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Revisiting Mackinder’s ‘Round World’

2019-10-24T00:00:00Z

Seventy-six years ago, the editors of Foreign Affairs invited Sir Halford Mackinder (1861-1947), the British geographer, educator, geopolitical theorist, and statesman, to revisit his “Heartland” theory of world politics. Mackinder, then age 82, acceded to the request and wrote “The Round World and the Winning of the Peace,” which was published in the July 1943 issue of the journal. It was Mackinder’s “last word” on his influential global worldview and, unfortunately, it is his least remembered article on geopolitics.

It is an article worth revisiting today because Mackinder and his geopolitical concepts are being cited by many observers as relevant to our 21st century world, particularly China’s rise to world power. Mackinder’s ideas are indeed relevant to 21st century geopolitics, but those ideas evolved over his lifetime and were rooted in a lifelong study of the relationship between geography and history. More attention should be paid to both the intellectual roots of his geopolitical worldview and his “last word” on the subject.

Born on Feb. 15, 1861, in Gainsborough, England, Mackinder was a practicing geographer and an educator who played an important role in establishing geography as an independent field of study in England. He made the first successful ascent of Africa’s second-highest peak, Mt. Kenya, in 1899. He was also a member of the prestigious Royal Geographical Society and contributed to the Society’s Geographical Journal. Between 1910-22, he sat as a Conservative Member of Parliament. During Russia’s Civil War, Mackinder served as Britain’s High Commissioner for South Russia and in that capacity recommended that Britain strangle Bolshevism in its cradle before it became a threat to the world’s democracies. He chaired the Imperial Shipping Committee and Imperial Economic Committee, and joined the Privy Council in 1926.

Mackinder’s study of the relationship between geography and history produced a series of articles and books that formed the intellectual foundation for his global geopolitical worldview. In 1887 in The Scope and Methods of Geography, he explained that political geography must be “built upon” physical geography, and that geography’s main function should be to explore the “causal relations” between geography and history.

Three years later, Mackinder wrote The Physical Basis of Political Geography, where he attempted to show that “the greatest events in the world’s history are related to the greatest features of geography.”

Beginning in 1902, Mackinder wrote a series of books that surveyed the world in geo-historical terms: Britain and the British Seas (1902), Our Own Islands: An Elementary Study in Geography (1907), The Rhine: Its Valley and History (1908), Eight Lectures on India (1910), Lands Beyond the Channel (1910), The Nations of the Modern World (1911), and Distant Lands (1912). Those works were the building blocks of his geopolitical synthesis, but they are little remembered today.

Mackinder is remembered most for two geopolitical works: The Geographical Pivot of History (1904) and Democratic Ideals and Reality (1919). Together, those works explained his “Heartland” theory of world politics as initially conceived. Mackinder identified the northern-central core of Eurasia as the “pivot state” or “Heartland” of the globe. This region, he wrote, was essentially landlocked and therefore impenetrable to sea power. The region also featured a lengthy lowland plain that would enable a sufficiently armed land power to expand to the west, east, and south.

Mackinder wrote that the “pivot state” or “Heartland” for the first time in history hosted a numerically sufficient and well-organized population. Moreover, the industrial revolution had enhanced the mobility of land power and contributed to the cohesiveness of large continental states. As he wrote in Britain and the British Seas, “The European phase of history is passing away, as have passed the Fluviatile and Mediterranean phases.” The great threat to the global balance of power was that a Heartland-based continental power could conquer and then organize the resources of the Eurasian landmass to build invincible sea power and overwhelm the remaining insular powers (i.e, Britain and the United States).

In the 1904 article, Mackinder viewed Russia as a potential global hegemon, but he also suggested that a more organized and technologically- advanced China could pose a similar threat because China “would add an oceanic frontage to the resources of” Eurasia. In 1919 in Democratic Ideals and Reality, in the wake of the First World War, Mackinder warned that Germany, with its defeat of Russia, had almost conquered the Heartland, and he predicted that unless a balance of power was restored on the Eurasian continent the struggle for the Heartland would be renewed. He slightly revised the boundaries of the “pivot state” and renamed it the “Heartland.” He described the continents of Eurasia and Africa as a single geopolitical unit and called it the “World-Island,” which combined incomparable resources and potential insularity. He famously recommended that an “airy cherub” should whisper to Western statesmen at the Versailles peace conference: “Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; Who rules the World-Island commands the World.”

During the inter-war period, German geopolitical theorists led by Karl Haushofer seized on Mackinder’s writings and constructed a blueprint for German expansion. The German geopoliticians divided the world into Pan Regions and their advocacy of German expansion melded well with Nazi notions of lebensraum after Hitler came to power. Hitler’ invasion of Soviet Russia renewed the struggle for the Heartland, and that struggle decided the outcome of the Second World War.

In the United States, Mackinder’s ideas surfaced in a popular sense when the events of the Second World War appeared to confirm their prescience. Democratic Ideals and Reality was reprinted in 1942. That same year, Henry Luce’s Life magazine ran a feature story on Mackinder’s geopolitical ideas and their impact on the war. By 1943, it appeared that the tide of the war had shifted against Germany. The editors of Foreign Affairs looked to the postwar settlement and invited Mackinder to update or revise his Heartland theory.

Mackinder began The Round World and the Winning of the Peace by explaining the origins of his Heartland concept. Surprisingly, he identified Britain’s War in South Africa and the Russo-Japanese War as the events that inspired his idea of the Heartland. Britain and Russia, respectively, used sea power and land power to wage war over comparable distances. Those two events reminded him, he wrote, of “Vasco da Gama’s rounding the Cape of Good Hope on his voyage to the Indies . . . and the ride of Yermak, the Cossack, . . . over the Ural range into Siberia.”

Then, Mackinder reviewed the series of raids conducted by “nomadic tribes of Central Asia, through classical antiquity and the Middle Ages, upon the settled populations of the crescent subcontinents: peninsular Europe, the Middle East, the Indies, and China proper.” Geography enabled a Central Asian power to expand over the coastlands of Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Those coastlands had access to the sea, or what he called in Democratic Ideals and Reality, the “World Ocean.” A Central Asian-based power could, therefore, become the world’s dominant land and sea power.

With that background, Mackinder in The Round World and the Winning of the Peace, looked to the postwar settlement. He judged his Heartland concept to be “more valid and useful today than it was either twenty or forty years ago.” He again revised the geographical boundaries of the Heartland and wrote that for practical purposes it was equivalent to the territory of the Soviet Union, excepting the land east of the Lena River.
The Soviet Union, he wrote, will emerge from the war as the greatest land power on the globe. “The Heartland is the greatest natural fortress on earth,” he continued. “For the first time in history it is manned by a garrison sufficient both in number and quality.”

Mackinder added a new geopolitical feature to his global worldview: the “Midland Ocean,” which consisted of “a bridgehead in France, a moated aerodrome in Britain, and a reserve of trained manpower, agriculture and industries in the eastern United States and Canada.” This was a remarkable foreshadowing of the North Atlantic alliance six years before it’s founding. “What a pity,” Mackinder lamented, “the alliance negotiated after Versailles, between the United States, the United Kingdom and France was not implemented. What trouble and sadness that act might have saved!”

He completed his global sketch of the world by identifying and briefly describing three other geographical regions: a “girdle of deserts and wildernesses” within which lie the Heartland and the Midland Ocean; the “tropical rain forests” of South America and Africa on either side of the South Atlantic Ocean; and “the Monsoon lands of India and China” that will grow to prosperity and balance the Heartland and Midland Ocean. The result, he hoped, was a “balanced globe of human beings. And happy, because balanced and free.”

Too many of today’s observers apply Mackinder’s concepts to our 21st century world without considering his “last word” on the subject in this seminal article. Mackinder foresaw the rise of China and India but viewed their rise as contributing to, instead of upsetting, the global balance of power. What he envisioned in The Round World and the Winning of the Peace was a tri-polar world where the Heartland, the nations of the North Atlantic basin, and the Monsoon lands of East and South Asia would balance each other.

Mackinder’s ideas and concepts are back in vogue, and that is a good thing. But it is important to recognize that Mackinder’s strategic outlook changed, or at least evolved, in response to major world events. He was a geopolitical empiricist not a geographical determinist. Those who invoke Mackinder’s ideas as originally conceived in 1904 and revised in 1919, while neglecting his 1943 Round World article, not only do him an injustice but also risk misapplying those ideas in ways that Mackinder never intended.

China’s aggressive military moves in the East China and South China Seas and the Indian Ocean, its diplomatic and economic expansion via the Belt and Road Initiative, its strategic cooperation with Russia, and its growing influence in Africa are causes for concern. China is expanding its influence and global footprint across Mackinder’s World-Island. If Mackinder were alive today, his advice to Western statesmen would likely be to pursue policies that buttress the tri-polar world he envisioned in 1943.

Indeed, the logic of Mackinder’s Round World article leads to a renewed appreciation for the Nixon-Kissinger approach to geopolitics, which sought for the United States to have better relations with Russia and China than they had with each other. The goal then, as now, is to promote the geopolitical pluralism of Eurasia so that, in Mackinder’s words, we have a “balanced globe of human beings.” Mackinder never wavered from his goal of measuring “the relative significance of the great features of our globe as tested by the events of history” so that the Western democracies could “best adjust our ideals of freedom to [the] lasting realities of our earthly home.”

Francis P. Sempa is the author of "Geopolitics: From the Cold War to the 21st Century, America’s Global Role: Essays and Reviews on National Security, Geopolitics and War," and "Somewhere in France, Somewhere in Germany: A Combat Soldier’s Journey through the Second World War." He has written on historical topics, including the Civil War, for The Washington Times, The Diplomat, Orbis (the journal of the Foreign Policy Research Institute), the University Bookman, Presidential Studies Quarterly, and other publications.

Francis P. Sempa, a federal prosecutor, is the author of Geopolitics: From the Cold War to the 21st Century and America’s Global Role: Essays and Reviews on National Security, Geopolitics, and War. He has written extensively on historical and foreign policy topics for The Diplomat, Orbis, the Claremont Review of Books, the University Bookman, the Asian Review of Books, Joint Force Quarterly, the South China Morning Post, Strategic Review, and other publications.

Hitler Was His Own Worst Enemy

2019-10-17T00:00:00Z

Last in a series of stories exploring how Germany might have won World War II. Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

In our last installment, we discussed the ways in which Germany might have defeated the Soviet Union, which led to Soviet-era state-owned news agency Pravda promptly attacking the author in an article entitled, “U.S. Gave advice to Hitler How to Defeat Russia.” In this article, we will discuss why Hitler was Germany’s greatest obstacle to winning the Second World War and how the war might have been won if German generals could have prevented him from interfering in military operations. German dictator Adolf Hitler has been considered a political genius by some and a mad man bent on world conquest by others, but the truth is that he was neither. Rather, he was a virulent anti-Semite who believed his life’s mission was to re-unite Germany and lead an international crusade against Soviet Communism. He was also responsible for committing a series of strategic blunders and military miscalculations, some small and some great, that ended up ensuring Germany’s defeat. But what if German military leaders had been given the freedom to prosecute the war more wisely, resulting in a stalemate or even something resembling a Nazi German victory? Here are some things that Germany could have done differently to win the war:

Overthrow Adolf Hitler before, or immediately after, he violated the Munich Pact — Overthrowing or assassinating Hitler was probably the single most important thing Germany could have done to win the Second World War, assuming it had ended up fighting it at all without him. The reason for this is that Hitler made a series of critical strategic errors beginning with his decision to violate the Munich Pact in March 1939 and continuing with his decision to spare the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) at Dunkirk in May 1940, his decision to halt the German advance on Moscow in August 1941 and his decision to declare war on the USA in December 1941, which taken as a whole served to all but guarantee ultimate German military defeat.

There were more than 40 known coup or assassination attempts against Hitler, many with wide support by top German military leaders including 11 German field marshals at various times. But the first and perhaps the most promising was planned to occur in September 1938 in response to fear by the German general staff that Hitler’s demand for the German Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia would result in a war with Britain and France, which Germany was woefully unprepared to fight and would have been sure to lose. The Germans had only about one-third as many divisions as they were able to mobilize in September 1939 and the Czech army had the same number of troops as the Germans did and six more army divisions! Needless to say, they would have had to use the bulk of the German Army to successfully invade leaving Germany’s western borders largely undefended against a potential French invasion and occupation of Germany’s Rhineland industrial region. Thus the German generals led by General Ludwig Beck felt it would be necessary to remove Hitler from power in order to avoid a near certain German military defeat.

These senior military anti-Hitler conspirators, also known as the Oster Conspiracy, after the name of the German General who initiated it, planned to arrest or assassinate Hitler the moment he gave the invasion order, overthrow his Nazi regime and restore Kaiser Wilhelm II as Emperor of Germany. Germany’s Chief of the general staff at the time, Colonel General Franz Halder, reportedly carried a loaded pistol at all times in his meeting for Germany in case the time was right to arrest or kill Hitler. However, implementation of the plan depended on the British issuing a declaration guaranteeing Czechoslovakia from German military aggression and threatening to declare war if the Germans invaded. A strongly worded letter from Chamberlain to Hitler that Britain would declare war on Germany if it invaded Czechoslovakia may have been all it took to trigger the overthrow of Hitler and save the world from the devastation of the Second World War. The coup plotters sent an agent to tell then British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain of their plan to overthrow Hitler requesting he issue such a declaration to justify Hitler’s ouster, but the British Cabinet rejected their proposal. This plan to overthrow Hitler lost much of its senior German military support after France and Britain signed the Munich Pact giving in to most, but not all of his demands without war. It goes without saying that a post-Nazi German government would never have forcibly expelled the Jews, let alone mass murdered them in the Holocaust as Hitler did.

The coup plotters continued to plot to overthrow Hitler after the signing of the Munich Pact, but senior military support from the coup was much reduced following Hitler’s quick string of victories which the Germans were able to achieve from 1938-41. Chamberlain remained a strong supporter of German efforts to overthrow Hitler until his untimely death in November 1940, but his successor Winston Churchill refused repeated requests to help German resistance leaders trying to assassinate him. One of the best ways to have assassinated Hitler would have been to use nerve gas, given that contact between his skin and a single drop of nerve gas could have killed him within 20 minutes, but it appears that using this method of assassination was never seriously contemplated by German resistance leaders. The coup leaders all supported peace with the Western Powers, so had they succeeded the war might have ended much sooner, allowing Germany to focus on defeating the Soviet Union. The final July 20, 1944 attempt by the German resistance to kill Hitler known as ‘Operation Valkyrie’ was led by Colonel Klaus von Stauffenberg, who was played by Hollywood actor Tom Cruise in the exceptional recent movie Valkyrie. It came the closest to killing Hitler and overthrowing the Nazis from power, but tragically failed after which Hitler ordered the execution of 5,000 German resistance members.

The author actually had the privilege of visiting the German Resistance Memorial in Berlin this past April and paying homage to these unsung, fallen heroes and it proved to be a very moving experience. Ultimately however, even if the German resistance had not succeeded in killing Hitler until later in the war, the Western Allies would have likely had a far more difficult time justifying their postwar destruction and dismemberment of Germany under the pretense of collective punishment of all German civilians for Hitler’s crimes had the Germans already overthrown the evil Nazi regime on their own.

Allow the German General Staff to make all important military decisions — Hitler’s insistence on making all of the major military decisions, instead of allowing his generals to run the war, resulted in a series of avoidable mistakes, the cumulative effect of which assured Germany’s ultimate defeat. Not only did he halt the advance of Army Group Center and prevent it from taking Moscow in summer 1941, but he issued “no-retreat” orders that resulted in entire German armies surrounded and captured, and the unnecessary loss of hundreds of thousands of German troops as the tide of war began to shift against them. Some historians have argued this “no-retreat” order succeeded in preventing the German military withdrawal in the face of the Soviet 1941-42 Winter offensive from turning into a rout, which may be true, however that was an exception. Also, he ordered militarily dubious offensives at Stalingrad in August 1942 and at Kursk in July 1943 and later the Ardennes at the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944 and in Hungary in March 1945, which resulted in heavy German losses without which Germany could have likely defended against successive Soviet offensives at least a couple years longer.

Employ nerve gas to repel the Allied invasion of Normandy and subsequent Soviet invasion of Germany – Hitler spent over $2 billion (as much as the U.S. spent on the Manhattan Project developing the atomic bomb) developing and producing a massive arsenal of Tabun and Sarin nerve gas, which were much more deadly than the Allies’ stocks of mustard gas, totaling 12,000 tons, but declined repeated requests from his military commanders to employ it against enemy troops on the battlefield -- even when Germany was in the process of being totally overrun by the Western Allies and Soviet Red Army from January-May 1945 and he was preparing to commit suicide. The Germans could have employed their vast stocks of nerve gas to potentially repel the Allied amphibious invasion of Normandy on D-Day although it is perhaps fortuitous that they did not as the U.S. and U.K. likely would have responded with their even more deadly stockpile of anthrax which Churchill planned to use to bomb and kill tens of millions of innocent German civilians if the Allied landings in Normandy had been repulsed by the Germans, which would have made Germany’s largest cities uninhabitable for half a century. The Germans could have delivered Sarin nerve gas via mortars, which Germany had considerably more of than did the Allies, along with other types of artillery rounds since delivery by air in the face of Allied air superiority would likely have proven much more challenging. Winston Churchill, on the other hand, had no such scruples and reportedly planned on using mustard gas against German troops on the beaches if they had ended up invading Britain. Nerve gas might have also been used successfully to repel Soviet troops advancing on eastern Germany from Berlin, given favorable wind conditions. Interestingly, all German mortars and multiple rocket launchers above 10 centimeters in diameter during the war were designated by the Germans as Nebelwerfers which translates to “smoke or fog throwers” and were initially assigned to the German Army Chemical Corps, being primarily designed to deliver poison gas and smoke rounds.

Another related major mistake was Hitler’s decision to control the Panzer divisions in Normandy instead of giving full control to Rommel to repel the Allied landing forces on D-day while Hitler slept through D-day and missed the opportunity to do so believing the Allied ruse that the invasion of Normandy was merely a diversion from the main planned allied landings.

Don’t enact anti-Semitic laws that caused top nuclear scientists to emigrate from Europe to the United States —When Hitler was appointed as Reichskanzler in 1933, his virulent anti-Semitism, which he developed following the German surrender at the end of World War One, caused all the top Jewish German and Hungarian scientists, including most notably Albert Einstein, who had been working at the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin, to emigrate to the U.S. and U.K. Their assistance proved critical in aiding the U.S.-led Manhattan Project in helping the Allies develop the atomic bomb by July 1945. However, had Hitler and the Nazis never enacted discriminatory laws against Jews, Einstein and other European scientists might have helped Germany develop the atomic bomb first, which Germany then could have employed to help break the deadlock on the Eastern Front and produce a more favorable peace settlement with the Soviet Union. That in turn would have catapulted Germany to military superpower status along with the United States and Soviet Union.

Conclusion

This concludes the list of the top 20 things Nazi Germany could have done differently to win the Second World War. However, even had it had technically won the war, the victory would have likely have been limited in scope unless it had succeeded in capturing Moscow and pushing the Red Army back to the Archangel-Volga-Astrakhan Line. Even then, Stalin would have eventually counterattacked and pushed the Germans back, likely making Germany’s victory temporary and prolonging the war considerably longer than it was waged in actual history. The most likely final outcome of a German victory in the war would have been a German-dominated Europe in which German troops had completely withdrawn from Northern, Southern and Western Europe (except for Luxembourg and Alsace-Lorraine). German troops would remain in Eastern Europe to defend against the prospect of renewed Soviet aggression while Poland would be a Polish-led German protectorate.

The Soviet Union would have likely been restored to its 1938 borders with Nazi Germany fighting a half-century long Cold War against them. Germany might have succeeded in regaining its African colonies and may have succeeded in adding a few new ones had it pursued the Mediterranean option in Part 3 of this series. Had the Jews been forcibly deported to Palestine as part of a peace agreement with Britain as Hitler had requested in his May 1941 peace offer, the Jewish Holocaust would have largely been averted. Ultimately, a victorious Nazi Germany likely would have been a contented, but contained, regional power, not bent on world domination as Allied war propaganda, war hysteria and popular mythology suggested at the time and since. Hopefully, Hitler would have been assassinated and the Nazis overthrown by the German resistance shortly thereafter, returning Germany to democratic control. Then the new German government could have granted full independence to Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the Czech Republic and returned all Polish majority territories to Poland while inviting them to join a new Central & Eastern European mutual defense alliance against the Soviet Union.

© David T. Pyne 2019

David T. Pyne, Esq. is a former U.S. Army combat arms and H.Q. staff officer with a M.A. in National Security Studies from Georgetown University. He currently serves as a Vice President of the Association of the United States Army’s Utah Chapter and as Utah Director of the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security. He can be reached at emptaskforce.ut@gmail.com

Germany Could Have Defeated USSR in WW II

2019-10-16T00:00:00Z

Fourth in a series of stories exploring how Germany might have won World War II. Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

In our last installment, we discussed how Germany could have forced Britain to accept one of his peace offers and keep the United States out of the war. In this article, we shall examine how Germany might have not only avoided total defeat at the hands of the Red Army, but even might have achieved a measure of victory against her much larger and more powerful Soviet adversary, which was over 40 times larger than Germany at its greatest extent.

Don’t invade Yugoslavia and Greece in April 1941.

In actual history, Yugoslavia agreed to join the Axis powers in late April 1941, but days later a coup brought new leadership to power more sympathetic to the Allies. While the new Yugoslav leaders promised the Germans to remain aligned with the Axis as previously agreed while remaining neutral in the war, Hitler viewed the coup as a personal insult and vowed to make Yugoslavia pay, diverting German Panzer divisions from Poland and Romania to invade Yugoslavia and Greece. This ended up delaying the planned German invasion of USSR by five and a half crucial weeks from May 15-June 22, 1941. In retrospect, there was no military necessity for Hitler to invade Yugoslavia in April 1941. He could have merely sent a few German infantry divisions to reinforce Albania to prevent it from being overrun by Greek troops but he feared potential British reinforcements in Greece, which could threaten his southern European flank.

Of course, had Britain and France not still been at war with Germany, it is unlikely that Italy would have invaded Greece in 1940–41 and risked a British Declaration of War, so in that case Operation Barbarossa could have kicked off on May 15, 1941 as originally planned, greatly increasing the chances of a German capture of Moscow in 1941. Combined with Hitler’s subsequent decision to divert his two central Panzer Armies to capture Soviet armies on their northern and southern flanks, this five-and-a-half week delay to the start time of Operation Barbarossa proved fatal to German prospects for victory in the war. Even if Hitler hadn’t pursued a Moscow-first military strategy as his generals wisely advised, invading Russia five and a half weeks earlier might well have been sufficient to enable the Germans to capture Moscow by November 1941, albeit at considerable cost in men and material.

Don’t halt the advance on Moscow of the two Panzergruppen (tank armies) of Army Group Center for two crucial months.

While many historians view the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 as Hitler’s biggest blunder, evidence from Soviet archives uncovered following the Soviet collapse in 1991 suggests it was successful in preventing a Soviet invasion of Poland and Romania, which had been planned for July 1941. As it turned out, Hitler was correct in his assessment that his invasion of the Soviet Union was necessary as a preemptive attack against Soviets who were planning to attack Germany. In preparation for his planned invasion of Europe, Stalin had, between August 1939 and June 1941, overseen a massive military buildup of the Red Army increasing its total active-duty manpower from 1.5 million to 5.5 million. This expansion more than doubled the total number of divisions from 120 to 303, including an increase in the number of Soviet tank divisions from from 0 to 61 tank divisions as opposed to only 20 total Panzer divisions available in the German Army at the time of Operation Barbarossa. By June 1941, the Red Army boasted seven times more tanks and four times more combat aircraft than invading German forces.

The first objective of this planned Soviet invasion of Europe was to occupy Romania to cut off Germany from its access to Romanian oil fields to immobilize the German armed forces and force their capitulation. Then after conquering Berlin and forcing a German surrender, the Red Army was to occupy all of continental Europe to the English Channel, which noted British author, Anthony Beevor, states that Stalin seriously considered doing at the end of the war as well. Viewed in this light, Operation Barbarossa was not a mistake at all but rather an operation which succeeded in destroying the over 20,000 Soviet tanks and thousands of combat aircraft concentrated at the border to invade German territory and postponed the Red Army subjugation of Germany and Europe by nearly four years. Soviet defector, Viktor Suvorov in his groundbreaking book Chief Culprit goes so far as to credit Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union as saving Western Europe from being conquered by the Red Army.

Rather, Hitler’s biggest mistake with regards to his war against the Soviet Union was his decision in early August 1941 to divert the two Panzer Armies of Army Group Center to help Army Group North and Army Group South to overrun and encircle Soviet armies on the flanks of its advance resulting in a two month delay in advancing on Moscow when the Soviet capitol was open for the taking. If Hitler had pursued a Moscow-first strategy, he could have captured Moscow by the end of August or early September at the latest. He might even have pushed the Red Army back to the Archangel Volga Astrakhan line by October 1941 or by summer 1942 forcing Stalin to accept an armistice recognizing most of Germany’s hard won gains. In his excellent book Hitler’s Panzers East, R.H.S. Stolfi estimated that would have taken away up to 45 percent of the Soviet industrial base and up to 42 percent of her population making it extremely difficult for the Soviets to recover and take back lost territory. While the Soviets could have relocated many of their industries east of the Urals as in actual history, their industrial production would have been much more crippled than it was in actual history without U.S.-UK military industrial assistance. Had the Germans captured Moscow before winter 1941 and held it through the Soviet winter late-1941, early-1942 counteroffensive, Stalin might have requested an armistice on terms much more favorable to Germany than the ones he offered in actual history. Those terms might have included the transfer of much, if not all, of the oil-rich Caucasus region to Germany in exchange for the return of their all-important capitol city to Soviet control. With the Soviets so gravely weakened, Japan likely would have joined the fight to take their share of the spoils and occupy Eastern Siberia as Japanese Army generals had wanted to do all along. Thus, if Hitler had allowed his generals to capture Moscow first, the Germans likely have won the war.

Due to Hitler’s rosy predictions for a swift Soviet collapse and an end to the war in the East by December 1941, Germany failed to produce winter clothing for his invading troops. According to some accounts, as many as 90 percent of all German casualties from November 1941-March 1942, totaling several hundred thousands, were due to frostbite. Only in late December 1941 did the Nazi leadership admit their mistake and urgently collect as much winter gear from German civilians to send to German troops as possible.

Allow national independence and self-rule for all of the Soviet territories liberated by German forces.

Perhaps the biggest key to winning their war against the Soviet Union (other than not fighting the United States and the UK, of course) was for the Germans to not only be seen as liberators from Soviet Communist control, as they initially were when they invaded the Soviet Union, but to actually be liberators from Soviet Communist oppression. The Germans should have used nationalism to rally the people of Belarus, Ukraine and the Baltic States to fight not for the Germans or against Stalin but rather to liberate their own countries from Soviet captivity. They should have allowed self-rule for all of these liberated nations just as Imperial Germany had granted them after defeating the Russian Empire in March 1918 as part of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. In actual history, the Germans captured 5.6 million Soviet troops and captured Red Army Lieutenant General Vlasov offered to lead a Russian Liberation Army to help fight the Soviets while other leaders offered to lead Ukrainian and Cossack Liberation Armies but Hitler would not allow them to be used in combat on the Eastern Front, believing them to be unreliable. If the Germans had treated the citizens of liberated Soviet territories and Soviet Prisoners of War (POW’s) fairly, millions of additional captured Soviet soldiers might have volunteered to fight on the German side. As it turned out, Stalin ended up using the nationalism of Ukraine and other Soviet republics to defeat the Germans instead of the other way around which represented a major missed opportunity for Germany that helped ensure they lost the war.

Accept one of Stalin’s offers for an armistice.

After Germany invaded the Soviet Union, they quickly discovered the Soviets had thousands more tanks and a couple hundred more divisions than the Germans had realized before the war. Hitler himself is reported to have remarked that if he had realized how many tanks the Soviets had before the war, he would never have invaded the Soviet Union. However, after the invasion began, he should have realized that the best hope for Germany had they failed to capture Moscow in 1941 or 1942 and achieving his objectives of reaching the Archangel-Volga-Astrakhan line was no longer achievable, was to have concluded a negotiated peace with Stalin ending the war with limited German gains. In actual history, Stalin made a series of peace offers from 1941–1944. The first in July 1941 offered to cede the Baltics, Ukraine (presumably including the Crimean peninsula which was not then part of Ukraine) to Germany. The second in May 1942 added Belarus to sweeten the pot. Stalin’s third peace offer in May 1943 was a proposed ceasefire along the Soviet Union’s 1938 borders which would have effectively reversed the Hitler-Stalin Pact, while leaving the Germans in control of the Baltic states, eastern Finland, the eastern half of Poland and northeastern Romania all of which had been annexed by the Soviets from 1939–1940. This is the only peace offer that Stalin might have been willing to honor long-term. Had Hitler conquered the Caucasus region or more plausibly captured Moscow and ceded it back to Stalin in exchange for the oil rich Caucasus, the Turks would have likely joined the Axis given his promises to turn over the Soviet Caucasus republics (which had briefly won their independence following the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918) to Turkish control following his planned victory over the Soviet Union.

