments run quite contrary to the long held popular contention
that the world's population is exploding without pause. It can be more accurately stated, as well as statistically supported,
that in another couple of generations, the global population will, in fact, begin imploding!
In an age of moral relativism, rampant secularism, mindless consumerism, a seemingly unending battle against global terrorism,
increasing economic insecurity in our domestic as well as the global markets and declining marriage and birth rates, etc.,
in what may modern man place his hope? Josef Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI, illuminates what real hope to Christians
is, no matter what trying circumstances they may ever find themselves or the state of the world in, and on what it is ultimately
based.
Outspoken
as he was, once the Nazis took over, Rupert Mayer was closely monitored by the
Munich Gestapo who put together quite a file on him. In 1937 when he began to
speak out against the closing of Catholic schools from the pulpit of St.
Michaels in Munich, the Gestapo attempted to ban him from speaking in public as
well as the pulpit. When he continued to disregard this prohibition, the
Gestapo arrested him in early June. At his trial, Mayer defiantly told the
presiding judge, “It gives me far more pleasure to be here as the accused than
as judge."
As the
Nazis ascended in popularity, however, Rupert Mayer did not hesitate to take
increasingly courageous stands against their ideology whether from the pulpit, the
street or other public forums. Mayer recognized, "Hitler
is a great speaker
and is very popular, but he stirs up the people by distorting the truth. . . .
I’m going to tell you, here and now and unequivocally, that no German Catholic
can ever be a National Socialist. When the rights of God are defied and
interfered with, we have an obligation to defend them even if it entails
fighting. There can be no peace where the things of God are trampled underfoot."
A brief history of the German American Police Association in Chicago from its inception in 1975 to the present!
| Remembering who we are, from whence we came and |
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| where, God willing, our journey should lead! |
You may not speak German as perhaps your German immigrant parents, grandparents or great-grandparents, etc. did, but
you, like most Americans whatever their ethnicity or race, are speaking a Germanic language! In fact, it's called English,
the international language of the world we now live in!
The sur names many of us bear today, of course, have been passed on down to us through the generations. They, perhaps,
more than anything else, indicate where we or our ancestors came from. Although the roots of their original forms date back
to ancient Germanic times, the development of their final forms were generally not fixed until the 17th century and onwards
after Gutenberg's press and Martin Luther's bible set the grammatical standards that evolved into the modern German language.
Who are the Germans, where did they (we) come from and how did our ancient ancestors come to settle
in western central Europe?
German tribes annihilate three Roman legions under Varus, decisively halting Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus' further
encroachment into German lands east of the Rhine and north of the Danube!
For many barbarian German tribesmen, Christianity was a "Roman" thing and most had little interest. It was
not only German reluctance, the Church also appeared hesitant because the Roman world generally considered the Germans as incapable
of having souls to convert.
The Christianization of the pagan, barbarian German tribes was long and gradual, but this man's man, missionary and martyr
set its definitive course during the 8th century!
Aka Charlemagne, the Father of Europe, Karl was, in fact, a German and as King of the Franks, a West German tribe, took
control of the former Western Roman Empire and reinstituted it as the Holy Roman Empire in 800 A.D.!
A chivalric order of warrior/monks incepted in 1198 during the Third Crusade via the spiritual authority of Pope Celestine
in order to protect and provide for German pilgrims and Christendom's holdings in the Holy Land. It was from their crusades
in the pagan lands they conquered along the Baltic coast in present day Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and northwest Poland during
the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries, however, that the Teutonic Knights' renown (and notoriety) would be heralded. It was from
the Order's holdings in the Baltics that the Kingdom of Prussia would come into existence. It is also from the Teutonic Knights'
battle standard, a black cross against a white background, that the famed military decoration known as the Iron Cross originated
and still survives today as the emblem of the German Armed Forces (Bundeswehr).
Our ancestors, their blood running through our veins, survived an unprecedented, devastating epidemic which wiped out
1/4 to 1/3 of Europe's entire population in only 4 short years during the mid 14th century!
