Tag: European History

Bastille Day

Today, 14 July 1789, is known as Bastille Day and the French revolution….this is when the french people had had enough of the suffering that they endured with the monarchy and took to the streets and stormed the prison known as the Bastille.

“Bastille Day is a holiday celebrating the storming of the Bastille—a military fortress and prison—on July 14, 1789, in a violent uprising that helped usher in the French Revolution. Besides holding gunpowder and other supplies valuable to revolutionaries, the Bastille also symbolized the callous tyranny of the French monarchy, especially King Louis XVI and his queen, Marie Antoinette.”

The prominent figure of this time was Maximilien Robespierre who oversaw the ‘Reign of Terror’ that ensued after the fall of the monarchy.

When Robespierre was elected as a deputy for the Third Estate in the Estates General in May, he witnessed the onset of the Revolution that broke the monarchy just two months later. It consumed him.

…

The radical journals and pamphlets together with the lengthy speeches given at the revolutionary clubs paved the way for manipulation of the press and the learning of the methods of mass psychology, indoctrination, and incitement of mob violence.

Jean-Paul Marat took his cue from Robespierre and began “perpetual denunciations of traitors” in his journal, L’Ami du Peuple. He even went so far as to “call openly for violence against fellow Frenchmen.” Another radical journalist, René Hébert, followed suit and used his newspaper, Le Père Duchesne, to arouse and agitate the French populace.

Despite incessant references to the virtue of the people, Robespierre trusted their virtue solely as an abstract concept or when their passions could be mobilized to serve the purposes of the revolution. In his eyes, mob violence was justified if it answered his personal call to carry out political riots or revolutionary insurrections. Robespierre no longer had any further use for the mob, and his references to the people became a total abstraction.

From 1792 to 1794, ‘The Incorruptible’ was instrumental in setting the stage for and presiding over the Reign of Terror. His technique was simple and time-tested–the Machiavellian tactic of “divide and conquer” (divide et impera). He did so with gruesome efficiency eliminating one by one his divided opposition–first the monarchists followed by the Feuillants and the Girondins; next the Hébertists; then the Dantonists; and finally, anyone who stood in his way and the continuation of the Terror. Robespierre succeeded in establishing institutionalized terror as an instrument of state power. He presided over it and used it against his enemies. For him, the end justified the means.

https://www.realclearhistory.com/2025/04/07/maximilien_robespierre_tyrant_1101685.html

I offer up this history lesson because I smell similar situations brewing here in the US….we must tread lightly and avoid any repeat of history.

Class Dismissed!

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“lego ergo scribo”

“Forget” The Holocaust?

Yesterday was Holocaust Remembrance Day and I thought I would let all those staunch supporters of Trump and his minions know that their hero has some dicey people in his group…..like Musk who recently has given support to Germany’s far right party and also gave this salute that sent shiver up many spines….but his comments about the Nazi days should send more shivers….

Billionaire enterpreneur Elon Musk insisted at a far-right rally in Germany over the weekend that the European country must move “beyond the past” and leave behind the memory of one of the deadliest genocides in history—but as leaders on the continent marked the 80th anniversary of the Auschwitz concentration camp liberation on Monday, several made clear that Musk’s advice was not welcome.

Musk’s comments on “‘the need to forget German guilt for Nazi crimes’ sounded all too familiar and ominous,” said Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Sunday. “Especially only hours before the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.”

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on the social media platform X, “I couldn’t agree more.”

The country’s ambassador to Israel said that while Musk claimed German children are treated as “guilty of the sins” of the Nazis during World War II, the government simply wants “them to grow up informed and responsible and to apply the lessons of Germany’s past.”

As Common Dreamsreported, the Tesla CEO and key adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump made the remarks at a rally for Alternative for Germany (AfD) on Saturday, five weeks before Germans are set to vote in federal elections.

AfD is currently polling at 19%, trailing the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which is in first place at 28%. But leaders across Europe, including Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Scholz have warned that Musk appears to be angling for the spread of far-right ideologies—including neo-Nazism—in European countries.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/elon-musk-europe

I find it interesting (not so much more like pathetic) that Trump supporters love Israel and all its parts and yet also support a d/bag like Musk who seemingly is a closet Nazi.

Stupid is as stupid votes.

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“lego ergo scribo”

Russia, What Went Wrong?

