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A certain man - hardly known even in his home country - comes to mind. A man nicknamed The boxer of Auschwitz, “He who beat the Germans as he wished” by his companions, and Weiss Nebel (“The White Fog”) by his Nazi overseers.A man who was, in fact, one of the first people ever deported to Auschwitz, being attributed the number 77 amongst his fellow inmates, but who yet survived in the camps all the way until the end of the Second World War thanks to his martial skills.The man whom I’m speaking of is the former Polish bantamweight and Auschwitz multi-weight unified champion, soldier, member of underground resistance movements and hero in his own right, Tadeusz Pietrzykowski.Let me tell you his story.Background, and the Second World WarTadeusz was born in 1917, in Warsaw, the capital city of Poland, fifth out of seven siblings. Both his parents had a higher education - which was very rare at the time - and they insisted on their children being raised well.Tadeusz had a natural artistic talent. After watching the famous movie “Ben Hur” as a 9-year-old kid, he drew a warrior charging on a chariot as a homework for his plastic arts class, and did it so well his teacher asked him to draw it again in front of him as he suspected the homework had been made by an adult artist. As a teen, he would make ends meet by drawing for people who were in Warsaw’s academy of fine arts and in architecture colleges. Tadeusz was very talented at school, too.His father died when he was ten, and his family’s financial situation rapidly deteriorated. Tadeusz joined a military school, where he first started boxing, and slowly drifted away from pursuing studies, much to his mother dismay. At age 16, he joined the biggest Warsaw sports’ club, Legia Warszawa, and had his first professional fight a year later. Yet, he was still going to school, and could not fight under his real name in the light of the Polish law; he was therefore nicknamed “Teddy” by his trainer, Feliks Stamm – the man who’s considered the father of Polish boxing, having trained a generation of Olympic level fighters.“Teddy” fought over 50 times during his short-lived career, winning most of his fights, several tournaments, and attracting great interest from Polish sport journalists after becoming Warsaw’s bantamweight’s (52–53kg / 114–116 lbs) division champion in 1937 following very skillful displays on the ring; they even started referring to him as “Teddy Iron-Fist”.It all ended when World War II started, 1st September 1939. His club’s authorities had previously started procedures to prevent him from being drafted due to his promising boxing talents, but Tadeusz took none of it and volunteered to Warsaw’s first defence unit. And there he took arms and fought until the capitulation of Warsaw, 28th September of 1939, defending the Ochota district, next to where he grew up.Tadeusz was not deterred by Warsaw’s fall - which simply lead to the creation of underground resistance movements fighting secretly. The 1st October 1939, at a secret military meeting under a monument to Jan III Sobieski - former king and Polish national military hero - he swore an oath in the presence of a chaplain and several Polish officers: he “would fight until the very end, until the defeat of the Germans”.From there on he had two choices; either fight in Poland with the various existing resistance units, or try to get to the West, where he could battle as a pilot, having received an adequate training before WWII in the military academy he attended during his teenage years.In early February 1940, he took his decision; he decided he would to go to France to join to the local rebirthing Polish army. Blending himself in the crowds of the cities he passed through by wearing a hat and feigning to read German newspapers, he crossed all of Poland, Czech Republic, but his luck eventually ran out and at the end of the month he was caught in Hungary by the local police and arrested.He was then deported back to Poland, to the already very filled prison of Tarnów south of the country, where he was interrogated, tortured and starved with hundreds of other Polish prisoners for about 4 months, until June 1940. The conditions there were hard enough for the inmates to dream of being sent to German hard labor camps. During the repeated beatings, Tadeusz would hide his knowledge of German so that he could have a little bit more time to think before answering questions while the translator formulated the interrogators’ words in Polish.The inmates of the prison all thought that they were indeed going to do hard labor in Germany, but the day before their departure they learned via Morse communication on the prison’s pipes that they would be sent somewhere else.Arriving to KL AuschwitzThe Tarnów prisoners were put on a train the 14th June 1940 and deported directly to the concentration camp, which was itself located in a relatively remote area - yet had a functional railway.The first Auschwitz convoy, made of 727 prisoners from Tarów’s prisonThis was the first convoy ever sent to Auschwitz, safe for a very small group which arrived earlier, consisting of 30 German criminals who would all become the camp’s early kapos – prisoners serving as underlings of the SS, who were guaranteed an advantageous material situation while being responsible for disciplining other inmates, acting as lawless overseers.Thus, the first Polish prisoner received the number 31. Tadeusz became the n°77 - out of the 202 499 numbers in total that would be chronologically given to the males having worked in the camp for the duration of the war. And the nightmare begun.To their very unpleasant surprise, the prisoners were not made to work physically right after coming to the camp. The first two weeks after the convoy’s arrival - a period called the Quarantine - were instead dedicated to break the inmates’ bodies and spirits. During the Quarantine, prisoners were forced to perform exhausting physical tasks - often senseless ones - under the harsh supervision of the camp’s overseers.Prisoners would stay out all day under the burning summer sun in an open space and do what they were asked; crawl, jump up and get down, walk around with their hands touching their feet, take heavy bags from one place to another just to take them back to their starting spot, and so on, all day. During the breaks in between the exercises, prisoners were taught German songs and basic commands.If somebody made a mistake during the singing or when repeating sentences in German, he was brutally beaten up. Whenever the SS men grew bored of the exercises, they amused themselves with the prisoners - at their expense. This included beatings, forcing catholic priests and Jews to say loud prayers while standing on barrels, or having the inmates do even more absurd tasks - such as plucking grass with their mouths around the camp.Of course, all of this was performed by people who were abused in prison for several months prior to their arrival to Auschwitz, and therefore it’s no surprise that after just a couple days the prisoners were at their mental and physical limits - even Tadeusz, despite him being young, healthy, and athletic. The Quarantine’s role was indeed that of a first selection process, supposed to weed out the sickly and weak. Still, “Iron Fist” Teddy passed, and now he had to work.Hard laborTeddy’s very first job at Auschwitz was to fill the numerous holes present on the camp’s uneven terrain with rubble, which was extremely tedious, but he rapidly took advantage of the fact the various work units were still getting created in the early days of the camp and he managed to get transferred to the harvesting team (consisting in manual harvesting that is), which he thought would be relatively easier.In reality the work wasn’t much better, and was still very taxing physically; Teddy worked 12 hours a day, from 4am to 6pm, bare footed on the rough soil, going with a daily ration of 250g of bread (0.55 lbs), 1L of watery soup and an occasional 0.5L of coffee (sometimes inmates would get it, sometimes they wouldn’t).Once the harvests were finished, he managed to get work in the camp’s carpentry team, thanks to some workers which he made friends with in Tarnów’s prison. Having no knowledge of carpentry either, he was assigned to physical help and worked as a janitor, notably having to bring random objects created by the carpenters to the camp’s commandant Rudolf Höss.He once stumbled while getting on the stairs in said house, and lightly scratched a wall, which Höss’ wife saw. Her husband had Tadeusz whipped 25 times for it by the carpentry’s kapo, Arthur Blake. Tadeusz also unwillingly assisted to violent executions while working outside the barracks, which marked him for life.His janitor’s job allowed him to steal food left unaware in some parts of the camp, which he and his carpenter friends would cook in containers designed to make carpentry glue. Sadly, this would also cause his downfall, as in late October 1940 he was caught stealing potatoes from the camp’s pigsty, for which he was canned 30 times and rapidly relocated to hard physical labor by the carpentry unit’s kapo.He therefore started working in a construction group south of Auschwitz, where Höss decided to build a resort for his SS men, who would otherwise drink themselves to death when on standby out of sheer boredom - sometimes even losing their weapons in nearby villages. The work was terribly rough, physical, and deadly. In snowy November the prisoners worked in wooden shoes, shorts and plain clothing. Tadeusz was part of a group which carried 50kg (110lb) cement bags all day - something unthinkable for malnourished and physically exhausted prisoners, who oftentimes didn’t weight that much themselves (this was Tadeusz’s case).All the work was happening under the SS men supervision, who beat the prisoners and set their dogs on them for any misdemeanor. Teddy noted that some SS respected the difficulty of the job, and would sometimes give him some food leftovers. Still, prisoners were dying like flies due to the cruel conditions they worked in. Tadeusz himself eventually sensed his end was near, and managed to simulate an accident to return to the camp; he dropped a log of wood on his leg, which rapidly got swollen. Still able to work, but not in such conditions, he was not executed but sent back to Auschwitz in the next convoy.Aerial view of KL Auschwitz-Birkeneau. KL is the abbreviation for Konzentrationlager (“concentration camp” in German), whereas Auschwitz and Birkenau (respectively Oświęcim and Brzezinka in Polish) were the cities inbetween which the camp was situated, hence its name. One has to understand that most concentration camps were gigantic, housing up to tens of thousands of prisoners at once; they were small cities in their own right.Auschwitz’ first boxing matchDue to his injury, he was assigned to “light work” in the Strassenreiniger unit, which did streets’ cleaning in the camp. This allowed him to survive, but Tadeusz kept actively looking for food - as “it was impossible to survive on a camp’s ration alone” - and putting himself in great peril doing so. In fact, he survived miraculously an encounter with rapportführer Palitzsche, one of the most feared figures in the camp, an SS known for killing prisoners on a whim; while exiting the n°3 block where a fellow inmate had just cooked him some stolen potatoes which he still held in his hands, he fell right on the unfamous Nazi. Teddy directly stood to attention and adopted the protocol:-Haftling Numer 77 bei der Arbeit! [“Prisonner n°77 reports for work!”]