The apparent rationales behind Stalin’s armistice proposals was to wait until the Western Allies had opened up a Second Front or until Hitler had demobilized and/or redeployed his forces from the Eastern front (as the historical record indicates he planned to) as well as to buy time for the Red Army to rebuild its forces before reinitiating hostilities. At the very least, Hitler’s acceptance of one of Stalin’s peace offers might have served to substantially delay the defeat of Nazi Germany or else potentially enable the Western Allies to occupy all of Germany before the Soviets did, preventing it from being divided into West and East Germany as in actual history.

The reason that Hitler failed to avail himself of this opportunity to end the war with the Soviet Union on favorable terms to Germany is that he deluded himself into believing the German Army could successfully conquer Soviet territories far beyond the German gains of World War I instead of accepting more realistic and achievable gains and objectives. Even in June 1943 when Hitler had given up any plans for further offensives, had ordered the construction of a defensive line in the east and sent his foreign minister to meet with his Soviet counterpart to try to negotiate a peace agreement with the Soviets, he still refused the Soviet peace offer. In retrospect, the wisest thing Germany could have done would have been to complete their encirclements of Soviet forces and/or capture Moscow first and then negotiate a Second Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Stalin beginning in early October 1941 after they succeeded in capturing or destroying the vast majority or the Red Army’s tanks and combat aircraft. Then the Germans could have constructed a fortified defense line to protect their hard-won gains.

© David T. Pyne 2019

Part 5 will focus on how Adolf Hitler was his own worst enemy.

Hitler Could Have Forced Churchill to Take Peace Offer

2019-10-15T00:00:00Z

Third in a series of stories exploring how Germany might have won World War II. Read Part 1 and Part 2.

In the last article of this series, we examined how Germany might have won the war if Hitler had been patient enough to wait to risk war until the German army was ready to fight. In this article, we will consider some ways the Germans might have goaded the British into accepting a negotiated peace before the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 while keeping the United States officially neutral in the conflict. Here are some of the most effective things Hitler could have done to accomplish that:

Don’t allow the withdrawal of British Expeditionary Forces at Dunkirk – Hitler’s decision to spare the BEF at Dunkirk and allow their evacuation to Britain from May 26-June 4, 1940 was meant to underscore the fact that he wanted peace with Britain. Ironically, it was this very decision to deliberately spare the BEF and allow the withdrawal of 336,000 British and 210,000 French 9th Army troops that enabled Churchill to reject Hitler’s 1940 peace offer, which history shows he seriously considered accepting on May 26, 1940 before the BEF had been saved. It is a supreme irony of history that the one time Hitler proved he was serious about peace with Britain, his peace offering was precisely what ended up causing it to refuse his peace offers, ultimately costing Germany any hope for victory in the war. The terms of his July 1940 peace offer reportedly closely mirrored his proposed May 1941 peace offer, including granting nominal independence to Poland as a German protectorate along with a full German military withdrawal from France (except for Alsace-Lorraine), Belgium, Holland, Denmark and Norway. Peace with Britain, even if temporary, likely would have enabled Germany to negotiate favorable peace terms with the Soviets along the lines Stalin himself proposed as shall be detailed in the next installment of this series. Of course, if Hitler had accepted a Four-Power Peace Conference and/or only occupied the Polish Corridor, Hitler would never have had to attack Britain or France to win the war in the first place, as they would not have been at war.

Replace Admiral Canaris as head of German Military Intelligence before the “Dutch War Scare” — Rear Admiral Wilhelm Canaris served as head of the German Abwehr Military Intelligence from 1935-44. During this time, he helped plot the September 1938 coup against Hitler, which sadly was never carried out. However, once his plot to overthrow Hitler and the Nazis was aborted, he began a campaign of sabotage against Germany, which helped to ensure her eventual defeat. The first of these acts of sabotage was known as the “Dutch War Scare” of January 1939, in which he sent Britain false reports that Nazi Germany intended to invade Holland and then use it as a base from which to destroy British cities and bomb England into submission to try to get British leaders to take a harder line against Nazi Germany. These false reports caused British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to make his “continental commitment” to France the following month, to send a large British ground force to the defense of France in the event of the outbreak of war with Germany. They also may well have helped spur Chamberlain’s subsequent about-face in issuing the British military guarantee of Poland against German aggression in March 1939, without which the war likely would have been averted.

Then in early 1940, Canaris began revealing all of Germany’s battle plans to the Western Allies starting with Hitler’s planned invasion of France and the Low Countries which likely resulted in a very substantial number of German military casualties. Following the fall of France in June 1940, Spanish dictator Francisco Franco would likely have joined the Axis, had Canaris not repeatedly talked him out of it. If Spain had joined the Axis, Portugal might have felt pressured to join the Axis as well to avert a possible German invasion. Spanish entry into the war would have enabled Hitler to capture Gibraltar and control the western approaches to the Mediterranean as subsequently detailed in this article. Along with the German capture of the BEF at Dunkirk, this almost certainly would have caused Britain to accept Hitler’s generous June-July 1940 or May 1941 peace terms, which in turn would have almost certainly precluded U.S. entry into the war and enabled Germany to survive its war with the Soviet Union. Hitler then planned to invade Switzerland, but Canaris was successful in convincing Hitler that doing so would not be worth the cost. In summer 1943, Canaris successfully negotiated an agreement with the heads of U.S. and British intelligence to overthrow the Nazis and assassinate or hand over Hitler in exchange for an end to the war in the West and Germany being allowed to continue fighting the Soviets in the East. Regrettably, President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill refused to honor the agreement, foolishly insisting on nothing less than unconditional surrender in furtherance of Soviet objectives.

Force Britain to conclude a negotiated peace before invading the Soviet Union — Germany had to fight a two-front war in World War I, so German generals were fearful about having to fight that way again. During the Battle of Britain, Hitler should have continued bombing the RAF air bases when it was on its ropes instead of yielding to Churchill’s provocation to bomb civilian targets after Churchill ordered Bomber Command to bomb Berlin in late August 1940. After Britain declared war and Germany had defeated France, Hitler could have invaded and possibly succeeded in occupying part or all of Great Britain had he first been successful in winning the Battle of Britain against the Royal Air Force. Of course, such an invasion would have been far more successful had he allowed the German Army to capture the BEF and the rest of the French 9th Army at Dunkirk, but had they done so the British likely would have accepted Hitler’s July 1940 peace offer without the need for a German invasion of the British Isles. Even if the Germans were only partially successful in achieving their invasion objectives, the British would likely have quickly sought peace with Germany following such an invasion in order to prevent a German capture and occupation of London and obtain a rapid withdrawal of German troops from the British Isles. However, Hitler may never have been serious about invading Britain as he viewed it as a natural ally against Soviet Communism, and hoped it would agree to his generous peace terms delivered by Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess in May 1941. So he proceeded to cancel the German amphibious invasion plan, known as Operation Sea Lion, in September 1940.

Rather than take the very substantial risk of heavy German losses by launching an all-out amphibious invasion of Great Britain, Hitler might have chosen to pursue General Heinz Guderian’s daring plan to use a couple of Panzer divisions to capture Gibraltar, Spanish Morocco, French Morocco, Rio De Orio, the Canary Islands, Egypt and the Suez Canal in late 1940 or early 1941 in order to cut off British forces from their Mediterranean colonies. This plan would have required Spanish approval for German forces to travel through Spain to capture Gibraltar which Hitler first authorized a plan to capture in August 1940. Upon massing German troops on the Franco-Spanish border, Franco would not have refused due to his fear that if he did, German forces would invade and occupy Spain and depose him from power. If nothing else, Spain would have remained a pro-Axis neutral, however with a large number of German troops in the country, Franco might have felt pressured to have Spain join the Axis Powers at that time. After capturing Egypt and the Suez Canal by early 1941, Germany would have been in a position to successfully bribe Turkey to join the war with promises of a return of the former Ottoman provinces of Egypt (divided with Italy), Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and parts of oil-rich Saudi Arabia. Just as he did in actual history, Hitler could have also offered Turkey the return of the oil-rich southern Caucasus Soviet republics to Turkish control.

With Turkish military assistance and the Berlin-to-Baghdad Highway having been completed in 1940, Axis conquest of the region would have been much easier. With the British largely expelled from the Mediterranean, it would have fallen under Axis control facilitating the Axis conquest of the region. Then they could have supported the pro-Axis coup in oil-rich Iraq in April 1941 and returned Kuwait to Iraqi control. Britain and the Soviet Union would likely have responded to a German intervention in support of the new Iraqi government by staging an unprovoked invasion of Iraq just as they did in actual history in September 1941. The Germans could have occupied the western Iran border region, but moving forces beyond that would have been difficult. Nevertheless, their increasing threat to Allied control of Iran and potential threat to British control of India where they could provide arms and military support to the pro-Axis Indian National Army in their attempts to liberate India from British rule would have posed a very serious threat to the British Empire.

Had the Germans pursued this option, the British likely would have sought peace after the fall of the Suez Canal, but certainly would have done so following a German-Turkish conquest of Palestine and Iraq, which was the source of much of their oil, thus ending the war by the end of 1941, without the need for a full-scale invasion of Britain. It also would have had the further benefits of forcing the Soviets to divert a significant number of Red Army divisions to their southern flank to defend against a possible Axis invasion of the Caucuses from Turkey and/or Iran.

This plan also would have allowed a peace treaty to be signed with pro-German Vichy France after which all German troops could have been withdrawn. Hitler could have also accomplished his objective of deporting all European Jews to Palestine or Madagascar, thus averting the Jewish Holocaust, which the British had refused to allow him to do during the war in actual history. Needless to say, a successful Middle Eastern campaign would have successfully resolved the Axis fuel crisis while increasing the number of allies fighting on their side enabling it to fight more effectively and for a greater number of years than in actual history.

Don’t declare war on the United States of America — While FDR was waging an undeclared war against Germany in the Battle of the Atlantic during most of 1941, Hitler acted scrupulously to avoid war with the U.S., even ordering his U-boats not to return fire against U.S. Navy destroyers depth charging them. But following the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, Hitler did an abrupt about face and declared war against the U.S. on Dec. 10, 1941 in his most foolish and avoidable mistake of the entire war. Hitler apparently did so in order to show solidarity with his Japanese allies even though in the end Nazi Germany received absolutely no military benefit from its alliance with Japan because Japan refused to open up a second front against the Soviet Union as Hitler had requested it do after Germany invaded the USSR. Japan even signed a Non-Aggression Treaty with the Soviet Union on April 13, 1941 allowing Stalin to transfer 28 Red Army divisions from Siberia that proved invaluable in stopping the Germans from capturing Moscow, which then participated in the subsequent Soviet counteroffensive against German forces from December 1941-May 1942.

Had Hitler not declared war on the U.S., it is doubtful that Congress would have ever declared war on Nazi Germany even after Pearl Harbor. In declaring war against the mightiest industrial power on Earth at the time while already fighting a life or death struggle against the Soviet Union, which was the second strongest industrial power in the world before he made peace with Great Britain, Hitler effectively ended up signing Germany’s death warrant. Even if Britain had not made peace with Germany by the end of 1941, had Hitler not declared war on the U.S. after Pearl Harbor, British leaders likely would have lost all hope of U.S. military intervention in the conflict in Europe, likely causing it to accept peace with Germany by 1942 at the latest.

Part Four will focus on what Germany could have done differently to achieve victory over the Soviet Union.

© David T. Pyne 2019

More Mobile Military Just 1 Way Germany Could Have Won

2019-10-14T00:00:00Z

Second in a series of stories exploring how Germany might have won World War II. Read Part 1 here.

In our last article, we examined some of the actions that Germany might have taken to achieve its territorial objectives without having to fight the Western Powers of Britain, France and the United States of America in World War Two. Some of the most important ways for Germany to have won the war would have been to have waited until German industries had recovered from the limitations imposed by the Versailles Treaty to maximize Germany’s military potential. It would have entailed a more prudent utilization of Germany’s limited military-industrial resources, better organization and increased mobility of her army. Here are some examples:

Avoid war with Allies until 1941 or 1943

Due to the fact that the German rearmament program was not projected to be completed until 1943, Hitler expected the outbreak of war would not occur until then or until 1941 at the earliest. Accordingly, Hitler was completely caught off guard when Britain and France declared war against him on Sept. 3, 1939 over his invasion of Poland. Germany’s generals warned Hitler that the army was not ready for war in 1939. Not only were one-third of Germany’s army divisions still seriously underequipped, but there was a major shortage of officers due to the massive expansion of the German Army from seven to 103 divisions during a five year period. Due to the serious shortage of tanks armed with 37mm guns or above, the German Army was forced to employ 2,000 obsolete Panzer I and Panzer II training tanks which the Germans had never intended to use in war. While the punitive Treaty of Versailles did not end up accomplishing its purpose in keeping Germany economically destitute, militarily powerless, divided and downtrodden, let alone prevent a Second World War, its ban on Germany building tanks actually contribute toward Nazi Germany losing World War II.

Without the Treaty of Versailles’ restrictions, German industries would not have had so many difficulties producing thousands of Panzer III and Panzer IV medium tanks (which began production way back in 1936) until 1942/1943, forcing the Germans to use inferior model tanks. By contrast, the T-34 was first produced in 1940; by 1941, over 3,000 production models were being built. Had the German Panzer III and IV tanks comprised the whole of the German tank fleet—instead of a small percentage of it—at the beginning of Germany’s invasion of Russia, it might very well have made the difference and helped German forces capture Moscow in 1941. This likely would have prompted Stalin to offer Germany even more generous peace terms than he did in actual history.

Furthermore, thanks in large part to the disarmament provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany had a dearth of militarily-convertible industries which prevented them from mass producing the hundreds of thousands of trucks needed to motorize their army. Whereas the U.S. and British armies in Europe were fully motorized and the Red Army was nearly so—thanks to the 450,000 trucks provided by the United States and United Kingdom via Lend-Lease shipments—the German army was forced to move by horse carriage, foot and rail right up until the end of the war because they lacked motorized transport.

It is one of history’s greatest ironies that the nation that pioneered and most excelled at mobile Blitzkrieg warfare had the least-mobile army of all the great powers during the war. It is certainly impressive that the Germans achieved so many victories with so many quantitative disadvantages in terms of heavy weapons, supplies and transports in comparison with their enemies. One can only wonder what the German army might have achieved had it possessed a similar number of tanks and trucks as the American or the Soviet armies. Certainly, the outcome of the war would likely have been much different had Hitler waited until 1943 (as he had originally planned) when the German rearmament program was completed and the country had acquired sufficient fuel oil resources.

Start mass production of armaments sooner

Hitler delayed starting Germany’s mass production of armaments because he anticipated a series of rapid victories against both the Western Allies and the Soviet Union ending the war by December 1941. He also feared a resulting disruption of the German economy as German leaders had done in World War One, largely resulting in the subsequent postwar German economic collapse. After his anticipated victory, the historical record reveals that he planned to reduce German armaments production in order to focus on economic, industrial and architectural pursuits such as his planned redesign of Berlin into the “world capital” of Germania.

However, if Hitler had started mass production of heavy armaments four years earlier, then by 1941 his factories might have been producing one thousand Panzer III and Panzer IV medium tanks a month. Ideally, these tanks would have been armed with long barrel 50mm and 75mm cannons. If so, by May 1941 he would have had ten thousand high-velocity gun-armed light and medium tanks (and, if at all possible, ten thousand half-tracks), which might have enabled the Germans to field over three times more tanks than the German Army was able to deploy on the Eastern Front during the entire war. Then the German Army might have succeeded in capturing Moscow in 1941 and may never have lost their hard-won quantitative superiority in tanks on the Eastern Front (which they briefly achieved following in the first two to three months following their invasion of the Soviet Union).

In his book Inside the Third Reich, which he wrote after the war, German Armaments Minister Albert Speer criticized Hitler’s decision to build 45-ton MAN-designed Panther tanks instead of Build Daimler-Benz Panthers weighing 35 tons. Furthermore, the German 57-ton Tiger tanks were much more expensive and difficult to produce than their 25-ton Panzer IVh medium tanks which weighed less than half as much (or their 45-ton Panther tanks for that matter). The effort to produce them likely prevented the Germans from building several thousand more medium tanks, which like the well-designed T-34 family of tanks produced by the Soviets, could have been mass-produced much more quickly and efficiently. The Germans should have also employed mass production techniques such as welded turrets to produce tanks as fast as the Allies did since maximizing medium tank production was the key to defeating the USSR.

In addition, German construction of heavy, rather than medium, tanks made even less sense given the desperate shortages of gasoline necessary to fuel the German war machine later in the war. For this reason, the German war effort would likely have been far better served had they averted construction of heavy Panther and Tiger tanks altogether and focused all tank production on 25-ton Panzer IVh tanks and StuG III tank destroyers to maximize their number of operational tanks during the latter half of the war.

Germany's limited miltary resources were wasted

During World War II, Germany ended up wasting its finite military-industrial resources building under-armed Scharnhorst-class battlecruisers, giant under-armed Admiral Hipper-class heavy cruisers, over 1,156 U boats and thousands of V-1 and V-2 rockets of dubious conventional military utility. Not only did these weapons squander limited German steel and industrial resources, but they expended millions of tons of fuel oil which was desperately needed for the German Army and Air Force. Instead of building over a thousand U-boats as they did in actual history, Germany should have abandoned its unrestricted submarine warfare campaign. For just as Germany did in World War I, unrestricted submarine warfare ended up yielding far more negative than positive results, specifically in that it caused other nations to declare war against Germany after their merchant ships were sunk. Doing so would have freed up limited German military-industrial resources to enable them to focus on building more fighters to obtain air superiority over the British and Soviets, giving them a better chance of both winning the Battle of Britain and capturing Moscow in 1941 or 1942.

In addition, building a fleet of seven aircraft carriers instead of four battleships and three Admiral Hipper-class heavy cruisers, would have been a far better use of limited German arms production resources, which would have given the German Navy a chance to potentially defeat the Royal Navy in successive battles and perhaps even obtain naval superiority, ending the British starvation blockade against Germany and her allies. The Germans could have started building this aircraft carrier fleet after 1935 the Anglo-German armaments agreement was signed so that by 1941 they would have had all seven completed.

Hitler should have made German Army as motorized as possible

Immediately prior to the German invasion of Russia, Hitler decided to cut the number of tanks per division in half from 300 to 150 in order to double the number of Germany’s Panzer divisions on paper while diluting their actual strength, mobility and fighting power. This was a major mistake. Instead, Hitler should have refocused Germany’s military-industrial resources to attempt to make the German Army as motorized as possible. British and American forces operating in the European theater were fully-motorized, meaning they were all transported by wheeled vehicles. But the German Army, ironically given the fact that its early war victories from 1939–41 were due to their successful use of Blitzkrieg tactics, remained mostly foot and horse-bound right up until Germany’s unconditional surrender to the Allies on May 7-8, 1945.

Further showcasing the disparity in mobility, the Axis built scarcely more than 10 percent of the number of trucks and jeeps that the Allies built during the war, with the Germans accounting for less than 39 percent of the Axis total. Likewise, the Axis powers produced a mere 6.3 percent of the total fuel oil produced by the Allies during the war. Of course, maximizing the percentage of German forces that were mechanized (i.e. track-driven) would have been an even more important contributory factor to help the Germans win the war, though this might have been significantly hampered by fuel shortages, which increasingly immobilized their tanks, tank destroyers, assault guns, and other heavier armored vehicles later in the war. This was particularly the case following the Soviet conquest of Romania and the all-important Ploesti oil fields in late August which provided most of Germany’s oil during the duration of the war.

Part 3 will focus on how Germany could done things differently to keep U.S. neutral and remove Britain from the war.

Germany Could've Won WW II Without Fighting Western Allies

2019-10-13T00:00:00Z

First in a series of stories exploring how Germany might have won World War II.

Last month marked the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II, which cost the lives of an estimated 50-60 million people and was the most terrible war in world history. We all know how the war turned out—with an overwhelming Soviet-Western Allied victory over Nazi Germany ending with the destruction and dismemberment of Germany herself and the death by starvation of millions of her citizens. Given the way the events of the war played out, there was no other foreseeable outcome other than her defeat. But as most historians are aware, German defeat in the war would have been far from inevitable had Nazi leader Adolf Hitler refrained from making certain critical mistakes.

This series of articles represents an attempt to summarize the top mistakes and omissions Germany made that cost it victory in this greatest and most terrible of all wars in human history. Of course, the best way for Germany to have won World War II was for it to have avoided fighting Britain, France, and the United States of America altogether. Germany had the military potential to defeat France and likely force Britain to make peace, but with a Navy less than one-sixth the size of Britain’s, it had no means to even attack U.S. territory, let alone defeat it. Here are some actions that Germany might have taken to achieve their territorial objectives without having to fight the Western Powers of Britain, France and the United States of America:

Accept British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s offer of a second Four-Power Conference—It is a little known fact that Hitler passed up a huge opportunity to satisfy his few remaining territorial demands after the signing of the Munich Pact for the return of the ‘free’ German city of Danzig and/or the Polish Corridor along with some former German colonies in Africa and the Pacific without the need for war between Germany and Poland, let alone between Germany and the United Kingdom and France. In announcing he had achieved “peace in our time” at Munich in September 1938, Chamberlain revealed his belief that the Munich Agreement was just the prelude to a second and much more comprehensive Four-Power Peace Conference between the UK, France, Germany and Italy. His intended purpose of this second conference would have been to redress Germany’s remaining legitimate grievances stemming from the unjust Treaty of Versailles and thereby secure a more just and lasting peace to avert the potential outbreak of a Second World War.

Hitler could have accepted Britain’s generous offer and scheduled the conference for late 1938 or early 1939, before he foolishly violated the Munich Pact in March 1939. He could then have requested the return of all of Germany’s lost eastern territories from Poland. After this proposal was rejected by the Poles, he could have demanded the return of merely Danzig and the Polish Corridor perhaps with some of the same assurances to the Poles offered by the German delegation at Versailles in 1919 namely to allow the Poles a road/rail corridor to the German port of Danzig just as he offered Poland in actual history.

Britain and probably France as well, would have likely pressured the Poles to accept such a reasonable compromise proposal and informed them they would not support Poland militarily if Poland rejected it just as they told Czech leaders after Munich. It is also possible and perhaps even likely that without the promise of Allied military support, Poland would have agreed to cede the rest of West Prussia and perhaps even East Upper Silesia, but not Posen, to Nazi Germany in order to avoid war. Thus, Hitler could have achieved the last of his territorial objectives without war, with the exception of those pertaining to the Soviet Union. At the same time, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini could have made demands for France and Britain to honor their promises to Italy for more Yugoslav territory in return for entering World War I on the side of the Allies. These territorial claims included the entire Istrian peninsula and northern Dalmatian coast and adjacent islands in the Adriatic Sea as well as a protectorate over Albania, all of which they ended up annexing following the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941.

The effect of such a negotiated settlement might have been long-term peace for Europe, (with the exception of Hitler’s plan to invade the Soviet Union of course), likely transforming both Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy into mostly satisfied, rather than revisionist, powers generally supportive of maintaining the British-led world order. This of course was the ultimate objective of Chamberlain’s accomodationist policy of Nazi Germany all along. Strangely, Hitler did not appear interested in convening such a Four Power Peace Conference. Had Hitler’s claims against Poland been negotiated peacefully, not only would he have succeeded in averting the outbreak of war with Poland and the Western Allies, but he would not have felt the need to sign the Hitler-Stalin Pact of August 1939 carving up eastern Europe between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Whether Stalin would have still invaded and annexed the Baltic States, eastern Finland, eastern Poland and northeastern Romania from 1939-40 is unclear. However, it is likely he would have invaded all of those nations at some point during the 1940’s regardless of what Hitler did or did not do since his massive expansion of the Red Army was completed by June 1941, by which time the Soviet Union boasted seven times as many tanks and four times as many combat aircraft as Nazi Germany.

Don’t violate the Munich Pact by occupying the Czech provinces of Bohemia and Moravia–After demanding Slovakia declare independence, Czech President Emil Hocha traveled to Germany to meet with Hitler and request a German guarantee of the Czech Republic. Instead, Hitler strong-armed Hocha to sign a decree authorizing the entry of German troops into his nation effectively ending Czech independence after which he sent troops to occupy the Czech Republic on May 15, 1939 in flagrant violation of the terms of Munich Pact. If Hitler had accepted Czech President Emil Hocha’s request to make the Czech Republic a German protectorate without actually occupying it with German forces, he would not have been in violation of the Munich Pact.

It is hard to overestimate the negative impact Hitler’s foolhardy violation of the Munich Pact had upon Chamberlain. After all the euphoria in London and Paris over the avoidance of war with Germany in 1938 with the Munich Agreement, which enshrined the Wilsonian principle of self-determination to allow the 3.5 million Germans in the Sudetenland to unite with Germany, Chamberlain viewed Hitler’s violation of the pact as a personal insult and breach of honor. This caused him to do an about face and guarantee Poland against potential German military aggression, which Hitler had never even contemplated up to that point, causing Poland to refuse all of Hitler’s subsequent attempts to negotiate the return of this Polish occupied German city.

This abrupt reversal in policy ended up triggering a world war which would cost over fifty million lives, dragging the French into the war along with Britain less than six months later. Had Hitler not violated the Munich Pact and had he instead used a Four Power Conference to settle his claims to the Polish Corridor with Poland without war, he might have been remembered as the most successful German Chancellor in German history, with the exception of Otto von Bismarck for accomplishing the never-before realized dream of a united Germany. Instead, he is universally despised as the German leader who not only killed five million Jews in the Holocaust but also presided over the destruction of Germany, herself, in 1945.

Only occupy the Polish Corridor, not all of western Poland–On Sept. 2, 1939 the day after he invaded Poland, Hitler offered to withdraw from all of Poland except for the Polish Corridor, which constituted scarcely more than 4% of Polish territory, in order to avoid war with Britain and France. Unfortunately, his offer was ignored by Allied leaders who proceeded to declare war the following day. However, if Germany had limited itself to liberating the Polish occupied German city of Danzig and invading the Polish Corridor, which represented the full extent of his territorial claims on Poland and which it captured in the first four days of fighting, he could have then requested an armistice from Polish leaders on Sept. 5.

The Poles would likely have accepted their peace offer after the Soviets invaded Poland on Sept. 17 in order to defend Poland from the all-out Soviet invasion and planned Soviet annexation of nearly two-thirds of Polish territory under the original Hitler-Stalin Pact. The Allies then likely would have followed suit by making peace with Nazi Germany as well, thus ending World War II after a mere two weeks of fighting. Indeed, Polish leaders feared that had Hitler done this, Britain and France would never have declared war on Germany at all.

Having to only fight a one-front war against the Soviet Union might have enabled the Poles to hold out for a few months instead of a few weeks against the Soviet onslaught perhaps resulting in a few hundred thousand more Red Army casualties. This in turn would have delayed the Soviet invasion of Finland until 1940. Peace with Nazi Germany would have opened the door to a major Anglo-French military intervention in the Russo-Finnish War consisting of 150,000-300,000 troops which might have enabled the Finns to hold out until spring 1941 when Operation Barbarossa began, if not retake lost territory. This in turn might have led to the curious prospect of Nazi Germany, France and Britain fighting on the same side, however briefly, in a war against the Soviet Union. This series of events also would have almost certainly led to a German-Polish alliance against the Soviets that Hitler had long sought for as the Poles would have had no choice but to ally with Nazi Germany if they had any hopes of ever regaining the two-thirds of their territory which had been annexed by the Soviets under the terms of the original Hitler-Stalin Pact. Poland would most likely have joined in the German-led invasion of the Soviet Union in exchange for promises for Germany’s support for the return of these lost territories.

Even if Hitler had invaded western Poland and only annexed the territories that Germany lost to Poland in treaty of Versailles and immediately pulled German troops out of the rest of Poland, then Britain and France might well have accepted his subsequent peace offer of October 1939. Since Hitler had tried to get Poland to ally with Germany from 1934-39 unsuccessfully and since he had included a commitment to an independent Polish state in nearly all of his peace offers to the Allies from 1939-1941, he should have then demonstrated his sincere desire for peace with Britain and France by granting Polish independence himself. One of Hitler’s biggest mistakes was that he never followed through on his legitimate peace proposals with Britain and France by taking unilateral action to show they were serious, except at the worst possible moment for the Germans when he opted to spare the BEF at Dunkirk as shall be shown later in this series.

