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1461_33 | From Charleroi, Napoleon proceeded to Philippeville; whence he hoped to be able to communicate more readily with Marshal Grouchy (who was commanding the detached and still intact right wing of the Army of the North). He tarried for four hours expediting orders to generals Rapp, Lecourbe, and Lamarque, to advance with their respective corps by forced marches to Paris (for their corps locations see the military mobilisation during the Hundred Days): and also to the commandants of fortresses, to defend themselves to the last extremity. He desired Marshal Soult to collect together all the troops that might arrive at this point, and conduct them to Laon; for which place he himself started with post horses, at 14:00. |
1461_34 | The French army, under Soult, retreated on Laon in great confusion. The troops commanded by Grouchy, which had reached Dinant, retired in better order; but they were cut off from the wreck of the main army, and also from the direct road to Paris. Grouchy, therefore, was compelled to take the road to Rethel whence he proceeded to Rheims; and by forced marches he endeavoured to force a junction with Soult, and thus reach the capital before the Coalition armies. |
1461_35 | In the meantime, Wellington proceeded rapidly into the heart of France; but as there was no enemy in the field to oppose his progress, the fortresses alone demanded his attention. On 20 June 1815 an order of the day was issued to the British army before they entered France. It placed the officers and men in his army under military order to treat the ordinary French population as if they were members of a Coalition nation. This by and large Wellington's army did paying for food and lodgings. This was in sharp contrast to the Prussian army, whose soldiers treated the French as enemies, plundering the populace and wantonly destroying property during their advance. |
1461_36 | From Beaumont, the Prussians advanced to Avesnes, which surrendered to them on 21 June. The French at first seemed determined to defend the place to the last extremity, and made considerable resistance; but a magazine having blown up, by which 400 men were killed, the rest of the garrison, which consisted chiefly of national-guards, and amounting to 439 men, surrendered at discretion. On capture of the town the Prussian soldiers treated it as a captured enemy town (rather than one liberated for their ally King Louis XVIII), and on entering the town, the greatest excesses were committed by the Prussian soldiery, which instead of being restrained was encouraged by their officers. |
1461_37 | On his arrival at Malplaquet—the scene of one of the Duke of Marlborough's victories—Wellington issued the Malplaquet proclamation to the French people on the night 21/22 June 1815, in which he referred to the order of the day addressed to his army, as containing an explanation of the principles by which his army would be guided.
Napoleon arrived in Paris, three days after Waterloo (21 June), still clinging to the hope of concerted national resistance; but the temper of the chambers and of the public generally forbade any such attempt. Napoleon and his brother Lucien Bonaparte were almost alone in believing that, by dissolving the chambers and declaring Napoleon dictator, they could save France from the armies of the powers now converging on Paris. Even Davout, minister of war, advised Napoleon that the destinies of France rested solely with the chambers. Clearly, it was time to safeguard what remained; and that could best be done under Talleyrand's shield of legitimacy. |
1461_38 | Napoleon himself at last recognised the truth. When Lucien pressed him to "dare", he replied, "Alas, I have dared only too much already". On 22 June 1815 he abdicated in favour of his son, Napoléon Francis Joseph Charles Bonaparte, well knowing that it was a formality, as his four-year-old son was in Austria.
With the abdication of Napoleon (22 June) the French Provisional Government led by Fouché appointed Marshal Davout, Napoleon's minister of war, as General in Chief of the army, and opened peace negotiations with the two Coalition commanders.
On 24 June, Sir Charles Colville took the town of Cambrai by escalade, the governor retiring into the citadel, which he afterwards surrendered on 26 June, when it was given up to the order of Louis XVIII. Saint-Quentin was abandoned by the French, and was occupied by Blücher: and, on the evening of 24 June, the castle of Guise surrendered to the Prussian army. The Coalition armies, at least 140,000 strong, continued to advance. |
1461_39 | Second week (25 June – 1 July)
On 25 June Napoleon received from Fouché, the president of the newly appointed Provisional Government (and Napoleon's former police chief), an intimation that he must leave Paris. He retired to Malmaison, the former home of Joséphine, where she had died shortly after his first abdication.
On 27 June, Le Quesnoy surrendered to Wellington's army. The garrison, which amounted to 2,800 men, chiefly national-guards, obtained liberty to retire to their homes.
On 26 June, Péronne was taken by the British troops. The first brigade of guards, under Major-general Maitland, took by storm the horn-work which covers the suburbs on the left of the Somme, and the place immediately surrendered, upon the garrison obtaining leave to retire to their homes. |
1461_40 | On 28 June, the Prussians, under Blücher, were at Crépy, Senlis, and La Ferté-Milon; and, on 29 June, their advanced guards were at Saint-Denis and Gonesse. The resistance experienced by the British army at Cambrai and Péronne, detained them one day behind the Prussian army; but forced marches enabled them to overtake it in the neighbourhood of Paris.
In the meantime, Soult was displaced from the chief command of the army, which was conferred on Marshal Grouchy. The reason of this remarkable step, according to Soult, was because the Provisional Government suspected his fidelity. This was very likely the true reason; or they could scarcely at this moment have dismissed a man clearly superior to his successor, in point of abilities. |
1461_41 | The rapid advance of the Coalition armies caused Grouchy to redouble his speed to reach Paris before them. This he effected, after considerable loss, particularly on the 28th, at the Battle of Villers-Cotterêts where he fell in with the left wing of the Prussian army, and afterwards with the division under General Bülow, which drove him across the river Marne, with the loss of six pieces of cannon and 1,500 prisoners. Grouchy fairly acknowledged, that his troops would not fight, and that numbers deserted. In fact, though the French army was daily receiving reinforcements from the towns and depots in its route, and also from the interior, the desertion from it was so great that its number was little if any thing at all augmented. |
1461_42 | With the remainder, however, Grouchy succeeded in retreating to Paris, where he joined the wreck of the main army, the whole consisting of about 40 or 50,000 troops of the line, the wretched remains (including also all reinforcements) of 150,000 men, which fought at Quatre Bras and Waterloo. To these, however, were to be added the national-guards, a new levy called les Tirailleurs de la Garde, and the Federés. According to Bonaparte's portfolio, found at Waterloo, these latter amounted to 14,000 men. Altogether, these forces were at least 40,000 more, if not a greater number. Paris was, therefore, still formidable, and capable of much resistance.
On 29 June the near approach of the Prussians, who had orders to seize Napoleon, dead or alive, caused him to retire westwards toward Rochefort, whence he hoped to reach the United States. The presence of blockading Royal Navy warships under Vice Admiral Henry Hotham with orders to prevent his escape forestalled this plan. |
1461_43 | Meanwhile, Wellington continued his operations with unabating activity. As the armies approached the capital, Fouché, president of the Provisional Government, wrote a letter to the British commander, asking him to halt the progress of war.
On 30 June Blücher made a movement which proved decisive of the fate of Paris. Blücher having taken the village of Aubervilliers, made a movement to his right, and crossing the Seine at Lesquielles-Saint-Germain, downstream of the capital, threw his whole force, (apart from a skeleton force holding the Coalition line north of the city) upon the west-south side of the city, where no preparations had been made to receive an enemy. |
1461_44 | On 1 July Wellington's army arrived in force and occupied the Coalition lines north of Paris. South of Paris, at the Battle of Rocquencourt a combined arms French force of commanded by General Exelmans destroyed a Prussian brigade of hussars under the command of Colonel von Sohr (who was severely wounded and taken prisoner during the skirmish), but this did not prevent the Prussians moving their whole army to the south side.
Third week (2–7 July) |
1461_45 | By the morning of 2 July, Blücher had his right at Plessis-Piquet, and his left at Meudon, with his reserves at Versailles. This was a thunderbolt to the French; and it was then that their weakness and the Coalition strength was seen in the most conspicuous point of view; because, at this moment, the armies of Wellington and Blücher were separated, and the all the French army, between them, yet the French could not move to prevent their junction (to shorten their lines of communications Wellington, threw a bridge over the Seine at Argenteuil, crossed that river close to Paris, and opened the communication with Blücher). After the war Lazare Carnot (Napoleon's Minister of Internal Affairs) blamed Napoleon for not fortifying Paris on the south side, and said he forewarned Napoleon of this danger. |
1461_46 | To defend against the Prussian move, the French were obliged to move two corps over the Seine to meet Blücher. The fighting to the south of Paris on 2 July, was obstinate, but the Prussians finally surmounted all difficulties, and succeeded in establishing themselves firmly upon the heights of Meudon and in the village of Issy. The French loss, on this day, was estimated at 3,000 men.
