by Ben Weingarten
Amalgamated Bank, with just five branches across three cities, and a market value lower than the net worth of many an individual hedge fund honcho, would seem an unlikely mover and shaker in the world of Wall Street, let alone Washington, D.C.
Yet last fall, it successfully pressured colossal credit card companies Visa, Mastercard, and American Express to use the financial system to track and report gun purchases. Amalgamated is “more than a bank,” says Michael Watson of the Capital Research Center. “It’s a bank for an ideological movement.”
This “ideological” bank holds $7 billion in deposits and manages or maintains custody of some $51 billion. And while that sounds like a great deal of money, it pales in comparison to financial institutions such as JP Morgan, with its $2.4 trillion in deposits, or the $8.6 trillion in assets managed by BlackRock. But Amalgamated’s outsized influence doesn’t flow from the size of its coffers. Rather, it’s explained by its role as cue to the wider corporate world given the major sources of that money – the Democratic Party, progressive activist groups, and major labor unions.
During political election cycles, such as at the end of the third quarter of 2022, upwards of $1 billion – or 17% of Amalgamated’s total deposits – come from Democratic campaigns, political action committees, and state and national party committees. Amalgamated is the commercial banker for the Democratic National Committee, along with Joe Biden and virtually every other 2020 presidential contender, and congressional leaders like Rep. Nancy Pelosi. All told, Amalgamated serves more than 500 political organizations – in addition to adjacent groups such as Color of Change and the Sierra Club. As the New York Times said of Amalgamated, it is “the left’s private banker.”
The bank also works side-by-side with more than 1,000 unions, including the nation’s second largest union overall, the Service Employees International Union – alongside other behemoth government employee unions including the United Federation of Teachers and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. “[Y]ou might see us out there walking with” picketing workers, to whom Amalgamated provides “strike loans,” the company notes. The bulk of Amalgamated’s trust and investment management business comes from institutional clients, including union pension funds.
Amalgamated’s unusual position and nature distinguish it from other financial institutions that have embraced the Environmental Social and Governance movement (ESG), such as BlackRock and JP Morgan. Its deep ties to the Democratic Party and its support for liberal and leftist political causes may make it a new model for how progressive corporations, politicians, and activists can work together to push favored causes outside the political process.
Richard Morrison, senior fellow at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, said Amalgamated can, at a minimum, “serve as an example for other managers and CEOs who want to make their mark as the most ‘enlightened’ players at the next big management conference or World Economic Forum annual meeting.”
As an admiring Andrew Ross Sorkin, the New York Times financial journalist, put it in a July 2022 conversation with Amalgamated CEO Priscilla Sims-Brown, “We’re at quite a moment, and your bank is a microcosm of so much of it.”
Taking Socialism to the Bank
Amalgamated has deep progressive roots. It was founded in 1923 by and for the socialist textile laborers of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, and remains 41%-owned by their successor affiliate, Workers United, an affiliate of the powerful SEIU.
Over the decades, it has amassed an almost exclusively progressive client base to pursue a progressive mission. Its business positions the financial institution “at the vanguard in terms of ESG-aligned policy recommendations,” according to CEI’s Morrison. Amalgamated’s inherently political assets may help explain how it became a lightning rod in the ESG wars likely to intensify under a GOP-controlled House.
Amalgamated’s business flows naturally from its mission to promote “social and environmental justice in-line with stockholder return,” which is codified in its corporate structure as the first publicly traded financial institution to organize as a public benefit corporation. Embodying the tenets of ESG, this designation alerts shareholders that the company will seek “to promote social and environmental justice in-line with stockholder return.”
The bank’s mission is personified by management, such as former CEO Keith Mestrich, previously the CFO of SEIU. Mestrich accelerated Amalgamated’s drive into political banking over the last decade alongside several former Obama administration officials-turned-financial executives.
Amalgamated’s mission can be seen in the company’s internal policies, which include hiring formerly incarcerated workers, covering employees’ travel costs when seeking out-of-state abortions, and raising its minimum wage to $20 per hour, a first for any bank.
It is also reflected in Amalgamated’s position as the financial partner of the charitable Amalgamated Foundation, whose coffers have swelled, fueling its tens of millions of dollars in grants to progressive causes of the kind supported by the bank.