Next: Importance of Hitler waiting to risk war with Britain and France until the German Army was fully ready for war.

Trump Should Heed History and End His Trade Wars

2019-10-10T00:00:00Z

The Federal Reserve’s recent interest rate cut was the result of growing concerns about the economy. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said the cut was necessary because “the global growth outlook has weakened” and “trade policy tensions have waxed and waned.” These risks have reduced U.S. business investment and exports. President Donald Trump would be wise to share the Fed’s trade-policy concerns because history shows trade restrictions during periods of economic uncertainty can sink sitting presidents.

President Herbert Hoover signed the disastrous Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in June 1930, raising the average tariff rate to nearly 60 percent. The act increased tariffs to record levels on more than 20,000 imported goods and fueled massive retaliation by countries.

Economists agree that Smoot-Hawley exacerbated the Great Depression. Voters rebuffed Hoover and his tariffs in 1932, electing Franklin D. Roosevelt, who began dismantling the “notorious and indefensible” tariff act.

Forty years earlier, President Benjamin Harrison lost his 1892 reelection bid to Grover Cleveland, who made lowering Harrison’s record-breaking tariff rates his key campaign issue. The tariffs were also unpopular abroad, sparking protectionist retaliation by the British Empire. Cleveland won the general election by the largest popular vote margin in 20 years.

In both cases, trade restrictions contributed to a landslide defeat of a sitting president.

In 1980, President Jimmy Carter alienated an entire constituency by imposing a grain embargo on the Soviet Union as punishment for its 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. This helped create the worst conditions for American farmers since the Great Depression.

The farmers, concentrated in swing states, hated the embargo. They voted overwhelmingly for Carter’s opponent, Ronald Reagan, who had vowed to lift it. Reagan went on to win each swing state and quickly ended the embargo as president.

Farmers played as big a role in the 2016 election. According to FiveThirtyEight, Hillary Clinton would have won Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin if farmers had voted for her and not Trump, which would have given Clinton a narrow victory.

In 2020, farmers, who have been hurt by Trump’s tariffs, will be just as important, as will blue-collar workers.

Trump’s tariffs on goods from China, most of which are 25 percent duties, have already cost nearly 156,000 American jobs, according to the Tax Foundation. And it’s called a trade war for a reason: countries harmed by his tariffs during the past two years shot back. Canada, China, India, Mexico, and the European Union retaliated with tariffs on hundreds of products intended to harm critical constituencies and hurt Trump’s reelection chances. Maryscott Greenwood of the Canadian American Business Council said bluntly: the Canadian tariff “list was clearly drawn strategically to exert maximum pain politically for the president.”

China has levied hundreds of retaliatory tariffs since 2018, mainly on apparel, agricultural products, and materials like aluminum and steel. Soybeans, America’s largest export by value to China, were hit with a 25 percent tariff, which abruptly halted nearly all consumption of American soybeans there.

Trump has tried to alleviate some hardship by giving farmers multibillion-dollar federal handouts, but these checks replace only a portion of lost income, and many farmers strongly prefer trade over aid.

Trade policy uncertainty is now hurting business investment and consumer confidence. The University of Michigan consumer sentiment index has fallen recently due to trade concerns. The Fed, Wall Street, and Main Street are signaling they want an end to trade uncertainty.

Trade talks between the United States and China have stalled repeatedly, and Congress may not ratify the proposed U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement this year or even before the 2020 election. Trump plans to impose levies on nearly all Chinese imports by the end of the year and China will retaliate.

China and the U.S. are scheduled to hold high-level trade talks in Washington, D.C., in early October. That is the time to end the trade war. History shows that President Trump risks defeat in the next election if he does not end his trade wars quickly amidst the slower growth and vanishing optimism.

Lawrence J. McQuillan is the director of the Center on Entrepreneurial Innovation at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif., where Lamar K. Hendrikse is a policy researcher.

Critics Misinterpreted 'Quality' of Slaves

2019-09-19T00:00:00Z

The New York Times 1619 Project focused almost exclusively on demonstrating the link between slavery and white supremacy today. Historically, however, the “legacy of slavery” almost always related to how contemporary black behaviors were linked to the slave past. This essay will identify the misrepresentation of the behaviors of enslaved blacks by those who overstated the harshness of their treatment and its adverse ramifications on assessments of black Americans after emancipation.

One stream of thought suggested by Matthew Desmond’s essay was that slavery was a vicious system of exploitation that previewed the dynamics of early U.S. capitalism. This perception of slavery was found in the early post-WWII writings of Stanley Elkins and Kenneth Stampp. In Slavery, Elkins wrote that the long series of shocks from their African capture, to their Middle Passage transport to the West Indies, through their sale to American plantations where slaves experienced brutal treatment, created a psyche similar to what Charles Bettleheim observed in Jewish inmates in Nazi concentration camps.

Like Bettleheim’s concentration-camp Jews, Elkins believed that the typical enslaved black adopted a childlike quality of complete submission that included identifying their masters as father figures since “their real fathers had virtually no authority over his child since discipline, parental responsibility, and rewards and punishments all rested in other hands.” This thesis was Elkin’s explanation for the black Sambo image that was widely accepted among researchers and observers of the slave experience.

In The Peculiar Institution, Stampp believed that to counter the harsh oppressive regime many enslaved blacks “feigned childlike behavior to sabotage production: shirking their duties, feigning illness, injuring the crops, and disrupting the routine.” For Stampp, however, terror and brutalization were at the core of the slave experience. As a result, the vast majority of enslaved blacks understood that to be the recipient of his master’s paternalism, a slave had to adopt the pose of “a fawning dependent.” He believed that this relationship robbed slaves of their confidence and promoted a “process of infantilization.”

Furthermore, Stampp claimed that masters destroyed the strictly regulated family life and rigid moral code that had prevailed in Africa. The typical slave family was matriarchal and “had about it an air of impermanence.” Most fathers and even some mothers regarded their children with indifference and sexual promiscuity was widespread. The slave trade further eroded black family life.

While Elkins and Stampp saw themselves as exposing the inhumanity of slavery, they unfortunately reinforced negative images of enslaved men and women: they lacked a strong work ethic, they lacked a strong commitment to the nuclear family, and they lacked sexual discipline. These alleged attributes sustained a series of adverse stereotypes. For W.E.B. Dubois, later E. Franklin Frazier, and ultimately Daniel Patrick Moynihan, it explained the high rate of black births out of wedlock.

For many whites, it led them to consider black laborers inherently lazy, requiring stern discipline to harness their work effort. For Southern landowners, it explained why even when a substantial compensating wage was offered, black workers refused to be employed in the gang system in which cotton production had been organized under slavery. The labor historian Herbert Hill reported that the leading early 20th century labor economist John R. Commons believed that “the backward nonwhite races were lazy, could not compete, and therefore did not need unions.” There continues to be widespread belief that too many black men lack a strong work ethic. This was one of the reasons given for Latino workers replacement of black workers at jobs that are physical demanding.

Eugene Genovese faulted critics of slavery who embraced the Elkins-Stampp narratives. He claimed “they have read the story of the 20th-century black ghettos backward in time and have assumed a historical continuity with slavery days. Herbert Gutman insisted that the “black family that emerged from slavery already had a distinct and quite simple nuclear structure.” He based this on Freedmen’s Bureau data on black family organization just after the Civil War and demographic records of six large plantations.

Plantation records indicated that more than three-quarters of all children were raised in stable two-parent families. This outcome reflected the fact that less than one in five marriages were ended as a result of the slave trade. In Gutman’s plantations, women had their first child, on average, at 18 years old. This timing suggested to Gutman that under well-defined mores, a girl typically had intercourse fairly early and bore a child, but then settled down with one man and had the rest of her children by him. While slave women still “fell victims to white lust, but many escaped because the whites knew they had black men who would rather die than stand idly by.” So strong was the resistance that it curbed “white sexual aggression” against married women.

For Gutman, Genovese, and Fogel, the planter’s absolute control was tempered by a primary focus on profitability. Since prime-age enslaved males were costly to purchase, planters made care to not risk their safety. They may be whipped, but not used whenever possible on highly risky activities. Instead, Irish immigrants were hired to do these dangerous jobs.

More generally, it was understood that carrots were more effective inducements than sticks. In modern times, this is known as efficiency wage theory. Wages and working conditions are determined by the cost of supervision and replacement. If extensive supervision to guarantee work effort is either expensive or technically infeasible and if it is expensive to replace workers, capitalistS would find it more profitable to pay their workforce above the going wage. This would instill loyalty, raise work efforts and reduce turnover. This was the theory behind Henry Ford’s “five dollars a day” and promises to support efforts of his workers to purchase homes.

For slavers, the hiring of white overseers was expensive. Overseers were employed in only one-sixth of moderate-size plantations (16-50 slaves); 25-30 percent on larger ones. On three-quarters of plantations with no white overseers, there was only one adult male of working age. This required extensive employment of enslaved workers in supervisory positions, as well as in many craft positions.

As a result, planters engaged in efficiency wage theory by providing benefits to strengthen profitability. Genovese suggested that masters who practiced paternalism were more successful than those who used their powers ruthlessly. In support of the impact of these concessions, ex-slave narratives indicated that stealing was over eight times as frequent in the plantations of masters who provided meager rations as on those with masters who provided ample rations.

This efficiency wage strategy took many forms. For example, beef or fish would have been a cheaper source of protein but almost universally pork was provided because of the strong preference of enslaved workers. On many plantations, enslaved workers who performed well were awarded private plots of land on which they could farm and sell their surplus to the planter for credits to purchase other goods. Fogel estimated that “income of top field hands was 2.5 times basic income; of top craftsmen probably four or five and in some exceptional cases as much as 10 times basic income.”

Gutman’s analysis of only large and growing plantations created two biases. First, it biased downwards age of first births. In more comprehensive data analyses, it was estimated that the average age at first births was 21 years old. This higher age does not preclude regular sexual intercourse before marriage, but does indicate that such behavior was far from universal. Also the seasonal pattern of first birth matched well with seasonal pattern of marriages. This further undermines notions of black promiscuity.

Second, family stability was much lower on plantations with less than 15 slaves. These plantations were more vulnerable to economic pressures so selling slaves was a more likely outcome; and often enslaved marriage partners lived on different plantations, making selling the husband emotionally easier. Still, in these smaller plantations half of enslaved children were raised in two-parent families.

Not only was the Elkins-Stampp view wrong about the place of the nuclear family in slave lives, it was wrong about the black work ethic. As already mentioned, enslaved blacks were employed in many skilled and semi-skilled positions. In the agricultural sector, Fogel estimated 7.0, 11.9, and 7.4 percent of enslaved blacks were employed in management, skilled artisan, and semi-skilled positions, respectively. In urban areas, 27 percent of enslaved blacks were artisans. As a result, the early 20thcentury researcher Carter Woodson claimed that at emancipation, black workers made up over 80 percent of the artisan class in the South. Indeed, at the end of the 19th century, DuBois commented on the potpourri of occupations available to black workers in the South compared to the North where craft unions almost universally embraced racial exclusionary practices. Fogel lamented the mistaken view of black labor:

That the quality of slaves, both as ordinary workers and as managers, could have been so completely misrepresented by the antebellum critics of slavery is testimony to the extent of their racist myopia. What bitter irony it is that the false stereotype of black labor, a stereotype which still plagues blacks today, was fashioned not primarily by the oppressors who strove to keep their chattel wrapped in the chains of bondage, but by the most ardent opponents of slavery, by those who worked most diligently to destroy the chains of bondage.
This essay has explored the contrasting slave literature. We have seen that the fiercest critics of slavery, those that emphasize its most gruesome aspects, invariably reinforced the worst stereotypes of enslaved men and women, and gave no room for constructive agency. By contrast, those observers who limit the viciousness of slavery, those who are sometimes characterized as apologist for the system, present enslaved blacks as people who used their agency to better themselves and their families.

Robert Cherry is Brueklundian Professor at Brooklyn College and CUNY Graduate Center and author of Jewish and Christian Views on Bodily Pleasure (Wipf & Stock 2018).

3 Key Books Shaped Vision of Appeasement

2019-08-13T00:00:00Z

The recent publication of Tim Bouverie’s, Appeasement: Chamberlain, Hitler, Churchill and the Road to War, has fueled renewed interest in the reasons for the blunders of British diplomacy in the 1930s. The book has received deservedly high praise for the clarity of its analysis of appeasement’s consequences. Bouverie places the major responsibility for appeasement’s failure on Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain who consistently underestimated and misread Hitler’s intentions. He also stresses the role played by many of the leading members of the British aristocracy, who saw Nazism as a bulwark against the threat of Communism.

A third theme, and one often downplayed by some historians, is the emergence of pacifist sentiment on the left in the 1920s after the terrible losses of the First World War. He notes that Britain lost 750,000 killed during that conflict, almost double British losses, civilian and military, in World War II. Bouverie believes that the left’s response to the threat from Nazism was paralyzed by pacifism. As late as the eve of World War II, the British Labor Party voted against all rearmament measures.

Bouverie’s study mirrors the arguments of the three key works that shaped our view of appeasement: Cato’s Guilty Men, Winston Churchill’s The Gathering Storm, and John Wheeler-Bennett’s Munich: Prologue to Tragedy. In an interesting commentary on how ideas move in modern society, all three books shaped the thesis that largely prevails today regarding appeasement.

Guilty Men appeared in July 1940 as Britain faced the greatest threat to its existence since the Norman Conquest. The Germans had overrun Holland and Belgium and defeated France in a campaign that lasted six weeks. Britain stood alone, confused about what had happened and baffled on what course to follow: fight on or enter negotiations with Hitler. Three journalists, Michael Foot, a Socialist, Frank Owen, a Liberal, and Peter Howard, a Conservative threw Guilty Men together in a matter of days. They singled out 15 men responsible for the crisis England faced. Foreign Secretaries Sir Samuel Hoare and Lord Halifax were blamed for the feebleness of British diplomacy in the 1930s. Military unpreparedness was laid at the foot of various Conservative ministers, including Sir Thomas Inskip, whose appointment they labeled the worst since Caligula named his horse a Senator. The real villain of their indictment, however, was Neville Chamberlain, whom they castigated for his betrayal of the Czechs at Munich. He was portrayed not just blind to the threat from Nazism but actually a Nazi sympathizer.

What is most memorable about Guilty Men is the portrait they painted of the British aristocracy as craven supporters of Nazism, reflecting the myth of ‘the Cliveden Set’: Nazi sympathetic British aristocrats meeting together to formulate support for appeasement at Lord Astor’s estate, Cliveden. Although there is no evidence for any significant Cliveden Set influence, the concept established the myth of aristocrats undermining British democracy. It shows up in novels like Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day and even in the popular television series, "Downton Abbey."

Guilty Men’s thesis was overblown and blind to the complexities of the situation that Britain faced in confronting Hitler. In particular, they downplay the pacifism of the British left, which consistently opposed all rearmament measures.

The portrait of Chamberlain was unfair. He wasn’t blind to the German threat. He believed some diplomatic understanding with Hitler (whom he described a common little dog) was preferable to war but at the same time he supported rearmament including the crucial expansion of the fighter force that won the Battle of Britain.
None of this mattered. Guilty Men captured the imagination of the British public, indelibly indicted the villains for the failures of British diplomacy—the book sold 200,000 copies in a matter of weeks, a stunning figure for those days.

In 1948, two books appeared that raised Guilty Men’s indictment of appeasement to more sophisticated levels. Volume one of Winston Churchill’s History of the Second World War, The Gathering Storm, was the single most influential examination of the failures of British diplomacy in the 1930s, one whose broad interpretation still prevails because he was the only World War II leader to write his memoirs. While Guilty Men indicted an entire class, Churchill’s theme was “lost opportunities,” the failure to rearm and to cultivate allies in the struggle against Nazism. He called World War II the “Unnecessary War,” one that could have been avoided but the “malice of the wicked was reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous.” Churchill wrote that he saw war coming in the 1930s “and cried aloud to my own fellow countrymen and to the world, but no one paid any attention.” They would pay attention now.

Sympathetic government officials supplied Churchill with facts and figures about the growing danger from German militarization throughout the 1930s. (He was largely indifferent to the threats from Italy and Japan and passed over the Spanish Civil War in just a few pages). His concentration was on German rearmament, a threat he had noted in 1932 even before Hitler came to power. He called for massive rearmament programs, strengthening the alliance with France and, despite his well-known hatred of Communism, reaching out to the Soviet Union for action against Germany.

Churchill’s portrait of the 1930s—“the years the locust ate”—is harsh on his two predecessors as Prime Minister -- Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain. Baldwin was a masterful politician but indolent and not interested in foreign affairs. Chamberlain, Churchill writes, was anything but indolent. He suffered from an almost hubristic belief that only he could make peace with Hitler, a belief that led ultimately to the disastrous events of 1938, culminating in the sellout of Czechoslovakia at Munich.

The Munich settlement was popular. When Churchill attacked it in Parliament as a “total and unmitigated defeat,” he was greeted with groans and jeers. The subsequent events of the next six months—Kristallnacht with its savage attack on the Jews, the German absorption of the rump of Czechoslovakia and German threats directed at Poland—vindicated Churchill.

The publication of the official government documents for the appeasement era in the 1970s, and subsequent scholarly studies, broadly support Churchill’s interpretation of why appeasement was a doomed policy. Churchill had argued that there was a chance to stop Hitler during the Rhineland crisis of March 1936 or in the summer of 1938 as he was preparing up for war against Czechoslovakia. The official records seem to indicate that he was right.

The Gathering Storm was a huge publication success. It was made into a major television film, serialized in 80 magazines and published in 50 countries in 20 languages. It also made Churchill a rich man.

Churchill’s interpretation of events was confirmed by another book that appeared in 1948. John Wheeler-Bennett’s Munich: Prologue to Tragedy was the first scholarly study of appeasement. Wheeler-Bennett was a diplomat and talented historian of German history who among other works wrote a highly regarded study of the German Army’s role in politics: nemesis of power.

After World War II, he was appointed as the British editor of the Documents on German foreign policy. It was from this material that he wrote the first, and for a long time, the definite study of British appeasement, focusing on the Munich crisis of 1938.

Wheeler-Bennett’s portrait of British diplomatic blunders follows Churchill’s theme of lost opportunities but using captured German documents he stresses the consistency of Hitler’s policies. He argues that nothing the British could have done would have diverted Hitler from his plans to occupy the Rhineland, annex Austria or the eventual showdown with Czechoslovakia.

Wheeler-Bennett is fair to Chamberlain, stressing his sincere abhorrence of war while at the same time noting how his vanity led him to believe that he alone could strike a bargain with Hitler. He seriously misjudged Hitler who regarded Chamberlain and the other appeasers as nothing but “little worms.”

Wheeler-Bennett believes that British foreign policy was undermined in the 1930s by the general air of pacifism that affected both parties but particularly Labor which rejected all efforts at rearmament in the face of the Nazi menace.

Like Churchill, Wheeler-Bennett believes that Chamberlain made a mistake in rejecting offers of help from the Soviet Union during the Czech crisis and in the months that followed. This rejection enabled Hitler to negotiate the infamous Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939 which guaranteed war.

Guilty Men, The Gathering Storm and Munich: Prologue to Tragedy described British foreign policy as a grievous failure and a main contributor to war in 1939. The broad thesis of the three books—the pro-Nazi sympathizers of the British ruling class, Chamberlain’s naiveté in dealing with Hitler and the lost opportunities to confront Hitler in the 1930s remain the standard interpretation of events today. Subsequent scholarship including Bouverie’s brilliant tour de force hasn’t changed the overall portrait significantly.

John P. Rossi is Professor Emeritus of History at La Salle University in Philadelphia.

Beat the Heat With These 10 History Reads

2019-08-07T00:00:00Z

It’s August here in the Heart of Texas, and I’m staying indoors as much as possible. I bide my time by doing family stuff and by reading excellent books. Here are 10 recommendations for you, from me and from your humble servants at RealClearHistory:

10. Subjects unto the Same King: Indians, English, and the Contest for Authority in Colonial New England by Jenny Hale Pulsipher. This is the book that shows how the Indians on the eastern seaboard of the United States competed with colonists for not only land and monopoly power in markets like the fur trade, but for the ear of the British monarchy. It turns out that the British policy of loaning out its legal institutions for use to peoples not under formal British jurisdiction was a great way to build an empire in a cost-effective manner.

9. Into the American Woods: Negotiations on the Pennsylvania Frontier by James Merrell. Another book about the bloody contest for control over the eastern seaboard, Merrell sets his sights on the Quaker colony of Pennsylvania rather than New England. The narrative of this book is frontier history and (mostly) informal diplomacy, but the focus is on individuals plucked from history and placed into context by a talented and passionate historian. This book has won prizes, and all of them are deserved.

8. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. This is the novel that earned Rushdie a fatwa from the Ayatollah of Iran. While all press is good press and Rushdie surely deserves the fame, it is almost a shame that Khomeini’s Shi’ite death warrant is what this story is famous for. The Satanic Verses brings to its reader a world that exists just underneath the surface of geopolitics and global headlines. Rushdie uses fiction to tell real stories about the Orient. In doing so, he humanizes the Middle East and South Asia. The founder of Islam, for example, becomes, in Rushdie’s loquacious prose, a character in a story that everybody can relate to. There are Sikh terrorists, Biblical angels, pre-Islamic polytheists, self-loathing Hindus, and subtly-crafted hosannas directed at the British imperial (and cosmopolitan) realm in this novel. The Satanic Verses is a good reminder that history without fiction is dry, and almost useless.

7. The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture, and Identity by Amartya Sen. An economist by trade, Sen’s book of essays on what it means to be Indian is worth the effort, especially given the country’s growing clout in world affairs today. The obligatory chapter on India and the West is there, and it’s enlightening, but so too are essays on the long relationship between India and China, secularism, and the Indian diaspora. If you want to take a logical-but-breezy trip through South Asia (and who doesn’t, really?), pick this one up.

6. I Used to Be French: an Immature Autobiography by Jacques Delacroix. I re-read this book every summer, and I will never tire of recommending it. Delacroix, a sociologist trained at Stanford, has produced a book that never gets old. It’s personal, provocative in places, and pithy. As a former Frenchman, there are tales of girls, of course, but also of poverty, of a dying Catholic culture in postwar Europe, and of freedom. What was life like for the second son of a Parisian cop in the second half of the 20th century? The answer is more interesting than you might think.

5. The Golden Rhinoceros: Histories of the African Middle Ages by François-Xavier Fauvelle. Over the past two or three decades much historical research has been done on, and in, Africa. The reasons for this vary, but the results of these endeavors are beginning to come to fruition within the pop-scholarly world. Fauvelle’s book places Africa at the center of the world, rather than its dark periphery, during the 7th through 15th centuries. What the archaeologist finds is that the kingdoms, empires, city-states, and federations which governed Africa during the Middle Ages were sophisticated. Artists and theologians were brought in from Asia and Europe to teach, create, and argue their cases before sometimes skeptical, sometimes enthusiastic African aristocrats. Goods poured in and out of the continent via commercial exchange with India and China as well as Europe and Arabia. African diplomats had the influence, when the balance of power was tilted in their favor, to make or break alliances in Asia or Europe. Books by archaeologists are usually accompanied by photos, and Fauvelle’s masterpiece is no different, so if African history isn’t your thing, at least check this one out for the pictures (and the maps).

4. African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa by Michael Gomez. As mentioned above, African history is getting better. Gomez has written a barnburner of a book. Focusing on West Africa’s connections to North Africa after the Islamic conquests of the latter, Gomez weaves together an explanation for why empires arose in West Africa. The answers might be a bit startling. I’d rather not give the answers away, either, but here is a morsel for your curiosity: social rules and government laws about ethnicity, caste, and race were all around long before Europeans started renting land for trading forts from Africans in the 15th century.

3. The Quills of the Porcupine: Asante Nationalism in an Emergent Ghana by Jean Marie Allman. This is a short (278 pages) book about a political party in Ghana that came into being in 1954, just three years before independence from the British Empire. (Here is where things get interesting.) This political party represented voices from a region in Ghana that was, just 50 years earlier, the epicenter of a powerful slave-trading empire known as the Kingdom of Ashanti. The National Liberation Movement (NLM), as this political party was called, pushed for more decentralization in the Gold Coast Colony and was at odds with the pan-Africanist vision for Ghana that needed a one-party state to fulfil its goals. The NLM lost the battle of ideas and was outlawed when the pan-Africanists took over the reins from the British. We all know what happened under pan-Africanist governments in other parts of Africa during the 1950s and ‘60s, too. Quills of the Porcupine is as much a book about Africa’s future as it is about Ghana’s past.

2. African Kings and Black Slaves: Sovereignty and Dispossession in the Early Modern Atlantic by Herman Bennett. How did the slave trade actually work? How did Africans and Europeans negotiate which people were to be slaves, and which people were to be slave raiders and traders? African Kings and Black Slaves answers these questions in detail, at least as it pertained to the situation in the Iberian Atlantic. I suspect this book will be the cornerstone of slave studies for years to come. (It would, for instance, be useful for historians and archaeologists studying the African slave trade in the Arab-dominated Indian Ocean.) Most importantly, though, this book does much to eviscerate the long-held view that Europeans came, saw, and conquered the African continent in the name of God and glory. Engaging throughout.

1. Persecution & Toleration: The Long Road to Religious Freedom by Noel Johnson and Mark Koyama. How did religious liberty arise in the first place? To answer such a big question, Johnson and Koyama look to Europe and leave few, if any, stones unturned. Readers will get no spoilers from me, but here is a short essay [] by Koyama introducing the book’s themes.

”Family stuff” at the Christensen household means checking out museums, zoos, and National Forests, among other things. One exhibit I won’t get to this year is at the Rubin Museum of Art, and it’s called “Faith and Empire: Art and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism.” (Ian Johnson has a great review of the exhibit.) One museum I will get to by the end of August is the Menil Collection in Houston.

Brandon Christensen is a columnist at RealClearHistory and a contributor to the site's Historiat blog. He also blogs at Notes On Liberty. Send him mail. Follow him on Twitter.

Critical Decisions: Dropping A-Bombs, Attacking French Navy

2019-08-01T00:00:00Z

“Above my pay grade” is an old cliché that refers to a really difficult decision being deferred to someone of higher authority. Recent history is full of examples of incredibly difficult decisions that have been made by a country’s highest-ranking leader. These decisions have resulted in long-lasting effects that have reverberated through the succeeding years, perhaps for the better, perhaps not. But no one can question the boldness of these choices and there is no question that only the most authoritative figure could make the call.

We’ll look at two, one of which is well-known, but governed more by emotion than fact, and one that has been virtually ignored by historians, but may have been even more significant.

Using the Atomic Bomb on Japan
President Harry Truman’s decision to use the atomic bomb against the Japanese cites of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and 9, 1945 remains one of history’s most controversial decisions. Unquestionably, they were devastating attacks and their stunning severity convinced an otherwise fanatical and totally detached-from-reality Japanese leadership to snap into some semblance of lucidity and surrender immediately. The formal surrender took place on the battleship USS Missouri on Sept. 2, 1945.

The Japanese had displayed a zealously contumacious obsession to fight to the last man in their frenzied defense of the Pacific island campaign in 1941-45. When the island of Tarawa fell to U.S. forces after three days of unbelievably intense fighting, only 17 (!!) Japanese soldiers remained alive out of an initial force of 4,800. On Guam, after three weeks of fighting, the 18,000-man Japanese defensive force had fought with such ferocity that victorious U.S. forces took only 485 prisoners.

So it went, island after island, month after month. Total American casualties in the Pacific Theater were averaging 7,000 per week. Try to put that into the perspective of our recent engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iwo Jima (the famous “flag raising” battle) saw the Japanese fight to within 4,000 of their 22,000-man force, inflicting American casualties of 7,000 dead and 19,000 wounded during the 36-day battle.

Okinawa, the final island battle before the invasion of the Japanese homeland was to commence, lasted three months from April-June 1945, with 12,000 American deaths and 80,000 wounded. Japanese combat deaths were estimated to be in excess of 110,000.

The rate of casualties in these Pacific engagements was and remains simply unprecedented and incomprehensible, even to this day. Defending their homeland, there is every reason to believe that the Japanese would be even more desperate and fanatic. Adult civilians and children were ready to join the battle. Estimates of the duration of the invasion were from six months to over a year, and casualty expectations were over 500.000 American dead and 5-10 million Japanese dead, figures made so high because of anticipated widespread civilian participation in the defense of the homeland.