The early next morning (3 July) at around 03:00, General Dominique Vandamme (under Davout's command) was decisively defeated by General Graf von Zieten (under Blücher's command) at the Battle of Issy, forcing the French to retreat into Paris. All further resistance, it was now obvious, would prove unavailing. Paris now lay at the mercy of the Coalition armies. The French high command decided that, providing terms were not too odious, they would capitulate and ask for an immediate armistice. |
1461_47 | Delegates from both sides met at Palace of St. Cloud and the result of the delegates' deliberations was the surrender of Paris under the terms of the Convention of St. Cloud. As agreed in the convention, on 4 July, the French Army, commanded by Marshal Davoust, left Paris and proceeded on its march to the southern side of Loire. On 6 July, the Anglo-allied troops occupied the Barriers of Paris, on the right of the Seine; while the Prussians occupied those upon the left bank. On 7 July, the two Coalition armies entered the centre of Paris. The Chamber of Peers, having received from the Provisional Government a notification of the course of events, terminated its sittings; the Chamber of Representatives protested, but in vain. Their President (Lanjuinais) resigned his chair; and on the following day, the doors were closed, and the approaches guarded by Coalition troops.
Aftermath |
1461_48 | On 8 July, the French King, Louis XVIII, made his public entry into Paris, amidst the acclamations of the people, and again occupied the throne.
On 10 July, the wind became favourable for Napoleon to set sail from France. But a British fleet made its appearance and made escape by sea impossible. Unable to remain in France or escape from it, Napoleon surrendered to Captain Frederick Maitland of early in the morning of 15 July and was transported to England. Napoleon was exiled to the island of Saint Helena where he died as a prisoner-of-war in May 1821.
Some commandants of the French fortresses did not surrender upon the fall of the Provisional Government on 8 July 1815 and continued to hold out until forced to surrender by Commonwealth forces. The last to do so was Fort de Charlemont which capitulated on 8 September (see reduction of the French fortresses in 1815). |
1461_49 | In November 1815 a formal Peace treaty between France and the Seventh Coalition was signed. The Treaty of Paris (1815) was not as generous to France as the Treaty of Paris (1814) had been. France lost territory, had to pay reparations, and agreed to pay for an army of occupation for not less than five years.
Analysis |
1461_50 | This campaign was the subject of a major strategic-level study by the famous Prussian political-military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, Feldzug von 1815: Strategische Uebersicht des Feldzugs von 1815, Written , this study was Clausewitz's last such work and is widely considered to be the best example of Clausewitz's mature theories concerning such studies. It attracted the attention of Wellington's staff, who prompted him to write his only published essay on the campaign (other than his immediate, official after-action reports (such as the "Waterloo dispatch to Lord Bathurst"), his 1842 Memorandum on the Battle of Waterloo. This exchange with Clausewitz was quite famous in Britain in the 19th century (it was heavily discussed in, for example, Chesney's Waterloo Lectures (1868).
Timeline
See also Timeline of the Napoleonic era
See also
Napoleonic Wars
Battle of Waterloo
Notes
References |
1461_51 | This on-line text contains Clausewitz's 58-chapter study of the Campaign of 1815 and Wellington's lengthy 1842 essay written in response to Clausewitz, as well as supporting documents and essays by the editors.
— English title:
Attribution:
Further reading
. (Battle of Wavre)
Maps:
of the start of the campaign
1815 in France
19th-century conflicts
Conflicts in 1815
Napoleonic Wars
Waterloo, Belgium |
1462_0 | The Lutheran Church of Central Africa or LCCA is a Christian denomination of the Lutheran tradition based in the African countries of Zambia and Malawi. Currently (2004), it consists of over 40,000 baptized members in 200 congregations spread throughout both countries.
The LCCA maintains the Lutheran Seminary for the training of ministers, in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, and the Lutheran Bible Institute, a pre-seminary pastoral training school based in Lilongwe, Malawi.
Structure
Government
Technically, the two members of the LCCA, the Lutheran Church of Central Africa - Malawi Conference (LCCA-MC) and the Lutheran Church of Central Africa - Zambia Conference (LCCA-ZC) are both members of the overarching synod known as the Lutheran Church of Central Africa. In practice, due to political borders, both conferences operate independently of one another, their only true link being in the sharing of pastoral training facilities in Lusaka and Lilongwe. |
1462_1 | The LCCA-MC and LCCA-ZC are led by a president and a chairman, respectively, both elected for four year terms in bienual conventions within their own conferences. Synodical conventions are intended to be held regularly, but often are not, due to political borders.
Educational institutions
The LCCA runs two facilities for the training of clergy. The first is the Lutheran Bible Institute, located in Lilongwe, Malawi. It is intended as a three-year pre-seminary school and serves students from both of the LCCA's conferences.
The second facility is the Lutheran Seminary located in Lusaka, Zambia. The Lutheran Seminary is a three-year seminary for the training of clergy for the LCCA and trains students from both of the LCCA's conferences. Following training at the Lutheran Seminary students typically serve a one-year vicarship after which they are ordained as clergy. |
1462_2 | Other institutions
The LCCA maintains The Lutheran Press on the campus of the Lutheran Seminary, in Lusaka, Zambia and at the Lutheran Bible Institute in Lilongwe. The Lutheran Press publishes and prints various religious materials for use by the LCCA.
Among Lutheran Press publications are various local language hymnals, educational materials and an occasional newsletter.
History
The Lutheran Church of Central Africa was established by Lutheran missionaries from the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. First exploratory mission work began in the 1949 (with the first resident missionaries arriving in 1953) in the British colony of Northern Rhodesia (later to become the country of Zambia). In 1955, an official denomination, named the Rhodesian Lutheran Church Conference was organized. In 1962, the Rhodesian Lutheran Church Conference was reorganized and became The Lutheran Church of Central Africa. |
1462_3 | Exploratory mission work in the neighboring country of Malawi after 1962 led to the foundation of the Malawi Conference of the LCCA.
The LCCA is currently involved in mission work in Mozambique, with the eventual goal of setting up a sister church there.
Beliefs
The LCCA teaches that the Bible is the only authoritative source for doctrine. It subscribes to the Lutheran Confessions (the Book of Concord, 1580) as accurate presentations of what Scripture teaches. It teaches that Jesus is the center of Scripture and the only way to eternal salvation, and that the Holy Spirit uses the gospel alone in Word and Sacraments (Baptism and Holy Communion) to bring people to faith in Jesus as Savior and keep them in that faith, strengthening them in their daily life of sanctification.
Doctrinally, both conferences of the LCCA are in union. |
1462_4 | Ecumenical relations
Fellowship relations between the LCCA and other church groups are established only upon investigation and confirmation that both church groups hold complete unity in scriptural doctrine and practice.
The LCCA is closely associated with the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. It is also a member of the Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Conference (CELC), a worldwide organization of confessional Lutheran church bodies.