-Was ist denn los? [“What happened” said Palitzsche while pointing at the potatoes]-Ich habe geklaut [“I stole them” answered Tadeusz without reflexion]Palitzsche looked at him… and turned around without saying anything, heading to block n°2. Tadeusz on the other hand didn’t move for a moment, numbed by his own luck, as even with somebody else, food stealing resulted in heavy beating in the best case - with Patitzsche however, if was a death sentence. Recovering his senses, he quickly ran to another block.He worked in the Strassenreiniger unit during most of winter, up until a certain night, first Sunday of March 1941, when another prisoner came to him. Tadeusz was nude, sitting on a pile of bricks while his cloths were being checked for lices. Outside one could hear screams, and appeals to beatings in both German and Polish. Just two weeks ago had arrived to the camp a new German kapo, Walter Dunning, a big guy. He loved violence. Since his arrival 20 inmates already had been made unable to work due to his beatings.The man who came to Teddy asked him if he wanted to earn bread in a boxing fight. He accepted on the spot, for his situation was dire. He had no skills that could make him live in the camp; he was of no utility to the Germans, and was barely surviving through risky stealing. At this point, Tadeusz had been underfed for over a year, and was weighting about 40kg (88 lbs). The interesting thing here is that inmates didn’t reach out to him knowing he was a boxer, as almost nobody knew that in the camp; however many prisoners had noticed Tadeusz handled the overseers’ beatings remarkably well.So did the kapos, and they were the ones who proposed the bread reward as a bait, thinking this would be a nice bloodshed to witness - for Tadeusz was to fight Walter Dunning himself, who was incidentally the actual Germany middleweight boxing vice-champion and a real professional boxer. Dunning weighted about 70kg (154lbs), which would have been around 20 weight classes higher than Tadeusz (!) if there were actually weight divisions taking into account such low weights (in reality, it stops at minimum-weight (< 48kg =105lbs), which is 12 weight classes lower than Middleweight).Out of all the beatings Auschwitz had seen on its soil, this was the very first boxing fight to have ever taken place in the camp.The boxing ring was initially made in the corner of the main kitchen building. There were no boxing gloves yet, therefore the fighters simply wore thin working gloves instead. When Tadeusz arrived, the crowd of prisoners and kapos waiting for him started laughing and taping themselves on the head, seeing the short skeletal man who came to fight the imposing, hyperviolent and famously skilled Walter Dunning. His opponent even sarcastically asked him if he really wanted to fight. But Teddy “Iron Fist” did not fear him.The German was fighting for fun and fame, Tadeusz was fighting for survival. And when the bell rung, he directly started pounding Walter while evading all of his punches. Hit and run, endlessly. Not once did he get hit in the first round. During the break, waiting for the second round, he looked around him. The German kapos and prisoners were staring at him in silent disbelief, their sarcastic smiles having all but disappeared, while the Poles started calling out to him: “Hit, hit the German!”. Fearing kapos’ retaliation against them, he made signs for his fellowmen to stop, which was well received by the Germans.In the second round, Teddy also danced around his opponent, evading all attacks while being aggressive himself. Rapidly, one of his left hooks landed right on Dünning’s nose, making blood pour out of it, and causing his opponent to back up momentarily. Not knowing whether he could push it and go for the kill not against a kapo, Tadeusz froze, waiting for his opponent’s reaction. However, the enthralled Polish spectators started screaming again “Hit him, hit the German!”, which in return caused Dünning… to enrage and turn on them. He jumped on the public and started punching left and right, while the other kapos landed him a hand, beating the crowd back into silence.Dünning came back to Tadeusz with a smile, told him the fight was over, that he was a worthy opponent, and expressed his admiration to his new rival’s skills. He then took him to another block to get his hunch of bread (which Tadeusz directly shared with his block friends when he got back to the dormitory), while Otto Küssel (another kapo who assisted to the fight and was responsible for assigning camp’s prisoners to the different units - a very interesting figure in the camp, known as a philanthrope who helped the inmates, hated Hitler and who was dropped of all charges after the war) asked him where he wanted to work. Tadeusz asked for a spot in the Tierpfleger (work in the barn and stables), not really believing he’d get it.Yet Küssel kept his word, and Tadeusz was called to his new unit the next day, where he met again some of his former friends from the harvesting team. This allowed him to survive, as prisoners in the Tierpleger could get additional food. Tadeusz was now to take care of young calves (he would sometimes stealthily drink some of the milk he was supposed to feed them with), which was one of the easiest jobs on the camp. But he also decided to execute some of the hardest tasks the barn had, relieving some of his fellow inmates from difficult work, so along with better feeding he could recover his former strength, minimize the chances of being sent to another unit and loosing on the ring.This way, his new boxing career begun.The boxer of AuschwitzOrganized boxing matches became one of the most popular distractions in Auschwitz, mainly consisting of Polish prisoners fighting one another for food. Tadeusz generally went easy on his opponents. He didn’t want to give the German overseers any satisfaction from assisting to fraternal warfare when he fought against his fellow Poles, nor did he want to give too much punishment to other inmates who just desperately tried to get something to eat through these fights. He was particularly cautious when fighting Jewish prisoners, as for them, those matches were often a matter of life or death. If they didn’t give a good performance, they would generally be executed shortly after by the SS or kapos; he would calibrate the fight so they could live.Rudolf Höss in the middle, SS’ on his sides. The camps’ commandants would often be present during important boxing fights.Boxing matches opposing random prisoners against Germans (there were quite a few German inmates - sometimes Jews - who’d often be kapos) were generally led by the organizers’ sadistic tendencies, and would ignore most boxing rules. The prisoner, if loosing, would often get violently beaten down on the ground, sometimes straight into disability - and therefore, soon after, to death.Boxing in Auschwitz rapidly turned into a giant gambling feast for Germans. Kapos and the SS (up to the camp’s commandant himself) would bet important sums of money on the fighters, for better or worse; sometimes, the SS man losing money would execute the defeated fighter he had bet on, or assign him to the worse work units - which was as close as you could get to a death sentence. The opposite was also true; ecstatic after winning 1000 marks (~6,000 dollars in today’s money) from betting on Tadeusz for a certain fight, SS Karl Egersdorfer told him he’d make any of his wishes come true - to which Tadeusz answered he’d like something to eat. Egersdorfer happily accepted and commanded 5 kettles of soup not eaten by the SS to be given to him and his friends.Tadeusz Pietrzykowski was the most dominant boxer of the camp by a long shot, despite being naturally one of the smallest fighters. The fights in Auschwitz generally took place on Sundays, and it is estimated Teddy fought over 50 times - although the exact count is not known due to the lack of archives - and out of these matches, he lost only once, in 1942, against the Danish welterweight champion Leu Sanders (welterweight is 63–67 kg, 139–147 lbs, which is already 6 categories above Teddy’s original weight class) - but he avenged that very defeat two weeks later in a rematch by technical KO.By then, the Germans had nicknamed him Weiss Nebel, “The white fog” for his incredible ability to evade his opponents’ punches. In fact, he became a relatively important figure in the camp, bringing hope and pride to the desperate Polish prisoners through his victories - especially the ones against German inmates - and gaining the sympathy of many kapos and overseers for his quality as an athlete and eventual money maker.Nazis would even specifically look for prisoners that could fight him every new convoy; his popularity grew to the point where he could allow himself to be insolent with the SS with no repercussions. Yet, the camp’s dynamics were complicated, and despite his general fame with the Germans, there were some who did not see the successes of a Slavic untermensch under a good light, even less so when it brought defiance against the Nazis’ authority amongst prisoners. And to these people Tadeusz’s presence started becoming undesirable.That’s why following a brutal boxing match against a German kapo known for his cruelty against Poles (whom Tadeusz took great satisfaction in knocking out violently), SS doctor Entres took the Polish boxer to the medical block n°20, and under the pretext of a vitamin injection he infected him with Typhus. Teddy rapidly developed a strong fever, and was stuck in bed in the block, where he was “healed” under the supervision of dr Entres who initially kept an eye on him.His friends and the Poles from block n°20 did their best to take care of him, and didn’t let him die. After two weeks of lying in bed, still very weak and unable to walk, Tadeusz was in a helpless situation; a Nazi inspection was about to happen the next day to get rid of the ill prisoners of the block still unable to work - and he was most definitely on the waiting line.But he would escape death one more time, as a group of Poles came to visit him the night before, led by a certain Tomasz Serafiński… one the leading figures of the underground resistance movement in KL Auschwitz.Tomasz Serafiński was the false name used by Witold Pilecki, a famous Polish soldier volunteered to get to Auschwitz to work undercover as an informant for the Polish army, and by extension, for the allies. He was written about extensively on Quora (Who are some lesser known people who changed the world?). Tadeusz was an important person in the camp, who dramatically boosted the prisoners’ morals, and Pilecki had to take the risks necessary to save him.The group exfiltred Tadeusz to another block just before the inspection, hid him for a day, and then got him back to the hospital where they nurtured Teddy back to health, along with helping him get a new job once he was in shape, this time in the SS-revier (the hospital of the SS), where he worked as a janitor - while still regularly fighting in boxing matches. His continuous victories, even against German boxing champions (such as Wilhelmen Maierem, middleweight vice-champion of Europe of 1927 and double German champion in 1922/1923) kept shining in the hearts of the desperate Polish prisoners, being described by former inmates as a “transfusion of faith”, “a proof that Germans could be defeated”.This caused the camp’s Gestapo (secret police) itself to grow interested in him in early 1943, and Tadeusz would have probably been executed in the following weeks, if not for - again! - a great streak of luck, namingly the visit to Auschwitz of one of the higher graded intendents of Neuengamme’s concentration camp, Hans Lütkemeyer… whom he knew personally.Hans Lütkemeyer was a former boxing referee, and he was the one who actually arbitered the final match of an international boxing tournament held in Poznań (a big Polish city) in 1938, which was won by Tadeusz in his weight category. They later sat next to each other at the post-tournament banquet, got well together, exchanged photos and became friends – something war had not erased. Hans actually came to the camp to organize a prisoners’ transport from Auschwitz to KL Neuengamme, and he happily took Tadeusz with him, along with several of the boxer’s closest friends.NeuengammeNeuengamme’s camp was situated in Northern Germany, next to Hamburg, relatively close to the sea. This camp was special, as the Germans used the local prisoners’ workforce for weaponry production. This is why transports from other concentration camps such as Auschwitz were organized in the first place; the Nazis desperately needed more workers for this vital industry… to replace the ones that were constantly dying of abuse.Neuengamme’s inmates digging the Dove-Elbe canal. The photographs are scarce for this camp.Upon arrival, Tadeusz and his convoy were shouted at by the camp’s prisoners from the other side of barbed wire: “Neuengamme isn’t Auschwitz, here you won’t last long!”