To reduce the calculation of different warfare strategies to a cold analysis of projected casualty/death rates is indeed a horrifying proposition. It’s a choice no sane person wishes would ever have to be made. Nonetheless, absent the atomic bomb, an invasion of the Japanese homeland was going to happen in November 1945. Six million or more would have died. But it didn’t happen.

British “Operation Catapult” Against France in 1940
This is surely one of history’s most incredible incidences, brought about by an almost unfathomable confluence of circumstances. In late spring/early summer 1940, Britain stood alone against Nazi Germany. The Germans had invaded and made mincemeat of France, their bitter rival from World War I, forcing France’s surrender in late June 1940 after a one-sided campaign that lasted mere weeks, beginning in early May. It was perhaps the most humiliating, one-sided defeat of a major country by another in military history.

Despite numerical superiority over Germany in virtually every important category of weapons, the French evidenced no taste for battle—or national honor—and capitulated to the invading Germans without mounting a meaningful defense of their country.

One of the categories of French military ascendancy over Germany was their navy. At that time (1939-40), France had the world’s fourth most powerful navy, after Great Britain, America and Japan. With one fully operational aircraft carrier and seven full-fledged battleships, France’s naval strength far outstripped Germany’s. Germany had no aircraft carriers, had four battleships and three smaller so-called “pocket battleships.” In contrast, Britain had over 15 battleships and seven aircraft carriers.

When France surrendered to Germany on June 22, 1940, Britain demanded that France sail its ships to British or American ports or scuttle (self-sink) their vessels. In a show of astonishingly ironic national pride, French naval commanders refused to do so, insisting that they would retain control and ownership of their own fleet, promising to scuttle ships should Germany attempt to annex any for its own use.

Great Britain, and Prime Minister Winston Churchill especially, worried that Germany would seize the French navy and incorporate it into its own forces. The German navy had a very substantial U-boat (submarine) force, but relatively limited surface ship strength. Its battleships and cruisers were of very high quality and quite capable, but in sheer numbers, Germany did not present a major challenge to Britain’s rule of European and Atlantic waters.

Add France’s navy to Germany’s and it would have been a markedly different situation. That combined navy would, in fact, pose a serious threat to Britain’s seaborne security and could easily create utter havoc with the war-effort-sustaining supply convoys coming into England. If Germany gained control of the sea, it would lead to Britain’s defeat. Germany would own Europe. The world as we know it today would not exist. That was Britain’s fear.

France obstinately refused to comply with Britain’s demands, insisting its fleet would remain neutral, uninvolved in the war and out of German hands. Churchill was aghast at the prospect of French warships becoming part of the German navy, threatening Britain’s very survival. This led him to make one of history’s most incredible, unbelievable strategic decisions:

He ordered the British Navy to attack and destroy a major French fleet moored at its home port in Algeria, northern Africa at Mers-el-Kébir on July 3, 1940. British battleships opened fire and killed well over 1,000 French seamen, destroyed or damaged several French warships and incurred the wrath of their former ally with an action absolutely unprecedented in modern history. Just a generation earlier, French and British soldiers fought and died side-by-side, fighting the Germans in World War I. Just two months earlier, French and British soldiers fought and died side-by-side, fighting the Germans in the French countryside. Just five weeks previous, the British mobilized every seagoing vessel they could find—both civilian and military—in a desperate effort to evacuate the remnants of the British, French, and Polish armies from the beaches of Dunkirk in northern France, so that the Allies might survive to fight another day.

Yet now in July 1940, the British—under direct orders from Churchill—willingly killed their former allies and destroyed their ships. Astonishing.

Churchill wrote in his 1949 memoirs, “…The elimination of the French Navy as an important factor almost at a single stroke by violent action produced a profound impression in every country. Here was this Britain which so many had counted down and out, which strangers had supposed to be quivering on the brink of surrender to the mighty power arrayed against her, striking ruthlessly at her dearest friends of yesterday and securing for a while to herself the undisputed command of the sea. It was made plain that the British War Cabinet feared nothing and would stop at nothing.”

Was it the correct thing to do? How realistic is it to think the Germans could have successfully incorporated the French ships into their own navy? French equipment was different than the Germans’ and they would need to be retrofit. French ammunition was different and either the French ships would have needed to be re-gunned or the Germans would have had to find and stockpile large amounts of French ammunition. And what of the crews? Suddenly adding eight or more major ships would require upwards of 20,000 skilled, experienced sailors. Where would they come from? Then there is the actual learning curve of becoming familiar and proficient at operating new equipment. All of that considered, it’s doubtful that any annexed French ships could have made a meaningful contribution to Germany’s war effort for at least a year or two.

Both Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bombs and Churchill’s decision to attack the French navy probably had as much to do with making an impression on adversaries as they did with solving an immediate tactical problem. Truman likely wanted to show the Soviets—who we knew would be our biggest adversary on the world stage after the war—that America would act ruthlessly, without hesitation, when it was in our interests to do so. Churchill’s diary quite explicitly says the same thing.

Analysts and historians will argue forever over both the efficacy and morality of decisions such as these. But any way we look at them, these are big-time calls, made at the very highest pay grade.

Steve Feinstein is the owner of Feinstein Creative, a Massachusetts-based marketing communications firm, and is a long-time political, history and economics analyst. Contact him at feinstein_creative@hotmail.com.

In Time of Trump, Caligula Biography Topical

2019-07-29T00:00:00Z

The Great Oracle Google reports, today, 3,790,000 occasions of a comparison between Donald Trump and Caligula. Some representative samples: Donald Trump has ‘fascinating parallels’ with Caligula, says historian; Caligula and Trump: Two disturbingly similar despots centuries apart; Ask a classicist: is Donald Trump more of a Caligula or a Nero; Trump is Caligula; Trump Makes Caligula Look Pretty Good….

One could go on.
And on.

Yet ars longa vita brevis.

Trump, unclear on the concept of “search engine” – or card catalogue -- may find all this very, very Unfair. Perhaps so. That said, the cultural leitmotif makes Caligula: The Mad Emperor of Rome (Turner Publishing) by military historian Stephen Dando-Collins extremely topical.

Before Hitler, before Stalin, before Pol Pot … if one wanted to conjure the concept of a monstrous national leader Caligula was your man. Or as Wikipedia has it, “[S]ources focus upon his cruelty, sadism, extravagance, and sexual perversion, presenting him as an insane tyrant.”

“Caligula,” for those, like me, who dozed through ancient history in school, is a nickname. As a tot, he was affectionately called “Little Boot” – Caligula – by the troops of his wildly popular father, General Germanicus. The troops made him their mascot.

As an adult he was generally known as Gaius, short for Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus. After an extremely perilous youth he served as the third Roman Emperor, after Augustus and Tiberius. He ruled for a little less than four years before his well-earned enemies assassinated him.

He has gone down in history reviled yet known by his affectionate diminutive. A bit of a paradox, as if Hitler came to be generally known in history and pop culture as “Dolpho.”

Dando-Collins briefly and cryptically alludes to a column of mine at Forbes.com, headlined Donald Trump, Caligula, Michael Wolff, Suetonius, Infamia, And The 'Fake News' Wars. I am a lonely neutral Switzerland in the #NeverTrump #ForeverTrump war. I saw the widespread use of Caligula to vilify Donald Trump as an opportunity to ponder “fake news,” then and now.
“M. Icks and E. Shiraev, in Character Assassination throughout the Ages, put it:
"Suetonius makes no attempt to hide the polemical bias of his sources. He does not cite these texts because he believes them to be accurate per se, but rather because their mere existence serves as proof of the existence of infamia. This might seem trivial at first glance, but I consider it central: Suetonius’s use of such sources permits us to assess to a certain extent how effective the Romans considered such invectives. In several passages, Cicero refers to the topical character of sexual allegations that seem scarcely believable on their own merits. In order to be truly effective, an orator has to seize upon existing rumors of infamia and, building on them, attach all the remaining characteristics of the stereotypical vir mollis [effeminacy].”
…
“[A]s Vivian Green wrote in The Madness of Kings:
“The reliability of many of the Roman historians has been questioned. Tacitus and Suetonius were writing long after the events which they described; they were anti-imperialist in attitude and republican in sympathy. Both Dio Cassius and Herodian have been described as gossipy and anecdotal. Yet the force of their writing, and the stories they tell, if they need to be questioned, must be admitted.”
Thus, without exonerating his many mortal sins, Caligula presents as something of an enigma. We are left with many vivid stories, some plausible, some dubious. Enter Dando-Collins.

I found his story of “the mad emperor of Rome” a compelling page-turner. It reads like a political thriller. It reads like a work of investigative journalism. It reads like a myth-busting period history. Indeed it is all the above, while also presenting a drama – ending in Caligula’s assassination – of Shakespearean proportion.

The author is clearly familiar with, yet never pedantic about, all the sources of evidence. He deftly presents and dispels many old libels taken, for centuries, as history. Not infrequently, Dando-Collins persuades us that some of the accusations against Caligula are what the president calls “fake news.” The author assesses other (often blood curdling) stories to be reliable. It is gratifying to have the Caligula stories lucidly recounted and put into perspective by a master literary detective.

As a bonus we are presented with many piquant historical details. It is recorded that Caligula forced Pontius Pilate, the Roman procurator who washed his hands of the crucifixion of Jesus, to commit suicide. For those who might like to make a pilgrimage to the grave of he who asked quid est veritas? lore locates Pilate’s tomb at la Pyramide, in Vienne, France.

For those simply looking for a compelling read, Dando-Collins provides an abundance of felonies and capital offenses by his protagonist. He also provides a transfixing, little known, back story. Many of his stories are so lurid as to dwarf the incumbent president’s mere unseemly tweets and rhetorical excesses. President Trump presents as a piker by comparison.

Caligula: The Mad Emperor of Rome may herald the perfection of a whole new literary genre: "forensic history." Long ago I was tipped off to an open secret. Colleen McCulloch's pulp masterpieces in Masters of Rome were so uncannily accurate as to be held in awe as a kind of occult secret history by the "secret fraternity of Latin Teachers.”

For pure pleasure, if you enjoy historical fiction surely you’ll find much to love among the historical facts of Caligula: The Mad Emperor of Rome. And by way of improving the mind this small masterpiece reminds us just how venerable “fake news” is.

Ralph Benko, an Amherst College grad, history geek, and former Reagan White House official, is the principal of the national public affairs of ralphbenko.com.

Libya: Does 2019 Rhyme With 1911?

2019-07-29T00:00:00Z

Winston Churchill starts his history of World War I, The World Crisis, in an unconventional place and time: Libya in 1911, rather than Sarajevo in 1914. The reasons for this are both complex and, at least for me, convincing:

- In 1911, an Italian invasion and colonization of what had been the Ottoman provinces of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica (today’s Libya) highlighted Turkey’s spiraling inability to hold on to distant territories.

- Italy’s success in North Africa encouraged the Balkan states that had recently shaken off Turkish rule—Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, and Serbia—to make grabs for the Ottomans’ remaining European lands in two wars in 1912-1913.

- This fighting and scramble for real estate heightened the endemic violence and mistrust in the Balkans, thereby helping pave the road that led to Sarajevo, Gallipoli, the Somme, the rise of Bolshevism, and the other horrors of World War I.

I wonder whether the current civil war in Libya might not potentially have wide and disastrous repercussions similar to those of the events of 1911. Today’s Libyan factions have attracted support from multiple regional (Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates) and external (France, Italy, and Russia) players, including the deployment of pilots, technicians, and trainers. This makes possible an incident resulting in, say, the deaths of Emirati pilots flying for General Haftar’s Libyan National Army or Turkish advisers supporting troops of the rival Government of National Accord. A development like this could spark a broader conflict between the coalitions of states already at loggerheads in the Persian Gulf and Syria—leading to an unpredictable, 1914-ish cascade of second- and third-order consequences. As Bismarck remarked of the Balkans in the late 19th century, a broader international conflict could come out of “some damned foolish thing” in North Africa.

The history of pre-World War I Libya and its consequences is unlikely to repeat itself exactly, but I do fear, in the spirit of Mark Twain, that it could very easily rhyme with what’s happening there now.

William Brooke Stallsmith is an intelligence analyst who has worked in the Central Intelligence Agency and elsewhere on counterintelligence, economic espionage, and African and Near Eastern issues. He earned an MBA from Columbia University and a BA from the University of Virginia. His previous publications include articles in realcleardefense.com and The Cipher Brief.

America in Space and the Speech Nixon Never Had to Give

2019-07-18T00:00:00Z

Two speeches from the 1960’s bookend the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. One given and one not given.

President John F. Kennedy launched the moon landing program in a May 1961 speech to Congress with this call to action: “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”

April 1961 was a challenging month for the new Kennedy administration. The Soviet Union achieved the first orbital space flight on April 12, 1961. A few days later, the Bay of Pigs invasion of Communist Cuba failed. In May 1961, JFK called a joint session of Congress to present a speech entitled “Special Message to the Congress on Urgent National Needs." The address lasted about 45 minutes and included 10 separate sections. In the first eight sections, he described various programs and needs including Vietnam and the Cold War; programs to lower unemployment; requests for increased economic and military foreign aid; funding for foreign language broadcasts to offset Soviet propaganda; and higher military and civil defense spending.

JFK then moved on to the space program. The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union was a significant rationale for the program. At the time, this war was a battle between capitalism and communism. Kennedy believed that achievements in space mattered in this contest. Countries would use success in space as a measuring stick for the American or Soviet systems.

As he stated: “Finally, if we are to win the battle that is now going on around the world between freedom and tyranny, the dramatic achievements in space which occurred in recent weeks should have made clear to us all, as did the Sputnik in 1957, the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere, who are attempting to make a determination of which road they should take.”

Kennedy acknowledged the head start achieved by the Soviets. He described the challenge facing the country: “No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space, and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.” JFK laid out a multi-year multi-billion dollar program.

The concluding section of the speech started with: “It is not a pleasure for any President of the United States … to come before the Congress and ask for new appropriations which place burdens on our people.” JFK said the expenditures were necessary to defend freedom and peace. And he believed the American people would support these programs. Subsequently, Congress voted to fund the program.

Apollo 11 launched in July 1969. The margin of error for the Lunar Landing was slim. Astronaut Neil Armstrong manually piloted the ship past the original landing area which was littered with rocks. Armstrong landed with less than one minute of fuel left. Before the flight, Armstrong was asked by a journalist whether he would take any personal mementos to the moon. His answer: “If I had a choice, I would take more fuel.” Many adverse events could have occurred, either during the landing, once on the ground, or when leaving the moon – a small meteorite causing a leak, an electrical malfunction, an engine failure, etc. There was no way to rescue the Astronauts from any of these problems.

Imagine the worst had happened, and a failure had stranded the astronauts on the moon. They would have been still alive, with no chance of leaving the moon, doomed to die as soon as their life support ran out. Michael Collins, the astronaut in lunar orbit in the Command Module wrote: "My secret terror for the last six months has been leaving them on the Moon and returning to Earth alone … if they fail to rise from the surface or crash back into it, I am not going to commit suicide; I am coming home, forthwith, but I will be a marked man for life, and I know it."

President Nixon prepared a contingency speech in case of disaster.

The speech starts:

“Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace. These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.

These two men are laying down their lives in mankind's most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding.

“They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.”

The short speech ended with this sentence:

“For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.”

Thankfully, that speech was not necessary - never delivered. The successful landing and safe return of Armstrong and Aldrin marked the successful completion of the goal set by President John F. Kennedy earlier in the decade.

Eight years elapsed between JFK’s May 1961 speech launching the moon program, and July 1969 when the success of Apollo 11 made Nixon’s contingency speech unnecessary. A spectacular achievement we can all be proud of.

Howard Tanzman is a lifelong student of history. He writes about history, presidents and sports at https://www.parkspresidentsandparks.com/

10 Most Iconic Pieces of Art in Ancient Egypt

2019-07-16T00:00:00Z

Ancient Egyptians were far ahead of other civilizations in the areas of art, science and technological innovations - as is evident from the remnants and relics of their edifices, texts, and artifacts. Their artworks reflect profound influences of religious motifs, and mythology; which were integral parts of their lives. The intricacy and brilliance of ancient Egyptian artwork leaves historians as well as travelers gasping for words. From the marvels of engineering achieved through the Egyptian pyramids to the exquisite ornaments they made, Egyptian art relics have no parallel. Their craftsmanship is proven by the fact that some of these art forms have withstood the test of time and lasted over 3,000 years.

Listed below are the ten most iconic ancient art forms of Egypt that can leave you amazed:

1. Throne of Tutankhamun

Perhaps no other ruler of ancient Egypt was as enigmatic as Tutankhamun. The ‘boy king’ as he was called had his coronation at the tender age of nine and died mysteriously at 19 years. He left behind a vast empire and loads of wealth. The golden throne was found in 1922 by Howard Carter, the British archeologist who located his tomb. The amazing throne was intact even after 3,000 years, showing the excellent craftsmanship of the Egyptians. It was adorned with glass and precious stones and deemed as a fine instance of Amarna Period art. The amazing thing is the glaze of the metal was intact even after 3,000 years when it was excavated.

2. The Egyptian Book of the Dead

A noted ancient Egyptian funerary text, The Egyptian Book of the Dead was used till 50 BC from around 1550 BC. The book was replete with funerary texts, depicting the deep belief in the concept of afterlife and images of ancient Egyptian Gods. There was no single book, and many copies have been found. One copy can be seen in the British Museum. The ancient texts contain many rituals related to the afterlife that the Egyptians believed would help the deceased persons sail through the phases after death.

3. The Golden Tree of Life

The ideologies and beliefs of the ancient Egyptians can be understood by observing their painting and sculptures, as it is. One such notable painting is The Golden Tree of Life. The ancient papyrus painting has deep symbolism. In this painting, the birds placed on the tree symbolize various stages of life. The birds face East except one that faces West as it symbolizes the end of life. It is deemed as one of the best works about Egypt.

4. The Bust of Nefertiti

Another Royal Egyptian family member whose identity was shrouded in mystery is Nefertiti. The bust of Nefertiti was possibly created sometime in 1340 BC. It weighs almost 20 kg and made from one piece of limestone. While some historians believe she was a queen, others contradict that view. The bust is remarkably well made, and her facial features are accurately depicted in it. The craftsmen used gypsum stucco and gemstones in making the bust.

5. Canopic Jars

The Canopic jars were made by ancient Egyptians to preserve the body organs of the deceased persons. Each organ was kept in a separate container. These jars were mostly made with limestone.

6. Egyptian Papyrus

Not many are aware of it, but the word paper was coined from papyrus. It was a plant grown in the delta of the Nile River. The papyrus paper that was used extensively by the ancient Egyptians for painting and writing was made from its pith. These papyrus copies have withstood tests of time, much like the other relics of art. It is through the analysis of these Papyrus writings or paintings that the scholars and historians have decoded nuances of ancient Egyptian civilization.

7. The Statue of Khufu

The enticing statue of Khufu was created in 26 BC. It is an ivory statue of the famous Egyptian monarch made with amazing craftsmanship. It is only 7.5 cm high, but stands as evidence of the monarch’s two-decade-long reign. The statue was discovered by noted Egyptologist Flinders Petrie in 1903 at the necropolis of Abydos, near the Temple of Osiris. The statue is now kept in the Cairo Museum. This discovery convinced historians about the identity of the builder of the Great Pyramid of Giza, who happened to be the son of Queen Hetepheres.

8. Statue of Cleopatra VII Philopator

The most enigmatic female ruler to ascend the throne in ancient Egypt, Cleopatra still amazes. Many theories exist regarding her origin and reign, and a number of them are contradictory. However, the statue of Cleopatra is a stunning example of Egyptian art. The carefully crafted statue looks stunning and bears the stamp of Egyptian craftsmanship. Cleopatra had a Macedonian origin and true to her genes; she was known for causing many deaths in the family for capturing the throne. The queen’s face is carved in typical Greco-Roman style. The three cobras on the head of the queen make it look somewhat menacing.

9. Tomb of Senenmut’s Astronomical Ceiling

Senenmut was a noted architect in ancient Egypt who created the tomb complex of Pharaoh Hatshepsut. However, his tomb was no less spectacular. The ceiling of his tomb has an amazing depiction of the galaxy. The map is divided into the twin hemispheres. The northern hemisphere depicts the Egyptian lunar cycles along with well-known constellations while its southern segment shows stars and planets visible to human eyes. The intriguing thing in the artwork is the absence of Mars in the constellation.

10. Thutmose III Statue

Among the few found statues of ancient Egyptian kings, the statue of Thutmose III is a major one, and it is said to be an artistic masterpiece. Thutmose III was the Eighteenth Dynasty’s sixth Pharaoh. The statue reflects the aura of a powerful monarch with a resemblance to his stepmother Hatshepsut, to whom he was quite antagonistic. This statue is now kept in the Luxor Museum.

Vandana Sinha is the co-founder and editor of Historyly, a teacher by profession. She has a passion for reading and writing about different historical periods. Historyly was started with the view to make ancient history meaningful and interesting to the everyday reader.

Raid on Ploesti: Lessons Old and New

2019-06-27T00:00:00Z

Winston Churchill once remarked, ”In war, nothing ever goes according to plan except occasionally, and then, only by accident.”

One of history's best examples of this is the near-disastrous USAAF air raid against the German-run oil refineries in Ploesti, Romania on Aug. 1, 1943. The lessons of this event resonate with relevance and verity to this day.

The Ploesti refinery complex was responsible for producing almost 35 percent of the oil used by the German military-industrial complex and a similar percentage of their aviation fuel. Allied war planners considered this target to be of the utmost strategic importance, and felt, with some justification, that the complete destruction of Ploesti's refineries would have an extremely significant impact on Germany's ability to wage war.

Plan was to fly low and overwhelm German defenses

The U.S. high command conceived a plan to attack the refineries using two groups of B-24 Liberator bombers, the 367th and the 98th, of the U.S. 9th Air Force based in Libya, and three groups from the 8th Air Force, the 93rd, 44th, and 389th which flew down from England to Africa to join the other two. In 1943, there were no long-range fighter aircraft capable of escorting the bombers on the entirety of the trip—2,700 miles round-trip from Benghazi, Libya to Romania and back—so mission planners made the decision that the bombers would fly at extremely low level to avoid enemy radar detection and mitigate their lack of fighter protection. The rationale was that a large strike force coming in essentially by surprise at treetop level would overwhelm the German defenses by catching them off guard and assure a precision strike from point-blank range.

The five groups practiced for weeks in the African desert, making full-distance flights against dummy targets set up to resemble the actual refineries as closely as possible. The B-24 was designed as a high-altitude bomber (18,000–25,000 feet), and the aircraft was very difficult to handle in the heavy atmosphere only a few hundred feet above the ground. Nonetheless, by the end of July, the groups were ready to go.

The mission was set for Aug. 1, 1943 and was known as Operation Tidal Wave. This was certainly the most ambitious long-range strategic bombing attack ever attempted in history. The American command was well aware of the incredible risks, but such was the perceived importance of the mission that Brigadier General Uzal Ent was moved to say, “If nobody comes back, the results will have been worth the cost.”

In all, 178 Liberators, loaded well past the normal safety margin with bombs and fuel, left Benghazi that day and headed out on their 10-hour flight towards Ploesti.

All that could wrong did go wrong

Almost immediately, things began to go wrong. One of the lead planes suffered multiple engine failure and plummeted to earth shortly after takeoff, killing eight of 10 crewmen. Planes had difficulty maintaining proper formation because of the low altitude and their overloaded condition. The original flight plan had called for the groups to follow slightly different courses, so in the event of enemy detection, their final destination would not be immediately apparent. About three-quarters through the flight, each group was to pivot towards Ploesti after reaching a predetermined landmark and attack en masse, saturating the defenses and rendering them ineffective.

This proved to be far more difficult to execute in reality than in the pre-mission practice runs. The 376th Group mistook the town of Targoviste for their pivot point of Floresti and made the wrong turn. Disastrously off course and headed to nowhere, Major Ramsey Potts broke the heretofore strictly-held radio silence to warn the 93rd group and attempt to re-assemble some semblance of mission coherence.

By now, the German defenses were fully alerted and as the disjointed, confused Americans headed into the target area, they were met with an incomprehensibly hellish combination of anti-aircraft fire and German fighter plane attacks. Dozens upon dozens of American bombers were shot down, and virtually the entire attacking fleet was eliminated as a meaningful offensive force. Of the approximately 120 aircraft that somehow survived the attack itself, only 31 would ever fly again.

Five Medals of Honor awarded for single air action

Incredible instances of superhuman bravery were the order of the day. Group leader Lt. Col. Addison E. Baker and his pilot Major John Jerstad, who had previously completed his combat tour but had volunteered for this mission, their Liberator shot to ribbons and ablaze, led their group directly into the target area rather than safely setting their plane down in an open field short of the target. They willingly sacrificed their own lives in order to assure a productive bombing run, such was their dedication to what they believed was a mission on which the war's outcome would turn.

Twenty-one-year-old Second Lieutenant Lloyd Hughes of the 389th Group, on only his fifth combat mission, flew through intense anti-aircraft fire to successfully strike the target. He emerged with his B-24 streaming fire and gasoline from its belly and wings. He made a desperate attempt to save his crew by crash-landing his crippled plane on a lakebed but one wing of the blazing B-24 hit a riverbank and the plane exploded.

In all, the Army Air Force awarded five Medals of Honor—three posthumously—for acts of heroism and bravery, a record for a single air action.

Despite the apparent “failure” of the mission, the raid inflicted considerable damage on Ploesti's refineries. Some areas were barely touched, but others were almost completely destroyed. Net oil production was considerably reduced for months. Most importantly, Germany was forced to expend considerable time and effort rebuilding its capacity and, additionally, was forced to strengthen its defenses around the area, thus denying other fronts of those vital resources.

The lessons learned from the Ploesti mission are clear and well worth remembering:

1) In spite of the best intentions and the most arduous training, it is never possible to foresee or allow for every imaginable contingency in any given situation or endeavor;

2) Hindsight is always 20-20; and

3) It can be convincingly argued that undertakings with a huge potential upside payoff for the good of mankind and (like Ploesti, with its goal of mortally crippling the Nazi war effort) are worth the cost.

Those lessons are as true today as they were in 1943.

Sources

Caidin, Martin Air Force Bramhall House, 1957

Green, William Famous Bombers of the Second World War Doubleday, 1959

Jablonski, Edward Airwar—Tragic Victories Doubleday, 1971

Wagner, Ray American Combat Planes Doubleday, 1982

Air Force Magazine Online, September 1988

10 Most Hated Enemies in American History

2019-06-13T00:00:00Z

June is such a lovely time of year. It’s hot. It’s sweaty. And there’s always down time. Behold, the 10 Most Hated Enemies in American History:

10. Adolf Hitler (1889-1945). Let’s get the easy one out of the way. Hitler has always been one of the republic’s most-hated enemies, and for good reason. The genocidal German Chancellor would probably make this list 150 years from now, too. To make things interesting, here is a counterfactual: Would Hitler have come to power if the United States had not entered World War I? The First World War was drawing to a brutal, bloody close until American entry turned the tide of the stalemate into a rout that destroyed not only the German Empire but the other polyglot empires in central and eastern Europe, too. The power vacuum that followed the collapse of the German, Russian, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian empires practically handed over the reins of power to people like Hitler.

9. Osama bin Laden (1957-2011). Another easy one, Osama bin Laden orchestrated the world’s deadliest terrorist attack and brought down the World Trade Center buildings. When video surfaced of Osama bin Laden smirking and laughing as he bragged about the iconic skyscrapers tumbling to the ground, the American penchant for generosity - renowned around the world (albeit quietly) - vanished. Bin Laden, once a U.S. ally during the Cold War, was killed in Pakistan by an elite U.S. military unit in 2011, while the United States military continues to wage a low-level war in neighboring Afghanistan.

8. Geronimo (1829-1909). A well-regarded leader of the acephalous Apache nation, Geronimo’s raids were violent and hateful. Native Americans and Euro Americans loathed each other. No inch of land from sea to shining sea was ceded peacefully. Geronimo inspired fear in the hearts of southwestern Anglos and animosity in the hearts of Americans elsewhere. Geronimo’s post-surrender life is perhaps the most emblematic of what happened to the Indians: he was paraded around the country as a prisoner of war, but was permitted to sell material goods like bows and arrows or hats or buttons. He was also paid to shoot buffalo and take pictures with the well-to-do. He died in a hospital in 1909, under armed guard as a prisoner of war.