Targeting Guns
Like other progressive asset managers, Amalgamated also engages in shareholder activism, leveraging the power of the shares it holds on behalf of clients to compel corporations to pursue the bank’s favored policies. The Capital Research Center reports that Amalgamated has filed shareholder resolutions with the likes of “Amazon, Lowe’s, PayPal, Netflix, and Smith & Wesson, on everything from board diversity to greenhouse gas emissions to political spending and lobbying” – alongside union affiliates. It also litigates against companies that violate its principles.
Amalgamated has been especially active in promoting anti-gun efforts.
The initiative that landed the bank on the radar of congressional Republicans was originally advocated by Sorkin. In 2018, following several mass shootings, the Times columnist suggested that banks and credit card processors develop gun retailer-specific merchant category codes (MCCs).
When one makes a purchase with a card issued by American Express, Mastercard, or Visa, such transactions are reported to the payment brand with a code that can be used to track a customer’s activities.
“If the credit card companies and banks agreed, they could come up with a series of subcodes that would identify retailers that sold guns under a ‘best practices’ policy — like the policy that Citigroup proposed [restricting gun sales by its clients] … and the ones that don’t,” Sorkin said. “It would … give banks that issue credit cards the opportunity to decide which retailers they wanted to associate with [and] might add pressure on gun retailers to voluntarily follow the ‘best practices’ route.”
In July 2021, Amalgamated took up the cause, petitioning the relevant code-blessing International Organization for Standardization, to create a new credit card code covering standalone gun and ammunition retail stores.
Months later in October 2021, Senate and House Democrats took up companion bills directing Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network to collect information from financial institutions to develop “an advisory regarding the reporting of suspicious transactions related to gun violence.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren co-sponsored the Senate legislation. The bills languished, but a new Gun Violence Prevention Caucus convened by Senate Democrats is poised to introduce it again this term.
The International Organization for Standardization would reject Amalgamated’s petition that same October, and deny its appeal in February 2022 – reportedly amid opposition from the major payment brands, whose representatives serve within the group. In June 2022, Amalgamated would apply again. The brands continued to disapprove of the petition. But in September 2022 that all changed.
That month, congressional Democrats led by Sen. Warren sent a letter, endorsed by Amalgamated, to leading payment brand CEOs, urging the companies to get behind the petition, and questioning why they were “obstructing” Amalgamated’s effort. Notably, Amalgamated had banked several of the signatories’ campaigns during the 2022 campaign cycle, including that of the Massachusetts senator.
The standardization body relented, and the major credit card companies adopted the code. Bank president Sims Brown declared victory. “The new code will allow us to fully comply with our duty to report suspicious activity and illegal gun sales to authorities without blocking or impeding legal gun sales,” she said.
Neither Amalgamated nor Sen. Warren’s office responded to RealClearInvestigations’ inquiries. The parties have never publicly discussed any coordination they might have engaged in with respect to the anti-firearms credit card push.
Sorkin, who also did not respond to RCI’s inquiries about his activism, wrote that the creation of the code is “only the beginning” of a broader gun control effort, urging retailers to assign the code to specific registers so payment brands could identify gun-specific purchases, and calling on financial companies to develop algorithms to identify suspicious activity and report it to authorities.
Republican senators wrote in a subsequent letter that the code aimed “to target, surveil and discourage gun and ammunition sellers.” They added: “Your actions were a major step toward targeting law-abiding Americans exercising their right to purchase firearms.”
House Financial Services Committee Republicans argued in a separate letter that “There is a serious risk … this new MCC will be abused with every transaction flagged as suspicious. At a minimum, monitoring the firearms seller MCC … poses a serious risk of circumventing important existing legal restrictions on the creation of a firearm registry.”
The Firearm Industry Trade Association characterized the code as a “stepping stone to watchlists and bans.” Sims Brown has dismissed these concerns.
Climate Collusion
Amalgamated has also taken a leading role in the financial services industry’s push to use its market power to drive the green agenda. In April 2021, the bank reported it had helped launch the Net Zero Banking Alliance. The financial sub-group of a broader, United Nations-backed coalition consists of 119 banks with $70 trillion in assets who have “committed to aligning their lending and investment portfolios with net-zero emissions by 2050.”
Last October, attorneys general representing 19 states revealed they were investigating six major U.S. banks over their participation in the alliance – excluding Amalgamated. Then-Missouri Attorney General, now Senator Eric Schmitt, a Republican, said that the states were probing the “banks for ceding authority to the U.N., which will only result in the killing of American companies that don’t subscribe to the woke, climate agenda.”