See also
Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod
List of Christian denominations in Malawi
References
External links
LCCA-MC information page from the CELC website
LCCA-ZC information page from the CELC website
Historical Timeline of the Zambia Conference of the LCCA (from the WELS website)
Historical Timeline of the Malawi Conference of the LCCA (from the WELS website)
Lutheranism in Africa
Evangelicalism in Africa
Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Conference members
Protestantism in Malawi
Protestantism in Zambia |
1463_0 | Josef Mengele (; 16 March 19117 February 1979), also known as the Angel of Death (), was a German (SS) officer and physician during World War II. He is mainly remembered for his actions at the Auschwitz concentration camp, where he performed deadly experiments on prisoners, as a member of the team of doctors who selected victims to be killed in the gas chambers and as one of the doctors who administered the gas. With Red Army troops sweeping through German-occupied Poland, Mengele was transferred from Auschwitz to the Gross-Rosen concentration camp on 17 January 1945, ten days before the arrival of the Soviet forces at Auschwitz. |
1463_1 | Before the war, Mengele had received doctorates in anthropology and medicine, and began a career as a researcher. He joined the Nazi Party in 1937 and the SS in 1938. He was assigned as a battalion medical officer at the start of World War II, then transferred to the Nazi concentration camps service in early 1943 and assigned to Auschwitz, where he saw the opportunity to conduct genetic research on human subjects. His experiments focused primarily on twins, with no regard for the health or safety of the victims. |
1463_2 | After the war, Mengele fled to South America. He sailed to Argentina in July 1949, assisted by a network of former SS members. He initially lived in and around Buenos Aires, then fled to Paraguay in 1959 and Brazil in 1960, all the while being sought by West Germany, Israel, and Nazi hunters such as Simon Wiesenthal, who wanted to bring him to trial. Mengele eluded capture in spite of extradition requests by the West German government and clandestine operations by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. He drowned in 1979 after suffering a stroke while swimming off the coast of Bertioga, and was buried under the false name of Wolfgang Gerhard. His remains were disinterred and positively identified by forensic examination in 1985. |
1463_3 | Early life
Mengele was born in Günzburg on 16 March 1911, the eldest of three sons of Walburga ( Hupfauer) and Karl Mengele. His two younger brothers were Karl Jr. and Alois. Their father was founder of the Karl Mengele & Sons company (later renamed as ), which produced farming machinery. Mengele was successful at school and developed an interest in music, art, and skiing. He completed high school in April 1930 and went on to study philosophy in Munich, where the headquarters of the Nazi Party were located. In 1931 he joined , a paramilitary organization that was absorbed into the Nazi ('Storm Detachment'; SA) in 1934. In 1935, Mengele earned a PhD in anthropology from the University of Munich. In January 1937, he joined the Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene in Frankfurt, where he worked for Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, a German geneticist with a particular interest in researching twins. |
1463_4 | As Von Verschuer's assistant, Mengele focused on the genetic factors that result in a cleft lip and palate, or a cleft chin. His thesis on the subject earned him a doctorate in medicine (MD) from the University of Frankfurt in 1938. (Both of his degrees were revoked by the issuing universities in the 1960s.) In a letter of recommendation, Von Verschuer praised Mengele's reliability and his ability to verbally present complex material in a clear manner. The American author Robert Jay Lifton notes that Mengele's published works were in keeping with the scientific mainstream of the time, and would probably have been viewed as valid scientific efforts even outside Nazi Germany.
On 28 July 1939, Mengele married Irene Schönbein, whom he had met while working as a medical resident in Leipzig. Their only son, Rolf, was born in 1944. |
1463_5 | Military service
The ideology of Nazism brought together elements of antisemitism, racial hygiene, and eugenics, and combined them with pan-Germanism and territorial expansionism with the goal of obtaining more (living space) for the Germanic people. Nazi Germany attempted to obtain this new territory by attacking Poland and the Soviet Union, intending to deport or kill the Jews and Slavs living there, who were considered by the Nazis to be inferior to the Aryan master race. |
1463_6 | Mengele joined the Nazi Party in 1937 and the (SS; 'Protection Squadron') in 1938. He received basic training in 1938 with the ('light infantry mountain troop') and was called up for service in the (Nazi armed forces) in June 1940, some months after the outbreak of World War II. He soon volunteered for medical service in the , the combat arm of the SS, where he served with the rank of SS- ('second lieutenant') in a medical reserve battalion until November 1940. He was next assigned to the ('SS Race and Settlement Main Office') in Poznań, evaluating candidates for Germanization. |
1463_7 | In June 1941 Mengele was posted to Ukraine, where he was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class. In January 1942, he joined the 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking as a battalion medical officer. After rescuing two German soldiers from a burning tank, he was decorated with the Iron Cross 1st Class, the Wound Badge in Black, and the Medal for the Care of the German People. He was declared unfit for further active service in mid-1942, when he was seriously wounded in action near Rostov-on-Don. Following his recovery, he was transferred to the headquarters of the SS Race and Settlement Main Office in Berlin, at which point he resumed his association with Von Verschuer, who was now director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics. Mengele was promoted to the rank of SS- ('captain') in April 1943.
Auschwitz |
1463_8 | In 1942 Auschwitz II (Birkenau), originally intended to house slave laborers, began to be used instead as a combined labour camp and extermination camp. Prisoners were transported there by rail from all over Nazi-controlled Europe, arriving in daily convoys. By July 1942, SS doctors were conducting "selections" where incoming Jews were segregated, and those considered able to work were admitted into the camp while those deemed unfit for labor were immediately killed in the gas chambers. The arrivals that were selected to die, about three-quarters of the total, included almost all children, women with small children, pregnant women, all the elderly, and all of those who appeared (in a brief and superficial inspection by an SS doctor) to be not completely fit and healthy. |
1463_9 | In early 1943, Von Verschuer encouraged Mengele to apply for a transfer to the concentration camp service. Mengele's application was accepted and he was posted to Auschwitz, where he was appointed by SS- Eduard Wirths, chief medical officer at Auschwitz, to the position of chief physician of the (Romani family camp) at Birkenau, a subcamp located on the main Auschwitz complex. The SS doctors did not administer treatment to the Auschwitz inmates but supervised the activities of inmate doctors who had been forced to work in the camp medical service. As part of his duties, Mengele made weekly visits to the hospital barracks and ordered any prisoners who had not recovered after two weeks in bed to be sent to the gas chambers. |
1463_10 | Mengele's work also involved carrying out selections, a task that he chose to perform even when he was not assigned to do so, in the hope of finding subjects for his experiments, with a particular interest in locating sets of twins. In contrast to most of the other SS doctors, who viewed selections as one of their most stressful and unpleasant duties, he undertook the task with a flamboyant air, often smiling or whistling. He was one of the SS doctors responsible for supervising the administration of Zyklon B, the cyanide-based pesticide that was used for the mass killings in the Birkenau gas chambers. He served in this capacity at the gas chambers located in crematoria IV and V. |
1463_11 | When an outbreak of noma—a gangrenous bacterial disease of the mouth and face—struck the Romani camp in 1943, Mengele initiated a study to determine the cause of the disease and develop a treatment. He enlisted the assistance of prisoner Berthold Epstein, a Jewish pediatrician and professor at Prague University. The patients were isolated in separate barracks and several afflicted children were killed so that their preserved heads and organs could be sent to the SS Medical Academy in Graz and other facilities for study. This research was still ongoing when the Romani camp was liquidated and its remaining occupants killed in 1944. |
1463_12 | When a typhus epidemic began in the women's camp, Mengele cleared one block of six hundred Jewish women and sent them to their deaths in the gas chambers. The building was then cleaned and disinfected and the occupants of a neighboring block were bathed, de–loused, and given new clothing before being moved into the clean block. This process was repeated until all of the barracks were disinfected. Similar procedures were used for later epidemics of scarlet fever and other diseases, with infected prisoners being killed in the gas chambers. For these actions, Mengele was awarded the War Merit Cross (Second Class with swords) and was promoted in 1944 to First Physician of the Birkenau subcamp.
Human experimentation |
1463_13 | Mengele used Auschwitz as an opportunity to continue his anthropological studies and research into heredity, using inmates for human experimentation. His medical procedures showed no consideration for the victims' health, safety, or physical and emotional suffering. He was particularly interested in identical twins, people with heterochromia iridum (eyes of two different colors), dwarfs, and people with physical abnormalities. A grant was provided by the ('German Research Foundation'), at the request of Von Verschuer, who received regular reports and shipments of specimens from Mengele. The grant was used to build a pathology laboratory attached to Crematorium II at Auschwitz II-Birkenau. Miklós Nyiszli, a Hungarian Jewish pathologist who arrived in Auschwitz on 29 May 1944, performed dissections and prepared specimens for shipment in this laboratory. The twin research was in part intended to prove the supremacy of heredity over the environment and thus strengthen the Nazi premise |
1463_14 | of the genetic superiority of the Aryan race. Nyiszli and others reported that the twin studies may also have been motivated by an intention to increase the reproduction rate of the German race by improving the chances of racially desirable people having twins. |
1463_15 | Mengele's research subjects were better fed and housed than the other prisoners, and temporarily spared from execution in the gas chambers. His research subjects lived in their own barracks, where they were provided with a marginally better quality of food and somewhat improved living conditions than the other areas of the camp. When visiting his young subjects, he introduced himself as "Uncle Mengele" and offered them sweets, while at the same time being personally responsible for the deaths of an unknown number of victims whom he killed via lethal injection, shootings, beatings, and his deadly experiments. In his 1986 book, Lifton describes Mengele as sadistic, lacking empathy, and extremely antisemitic, believing the Jews should be eliminated as an inferior and dangerous race. Rolf Mengele later claimed that his father had shown no remorse for his wartime activities.