7. Emilio Aguinaldo (1869-1964). Another former ally, Aguinaldo fought side-by-side with American troops against Spain in the Philippines. When Spain surrendered, though, it was to the United States in a European city (Paris, to be exact). This was done for two reasons. First, the Spanish did not want to cede the Philippines to the (non-white) locals. Second, the Americans did not want the locals to take part in the negotiations of surrender, as they wanted the colony for their own empire. While the United States was negotiating with Spain in Paris for the Philippines, Emilio Aguinaldo was busy creating a republic for Filipinos. A grisly guerilla war ensued. Aguinaldo surrendered to U.S. forces in 1901, but the insurrection he started lasted up until the moment Japanese soldiers began forcefully moving Filipinos into labor camps during World War II.

6. Charles Grey, 1st Earl Grey (1729-1807). Of all the British military brass who served during the American Revolution, none was more despised than Charles Grey. One of the most successful British leaders of the war, the Earl learned quickly to fight fire with fire and engage the Americans and their Native allies at their own guerilla game. He led murderous raids on American troops in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New Jersey. These raids were undertaken at night and gunpowder was forbidden: only bayonets were to be used against the rebels. His success against the Americans earned him a promotion and he was to be the supreme commander of all British forces in North America, but the war ended before he could take over the reins. Prior to the American secession, the 1st Earl Grey cut his teeth in Germany, France, and Cuba during the Seven Years’ War.

5. Antonio López de Santa Anna (1794-1876). Given the lopsided nature of the Mexican-American War, it’s worth wondering how Santa Anna made this list. The answer is his dishonorable antics against non-combatants and prisoners of war. Santa Anna’s massacres left a bad taste in the mouths of most Americans, and helped tip the balance of the war debate in favor of the hawks. Santa Anna’s most famous massacre was, of course, the one at the Alamo, but he also orchestrated the Goliad Massacre, where over 400 Texans were slaughtered by Mexican troops after they surrendered.

4. Tecumseh (1768-1813). Speaking of massacres, Tecumseh saw more than a few as a boy and young man growing up in Ohio country during the late 18th century. A staunch, longtime ally of the British Empire, Tecumseh spent a lot of time trying to patch together a pan-Indian confederation, which was at odds with American plans for Ohio country. A veteran of the Northwest Indian War - a savage, 10-year war between the United States and an Indian confederacy led by Little Turtle - Tecumseh had nothing but hate for Americans. The feeling was mutual. A war erupted between the U.S. and Tecumseh’s confederation in 1810, and the fighting bled into the War of 1812, with Tecumseh siding, once again, with the British. He died in the Battle of Moraviantown. While the British technically won the War of 1812, Tecumseh’s confederacy collapsed and any Indians still left in Ohio country were violently pushed west of the Mississippi.

3. Leonid Brezhnev (1906-82). Brezhnev? Why not Josef Stalin, whose murderous purges dwarfed Hitler’s ethnic cleansing campaigns? Mostly because Stalin and FDR were best buds during World War II. Khrushchev threatened to bury us, but the honest socialist couldn’t help himself when he visited the United States; Khrushchev loved us, and we loved him back. Brezhnev, on the other hand, inflicted serious pain on the United States. The Soviet autocrat, who ran the Soviet Union from 1964-82, presided over the world’s most powerful socialist entity during a time of great cultural upheaval in the United States. It was Brezhnev who watched American soldiers die in Vietnam from Soviet-made weapons, and he was still in charge when the U.S. pulled out of southeast Asia in defeat. The period of détente during the Cold War, which saw the Soviet Union achieve military parity with the United States, was also largely the work of Brezhnev. The hard anti-communist turn of the American public, beginning in 1978 with the election of Jimmy Carter, couldn’t be clearer: Brezhnev’s Soviet Union had morphed into an Evil Empire.

2. Osceola (1804-38). Of all the Native American leaders who fought against the United States, Osceola stood out amongst his peers when it came to being hated by Americans. The Seminole leader had a hard life, but one that was reflective of society in Alabama in the early 19th century. He and his mother had to flee Creek country after their side of the Creek civil war lost, and they ended up being adopted into the Seminole nation once they settled in Florida. Osceola’s side of the Creek civil war was the “traditionalist” side, or the side that wanted nothing to do with the United States. As a Seminole, Osceola started the Florida War with the United States after he and his men butchered hundreds of American soldiers who were marching from one fort to another. This war was the longest of the Indian wars in American history, lasting just over six-and-a-half years, and civilians on both sides suffered harsh attacks. One group that did not suffer was the slaves brought in from Africa: Osceola’s Seminoles freed them wherever they went, and most took up arms to help the Seminoles in their fight against the United States. Osceola died in a military prison in South Carolina. He was given full military honors.

1. Hideki Tojo (1884-1948). Although Prime Minister Tojo was responsible for the attack on Pearl Harbor, it might be more accurate to put Emperor Hirohito in this spot. As a divine right monarch, Hirohito made an easy target for Americans looking for reasons to hate an enemy. In reality, the Japanese Emperor was just a figurehead for Tojo’s government (which is why Douglas MacArthur spared the Emperor’s life). Hideki Tojo was as ruthless as he was hateful. He was responsible for the butchering of innocent people in China and Korea that took place under Japanese occupation, and he was responsible for the way the Japanese military treated its captives. Hideki Tojo was hanged in Tokyo in 1948, his empire in shatters, his family shamed, and his country defeated.

Et cetera

No Kim Jong-Un, or his ruthless grandfather? The socialist dictators of Korea are mere flies. They don’t inspire hatred the way the men in the Top 10 did.

No Crazy Horse or Sitting Bull? The Indian wars are among the most important wars in American history, ranking alongside the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War II. These wars of attrition between colonist and Native shaped the United States just as much as the wars against the British Empire, the Nazis, and the slave owners. The Natives in the Top 10 inspired hatred more than Sitting Bull or Crazy Horse because by the time the Sioux were fighting the American military, the war for the continent had already been won by the United States. The post-Civil War Indian wars were just a formality. Prior to the Civil War, the Indians east of the Mississippi had more people, bigger villages, agriculture, organized militaries, and allies in London, Paris, and Madrid. They represented a threat to the existence of the republic.

No Ho Chi Minh? Too many friends on campus.

No Timothy McVeigh? No Unabomber? No hatred here, at least from the American public. (It’s hard to hate stupid.)

Saddam Hussein? Again, no hatred. Hussein was a tinpot dictator in 1991, when the U.S. first invaded Mesopotamia, and then he was in Osama bin Laden’s shadow 10 years later. Hussein was always more of a nuisance that a truly hated enemy, which puts him in the same camp as the Kims and domestic terrorists.

Have a great weekend, and an even better summer.

Brandon Christensen is a columnist at RealClearHistory and a contributor to the site's Historiat blog. He also blogs at Notes On Liberty. Send him mail. Follow him on Twitter.

The 'Wrong of Versailles' 100 Years On

2019-06-06T00:00:00Z

This June 28th marks the centenary of one of the most consequential peace treaties signed in the 20th century. On June 28, 1919 (interestingly exactly five years to the day after the assassination of Francis Ferdinand and his wife launched World War I) the victorious Allies gathered at Louis XIV’s magnificent palace in Versailles to dictate the treaty that ended what was then called “The Great War.”

The terms were harsh. Article 232 of the treaty stated that Germany accepted full responsibility for the war. She agreed to pay heavy reparations to France, Belgium and Great Britain, would maintain only a small army without offensive weapons such as airplanes, submarines or tanks and would surrender large pieces of territory to the new Polish state in the east while restoring the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine to France. Along with the dismemberment of the Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman Empires, the treaty signaled an enormous shift in the balance of power in Europe, one that had lasted for all practical purposes for a century, since the end of the Napoleonic wars.

To what extent did this treaty that ended one terrible war contribute to a second more awful conflict 20 years later? At another level, could you argue that the extreme nature of the Versailles Treaty led to the rise of dictators such as Benito Mussolini and especially, Adolf Hitler?

It is safe to say that the actions of the leaders at Versailles were counterproductive, if understandable, given what happened to their nations during World War I. The French, with their population already stagnating, lost about one quarter of their adult male population; the British suffered 750,000 killed; Italy a like figure. For comparison, the number of British killed between 1914-18 was almost double those who died in World War II. Even the United States, which only took an active part in battle for about five months, suffered 114,000 deaths (they suffered 400,000 killed in 44 months during World War II). For Germany, the figure was 1.8 million killed. These losses generated a terrible sense of loss on the part of the victors and a thirst for revenge on the part of the defeated Germans.

There quickly emerged among the Germans a belief that they had been betrayed by traitors-- communists, pacifists and Jews and their cowardly political leaders, known as “the November criminals” who surrendered an undefeated Germany to the Allies on Nov. 11, 1918. The fact that this wasn’t true didn’t matter. By November 1918 the Germans had been defeated on the battlefield and the nation worn down by the British blockade which led to mass starvation during what was called the “turnip winter” of 1918. Extremist political parties seized the theme of betrayal with enthusiasm, among them a small right wing populist faction that later became the National Socialist German Workers Party, better known as the Nazis. It was their eventual leader, Adolf Hitler who raised this sense of betrayal, the myth of the stab in the back, to new levels.

While it is probably true that the economic problems of post-war Germany, especially the terrible hyper-inflation of the early 1920s which destroyed the German middle classes, contributed to Hitler’s rise to power, the bitter aftermath of the war played a significant part in winning him an audience. The German Republic that emerged after the war, the Weimar regime, was doomed from the start. It was saddled with the sense of betrayal and treachery that German people felt. However, what clinched Hitler’s ultimate takeover in January 1933 was the second great economic catastrophe for Germany (and the world), the onset of the Great Depression in the early 1930s.

The combination of the so-called “wrong of Versailles,” the belief that Germany hadn’t really been defeated but betrayed, and the twin economic crises of the 1920s and early 1930s gave Hitler a platform that he as a skilled demagogue could exploit. Hitler’s Nazi party was an insignificant one in the German parliament as late as 1928 with just a handful of deputies. Four years later it was the largest political party and movement in Germany. Hitler came to power in a legal manner having been able to exploit those frustrations the German people felt after World War I better than any of his democratic rivals. The Versailles treaty and its flaws played a contributing role to that disaster for the world.

John Rossi is Professor Emeritus of History at La Salle University in Philadelphia.

Nixon's Soviet Lesson on American Humility

2019-05-24T00:00:00Z

On May 22, 1972, Richard Nixon went to Moscow. The Historiat has already covered at historic visit here, but there is plenty more to glean from the encounter.

The Kitchen Debate of 1959, for example, where Nixon, ever the lawyer from California, got into an impromptu debate with Nikita Khrushchev (ever the socialist) over the merits of their different systems of governance and economy. Nixon’s 1959 trip so impressed the Soviet First Secretary that Khrushchev later declared he did everything in his power to prevent Nixon from being elected President in 1960.

There is also the eternal unanswered question: Why Nixon? How did the staunch anti-communist end up making two trips to the Soviet Union in the heat of the Cold War? Perhaps it is because only warriors can make a lasting peace. Or maybe, as Rick Brownell recently argued, it’s because Nixon was actually a Progressive. Trump himself, after all, said that Republicans and Conservatives are two different animals, and the Progressive tradition has a long history of operating within the GOP.

On May 28 of that eventful 1972 summit, Nixon became the first American president to address the Soviet people directly. He did so on live radio and television, two mediums where he had mixed success in the past, and in English. In his memoirs, Nixon stated that he wanted to reach the Soviet people as plainly as he could, with no interpreters to muck up his message, and no censors. The Cold War lasted another 20 years after that speech, so it has been easy for Nixon’s detractors to downplay the significance of the 1972 speech.

However, the fact that the democratically elected leader of the most powerful country on the planet wanted to speak to the Soviets himself, with no aides or Party men at his side, is one of the more subtle American victories of the Cold War. A functioning democracy that protects rights and operates under a rule of law requires humility of its leadership, no matter how powerful the positions are. Nixon’s address gave the Soviets a dose of the liberalism that guides the American constitution.

Liberalism is above all else a humble creed, and a lone, powerful man speaking to foreign people plainly about friendship, gave the Soviets a glimpse of how their own leaders would behave if Soviet politicians were constrained by a rule of law and democratic consent.

Brandon Christensen is a columnist at RealClearHistory and a contributor to the site's Historiat blog. He also blogs at Notes On Liberty. Send him mail. Follow him on Twitter.

10 Railroads That Made America Great

2019-05-16T00:00:00Z

Choo! Choo! On May 10, 1869, just four years after the end of the Civil War, a golden spike was driven into the ground at Promontory Point, Utah, in order celebrate the completion of the republic’s first transcontinental railroad.

Today, in May of 2019, the American railroad system is recognized as the best in the world, at least when it comes to efficiency in regards to moving freight, but this wasn’t always the case. Here are the 10 Railroads that Made America Great.

10. Union Pacific Railroad. The Union Pacific was responsible for laying the track from Omaha to Promontory Point. The men who worked for the company had to build a railroad through the Rocky Mountains and the Uintas. The railroad was a government charter, so it faced severe operational difficulties from the get-go. Still, Washington managed to pour enough money into the Union Pacific that it achieved its goal. By the time the railroad dissolved in 1880 (less than 20 years after its founding), the Union Pacific had united the coasts of the American republic.

9. The Central Pacific Railroad was the line that came from the west in order to meet the Union Pacific in Utah. The CP’s line started in Sacramento and had to be built through the Sierra Nevadas and the high-altitude desert of the Great Basin. The Central Pacific was also a government charter, and therefore also faced stiff operational challenges, including corruption and labor strife. The Central Pacific Railroad is probably most famous for the Chinese laborers it hired to build its track.

8. Pennsylvania Railroad. A privately run railroad, the Pennsylvania Railroad was founded in 1846 in Philadelphia and grew into the largest corporation in the world by 1882. In 1946, 100 years after its founding, the famous railroad company reported its first loss. Ever. The Pennsylvania Railroad spread out from Philadelphia into Pittsburgh, Chicago, St. Louis, New York, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, the northern tip of Michigan and parts of West Virginia. In 1968, the Pennsylvania Railroad merged with a regional rival and ceased to exist.

7. Southern Pacific Railroad. Founded in 1865, the Southern Pacific line began in New Orleans and connected through Houston, Austin, San Antonio, El Paso, Phoenix, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento, Portland, and Ogden-Salt Lake. The Southern Pacific was involved in a legal dispute with Santa Clara (Calif.) county in 1886, and the ruling from the case laid the foundation for present-day legal protections that corporations enjoy here in the United States. Southern Pacific’s telecommunications network created Sprint (the phone company) and helped lay the groundwork for America’s fiber optic network. Plagued by financial problems, Southern Pacific is now part of the Union Pacific Railroad.

6. Buffalo Bayou, Brazos, and Colorado Railroad. The first operating railroad line in the great state of Texas, the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos, and Colorado (BBB&C) Railroad was supposed to go from Houston (where Buffalo Bayou is located) up to Austin and on through northern Texas to connect with ports along the Brazos and Colorado Rivers. The first segment was completed in 1853. All was going according to plan until the Civil War forced construction to halt, and when the Blue and the Gray finally stopped fighting, the BBB&C found itself in dire financial straits, eventually going broke during Reconstruction. The line was bought by another Texas company and instead of going north, to Austin, it continued west and connected Houston to San Antonio and, eventually, El Paso, where it connected to the much larger Southern Pacific Railroad and guaranteed that a transcontinental route through Texas would run west-east through southern Texas. It’s now part of the Union Pacific family.

5. Santa Fe. The Santa Fe line was founded in 1859 to connect Topeka, Kan. with Santa Fe. That connection never happened, but that’s what makes the Santa Fe’s history so great. (Today, by the way, the Santa Fe is part of the BNSF (Burlington Northern Santa Fe) Railroad system, the largest in the United States.) The Santa Fe Railroad hustled. It built a network through the Rockies, built lines into Chicago and the Puget Sound, and even traded its rail lines at one point in time, opting to give up its track in Mexico for track in the San Joaquin Valley.

4. Northern Pacific Railroad. A government-sponsored enterprise from the start, the Northern Pacific was saddled with financial problems throughout its short lifespan. The railroad also achieved an amazing feat: building a transcontinental line from the Great Lakes to the Puget Sound. President Ulysses S. Grant drove in the final spike himself, in Montana, in 1873. The Northern Pacific was never able to compete with the privately financed railroads, and bankruptcies, labor violence, and corruption followed the line wherever it went. Still, the Northern Pacific survived in one form or another until 1970, when it was absorbed into the then Burlington Northern Railroad system, a private company now owned, indirectly, by Warren Buffet.

3. Western Pacific Railroad. There were actually two Western Pacific Railroads in American history. The first Western Pacific was responsible for building the westernmost portion of the transcontinental railroad, which started in San Jose and ended in Sacramento. In 1870, it was bought out by Central Pacific Railroad. The second Western Pacific Railroad was not even founded until 1903, well after the railroad system had linked the republic. The railroad became famous throughout the world as a leisure line (the California Zephyr was a part of WP’s system).

2. Mobile & Ohio Railroad. Stretching from Mobile, Ala. to Columbus, Ken. (in the Ohio Valley), the M&O Railroad was completed just before the beginning of the Civil War, and was the longest railroad in the country operating under a single corporate charter. The M&O was used by the Confederate government liberally throughout the war, and because of that she was attacked often and had to be rebuilt almost from scratch after the war ended. The M&O also had to find a way to cover the $5 million that the Confederate government had borrowed from it. The railroad survived and even thrived for almost 80 years after the Civil War. The M&O operated under Southern Railway’s direction from early in the 20th century until 1940, when Southern sold its M&O bond to Gulf, Mobile and Northern Railroad.

1. The Great Northern Railway. A privately financed company, the Great Northern Railway has been the subject of much veneration in American libertarian circles. (The line was amazing. It began in Saint Paul and ended in Seattle.) American libertarians hold up James J. Hill (the founder and chief executive of GNR) and his corporate empire as an exemplar of liberty, but this is not quite true. Sure, the Great Northern Railway refused to get financing from Washington, but it sure received lots of other help from D.C., and Hill spent quite a bit of time with his friends on Capitol Hill. Most perniciously, the Great Northern Railway sought Washington’s help with land issues that the Native Americans, who had more clout up north due to a variety of factors, kept mucking up. With that being said, the Great Northern Railway did what no other line in American history has been able to do: build a transcontinental railroad system without a government charter.

Further thoughts

The superficial story of the railroads in the United States is focused on bringing the country together physically as well as spiritually and politically. Meh.

Dig a little deeper and you’ll find out why American railroads are so popular in scientific and literary circles. The richer story to be told by the railroads describes rent-seeking in luscious detail. The railroads help to explain corruption in nominally democratic societies. The story of American railroads highlights the best and the worst of humanity itself.

All aboard!

Brandon Christensen is a columnist at RealClearHistory and a contributor to the site's Historiat blog. He also blogs at Notes On Liberty. Send him mail. Follow him on Twitter.

brandon.l.christensen@gmail.com

5 Battles That Defined Mexican-American War

2019-05-15T00:00:00Z

On May 13, 1846, the United States Congress, egged on President James K. Polk, declared war on Mexico. In 1879, Ulysses S. Grant, who had fought in the war as a strapping young lad, described the whole affair as “wicked” and that the land grab made him “ashamed of [his] country.” Abraham Lincoln was a freshman in the House of Representatives during the war, and he was one of its harshest critics. Alas, Mr. Lincoln was voted in to office after war had already been declared.

It wasn’t just Whigs who opposed the war, either. John C. Calhoun, one of Polk’s fellow Democrats, was relentless in opposing Manifest Destiny. For him, like the Whigs in the North, any territory taken from Mexico would only augment the wound of slavery throughout the republic.

The war itself lasted only two years, from 1846-48, but the consequences were of lasting importance. The United States of America annexed more than half of Mexico’s territory and established itself as the strongman of the region. Here are the five battles that made it all happen:

5. Siege of Veracruz (March 9–29, 1847). Like most of the battles and sieges of the war, this one ended with an American victory. The siege also marked the first official amphibious assault of the U.S. military. Capturing Veracruz was no small feat. At the time, Veracruz was considered the most impenetrable fortress in North America. The victory helped the Americans establish themselves deep in Mexican territory and paved a relatively clear path towards the Mexican capital.

4. Battle of Cerro Gordo (April 18, 1847). The first major battle to result from the American march towards Mexico City, the Battle of Cerro Gordo was massive by the standards of the war -- 12,000 American soldiers attacked 8,700 Mexican soldiers who had dug in deep at a mountain pass called the Cerro Gordo. The Americans took it in one day, but not before slaughtering 1,000 Mexican soldiers. Several famous American men got their chops at the Battle of Cerro Gordo, including Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee. The battle was so successful that several towns are named after it: one each in Iowa, North Carolina, and Illinois.

3. Siege of Pueblo de Taos (February 3-5, 1847). This was the battle that ended the Taos Revolt, a sidestory of the war that is useful for understanding just how complex the Mexican-American War was. After the American military had taken present-day New Mexico from the Mexicans, the locals revolted against the United States occupation, not necessarily because they were loyal to Mexico (which they were not), but because they thought they deserved more of a voice in how to move forward. The Taos Revolt forced the Americans to think more carefully about occupation and annexation, and earned the citizens of New Mexico a seat at the table in Washington when it came to divvy up the spoils of war.

2. Battle of Molino del Rey (Sept. 8, 1847). Fought on the outskirts of Mexico City, the Battle of Molino del Rey was one of the war’s bloodiest (less than 900 soldiers, added together on both sides, died). The Mexican Army was basically making one last, gallant stand, and it did, but it was no match for the American invaders. The one-day battle allowed the United States military to begin preparing for a siege of Mexico City proper, which fell one week after the Battle of Molino del Rey.

1. Battle of Buena Vista (Feb. 22-23, 1847). In Coahuilla, one Mexico’s northernmost states today (and a good candidate for statehood within the US), just over 15,000 Mexican soldiers were decisively beaten by a much smaller, better-armed American force of just under 5,000 soldiers (who were led by future president Zachary Taylor). The Battle of Buena Vista, while being one of the largest battles of the war, also served as a sign for things to come during the short war. Two hundred and sixty-one Americans died in the battle, and the Mexicans lost 591 soldiers.

Et cetera
Yes, I know most of these battles were fought in 1847, but to be honest that’s pretty much the only year where the two militaries fought seriously. In 1846, both sides were arming and strategizing and traveling, and in 1848 both sides were trying to figure out how to end the lopsided affairs as quickly and as gentlemanly as possible.
Mexico fell further into disrepair after the war, but the United States did not fare much better. Most historians today recognize that the land grab led directly to the Civil War. Calhoun had been correct all along: a successful war against Mexico would only bring slavery to the forefront of American society.

Brandon Christensen is a columnist at RealClearHistory and a contributor to the site's Historiat blog. He also blogs at Notes On Liberty. Send him mail. Follow him on Twitter.

Wilson's, Jackson's Legacies Take Hits, Grant's Stock Rises

2019-05-09T00:00:00Z

Since World War II, historians, newspapers, and institutions have performed surveys of presidential reputations. There is unanimous agreement placing George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt, and Thomas Jefferson at the top of the list. Franklin Pierce, Millard Fillmore, and James Buchanan are consistently at the bottom.

However, there are several Presidents whose reputations have either significantly improved or worsened since these surveys started. Some examples follow below.

Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson was the first president to come from a humble background. Before Jackson, the first six Presidents were college-educated aristocrats from either Virginia or Massachusetts.

Jackson was the founder of the modern day Democratic party. He considered himself the “champion of the common man.” The movement was called, ‘Jacksonian Democracy.’ One of his signature issues was opposition to Bank of the United States. He felt this institution had too much power and favored the wealthy. After a fierce political battle, Jackson succeeded in eliminating the bank. Jackson also strongly supported the Union against South Carolina’s attempt to nullify a Federal tariff bill by threatening the use of military force. State’s rights and nullification later became issues leading up to the Civil War.

For supporting the expansion of democracy to the “common man” and creating the modern-day Democratic party, Jackson had long been considered one of our nation’s better presidents.

However, more recently, Jackson has come under criticism for his treatment of Native Americans. Through the Indian Removal Act of 1830, he supported relocating Native Americans from their historic lands in the Southeast to lands west of the Mississippi, in present-day Oklahoma. Many were forced to move along the “Trail of Tears,” a consequence of these actions. Removing President Jackson’s image from the $20 bill is now under consideration. The annual Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner, held as a fund-raising event by the Democratic Party, may lose its name as a result of these concerns.

Ulysses S. Grant
Until a Wall Street Journal survey in 2005, Grant was always rated as one of the worst presidents in our history because of the many scandals during his administration. Examples include the “Black Friday Gold Panic” in 1869 where some financiers attempted to corner the gold market using Grant’s brother-in-law to influence the president. In another, known as the “Whiskey Ring,” corrupt officials profited by diverting tax money into their own hands. Grant testified on behalf of the defendant in this case, which did not help his reputation. Rumors that Grant was a drunkard also hurt his standing.

Recent surveys now place Grant as an average president. The primary factor is his strong defense for African-American civil rights in the South. When Grant became president in 1868, the South was resisting African-American rights through laws, violence, and intimidation. During Grant’s administration, laws were passed protecting civil rights. Grant signed legislation creating the Justice Department to enforce the 14th (Citizenship) and 15th (right-to-vote) Amendments and related federal laws in the South.

In 1871, the Ku Klux Klan Act authorized the president to impose martial law. Grant sent federal troops, and the Klan's power collapsed. Elections in the South saw African Americans voting in record numbers during Grant’s presidency. His Postmaster General used patronage powers to appoint many African American men and women as postal workers across the nation. In 1872, Frederick Douglass released a pamphlet entitled “U.S. Grant and the Colored People,” in which he praised Grant’s “wise, just, practical and effective friendship.”

Woodrow Wilson
Initial surveys placed Wilson as one of the best U.S. presidents. His administration implemented several progressive reforms, including the creation of the Federal Reserve System, implementation of the first income tax, and creation of the Federal Trade Commission to regulate business practices. In foreign affairs, he was an idealist, favoring self-determination, arms reduction, and a League of Nations to maintain peace. He based our entry into World War I on these ideals, known as the “Fourteen Points.” Wilson won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.

More recently his reputation has taken a hit due to the publicity of his racist behavior. During his administration, many federal departments were re-segregated. In 1919, numerous race riots across the U.S. resulted in hundreds of deaths. Wilson declined to take any action to protect African Americans in what became known as the “Red Summer.” Princeton University, where Wilson had served as president, is facing protests to remove his name from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

Another criticism of the Wilson administration is the Sedition Act of 1918, making it illegal to criticize the U.S. government, a restriction of our civil rights. Finally, Wilson suffered a severe stroke with 18 months left in his term, leaving him incapable of performing as president, but he refused to give up the office.

Conclusion
It is too early to evaluate a president’s record shortly after leaving office. Policies that looked sound at first may not stand the test of time. Or vice versa. We should give these men credit for doing one of the hardest jobs in the world – and using their judgment to do what they thought was best for the country at the time given the facts and circumstances as they understood them.

A final example. In 1976, Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon after Watergate because he felt it best for the country. The decision was extremely controversial at the time and may have cost him his re-election. In 2001, 25 years later, Ford won the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award for that decision. Ted Kennedy, in presenting the award stated:

"At a time of national turmoil, America was fortunate that it was Gerald Ford who took the helm of the storm-tossed ship of state. Unlike many of us at the time, President Ford recognized that the nation had to move forward and could not do so if there was a continuing effort to prosecute former President Nixon. So President Ford made a courageous decision, one that historians now say cost him his office, and he pardoned Richard Nixon. I was one of those who spoke out against his action then. But time has a way of clarifying past events, and now we see that President Ford was right.”

Howard Tanzman is a lifelong student of history. He writes about history, presidents and sports at https://www.parkspresidentsandparks.com/.

America's Oddest Riot: The Opera Riot at Astor Place

2019-05-08T00:00:00Z

“Class distinctions in America are so complicated and subtle that foreign visitors often miss the nuances and sometimes even the existence of a class structure. So powerful is ‘the fable of equality,’ as Frances Trollope called it when she toured America in 1832, so embarrassed is the government to confront the subject [...] that it’s easy for visitors not to notice the way the class system works.”

- Paul Fussell, Class: A Guide Through the American Status System

On May 10, 1849, the oddest riot in American history took place in and around a theatre in Manhattan. Hundreds of people were injured in the Astor Place Riot, and somewhere between 22-31 people died in the violence.