. It’s true that Neuengamme was a very rough place, especially for Poles, who were treated the worse among the inmates (with Jews and Russians). Indeed, the Polish language was illegal in the camp, and in order to break the inmates’ spirits Germans organized executions of Poles on every Polish national day, along with constant acts of sadism directed specifically at them.Once again, Tadeusz and his companions went through a Quarantine period, during which the rumor had it a boxer had just arrived to the camp. The SS higher ups - who organized boxing fights in Neuengamme for a while, too - heard about it and decided to put Tadeusz’s skills to the test in a sparring session with another Polish prisoner - who happened to be somebody Teddy had already met and taught boxing in Auschwitz. Satisfied with what they saw, they soon decided to arrange a fight with a very big and sadistic anti-Polish German kapo, Jimmi Kachta, whose shoulders were higher than the top of Tadeusz’s head. The match referee was to be Hans Lütkemeyer, again.Tadeusz’s friends who came in the same transport feared for him, as despite all the things he did in Auschwitz, this time his opponent seemed too big - yet the Polish boxer wasn’t deterred. The boxing match was coming soon, and the whole camp knew about it. On the day of the fight, Kachta came to Tadeusz and offered him a piece of bread with a smile on his face, claiming that this would be his last meal. Tadeusz accepted, amused by his opponent’s confidence.The match happened near the Quarantine barracks, in the evening. Most of the camp’s prisoners had gathered in the evening for the fight, often separated from the scene by fences as they were in other sections of the camp. They couldn’t even see the match, but they wanted to know the result. And they didn’t wait very long, as the fight was short.Tadeusz forced his opponent to hunch himself by going low, which coupled with the height difference made the fight very uncomfortable for the German. He then seemingly avoided confrontation, playing on the kapo’s overconfidence, barely attacking and dancing around, letting his opponent’s guard go down… until the moment he did a rapid dodge and cleanly landed a right hand straight on the German’s jaw from a blind spot, causing an instant knockdown, and having him hit his head violently on the wooden canvas.Kachta started regaining consciousness after the count was already at 8, and thanks to the harsh rules of concentration camps’ boxing he was allowed to continue, but it was already over. Soon after Tadeusz repeated the exact same combination, causing his giant opponent’s lights to go out for 15 minutes.Testimonies from the time claim that the public literally exploded in joy, with some prisoners going as far as tearing metal grids and barbed wire apart with their bare hands just to get closer to the incredible short man who had just knocked out one of the worse abusers of the camp. Even the SS were enthusiastic about the incredible scene they had just witnessed, and awarded Tadeusz a special meal… dog’s thighs.This event caused a sudden “fashion” for Poles amongst the higher ups of the camp. Everybody wanted to have a Pole under his command, in his unit. Tadeusz and his fights became a central part of the Polish prisoners’ life and of the camp’s general atmosphere. He continued forth as the boxer of Neuengamme, fighting every Sunday for food and glory, and never loosing - even against opponents sometimes so tall he couldn’t reach their jaws.The boxer of NeuengammeTeddy’s early career pictures.His most famous fight in Neuengamme - in 1944 - is worth noting, as it inspired the novel “The Boxer and Death”, which later lead to an eponym Slovak film and influenced the scenario of a more known Hollywood movie called “The triumph of the Spirit”; Teddy battled the German professional boxer Schally Hottenbach, former America’s middleweight vice-champion.As opposed to most of the German kapos, Schally was actually massively supported by the SS and the German prisoners, therefore the fight quickly got political. Their first fight - 3 rounds long - ended in a draw. Schally fought well initially, but Teddy was gradually working him up and if not for the final bell, he would have knocked out his opponent cold.This caused the situation to grow even more tense, as a victor had to emerge from a rematch. And indeed, said rematch was one of the biggest events to ever happen in the camp. Everyone was waiting for it. Inmates, SS, the higher command. There were even v.i.p. Germans from Hamburg invited to Neuengamme for this very fight. Gambling was starting to get through the roof, as Hamburg had recently been bombed, and prisoners sent there had found thousands of coins in the debris - coins which had little use on the camp outside of said gambling.Funnily enough, it rapidly became known among the inmates that Neuengamme camp’s commander, Max Pauly, despite his reputation as a “Pole-killer” … had actually bet on Teddy. At the beginning of the fight, the Polish boxer - who did not want to be robbed of victory this time again - did something very unusual. He addressed himself directly to Max Pauly and demanded the fight to last until one of the boxers is knocked out. Surprised and a little bit worried about his losing his bet, the camp’s commander eventually agreed, causing the public to clamor in excitement.The rematch was short and intensive. The boxers fought on an equal footing in the first round, exchanging blows and evading their opponent’s attacks skillfully, while the public was going crazy.In the second round, Teddy went all out from the start, showering his German opponent in punches, until he landed a clean uppercut on his jaw. He then remembered his old trainer F.Stamm’s words: “Never concede a single second to your rival after connecting a shot. A strong punch is but an occasion to seize the moment”. And so Teddy did, following his attack by a series of blows ending by a brutal hook on Schally’s jaw, violently knocking out his opponent. The public roared…! And the boxer of Neuengamme remained undefeated.Escaping death again, and the liberationSoon after this fight, Teddy learned from the SS men who liked him that the local Gestapo wanted to execute him - for the exact same reasons than in Auschwitz. His referee friend Hans Lütkemeyer had just been sent away, and most of the former SS staff (which had become relatively pro-Polish in the past year) had been sent to the Eastern Front, being replaced by staunchly anti-Polish Germans. He had fought 20 times on Neuengamme’s ring, was undefeated and reigning, but he now had to flee. Thanks to his connections and relative authority, he managed to arrange a rapid change of units and to be transported to a sub-camp of Neuengamme in the city of Salzgitter, far away, and thus once again escaped death’s fingers.Nevertheless, soon after his arrival he fell strongly ill to some sort of pneumonia, and unfortunately the local facilities were not functional enough to take care of him properly. Unable to work and lying for already quite some time, he would again have probably been disposed of, if not for the help of a fellow Polish inmate working in the small sub-camp hospital, who claimed to the local commandant that Tadeusz might be infected with Typhus. Fearing for an epidemic, he ordered Tadeusz to be transported to another sub-camp in Drütte, where Tadeusz was taken care of by a Polish doctor.After about two months of recovery, he managed to get work in the same facilities he had just been healed in; within the hospital. As the soviets kept pushing in the East, Germans soon had no other choice but to evacuate the camp. And the 24th March 1945, Teddy found himself put in a transport to KL Bergen-Belsen, deeper in German lands. Bergen-Belsen was originally a camp in which “important” Jews from allied/neutral countries were detained, in hope of later using them to put pressure on their home countries and to treat them as currency for eventual war prisoners’ trades. For this reason, the camp wasn’t willingly killing its inmates at work, and was officially labelled in a stroke of psychopathic humor a “relaxational camp” (“Erholungslager”) by the Nazis.The train passed several German cities on its way, including a stop at the station in Celle, a city 20km (12 miles) away from KL Bergen-Belsen. At his arrival, the transport had the misfortune of halting in between a train containing ammunition and an other containing fuel. And of course, just moments later… Americans started bombing the city. But again, Tadeusz’s mad luck prevailed.Out of the 4000 prisoners transported from KL Neuengamme by this train, only 300 survived the onslaught. Teddy was among them, almost unscathed by the powerful explosions. Whoever was left alive and still able to walk went to the camp on their feet, escorted by the Hitlerjugend.Upon arrival, there were no formalities, nor any Quarantine. Lucky once more, Teddy met former Auschwitz SS men who instantly recognized him, including Karl Egersdorf, the man who gave him 5 soup pots after winning 1000 marks from a bet on the Polish boxer. This, again, allowed him to survive, as through these connections he managed to get a preferential job, which was of utmost importance as the war was lost for the Germans and the situation was deteriorating very rapidly in camp – notably when it comes to the resources allocated for the prisoners.At this point, hunger and epidemics were decimating the Bergen-Belsen camp’s population at an alarming rate (especially among women and children), there were rumors about blowing the whole place up with the prisoners when the allies would be too close, and many of the SS wanted to flee to Hamburg. In fact, the SS men of the camp did in part run away during the negotiations with the allies to liberate the camp, but most came back after what seems to be a misunderstanding of orders. The last days of the camp were chaotic, as the SS supervision stopped.The allies entered the KL Bergen-Belsen about 3 weeks later, 15th April 1945. What they saw didn’t really meet the expectations they had from a so called “relaxational camp”. On about 1 square mile (1600m x 1600m), there were 60 000 prisoners packed, about half of which were either dead or dying. There were corpses hanging from barracks’ windows, dead and alive people laying one on the other indiscriminately, random stacks of corpses dispersed around the