RCI contacted the offices of several attorneys general leading the probe to ask if Amalgamated had become a subject of their investigation given its role in the alliance. The Missouri AG’s office replied that it had no comment, as the investigation was pending.
Amalgamated has also submitted input on, and formally endorsed, relevant regulations proposed by the Biden SEC, such as its controversial proposed climate risk disclosure rule. Amalgamated was the sole banker for the Biden presidential campaign.
In October 2021, prior to the release of the proposed climate rule, Amalgamated’s chief sustainability officer participated in a meeting alongside like-minded executives with SEC Chairman Gary Gensler, according to Gensler’s public calendar. Neither Amalgamated nor the SEC responded to RCI’s request for information about that meeting. The SEC has been slow to respond to RCI’s related FOIA requests.
Oversight Incoming?
With the Senate in Democrats’ hands, it is unclear if Republican leaders on the Banking and Judiciary Committees who had put Amalgamated on notice last fall for their gun control push will follow through. Their offices did not respond to RCI’s inquiries or would not speak on the record regarding their oversight plans.
Like their Senate counterparts, House Financial Services Committee Republicans were tight-lipped when RCI inquired about any pending Amalgamated probe. A spokesperson for GOP Congressman Andy Barr referred RCI to the press release announcing his chairmanship for the House Financial Services’ Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Monetary Policy.
House Republicans in their initial missive to Amalgamated indicated they were keen to understand the extent of the bank’s coordination with activist groups in its credit card code push.
Some critics argue that Amalgamated’s extraordinary business model – leveraging money from Democrats and unions, including those of public sector employees, to pursue policies often championed by those very clients – creates novel conflicts. Morrison told RCI that “to the extent” Amalgamated has “clients who are policymakers … they should be scrutinized over whether the progressive policy changes they’re lobbying for will benefit them … and whether their influential clients exerted any influence to make such changes happen.”
He added, however, that “If other corporations can lobby for lower corporate tax rates, Amalgamated can lobby for gun control measures.”
Richard Painter, the Republican-turned-Democrat former chief legal ethics officer of the George W. Bush administration, said that banks should coordinate with politicians on relevant issues, citing for example a hypothetical effort to collaborate on cracking down on Chinese money laundering in the financial system.
Though there is little to indicate that Amalgamated’s pursuit of progressive causes is disingenuous or rooted primarily in a desire to curry favor with Democrats in ways that will redound to the bank’s bottom line, Painter expressed a general concern that banks often take such positions for the kind of self-serving reasons Morrison raised. Citing Wall Street’s progressive posture on social issues, and now indicted crypto-currency entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried’s championing of similar causes, Painter said “these guys, they go left to support the Democrats, do a lot for them, and then behind the scenes they’re looking for less regulation and they do whatever they want in the financial services sector.”
Painter asserted that political banking of the kind Amalgamated engages in is perfectly legal provided a bank does not offer politicians services at below-market rates or coordinate with their campaigns in its political activism, which would raise campaign finance red flags.
Others with whom RCI spoke expressed concerns about whether Amalgamated’s ESG-oriented activism undermined the financial interests of its clients by dampening their returns – which could impact taxpayers if Amalgamated is managing public sector union money.
As a general matter, said Terrence Keeley, a former BlackRock executive and proponent of impact investing critical of ESG investing as currently practiced, “Politics and finance should be like church and state – as far as possible from one another.”
Amalgamated has violated that tenet, but the market hasn’t seemed to mind. Its stock is near an all-time high, notwithstanding potential congressional scrutiny, and a slew of “recent executive resignations … regulatory ‘issues’ preventing an acquisition, a big ‘reclassification’ of assets, and a large share sale” by one of Amalgamated’s major investors — signs of potential peril highlighted by one bearish observer.
Capitalism would seem to have been good to the socialist-founded bank.
– – –
Ben Weingarten is a writer for RealClearInvestigations.
Photo “U.S. Capitol” by Blue Arauz.
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The oldest son of Léon Constant Ghislain Carton de Wiart and his wife Ernestine Wenzig, Adrian Carton de Wiart was born on May 5, 1880, in Brussels, Belgium. Carton de Wiart was raised in a world of privilege, but he was never soft. Rumors swirled during his childhood that the young man was actually the illegitimate son of Belgian King Leopold II. As the child matured his time was split between Belgium and England.