In 1507 this German priest/geographer created the most detailed map of the world that was known at the time which
included a previously uncharted land mass lying between Europe and Asia though separated by huge ocean expanses. Waldseemuller
named this land mass America on behalf of Amerigo Vespucci, the Italian navigator from whose nautical surveys his map
was drawn. Just about all of the original copies of Waldseemuller's 12 panel wall map of the world were considered lost until
one resurfaced in a castle in southwestern Germany in 1901. In 2001 this copy was purchased by the US Library of Congress
for $10 million dollars!
The legacy of the 1735 Zenger trial resides in the constitutionalized principle that every American's right
to free speech rests upon the individual's right to crtiticize his government. American ideals of free speech and a free press
were forged out of the grievances the colonists had with the Crown's magistrates in the years preceding the War of Independence.
Casper Lauer, a German immigrant and the first Chicago police officer slain in the line of duty in 1854, has his star
inducted in the Chicago Police Department's Star Case at CPD HQ!
The Chicago Police Memorial Fund, GAPA Chicago, Casper Lauer's descendants, CPD Superintendent Terry Hillard and the
Pipes & Drums of the Chicago Police Department dedicate Casper Lauer's new headstone at the site of his grave in St.
Boniface German Catholic Cemetery!
Surely a time of mixed emotions for those police officers working the streets on this most cherished of holidays, and
a tinge of sadness for our familes as well. For while most families will be sharing Christmas with each other, many of
Chicago's patrol officers will be sharing it with those for whom the spirit of Christmas seems to have forsaken!
This German wiseman knew that man's most prized possession was his soul, and that your soul was all you take
with you out of this world and into the next, whether it be saved or damned!
From
the cold chilly waters off the “rocks” of Lake Michigan at Fullerton Ave. beach to the Olympic
swimming pools of 1924 Paris and 1928 Amsterdam, Weissmuller set the American,
if not international standards, for energy, daring, endurance and athletic
ability as a swimmer who was selected in 1950 as “the greatest swimmer of the
half century" by the Associated Press. An extraordinary honor when considering
that Babe Ruth was chosen for the same honor in Baseball, Jesse Owens in
Track, Jack Dempsey in Boxing and Jim Thorpe in Football! Although a charter
member of the US Olympic Swimming Hall of Fame, Weissmuller is probably better
known to those of us who grew up in the post World War II era from Sunday
Matinee TV movie fare for his film
portrayal as “Tarzan, the Ape Man.” But,
he literally swam his way into these roles and into American consciousness after
winning 3 gold medals in Paris and adding 2 more in Amsterdam.
Citations of Civil War Congressional Medal of Honor Recipients who were born in Germany!
Of the 428 Congressional Medals of Honor awarded to the United States Army during the Indian
campaigns from 1865 to 1898, 30 went to these US cavalrymen who were born in Germany!
This German immigrant, Civil War veteran and US Cavalry Scout fought in more Indian campaigns (the Apache wars of
the Southwest) than Daniel Boone, Kit Carson, Jim Bridger all together! Charlton Heston played him in Arrowhead and
Robert Duvall in The Legend of Geronimo!
Reflections of some of our German immigrant forebears in 1909 as they compare their early experiences
in Chicago with the lives they left behind in Germany.
It may never happen again, but it did in 1907!
The huge influx of German immigrants (some of our grandparents and great grandparents) into the United States during
the last half of the 19th and early 20th centuries presented a "German Problem" to the Anglo-American staus
quo: Just who were these Germans and their "Kultur" and what threat were they to Anglo-American hegemony in America, and what
would it take to "Americanize" them in a manner suitable to Anglo-American sensibilities?!
Despite their social, religious and political differences, Chicago's Germans unite and then rally to defeat a
proposed "Anti-Saloon" ordinance during the Spring elections of 1910. Includes a stirring editorial from the March
23, 1910 edition of the Chicagoer Arbeiter-Zeitung. . . .