area, pits filled with dead bodies this and there, and wailing but living skeletal humans crawling around trying to find food, all in the midst of unbearable fetor. The first journalist to enter the camp, british photograph George Rodger, admitted 40 years later that he did never once look again at the photos he took that day; he simply couldn’t bear the sight.Even though from the allies’ perspective the camp’s liberation was an almost traumatic event due to the sheer amount of nightmarish suffering they were exposed to, the prisoners remembered this day as one of the best they had during the whole war; those who were still able to walk ran to the liberators with screams of joy. The conflict was finally over, and for the first time in 5 years Tadeusz was free. It was a lucky time for him, as he also found his future wife, Zofia – who worked in the camp’s hospital as a nurse – hiding between corpses a couple days prior to the liberation.Bergen-Belsen’s liberation - one of the “lighter” pictures taken by George Rodger.Post war life - and deathAfter the war, Tadeusz temporarily stayed on the allies’ controlled side of Europe, and kept working as a soldier for the local Polish army until 1946. He continued boxing semi-professionally while organizing sport events for Polish soldiers, fighting 17 times in total on German, French and Belgian rings in that 1.5 years’ span; he scored 15 wins, 2 draws, and no losses. He became quite known amongst allied soldiers as “the one with Iron Fists”. Still, he was missing his family and his country.Right after KL Bergen-Belsen’s liberation, he participated to anti-Nazi investigation missions, which screened the surrounding areas looking for SS men hiding amongst civilians. One of the things this answer - despite its length - might have not conveyed properly, is that Teddy actively participated to underground anti-SS movements during the war, especially in Auschwitz. He was actually a close friend to Witold Pilecki, the leader of the underground movement in the camp, and one of his most trusted cooperators; one of the first people Pilecki visited when he returned to Poland after the war was actually his friend Tadeusz. Teddy swore an oath to Pilecki in 1941 back in Auschwitz – in the presence of other underground fighters – with regards to their common work and mutual fidelity in the face of German oppression.Tadeusz notably conspired against KL Auschwitz’ commandant Rudolph Höss with other prisoners, trying to kill him – between others - with Typhus infected lices (which were commonly used against the SS) and by forcing a horse accident, but the Nazi leader kept surviving, at most breaking his leg during one of the attempts. Teddy managed however to kill his favorite dog, Rolf - which was trained to jump to the throat of Jews upon hearing “Juden!” - and ate him with his friends. Despite intensive researches Höss never found his dog again, nor did he learn what happened to him.In 1946, Tadeusz decided to come back to Poland, reluctantly getting under the Soviets’ umbrella. Sadly, he learned his mother had died in 1945, but he still met with the rest of his family and came back to Warsaw, his city – to what was left of it, that is.The castle square of Warsaw, end of WWII.In 1947, when Pilecki was falsely tried for treason by the Soviets, Tadeusz got caught in the crossfire and was himself interrogated and insolently suspected of “national treason”. He would have probably been heavily sentenced for his work in the Polish army if not for the fact the interrogator he fell on was the brother of a KL Auschwitz inmate he had helped in the camp – the man instead thanked Teddy and arranged the investigation to be abandoned and the charges to be dropped.This was but one more time he had escaped death, but Pilecki wasn’t this lucky; he was executed the same year, shot in the back of the head by the Soviets (his body has yet to be found). Tadeusz was strongly affected by this event. Still, he dreamed of coming back to the rings, but after getting very sick in 1946, his condition was never the same again. He fought only once more between the ropes, against his former rival and Polish champion Antoni Czortek, and unfortunately, for the first time in years, Tadeusz lost. Not feeling it anymore he decided to retire on the spot.He went on to become a teacher in middle & high school for the rest of his life; he mostly taught physical education, but also chemistry, amongst others. He was a coach for a while in a correctional school, where he taught difficult kids fair play and mutual respect. He was energetic and open minded, which was very appreciated by the youth. His beautiful art pieces would decorate the hallway leading to the school’s gym. His pupils adored him and saw him as a role model.He would sometimes talk to his students about what he experienced in concentration camps with a trembling voice, often mentioning his spiritual figure, Fr. Maximilian Kolbe, a catholic priest who was imprisoned in Auschwitz and volunteered to get gazed instead of a prisoner he didn’t even know – an event that marked Teddy for all of his life, for he knew the priest personally and was attached to him.Finally, Tadeusz died in 1991 at the age of 74 from a stroke. The same morning, he had written a letter to his daughter and grandchildren, in which he did not forget to express his sincere love to them. And that’s how the hero’s legend ended.Many professional boxers fought for bread – and often, for their lives – in KL Auschwitz. The most known of them in popular culture are Salamo Arouch and Victor Perez; both had their struggles in the camp immortalized by movies relating their stories (respectively Triumph of the Spirit (1989) and Victor Young Perez (2013)). Victor Perez in particular lost his life in 1945, during the evacuation march of Auschwitz, shot by a guard while attempting to distribute bread he had found to other starving prisoners.But both of them arrived to the camp in 1943, when Teddy was already gone, and they never got to meet the former undisputed Auschwitz champion. However, even though they did not meet him, he was with them until the very end; as related by the end of the war by the Polish writer and former inmate T.Borkowski, who arrived to the camp in 1943 and had never seen Tadeusz either:“To this day we all hold deep within us the memory of inmate n°77, he who beat the Germans as he wished”.Inmate n°77, a mural in the name of Tadeusz Pietrzykowski, Nidzica, PolandI wrote this answer based on the most complete and researched biography we have of Tadeusz Pietrzykowski, namingly the book “Bokser z Auschwitz” (“The Boxer from Auschwitz”) written by Marta Bogacka.

There is no truth to this question historically or definitionally.Given our first-past-the-post district-representation scheme, we have had two pragmatic parties rather than multiple ideological parties as in proportional-representation schemes. Our parties change all the time and reflect multiple ideologies at any given time. The change owes to the most active issues of the day as well as to the most active elements within each of the parties in terms of personal and monetary energy.Here is a rough approximation of the state of the two parties today (with red representing the Republican Party and blue representing Democratic cohorts):The Two Parties LaunchA political party is simply an organization that nominates candidates for public office who then run for that office under the banner of and with the assistance of that party. That distinguishes political parties from other political interest groups, which may or may not be allied with a given political party.The Democratic Party formed in roughly 1828 as the Era of Good Feelings came to an end, and is now the oldest active political party in the world. It split from the Democratic-Republican Party as something of a purist second party supporting Thomas Jefferson’s agrarian vision for the young nation and so it opposed federalism with a platform of states’ rights, republicanism and constitutionalism. It initiated a number of populist programs from Manifest Destiny to Indian relocation to opposition to a national bank. It is a liberal party, but within a few years the Whig Party arises with a more clearly liberal agenda.The Republican Party. When, in 1854, the Whig Party proved insufficiently liberal to oppose slavery and the Kansas–Nebraska Act, the more ardent Whigs reached out to anti-slavery members of the Free Soil Party and the Democratic Party to form the Republican Party. This formation and the roiling issue of Slavery in the United States hardened party lines, changing the Democratic Party to a more conservative and pro-slavery stance.For more than a century and a half now, these have been our two major political parties.Major Political Outlooks in the USSeveral different political threads and outlooks exist in the United States, and most have been reflected in both parties. Major outlooks would be those that have provided the leading themes for the parties and characterized our elected presidents.Republicanism/Liberalism. The founding outlook was Republicanism in the United States, which remains the dominant political outlook with slightly more than fifty percent of Americans holding viewpoints that are liberal, that is, that favor individual rights and freedoms, smaller government, free markets and free enterprise, citizen sovereignty and the other tenets derived from such Age of Enlightenment thinkers as Locke, Smith, Say, Kant, Condorcet, Voltaire and many others. The liberal label arrived from Spain as the result of the formation there in 1810 of the Liberal Party to emulate the constitutional monarchism of Great Britain.Whether in the Libertarian Party, Republican Party or independent, libertarians stand as our most thoroughly liberal outlook.Conservatism. True conservatism, which is to say a preference for constitutional monarchism, or Toryism, has not been a factor in US politics since the end of the Revolutionary War. While political science recognizes constitutional monarchy and Toryism as liberal, conservatives in the US are even more to the republican end of the liberal scale, as they wish to conserve our more liberal heritage here in the US.The conservative distinction comes as a result of the desire to put morality on par with liberty in weighing issues, and the various stripes of conservatism can be distinguished by the degree and type of morality they wish to leverage. So-called Burkean conservatives (after Edmund Burke) wish to promote a more nearly secular Judeo-Christian morality. Christian conservatives can be distinguished between Catholic and Protestant, with the latter being further subdivided into liturgical sects versus piety and evangelical sects.