When Adrian was six his parents divorced. His mother married Demosthenes Gregory Cuppa later that same year. This fact has no bearing on the story. I simply thought Demosthenes was one of the coolest names I had ever heard. After the divorce, Adrian’s father moved with him to Cairo. There he learned to speak Arabic.
Adrian’s father remarried, and the boy was dispatched to an English boarding school. This was considered de rigueur for young men of means during this time. He ultimately found himself at Balliol College in Oxford. However, in 1899 Carton de Wiart dropped out of school to go to war.
In a familiar refrain, Adrian lied about his age to get into uniform. In short order, he found himself in South Africa during the Second Boer War. In all the excitement of enlisting, training, and deploying to an active war zone, Adrian neglected to notify his father that he had joined the military. Soon after his arrival in Africa, he was wounded in the groin and belly and evacuated back to England. When his father found out that Adrian had left Oxford to fight in Africa he was livid. Adrian returned to Oxford after he recovered, but this didn’t last, either.
Soldiering was in his blood, and Carton de Wiart sought out chaos. He was granted a commission in the Second Imperial Light Horse and in 1901 made his way back to South Africa. The following year he was posted to India. While there he became enamored with the fine art of pig-sticking.
A Curiously Horrible Hobby
Pig sticking was popular among young British Army officers with more balls than brains. The Indian boar was known as the Andamanese pig and stood roughly three feet at the shoulder. Heavily tusked, these rangy animals topped out at around 300 pounds. Pig stickers took these ghastly beasts with long boar spears. These spears included a rigid cross guard to keep the enraged porker from sliding up the spear once he was pithed to rip the hunter’s heart out with his dying breath.
Of pig-sticking and young soldiers, an unknown military official of the era had this to say, “A startled or angry wild boar is…a desperate fighter [and therefore] the pig-sticker must possess a good eye, a steady hand, a firm seat, a cool head, and a courageous heart.”
I actually know a petite young lady in my modest little Southern town who likes to hunt wild pigs with dogs and a big honking knife. In a crowd, you would take her for a cheerleader. However, she is obviously insane.
Much like his American doppelganger, Theodore Roosevelt, Carton de Wiart viewed physical setbacks as fuel for personal improvement. In the wake of his battlefield injuries, he embraced physical fitness as a remedy for lurking weakness. Though an inveterate gentleman around the ladies, he was also known for his coarse diction when it was just guys. He was later described as, “A delightful character who must hold the world record for bad language.”
In 1908 he married the Countess Friederike Maria Karoline Henriette Rosa Sabina Franziska Fugger von Babenhausen. Once again, there’s no real point to including her here beyond the obvious observation that hers was an absolutely epic name. Together they had two daughters. Imagine having to ask this guy permission to date his little girl…
At the outset of the First World War, Carton de Wiart was posted to British Somaliland to face the Dervish leader Mohammad bin Abdullah. History has come to refer to this character as the “Mad Mullah.” While serving in the Somaliland Camel Corps, Adrian was shot twice in the face. These injuries cost him his left eye and part of his ear. If you’re counting, that should be four major wounds thus far. In 1915 he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order.
After having been shot in the gut, the groin, and the ear and earning a handsome eye patch in lieu of an actual left eye, most combat veterans married to a wealthy Countess would rightfully retire to the family estate to draft their memoirs. By contrast, as soon as he could travel, Carton de Wiart caught a handy steamer for France and the largest war the world had ever seen.
Carton de Wiart commanded three separate infantry battalions and later a brigade. He caught bullets in his ankle and skull during the Battle of Cambrai. At the Battle of Passchendaele, he was shot in the hip and then later in the leg. At Arras, he took yet another round to the ear. He was wounded on seven separate occasions after he got to France.
In 1915 Adrian was shot in the left hand and duly reported to the unit surgeon. His hand was in quite a state, so de Wiart demanded the physician amputate his fingers so he could get back to the war. When the doctor refused the exasperated officer simply tore them off himself.
Carton de Wiart got his brigade a mere three days before the end of the war. Upon his arrival at his new command, the war-weary unit fell in for inspection. A man who was there said this of their new commander’s general demeanor, “Shivers went down the back of everyone in the brigade, for he had an unsurpassed record as a fire eater, missing no chance of throwing the men under his command into whatever fighting happened to be going…He arrived on a lively cob with his cap tilted at a rakish angle and a shade over the place where one of his eyes had been.”