A tale that unravels the mystery behind one of the most controversial episodes in American history, as well as one
which sounded the death knell of a once proud, pre WWI German American consciousness that saw its demise in the midst of circumstances
beyond its control!
Secret alliances, exaggerated national pride, economic rivalries and failed diplomacy, etc., by their respective governments
whether in Germany, Great Britain, or France had, by Christmas Eve 1914, bogged down much of the full flower of western European
manhood deep into the stinking, muddy quagmire of trench warfare along a 300 mile wide western front that extended from the
Belgian/French coast on the English Channel to the Swiss border on the south. Certainly not the glory many of them had perhaps
envisioned the previous August when this most unnecessary war had commenced. The war was only in its early innings though,
and each side was still fully convinced that victory would be theirs' once the next Spring's offensives were launched. Thus
the Allied and German frontliners were only beginning to hate each other when in the early evening hours of Christmas Eve,
His most Holy Spirit began to seep through the muck, mire and misery. . . .
Part I: Without going into the causes of the conflict
that raged on the European mainland from 1914 to 1918, by early 1917 it was apparent to Chicago’s German Americans that
entry into the war was imminent, if not preordained by the pro British Wilson government. Naturally enough, they were largely
against American involvement, for the majority of Chicago’s sizeable German community was only one to two generations
removed from their old “fatherland.”
Part II: When
a British ocean liner, the Lusitania, went down in 1915 with the loss of 1,198 lives including 128 Americans after being torpedoed
by a German U boat in the Irish Sea, the entire nation erupted in a frenzied uproar, and Chicago’s Germans were further
forced onto the defensive. Most, it seemed, were cognizant by now that arguing the German side of any issue concerning the
war had become futile, especially now that American lives had been sacrificed. It was only too apparent by now that American
bankers were financing the Allied war effort. Furthermore, the US government was allowing the British navy to blockade German
and other neutral trade to the United States, while at the same time permitting trade and monetary support by American manufacturers
to the Allies to circumvent the spirit of “Wilsonian neutrality.
Part Three: Once the United States entered the war in April of 1917, the pent-up
tension of "neutrality" exploded on the home front as Chicago as well as the rest of the nation prepared for war!
Part IV: American Entry into the war in Europe in support of England
and France eventually led to the censorship of the German American press by
the US Congress in September of 1917. This resulted
in the total suppression of not only any divergence of opinion concerning Germany
and the war itself, but any and all independent German American
opinion regarding it. As part of the “Trading with the Enemy”
bill, publication of war commentary in the German language
press was prohibited by law unless accompanied by a parallel column translated
in English
Part V: Chicago’s Germans were generally spared from some of the
more extreme forms of harassment the nationwide hysteria promoted
primarily because of their numerical strength in the city, a political
fact the mayor of Chicago, William Hale Thompson, nicknamed “Kaiser
Bill” by the Chicago press, was well aware of. Chicago’s
police chief, Herman Schuettler, a second generation German American, was widely esteemed as Chicago’s “greatest policeman.” Another second generation German
American, John Traeger, was the Sheriff of Cook County as was the
Catholic Archbishop of Chicago, George Mundelein.
Conclusion: As World
War One ended most German Americans were emotionally numb after four years of severe stress on the psyche
of their ethnic self identity. The government sanctioned, openly
predjudicial psychological assault on their once proud German American consciousness left an emotional scar that
has never completely healed. Tired of persecution and compromising situations
that German ethnic identity might incite, the war hastened their assimilation, especially
among the second and third generations. Intimidated by what had transpired during the war
years and leery of calling attention to themselves as German Americans,
many found it easier to drop the hyphen and get on with their lives.
A Review of GAPA Director & Northeastern Illinois University Adjunct Professor
Tom Hoff's well researched study of the men who served in the American Expeditionary Force during World War One!
Part One: Prelude to a Rumble! As developments in the Amphitheater exposed the internal dissensions within the Democratic
Party itself, the drama on the streets revealed the cultural/class divide of an America that was beside itself in coming to
grips with not only the war in Vietnam, but the Civil Rights Movement, the sexual revolution and the increasing alienation
and use of illegal, mind altering drugs by their youth.
