This Week in History recalls memorable and decisive events and personalities of the past.
27th June 1950 – United States forces intervene in Korean War
Following the defeat of the Japanese Empire at the end of the Second World War in 1945, the Soviet Union and United States (US) agreed to divide the Korean Peninsula along the 38th Parallel, and occupy the northern and southern portions respectively, until such a time as the fate of Korea could be decided.
At first, Korea was governed by a joint Soviet-American commission. However, the rapidly evolving politics of the cold war, and the protests of Koreans, led to the establishment of a Korean government, the Republic of Korea (ROK). This was resisted by the Soviets and communist Korean groups, who believed this government to be unfairly established, and, as a result, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) was established in the Soviet-occupied zone, under the leadership Kim-Il-Sung. Today these states are commonly known as North and South Korea.
Soviet forces withdrew from Korea in 1948, and American troops a year later, in 1949.
Beginning in 1948, the DPRK sponsored communist uprisings across the ROK and, over the next two years, the two sides clashed repeatedly on the border in what was effectively a small-scale border war. With American training and weapons, the ROK army was able to hold its own against these attacks, but became almost entirely geared towards fighting unconventional warfare.
On 25 June 1950, the DPRK launched a massive unexpected invasion of the ROK, which began the Korean War. The DPRK army would quickly smash the underequipped, outnumbered and ill-prepared ROK army, driving it south
The ROK’s leadership responded on 28 June by embarking on a purge of all political dissidents. It is for this reason that the Korean War is remembered by many Koreans today as a war between left and right rather than between north and south.
DPRK forces steadily pushed back the ROK’s army, until it held just a small portion in the south of the country around Pusan. The US, which had begun providing military support to the ROK two days after the invasion, soon obtained a mandate for a United Nations intervention to protect the ROK. As the Soviets were boycotting the UN at the time, they were unable to veto it.
By August, the UN forces began to arrive in great numbers. In time, they would push the DPRK back, saving the ROK from collapse. The war had a long way to go yet, but that part of the story will be covered in an upcoming This Week in History.
28th June 1919 – Treaty of Versailles is signed, formally ending the First World War
While the fighting in the First World War officially ended on 11 November 1918, it was not until 28 June 1919 that the peace treaty which would define the post-war world would be finalised.
In short, under the treaty, Germany accepted sole responsibility for starting the war, and was compelled to cede some territory and to pay war reparations.
Since its writing, the treaty has come under intense scrutiny. Famously, famed economist John Maynard Keynes wrote an essay declaring it an unjust and ‘Carthaginian’ peace, a reference to the Roman peace treaty imposed on the city of Carthage after the 2nd Punic war, which crippled the Carthaginian state. The view that Germany was mistreated led to a great rise in pro-German sentiment, especially in the English-speaking world, and allowed Hitler a fair amount of goodwill from foreigners when he first rose to power.
However, others, myself included, have taken a different view of the peace.
Rather than being an unfair imposition on the German Empire, the peace was a disaster because it hurt German honour without extinguishing its ability to make war.
Rather than a Carthaginian peace, the loss of territory and the war indemnity were not unduly harsh for a country that lost a war at the time. Indeed, in terms of territorial and population loss, Germany was not significantly damaged in its war-making ability. A Carthaginian peace would have been more akin to the territorial, population and industrial losses imposed on Russia by the Germans in 1917.
The territorial losses were also mild compared to what the French had originally intended, which would have amounted to a complete dismantling of the German Empire into several smaller nations.
By simply examining the power and size of the German army in 1939, it is quite apparent that the losses in territory and people it had suffered did little to prevent it from establishing one of the world’s strongest armies, backed by a powerful economy.
Furthermore, the war reparations that the Germans were expected to pay were similar to those they had imposed on France after the Franco-Prussian war in 1870. Much of the economic damage that resulted was due to internal instability and mismanagement rather than simply the amounts the German Empire were compelled to pay.
By forcing Germany to accept responsibility for the war without crushing it, the allied powers had handed a powerful sense of grievance and an emotionally powerful weapon to German nationalists, which they would exploit to great effect and which ultimately helped to cement the rise of the Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime.
Once in control of the state, the Nazis found themselves in possession of one of the world’s most economically powerful, populous and advanced states, which they used to wage war across Europe.
This is only one view, however, and the effects of the Treaty of Versailles are likely to be debated for centuries to come.