The observer reported that the newly-minted brigadier was also missing a limb and had eleven wound stripes on his uniform. The first man in line for inspection noted that Carton de Wiart, despite having only one eye, ordered him to get his bootlace changed.
While a Lieutenant Colonel commanding the 8th Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment in 1916, Carton de Wiart earned the Victoria Cross, his nation’s highest award for bravery in combat. His citation reads, “For most conspicuous bravery, coolness and determination during severe operations of a prolonged nature. It was owing in a great measure to his dauntless courage and inspiring example that a serious reverse was averted. He displayed the utmost energy and courage in forcing our attack home. After three other battalion Commanders had become casualties, he controlled their commands, and ensured that the ground won was maintained at all costs. He frequently exposed himself in the organization of positions and of supplies, passing unflinchingly through fire barrage of the most intense nature. His gallantry was inspiring to all.”
We’re Just Getting Warmed Up
After the war, Carton de Wiart was posted to Poland as part of the British-Poland Military Mission. Poland was at that time in conflict with the Russians, the Lithuanians, the Ukrainians, and the Czechs. Throughout his time in Poland, de Wiart faced peril aplenty. In 1920 while out on an observation train his party was attacked by Red Army cavalry. De Wiart posted himself on the footplate of the train and repelled the mounted troopers with his revolver. At one point he fell off of the moving train only to quickly reboard. You recall that throughout it all the man only had the one hand and a single eye.
Carton de Wiart retired in December of 1923 to the estate of a Polish friend in the Pripet Marshes. Of the next period of his life, he later said, “In my fifteen years in the marshes I did not waste one day without hunting.”
In the summer of 1939 with the Nazis preparing to invade, de Wiart was recalled to active duty. When the Germans overran his estate they stole his fishing tackle, gun collection, furniture, and clothing. De Wiart narrowly escaped through Romania after an attack by the Luftwaffe that killed the wife of one of his aides. By now the old soldier was angry.
Carton de Wiart commanded Commonwealth forces during a running fight across Norway culminating in a desperate seaborne evacuation led by Lord Louis Mountbatten. Afterward, he briefly commanded a division in Northern Ireland before being dispatched to Yugoslavia as head of the British-Yugoslavian Military Mission. While en route in a Vickers Wellington bomber, the plane crashed into the sea about a mile short of Italian-controlled Libya. The 60-year-old, one-armed British Major General was knocked unconscious in the crash, but came to once doused in the cold water of the Mediterranean. He swam to shore but was captured by Italian forces on the beach.
During his subsequent incarceration as a POW, Major General de Wiart attempted to escape five times. One attempt to tunnel out of his camp occupied him for seven months. He once successfully remained loose for eight days disguised as an Italian peasant. This was all the more impressive considering he had only one arm, one eye, sundry obvious scars, and didn’t speak Italian.
Once the Italians decided they would abandon the Nazis they requested de Wiart serve as their emissary to the British Army. In this capacity, he needed fresh clothes and was sent to Rome at government expense for a fitting. Though he distrusted the Italian tailors, he said that he, “Had no objection provided he did not resemble a gigolo.”
We lack the space to do this man justice. After the Italian surrender, de Wiart was posted through China, India, and Egypt in a variety of official roles. Along the way, he was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
When passing through Rangoon, de Wiart tripped on a coconut mat and tumbled down stairs, fracturing several vertebrae in his back and rendering himself yet again unconscious. With a little time in a Burmese hospital he recovered. His first wife died in 1949. Two years later he married a woman 23 years his junior. Carton de Wiart finally retired for real to Aghinagh House in Killinardish, Ireland. He died in the summer of 1963 at the age of 83, a British hero of the sort about whom ballads are crafted.
On January 8, 2022, Aleksander Tarnawski turned 101 years old. 101 years prior he had entered the world kicking and screaming in Słocin in the Rzeszów poviat in Poland. At age seventeen, Tarnawski graduated from the gymnasium in Chorzów. He then enrolled in the University of Lviv studying Chemistry. The following year the entire world conflagrated.
Poland suffers from some of the most lamentable geography. Poland is on the way to any number of juicy geopolitical targets and has suffered from some of the most deplorably unneighborly neighbors. Like most of the young males of his generation, Aleksander Tarnawski soon found himself swept up in the war.