Part Two: Let's Get It On! The street confrontations between the Chicago Police Department and the New Left and Yippie
protesters. Who provoked whom?
Conclusion: America weighs in over the provocation, confrontation and response of Mayor Daley and the Chicago Police
Department during the DNC at the ballot box and elsewhere. . .
019 District (Belmont) patrol officer, riding solo, finds himself in gun battle after picking up the chase of two armed
robbers until they crash land and flee on foot.
Undercover operation in Rodgers Park turns hot for 024 District Tactical officer!
After chasing fleeing carjackers into an alley, 017 District (Albany Park) patrol officer finds himself in a desparate
firefight.
Ex Marine, 017 (Albany Park) patrol officer working CTA Special Employment on near North Side severely wounds a man who
only minutes before shot his wife to death on the street!
025 (Grand-Central) patrol officer responding to the building where another police officer had been shot and
killed shortly before, engages (with other responding officers) in a deadly gun battle with the offender.
In
the early morning hours of a Spring day in 2010, Chicago Police Department Gang
Enforcement officer Paul Heyden, Jr. was on patrol with other gang officers in
plain clothes and in an unmarked vehicle on Chicago’s far west side when they
heard shots fired a short distance away. Minutes later Officer Heyden encountered a man in an alley who raised a gun toward
him. After commanding this individual to drop his weapon to no avail, Officer Heyden, in defense of his own life, fired
several shots at this individual, striking him as many times until he fell mortally wounded.
Responding to a crime scene where a man had been fatally shot on the street, Officer Gonzalez and her partner cornered
the vehicle from which the offender had fled. While Officer Gonzalez took control of the driver of this vehicle, her partner
followed the shooter into a parking lot where he exchanged shots with the offender in a gun battle which resulted in the offender's
fatal wounding.
GAPA Salutes Its Own Veterans 1
GAPA Salutes Its Own Veterans 2
GAPA Salutes Its Own Veterans 3
GAPA Salutes Its Own Veterans 4
GAPA Salutes Its Own Veterans 5
As only the first son of a German farmer could hope to inherit the family Hof, and land became as hard
to come by as military service was as hard to avoid, during the economic downturns of the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
many of rural Germany's 2nd, 3rd & 4th, etc. sons emigrated to America in search of a grubstake to call their own. Many
of us are their grandchildren or great grandchildren!
Can one be proud of their heritage? To what degree! Pope Benedict XVI lends his counsel!
Written by American historian Victor Davis Hanson in relation to the Euro crisis and the future of the
Euro Zone currency union. In it Hanson comments on Germany's present and undeniable economic predominance in Europe despite
having "lost" two world wars in the previous century. Includes Pope Benedict XVI's thoughts on German virtue.
The 19th Century visions of this German nun inspired Mel Gibson's blockbuster, yet controversial, film,
The Passion of Jesus Christ!
The pc media may seem astonished if not oblivious, but German Americans still remain (gasp!) the largest ethnic group
in these here United States of America!
It is sad but true today that some claim Christianity to have been at the roots of
the anti-Semitism that eventually led to Nazi Germany. After all, weren’t Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler and all the rest
of the Nazi henchmen ‘baptized’ Christians. This alleged Nazi/Christian axis, however, is a slanderous if not
false understanding of Nazi doctrine itself, for the historical record clearly indicates that Christianity was correctly perceived
by Nazi ideologues to be a dangerous threat to the Third Reich, and not just because the racial origins of Christianity were
Jewish, but it was more so in how the Bible provided the moral basis of German society and culture that they loathed in that,
at it's most basic core, Christianity holds that all men are created in the image and likeness of God! Provides
a detailed account of the zealous persecution of the Catholic Church in the Third Reich by Nazi authorities who
were intent on forcing Germans to choose Adolf over Jesus in order to promote if not realize the Nazi ideals of German master
race superiority!