A former Auschwitz inmate doctor said of Mengele: |
1463_16 | Twins were subjected to weekly examinations and measurements of their physical attributes by Mengele or one of his assistants. The experiments he performed on twins included unnecessary amputation of limbs, intentionally infecting one twin with typhus or some other disease, and transfusing the blood of one twin into the other. Many of the victims died while undergoing these procedures, and those who survived the experiments were sometimes killed and their bodies dissected once Mengele had no further use for them. Nyiszli recalled one occasion on which Mengele personally killed fourteen twins in one night by injecting their hearts with chloroform. If one twin died from disease, he would kill the other twin to allow comparative post-mortem reports to be produced for research purposes. |
1463_17 | Mengele's eye experiments included attempts to change the eye color by injecting chemicals into the eyes of living subjects, and he killed people with heterochromatic eyes so that the eyes could be removed and sent to Berlin for study. His experiments on dwarfs and people with physical abnormalities included taking physical measurements, drawing blood, extracting healthy teeth, and treatment with unnecessary drugs and X-rays. Many of his victims were dispatched to the gas chambers after about two weeks, and their skeletons were sent to Berlin for further analysis. Mengele sought out pregnant women, on whom he would perform experiments before sending them to the gas chambers. Alex Dekel, a survivor, reports witnessing Mengele performing vivisection without anesthesia, removing hearts and stomachs of victims. Yitzhak Ganon, another survivor, reported in 2009 how Mengele removed his kidney without anesthesia. He was forced to return to work without painkillers. Witness Vera Alexander |
1463_18 | described how Mengele sewed two Romani twins together, back to back, in a crude attempt to create conjoined twins; both children died of gangrene after several days of suffering. |
1463_19 | After Auschwitz |
1463_20 | Along with several other Auschwitz doctors, Mengele transferred to Gross-Rosen concentration camp in Lower Silesia on 17 January 1945, taking with him two boxes of specimens and the records of his experiments at Auschwitz. Most of the camp medical records had already been destroyed by the SS by the time the Red Army liberated Auschwitz on 27 January. Mengele fled Gross-Rosen on 18 February, a week before the Soviets arrived there, and traveled westward to Žatec in Czechoslovakia, disguised as a officer. There he temporarily entrusted his incriminating documents to a nurse with whom he had struck up a relationship. He and his unit then hurried west to avoid being captured by the Soviets, but were taken prisoners of war by the Americans in June 1945. Although Mengele was initially registered under his own name, he was not identified as being on the major war criminal list due to the disorganization of the Allies regarding the distribution of wanted lists, and the fact that he did not |
1463_21 | have the usual SS blood group tattoo. He was released at the end of July and obtained false papers under the name "Fritz Ullman", documents he later altered to read "Fritz Hollmann". |
1463_22 | After several months on the run, including a trip back to the Soviet-occupied area to recover his Auschwitz records, Mengele found work near Rosenheim as a farmhand. He eventually escaped from Germany on 17 April 1949, convinced that his capture would mean a trial and death sentence. Assisted by a network of former SS members, he used the ratline to travel to Genoa, where he obtained a passport from the International Committee of the Red Cross under the alias "Helmut Gregor", and sailed to Argentina in July 1949. His wife refused to accompany him, and they divorced in 1954. |
1463_23 | In South America
Mengele worked as a carpenter in Buenos Aires, Argentina, while lodging in a boarding house in the suburb of Vicente López. After a few weeks, he moved to the house of a Nazi sympathizer in the more affluent neighborhood of Florida Este. He next worked as a salesman for his family's farm equipment company, Karl Mengele & Sons, and in 1951 he began making frequent trips to Paraguay as a regional sales representative. He moved into an apartment in central Buenos Aires in 1953, used family funds to buy a part interest in a carpentry concern, and then rented a house in the suburb of Olivos in 1954. Files released by the Argentine government in 1992 indicate that Mengele may have practiced medicine without a license while living in Buenos Aires, including performing abortions. |
1463_24 | After obtaining a copy of his birth certificate through the West German embassy in 1956, Mengele was issued with an Argentine foreign residence permit under his real name. He used this document to obtain a West German passport, using his real name and embarked on a trip to Europe. He met with his son Rolf (who was told Mengele was his "Uncle Fritz") and his widowed sister-in-law Martha, for a ski holiday in Switzerland; he also spent a week in his home town of Günzburg. When he returned to Argentina in September 1956, Mengele began living under his real name. Martha and her son Karl Heinz followed about a month later, and the three began living together. Josef and Martha were married in 1958 while on holiday in Uruguay, and they bought a house in Buenos Aires. Mengele's business interests now included part ownership of Fadro Farm, a pharmaceutical company. Along with several other doctors, he was questioned in 1958 on suspicion of practicing medicine without a license when a teenage |
1463_25 | girl died after an abortion, but he was released without charge. Aware that the publicity could lead to his Nazi background and wartime activities being discovered, he took an extended business trip to Paraguay and was granted citizenship there in 1959 under the name "José Mengele". He returned to Buenos Aires several times to settle his business affairs and visit his family. Martha and Karl lived in a boarding house in the city until December 1960, when they returned to West Germany. |
1463_26 | Mengele's name was mentioned several times during the Nuremberg trials in the mid-1940s, but the Allied forces believed that he was probably already dead. Irene Mengele and the family in Günzburg also alleged that he had died. Working in West Germany, Nazi hunters Simon Wiesenthal and Hermann Langbein collected information from witnesses about Mengele's wartime activities. In a search of the public records, Langbein discovered Mengele's divorce papers, which listed an address in Buenos Aires. He and Wiesenthal pressured the West German authorities into starting extradition proceedings, and an arrest warrant was drawn up on 5 June 1959. Argentina initially refused the extradition request because the fugitive was no longer living at the address given on the documents; by the time extradition was approved on 30 June, Mengele had already fled to Paraguay and was living on a farm near the Argentine border. |
1463_27 | Efforts by Mossad
In May 1960, Isser Harel, director of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, personally led the successful effort to capture Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires. He was hoping to track down Mengele so that he too could be brought to trial in Israel. Under interrogation, Eichmann provided the address of a boarding house that had been used as a safe house for Nazi fugitives. Surveillance of the house did not reveal Mengele or any members of his family and the neighborhood postman claimed that although Mengele had recently been receiving letters there under his real name, he had since relocated without leaving a forwarding address. Harel's inquiries at a machine shop where Mengele had been part owner also failed to generate any leads, so he was forced to abandon the search. |
1463_28 | Despite having provided Mengele with legal documents using his real name in 1956 (which had enabled him to formalize his permanent residency in Argentina), West Germany was now offering a reward for his capture. Continuing newspaper coverage of his wartime activities, with accompanying photographs, led the fugitive to relocate once again in 1960. Former pilot Hans-Ulrich Rudel put him in touch with the Nazi supporter Wolfgang Gerhard, who helped Mengele to cross the border into Brazil. He stayed with Gerhard on his farm near São Paulo until more permanent accommodation could be found, which came about with Hungarian expatriates Géza and Gitta Stammer. The couple bought a farm in Nova Europa with the help of an investment from Mengele, who was given the job of managing for them. The three bought a coffee and cattle farm in Serra Negra in 1962, with Mengele owning a half interest. Gerhard had initially told the Stammers that the fugitive's name was "Peter Hochbichler", but they |
1463_29 | discovered his true identity in 1963. Gerhard persuaded the couple not to report Mengele's location to the authorities by convincing them that they themselves could be implicated for harboring a fugitive. In February 1961, West Germany widened its extradition request to include Brazil, having been tipped off to the possibility that Mengele had relocated there. |
1463_30 | Meanwhile, Zvi Aharoni, one of the Mossad agents who had been involved in the Eichmann capture, was placed in charge of a team of agents tasked with tracking down Mengele and bringing him to trial in Israel. Their inquiries in Paraguay revealed no clues to his whereabouts, and they were unable to intercept any correspondence between Mengele and his wife Martha, who by this time was living in Italy. Agents who were following Rudel's movements also failed to produce any leads. Aharoni and his team followed Gerhard to a rural area near São Paulo, where they identified a European man whom they believed to be Mengele. This potential breakthrough was reported to Harel, but the logistics of staging a capture, the budgetary constraints of the search operation, and the priority of focusing on Israel's deteriorating relationship with Egypt led the Mossad chief to call off the manhunt in 1962. |
1463_31 | Later life and death
In 1969, Mengele and the Stammers jointly purchased a farmhouse in Caieiras, with Mengele as half owner. When Wolfgang Gerhard returned to Germany in 1971 to seek medical treatment for his ailing wife and son, he gave his identity card to Mengele. The Stammers' friendship with Mengele deteriorated in late 1974, and when they bought a house in São Paulo, he was not invited to join them. The Stammers later bought a bungalow in the Eldorado neighborhood of Diadema, São Paulo, which they rented out to Mengele. Rolf, who had not seen his father since the ski holiday in 1956, visited him at the bungalow in 1977; he found an "unrepentant Nazi" who claimed he had never personally harmed anyone and only carried out his duties as an officer. |
1463_32 | Mengele's health had been steadily deteriorating since 1972. He suffered a stroke in 1976, experienced high blood pressure, and developed an ear infection which affected his balance. On 7 February 1979, while visiting his friends Wolfram and Liselotte Bossert in the coastal resort of Bertioga, Mengele suffered another stroke while swimming and drowned. His body was buried in Embu das Artes under the name "Wolfgang Gerhard", whose identification Mengele had been using since 1971. Other aliases used by Mengele in his later life included "Dr. Fausto Rindón" and "S. Josi Alvers Aspiazu".