Tarnawski was not drafted in time to serve during the German invasion, but he was eventually arrested by the Soviet NKVD. At this time in this place, the NKVD didn’t need much of an excuse to arrest or even kill you. After presenting his documents from the University of Lviv he was ultimately released.
Tarnawski’s was the first generation of modern Poles to come of age in a free nation. When commenting on his mindset and that of his comrades he said this, “During my childhood and youth, after so many years of captivity, patriotism and the need to sacrifice oneself for the motherland were the main slogans. And if a young man like me grew up in such an atmosphere, it was as it is.”
Poland fell to Germany in 35 days. Their dedicated professional army was outnumbered by more than two to one. The overwhelming combat power of the Wehrmacht secured the nation on October 6, 1939. 874,700 Poles were hors de combat. 66,000 gave their lives in defense of their country…in 35 days. By comparison, we lost 58,000 troops in ten years’ worth of intense combat in Vietnam.
Traveling with a large number of refugees fleeing the Nazis, Aleksander Tarnawski made his way across the border to Hungary. After a stint in a Hungarian refugee camp, he crossed into France, where he reported to the WKU recruiting point. From there he was assigned to the 1st Infantry Regiment of the 1st Grenadier Division.
By now the Nazi blitzkrieg seemed irresistible. With the collapse of the Allied armies on the continent, Tarnawski was one of the lucky few to escape across the English Channel to Britain. Upon his arrival, the young man immediately began training to take the fight back to the Germans.
Once in Great Britain Tarnawski trained as an armor soldier. One day in mid-1943 he was approached by a Polish Colonel who asked if he would like to return to Poland. He explained, “I was 22 at the time, and secondly, there was a war all over the world, and I was sitting here idly, I agreed to go to Poland without hesitation.” Aleksander Tarnawski had just assessed into the Cichociemni.
The Cichociemni were the commandos of the Polish underground. The word roughly translates to, “The Silent Unseen.” Their mission was to infiltrate occupied Poland, coordinate and execute resistance operations, and kill Germans.
Drawn from all units of the Polish Armed Forces not under German subjugation, they knew they were volunteering for the most dangerous work of the war. Tarnawski trained in the art of close combat, silent killing, demolitions, covert communication, and spycraft under the tutelage of the British Special Operations Executive.
Tarnawski’s training included extensive physical fitness and the expert use of a wide variety of German, Russian, Polish, Italian, and British weapons. They trained to covertly emplace mines while learning cryptography, land navigation, and advanced marksmanship techniques. They learned about life in German-occupied Poland covering everything from curfews and military laws to contemporary fashion trends. Their hand-to-hand training was based on jujitsu.
Of 2,413 candidates, only 605 passed the training course. Among them were fifteen women. Of those, some 579 qualified for operational assignments. 344 of those trained operators were eventually deployed to Poland. 113 of these were ultimately killed in action.
On the night of April 16, 1944, Aleksander Tarnawski climbed aboard a four-engined Halifax bomber from the 300th Bomber Squadron at the Allied airbase in Brindisi, Italy, as part of Operation Weller 12 under Captain Edward Bohdanowicz. After an uneventful night combat insertion near the Polish village of Baniocha at Gora Kalwaria outside Warsaw, Tarnawski went to work. He was ultimately assigned to the Nowogródek District of the Home Army.
The Polish Home Army was designated the Armia Krajowa or AK for short. Their general mandate was to make life as miserable as possible for the German occupation forces. As the Soviet Red Army got closer to the Polish border the AK got more audacious in their combat operations.
This mandate was both incredibly complex and unimaginably dangerous. With support from the Cichociemni and Allied logistics, AK operatives conducted sabotage and direct action raids, emplaced mines, and established supply caches to support their sweeping insurgency efforts. The largest coordinated resistance operation of WW2 was the Warsaw Uprising that kicked off on August 1, 1944, under the direction of the AK. The Warsaw Uprising was part of the overarching Operation Tempest.
For sixty-three days Polish unconventional troops engaged in raging combat with German forces with little to no outside support. The Red Army had drawn up alongside the eastern suburbs of the city on Stalin’s orders and refused to assist the initiative. Stalin knew that the subjugation of Poland would be a necessary part of his post-war plans for conquest. Allowing the Germans to crush the Polish Home Army dovetailed perfectly into his dark schemes.