Former Chicago German American journalist and publisher (Amerika Woche) Werner Baroni recollects an interview with 4
time US Gold Medalist at the 1936 Berlin Olympics Jesse Owens which provides a surprisingly different view of Owens'
reception by the German people than heralded by the US press at that time!
Schmeling's fame, if not notoriety for some, came to him primarily for his two fights against Joe Louis in 1936, and,
especially, 1938, in which he was portrayed in the American media as Adolf Hitler's "Nazi Superman." Schmeling proved,
however, despite circumstances on both sides of the Atlantic beyond his control, to be very much his own man not only then
but throughout his long life!
Schmeling, despite his prowess in the ring, fought off attempts of becoming a pawn of both the Nazi regime and American
boxing interests. The Nazis rewarded Schmeling by drafting him at age 35 into the Wehrmacht's paratroopers, though his
comrades were almost half his age. His American detractors speculated for the rest of his life as to what extent he was a
Nazi if he was at all. However, in 1989 he was made an Honorary Citizen of Las Vegas when the owner of the now former Sands
Hotel, Henri Lewin, revealed that not only did Schmeling hide him and his brother Werner during the Kristallnacht outrages
in Berlin in November of 1938 (six months after the Louis fight) but helped to smuggle them out of Germany!
Hartmann shot down 352 aircraft on the Eastern Front as a Luftwaffe pilot in WWII, but he revealed the true
measure of his soul during the 10 years he survived in Soviet captivity!
Austria was the only land the Communist super power that was the Soviet Union ever agreed to return its sovreignty to
during the entire Cold war! What really caused the Red Army to withdraw from Austria during the darkest years of the Cold
War in 1955?
Is there a relationship between the Nazi euthanasia programs of the '30s and the assisted suicide movement that is developing
in the West?
The early life of this Bavarian peasant who subsisted entirely without food and water for 35 years, from 1927 to 1962,
and nourished only by the Holy Eucharist bore the stigmata (wounds) of Christ. These not so natural facts were substantiated
by medical experts, some of whom were also astonished that after one prolonged period of observation, Therese didn't have
the least bit of body waste--stool, urine or excretions of any kind--to examine!
International recognition of Therese Neumann's stigmata as well as accounts of her supernatural visions, bi-locations
and expiatory suffering for the miraculous cures of others drew its share of skeptics but not among the Nazis in her
own native land. Before and during the war, the Nazi press banned all references to her, except when it once falsely reported
that she was a Hitlerite herself and in another instance it stated that she was dead. In fact, the Gestapo murdered two of
her non-clerical chroniclers, journalists Fritz Gerlich and Friedrich Ritter von Lama, and the SS shelled her home in Konnersreuth,
Bavaria when nobody in the village would turn her in. Also not included among the skeptics were over 12,000 American GIs who
visited her at the end of WWII and throughout the postwar occupation, including one GAPA member's father-in-law!
Significant lifestyle changes hailed as progress a generation ago in the West are now being questioned if not re-examined
in light of the fact that the so called "sexual liberation" unleashed in the 1960s and 1970s has for all too many "baby boomers"
and "Gen Xers" led to an unprecedented need for two income families who now struggle to buy homes and have children. The result: low
birthrates across the Western world that will dramatically decrease their populations by the end of this century!
The American Dream begins and ends with a job that can support a marriage, a family, a home and an education
for the kids as well as providing paid holidays, vacations, health insurance and retirement security. The traditional path
to the American Dream has been higher education, but the skyrocketing costs at colleges and universities across the
land are forcing young Americans today to take on such debt via student loans that they may may be undermining, if not sacrificing,
their future financial ability to get married, buy homes and have families.
The West is lurching through a collective guilt trip, suffering through a crisis of cultural self-confidence. . . . its
sense of its own tradition has been rocked hard, and the Christian banner under which it flew, thoroughly shredded. . . .
Pope Benedict XVI relates, "Unless we embrace our own heritage of the sacred, we will deny the identity of Europe. . . . There
is something deeply alien about the absolute secularism that is developing in the West."
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