+++I start my infusion today and I do not know how it will go so this may be my only post for the day….sorry about that+++

In the mid-90s there was a lot of optimism that Russia would join the world with market economy and our wealthy would have new regions to hunt.

But something went wrong and instead we got Putin and his band of thugees.

While I was out there reading I found a declassified document that could answer some of the question being asked.

Once in a great while, a diplomatic memorandum—the outline of a proposed change in policy sent from a foreign service officer to his political masters back in Washington—has momentous impact. The most famous of these is George Kennan’s “Long Telegram” of February 1946, which urged “a long-term patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.”

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Now a similarly long memo, written nearly 50 years later, in the early days of the post–Cold War era and post-Soviet Russia, raises questions about how the world today might be different if Bill Clinton had heeded it as much as Harry Truman heeded Kennan’s.

The newly discovered memo, written in March 1994 by Wayne Merry, chief of the U.S. Embassy’s internal politics division at the time, didn’t make the same impact as Kennan’s for two reasons. First, Merry did not go public. Second, unlike Kennan’s memo, Merry’s was at odds with U.S. policy and was ignored, then buried, and its author was blackballed, by the policymakers at the time. In fact, it was buried so deeply that it was declassified just last week as the result of a lawsuit filed under the Freedom of Information Act by the National Security Archive, a private research firm at George Washington University.

Looking at it today, more than 30 years after the fact, it’s a remarkably prescient document that should prompt several lessons about how to run foreign policy.

Merry’s memo, titled “Whose Russia Is It Anyway: Toward a Policy of Benign Respect,” was written as Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s experiment with democracy and free-market economics was in heightened turmoil. The party of his prime minister, Yegor Gaidar, the architect of his economics policy, had recently lost an election—the result of popular discontent with the policy’s extreme inflation and displacement. Yeltsin mobilized tanks in downtown Moscow to put down an attempted putsch—launched for a variety of motives—in Russia’s Parliament. Yet, to the frustration of specialists in the U.S. Embassy, including Merry, many senior officials back in Washington saw Yeltsin as a still-strong figure and his “shock therapy” economics—which they had been pushing, along with a bevy of academic advisers, many of them from Harvard—as a success.

Merry stressed the urgent need for a course correction:

https://slate.com/_pages/cm51dbke8005qx9l0xtr1litr.html

It reads like ‘greed’ played a part in the rise of the Putin clan….maybe ambition should be tabled in favor of critical thinking….but that is not what big business pays the Congress to do….critically think.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Remember The 5th Of November

I believe that this date, 05 November 2024 will be remembered, at least for awhile, because of the social implications of the election.

Today is election day and most people, that I know, are planning to go out and vote and it will be an ordeal or so they say…..there probably will not be much traffic on my blog today as people make their way to the polls.

But this day has been remembered for many years.

What better time for a little history?

Because of this I shall drop a little history on you……

‘Remember, remember the fifth of November.’

On this date in 1605, a group of conspirators attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament and everyone inside them. Since the State Opening was to occur on this day, it would have led to the death of King James I of England and VI of Scotland, as well as pretty much the entirety of the government.

But why, exactly, did Robert Catesby, Guy Fawkes and the other conspirators aspire to commit such a diabolical act?

Late 16th and early 17th century Europe was a veritable powder keg of religious frictions (please pardon the pun). Corruption within the Catholic Church had led to the rise of Protestant ideals even before Henry VIII upended the religious situation in England by divorcing Catherine of Aragon and declaring himself as Supreme Head of the Church of England in the 1530s.

Henry was succeeded on the throne by his son Edward (a Protestant), Mary (a Catholic) and eventually Elizabeth I (a Protestant again). Under her reign, England eventually became the leading Protestant power in Europe – but that led to rising tensions with a number of Catholic countries, most notably Spain.

The execution of Elizabeth’s cousin Mary Queen of Scots in 1587 and the failed invasion of the Spanish Armada the following year were huge events that shaped the political and religious climate at the time. Many Catholics were persecuted (around 100 priests were executed during Elizabeth’s reign) and religious intolerance was rife.

When Elizabeth I died without children, the Scottish King James VI came to London to assume the English throne as James I in 1603. Given that he was the son on Mary Queen of Scots (a devout Catholic), and that his wife Anne of Denmark was also Catholic, there were high hopes that he would take a more lenient view.

https://www.history.co.uk/articles/why-did-they-try-to-blow-up-the-houses-of-parliament

A fascinating plot and worthy of a look.