29th June 1975 – Steve Wozniak tests the first prototype of Apple 1 computer
Driven by his friend Steve Jobs’ idea of selling a desktop computer, Steve Wozniak worked on the Apple 1 computer, building it himself. Wozniak sold his HP-65 calculator and Jobs sold his only car in order to raise the money needed to fund the manufacture and selling of Wozniak’s new creation.
Featuring a 1MHz processor, 4KB of RAM standard and graphics support for 40×24 characters, the Apple 1 would be the first product of Apple computers.
When finally launched to the public on 11 April 1976, it sold for $666.66 (equivalent to approximately $2,995 today). Today, an original Apple 1 can sell for tens of thousands of dollars in auction.
The product was enough of a success to launch a second version in 1977, and launch the company that would become one of the modern world’s juggernauts of technology, ranking today as one of the planet’s largest and most important corporations.
30th June 1908 – Tunguska event in Russia
Without warning, early on the morning of the last day of June 1908, the wilderness of Siberia was struck by a massive explosion.
Siberian tribesmen and Russian settlers around Lake Baikal reported seeing a column of bluish light suddenly appear in the sky around 7.20am, glowing as brightly as the sun. A few minutes later a huge flash appeared far in the distance, followed by what sounded like artillery fire.
An enormous shockwave accompanied the sound, which was reportedly powerful enough to knock people off their feet and shatter windows even hundreds of kilometres away.
The shockwave, reportedly equivalent to a 5.0 magnitude earthquake closer to the site, was measured as far away as Indonesia and Washington D.C.
Miraculously, given the isolation of the site, the explosion killed only three people, but it flattened 80 million trees over an area of 2,150 square kilometres.
No proper scientific investigation was done until 10 years after the event due to how isolated the site was.
Today the consensus is that the event was the result of a 60-150-metre comet or asteroid hitting the atmosphere at enormous speed, breaking up 6-10km above the Earth’s surface and exploding in the air.
The event is a reminder of the rare, but potential threat that rocks from space pose to humanity. Had the same rock hit London or Berlin it would be remembered today as one of the great natural disasters of history rather than as an obscure historical curiosity.
1st July 1520 – Spanish conquistadors fight their way out of Tenochtitlan after nightfall
After landing an army in central America in 1519, the Spanish lawyer, general and fugitive, Hernán Cortés, had managed to establish a series of alliances with various former tributaries and enemies of the Aztec Empire (covering the territory that is Mexico), most notably the Tlaxcaltec. Leveraging his own troops’ military prowess and his assembly of local allies, Cortés had forced the Aztec emperor to accept him as a guest in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan (situated at the site of modern-day Mexico City). In November 1519, Cortés and his army of Spanish troops and local allies entered the city and took up residence in a compound the Aztecs had been forced to build to accommodate them.
The Spanish then effectively took control of the city, holding the Aztec emperor, Moctezuma, prisoner in his own palace.
As tensions mounted in the capital, Cortés received word of another Spanish army landing at the coast, having been sent by the governor of Cuba to arrest him for insubordination. Leaving most of his forces in the city, Cortés hastened to the coast where he managed to talk round the troops in the force sent to arrest him and bring them over to his side.
While Cortes away from the city, the Spanish received word that the Aztecs were preparing to attack them, and so decided to strike pre-emptively. They chose a festival day as their moment to strike, rushing in and massacring a huge number of Aztec nobles and priests. Moctezuma was taken hostage.
Outraged, the Aztecs rushed to lay siege to the Spanish compound. When the Spanish produced the hostage emperor to calm the crowd, Moctezuma was killed, either by rocks hurled from the crowd or by Spanish swords.
When Cortés returned to the city in late June, he found the troops he had left in the city were besieged and under constant attack from the outraged Aztec army.
With supplies running low, the Spanish realised they needed to break out of the city and escape, lest they be starved into defeat.
In the early hours of 1 July 1520, under the cover of a rainstorm, some 800 Spaniards and 20 000 of their Tlaxcala allies attempted to break out. They almost made it to the causeway leading into and out of the city, but were discovered just before reaching it. Here they were engaged by a force of at least 50 000 Aztec warriors.
What followed was a ferocious and chaotic battle along the causeway in which around 400 Spaniards and 3 000 of their allies were killed before the remainder escaped the city. Some stories claimed that some of the Spaniards died weighed down with the gold they had looted from the city, hacked to death by vengeful Aztec warriors or dragged off to become human sacrifices atop the pyramid temples of the Aztecs.
Though Cortés wept when realised the extent of the disaster, he succeeded in making his escape to the coast. The Aztecs had not heard the last of Hernán Cortés.
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