Exhumation |
1463_33 | Meanwhile, sightings of Mengele were being reported all over the world. Wiesenthal claimed to have information that placed Mengele on the Greek island of Kythnos in 1960, in Cairo in 1961, in Spain in 1971, and in Paraguay in 1978, eighteen years after he had left the country. He insisted as late as 1985 that Mengele was still alive—six years after he had died—having previously offered a reward of US$100,000 () in 1982 for the fugitive's capture. Worldwide interest in the case was heightened by a mock trial held in Jerusalem in February 1985, featuring the testimonies of over one hundred victims of Mengele's experiments. Shortly afterwards, the West German, Israeli, and U.S. governments launched a coordinated effort to determine Mengele's whereabouts. The West German and Israeli governments offered rewards for his capture, as did The Washington Times and the Simon Wiesenthal Center. |
1463_34 | On 31 May 1985, acting on intelligence received by the West German prosecutor's office, police raided the house of Hans Sedlmeier, a lifelong friend of Mengele and sales manager of the family firm in Günzburg. They found a coded address book and copies of letters sent to and received from Mengele. Among the papers was a letter from Wolfram Bossert notifying Sedlmeier of Mengele's death. German authorities alerted the police in São Paulo, who then contacted the Bosserts. Under interrogation, they revealed the location of Mengele's grave and the remains were exhumed on 6 June 1985. Extensive forensic examination indicated with a high degree of probability that the body was indeed that of Josef Mengele. Rolf Mengele issued a statement on 10 June confirming that the body was his father's and he admitted that the news of his father's death had been concealed in order to protect the people who had sheltered him for many years. |
1463_35 | In 1992, DNA testing confirmed Mengele's identity beyond doubt, but family members refused repeated requests by Brazilian officials to repatriate the remains to Germany. The skeleton is stored at the São Paulo Institute for Forensic Medicine, where it is used as an educational aid during forensic medicine courses at the University of São Paulo's medical school.
Later developments
In 2007, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum received as a donation the Höcker Album, an album of photographs of Auschwitz staff taken by Karl-Friedrich Höcker. Eight of the photographs include Mengele. |
1463_36 | In February 2010, a 180-page volume of Mengele's diary was sold by Alexander Autographs at auction for an undisclosed sum to the grandson of a Holocaust survivor. The unidentified previous owner, who acquired the journals in Brazil, was reported to be close to the Mengele family. A Holocaust survivors' organization described the sale as "a cynical act of exploitation aimed at profiting from the writings of one of the most heinous Nazi criminals". Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center was glad to see the diary fall into Jewish hands. "At a time when Ahmadinejad's Iran regularly denies the Holocaust and anti-Semitism and hatred of Jews is back in vogue, this acquisition is especially significant", he said. In 2011, a further 31 volumes of Mengele's diaries were sold—again amidst protests—by the same auction house to an undisclosed collector of World War II memorabilia for US$245,000. |
1463_37 | Publications
Racial-Morphological Examinations of the Anterior Portion of the Lower Jaw in Four Racial Groups. This dissertation, completed in 1935 and first published in 1937, earned him a PhD in anthropology from Munich University. In this work Mengele sought to demonstrate that there were structural differences in the lower jaws of individuals from different ethnic groups, and that racial distinctions could be made based on these differences.
Genealogical Studies in the Cases of Cleft Lip-Jaw-Palate (1938), his medical dissertation, earned him a doctorate in medicine from Frankfurt University. Studying the influence of genetics as a factor in the occurrence of this deformity, Mengele conducted research on families who exhibited these traits in multiple generations. The work also included notes on other abnormalities found in these family lines. |
1463_38 | Hereditary Transmission of Fistulae Auris. This journal article, published in ('The Genetic Physician'), focuses on fistula auris (an abnormal fissure on the external ear) as a hereditary trait. Mengele noted that individuals who have this trait also tend to have a dimple on their chin. |
1463_39 | See also
Angel of Death (Slayer song)
Aribert Heim
Carl Clauberg
Eva Mozes Kor
Grigory Mairanovsky
Hans Münch
Kurt Blome
Nazi eugenics
Shirō Ishii
The Boys from Brazil (novel)
References
Informational notes
Citations
Bibliography
Further reading
External links |
1463_40 | 1911 births
1979 deaths
20th-century anthropologists
20th-century German non-fiction writers
Accidental deaths in Brazil
Auschwitz concentration camp personnel
Burials in São Paulo (state)
Combat medics
Deaths by drowning
Fugitives
Fugitives wanted by Germany
German anthropologists
German eugenicists
German expatriates in Argentina
German expatriates in Brazil
German expatriates in Italy
German male non-fiction writers
German medical writers
German military doctors
Holocaust perpetrators in Poland
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich alumni
Nazi human subject research
Nazis in South America
Nazi war criminals
People associated with the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics
People from Günzburg
People from the Kingdom of Bavaria
People who died at sea
Physicians in the Nazi Party
Recipients of the Iron Cross (1939), 1st class
Romani genocide perpetrators
SS-Hauptsturmführer
Waffen-SS personnel |
1464_0 | Beginning in the 1970 NFL season, the National Football League began scheduling a weekly regular season game on Monday night before a national television audience. From 1970 to 2005, the ABC television network carried these games, with the ESPN cable television network taking over beginning in September 2006. Listed below are games played from 1970 to 1989.
Stadiums and teams appearing under different names
Some stadiums and teams had multiple names throughout their appearances in the MNF package in this era.
First name listed is the stadium/team's name heading into 1990. All names were seen in the package at least once in this era.
Stadiums
Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium – Atlanta Stadium
Foxboro Stadium – Schaefer Stadium (the facility did not host a game while it was named Sullivan Stadium)
Jack Murphy Stadium – San Diego Stadium |
1464_1 | Teams
Indianapolis Colts – Baltimore Colts
Los Angeles Raiders -Oakland Raiders
Phoenix Cardinals – Chicago Cardinals - St. Louis Cardinals - Arizona Cardinals
1970s
1970 NFL season
In only the second MNF game on September 28, Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Len Dawson became the first quarterback to throw for 4 touchdown passes on Monday Night Football.