The Astor Opera House was conceived as an upscale retreat for upper class Manhattanites looking to avoid the rabble that often attended theatre performances in the 19th century. Unfortunately, the founders of the Astor Place couldn’t quite keep non-elites out the way they’d hoped; part of the reason for this was for the simple fact that New York, and the United States more broadly, couldn’t attract many opera performances, nor could it attract consistent top-level theatre talent from the United Kingdom. In order to stay afloat of the books, then, the founders of the Astor Place had to take honestly earned money from theater goers who worked for a living.

Thus the Astor Place, like every other theater in the United States, was unable to make itself too exclusive. Its founders, like those who founded the republic itself, had to find a way to live with an equality that was democratic in nature. Democratic equality was, and is, a different monster than the equality Europeans had been grappling with since Late Antiquity (the tail end of the Roman Empire). The old equality was based on Christianity and on the feudalistic property rights regimes that undergirded Europe. Democratic equality, on the other hand, is based on notions of self-rule and on capitalistic property rights. Basically, in Western culture, free men and money replaced piety and honor when it came to mutual understandings of equality.

Urban Entertainment in the Early 19th Century

Shakespeare was popular in 19th-century America. In the 19th century, almost all Americans could quote Shakespeare as well as they could the Bible. Theater actors were like the present-day equivalent of movie stars or hip-hop artists. These actors had loyal followings and fan cultures that often took on lives of their own. British actors were the most well known, though not necessarily the most popular. Middle- and working-class Americans preferred to support American actors, while the wealthy and the educated (two very different classes, I assure you) tended to be fans of British actors.

Since there were no internet chat rooms in the 19th century, arguments between fans were different. Fans would meet up face-to-face and brawl in the streets. To make matters worse, fans would sometimes buy up large blocks of tickets for a rival actor’s show and then heckle the rival during his performance, or throw rotten fruit onto the stage. Every once in a while, the fans would tear apart the theater that was hosting a rival actor’s play, or burn it to the ground.

The Astor Place Riot

On May 7, 1849, some fans of an American actor, Edwin Forrest, ruined a performance of “Macbeth” starring Forrest’s British rival, an actor named William Macready. The American hosts threw rotten fruit, dead animal carcases, and glass bottles filled with excretory liquids at Macready and his troupe. The British visitors were so enraged that they tried to quit America once and for all, but an intervention from Herman Melville, Washington Irving, and other members of America’s budding literati class convinced Macready to perform one last time.

The militia was called in for Macready’s last show, to be performed at the Astor Place, and so was the regular military. According to Burrows & Wallace, two historians, 350 militiamen joined 250 policemen (100 stationed outside of the theater, 150 inside), mounted cavalry units, light cannons, and hussars - freaking hussars! - were on hand to prevent violence.

All hell broke loose, anyway.

The theater was torn to shreds, Macready never came to America again, and the Irish immigrants and working class locals were finally able to see eye-to-eye as they rioted against British culture and upper-class American snobbery.

Brandon Christensen is a weekly columnist at RealClearHistory and a contributor to the site's Historiat blog. He also blogs at Notes On Liberty. Send him mail. Follow him on Twitter.

When Did Mother Jones Go All in for Labor?

2019-05-01T00:00:00Z

It’s May Day, a holiday celebrated by leftists all over the world. In Venezuela, a leftist government is starving its citizens and shooting the complainers. In Russia, a country that was once the epicenter of violent socialist revolution, a May Day celebration is held, but the real activity is centered around preparations for the May 9 parade celebrating the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany.

The United States has never had a strong socialist movement, and it’s better off because of it, but individuals in this country have long taken advantage of the freedom found here to pursue leftist causes. Mary “Mother” Harris Jones is one such individual. This is her story.

Jones was born into a Catholic farming family in Ireland that had to flee the Emerald Isle due to the famine. The Harris family first tried to eek out a living in the United States, but found life to be too hard, so the family moved to Canada. The Canadian experience proved to be a brutal one for a woman who would become one of the American Left’s most beloved icons. Anti-Catholic hostility was rampant (Canada was still a part of the British Empire at the time) and anti-immigration sentiment was at an all-time high.

Mother Jones migrated back to the U.S. in 1859, to Michigan, and then drifted into Chicago before moving to Memphis. Mary Harris married a labor organizer in Memphis in 1861, and bore him four children. Her husband and all four children died in a yellow fever epidemic in Memphis in 1867.

Jones then left Memphis for good and moved back to Chicago, where she continued to emulate bourgeois values by starting a small business (Jones was a homemaker in Memphis; her husband, George Jones, made enough money to support Mary and all four children). Business was good until the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 destroyed her business and her home.

Crazy, right? It gets crazier.

Mother Jones became involved with the Knights of Labor while helping to rebuild the city of Chicago. The Knights of Labor, an anti-Asian, anti-immigrant (but pro-Catholic) labor union that was involved in the Haymarket Riot, was one of the most powerful organizations in the United States in the late 19th century. The Haymarket Riot doomed its prospects in Chicago, though, and Mother Jones was one of many to abandon the union.

Mother Jones had a particular brand of labor activism that has never sat well with the Leftist aristocracy. She was a staunch Christian and argued that better wages would allow women to stay home with the children, and that women’s suffrage was secondary to class struggle.

But why did Mother Jones go all in for labor? None of her biographers really ask or answer this question, and I certainly cannot do much more than offer some idle speculation: anti-immigrant bigotry drove Jones and others like her into the ideological arms of socialists. If I am correct, and I usually am, then the history of Mother Jones, and socialism in America, has much to teach us about our polarized society today.

Brandon Christensen is a columnist at RealClearHistory and a contributor to the site's Historiat blog. He also blogs at Notes On Liberty. Send him mail. Follow him on Twitter.

Does Progress Flow Down From Rockies?

2019-04-23T00:00:00Z

April 20 was national pot-smoking dayin the United States. In Colorado, you can buy marijuana legally, smoke it legally, and grow it legally. In January 2014, the state officially legalized pot. Since then, several other states have joined Colorado in legalizing the wacky weed and one CBS poll says that 65% of Americans now favor legalizing pot.

Colorado is not just a trendsetter for today, either. In 1967, its governor, John Love, signed a bill on April 25 that legalized abortion. The controversy surrounding Colorado’s legislation has been unending, and still goes on today, but the now national issues all started in Colorado. Governor Love was a Republican, by the way, and served in the Navy during World War II. He earned not one, but two Distinguished Flying Crosses.

If you think legalizing pot and abortion was bad, Colorado was also the first state to grant women, by popular referendum, the right to vote (in 1893). Utah was technically the first state to grant universal suffrage, but most people discount Salt Lake’s “first” because of polygamy. The logic behind this line of thinking goes something like this: the polygamists wanted women to have the right to vote so that they could tell their wives how to vote, thus enhancing the voices of polygamists in democratic politics. Colorado had no such baggage when its men voted to give its women equal voting rights.

Left-leaning political legislation isn’t the only thing Colorado does first. In 1976 the American Basketball Association held its All-Star game in Denver, and the first-ever slam dunk contest was held. Guess who won? None other than Julius Erving. (He beat out George Gervin, Artis Gilmore, Larry Kenon, and David Thompson.)

How does Colorado get to things first? Is it the thin Rocky Mountain air? The beauty?

Colorado is notoriously purple, politically. One senator from each party represents Colorado in Washington, as do four Democrats and three Republicans in the House. It’s also has the healthiest population of Americans citizens, too. The life expectancy rate - 80.2 years - is the best in the country.

The Centennial State has come a long way from being carved out of Kansas, Utah, and New Mexico Territory, and an even longer way from being claimed by Mexico. When I think of the things that a state like Colorado has been able to accomplish, I marvel at our federal system. The 50 states are laboratories of democracy, indeed.

Brandon Christensen is a columnist at RealClearHistory and a contributor to the site's Historiat blog. He also blogs at Notes On Liberty. Send him mail. Follow him on Twitter.

Jackie Robinson's Life Wasn't All Baseball

2019-04-16T00:00:00Z

By now you all know April 15 isn’t just tax day, it’s also “Jackie Robinson Day.”

Since 2004, all Major League Baseball players have worn Robinson’s number (42) on that day in honor of his courage in becoming the first black baseball player in the Major Leagues. Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, which is a polite way of saying he broke racist segregation in professional American baseball. You all know who he is. Hopefully you were able to check out Bryce Harper’s tribute to Jackie Robinson this year, too. (Here’s a good link.)

Robinson’s background is even more interesting than his baseball career. He was born into a sharecropping family in Georgia in 1919. Sharecropping was a popular form of livelihood in the Reconstructed South. Sharecropping is where farmers tend land that’s not theirs and are allowed to keep a significant portion of the crops they raise. Luckily for Robinson, his family relocated to Pasadena just a year after he was born, so he never had to experience that harsh realities of the Reconstructed South. Sharecropping still exists today, in large swathes of Africa and Asia, but the only people who practice this method of farming in the U.S. are those who live in hippie cooperatives or religious communes.

Instead, he got to grow up in Los Angeles, where he found himself “Not Allowed” into many places because of the color of his skin. The institutionalized racism couldn’t keep Robinson down, though, not even as a kid. He lettered in five sports at John Muir High School: baseball, basketball, football, track and field, and … tennis. Yes, tennis. He won a boys singles tournament as a junior. This was in the 1930s, and -- get this -- the name of the tournament was “Pacific Coast Negro Tennis Tournament.” Segregation abounded, and not just in the Old South.

As a student-athlete at UCLA, Jackie Robinson became the first Bruin to letter in four sports: baseball, basketball, football, and track and field. No small feat given UCLA’s sublime reputation in college sports. This is mostly well-known, as is the fact that Robinson played poorly on the baseball team. What is less well-known is that UCLA’s football team was one of the most desegregated in the country when Robinson played. There were, including Robinson, four black players on UCLA’s undefeated 1939 team. Things change.

Post-baseball, Robinson went on to become the first black sports telecaster, the first black vice president of a major American corporation, and an important philanthropist. While it is tempting to attribute these achievements of citizenship to a humble upbringing and a UCLA education, it makes more sense to attribute his lifelong fight against racism to … himself. Some people are just champions.

Jackie Robinson considered himself an independent in politics. His politics were fighting segregation and other forms of institutional racism. So it was that he found himself on the side of the Republican Party during much of the 1950s and 1960s. Yet he also defended the Johnson administration’s war in Vietnam. He publicly supported Richard Nixon, a fellow Californian, in 1960 but heaped measured praise on JFK for his and his administration’s fight against racism.

This was still at a time when the Democrats were still aligned with Old South racists. Robinson abandoned, publicly, the Republican Party after it elected Barry Goldwater over Nelson Rockefeller, telling the press on his way out of the GOP’s 1964 convention that he had "a better understanding of how it must have felt to be a Jew in Hitler's Germany." The Republican Party lost the African-American voting bloc in 1964, and Jackie Robinson’s words exemplify how it did so.

Jackie Robinson died from a heart attack and complications from diabetes at the age of 53 in Stamford, Conn.

Brandon Christensen is a columnist at RealClearHistory and a contributor to the site's Historiat blog. He also blogs at Notes On Liberty. Send him mail. Follow him on Twitter.

'Another Fine Mess' in the Middle East

2019-04-11T00:00:00Z

“Well, that’s another fine mess you’ve gotten us into.”—Laurel and Hardy, c. 1930’s.

There is no question that the Middle East Arab-Israeli-oil situation is one of the world’s most enduring and vexing problems. Almost every economically significant country in the world has a major stake in how this scenario plays out and most countries orient and arrange a large part of their foreign policy and energy strategy with Middle East considerations front and center in their planning.

What if the United States had been presented with the opportunity to circumvent the Mid-East Jewish-Arab-oil crisis before it had a chance to metastasize into the worldwide scourge it is today? The opportunity did, in fact, present itself in 1945. Unfortunately, the United States—under FDR—failed to capitalize on it and thus the world today lives in constant danger caused by the flashpoint of those seemingly unending, unsolvable regional tensions.

The missed opportunity was the result of FDR's mishandling of his historic meeting with King Abdel Aziz Ibn Saud of Arabia on Great Bitter Lake in the Suez Canal on Feb. 14, 1945. FDR’s actions here essentially created the 70+ year economic and political tensions and conflicts regarding oil that continue to afflict international relationships and define the national security and oil acquisition strategy of virtually every developed country in the world today. Most of the damaging international energy related circumstances in the present-day world were set in motion by FDR’s actions at that meeting.

FDR knew that as America entered the post-WWII era, it would no longer be able to provide itself with enough oil-based fuel to meet its growing economic and military needs. Saudi Arabia, with its vast, largely untapped oil fields, was a key part of America’s post-WWII economic puzzle. America needed to get there first, to be regarded by the Saudis as their trusted friend and ally, in order to receive favorable treatment from the Saudis and obtain prioritized access to Saudi oil, in preference over the other major WWII victors, like the Soviets, China and Britain.

Therefore, FDR arranged a meeting with Saudi King Abdel Aziz Ibn Saud aboard the American Navy cruiser Quincy on Roosevelt’s way home from the Yalta Conference with Churchill and Stalin. The “Big Three” had just met to determine the after-war world order; only FDR had the foresight to try to secure his own country’s energy — and therefore economic and military — future as well.

It was quite a meeting on the Quincy. Quite literally, it was the meeting of two completely different worlds. The King came aboard with an entourage of at least 20 people, complete with sheep for slaughter and rugs and tents for sleeping on the deck. The King was reportedly quite fascinated with Naval gunnery and Hollywood motion pictures, neither of which he’d seen before. Roosevelt, for his part, earned the King’s trust and affection with his direct, respectful, non-condescending manner, and the two men of disparate worlds got along quite well.

Even then, in the 1940s, the primary motivator in the Arab world was the “Jewish problem,” and where the Jewish people should settle after the war. The King was opposed to the establishment of a modern Jewish state upon historical Jewish lands, saying in effect, that if Germany had done such horrible things to the Jews, then Germany should pay for their repatriation to Germany and be forced to offer them prime German lands for their new homeland. Roosevelt knew that this was untenable; there was no Germany, per se, anymore, no independent state that had authority over lands and resources to “offer” to anyone.

With the establishment of a Jewish state in the Middle East looking more and more like the only viable solution to the problem of Jews displaced by the war, Roosevelt made an offer to King Saud that would forever change and shape the post-WWII world: FDR said that America would never make any move with respect to the Jews and Arabs without first consulting him and other Arab leaders, and would not do anything for the Jews at [the Arabs’] expense. In other words, we’d never unilaterally side with Israel against Arab interests. With this statement, this promise, Roosevelt sought to reassure King Saud that America could be trusted with regard to the Jewish “problem,” and was thus deserving of preferential oil treatment by Saudi Arabia.

The problem was Roosevelt’s statement was his own personal assurance; it was not any official policy on the part of the United States. Roosevelt used his own sophisticated communications experience and his personal connection with the King to essentially deceive the King into believing that official U.S. policy was to not make any preemptive pro-Israel moves to the detriment of Arab interests. As soon as Roosevelt was gone (he died only two months after this meeting), his “agreement” with King Saud vanished into thin air.

Roosevelt’s successor, Harry Truman, felt no obligation to honor Roosevelt’s informal personal assurances. Quite the contrary, America became unapologetically pro-Israel from that point forward. Saud and his country were incensed.

From Thomas Lippman’s book, "Inside the Mirage: America’s Fragile Partnership with Saudi Arabia" is this proof:

The king taking this as a commitment from the United States and not just from Roosevelt personally, was furious to discover three years later that Harry Truman did not consider himself bound by it.

Saudi Arabia felt betrayed, stabbed in the back by an American president. Any sense of long-term loyalty and political/geographic allegiance to America was immediately replaced by self-serving economic and military considerations. Saudi Arabia would gladly accept American investment, American military protection and the infusion of American technology into their economy, but the good feelings and burgeoning trust between the two countries engendered by the Lake Bitter meeting was shattered forever once the Saudis realized that Roosevelt had deliberately misled them into thinking his personal word was, in fact, official U.S. policy.

A better way to resolve the conflicting requirements of a post-WWII Jewish homeland and American access to Saudi oil could have and should have been found. Saudi Arabia in the 1940s desired to enter the “modern world,” yet it was still so economically undeveloped and its society still so backwards by Western standards that the United States held all the negotiating cards. Worldwide oil usage in 1945 was a fraction of what it is today and the modern Israeli state didn’t yet exist. Therefore, the game was far simpler then, and the United States was in an overwhelmingly dominant position to ensure that the outcome of any negotiation concluded to its advantage. But Roosevelt squandered his edge, made a transparent, unenforceable promise and left his American successors holding an empty bag.

Saudi Arabia has since founded OPEC, twice started oil embargoes against us and generally led the U.S. around by the nose like a flirtatious girl dishonestly teasing a teenage boy just to get showered with gifts and attention.

It’s been 70 years since FDR botched the biggest economic/political game the U.S. has ever played and we’re still paying dearly for his error today, in every single aspect of our country’s business.

A fine mess indeed.

Silas Dinsmoor: Trials and Tribulations of an Indian Agent

2019-04-09T00:00:00Z

You’ve probably never heard of Silas Dinsmoor. He was an Indian agent in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, at a time when Indian agents were viewed by Washington policymakers more as diplomats than as corrupt, racist bureaucrats.

The early American presidents knew that the Native American nations surrounding their fragile republic posed an existential threat. In the early era of the republic, there were three competing factions when it came to the West (the Appalachian Mountains): the federal government; western colonists from Europe; and the Indians, who were usually further divided into pro- and anti-American factions. The aims and ends of these three factions are easy to predict.

The federal government tended to fill its Indian agent positions with Ivy League graduates. Silas Dinsmoor was a Dartmouth man. Dinsmoor replaced a Princeton man. The man who replaced Dinsmoor in Cherokee country was also a Dartmouth man. The federal government wanted to acculturate the Natives who lived along the republic’s long western border into broader American society. The aim of acculturation was not charity. Acculturation was as much about Realpolitik as Andrew Jackson’s ethnic cleansing campaign in the 1830s.

Most of the the Native countries were allied with the United Kingdom or Spain. Many Natives had deep, centuries-long commercial ties with the French. The colonists advancing westward from America’s port cities wanted land and a government that would support their desires, so the leaders of the early republic had much to fret about.

Dinsmoor first became involved with the Cherokee Nation when he was made an assistant to Benjamin Hawkins, who had been tasked by George Washington himself to oversee relations with “Indians south of the Ohio.” Hawkins, a former senator from North Carolina, was given such an immense task after his predecessor got sacked for corruption (he was making deals with the British for Indian land, and deals with the Cherokee for Shawnee and Creek land). Hawkins went to live with the Creek, Dinsmoor with the Cherokee.

While an Indian agent, Dinsmoor labored to convince those deep in Cherokee territory of the superiority of agriculture, trade, and mechanized industry. Dinsmoor also pleaded with the Cherokee to establish a central government with limited, enumerated powers of some kind so as to better communicate with the federal government of the United States. A centralized power structure would also give law and order in Cherokee country a big boost (the frontier in the early republic era was a violent place).

Dinsmoor’s diplomatic efforts in Cherokee country laid the foundation for the nation’s ability to adapt and acculturate to the American way of life. (In 1832, for example, the Cherokee successfully sued the state of Georgia in the famous Worcester v. Georgia case). Dinsmoor, Yankee Ivy Leaguer and civilizer of the Cherokee, was far from done with life, though. When his assignment to Cherokee ended in 1798, he begged off Indian diplomacy and joined a Navy expedition to the Mediterranean.

Barbary pirates and sultans of Istanbul

Exactly one year after leaving Cherokee country, Dinsmoor was on the first American warship to enter Mediterranean waters. Dinsmoor’s position on the historic warship was more modest than being an Indian agent. (He was a purser, which is basically the ship’s recordkeeper.) The purpose of the warship’s mission was to establish peace with the Barbary states of northern Africa. Upon arriving in Algiers, the capital city of one of the Barbary states, the governor of the city told the Americans to keep sailing east until they reached Istanbul, the great capital city of the powerful Ottoman Empire. The governor of Algiers loaded up the American warship with slaves and exotic animals and sent the expedition on its way. Dinsmoor was ecstatic, but he also referred to Istanbul as Constantinople, which was the old name of the great city, when it served as capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. Yankee Ivy Leaguers were, in the late 18th century, still country bumpkins.

It is unclear if the Dinsmoor expedition had any success in gaining the Sultan’s audience, though the Barbary War of 1801-05 suggests that not only did the Americans not reach the Sultan’s ear, but that the governor of Algiers had a sense of humor in addition to cunning and prowess.

The Choctaw years, feud with Andrew Jackson

Thomas Jefferson appointed Dinsmoor to be Indian agent to the Choctaw once he returned from the Mediterranean. Jefferson was more expansion minded than Washington, though, and while the republic’s third president encouraged Dinsmoor to do what he had done with the Cherokee, he also wanted Dinsmoor to push for more land purchases, which the Choctaw scoffed at. Jefferson reportedly grew exasperated with Dinsmoor’s inability to buy large chunks of Choctaw land away from the Indians, but Dinsmoor was somehow able to keep his job.

His job as Indian agent to the Choctaw became much less secure when he became embroiled in a controversy surrounding the slave trade in the region. Dinsmoor began enforcing a law that required traveling slave owners to carry proof of their ownership. Andrew Jackson, for some reason, saw this as intolerable and threatened Dinsmoor’s life. (The future president also threatened to burn down the federal office that Dinsmoor worked in.) In 1813, Dinsmoor was unceremoniously dumped from his position as Indian agent, so he moved first to Mobile, Ala. before finally settling on a family farm in northern Kentucky now known as the Dinsmore Homestead. It is there that he is buried alongside his wife.

Brandon Christensen is a columnist at RealClearHistory and a contributor to the site's Historiat blog. He also blogs at Notes On Liberty. Send him mail. Follow him on Twitter.

10 of History's Most Important Alliances

2019-04-04T00:00:00Z

April 4, 1949, marks the founding of NATO, or North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which means that the alliance turns 70 years old this year. The anniversary has inspired the usual op-eds from conservatives, liberals, and libertarians, but while these opinions about NATO may be predictable, they may also be useful for understanding broader patterns in contemporary American society.

Conservatives, for instance, are split on the issue. Traditionalist and religious conservatives want Washington to come home, while more secular and business-oriented conservatives continue to argue that the United States is indispensable to a world beset by dark forces. This foreign policy difference of opinion among conservatives mirrors the widening split in domestic conservative politics more generally.

Liberals have a predictably convoluted stance that also mirrors domestic political trends: They don’t know if NATO is good because of its military connections, but they do know the alliance should still be funded by taxpayers anyway because of its good intentions.

Libertarians are as split as conservatives, but theirs is a split at the international level rather than domestic. Most American libertarians argue that the United States should leave NATO, but most European libertarians think the alliance is still necessary. These are understandable positions, given each side’s neighbors, but NATO plays a bigger role in European domestic politics, too. Without the alliance, the populist surges in Europe would not have as many constraints tying them down. As Dutch political theorist Edwin van de Haar points out, alliances fit in well with the libertarian preference for more fluidity between states.

Seventy years is a long time for anything, much less an ocean-spanning military alliance of democracies. So, in honor of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and all of its warts, here are 10 of the other greatest alliances in history.

10. Warsaw Pact (1955-91). NATO’s nemesis, the Warsaw Pact was set up by the Soviet Union in response to NATO after Moscow failed to reunify Germany. Composed of a bunch of puppet regimes in eastern Europe, the Warsaw Pact was an honorable sentry for Moscow’s paranoid central planners. When the USSR collapsed in 1991, so did this alliance. Today, many of its members have joined NATO, much to the chagrin of Russia.

9. Delian League (478 BCE-404 BCE). The Delian League was an anti-Persian alliance of city-states led by Athens. The alliance defeated Persia, but that was just one of its many successes. Under Athenian leadership, trade flourished in the Greek world, piracy in the Aegean Sea was eliminated, and rule of law began to become standardized for certain segments of Greek society, like the economy. After the victorious war against the Persians was over, many members of the league tried to leave, but Athens had gone broke funding the war and wanted its allies to pay their fair share of the costs. Instead, the infamous Peloponnesian Wars broke out.

8. Peloponnesian League (550 BCE-366 BCE). Led by Sparta, the martial and land-based counterpart to commercial and sea-based Athens, the Peloponnesian League eventually defeated the Delian League after a brutal, decades-long war. To win the war, though, Sparta took money from the hated Persians and promised to recognize Persian leadership over Asia’s Greek colonies. Desperate to end the war, the Peloponnesians used Persian money to build a fleet and beat the Delians at their own game. Once Athens surrendered, the Spartans famously demanded that the Delian “long walls” come down first.

7. Triple Alliance of 1865 (1865-72). Latin America has long been sclerotic when it comes to military science and diplomacy. In 1865, though, when the United States Civil War was coming to an end, the Latin American countries of Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay signed an alliance against Paraguay and almost wiped the country off the face of the earth. The end result, though, was victory for the alliance and utter devastation for Paraguay. In fact, this 19th century war was the bloodiest conflict in Latin American history. Maybe scleroticism in military science and diplomacy ain’t a bad thing ...

6. Holy League of the Great Turkish War (1684-99). Of all the various anti-Ottoman alliances that were patched together by the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages, the Holy League of 1684 stands out for its powerful members and successful outcome. The Holy League consisted of Venice, Russia, the Holy Roman Empire, and Poland-Lithuania. Pope Innocent XI was responsible for the formation of the Holy League, and it marked the first time in history that Russia joined an alliance of European states. The Ottomans got crushed, and had to cede large swaths of its territory. The Great Turkish War and the Holy League marked the beginning of the end of the Ottoman Empire.

5. Triple Alliance of Mesoamerica (1430-1521). In 1430, three city-states in Mesoamerica formed an official alliance after they helped each other stifle another city-state’s violent dynastic succession dispute. Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan, together with Huexotzinco, fought together in the Tepanec War. When the war ended, Huexotzinco left the alliance, but the other three founded what was to become the Aztec Empire. The alliance went on to build a polity that inspired fear and hatred throughout Mesoamerica, which ended up helping the Spaniards when they came to Mexico looking for allies.

4. Imperial alliance of the Genk Incident (1185-1333). In medieval Japan, an interesting shogunate known as the Kamakura governed for a couple of centuries. The Kamakura era is the era where samurais rose to prominence in Japan and the official imperial family was kept around only to be used as a figurehead. Aside from the decline in power of the imperial family, the Kamakura era is known for the expansion throughout Japan of several Buddhist schools of thought and the destruction of not one but two Mongol invasion fleets. The Imperial family eventually built an alliance out of several aristocratic clans and destroyed the Hj clan, which ran the Kamakura shogunate.

3. Maratha Confederacy (1674-1871). The history of India is still a work in progress (people like Sarath Pillai are doing good research trying to alleviate this). The Maratha confederacy started out as an alliance against the Muslim Mughal Empire and a couple of petty Muslim sultanates, but the confederacy quickly grew into an empire until 1772, when the far-flung empire became too large to govern effectively and a confederal arrangement was again adopted by Maratha elites. The confederacy beat the British in the first Anglo-Maratha War (1775-82), though by 1871 the British had overwhelmed and outfoxed the last major polity to resist British imperialism. Hindu-centric political parties in India sometimes drum up the Maratha when they want to stoke religious tensions, but the confederacy governed over Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jains, Buddhists, and Sikhs relatively equitably during the 200 years of its existence.

2. Seven Warring States (403 BCE-221 BCE). The Seven Warring States were Chinese polities that sought to establish their rule in place of the dying Zhou Empire. For roughly 200, years these seven states allied with each other and against each other in a hodge-podge of entangling alliances. The Qin state eventually won out, but the era of oscillating alliances and warring states was also a time of intellectual, cultural, scientific, and spiritual flowering in China. The Warring States period is sometimes called the Golden Age of Chinese philosophy, with Confucianism, Daoism, Mohism, and many other schools of thought all competing for the hearts and minds of China’s deepest and most brilliant citizens. Near the end of the Warring States period, a last gasp alliance was made between three rival states to try and stop the Qin from attaining hegemony, but it failed miserably.

1. Triple Entente (1907-14). There must be something to be said for European diplomacy. Every corner of the world had networks of alliances and balances of power and this-and-that, but the Europeans perfected diplomacy. How they came to perfect diplomacy has still not been answered definitively, but the Warring States era in China might provide a clue. As China broke up into polities competing for land, money, people, and all the rest, ideas began to flow more freely (as did money, people, and all the rest). The competitive, decentralized nature of Europe is probably the main reason why European diplomacy became so sophisticated over the course of the last 250 years. Of course, you could always argue the other way around and point to all the bloodshed that was caused by “sophisticated” diplomatic arrangements like the Triple Entente.

Have a good weekend.

Brandon Christensen is a weekly columnist at RealClearHistory and a contributor to the site's Historiat blog. He also blogs at Notes On Liberty. Send him mail. Follow him on Twitter.