The Poles began the operation with nearly 49,000 men under arms. However, these were generally highly motivated but poorly trained irregulars armed with little more than a scrounged weapon and a handful of ammunition or a grenade. Arrayed against them were as many as 25,000 battle-hardened Wehrmacht and SS troops amply supplied and equipped with state of the art weapons.
During the course of the fight, the Poles employed two captured German Panther tanks, a Hetzer assault gun, and a pair of armored half-tracks. The Germans for their part had dozens of armored vehicles at their disposal along with Ju 87 Stuka dive bombers. The end result was a massacre.
More than 15,000 Polish resistance fighters died in the fight, while another 15,000 were captured. 5,660 Polish First Army soldiers became casualties. Balanced against that the Germans suffered as many as 17,000 killed or missing. There was as many as 200,000 civilian dead. Once the fighting abated the Germans came in and systematically leveled the city. The breadth of destruction precluded reliable numbers.
The Polish AK fought with whatever they could scrounge. They improvised armored vehicles out of civilian trucks and widely employed the Błyskawica submachine gun. A crude Sten-like weapon, the Błyskawica was the only standardized, mass-produced weapon to be built in occupied Europe during the war. The gun fired 9mm Para at around 600 rpm from a 32-round box magazine. Roughly 700 copies were built in underground workshops in Poland.
Throughout his time in occupied Poland, Aleksander Tarnawski undertook difficult and hazardous covert missions and also trained AK soldiers in the combat skills they needed to face the Germans. In slightly more than a year in combat Tarnawski earned the Polish Cross of Valor four times. He left the military as a Major.
The Rest of the Story
After the war, Tarnawski got a job with Polish Radio in Warsaw. Despite the chaos of active special operations service against the Nazis, he still retained his passion for Chemistry. He subsequently landed employment as a lab assistant in the Walenty Wawel coal mine in Ruda Slaska. From there, Tarnawski earned a Masters Degree in Chemical Engineering from the Silesian University of Technology.
Tarnawski eventually served as an assistant professor at the Institute of Non-Ferrous Metals in the 1960’s. He then earned a position as Senior Laboratory Engineer at the Institute of Plastics and Paints in Gliwice where he worked until he retired in 1994. Along the way he was married, widowed, and remarried, this time to a fellow Chemistry professor. Together they had a daughter who eventually earned her own PhD in Economics.
In September 2014, at age 94 at Książenice near Grodzisk Mazowiecki, fully seventy years after being dropped into Poland at night from a British Halifax bomber, Aleksander Tarnawski made one last parachute jump. This time he hit the silk with former and current GROM operators. GROM is short for Grupa Reagowania Operacyjno-Manewrowego which loosely translates to “Group for Operational Maneuvering Response.” I’m told this also means, “Thunder.”
Formally activated in 1990, GROM is one of five special operations units of the Polish Armed Forces and is respected around the world within the specops community. GROM is named in honor of the Silent Unseen of the WW2-era Polish Home Army. GROM operators are colloquially referred to as “The Surgeons” for their recognized capabilities at precision direct action operations.
As of January 2022, Major Tarnawski was the last survivor of those original 344 Cichociemni sent into combat during World War 2. After fighting the Germans undercover for more than a year and facing the likely prospect of torture and horrible gory death at any moment, Tarnawski went back to school and spent his entire professional life making the world a better place. He also saw to it that his daughter was educated and productive as well.
As amazing as his story was, Aleksander Tarnawski was typical of his generation. Those crusty old guys grew up with absolutely nothing and then faced literally unimaginable challenges. They not only prevailed in the face of such profound adversity but also thrived. Today’s crop of perennially-offended, easily-breakable social justice snowflakes would do well to learn from their example.
In all of American firearms history, there is no more legendary name than John Moses Browning. Born in 1855, he was not only an inventor and innovator, he was also a genuine gun genius. Browning made his first firearm at age 13 in his father’s gun shop, and was awarded the first of his 128 firearm patents in 1879 at just 24 years of age.
“John M. Browning is the unrivaled Dean of arms inventors and designers,” said Philip Schreier, director of NRA Museums. “Throughout the long history of firearms, from the year 1350 to the present, no one person has had such a staggering effect on the evolution of firearms technology as John Browning. Now, nearly 100 years after his death, most of his firearms designs and patents are still being used on a daily basis to defend life and liberty.”