*Progressivism. The unification of Germany under Otto von Bismarck culminating in 1871 went on to establish the modern paternalistic state and remains the dominant event shaping politics in modern times. Bismarck, a thorough-going monarchist, co-opted the liberal and socialist movements opposed to him by implementing their own schemes as instruments of state power. Social democracy, which had been Marxian, became instead Bismarckian, that is, authoritarian and non-egalitarian (fascism and communism in turn were also colored by the high modern state to the extent they also became right-wing).Progressivism arrived in the United States slowly starting in the 1870s. While it is defined as a preference for social democracy, it is more accurately a preference for the high modern paternalistic state, that is, top-down government as opposed to the bottom-up government foundational to republican government. It took hold in both parties and can best be characterized here in its early decades as a native-stock reaction to increasing immigration from beyond Western Europe, an attempt to make certain the United States remained Anglo-Saxon, Protestant and male dominated.Right progressivism more wholeheartedly embraced the Bismarckian side of the high modern state including our only embrace of Imperialism. Left progressivism too was more Bismarckian but with more concern expressed for socialism and social democracy. Otherwise, the two agendas were not all that different, leading to a lot of party crossover.The Progressive Era lasted from roughly 1896 to 1921, brought to an end by the excesses of Prohibition and the Wilson administration (credited widely in Europe as the first fascist regime). Progressivism revived with the election of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 (claiming to be a liberal to hide his progressivism, then out of favor, a source of confusion ever since) and his implementation of New Deal progressive policies, which, though now acknowledged to have greatly delayed recovery from the Great Depression, were popular at the time. The Red Scare of the Cold War marginalized progressivism. It began to revive in its present postmodern Alinskyite incarnation beginning with the student protest movements of the late 60s.Statism. With a very few exceptions, the disastrous terms of the last two progressive Republicans, Herbert Hoover and Richard Nixon, eliminated progressivism from that party only to have it replaced by a gummy generic sense that, faulty as the high modern state has proven, it is nevertheless what the people want and expect. Better to go with the flow than to advocate for the republicanism that we are constitutionally guaranteed.Minor Political Outlooks in the USMinor political outlooks would be those that have been the basis for candidacies for the presidency or for party factions without electoral success.Populism. Populism is not a specific outlook but rather an attempt to leverage the political passions of the day, usually with a single issue foremost, to gain votes. It exists today as Single-issue politics but in its heyday under William Jennings Bryan was a major branch of the Democratic Party. It is usually divisible into agrarian and political movements, but for our purposes can be considered as a single movement, particularly now that small-scale farming has so dwindled. In the lifetime of anyone reading this, populism is more used to undergird party messaging and elicit the votes of narrow issue groups than as a movement in its own right. Simply think of the use by both parties of such issues as gun rights/control, abortion rights/control and money in politics/free speech.Single-issue politics would cover such contemporary phenomena as the Green Party, marijuana-legalization movements and the like as well as longer term social movements with a political agenda, such as Women's liberation, and shorter term explicitly political ad hoc organizations such as Occupy or Black Lives Matter. While the Tea Party movement began populist as a tax protest, it soon settled into a wider conservative groove that was then co-opted by False flag fund-seeking groups and illegal resistance from the IRS.Reactionary Politics. Reactionary refers to a conscientious effort to defend or return to a status quo ante that goes beyond a mere desire to conserve and beyond mere populism. While it has been applied to world politics in a variety of situations, here in the US I employ it primarily only for the politics that oppose racial equality, particularly those that wished to support and maintain Jim Crow laws.Left Socialism. As Bernie Sanders recently demonstrated, left socialism has not disappeared, though it does remain an insignificant force in US politics, the province of a few noteworthies such as Noam Chomsky, Albert Einstein, Ralph Nader and so on.Right Socialism. The mainstream socialisms (fascism, communism and social democracy) each had followings in the interwar years and were highly influential in the union movement and Democratic politics. From Eugene V. Debs to Norman Thomas, there is usually a socialist candidate for the presidency in each American election. It should be noted here that the antipathy felt by each of the three main forms of socialism for the other two was a factor in US politics during the interwar years and considerably more so in Europe. Indeed, World War II can be looked at largely as rivalry between the emerging forms of socialism.Fundamentalism. Christian Fundamentalism peaked in the early 20th century and retains not much force, though non-Christian fundamentalism is becoming a rising concern in politics. The Moral Majority that appeared during the Reagan years was less fundamentalist than simply religious conservative.A Brief History of our Two Major PartiesThese various outlooks have played out in American politics since the end of the Civil War reflected in both parties. As pointed out at the outset of this answer, we have pragmatic rather than ideological parties, and they change and adapt constantly in order to gain an electoral advantage. Themes that promise a winning advantage are pushed to the fore, while problematic themes are pushed to the background. Before the age of mass media, politicians could more easily address each audience uniquely, telling each what it wanted to hear. Now, part of the art of politics practiced by both parties is to suppress marginal cohorts that would be problematic to message to.Post-Civil War Period. Given that the Democratic Party took the blame for causing the Civil War, the first four post-war elections went to Republicans who were generals and war heroes—Ulysses Grant, Rutherford Hayes and James Garfield (with Chester Arthur serving out the bulk of Garfield’s term following his assassination). The outlook of all was liberal, and their time in office was spent administering and slowly moderating Reconstruction, protecting the right of blacks to vote, moderating Indian policy and restoring civil service to a merit system rather than the spoils system first implemented by Andrew Jackson. The latter three had been civil rights attorneys, with Hayes having made a reputation winning cases against the Fugitive Slave Act and Arthur having won a suit that ended segregation of New York City street cars.With all four having been generals and somewhat accustomed to a hands-off approach to getting the job done, the corruption that had become endemic beginning with Jackson, festered and became the leading issue of the 1884 election. Arthur, dealing with kidney disease, campaigned weakly and did not receive the Republican nomination. The election went instead to Grover Cleveland, a Bourbon Democrat, by that time the last bastion of old-time liberalism in the Democratic Party as progressivism began to take hold. However, the Democratic Party was far from liberal on race and women’s rights issues. It was, though, stronger on free enterprise and more opposed to protectionism than the Republican Party at that time.Benjamin Harrison, grandson of William Henry Harrison, our ninth president, who died only a month into office, and also a Civil War general and lawyer, was perhaps the most stalwart of all post-war presidents on behalf of African-American rights. (In retrospect, the choice of National Union Democrat Andrew Johnson as Lincoln’s running mate for his second term was disastrous for those rights, as, serving out Lincoln’s term in the critical years right after the war, he was able to blunt Lincoln’s and the Republicans’ civil rights agenda.) Cleveland succeeded Harrison, the only president to serve split terms.The Progressive Era. Progressives finally swept into office with the election of Republican William McKinley in 1896, with Republican progressives winning the next four presidential elections. But these Republicans were different. While continuing to support a gold-only monetary standard (with Bimetallism the populist preference) and tariff protectionism, they were no longer liberal on the issue of race, though each of the Republicans were somewhat moderate by contrast to Democrats, especially in the subsequent presidency of Woodrow Wilson.When, in McKinley’s first term, Cuba demanded freedom from Spain, he moved cautiously at first. But when the Battleship Maine blew up in Havana Harbor, with the Spanish falsely suspected, Americans clamored for war. Still, McKinley moved cautiously, but as the public responded positively to his increasing bellicosity, we were soon battling Spain in the Philippines as well. In the settlement of the war, we purchased Guam, the Philippines and Puerto Rico from Spain. Hawaii was soon annexed, absurdly under a claim of Manifest Destiny. This expansion easily won McKinley a second term, one that had to be completed by Theodore Roosevelt after McKinley’s assassination.Roosevelt devoted his terms in office to his pet project, the Panama Canal, and to reforms in the progressive mold—trust-busting (with trusts referring to large corporations), coming down on behalf of striking cold miners and putting federal clamps on railway rates. He issued almost as many executive orders during his time in office as all of his predecessors combined and, like our present president, did so in an attempt to circumvent Congress. By his second term, the Congress, though Republican, was digging in its heels and refusing to pass his bills. Because he had needlessly promised to seek only one term when running for the presidency, he threw his support to his Secretary of War, Howard Taft, for the 1908 election. When Taft did not perform as Roosevelt wanted, he ran as the candidate of the Progressive Party, throwing the election to Woodrow Wilson.By the end of Wilson’s second term, Americans were fed up with progressive rule, and for excellent reason: Charles Tips' on Woodrow Wilson’s Administration. The Progressive Era ended with the election of two hearty liberals in Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge. Harding adroitly ended Wilson’s Depression of 1920–21, and together they helped stoke the booming economy of the “Roaring Twenties.” A third Republican followed, but Herbert Hoover was cut from different cloth (indeed, he had long been the target of barbs from Coolidge, who accurately predicted he would flounder in the coming economic straits).Hoover was, like Nixon later, a Quaker from California who was Republican primarily because only Republicans could gain elective office in the western states at that time. Quite arguably, both were not just progressives but left progressives. Little known to Hoover or anyone, the seeds of economic disaster had already been sowed at the Genoa Conference (1922) by social democratic economist John Keynes (Charles Tips's answer to What caused the Great Depression?) Hoover rode the Depression up, while a Democrat was elected who, starting from his first day in office, rode it down though not without prolonging it by as much as seven years by some estimates, especially by contrast to Harding’s handling of the predecessor depression, which opened with worse starting metrics.The New Deal. As Rex Tugwell, a member of Franklin Roosevelt’s Brain trust admitted, the programs of the New Deal were cobbled together after Roosevelt took office from programs Hoover had already put in place. Beyond the economic bumbling, FDR ran as corrupt an administration as any ever, was far from a civil rights leader (he secured black votes through the lure of civil service jobs and other promises he did not keep and assisted in the continuing of Southern disenfranchisement of black voters), and he was totally unprepared for a major war that had been brewing on both the Atlantic and Pacific sides for years and promising to engulf us in it.