The October 19 game between the Washington Redskins and Oakland Raiders was originally scheduled as a head coaching matchup between Vince Lombardi of the Redskins and the Raiders' second-year mentor, John Madden. However, Lombardi died of colon cancer six weeks before the contest. In that game, Raiders running back Hewritt Dixon rushed for 164 yards and a touchdown. |
1464_2 | Following their humiliating shutout in the November 16 game, the Cowboys would go on a seven-game winning streak, not losing until a deciding field goal in the final seconds of Super Bowl V against the Baltimore Colts. The St. Louis Cardinals, who completed a season sweep of the Cowboys at the Cotton Bowl would go 1–3–1 down the stretch to fall completely out of the playoffs and cost coach Charley Winner his job.
The Colts and Packers simultaneously became the first teams to make their second appearances on MNF when they played each other. The Browns, Lions, and Rams were the only other teams to make two MNF appearances in 1970. The only teams that did not appear on MNF in 1970 were the 49ers (who first appeared in 1971), the Saints and Patriots (who first appeared in 1972) and the Broncos and Bills (who first appeared in consecutive weeks in 1973). |
1464_3 | The November 23 game became infamous when an intoxicated Howard Cosell slurred his way through the first half and vomited on Don Meredith's boots at halftime. Cosell left Franklin Field prior to the second half, leaving Meredith to finish the game with Keith Jackson.
1971 NFL season
The October 11 game was the final NFL contest played in the Cotton Bowl. The Dallas Cowboys moved into Texas Stadium for its next home game on October 24 versus the New England Patriots.
Wide receiver Dave Smith of the Pittsburgh Steelers became a part of Monday Night Football lore with an infamous mistake in the October 18 game against the Kansas City Chiefs. Smith was en route to scoring on a 50-yard pass play when he raised the ball over his head before reaching the end zone. Smith lost control of the ball, thinking he had already scored, with the mistake resulting in a touchback for the Chiefs. |
1464_4 | The November 1 game between the visiting Detroit Lions and the Green Bay Packers ended in a 14–14 tie at County Stadium in Milwaukee. The first tie in the history of the Monday Night Football series.
The December 13 game saw the triumphant return of George Allen to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, where he coached the Los Angeles Rams for five seasons (1966–70). Allen's new team, the Washington Redskins, clinched its first playoff berth since 1945 with a 38–24 victory over the Rams, also handing the NFC West championship to the San Francisco 49ers. Ironically, the 49ers ousted the Redskins from the playoffs with a 24–20 victory 13 days later. In addition, one of the contestants for an NFL punt, pass and kick contest shown during the game would be future Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy Reid.
The October 25 game featured a moment of silence for Lions wide receiver Chuck Hughes who died of a heart attack on the field at Tiger Stadium the previous day. |
1464_5 | The 49ers made their MNF debut December 6 vs. Kansas City at home.
1972 NFL season
The September 25 game marked the New Orleans Saints' debut on Monday Night Football. The Saints' opponents, the Kansas City Chiefs, returned to Tulane Stadium for the first time since their Super Bowl IV victory over the Minnesota Vikings. Chiefs coach Hank Stram later coached the Saints in 1976 and 1977, although the team moved to the Louisiana Superdome in 1975. Saints quarterback Archie Manning made his Monday Night debut as well; 23 years later, his son, Eli Manning, made his Monday Night debut for the New York Giants against the Saints in a game relocated from New Orleans to Giants Stadium after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina three weeks prior.
The Patriots were the other team to make its MNF debut in 1972, hosting the Colts November 6. |
1464_6 | The October 9 game between the Oakland Raiders and Houston Oilers at the Astrodome is infamous for an awkward off-field incident. During the game, which the Raiders won in a 34–0 shutout, ABC cameras had panned out and showed several fans leaving. A cameraman caught one of the few to stay in the game, who showed his disgust with the Oilers' performance by raising his middle finger, prompting Don Meredith to quip, "We're number 1 in the nation." The game was the first in the series' three-year history to pit two former AFL clubs against each other.
The November 27 game saw the Miami Dolphins make their lone primetime appearance during their 17–0 season. The Dolphins had little trouble in dispatching the outclassed St. Louis Cardinals, one of nine games the Dolphins won that season against teams which won five or fewer games (the Cardinals finished 4-9-1 for the third time in four seasons, and did so again in 1973). |
1464_7 | The December 11 game saw the New York Jets wide receiver Don Maynard set a new NFL record for pass receptions when he caught his 632nd reception, a record that stood until 1975 when Charley Taylor became the NFL all-time pass receptions record holder.
1973 NFL season
The Broncos and Bills were the last of the 26 teams of the merged NFL to make their first appearances on the program, but not against each other, rather, alone in consecutive weeks.
During what would be Don Meredith's final season of his first Monday Night stint, he was the center of three incidents in a three-week stand. In the Oakland-Denver game on October 22, Meredith famously quipped, "We're in the Mile High City, and so am I" (referring to his marijuana use at the time), followed by his drinking through the Buffalo–Kansas City game the following week. Finally, on November 5 during the Steelers-Redskins matchup, he referred to President Richard Nixon by the nickname of "Tricky Dick". |
1464_8 | The October 8 game ended in dramatic fashion as Redskins safety Ken Houston stopped Cowboy running back Walt Garrison at the Washington one-yard-line as time expired to preserve a 14–7 Redskins victory.
The Minnesota Vikings entered the November 19 game in Atlanta with a spotless 9–0 record, but left with their first loss. The Falcons jumped out to a 17–7 halftime lead, then held on as the Vikings came up one yard short on fourth down at the Atlanta 39 with 55 seconds to play. The victory was the Falcons sixth in a row. The victory was sweet revenge for Falcons head coach Norm Van Brocklin, who was the Vikings' first head coach from 1961 to 1966, and quarterback Bob Lee, a Vikings backup from 1969 to 1972 (as well as punter from 1969 to 1971), and again in 1976 and '77.
Only one home team lost out of the 13 games: Cleveland to Miami 17–9 on October 15 (the Raiders and Broncos played to a 23–23 tie in Denver a week later). |
1464_9 | 1974 NFL season
The season-opening contest in Buffalo on September 16 marked the start of a three-year stint for Alex Karras as a color commentator for the show. Karras had replaced Fred Williamson, who had originally replaced Don Meredith, but was dismissed after a poorly received effort during a few preseason contests. The Raiders' loss was their first on Monday Night, and would be their last until 1986.
The October 14 game between the Lions and 49ers marked the final Monday Night Football game ever at Tiger Stadium. |
1464_10 | Facing huge competition from the October 28 CBS broadcast of the wedding of Rhoda Morgenstern on Rhoda and NBC's November 18 broadcast of The Godfather, ratings for Monday Night Football took a hit for those two contests. On that October 28, Pittsburgh defeated Atlanta for the 14th consecutive home team victory on Monday Night and the 15th consecutive without a loss. The streak was snapped the following week when Los Angeles won at San Francisco, the fourth of 10 consecutive Rams victories at Candlestick Park. |
1464_11 | The November 25 game at Tulane Stadium marked the first time ABC broadcast a Monday Night game in the same facility which would host the Super Bowl at the end of the season. Ironically, the Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the New Orleans Saints in the MNF game, then came back January 12, 1975 and ousted the Minnesota Vikings on the same field to win their first championship in franchise history. In between, ABC telecast the final Sugar Bowl played at Tulane Stadium, with Nebraska edging Florida 13–10 on New Year's Eve.
After losing to the Steelers, the Saints did not return to MNF for five years.
From 1974 until 1977, the Monday night game aired on Saturday during the final week of the regular season. Previously, there had been no prime-time game in the season's final week. |
1464_12 | 1975 NFL season
The Oakland Raiders' defeat of the Miami Dolphins on September 22 ended the Dolphins 31-game home winning streak. During this game, ABC switched at halftime to ABC News anchor Harry Reasoner for an update on the assassination attempt on President Ford by Sara Jane Moore earlier that day.