Handgun: Colt Model 1911
This pistol takes its model number from the year Colt introduced it, 1911. And from then until 1984—over seven decades—it was the standard-issue sidearm for the entire U.S. Armed Forces, eventually replaced by the 9mm Beretta M9. Some modern versions of the gun are still in service with American military units, such as the U.S. Army Special Forces.
Browning developed the Model 1911 in response to the U.S. Army’s having sought a semiautomatic handgun to replace its outdated revolvers. His design won the highly competitive Army contract because the handgun was not only extremely reliable, but also had a number of unique attributes. For example, it was one of the first guns with parts that could be used to disassemble itself for simple, easy takedown and cleaning.
In addition to its military history, the Model 1911 is a very popular handgun with the general public yet today. An estimated 150 firearms manufacturers or more worldwide make and sell Model 1911-style handguns in various calibers. Compact variants of the gun are also in high demand as a concealed-carry gun because of the design’s relatively slim width and the stopping-power of the .45 ACP (Automatic Colt Pistol) caliber.
Rifle: M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR)
An absolutely awesome battlefield weapon in terms of firepower, John Browning invented this rifle in 1917. As a result, it saw only limited use near the end of World War I, but extensive use during World War II and the Korean War. The BAR (short for Browning Automatic Rifle) is a beast of a firearm. Weighing 16 to 20 pounds, the gun is selective-fire, capable of firing .30-06 Springfield-caliber ammunition in semiautomatic, full-automatic or burst modes. The rifle is fed by detachable box magazines of either 20 or 40 rounds
This so-called “light” machine gun was designed by Browning to be carried and fired by advancing troops while supported with a sling over the shoulder and fired from the hip without stopping or aiming, a concept known as “walking fire.” For more focused, aimed shooting, BAR rifles came equipped with a bipod after 1938.
Military personnel were not the only ones impressed with the firepower and portability of the BAR. Criminals also took notice, two of the more infamous being Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker (“Bonnie & Clyde”), who robbed banks throughout the South and Midwest during the 1930s. Clyde’s weapon of choice was the BAR, which he obtained—along with armor-piercing ammunition—by periodically breaking into National Guard armories.
But Bonnie could also handle one of these heavy rifles, even though she was not a large woman. A Missouri highway patrolman, forced to take cover behind an oak tree when Bonnie opened up on him with a BAR stated, “That little red-headed woman filled my face with splinters on the other side of that tree with one of those d*mned guns.”
Shotgun: Browning Auto-5
A revolutionary design for its day—and the first successful, mass-produced semiautomatic shotgun—the Auto-5 has a squared-off receiver back, earning it the nickname “Humpback Browning.” John Browning designed it in 1898, receiving a patent for the gun in 1900. Produced continually for the next 100 years by several gunmakers, production finally ceased for this fine firearm in 1998.
The name Auto-5 needs a bit of explanation, however. Auto is short for autoloader, not automatic, possibly causing some confusion because the gun has a semiautomatic action. The numeral 5 stands for the total number of shells the shotgun can hold when fully loaded: one in the firing chamber and four in the magazine.
An interesting sidenote is that the famous 20th Century author, shooter and hunter Ernest Hemingway didn’t think much of semiautomatic shotguns in general—preferring instead Browning’s double-barreled Superposed over/under shotgun—but he liked the Auto-5. “I shot a Browning [Auto-5] for twelve years, and it is the only good automatic shotgun,” he said. Ironically, it’s also the gun that nearly killed him.
Hemingway would often invite the rich and famous from Hollywood to Sun Valley Resort in Idaho for fall weekend bird hunts. It was during one of those hunts that socialite Mary Raye Hawks, wife of film director Howard Hawks, was handling a 16-gauge Browning Auto-5 (known as the Sweet Sixteen) less than safely when it went off, barely missing Hemingway—who was kneeling down just a few feet away tying his bootlace. The shot passed so close to the back of Hemingway’s head that it singed his neck hair.
The real test of any firearm is the test of time, and the three guns mentioned above have all passed that lengthy, detailed examination with flying colors. But Browning had many other successes, as well, such as the development of various Winchester rifles, and the water-cooled M1917 and air-cooled M1919 heavy machine guns. And yet today, when the legendary Browning M2 .50-caliber “Ma Deuce” machine gun arrives on the battlefield, enemies scatter.
John Moses Browning died doing what he loved best, inventing and designing firearms. While at his workbench one day in 1926, at the age of 71, he simply slumped over and slipped into firearms history.