** So why is he so esteemed? He, more than any other president implemented the Blue Model—the high modern paternalistic state—together with accustoming the American people to the idea that they should look to government for deliverance rather than to their own initiative and industry.Fortunately for the Roosevelt legacy, FDR died during his fourth term in office leaving the black mark of having used atomic weapons to his successor, Harry Truman, even though there is no doubt he would’ve done likewise. Truman, for his part, was not nearly such a progressive as FDR, though he did pull a neat trick on Republicans to win election in ’48.That trick owed to the fact that during the ’33 to ’52 years, the GOP was moderate and quite factionalized. The party held majorities throughout the North and West, while the South was solidly Democratic. Newspapers in our major cities overwhelmingly endorsed FDR’s Republican opponents, but he countered by going direct to the people via radio. Between his willingness to use taxpayer money to buy votes and his ability to go direct to the people, FDR was not seriously challenged. Rather, the GOP was riven with divisions—between the isolationists and internationalists in foreign policy, between conservatives, moderates and liberals, and especially between the fact that the liberal Northeastern wing of the party led by Thomas Dewey was generally aligned with FDR’s programs, simply feeling they could be administered more efficiently. This became Truman’s trick as he introduced a number of measures in Congress favored by Dewey and Northern and Western Democrats knowing that conservative Republicans would stall them. He then loudly attacked a “Do Nothing” Congress. That plus the fact that Hoover, a near political clone of FDR more than a Republican, had given Republicans a bad name meant Democratic domination during this period, a period also known as the Fifth Party System.Post-War Period. With the election of Dwight Eisenhower in ’52 during the Korean Conflict, US party politics entered a new era heavily colored, as already mentioned, by the Red Scare of the Cold War. Eisenhower, who had no known political affiliation, may have run as a Republican for the simple reason the GOP asked him first. Still, he functioned as a solid Republican liberal in office.In the first place, rather than inflate away the war debt as Wilson had disastrously done, he jacked marginal tax rates above ninety percent, promising to cut taxes substantially once War Bonds were paid off. Secondly, he put a premium on civil rights for African-Americans. He was no civil libertarian, but he did feel that the one legitimate complaint the Soviets could use against our moral position in the world was the neglected state of race relations. (His two major pieces of civil rights legislation had their enforcement teeth pulled out, however, by New Deal progressive Senate leader Lyndon Johnson.) Eisenhower also, with a booming economy and strong tax revenues in a lean government, promoted infrastructure spending—the Interstate Highway program, a space race, an arms race and so on.The 1960 presidential race between Richard Nixon and John Kennedy took place while I was in 6th grade and is the first I remember clearly. As a member of a pro-Eisenhower rare Republican family in Texas, I knew I should favor Nixon, but I disliked him intensely and much preferred Kennedy. It was only years later, during the Nixon presidency, that I realized Nixon was the progressive of the two with Kennedy the only true liberal ever elected by the Democratic Party. He even preferred supply-side economics and set the stage to implement Eisenhower’s promised tax cuts, something he did not complete before his assassination.During these years, both parties were liberal, the largely reactionary Southern bloc of the Democratic Party apart. With anti-communist conservatives ascendant in the GOP, liberal Republicans, particularly in the Northeast, were converting to Democrat. The voting lines in Congress in those days were quite unusual what with civil libertarians and defense hawks springing up in the Democratic Party to match the many such Republicans. Even the American Civil Liberties Union was ascendant within the Democratic Party. The only progressives tended to be throwbacks to the New Deal, like LBJ, and so this was an era of bipartisanship, Southern Democrats not just apart but often ostracized even by their own party fellows.It fell to the ever-calculating Johnson to push Kennedy’s tax cuts and his civil rights bill, steps seemingly at odds with his political pedigree. However, we found out years later that he had merely recalculated the advantage of enfranchising blacks, by then an inevitability, by twisting the arms of Southern politicians claiming, “I’ll have these niggers voting Democrat for two-hundred years.” He helped insure that by adding his War on Poverty program as part of his Great Society initiative.When he reached a dead-end in Vietnam, he declined to run for another term deferring to old liberal warrior Hubert Humphrey. This opened the door to the execrable Richard Nixon. He may have taken the Republican Party down, but at least he made sure that few progressives would find a home in the party from then on. It was also Nixon who decided on a strategy for turning the South Republican. He got nowhere with this, but his team had spotted a trend that would spool out… students in school in the South during the integration years of the ’60s after seeing the sordid dramas played out on television almost nightly by and large broke with the older generations on the topic of race. Those older generations are now in their seventies to dead, but over the years since, they supported Democratic candidates from the South—Carter, Clinton, Gore for example—but no “liberal” Northern or Western Democrats of the the type they felt had stabbed them in the back on integration. As my generation aged, the South steadily became Republican, just as solidly now as it had been Democratic in my youth.The icky feeling left by the Nixon debacle opened the door to good-government guy Jimmy Carter, who though moderately progressive, downplayed that and carried the South to win the presidency—something Democrats expected to own given the negative sentiment against Republicans given the extremely bad taste left by Nixon and (his brief successor) Gerald Ford’s pardon of him. Carter was so inept, he not only swiftly squandered the Democratic advantage, he almost single-handedly killed Keynesian economics by producing stagflation as part of his economic malaise.The Reagan Era. The election of Ronald Reagan was a sea change for US politics. The GOP was clearly liberal again, and, in the hands of Reagan, our American heritage regained much of its luster. Conservatives, religious conservatives and even libertarians by and large could unite behind him. The few remaining liberals in the Democratic Party (I was one) returned to the Republican fold, only to be called Neocons by our former allies.He, along with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, were stalwarts both politically and economically, and good things happened around the world. Meanwhile, the sixties student radicals now reaching their progressive peak of power in the Democratic Party clearly felt that things were not going according to script. They set out on a futile quest to ding the president however they could, to turn him into another Nixon. Alas. All of his military-strength posturing led, not to World War III as they predicted, but to the rejection of communism in the Soviet bloc.Such were his two terms in office that he became the first president in a long time to have his vice president succeed him electorally. George H. W. Bush, though a gifted bureaucrat, lacked Reagan’s political instincts, and enthusiasm for his presidency from conservatives in particular began receding. However, just before that, following Bush’s success in Desert Storm, his re-election seemed so inevitable, the way was open for relative unknown Bill Clinton, who, with the Southern Democratic bloc behind him, easily outpaced his more progressive opponents in the primaries.Clinton’s wife Hillary was plenty progressive to mollify the heart of the party, but Clinton’s own politics turned out to be something called Third Way, a split-the-difference tap dance between progressivism and conservatism that he turned out to be quite talented at. Indeed, he worked quite well with the Gingrich Congress, to the chagrin of progressives. Still, he was such a loose cannon in office that progressives had to come to his rescue time and again, creating something of a love/hate relationship, after which the party stalwarts were anxious to get one of their own to replace him in the form of Al Gore.The 2000 election was down to the wire with George W. Bush finally prevailing after much drama and mad bleating by the progressive media. Naturally, this helped endear Bush, the son, to conservatives despite the fact that his politics were more statist, almost on par with his dad’s. All in all, no one came out of Bush’s two terms looking good—certainly not the many Democratic congressmen who piously warned bout Weapons of Mass Destruction and voted to resume the war with Iraq (before turning into a clown-show opposition) nor the Frank-Dodd crowd with their house-loan utopianism and certainly not the Pelosi-Reid Congress we got the final two years that came in spending like drunken sailors with the president unable to find where he’d mislaid his veto pen. And so, the Reagan era that had started with such promise fizzled.What we have launched into now remains to be seen. It certainly, given all the debacles, will not go down as the Obama era, but whether the Democrats can hold or power goes back to Republicans is up in the air owing to the two conspicuously worst candidates in memory, perhaps ever. Both parties are at their lowest ebb making one wonder what sea change is in store for this nation.One thing is certain though, the two parties have not switched places. Yes, they switch ideologies from time to time but not with each other. Both sides have had their liberal elements, their progressive elements, their conservative elements, their populist elements. They are pragmatic parties after all; they don’t fight for ideas, they fight to win elections.For clarity sake… where the ideologies stand on the political spectrum:* See for example My answer to Which is worse for America: Libertarianism or anti-Libertarianism? Why? and My answer to Are people who claim that the US civil war was not about slavery simply racists in denial?** Senator Hiram Johnson of California, a Roosevelt supporter, told of his utter amazement in the 1936 election as FDR brazenly mobilized government agencies to dole out subsidies in return for votes. "He starts out with probably eight-million votes bought," calculated Johnson, "The other side has to buy them one-by-one and cannot hope to match his money." ["His money" referring actually to our money.] Roosevelt defeated Alf Landon by 523 electoral votes to 8. He also politicized and weaponized the IRS and other government agencies to a far greater extent than even Nixon or Obama.