The October 6 game marked the first regular season game ever played in the Pontiac Silverdome, the then-new home of the Detroit Lions. The Dallas Cowboys, who had missed the playoffs in 1974 for the first time in nine years, beat the Lions on their way to a 4–0 start to the season. The Cowboys would return to the playoffs in 1975, starting a new nine-year streak of playoff berths, and became the first NFL wild card team ever to play in the Super Bowl. |
1464_13 | Following their surprising 34–31 victory at Dallas Nov. 10, Kansas City did not win another MNF game until 1991. The Chiefs-Cowboys game is best remembered for a diving one-handed touchdown reception by the Cowboys' Golden Richards at the back of the end zone.
The final Monday Night Football game of the season offered one of the least attractive contests in the six-year history of the program: The 1–11 San Diego Chargers hosted the 3–9 New York Jets, with the Chargers pulling an upset 24–16 victory.
This was the first season that the Rams did not appear in one of the final two games of the season. The Rams played at home in the final Monday night game four of the first five seasons of Monday Night Football. Nevertheless, the Rams did play in the final game covered by the MNF team on Saturday, December 20, where they defeated the eventual Super Bowl champion Steelers. |
1464_14 | 1976 NFL season
This season saw the first Monday night overtime game since overtime was instituted for the regular season in 1974, as the Redskins kicked a field goal in the extra period to beat the Eagles 20–17.
The October 11 game marked the first time the Rams had ever been shut out at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in their team history. The 49ers sacked Rams quarterback James Harris 10 times, six alone by defensive end Tommy Hart.
The October 18 game featured Alex Karras singing a fight song written for the New York Jets by then-head coach Lou Holtz before the kickoff (which was repeated for the NFL Top 10 series in the episode on "Coaches Who Belonged in College").
1976 also marked the program using a new theme song for the introduction.
1977 NFL season
The September 26 game was decided in overtime on Don Cockroft's 35-yard field goal with 10:15 left in the extra session. |
1464_15 | This was Don Meredith's first season back in the booth, after three seasons at NBC. He would remain through the 1984 season.
The October 10 game was Joe Namath's last NFL start and last NFL game.
1978 NFL season
The September 4 game, the 1978 MNF season opener, was when Howard Cosell and the announcing crew was given a plate of nachos and Cosell began using the term 'nacho' for the duration of the game; this moment is notable for helping spread the popularity of the dish outside of its native Texas where it was invented. |
1464_16 | The September 18 game between the Colts and the Patriots featured a Monday Night Football-record 41 points scored between the two teams in the fourth quarter, 27 by the Colts. Colts running back Joe Washington had a memorable performance, scoring or helping score his teams' final three touchdowns. His catch of a touchdown pass tied the game at 20–20, and then he threw an option pass to Roger Carr to put the Colts ahead 27–20. After the Patriots tied it late, Washington returned the ensuing kickoff 96 yards for the winning touchdown.
The November 20 game between the Dolphins and the Oilers featured a memorable performance by Oilers' rookie running back Earl Campbell. Campbell rushed for 199 yards and four touchdowns in a nip-and-tuck game that was capped off by his 81-yard scoring run in the fourth quarter. It was the first MNF telecast from the Astrodome since the infamous 1972 game versus the Oakland Raiders where a fan gave the middle finger to a camera. |
1464_17 | The November 27 game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and San Francisco 49ers kicked off at 6 pm. Pacific time, just hours after San Francisco mayor George Moscone and city supervisor Harvey Milk were murdered at City Hall by former supervisor Dan White. NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle, a former publicity director at the University of San Francisco, did not consider postponing the game. During the game, a large protest march to the steps of City Hall took place. A rarely discussed moment happened before the game just prior the national anthem. The stadium observed a moment of silence to honor the fallen mayor. Between that and the national anthem a truck backed into the stadium flag pole sending it crashing to the ground. It was a large wooden pole near the southern end zone. It shocked the crowd who were already uneasy from a very tragic day in San Francisco. |
1464_18 | In the regular season finale December 18, New England Patriots coach Chuck Fairbanks was not present, suspended by owner Billy Sullivan after he accepted the same position at the University of Colorado. Coordinators Ron Erhardt and Hank Bullough served as co-coaches for the game, which the Miami Dolphins won 23–3. Fairbanks was allowed to coach the Patriots in the AFC divisional playoff vs. Houston, which New England lost 31–14.
From 1978 to 1986, ABC would televise some Thursday and Sunday night games.
1979 NFL season
The September 4 opening game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and New England Patriots was stopped for more than five minutes in the second quarter to acknowledge former Patriots wide receiver Darryl Stingley, who was seated in a luxury box at Schaefer Stadium. Stingley had suffered a career-ending injury 13 months earlier that had left him a quadriplegic. |
1464_19 | The October 1 game at Lambeau Field marked the first time ever that a Monday Night Football game had taken place in Green Bay. The three previous Packers home games in the series had taken place in Milwaukee (1970, 1971, and 1973). Two weeks later, the Jets hosted the first ever MNF game in New York City, and defeated the Vikings.
The Seattle Seahawks made their MNF debut October 29 versus the Atlanta Falcons. Four weeks later, they played their first MNF home game versus the New York Jets.
In the November 12 game between the Eagles and the Cowboys, barefoot Eagles kicker Tony Franklin booted a 59-yard field goal. It was the longest MNF field goal until Oakland's Sebastian Janikowski hit an altitude-assisted 63-yarder at Denver in 2011, tying the league record as it then stood, and is still the Monday night non-altitude assisted record. |
1464_20 | In the December 3 Raiders/Saints game, Ken Stabler rallied the Raiders from a 35–14 deficit. He threw an 8-yard touchdown pass to Cliff Branch for the winning score. Stabler later played for the Saints from 1982 through the first half of 1984.
1980s
1980 NFL season
Dallas defeated Washington marking the first time that those teams opened up the Monday Night Football season.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers played their first game on ABC Thursday, September 11 at home versus the Los Angeles Rams, then played their first Monday night game at Chicago October 6.
The November 24 game was the one where New Orleans Saints fans, watching what would become a dreadful 1–15 campaign that season, began wearing paper bags over their heads and referring to the team as the "Aints". One night later, Sugar Ray Leonard defeated Roberto Duran in the famous 'No Mas' bout for the welterweight world boxing championship. |
1464_21 | The December 8 game was forever remembered for Howard Cosell's announcement of the murder of John Lennon with three seconds left in the fourth quarter. ABC News' Nightline provided live coverage of Lennon's death shortly after the conclusion of the game.
1981 NFL season
The December 7 game between the Oakland Raiders and Pittsburgh Steelers would mark the final Monday night game played in Oakland prior to the Raiders' move to Los Angeles. The next Monday night game played in Oakland would be held in 1996; one year after the Raiders' return to Oakland in 1995.
Home teams won every game ABC aired after the month of September, a total of 14 contests.
1982 NFL season
This was the season in which a nine-week players’ strike forced the NFL to postpone seven regular season games. The September 20 game between the Packers and the Giants would be the last game played until November 21. The Packers-Giants game was the first Monday night game hosted by the Giants. |
1464_22 | The Tampa Bay Buccaneers hosted their first Monday night game November 29 versus the in-state rival Miami Dolphins, the first regular season meeting between the teams since the Buccaneers' inaugural year of 1976. In 1980, the Buccaneers hosted the Los Angeles Rams in a Thursday night game on ABC.
In the January 3 game between the Cowboys and the Vikings, Cowboys running back Tony Dorsett ran for 99 yards and a touchdown – still the longest running play from scrimmage in the NFL. Worth noting is that the Cowboys had only ten players on offense when the ball was snapped on that play, as fullback Ron Springs did not get onto the playing field in time after Minnesota kicked off to Dallas in the third quarter. |
1464_23 | The Cowboys-Vikings game originally was scheduled to be played on Sunday, September 26 (Week 3), but was canceled due to the players’ strike, and then was among 14 canceled games rescheduled to a newly added Week 17 when the strike was settled. This resulted in the Cowboys playing three of their nine regular season games on MNF; the only other teams with two MNF games in the shortened season were the San Diego Chargers and Miami Dolphins (incidentally, the November 8 game pitting the Chargers against the Dolphins in a rematch of "The Epic in Miami" was one of the games canceled as a result of the strike).