History of United States and Its Alliances

2019-04-01T00:00:00Z

On April 4, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) will turn 70. This is an incredible historical feat. Alliances never last long, and the fact that NATO transcends oceans and continents makes the longevity of this alliance all the more impressive.

There are those in the United States who have never liked the alliance, or at least America’s participation in it, and often argue that America’s growth into the most powerful polity in world history, with the world’s freest people enjoying their liberties, has been done unilaterally thanks to our unique culture and set of institutions. Daniel Larison, a senior editor at The American Conservative with a PhD in History from the University of Chicago, is probably the most sophisticated proponent of this line of argument. Ron Paul, the former Congressman from Texas, is probably the most well-known proponent.

Unilateralists call themselves “non-interventionists” in the United States (their opponents refer to them disparagingly as “isolationists”) and while I don’t agree with them, they make a really good argument using history as their guide.

Prior to World War II, the United States had signed just one official alliance with another polity: the Treaty of Alliance with France that lasted from 1778-80. So from the start of the Revolutionary War (which was really a secession from the British Empire rather than an actual revolution) in 1776 to Washington’s entrance into World War II in late 1941, the United States had joined one alliance, and it was a short-lived alliance that would make or break the existence of the republic. (During World War I, the United States was an “affiliated partner” rather than an official ally.)

According to unilateralists like Larison and Paul, then, the United States has no need for allies. The republic has done just fine on its own without them, and the “entangling alliances” Thomas Jefferson warned us about only lead to problems abroad.

Fair enough, but what do we call the Oneidas and Tuscaroras, two Native American polities that fought alongside the United States during its secession from the British Empire? Affiliated partners? The decision of the Oneidas to leave the Iroquois League (a British ally) and fight alongside the American rebels had serious implications for not only North America but the world. Yet the Oneida were not allies?

The United States has a long history of entering into alliances of convenience, and a short history of building and then leading stable coalitions of military partners around the world. Contrary to what unilateralists like Larison and Paul would have you believe, then, alliances have shaped the destiny of the republic since its founding. And, more importantly, these alliances of convenience have their intellectual roots in George Washington’s foreign policy. Washington’s foreign policy even has its own name: the Washington Doctrine of Unstable Alliances. According to Washington and other elites of the founding era, the United States should freely enter into, and exit, alliances as necessary (Jefferson was a big fan of this Doctrine, too). This stands in stark contrast to the idea that the United States only soiled its virginal unilateralism once, when it was in dire peril and needed a helping hand from France to fend off an evil empire.

Washingtonian alliances throughout American history

Aside from fighting alongside the Oneida and Tuscarora during its secession from the British Empire, the United States forged alliances with Sweden, in 1801 to fight the Barbary states, and with the Choctaw, Cherokee, and some of the Creek during the ill-fated War of 1812. In fact, one of the reasons the United States got pummeled in the War of 1812 was the lack of Native allies relative to the British, who had secured alliances with at least 10 Native American polities.

The American push westward saw a plethora of shifting alliances with Native peoples, all of which tilted in eventual favor of the United States (and to the detriment of their allies).

The American foray into imperialism in the late 19th century saw alliances with several factions in Cuba and the Philippines that were more interested in extirpating Spain than thinking through an alliance with an expansion-minded United States.

In 1832 the United States entered into a Washingtonian alliance with the Dutch in order to crush some Barbary-esque states along the Sumatran coast. The alliance led to the eventual, brutal conquest of Aceh by the Dutch and a long-lasting mutual friendship between the Americans and the Dutch that has continued into today.

From 1886-94 the United States and its ally in the South Pacific, the Mata'afa clan of Samoa, fought Germany and its Samoan allies for control over the Samoan islands. The Boxer Rebellion in China saw the United States ally with six European states (including Austria-Hungary) and Japan, and affiliate with three more European states and several Qing dynasty governors who refused to follow their emperor’s orders.

NATO’s continued importance

Clearly, the United States has followed its first president’s foreign policy doctrine for centuries. Washington warned that his doctrine was not to be an eternal guideline, though. Indeed, the most-cited case study Washington Doctrine of Unstable Alliances is not the American experience in the 19th century, but the Nazi-Soviet one of the 20th, when the Germans turned on the Soviets as soon as it became expedient to do so.

The establishment of NATO has forced the United States to become reciprocal in its alliances with other countries. The republic can no longer take, take, and take some more without giving something in return. This situation of mutually beneficial exchange has tempered not only the United States but everybody else in the world, too (especially in the industrialized part of the world; the part with the deadliest weapons). Free riding will most likely continue to be a problem within NATO. The United States will continue to pay more than its share to keep the alliance afloat. And that’s perfectly okay considering the alternatives: imperialism (far more expensive than free riding allies), ethnic cleansing, or oscillating blocs of states looking out for their own interests in a power vacuum, like the situation Europe found itself in during the bloody 20th century.

Brandon Christensen is a weekly columnist at RealClearHistory and a contributor to the site's Historiat blog. He also blogs at Notes On Liberty. Send him mail. Follow him on Twitter.

Bloody, Cruel Aztecs Didn't Last Long

2019-03-28T00:00:00Z

The mythology of the Aztec civilisation is filled with ancient and wild stories of creation, zoomorphism and brutality. The Aztecs dominated central Mexico in the 1400s and early 1500s and according to legend, they came to Mexico from an ancient land called Aztland. Although Aztec mythology is not as extensive as its Greek or Roman counterparts - mainly because lots of Aztec history was lost after the Spanish Conquest and because the Aztec Empire survived less than 100 years (1430-1521) – it is a mythology full of splendid Gods and human sacrifices performed in honor of these Gods.

The Aztecs valued highly the skills of warriors above all others, and this emphasis allowed them an advantage against rival tribes in the region. This meant the Aztecs could collect tribute from their rivals which led to them becoming the largest military empire in central Mexico. They built immense buildings of grandeur design and flourished in the arts. Where the Aztecs differed from other Mesoamerican civilizations was their penchant for human sacrifice. Although human sacrifice to the Gods was common amongst the tribes in Mexico at that time, the Aztec culture took it to a higher level. Thousands of sacrifices in a single day was not uncommon. The Aztecs dictated that human blood be fed to the sun God - Huitzilopochtli – for the sun to rise each day. Sacrifices were conducted at the top of pyramids in front of spectators. Hearts were cut from living victims and blood would flow down the steps at all hours of the day and night.

Aztec Gods were numerous and were worshipped daily. Everyday items as well as colors, animals’ numbers and dates of the calendar had special meanings because each was associated with a deity – a rattlesnake, for example, was thought to represent the Aztec creator God, Quetzalcoatl. Although due to the abundance in tribes and civilisations around the Mexico and Southern American area, many Aztec beliefs were absorbed from earlier civilisations who had already developed a body of myths and legends, notably the Olmecs and the Toltecs. The Maya of southern Mexico also shared many religious and mythological traits and traditions with the Aztecs.

The Creator God - Quetzalcoatl

Quetzalcoatl was one of several Aztec creator Gods. Aztec legend states that Quetzalcoatl contributed to the creation of mankind. The God of wind, air and learning, Quetzalcoatl was a feathered, flying serpent and a boundary maker between the Earth and the sky. A feathered serpent deity like Quetzalcoatl was worshipped by many different groups throughout Mesoamerican history and it is widely acknowledged that the Aztecs were not the only people who worshipped him.

Being the wind God, the relationship between Quetzalcoatl and nature was captured in a text written in the Nahuatl language:

“he was the wind, the guide and road sweeper of the rain gods, of the masters of the water, of those who brought rain. And when the wind rose, when the dust rumbled, and it crack and there was a great din, became it became dark and the wind blew in many directions, and it thundered.”

Accounts of Quetzalcoatl differ. Spanish sources held that the Aztec Emperor Montezuma II initially believed the landing of Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes to be Quetzalcoatl’s return. In other words, these sources, mainly the Florentine Codex, indicate that the Aztecs believed Cortes to be their returning creator God.

Other sources dispute the Spanish sources, however, since the connection between Cortes and Quetzalcoatl has not been found in any document that was created outside of post-conquest Spanish influence.

The God of Human Sacrifice - Huitzilopochtli

Huitzilopochtli was the god of war, sun and human sacrifice – a hugely important God to the Aztecs given their fondness for warfare and sacrifices to the gods. Huitzilopochtli was credited with the victories which the Aztecs had on the battlefield. Sacrifices were made to him in order to protect the Aztecs from infinite night. Together with his brother Quetzalcoatl, Huitzilopochtli brought order to the world on the instructions of his mother and father Tonacatecuhtli and Tonacacihuatl.

Huitzilopochtli can be represented by a hummingbird. In every depiction found of the God, Huitzilopochtli always has a blue-green hummingbird helmet.

The Templo Mayor was the most important and powerful structure in Aztec society and was dedicated to Huitzilopochtli as well as Tlaloc – the Aztec God of Rain. As the Sun God, Huitzilopochtli represented war and sacrifice whilst Tlaloc represented fertility and growth.

The Great Capital City of the Aztec Empire - Tenochtitlan

The capital city of the Aztec Empire was Tenochtitlan (now the center of Mexico City). Tenochtitlan was built on an island in Lake Texcoco in the Valley of Mexico. Bernal Diaz del Castillo, a Spanish conquistador who was a soldier in the conquest of the Aztecs under Cortes described Tenochtitlan as something he was not even able to describe:

“I do not know how to describe it, seeing things as we did that had never been heard of or seen before, not even dreamed about.”

Tenochtitlan was connected by bridges that could be pulled away to defend the city and was interlaced with canals. All sections of the ancient city could be visited either on foot or via canoe. The city contained marketplaces, public buildings, homes, temples and palaces. The center of the city contained the temples and palaces. Some of the temples included the Templo Mayor, which was dedicated to the deity Huitzilopochtli and the Rain God Tlaloc, the temple of Quetzalcoatl; the tlachtli and the Sun Temple which was associated with warriors. The platforms for sacrifices were also found in the centre of the city.

After the demise of the Aztec Empire by Hernan Cortes and his conquistadors, the Spanish capital of Mexico City was founded on the ruins of Tenochtitlan. The Templo Mayor was dismantled, and the central district of Mexico City was built on top of it. Numerous traces of the former Aztec city of Tenochtitlan can be found whilst in 1987, archaeologists discovered a complete skeleton of a young woman below street level in Mexico City. The burial dates to the 1480s.

Montezuma II – The Aztecs Most Talked about Ruler

Not to be confused with Montezuma I, Montezuma II was the ninth and perhaps most well-known Tlatoani aka the ruler of Tenochtitlan. Montezuma II reigned from 1502-20 , the same time frame that the first contact between Mesoamerica and Europeans took place. Although the Aztec Empire reached its greatest size during his reign, Montezuma II was also responsible for widening the divide between the pipiltin (nobles) and the macehualtin (commoners).

Montezuma II lived in his own palace which also housed two zoos, one for birds of prey and a second for reptiles and animals. Three hundred people were dedicated to the care for these animals. The palace was also home to several aquariums.

The first Europeans landed on the east coast of Montezuma’s empire in 1917 – the expedition of Juan de Grijalva. Montezuma ordered that he be kept informed of any new sightings of foreigners going forward. When Hernan Cortes arrived in 1519, Montezuma immediately sent out emissaries to meet the Spaniard. Cortes describes his first encounter with Montezuma:

“(Montezuma) came to greet us and with him some two hundred lords, all barefoot and dressed in a different costume, but also very rich in their way and more so than the others.

“Mutezuma [sic] came down the middle of this street with two chiefs, one on his right hand and the other on his left. And they were all dressed alike except that Mutezuma wore sandals whereas the others went barefoot; and they held his arm on either side.”

Although it is widely recognised that Montezuma died during one of several battles with the Spanish, the details of his death are unknown. Some sources, notably Spanish ones, state that Montezuma was killed by rocks which were thrown at him by his own people whilst other sources by the indigenous assert that Montezuma was killed by the Spanish.

Following his death, Montezuma’s daughter became known as Isabel Montezuma. She was given a large estate by Cortes and gave the him a son – Lenor Cortes Montezuma.

Montezuma’s name lives on to this day: Popular real-time strategy game Age of Empires 2 featured a campaign called The Montezuma campaign whilst Montezuma is also the name of a popular Amazon slots game. Several operas have been named after the Aztec leader including operas by Antonio Vivaldi and Carl Heinrich Graun. A statue of Montezuma II was erected on the façade of the Royal Palace of Madrid, the statue stands amongst the kings of the ancient kingdoms that formed Spain.

Many indigenous peoples in Mexico are still thought to worship deities named after Montezuma. One myth still states that someday Montezuma will return to vindicate his people.

Gone but never forgotten

Overall, it must be stated that the Aztecs were a cruel and bloody civilisation. The demand for victims of sacrifice meant that the Aztec leaders tolerated loose control over their tribute cities,and the frequent revolts would offer opportunities for capturing new victims of sacrifice. Even during times of peace, “Garland Wars” were arranged as contests of courage and warrior skill. Achaeologists have also recently discovered that the Aztecs practiced ritual cannibalism.

All in all, this cruelty contributed to their downfall, as the Aztecs found little help from non-Aztecs in Mexico when a small Spanish army led by Hernan Cortes arrived on Mexican shores. The Spanish found it easy to enlist allies to help defeat the Aztecs.

Iain Fenton is a UK-based freelance journalist with an interest in history.

Common Sense and the American Frontier

2019-03-25T00:00:00Z

On March 4, 1897, Grover Cleveland left office for the last time. His second go-round as president of the United States is often used as a milepost that marks the end of the Frontier Era in American history. The so-called Wild West had come and gone, but so had the era on Republican domination of the Presidency and Reconstruction of the South.

In just 32 years, between 1865-97, the American republic swallowed up half of a continent after it took mostly English colonists and American republicans roughly 245 years, from Plymouth Rock to the onset of the Civil War in 1861, to reach the eastern bank of the mighty, muddy Mississippi and establish constitutional governance.

How did this explosion of territorial gain happen in such a short period of time?

Common sense easily explains this rapid expansion, but with history departments everywhere operating under the thumb of identity obsessed ideologues, common sense has often been pushed aside in the name of highfalutin theory. So, in honor of those who came before us, here were the main impediments to territorial acquisition in the pre-Civil War era.

Competition

Between 1620 and 1861, the United States and its forebears, British colonies, faced stiff competition for hegemony in North America. British colonists had to wage brutal wars against Swedes, the Dutch, the French, and the Spaniards, all of whom were funded and supplied in one form or another by powerful empires in Europe. Later, when the colonies seceded from the British Empire, the new American republic had to compete with the British, French, Spanish, and Russian empires for supremacy of North America.

European empires were not the only competition, either. Prior to the onset of the Civil War, several Native American polities were powerful actors in their own right. Densely populated societies like those of the Iroquois confederacy and the Five Civilized tribes (which was still around during the Civil War) presented obvious barriers to territorial growth for British colonists and American republicans. When you add it all up - European empires, indigenous confederacies, and lust for money and power - the slow start to America’s transcontinental transformation becomes easily understandable.

Technology

While pre-Civil War had railroads, and sophisticated canal locks, and access to global shipping routes on the high seas, technological innovation didn’t really seem to explode until the Civil War ended and subsequent Republican administrations supported policies that encouraged a massive influx of British capital into the country, which was eagerly funnelled into America’s quest to build transcontinental railroads. By the end of Cleveland’s second term, no less than six transcontinental railroads had been built: the Northern Pacific, the Union Pacific, the Southern Pacific, the Milwaukee Road, the Great Northern, and the Santa Fe. The six main arteries provided the republic with plenty of offshoots. The frontier? A thing of the past.

Slavery

Another common-sense issue holding back the growth of the American republic was slavery. Not only is chattel slavery brutal and inefficient, thus being bad for both society and economy, it’s a political liability, too. Expanding westward prior to the Civil War meant debates, sometimes violent debates, in Congress over whether or not the territories should be free or slave. It meant two very different societies had to compete against each other in colonizing the newly acquired territories. Bleeding Kansas and the struggle for Missouri were the end results of American territorial acquisitions up until 1865.

Once chattel slavery was eliminated from American society, it became much easier for everybody to define what kinds of polities should emerge west of the Mississippi.

Conclusion

Competition, technology, and slavery were the three main impediments to westward expansion, but sometimes ideology is lumped in together with these three. The reason ideology is sometimes lumped in there with the other three is because there was not a strong desire for the United States to ape Europe’s empires. Thus, in the minds of some, and this is especially true of American libertarians, a conclusion is drawn that Americans were against empire, and that republican institutions are inherently anti-imperial. Unfortunately, there is too much highfalutin theory in this argument, and not enough common sense. The Americans didn’t want to get involved in European power politics because it was dangerous to do so. But this didn’t mean Americans were against territorial expansion. Quite the contrary.

Brandon Christensen is a weekly columnist at RealClearHistory and a contributor to the site's Historiat blog. He also blogs at Notes On Liberty. Send him mail. Follow him on Twitter.

Debunking the Myth of Wyatt Earp

2019-03-18T00:00:00Z

Wyatt Earp was born on March 19, 1848. When I was a teenager my grandparents took me and my sister to Arizona during spring break to catch Spring Training. We took breaks from baseball to see Nogales, a couple of museums, and Tombstone. It was awesome. To celebrate Earp’s 171st birthday, and to pay tribute to my grandparents (they’re both still alive!), I figured I’d set the record straight on Wyatt Earp and the O.K. Corral gunfight.

First things first: the gunfight at O.K. Corral did not actually take place at the O.K. Corral. The 30-second gunfight took place six lots away from the Corral’s back entrance. Crazy, right? Just think: the further back you go in time, the more shrouded events can become in legend and outright falsities.

The gunfight wasn’t exactly as black-and-white as Hollywood films would have you believe, either. While I happily acknowledge that the 1993 movie Tombstone is still the best Western of all-time, and that Doc Holliday was Val Kilmer’s best-ever performance (Kurt Douglas outdid himself in Quentin Tarantino’s 2015 film Hateful Eight, otherwise it would have been his greatest performance of all-time too), the Earps weren’t exactly upstanding citizens of Arizona Territory or the republic.

Wyatt Earp and his brothers - Virgil, Morgan, James, and Warren - sold booze, dreams, land, and sex in America’s frontier, and they weren’t above using the law to their advantage to make a little extra profit. Wyatt himself was mostly just a gambler in his youth (that’s how he became friends with Doc Holliday), but he also had an arrest record that followed him from Iowa, where he grew up (he was born in Illinois), to Wichita, Kan. Earp was mostly picked up for frequenting whore houses, but he was also arrested for stealing horses and “vagrancy.”

In Wichita, Earp somehow earned a spot on a law posse and developed into a solid policeman. He was fired, though, and the reason for his firing will help to illuminate why the O.K. Corral gunfight was not a black-and-white affair: Wyatt Earp got canned as a policeman in Wichita because he beat up a political opponent of his boss.

Tombstone politics, frontier politics

Like Wyatt Earp’s good guy persona, the American frontier itself is shrouded in myths that are eagerly perpetuated by Hollywood and other media outlets.

The Earp brothers, upon their arrival in Tombstone in late 1879, aligned themselves with a local faction led loosely by Tombstone’s Republican mayor, John Clum. Clum’s Democratic rivals were already friends with the infamous Cowboys, and when Wyatt began running for public offices, the rivalry between the Earps and the Cowboys became lively; it wasn’t honor that drove this rivalry, it was politics.

Arizona Territory was heavily Republican, so when Wyatt Earp lost a local election in November of 1880 by less than 60 votes, suspicions ran high and allegations of ballot-stuffing were lobbed at Wyatt Earp’s political opponent, Johnny Behan. Less than one year later, on Oct. 26, 1881, the Earps and Doc Holliday murdered some of the Cowboys six lots down from the O.K. Corral. Within that time frame, though, the Earp brothers and their allies heatedly attacked Behan, the Cowboys, and their allies in the local press. The Cowboys, portrayed as barbarous yahoos in film, were also adept at using media.

Public opinion after the shooting was staunchly on the side of the Cowboys, too. John Clum left town - fled to Washington, D.C., actually - and got a job with the post office. The Earps and the Cowboys continued their vendetta, of course, and the 1993 film does a pretty good job of staying true to the story of Wyatt Earp as avenger.

Wyatt Earp after Tombstone

Earp went on to live in Alaska, Idaho, Colorado, and California among other places. In Los Angeles he actually got a job with the LAPD at one point in time, and helped detectives hunt down wanted criminals in Mexico. He continued to gamble, associate with prostitutes, and physically assault his rivals. He died at the ripe old age of 80, in pain, from a urinary tract infection. Among his pallbearers was John Clum, the former mayor Tombstone, and William Hunsaker, Wyatt’s attorney in Tombstone.

Brandon Christensen is a weekly columnist at RealClearHistory and a contributor to the site's Historiat blog. He also blogs at Notes On Liberty. Send him mail. Follow him on Twitter.

10 Most Brutal Massacres in History

2019-03-14T00:00:00Z

March 16, 1968 was the Mai Lai Massacre in Vietnam, where American soldiers brutally extinguished a Vietnamese village and contributed to the public turn against the war against communists in the former French colony. Five hundred people died. That’s brutal, but here are the 10 most brutal massacres in world history:

10. Chinese massacre of 1639. Chinese communities had existed all over southeast Asia for centuries, mostly as merchants, but sometimes as scholars too. This had both good and bad effects. One of the bad effects was that China’s merchant class tended to be wealthier than the locals they provided goods and services to, and every now and again Chinese communities were massacred by indigenous inhabitant. The 1639 massacre in the Philippines was especially brutal, as 17,000 to 22,000 people were slaughtered in a joint Filipino-Spanish venture.

9. Massacre of Praga (Nov. 4, 1794). 20,000 people in Praga, a suburb of Warsaw, were massacred by Russian troops after the latter conquered the city during the Kociuszko Uprising of 1794. For some reason I thought to compare this to the Boston massacre in 1770, where 5 died. There are not a lot of massacres in the Anglo-American world, at least not on the scale that we find elsewhere throughout history.

8. Cyprus massacre (June - September 1570). In June of 1570 the Ottoman Empire laid siege to the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, which was controlled politically by Venice, the wealthy city-state on the Italian peninsula (see RealClearHistory’s coverage of Venice here [https://www.realclearhistory.com/search/?q=venice]). The Christians on Cyprus held off the Ottomans for about four months, but sheer numbers, as well as disjointed politics in Europe, meant that the inhabitants of Cyprus would eventually be governed from Istanbul (not Constantinople). Cyprus, of course, continues to be split between a Greek (Christian) half and a Turkey (Muslim) half.

7. Chios massacre (March - July 1822). The Ottomans were bad people for a few centuries during the Middle Ages (RealClearHistory has more on the Ottomans here). In 1822, Istanbul massacred 52,000 Greeks on the island of Chios during the Greek War of Independence. The massacre was used deftly by imperial proponents in London, Paris, and Moscow, and further isolated the Ottomans from European diplomacy. As for the inhabitants of Chios, most were apathetic toward the rebellion until the massacre.

6. Massacre of the Rhineland Jews (1096). More of a series of massacres than a single, horrific occurrence, the massacre(s) of the Rhineland Jews in 1096 is considered by some historians to be the first of many pogroms in Germany and France that eventually culminated in the Holocaust some 850 years later. The massacres began with the People’s Crusade of 1096, which was a Crusade considered to be unofficial because the Pope himself did not sanction it. It is estimated that 12,000 Jews died in the Massacre of the Rhineland Jews.

5. Massacre of the Latins (1182). In the 12th century, Roman Catholics in Constantinople, the capital city of the Roman Empire, were known as Latins and in 1182 they were slaughtered, driven out of the city, or sold into slavery. Tens of thousands of people are estimated to have died. The massacre occurred because the vast majority of non-Roman Catholic inhabitants were much poorer than the Latins of the city, due to the latter’s connections to the wealthy city-states on the Italian peninsula (Venice, Genoa, Pisa, etc.). The massacre also made it harder for the Pope to unify the Christian world, as the split between Catholic and Orthodox sects only became more hardened.

4. Asiatic Vespers (88 BC). One of the more bloodier massacres in history, this one is also the most speculative on the list, if only because it took place so far back in time. The Asiatic Vespers was a coordinated attack throughout Anatolia (in modern-day Turkey) to slaughter all of the Romans living in Asia Minor. The massacres kicked off the first Mithridatic War between Rome and Pontus, a minor kingdom in Anatolia with hegemonic aspirations. All in all, 80,000 to 150,000 people are said to have been massacred by anti-Roman factions..

3. Hamidian massacres (1894-96). 80,000 to 400,000 Armenian Christians are said to have been slaughtered in the Hamidian massacres. The Ottoman Empire was trying to hold its once-vast empire together and had to resort to violence in order to do so. This, of course, only hastened its demise. The Hamidian massacres are less well-known than the Ottoman massacres of Armenians during World War I, probably because they were much less bloody. Armenians were not the only ones to be massacred, either. Christians in the Levant, known as Assyrians, were also slaughtered by the tens of thousands.

2. Yangzhou massacre (1645). The largest massacres in history are found in China, which is no surprise given the large, sedentary populations that arise there. The Yangzhou massacre was perpetrated by Prince Dodo of the Qing dynasty. It is said that the massacre of 800,000 people took place in just ten days, and then the conquering Qing army burned what was left to the ground.

1. Sichuan massacre (1645-46). There is probably space for a “10 Most Brutal Massacres in Chinese History” here at RealClearHistory, given the scope of the massacres described in this article. From 1645-1646, one million people are said to have been slaughtered in the Chinese city of Sichuan. Zhang Xianzhong led a peasant revolt that eventually, once Zhang’s peasant army conquered Sichuan, depopulated an entire region of China. Zhang’s massacres were brutal, but check out the “Seven Kill Stele” he is supposed to have left in one of the cities he conquered: “Heaven brings forth innumerable things to nurture man. Man has nothing good with which to recompense Heaven. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill.”

Further thoughts

These are just the recorded massacres in history. For example, the bloodshed that followed the Mongol conquests of peoples in Persia, China, and Mesopotamia are, as of today, incalculable. The Romans were brutal, too. Of course, the definition of “massacre” can be problematic. While this might seem like an academic point, it doesn’t hurt to ask: what’s the difference between the massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire and the Holodomor in Ukraine? What makes one a massacre and the other a genocide? The length of time that the murdering took place? The planning involved? Much more works needs to be done.

Put into historical perspective, the Mai Lai massacre is not that bloody, barely a blimp on the radar of innocents throughout history. To put a spin on a dark chapter of humanity, to add a silver lining even, massacres have declined in number over the years and have become much less bloody. The Japanese occupation of the Philippines, or China, doesn’t even crack the top 10, and may not even crack the top 20. The removal of the Native Americans from their land in Canada and the United States were rife with massacres, but few were as bloody as those found in the top 10. In fact, they weren’t even close.

The decline in number of people massacred is something to celebrate, along with the decline in war generally and the decline in absolute poverty. The world is becoming a better place, slowly but surely.

Commanders in Chief Who Became Commander in Chief

2019-03-12T00:00:00Z

George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, and Dwight Eisenhower served as our chief military commander before entering the Oval Office. How did this experience affect their presidencies?

George Washington

Washington’s military career began in 1754 with the French and Indian War. His first mission, involving a fort near Pittsburgh, ended with surrender to the French. A subsequent expedition, led by British General Edward Braddock, ended in disaster. But Washington got credit for his bravery in battle and for organizing the retreat. Washington gained valuable military experience despite serving in these losing battles.

During the Revolutionary War, Washington won daring victories at Trenton and Princeton. But he also lost key battles on Long Island and New York, allowing the British to capture New York City. He then lost at Brandywine and Germantown, resulting in British control of Philadelphia. Monmouth, the last battle in the north, was a draw. Afterward, the war moved to the South, where other generals led the Americans.

The Battle of Saratoga, which brought the French into the war, was led by American generals Horatio Gates and Benedict Arnold. The Battle of Yorktown, which ended the war, was won with significant French military support and leadership.

Measured solely on his battlefield performance, Washington was the least successful general of the three. However, he kept the army and country together throughout the war. He outlasted five British generals and coordinated efforts with different governors, states, and militias. He worked, not always successfully, with the Continental Congress to provide funding and supplies for the army while preventing the politicians from interfering with the war effort.

No doubt these skills served him well when he became president!

As our nation’s first president, he dealt with many issues including financing the government, dealing with France and Britain while avoiding war, and establishing the role of the federal government.

Ulysses S. Grant

Ulysses S. Grant attended West Point and fought in the Mexican War. After the war, he had a variety of assignments and ended up in California. Separated from his family, and becoming lonely and depressed, Grant left the Army. When the Civil War broke out, he rejoined the military and led the Army to several victories in the West, including the capture of Vicksburg, which secured Union control of the Mississippi. Lincoln promoted Grant to command of all the Union armies. He went on to defeat the Confederates in Virginia and obtain General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox.