I am at a loss to understand what ‘improvements’ Trump has made to the US economy, in the short or long term. Based on the facts, it is my perspective, he has made absolutely none.His nonsensical Tariff War with China has single-handedly destroyed the Farming industry in the Western USA, now going into the 3rd year as crops rot on the ground and with the Chinese market expected to be lost never to return. His tariff war has negatively impacted large and small businesses alike. And Trump’s wild promise of bringing back jobs to the USA has fallen squarely on its face.Here are the Facts:Trump undertook a tariff war with China and our allies in spite of advice from business leaders, Corporate CEO’s, as well as both Republican and Democratic economists, who had pointed out that this would not be a winning strategy. But Trump ignored their advice, and went with his gut because, according to him, “ he knows best” and “ only he can fix it”. Besides “winning would be so easy!”Trump promised to make China pay by mounting a tariff war that he said would be easy to win, but has alienated allies like Canada, the UK, and the European Union and that is costing Farmers their crops, their farms and their markets. Trump has already provided $12 billion in handouts of your tax dollars and has just paid out another $16 billion, all in an effort to ensure their support for his upcoming run for re-election. It’s worthy to note, that $62 million of the payout, went to two convicted felons in Brazil for their holdings in the US.GM had to fire 14,000 workers in large part due to tariffs on aluminum and steel, making their cars much more expensive and Ford’s CEO has reported that the tariffs have cost the company an additional $1 billion as of the end of last Nov. These costs have to be passed onto customers or absorbed by the company by cutting staff and workers, and it just keeps getting worse day in and day out.. yet this fool has no clue…Trump handed out $12 billion and then another $16 billion to compensate the western farmers, for their China export losses, yet virtually none of the money reached the small farmer as most went to large industrial-sized farm organizations.Because of Trump’s tariffs, farm bankruptcies and farmer suicides are at an all-time high with no end in sight.The vice president of the National Farmers Union, appeared May 16th, 2019 on Fox News to discuss President Donald Trump’s ongoing trade war with China, and had this to say: “It has been insane,” Edelburg said. “We’ve had a lot of farmers — a lot more bankruptcies going on, a lot more farmer suicides.” Source: FOX NEWS May 16th, 2019“We have more commodities, more grain sitting on the ground now because we lost huge export markets. We’ve lost export markets that we’ve had for 30 years that we’ll never get a chance to get back again. Farmers are hopeful to get their crops in the ground this year but really hope we have a place to sell it come fall.” Edelburg said the Trump administration’s federal aid to farmers would help, but wouldn’t be a solution to the problem. “We don’t need band-aids. We need long-term fixes to make sure farmers are able to survive. …the way (Trump ) is going about it may not be the right fix.” Source: FOX NEWS May 16th, 2019Not only have Amerian farmers lost their exports to China for the last two years, and now entering their 3rd year this month, but China has also found other countries including Canada, Brazil, and Europe to import crops that had been the USA’s exclusively.Farmers and agriculturists are now admitting that there is a very slim chance of winning back the Chinese market, now that China has switched to other importers.Now Trump has exacerbated the problem by promising to put an additional 30% tariff on another $300 billion of Chinese Goods timed just prior to the Christmas Season. As might be imagined, Retailers who have been already closing down stores and shuttering storefronts are less than happy with Trump’s policies for MAGA.Because of Trump’s tariffs, and Trump’s threat of more, China’s is now in the process of devaluing its currency to better compete for markets that America had owned on a virtual exclusive basis.Trump turned down the PPT, the Pacific Partnership Treaty that would have given America complete access to all the Pacific rim countries while blocking out China. Yet Trump was so stupid that he believed that China was the lead country and turned down the treaty because of this stupidity and the fact that Obama, including the Republican party, by the way, were for it. Now China is in, and the USA is out. Once again Trump snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.Although Trump is claiming a great economy, it was the winning economy that Obama turned over to Trump upon leaving office. For the last three years, Trump has been claiming “ his economy” has been the best ever, and even promising it would reach 6%, yet it hasn’t gotten above 3.2% and is currently tracking a little above 2% with the real prospect of a recession on the not too distant horizon.He’s made the USA a global embarrassment. For many businesses and all the western farmers, international trade is infinitely more difficult than it was just a few years ago having lost China their main export target.Trump hasn’t brought any jobs back to the USA, in fact, Lordstown closed down their GM plant.A division of Harley Davidson left the USA for Europe.The Minding industry that he supported with your tax dollars has virtually closed down except for a few that are hanging on by a thread while green energy that he has refused to support because Obama had, is larger than the coal industry and growing at double digits, while mining is going the way of buggy whips.The money he and Pence gave to the Air Conditioning plant in Indiana to remain open, moved their production to Mexico and closed down the US plant never to reopen.Trump ripped up numerous trade deals and replaced them with either nothing or moved the deck chairs slightly around the deck so that he could proclaim victory when in fact all he really did was to justify another so-called win. A good case in point was the needless drama, cost, and loss of goodwill caused in settling the NAFTA dispute with both Mexico and Canada. With a simple inclusion that didn’t materially alter the plan from the original, Trump then changed the name and claimed victory.The stock market chaos we’ve witnessed in recent weeks exposes the lie at the heart of his public relations campaign. One indicator is how Treasury bonds are doing, and are now starting to go badly:“The yield on 10-year bonds fell below the rate on the 2-year Treasury bond — this phenomenon, known as an inverted yield curve, has always been a reliable early indicator of a recession because it best reflects bondholders’ short-term expectations for the economy.“The other indicator is unemployment. Despite an official Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment count of 6.1 million unemployed workers, the real unemployed worker figure is more like 11.5 million. By not counting the 1.5 million “marginally attached” and “discouraged” workers, and especially by not counting the 4 million workers who are “part-time-of-necessity,” Trump’s official figure fails to capture the severe economic pain still being felt by far too many workers Of course, this undercounting of the real number of unemployed is just one piece of the larger picture, as there are tens of millions of counted workers who try to survive every day on low or minimum wages with marginal or no health insurance, sick leave, retirement security or parental leave. And then there are the millions of part-time workers who have no benefits at all”. Source” Trump says it's the best economy ever. The stock market and unemployment prove him wrong. Opinion | 'Best economy we've ever had'? Mr. President, I don't think so.All of us are paying for tax-cut corporate successes as our government deficits and debt has exploded under Trump. In other words, the increase in corporate profits is being paid for by all of us Americas, our children, grandchildren and most likely great, great, grandchildren. It’s not Trump and his wealthy friends who are paying, it’s the rest of the hard-working American breadwinners that are paying off the debt in order to reward wealthy corporations, their executives and wealthy shareholders.In spite of Trump’s continuing claim of a great economy and stock market, it is worthy to note that the economy and the stock market had greater increases under Obama than Trump.Like almost everything Trump has done over his lifetime, the economic “miracle” that Trump promises is more scam than substance, like the six companies that he bankrupted, and the $413 million that he got from his father and subsequently squandered. Trump’s claim of being a great negotiator and a great businessman is all a con without any substance in fact. This is the guy who promised to get rid of the national debt in eight years yet has increased the debt to an all-time high of $22 trillion up 27% alone over last year.If you don’t care about the national debt, deficits and the high cost of servicing our astronomical debt and still believe that billionaires and highly profitable corporations deserved a massive tax cut, then you voted wisely when you voted for Trump.Because of the stupid misguided tariff war with China, all indications are we will slip into a recession if not a depression in the next 12 to 18 months. The markets are roiling with uncertainty, and Wall Street is warning investors that there are major storm clouds ahead.In spite of Trumps continuing claim of a great economy and stock market, it is worthy to note that the stock market had greater increases under Obama than Trump.Like almost everything Trump has done over his lifetime, the economic “miracle” that Trump promises is more scam than substance, like the six companies that he bankrupted, and the $413 million that he got from his father and subsequently squandered. Trump’s claim of being a great negotiator and a great businessman is all a con without any substance in fact. This is the guy who promised to get rid of the national debt in eight years yet has increased the debt to an all-time high of $22 trillion up 27% alone in one yearIf you don’t care about the national debt, deficits and the high cost of servicing our astronomical debt and still believe that billionaires and highly profitable corporations deserved a massive tax cut, then you voted wisely when you voted for Trump.Because of the stupid tariff war with China, all indications are we will slip into a recession if not a depression in the next 12 to 18 months. The markets are roiling with uncertainty, and Wall Street is warning investors that there are major storm clouds ahead.Since being elected, Trump has been claiming an economy that Obama delivered, (chart follows) and has been able to ride on Obama’s economic success until his own “economic policies’ are now starting to bite with disastrous effect. Now the USA is facing the real possibility of a recession in spite of the fact that Trump was handed a large and growing economy.Yeah, But What about Trump's great unemployment Numbers?Despite an official Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment count of 6.1 million unemployed workers, the real unemployed worker figure is more like 11.5 million. Source” Trump says it's the best economy ever. The stock market and unemployment prove him wrong. Opinion | 'Best economy we've ever had'? Mr. President, I don't think so.A recent Economist Magazine article reported that it is not only America that has been blessed with falling unemployment rates; it’s the case across the entire richest countries around the world. 