If any of my British visitors have anything to add please give me and my readers the heads up.

I am so tired of the voices of the candidates and their surrogates that my ears want to bleed….time to get on with it and let the chips fall where they may.

As you go out to vote please be careful and be safe.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

World War Two Behind The Scenes

I like history but most people deplore the thought of remembering anything they do not understand.

There are many things about this war that few know anything about….basically because because they do not want to know they had rather believe the lopsided stories they have been told.

About the only thing anyone can recall is that ill-fated statement by Chamberlain (a post for another day)

Me? I like to look beyond the popular crap and do a deeper dive.

So were there any efforts to avoid World War 2….beyond that famous statement by Chamberlain…..( I know there will be inevitable condemnation of Chamberlain’s efforts…please don’t)

There are many military historians who are familiar with the battlefield history of World War Two but few know much about the diplomatic history of the war when it comes to peace initiatives, long suppressed by liberal establishment historians, to terminate the war, in many cases years before it ended in actual history, or even prevent it from happening at all. Americans have been indoctrinated to believe since grade school that the war could not have been averted and that our only mistake was not invading and crushing Nazi Germany in its cradle when it was still military inferior and in the process of rebuilding its armed forces following the crushing disarmament constraints of the Treaty of Versailles.

According to the dominant historical narrative, Hitler could not be trusted to keep any of his agreements so any negotiated peace settlement would only delay the inevitable. The only problem with this accepted historical narrative of the war is that none of it is true. These peace offers, which have been largely covered up and/or erased from the annals of history, serve to convincingly rebut the myth that Hitler, an evil dictator who mass murdered five to six million Jews, was undeterrable and unappeasable. They provide convincing evidence that World War Two was, in fact, neither a necessary nor inevitable war to stop a dictator who was bent on nothing less than world conquest as Americans have been taught to believe.

However, the most glaring historical misconception of the war by far, which has since been used to justify numerous wars including an indefinite, unnecessary, destabilizing and incredibly dangerous prolongation of America’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, was that it was Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler with the Munich Agreement that caused the outbreak of World War Two and therefore the chief lesson of the war is that we must never accommodate our adversaries or else they will be emboldened to invade other countries and perhaps start another world war. In fact, it was not the British policy of accommodating Nazi Germany that caused the outbreak of World War Two but rather it was Chamberlain’s decision to abruptly abandon it and issue an ill-considered British military guarantee against a German invasion that Hitler had never previously considered, in view of the fact that Hitler had spent the previous five years trying to cultivate Poland as an ally against the USSR, that resulted in the outbreak of the war.

https://dpyne.substack.com/p/lost-opportunities-for-peace-the

There is always more to any war than what lopsided history has taught…..this includes all wars….including the most recent one that all have very strong opinions about as a bit deluded that they are)

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Women’s History #5

World War 2 brought the capabilities of women as spies and resistance participants to the forefront…..these brave women were part of the war effort working for a section known as the S.O.E. (Special Operations Executive)….

There numbers were decimated by either incompetent leadership or a spy within the organization….I feel it was a little of both.

But let’s look at the brave women of World War 2……

After France signed an armistice with Germany in June 1940, Great Britain feared the shadow of Nazism would continue to fall over Europe. Dedicated to keeping the French people fighting, Prime Minister Winston Churchill pledged the United Kingdom’s support to the resistance movement. Charged with “set(ting) Europe ablaze,” the Special Operations Executive, or SOE, was born.

Headquartered at 64 Baker Street in London, the SOE’s official purpose was to put British special agents on the ground to “coordinate, inspire, control and assist the nationals of the oppressed countries.” Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton borrowed irregular warfare tactics used by the Irish Republican Army two decades before. The “Baker Street Irregulars,” as they came to be known, were trained in sabotage, small arms, radio and telegraph communication and unarmed combat. SOE agents were also required to be fluent in the language of the nation in which they would be inserted so they could fit into the society seamlessly. If their presence aroused undue suspicion, their missions could well be over before they even began.

Extensive training in resisting interrogation and how to evade capture underscored the gravity of their missions. Fear of the Gestapo was real and well-founded. Some agents hid suicide pills in their coat buttons in case they could not escape. They knew it was unlikely they would see their homes in the British Commonwealth again, but accepted the risk.