The San Francisco 49ers became the first reigning Super Bowl champion not to play a Monday night game, although they were featured in ABC games on other nights (one Thursday, one Sunday). Their scheduled Monday game (week 4 at Tampa Bay) fell victim to the strike. |
1464_24 | 1983 NFL season
The September 5 game between the Cowboys and the Redskins was when Howard Cosell referred to Redskins wide receiver Alvin Garrett as a "little monkey." Cosell would also call his final MNF game on December 12 between the Packers and the Buccaneers, and his final NFL game on ABC on Friday night, December 16, between the Jets and Dolphins at Miami. Cosell did not make the trip to the west coast for the last game of the season between the Cowboys and the San Francisco 49ers.
Future Hall of Fame quarterback Dan Marino made his NFL debut in the September 19 game between the Raiders and the Dolphins. |
1464_25 | The October 10 game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Cincinnati Bengals is remembered for the Steelers' Keith Gary grabbing the facemask of Bengals quarterback Ken Anderson on a first-quarter sack and twisting his head 180 degrees. Anderson was knocked out of the game and backup Turk Schonert threw three interceptions, two of which the Steelers returned for touchdowns in a 24–14 Steelers win.
The October 24 game between the Cardinals and the Giants is the only overtime tie in MNF history, as the Cardinals' Neil O'Donoghue blew three field goal attempts in the extra period, one of them from extra-point distance. It was also the first overtime game on a Monday night since Howard Cosell announced the death of John Lennon in 1980.
Both of the Redskins' regular season losses during the 1983 season came on Monday night (Week 1 at home to Dallas; Week 7 to the Packers in Green Bay) by a margin of 1 point in each game. |
1464_26 | Following their December 12 overtime loss to the Green Bay Packers, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers did not play another game on ABC until 1998.
From 1983 to 1986 in addition to some Thursday and Sunday night games, ABC would also televise a Friday night game in week 16.
1984 NFL season
The September 6 Thursday special game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the New York Jets was the first primetime game hosted by the Jets in New Jersey, after relocating from Shea Stadium to Giants Stadium. The Jets previously played a September 1977 game in New Jersey after a scheduling conflict with the New York Mets at Shea.
An early season snowstorm in the October 15 game at Denver caused the Packers to fumble on their first two plays. Both fumbles were returned for Broncos touchdowns. However, the 5-1 Broncos' offense could only muster an additional field goal as the 1-5 Packers scored two touchdowns in the second half and very nearly pulled an upset. |
1464_27 | The October 21 Sunday special game between the New Orleans Saints and Dallas Cowboys started at 9:45 EDT (8:45 CDT) due to ABC covering the second 1984 Ronald Reagan–Walter Mondale debate. This was the latest time a regular season NFL game started until 2006 – beginning that year, MNF on ESPN would air two games in week 1, the second kicking off after 10:00 pm EDT. The 1984 Saints-Cowboys game remains the latest NFL kickoff on a broadcast network.
1984 marked the third straight year in which the Cowboys played in both the MNF season opener and season finale. The Cowboys would open the MNF season again in 1985 and 1986 to complete a run of seven Monday night openers in nine seasons. However, they would not close the season on MNF again until 1995, a Christmas night game at Arizona. |
1464_28 | 1985 NFL season
The September 19 Thursday night game is memorable for Bears quarterback Jim McMahon's third quarter performance. Bears coach Mike Ditka elected not to start McMahon because of various ailments keeping him out of practice all week. ABC cameras kept showing McMahon begging Ditka to put him in the game. Finally, with the Vikings leading 17–9, McMahon entered the game and threw a 70-yard touchdown pass to Willie Gault on his first snap. The Bears immediately got the ball back at the Vikings' 25-yard line on the next series on a Wilber Marshall fumble recovery, and McMahon hit Dennis McKinnon on the very first play for a touchdown. Then, on the very next series, McMahon completed 3 of 5 passes and another touchdown to McKinnon. For the third quarter, McMahon had taken seven snaps and completed five passes for three touchdowns. |
1464_29 | The October 21 game is memorable for rookie Bears defensive lineman William Perry scoring a rushing touchdown after entering the game as an extra backfield blocker.
The October 28 game marked the final Monday night appearance at home for the Los Angeles Raiders until their return to Oakland in 1995, as well as the final Monday night game at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum until 2018.
In the November 11 game, a thrown snowball caused the 49ers to miss an extra point, a determining factor in the team's one-point loss.
The November 18 game between the Giants and the Redskins is infamous for Lawrence Taylor's sack that left Joe Theismann with a broken leg, ending Theismann's career.
The December 2 game between the Bears and the Dolphins, when the Dolphins put an end to the Bears' bid to match their undefeated season in 1972, was and still is the highest rated game in Monday Night Football history. |
1464_30 | 1986 NFL season
During this season, MacGyver began a six-year run as the program's lead-in – the longest lasting such program in history.
The September 8 game between the New York Giants and the Dallas Cowboys marked the NFL debut of Herschel Walker.
The September 29 game was the last MNF game in St. Louis until 2000, when the Rams played their season opener at the Trans World Dome.
The October 27 game took place at the same time as Game 7 of the 1986 World Series at Shea Stadium in nearby Flushing, New York (the World Series finale was scheduled for the previous night, but was rained out).
The Sunday, December 7 game between the Los Angeles Rams and Dallas Cowboys is remembered for Cowboys head coach Tom Landry being escorted off the field before the start of the 4th quarter due to Anaheim police learning of a threat on Landry's life. Landry would return after being fitted with a bulletproof vest. |
1464_31 | 1987 NFL season
There was a player strike called after the completion of Week 2's games. As a result, all games for Week 3 were canceled but unlike the 1982 players' strike, owners decided to resume play with replacement players. Replacement players were used in games played from Week 4 until Week 6 (including the 49ers–Giants, Raiders–Broncos, and Redskins–Cowboys MNF games). Once a new collective bargaining agreement ended the strike, regular players came back and played starting with Week 7. |
1464_32 | The October 26 game between the Broncos and the Vikings was rescheduled because Game 7 of the 1987 World Series (which was also broadcast by ABC), which featured the Minnesota Twins, had to play at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome on Sunday night, when the Vikings were originally slated to host the Broncos. Therefore, the game was moved to Monday night, and was played simultaneously with the Browns–Rams game. Coincidentally, the Browns had been slated to host the Broncos in the canceled Monday night game (in a rematch of The Drive). The Broncos-Vikings game, originally to be shown on NBC, was broadcast only in Colorado and Minnesota as part of ABC's ''Monday Night Football.'' The rest of the country saw the previously scheduled game: Los Angeles Rams at Cleveland, which turned out to be Eric Dickerson's last with the Rams. |
1464_33 | The November 30 Raiders/Seahawks game marked the memorable Monday Night Football debut of Bo Jackson, with his 91-yard touchdown run. Prior to that, he ran over Seahawks linebacker Brian Bosworth for another score.
* Did not play due to 1987 NFL strike.
1988 NFL season
The September 12 game between the Cowboys and the Cardinals was the first game the Cardinals played in Arizona after relocating from St. Louis. The Cardinals did not return to MNF until the 1995 finale on Christmas Day, also against the Cowboys.
The October 3 game between the Cowboys and the Saints would be the final MNF game coached by Tom Landry, as well as for the Cowboys team as a whole until 1991.
1989 NFL season
The October 9 game between the Raiders and the Jets was the first game for Art Shell as the Raiders head coach, becoming the first African-American NFL head coach in the modern era (Shell had been named interim head coach following the firing of Mike Shanahan). |
1464_34 | The November 6 game between the Saints and the 49ers was originally scheduled for New Orleans but was switched with their October 8 game when the San Francisco Giants played in the NLCS.
The December 11 game between the 49ers and the Rams had John Taylor become the first player in NFL history to score two touchdowns of over 90 yards in a single game.
The December 25 game between the Bengals and the Vikings was the first NFL game played on Christmas Day since the 1971 divisional playoffs. (The Vikings also hosted one of the two Christmas Day 1971 playoff games, losing to the eventual Super Bowl VI champion Cowboys.)
1989 marked the first year in which the Miami Dolphins did not appear on Monday Night Football. The Miami Dolphins appeared on ABC's Monday Night Football every year except for this year and the 2005 season.
1989 also marked Monday Night Football'''s 20th season, and Hank Williams, Jr. made his debut to the program with his hit "All My Rowdy Friends". |
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