2/3 of the OECD counties, mostly the rich ones, are enjoying record employment. Canada, the UK, Germany Australia and even France and suffering Spain and Italy have had a resurgence in employment. Japan report that 77% of those in the age group 15-64 have jobs. The size of the labor force has even grown in Germany.Here’s why:1. It is partially cyclical, the result of economic stimulus and a resurgence resulting in recovery following the great recession of 2008 and 2009 as pent up spending and recovering economies found their way back to healthy growth.2. It also points up the fact that workers, especially younger workers entering the market for the first time are better educated and better equipped to fill the many jobs that had been going empty for the lack of better educated and more qualified people.3. There more women entering the workforce that has goosed the numbers.4. Job sites, especially newly improved job web sites are doing a much better job of matching candidates to the more appropriate openings.5. Because of the internet and the advent of multiple job web sites, candidates are able to search jobs across the country instead of their what used to be their own communities. The result, greater opportunities and fewer job positions going empty.6. The sad fact, and one that you will never hear Trump mention is the fact that many of these jobs are low-end service jobs paying minimum wage.7. The job numbers are also helped by the fact that many low-end wage earners are working two and even three jobs just to survive. So we have double and in some cases, the same person counted 3 times.8. The small wage increases for which trump takes credit are primarily the result of a tighter market in need of more skilled workers. There are workers that now earning higher wages because of being better qualified, therefore averages are higher and are influential in skewing results somewhat higher.9. Also, the sad truth is that employment rates only track those working or actively looking for employment. Those that have dropped out are not included in the numbers and those still employed are the “better” employees and usually better paid.10. The simple fact is that there are more people in the labor force as the county increases in population than when Bush and Obama were in office, so it follows that there are more people employed.U.S. posts a record trade deficit in goods despite ‘America First’ policies The 2018 figure shows that President Trump’s tariffs and tough policies have failed to shrink a trade gap that he argues represents a massive transfer of wealth from Americans to foreigners.Source: Washington PostTrump promised he would get rid of the national debt in 8 years but now it’s at an all-time high that reached $22 trillion, up a full 27% from last year. Trump is actually adding $8.3 trillion in additional debt.Source: Trump and the National Debt Trump Pledged to Eliminate the Debt. Instead, He Will Add $8.3 TrillionThe $1.5 trillion in tax breaks that he promised the middle class, didn’t go to the working poor or the middle class, but instead directly benefited him, his family, the richest 1% and the most profitable corporations on the planet. The same CEO’s and top executives gave themselves major bonuses and then bought back their own stock that gave the markets a temporary surge, only to collapse as investors lost confidence in Trump and his looney policies and tariffs and on and off again threats against China and allies alike.“The tax cut has utterly failed to deliver the promised investment boom. Companies didn’t use their giant windfall to build new plants and raise productivity, they used it to buy back a lot of stock, passing the gains on to wealthy investors.” Source: New York TimesAT&T pocketed Trump’s tax cuts after promising 7,000 new jobs — but slashed 23,000 jobs instead while pocketing the tax cuts.Source: AT&T promised 7,000 new jobs to get tax break—it cut 23,000 jobs insteadThese unfair and misdirected tax cuts resulted in a double whammy adding to already serious fiscal deficiencies by reducing taxes overall while increasing the burgeoning deficit problem. Not only has America been ‘robbed’ of those taxes now and going forward, but these are taxes that should in all fairness be paid by the very rich, and highly profitable corporations. “Trump’s twin deficits show that his party has been lying about its policy priorities and that he is completely clueless about his signature policy issue”. Source: New York Times.This unwarranted tax cut for the rich has increased the deficit by an additional $1 trillion dollars, now estimated to actually come in at close to $2 trillion. And guess who is going to pay for it… one guess.Both Rubio and McConnell have both stated very clearly on a number of occasions that the deficit will have to be reduced with cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and wait for it…. your own hard-earned Social Security benefits. You know, the fund you have been paying into all your working life, the one, that you counted on to supplement and assuage your retirement when the time comes! Well, thanks to Trump and the Republicans, that is now up for grabs and is imperiled.And this is just in: Trump’s recent budget proposal included billions of dollars in Social Security cuts. The proposed cuts were a huge betrayal of his campaign promise to protect our Social Security system.Source: Trump is employing this insidious strategy to attack Social Security — and avoid a massive 2020 backlashCuts in Medicare and your Social Security is just part of the Trump agenda, as are his tariffs which are adding additional tax on those imported consumer items you are buying, and speaking of his infamous tariffs, based on his, “I know what is best” claim when he decided to instigate his tariff plan against the advice of both Democratic and Republican economists and CEOs, the results have been disastrous. “As many people have pointed out to no avail, Trump is all wrong about what trade deficits do. “ Source: New York Times“Tariff Man Has Become Deficit Man - Donald Trump focused his ire mainly on trade deficits, insisting that “our jobs and wealth are being given to other countries that have taken advantage of us.” But over two years of unified G.O.P. control of government, a funny thing happened: Both deficits surged. The budget deficit has hit a level unprecedented except during wars and in the immediate aftermath of major economic crises; the trade deficit in goods has set a record. Trump really has no idea how international trade works.” Source: New York TimesTrump’s tariffs have meant nothing more than an added extra tax on Americans and have cost taxpayers an additional $12 billion that Trump had to dole out to soybean farmers alone for lost crops, and he has passed along another $16 billion to the same farmers as they face even greater losses than estimated.To cover for his stupidity and wrong-headed Tariffs, “Tariff man” Trump, as he likes to call himself, lies to the American public by telling them that the tariffs are making America richer as they are filling the American treasury, when in fact they are an added tax on consumers, now estimated to cost an American family a $1000.“Trump’s tariffs on Chinese imports hurt American businesses; “Over the past year, the US has placed about $200 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods, in part to make Chinese products more expensive so Americans don’t buy them. The administration has also placed steep tariffs on all imported steel, angering other major US trade partners. Source: Farmers are losing patience with Trump’s trade warAs for those coal mining jobs he promised, nothing, zilch, an nothing either in terms of companies being brought back. Try and name even one that hadn’t been in the planning stages prior to Trump being elected. Of course, there have been jobs still fleeing as evident by Harley Davison closed a factory and moved the jobs to Europe to avoid Trump’s job-killing Tariff program of terror. Western Farmers are not only seeing their crops rot in the fields for lack of markets due to Trump’s tariff war, but they are now losing hope and farms as bankruptcies are on the rise.Farm bankruptcies are on the rise. “A total of 84 farms in the upper Midwest filed for bankruptcy between July 2017 and June 2018, according to the Federal Reserve of Minneapolis. That’s more than double the number of Chapter 12 filings during the same period in 2013 and 2014 in Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana.” Source: Farmers are losing patience with Trump’s trade war “ farmers are freaking out. Some are facing financial ruin now that millions of Chinese consumers, who once bought about 60 percent of American agriculture exports, have stopped buying their products. Exports to China from Minnesota dropped about 25 percent after the first round of tariffs went into effect last year” Trump created a $12 billion bailout program for farmers, and on May 17th, he outlined another plan to give them an additional $16 billion. Farmers are far from happy with this approach “it’s not clear if those bailouts will be enough to keep farmers happy. “We don’t want another check from the government,” Isane said. “People don’t realize that once you lose a market, it’s hard to get it back.” Source: Farmers are losing patience with Trump’s trade war“Net farm income has fallen by 50% since 2013 and the trade war has pushed commodity prices down even further. Many farmers and ranchers are on the verge of financial collapse.”…the resolving the trade war with China should be the administration’s “top priority” the Agriculture Department was told…farmers were disappointed to see tensions between the two countries escalate in recent days….the Agriculture Department was told that the president’s proposed bailout package for American farmers would not do nearly enough to stop the bleeding — it “will not make up for lost export markets and long term implications of trade disputes.” “Farmers are hurting,” he said. “It is critical the upcoming trade assistance be structured in a manner that does maximum good for our farmers and ranchers.” Source: Kansas GOP senator writes desperate letter to end Trump’s trade war: Farmers ‘on the verge of financial collapse’“Trump’s Trade Grade- We get a look at his transcript on trade policy. It’s not pretty. President Trump’s economic policy: He picks a yardstick to measure the American economy — the trade deficit — that’s mostly meaningless. He spends years criticizing it as too high and promising to reduce it. And under his administration, it surges.” “By just about any measure you pick,” Slate’s Jordan Weissmann writes, “his effort appears to have been an absolute flop.”“He set out to fix a non-problem (a trade deficit) and created real ones including international conflict, higher consumer prices and gross inefficiency in our economy,” The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin writes.The vice president of the National Farmers Union, appeared May 16th, 2019 on Fox News to discuss President Donald Trump’s ongoing trade war with China.“It has been insane,” Edelburg said. “We’ve had a lot of farmers — a lot more bankruptcies going on, a lot more farmer suicides.”“We have more commodities, more grain sitting on the ground now because we lost huge export markets. We’ve lost export markets that we’ve had for 30 years that we’ll never get a chance to get back again. Farmers are hopeful to get their crops in the ground this year but really hope we have a place to sell it come fall.” Source: FOX NEWS May 16th, 2019With each passing day, Americans are coming to the realization that Trump doesn’t have a magic touch in terms of delivering a great economy having seen the abject failure of his tariff war.As panic sets in and Trump becomes even more unhinged than usual, he is coming to the realization that the threat of a recession is becoming more of a reality, one that will cause the economy to tank, and he won’t be re-elected