Irregular missions required irregular materiel. The SOE Operations and Research section developed unique devices for agents to use in sabotage and close-range combat. Their inventions, including an exploding pen and weapons hidden in everyday objects like umbrellas and pipes, would even inspire Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. Operations and Research also developed a foldable bike called the Welbike, but it was unreliable on rough terrain. Most of the groups’ inventions, like waterproof containers that protected agents’ supplies during parachute jumps, were more practical.

https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/The-Female-Spies-Of-SOE/

I have watched several documentaries on those women and their stories need to be told and told often.

Sadly their contributions to the war effort have mostly been overlooked or forgotten…..that needs to change.

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Charter Of The Forest

I have not been writing so much these days about history and some of the misconceptions that are taught….I will rectify my absence.

The Constitution is in the news almost daily….it is used for every aspect of the news….so we should go back to the beginning.

Some Americans believe that the rights outlined in the Constitution were original thoughts by the Founders.

How many of you were taught in your history classes that the Constitution had its beginnings with the Magna Carta?

That teaching is not as accurate as you might think…..the Magna Carta was to quell the rebel barons had very little to do with the ‘common man’.

The Magna Carta, the Great Charter, or the Big Letter, signed by King John on June 15, 1215, at Runnymede, a meadow by the River Thames, to make peace with rebel barons, is perhaps the most well-known document that argues the existence and vigor of individual legal rights. Specifically, at the time of its signing, the immediate goal was protecting the private property of wealthy elite feudal lords who didn’t like their King.

Habeas Corpus—”show me the body”—as a defense against unlawful imprisonment, also traces a legal genealogy to the Magna Carta. However, the origins are in the Assize of Clarendon of 1166. I point out this distinction as noteworthy as there is more to the history of the Great Charter and its legacies.

For example, the Charter of the Forest, issued on November 6, 1217, two years after the Magna Carta, is the less-known of the agreements between these warring parties.

 “Unlike the Magna Carta, which dealt with the rights of barons, the Charter of the Forest addressed the rights of the common man. It restricted the amount of land that the king could claim for private use and restored the right of common access to natural resources.”

The Magna Carta Manifesto: Liberty and Commons for All by Peter Linebaugh examine the fascinating history from below of this document and the implications for the legal claims of private property.

English commoners’ rights come from The Charter of the Forest, not the Magna Carta

Since I am not as expert on English history I would like to hear from my English friends that will have more information than me.

There is so much that we Americans are not taught and I try to correct that oversight as best I can.

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Why Did Russia Let The Republics Go?

Ever wonder (probably not) if Ukraine is so important to Russia why then did they allow it to break away?

The news from Ukraine is redundant….pretty much the same day after day…..US spends like a drunken sailor for Ukraine…..Refugees are still pathetic…..Russia fires a rocket somewhere and the words of defiance on both sides continue….

Now a little historic background for those that have an inquiring mind…..

As the conflict drags on and involves more and more participation by the West, mainly the US, some of us struggle to understand just what went wrong.

With the war raging in Ukraine some people, granted not many, have asked the question how did it all come to this?

Basically they are asking what happened to the old USSR that it eventually lead to the many conflicts that have popped up over the last 25 years or so.

For answer we need to look back in Russian history just a bit….that is if you would like to understand what has happened to bring about the wrath on Ukraine.

The break up of the Soviet Union led eventually to the conflicts in Chechnya, Georgia, and now Ukraine….the only way to understand the situation is to look back to 1991 when the break up began…..

“Why did the Russians, despite all that one would expect from them given the histories of the downfalls of empires, decide not to fight and to let the empire fall?” asked Serhii Plokhii, Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard University, at a 29 April 2013 lecture at the Kennan Institute. Plokhii discussed the fall of the Soviet Union in the context of the last five months of the Soviet Union in order to explain why it was not accompanied by the violent conflicts triggered by the collapse of previous empires.

Plokhii argued that the fall of the Soviet Union is a unique case in the history of empires: “Russia let most of the republics go without a fight, without a struggle.” While there were slogans and campaigns for independence among the Union republics in the months before the collapse, none were campaigning for the complete disintegration of the empire. Rather, each was struggling against the central authority to augment its own independent power base. Even the Baltic states, the most independently minded of the republics, operated along these lines. Other republics, such as those in Central Asia, were not struggling at all against the Union for political independence.

It is common for scholars to mark the Soviet Union’s de facto end in August 1991, when Boris Yeltsin suspended the activities of the Communist party on the territory of the Russian Federation. However, Plokhii stated that this action alone did not precipitate the end of the USSR and independence of its constituent parts. Plokhii contended that only the exit of the Baltic States was inevitable at that moment; the status of other republics like Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus and Ukraine was not fully understood until December 1991.

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/why-did-russia-let-the-republics-go-revisiting-the-fall-the-ussr

If more info is needed then another source may assist your understanding…..

https://www.npr.org/2021/12/24/1066861022/how-the-soviet-unions-collapse-explains-the-current-russia-ukraine-tension

Sad few will actually care what the causes are…they have boiled their knowledge down to Ukraine good…..Putin Bad……and the US needs to risk everything to prove the points.

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D-Day Remembrance

Today is the 77th anniversary of the Allied landing on the beaches of Normandy……our “Greatest Generation” saving the world from fascism………..

D-Day In Remembrance - 720

Some say this was the beginning of the end of the European theater of World War 2….and yet there is a large sector of the country that thinks that we should not have entered this conflict…..(originally posted on Memorial Day)…..

A new poll timed to Memorial Day shows that a surprising number of Americans say that the United States may have made a mistake in sending troops to fight in World War II.

An Economist/YouGov poll out this week asked respondents “Do you think the United States made a mistake sending troops to fight in the following wars?”

As expected, there were significant divisions over conflicts like the Vietnam War, with 48 percent responding that “yes” it was a mistake to send troops there, and narrower divisions for recent Middle East conflicts like the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

And the decision to send troops to fight i World War II received more support than any other in the poll, but it was far from unanimous. A third of respondents said it either was a mistake to send troops to fight the Nazi-led Axis powers, or they weren’t sure if it was a mistake to contribute troops to the prevention of Nazi world domination.

While 68 percent said it wasn’t a mistake, 14 percent said it was, and an additional 18 percent weren’t sure. Skepticism was highest among respondents between the ages of 30 and 44, of whom a majority were either opposed to or unsure of sending troops to fight in WWII — 26% said it was a mistake and 25% were not sure.

Wait, WHAT? One-THIRD of Americans Aren’t Convinced We Should Have Sent Troops — To Fight World War II

That is about 33% of the American people…..think about that.

Should the US have fought in that war?

My thought is yes we should have….it maybe the only war that we needed to participate in….a growing cancer on mankind needed to be surgically removed for the good of all.

No photo description available.

Please take a moment to remember the sacrifices made by those that answered the call….there are so few of them left….we owe them a debt and we should be working to preserve the ideals that they fought for and died.

After that watch this video from the Lincoln Project…..

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Does Anyone Remember The Cambridge 5?

A History Sunday……

Probably only UK visitors will be the only ones that will remember and then only those that are aging….like me.

The Cambridge Five were the most notorious of all the spies who worked for the Soviet Union. This British quintet were exceptional for a number of reasons: while they worked independently, they knew the identities of one another; they spied at a critical time (during the Second World War and the early Cold War); the content of their espionage complemented each other, as each worked in different parts of the government. And the amount of information they provided was unsurpassed.

The five were recruited while students at the University of Cambridge in the 1930s and each would go on to have successful dual careers as British civil servants and Soviet spies. Kim Philby (1912–88) spent most of his career working for the British intelligence agency MI6, including a period as head of Soviet counterespionage and as MI6 liaison officer to the CIA in Washington DC. Donald Maclean (1913–83) had a successful career in the Foreign Office, working on atomic and military matters. Guy Burgess (1911–63) worked briefly for MI6, but also spent some time in the Foreign Office, working in London on propaganda, and then in the British Embassy in Washington.

From the mid-1930s through the early 1960s, the Soviet Union benefited from the services of five British traitors. Reams of classified documents transferred from British files and offices to those of the Soviet’s. During the height of World War II and the Cold War which followed, classified information shared between the United States and Great Britain received an eager welcome from the Soviets. The traitors sent so much information to their Soviet handlers that some in the NKVD/KGB questioned its value. Others were simply overwhelmed by the amount of data received and had insufficient time to properly analyze it all. Much of the damage done by the group originally labeled the Cambridge 4, later expanded to 5 when another traitor’s activities came to light, remains unknown.

This Spy Ring Betrayed the US and British to Soviet Intelligence

These spies did some major damage to the US and the UK in their sell-out to the Soviets.

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