Grant easily won election as President in 1868 and re-election in 1872. Some consider Grant a failure as president, due to the scandals that occurred during his term. But he also strongly supported African American rights during his presidency, sending Federal troops into the Southern states to enforce those rights and suppress the Ku Klux Klan. Grant also appointed both Jews and African Americans to federal offices, created the first Civil Service Commission, and established the first National Park (Yellowstone).

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Eisenhower graduated from West Point just as World War I ended. After the war, he served all over the world including stints under Generals John Pershing, Douglas MacArthur, and George Marshall. Although he never served in direct combat, Eisenhower’s overall organizational and planning skills led to his promotion to Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. As commander, he had to negotiate between multiple allies and politicians with conflicting points of view and strong egos including FDR, Winston Churchill, Charles De Gaulle, British General Bernard Montgomery, and United States General George Patton. Like Washington, this experience helped him as president.

Ike won election in 1952 and re-election in 1956. While in office, he ended the war in Korea, avoided escalation in the Cold War, created the Interstate Highway system, and started the space program. Congress passed two civil rights bills during his administration, the first to be adopted since Grant’s Presidency. In 1957, Ike sent the 101st airborne to restore order in Little Rock after riots ensued over enrolling blacks in a previously all-white school. This action was the first use of federal troops to enforce civil rights also since the Grant administration. These efforts eventually led to the Civil Rights and Voting rights acts of the 1960s.

Similarities and Differences

Washington and Eisenhower both had strong political components to their military roles, having to deal with multiple different parties to reach agreement on strategy and plans. This skill is certainly useful in the political arena and translated well into their administrations.

All three desired peace, perhaps not uncommon in those who have experienced the death and destruction of war. Washington kept the country neutral during the rivalry between Great Britain and France; Eisenhower kept the Cold War from getting hot; Grant worked on peaceful unification of the North and South after the Civil War.

Grant’s Presidential campaign slogan was ‘Let us have peace.’ In his memoir, completed just days before his death, he expressed hope for peace between the divided North and South, stating “I feel that we are on the eve of a new era, when there is to be great harmony between the Federal and Confederate… The universally kind feeling expressed for me at a time when it was supposed that each day would prove my last, seemed to me the beginning of the answer to Let us have peace”.

Eisenhower, shortly after World War II ended, stated, “I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can…” In his 1953 ‘Chance for Peace’ speech, he said, “Every gun that is made … every rocket fired signifies … a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” And, in Eisenhower’s famous farewell address, he warned against the potential power of the ‘military industrial complex,’ the result of high and ongoing defense expenditures.

Washington felt the best way to avoid war was to avoid foreign entanglements, as expressed in his farewell address – “It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.”

Washington and Eisenhower are among our best presidents. Grant’s poor reputation is gradually improving. One aspect of Washington’s service stands out. By voluntarily stepping down both as Commander of the Army and later as president, he established the principle of the peaceful transition of power. King George III of Britain was reputed to have said, referring to Washington voluntarily giving up power, “If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.”

Howard Tanzman is a lifelong student of history. He writes about history, presidents and sports at https://www.parkspresidentsandparks.com/

Nothing Terrific About Seaver's Latest News

2019-03-12T00:00:00Z

Fifty years ago today, Ted Williams, the newly minted manager of the Washington Senators, brought his squad to Dodgertown -- the Los Angeles Dodgers spring training complex in Vero Beach, Fla. The once innovative facility was no longer state-of-the-art, but Teddy Ballgame was gracious about it.

“This is the nicest camp I’ve seen,” he said. “This place has character.”

It had characters, too, including Tommy Lasorda, then the manager of the Dodgers Triple-A team. As the left-handed Lasorda threw batting practice that day, a puckish fan yelled that Lasorda didn’t exactly remind anybody of Sandy Koufax, the future Hall of Famer who’d retired from the Dodgers three years earlier. “I throw just as hard as Koufax,” Lasorda told the heckler. “It just doesn’t get up there as quick.”

Nothing seemed to move fast in Florida that spring. On March 12, 1969, Los Angeles Herald Examiner sportswriter Melvin Durslag noticed a sign at the Dodgertown canteen and newsstand that read “COLLIER’S: AMERICA’S MOST EXCITING MAGAINE. GET YOUR COPY TODAY.”

As Durslag noted in his column, “Collier’s folded in 1956.”

But the MLB was leaping into the future that year. Celebrated as the 100th anniversary of professional baseball, the 1969 season was the first to feature playoffs. Until then, the National League and the American League held pennant races, and the winners met in the World Series.

The last year of the old format is still remembered as the Year of the Pitcher, as the Detroit Tigers and St. Louis Cardinals rode dominant pitching to a Series won in seven games by the Tigers.

Cards ace Bob Gibson and Tigers righty Denny McClain not only won the Cy Young Award in their respective leagues, but the Most Valuable Player awards as well. In the World Series, though, Detroit had a secret weapon: a second ace, lefty Mickey Lolich, who won three of the seven games and was named Series MVP.

Going into 1969, nobody quite knew if the new format would work, but it did: MLB’s two best teams, the Baltimore Orioles and the New York Mets, faced each other in the October Classic.
A short series doesn’t always guarantee the best team will win, and it didn’t in 1969: The Orioles had the best record in the majors -- they’d won 109 games -- and were one of the most complete teams ever assembled. Yet they faced the “Amazin’ Mets” -- darlings of destiny -- who won it in five games.

That spring, the Dodgers had gotten an early glimpse of the Mets’ prowess when they were shut out, 3-0, in an exhibition game in Vero Beach. The pitchers New York sent to the mound that day included two future Hall of Famers, 24-year-old Tom Seaver and 22-year-old Nolan Ryan. Both righties threw hard, but Ryan threw really hard. “He was the only guy that could put fear in me,” Reggie Jackson once said of the Texas-born fireballer. “Not because he could get me out, but because he could kill me.”

Jackson was even more effusive when describing Tom Seaver. “He’s so good, blind men come out to hear him pitch,” Reggie once quipped. It must have been galling for the Dodgers to see Seaver on the mound in those days. A San Joaquin Valley native who’d starred at the University of Southern California, Seaver had been drafted in 1965 by the Dodgers, who unwisely refused to meet his $70,000 signing bonus request.

Two seasons later, Seaver was Rookie of the Year -- for the Mets. At that summer’s All-Star Game, young Seaver introduced himself to Henry Aaron.

“Kid, I know who you are,” replied the great Aaron. “And before your career is over, I guarantee you everyone in this stadium will, too.”

Even before that career ended, Aaron pronounced Seaver the toughest pitcher he ever faced. But it was how players in his own clubhouse described Seaver that really told you what he was like.

“Tom does everything well,” said Cleon Jones, an Amazin’ Mets’ teammate. “He’s the kind of man you’d want your kids to grow up to be like. Tom’s a studious player, devoted to his profession, a loyal cat, trustworthy -- everything a Boy Scout’s supposed to me. In fact, we call him ‘Boy Scout.’”

Sportswriters took to calling him “Tom Terrific,” a moniker reprised last week when organized baseball was shaken by the most un-terrific news: At 74, Tom Seaver has been diagnosed with late-stage dementia and is retiring from public life.

From the mists of our memories came the names of his long-ago teammates -- names like Ed Kranepool, Ron Swoboda, Art Shamsky -- who sent their best wishes. “He always handled himself with dignity and class,” said Kranepool. “I was proud to be his teammate,” said Swoboda. “A very, very special person,” said Shamsky.

“He will always be the heart and soul of the Mets, the standard which all Mets aspire to,” added Mike Piazza, a Hall of Fame catcher who knows Seaver but never played with him. “This breaks my heart.”

In Mild Defense of Andrew Johnson

2019-03-11T00:00:00Z

Andrew Johnson, 17th President of the United States, had a tough job. He wasn’t even elected to be President of the United States. His predecessor was assassinated after waging a four-year war on several rebellious states within the federation his state belonged to, and his state was among the rebellious! He was picked by that same predecessor to be Vice President because of his ties to the opposition party (see Roger Schleuter’s explanation for Abraham Lincoln’s decision to pick a Democrat as his 1864 running mate). To top it all off, the assassination of Johnson’s predecessor occurred just five days after the rebels surrendered and ended the war.

That’s a tough slate.

Andrew Johnson hailed from Tennessee, which, along with Virginia (and possibly Cherokee country), bore the brunt of the violence associated with the Civil War due to its geographic location along the border of the rebellious Confederacy and the old Union. Johnson was a sitting senator from the state when it declared its independence from Washington and joined the Confederacy, but unlike his fellow senators from the rebellious Southern states, Johnson refused to quit his position. (The other senators quit in order to join the newly formed Confederate States of America’s government.)

Johnson’s decision to not support the Confederacy was straightforward. Under the constitution, the slave-holding states had no right to leave the Union and the Union had no right to abolish slavery. The election of an abolition-friendly politician did not give slave-holding states the right to attack a fort, much less leave the republic and form their own. That’s about as constitutionalist as you can get. So why does Johnson get low marks from historians? Probably because historians lean to the left and the left in general does not much like the American constitution, but also because Johnson’s post-war policies were different than Lincoln’s plans for Reconstruction, and decidedly so.

Johnson gave the rebellious states a lot of leeway as they re-entered the union, which angered many Republicans and Northerners who had spent the last four years of their lives fighting the rebels. The policies carried out by the defeated rebels to re-implement racist laws only made matters worse, and Johnson’s decision to turn a blind eye - in the name of constitutionalism - threw fuel on the fire.

Nevertheless, Johnson’s impeachment trial had nothing to do with the regressive Black Codes in the South or the reintegration of rebel leaders into positions of power in federal politics. Nor did Johnson’s racism have anything to do with the impeachment trial. The impeachment trial was about Republicans covering their butts after their unconstitutional legislation regarding cabinet members became unpopular with the voting public.
Johnson’s impeachment trial wasn’t a Democrat-versus-Republican issue, either. Johnson was a pragmatic politician, as illustrated by his refusal to step down from the Senate. While Johnson kept a blind eye on self-governing events in the reconstructing South, and used his bully pulpit to oppose the 14th Amendment, he also tried to clear out Lincoln’s cabinet, which was a war cabinet and it did not make any sense to keep it around since the war was officially over. In one example, Johnson replaced a cabinet official with Ulysses S. Grant, so it wasn’t like he was corrupt or trying to fill cabinet positions with his cronies. But he was trying to purge his cabinet of warhawks, and the GOP did not like it.

In 1867, Congress had passed the Tenure of Office Act, which was designed to prevent Johnson from refilling his cabinet with peacetime bureaucrats rather than wartime bureaucrats. Johnson, of course, vetoed the bill, but Congress overrode Johnson’s veto and then, in March of 1868, tried to nail Johnson with violating the act. Johnson’s impeachment trial breezed through the House, which was dominated by Republicans, but the trial died, and rightly so, in the Senate. Andrew Johnson was the first President of the United States to undergo an impeachment trial.

Given the chaos that Andrew Johnson inherited, it is not surprising that his presidency was so tumultuous. A vicious, years-long civil war had just ended and a free people, bound together by a republican constitution, were trying to figure out how to heal wounds and go forward together.

Johnson, for his part, won the debate, at least in the long term. Subsequent Supreme Court rulings in the 1880s and 1920s supported his argument that the Tenure of Office Act was unconstitutional. The 10 Republican senators who voted that Andrew Johnson was not guilty, thus preserving the balance of power between the three branches of government, were never again elected into a public office of any kind. They fell on their swords so that we could continue to be free. Johnson became the only man in American history to serve as a senator after serving as a President, when the people of Tennessee voted him back to Washington in 1875. He died in office just a few months into the job.

Brandon Christensen is a weekly columnist at RealClearHistory and a contributor to the site's Historiat blog. He also blogs at Notes On Liberty. Send him mail. Follow him on Twitter.

10 Worst Space Disasters in History

2019-03-08T00:00:00Z

This week marks the anniversary of the recovery of the remains of Challenger’s crew on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. On March 10, 1986, the Navy and NASA announced that they had found a compartment that contained the remains of the ill-fated space shuttle’s crew.

When I think about space disasters, I am reminded of the space battle between Earth and Trisolaris in Liu Cixin’s fantastic sci-fi novel. Stay with me here. Liu Cixin’s Dark Forest novel needs to be read. In the novel, humans make contact with a nearby alien civilization, who proceed to make plans to invade earth, wipe out its human population, and re-populate it with themselves. The first battle between Earth’s space forces and the would-be invaders ends badly for Earth, as thousands of space warships are destroyed in a matter minutes by a Trisolaran probe. The novel brings up an uncomfortable theory that humans have been all-too-willing to neglect: what if the universe is a hostile, deadly place instead of a curious one? Nick Nielsen is asking important questions about humanity’s place in the stars, and Caleb Scharf is doing wonderful work explaining how life in the universe is likely to confront us at this stage of our development.

Despite the massive amount of attention that surrounds space flight disasters, only four have actually happened in space, and only 18 people have died in space (14 astronauts and four cosmonauts). This is due to the vast amounts of effort, planning, intelligence, and energy that go into space flight. In fact, most of the deadliest disasters happen on earth during the preparation phase, where painstaking practice is undertaken in order to execute space flight to perfection. So, in honor of those who have given their lives for humanity’s place among the stars, here are History’s 10 Worst Space Disasters:

10. Columbia (February 1, 2003). The Columbia Space Shuttle had served NASA and the United States for 22 years before it exploded in space upon re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere. In 22 years, Columbia had flown 27 space flights before disaster struck on the 28th mission. The destruction of NASA’s second space shuttle put the entire program on hold for two years, and supplies to the International Space Station had to be flown in by a public-private Russian space agency, Roscosmos (which has since become nationalized).

9. Soyuz 11 (June 29, 1971). This disaster marks the only time in human history that people died in actual space, and the three cosmonauts who perished also set a then-record for longest time spent in a space station at 22 days. (The Americans broke the cosmonaut’s record in 1973 with Skylab.) The Soviet explorers also ran on a treadmill (which shook the whole space station), made live television broadcasts to the Soviet Union, and put out a fire. They died when their cabin depressurized during the flight home, though there was no other damage to Soyuz 11. True to form, the Soviet government refused to reveal the truth of what happened until many years later. An American astronaut, Tom Stafford, was one of the pallbearers during the large state funeral that was held for the cosmonauts.

8. Nedelin catastrophe (October 24, 1960). While the Soviets were testing a missile for space launch in what is now Kazakhstan, it exploded and killed or maimed hundreds of people. True to Soviet form, the official death toll is unknown, but estimates range from 92-126 deaths and hundreds more injured. The disaster was so bad that the Soviet Union refused to acknowledge the event until its dying breath, in the waning days of glasnost. Named after M.I. Nedelin, the Soviet Union’s head of its Strategic Rocket Forces, the preparations for the launch were pushed hard by Nedelin as a result of political pressure from Moscow (he was killed in the explosion).

7. Voskhod 2 spacewalk near-catastrophe (March 1965). In the early and mid-1960s the Soviet Union was dominating the space race, reaching milestone after milestone years before the United States. In March of 1965 Alexey Leonov became the first human being to perform a spacewalk. For 12 minutes, 9 seconds Leonov walked around in space, but when he tried to re-enter Voskhod 2, he found that he could not fit through the door because his suit had ballooned, and things got so tense inside the spaceship that Soviet television and radio was cut off from the masses. The troubles for Leonov and his team did not end there, though. While he was able to squeeze inside Voskhod 2, sealing the door proved a nuisance and it was only with some old-fashioned Soviet makeshift tinkering that the crew was able to seal themselves off from the vast darkness of space. Oh, and Voskhod 2 also landed 300 miles off course, in the Siberian tundra, where rescue crews could not reach them via helicopter. So, they sent in a ski squad who built them a log cabin and a very large fire. Alexey Leonov is still alive today, living the good life in Russia, but before he retired he commanded the Soviet half of the first-ever joint space project between the United States and the Soviet Union.

6. Intelsat 708 incident (February 15, 1996). When China entered the space race in the 1990s, nobody took Beijing seriously. Things have changed. In the mid-1990s, though, a test rocket misfired and landed in a nearby village, killing at least six people. Here’s the real kicker, though. American technology companies were working with the Chinese rocket scientists, as they wanted to get their products within a budget that could work for them. The Intelsat 708 incident sparked Congress to pass some legislation that prohibited technology flowing so easily out of the United States. Corporations were fined millions of dollars. And 1996 was the last time the United States and China worked together on rocket science.

5. Alcântara VLS accident (August 22, 2003). China is not the only country to try and catch the United States in the space race. The European Union had been trying, with some success, over the years, and Russia’s space program is, of course, resurgent. How about Brazil? You better believe it. There are actually a whole slew of countries trying to build space programs, such as India, Pakistan, Mexico, South Africa, and Iran. The Alcântara VLS accident, which happened to Brazil’s space program, serves as a brutal reminder of what happens when countries push too hard for immediate results. Twenty-one people were killed when a rocket exploded on its launching pad in northern Brazil. Smoke from the jungle fire that was started by the explosion could be seen from hundreds of miles away. Brazil’s space program continues apace.

4. Plesetsk launch pad disaster (March 18, 1980). Back in the U.S.S.R., in 1980, a launch pad disaster killed 48 people and injured another 87. Pravda announced its success to the Soviet people, and nobody knew about the death toll until, again, glasnost ran its course and information began to reach the West in 1989. The official explanation for the deadly explosion pinned the blame on the dead crew, but when another explosion of exactly the same type was narrowly avoided just 16 months later, it was determined that there was an engineering problem that needed to be addressed. Francis Spufford’s novel Red Plenty does a marvelous job explaining why the Soviet Union just could not seem to work like a centrally-planned economy was supposed to.

3. Soyuz 1 (April 24, 1967). Somebody had to eventually man the first flight of the first generation Soyuz 7K-Ok spacecraft. That somebody was a hero of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Komarov, an engineer who commanded to the first-ever space flight to carry more than one passenger. Komarov also has the distinction of being the first human being to die in space, after Soyuz 1’s parachutes failed to open upon re-entry. All was not lost, though. Soyuz 1’s failure postponed the Soviet Union’s space program, and significant improvements were made in the 18-month interregnum. The Soyuz program never achieved its goal of putting a man on the moon, but thanks to its failures, the Russian people have contributed immensely to the exploration and understanding of space. The Mir, Salyut, and Zond programs, along with Moscow’s tremendous support for the International Space Station, have hopefully solidified Russia’s place in the far future of human history.

2. Apollo 1 (January 27, 1967). The cabin fire that took the lives of Apollo 1’s three crew members was, like the Soyuz 1 failure, a blessing in disguise. Because of Apollo 1’s disaster, the American space program took a good long look at itself and began focusing on safety as well as exploration and science. Unlike in the Soviet Union, the Apollo 1 tragedy was widely reported on. The American people had to grasp what it meant, each and every one of us, as individuals and as members of communities that we freely chose to join. Even Congress got in on the act and held tough, meaningful sessions about the nature of the republic’s space program. We are all better off thanks to the Apollo 1 disaster.

1. Challenger (January 28, 1986). Seven crew members, including teacher Christa McAuliffe, were killed when the Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight. The launch was televised and it's been reported that nearly 50 percent of all schoolchildren watched it, because McAuliffe was the first civilian to go into space. The tragedy is inedelibly inked onto the brains of multiple generations. The disaster was caused by a flaw in the "O-ring," that had been identified, but improperly addressed. The tragedy resulted in a nearly three-year break in the shuttle program. When the shuttle program finally resumed, the boosters were redesigned, and NASA adopted a more conservative safety program.

Have a good weekend.

Texas' Secession From Mexico

2019-03-04T00:00:00Z

The secession of Texas from Mexico on March 2, 1836 has much in common with the secession of 13 colonies from the British Empire on July 4, 1776. For one thing, the victors of both wars styled their secessions as “revolutions” rather than separatist movements.

There are other similarities, too, starting with the fact that Texas was not the only state in Mexico to try and secede from Mexico City. The self-declared republics of Rio Grande, Zacatecas, and Yucután also asserted their independence from Mexico, though Texas was the only state to actually succeed in its rebellion. Unlike the 13 North American states attempting to secede from the British Empire, the Mexican provinces did not band together to form a united front against a common enemy.

Texas itself was the northern part of a larger state called Coahuila y Tejas. When Mexico originally seceded from Spain, Coahuila y Tejas joined the new republic as its poorest, most sparsely populated member state. In addition to economic and demographic problems, Coahuila y Tejas shared a border with the Comanche and Apache Indians, who in the 1820s were still powerful players in regional geopolitics. Life in Coahuila y Tejas was nasty, brutal, and short.

The new republic of Mexico was preoccupied elsewhere and gave Coahuila y Tejas a free hand when it came to governance, a policy that would come back to bite Mexico City in the rear. Mexico City also liberalized its immigration laws so that English-speaking settlers from the United States could establish themselves in Coahuila y Tejas. The settlers came mostly from slaveholding American states, and this clashed deeply with Mexican views on race and slavery. To make matters more complicated, the 1830s saw an increase in tensions between federalists and centralists in Mexico City, much in the same way that Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans clashed with John Adams’ Federalists (culminating in the Alien and Sedition Acts).

While the clash between centralists and decentralists subsided in the United States, it exploded with open warfare in Mexico. The rebellious states, including Coahuila y Tejas, asked General Santa Anna to lead them, and he obliged. The rebellion of 1833 gave Texans a taste of blood though, and at the state level, there was much more of an emphasis for Coahuila and Texas to go their separate ways and become independent states within the Mexican republic. Nothing came of this proposed divorce until 1835, when Santa Anna, who was a decentralist just two years prior, abolished the Mexican constitution of 1824 and began centralizing power. The states that had originally joined the Mexican republic were disbanded and replaced with “departments” that were created by Santa Anna, and Coahuila y Tejas revolted.

On March 2, 1836, Texas declared its independence from Mexico and announced its intention to divorcing Coahuila, which joined up with Tamaulipas and Nuevo León to form the short-lived Republic of Rio Grande.

Major fighting between the Texan and Mexican armies came to an end in April of 1836, just one month after an official declaration of independence was proclaimed, but a sophisticated game of geopolitics continued to play out until the United States annexed Texas in 1845. The Republic of Rio Grande, for example, was never officially recognized by Texas despite a common enemy because Texas sought Mexico’s blessing of independence (it never happened). Texas still armed Rio Grande and volunteers from Texas flooded Rio Grande’s military. On the Mexican end, refusing to recognize Texas made it nearly impossible for Texas to find diplomatic support for its sovereignty outside of the United States.

France and the United Kingdom, for example, had vast empires that constantly quelled secessionist tendencies, and blessing a successful secession was the last thing London and Paris wanted to do. The fact that Mexico, a new republic rich with natural resources and viewed as a potential counterweight to American ambitions, refused to recognize Texan independence was icing on the cake for France the U.K.

With Texas isolated from the global stage, it had no recourse but to turn completely to the United States, which it did. The U.S., of course, resisted annexation for nearly a decade before ceding to annexationist factions. Texas wiped out the Comanche and pushed the Apache into the southwest, where they continued to fight the United States and Mexican republics into the 1930s.

Today, Texas is one of the two most influential states in the American imperium. It is powerful. It is beautiful. And it still harbors an independent streak.

Just for fun, here is an article from the Smithsonian about allowing Texas to split up into five different states.

Brandon Christensen is a weekly columnist at RealClearHistory and a contributor to the site's Historiat blog. He also blogs at Notes On Liberty. Send him mail. Follow him on Twitter.

Civility and the Johnson–Nixon Transition

2019-03-03T00:00:00Z

After being sworn in as the 37th President of the United States, Richard Nixon called for a time of national renewal and reunification, hoping to heal the wounds wrought by the divisiveness of the 1960s, which — between President Lyndon Johnson’s “withdrawal speech,” Martin Luther King Jr.’s and Robert F. Kennedy’s assassinations, and the chaotic Democratic National Convention — had found its ultimate expression in the election of 1968.

Though Nixon handily defeated Democrat Hubert Humphrey and Independent George Wallace in the Electoral College (301–191–46), he only won 0.7 percent more of the popular vote than Humphrey. Clearly, the country’s divisions ran deep, but not as deep as they might have run, had it not been for the restraint of President Johnson.

On Oct. 17, 1968, just a few weeks before the election, Johnson began hearing reports that the Nixon campaign had engaged in secret negotiations with the South Vietnamese government, through lobbyist Anna Chennault. The administration had struggled to bring all parties of the Vietnam conflict to the negotiating table since late March. On the other hand, Nixon’s cronies had worked against the peace talks since April. They discouraged the South Vietnamese from joining the negotiations, promising that they would receive a better deal from the as-yet-unelected Nixon administration.

This interference with official U.S. diplomatic initiatives violated the Logan Act (1799), which outlawed unauthorized contacts between private citizens and foreign powers.

Johnson received confirmation of Republican duplicity on Oct. 30, just one day before he announced a full bombing halt in North Vietnam (a prerequisite to negotiations). On Oct. 31, only an hour before all four parties to the talks (North Vietnam, the National Liberation Front, the United States, and South Vietnam) planned to announce that negotiations would commence, South Vietnam announced that it was uncomfortable with the NLF’s presence in the negotiations, and therefore would not attend. The president was furious.

Two days later, Johnson called his old friend, senior Republican Senator and Nixon ally Everett Dirksen, to inform him that the administration was aware of the Nixon campaign’s meddling. After summarizing the course of events, Johnson explained that “I’m reading their hand, Everett. I don’t want to get this in the campaign. … And they oughtn’t to be doing this. This is treason.” He told Dirksen to make sure Nixon knew that the administration was onto him.

True to his word, the president refrained from exposing Nixon’s role in what came to be known as the “Chennault Affair,” to the point of declining to comment for a Christian Science Monitor report on the diplomatic duplicity. Johnson’s restraint allowed Nixon to win the election.

President Johnson did not expose Nixon for several reasons. First, while he knew that the Nixon campaign was complicit, it was not yet clear whether Nixon himself had a hand in the subterfuge (he did). Second, as Johnson biographer Robert Dallek writes, revealing Nixon’s intransigence “would have opened [Nixon] to possible indictment and prosecution,” thereby “precipitat[ing] an unprecedented constitutional crisis.”

Even if Nixon survived such a crisis, it would likely hobble his legislative and executive efforts. Furthermore, Johnson was fearful that Nixon would retaliate against him and his advisers after taking office, and when Vice President Hubert Humphrey (Nixon's opponent) was briefed on the situation on Nov. 1, he also decided not to act on it, given the lack of proof that Nixon himself was directly involved.

Not only did Johnson not expose Nixon, but, as he promised before the election, he also worked intensively with the president-elect throughout the transition period. Having realized that he would leave office before the Vietnam negotiations ended, Johnson instructed his advisers to cooperate fully with the incoming administration. As Secretary of State Dean Rusk later wrote, “we thought the new president should make his own decisions for the future since he had been chosen by the American people to do just that.”

By leaving the major decisions of the negotiations to the president-elect, Johnson both respected the will of the voters and left Nixon a full deck of cards, as it were. Rather than shortchanging Nixon and letting him deal with any negative ramifications from agreements made during negotiations before he even took office, LBJ graciously gave Nixon the full power to make his own decisions in discussions with the Vietnamese Communists. As White House correspondent Drew Pearson wrote to Johnson during the transition period, “you have been extremely cooperative with the incoming president-elect — more so than any previous that I know of—and he owes you more than any previous president-elect.”

Lyndon B. Johnson clearly demonstrated his patriotism in his handling of the Chennault Affair and the transition period between his presidency and Nixon’s. While of course part of his reasoning for not exposing the Republican was the lack of evidence directly connecting Nixon to the interference, Johnson's nobler, patriotic side clearly won out over his political cynicism. As far as the transition period is concerned, Johnson had next to nothing to gain from cooperating with the incoming administration; indeed, he was hardly pleased with Nixon. The only viable explanation for his gracious attitude during the transition period is that he wanted Nixon to succeed, not for Nixon’s sake, but for the sake of the country.

Further Reading:

Berman, Larry. Lyndon Johnson’s War: The Road to Stalemate in Vietnam. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1989.

Dallek, Robert. Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961-1973. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Farrell, John A. Richard Nixon: The Life. New York, NY: Doubleday Press, 2017.

Hughes, Ken, ed. Presidential Recordings Digital Edition. Chasing Shadows Series.

Hughes, Ken. Chasing Shadows: The Nixon Tapes, the Chennault Affair, and the Origins of Watergate. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2014.

Johnstone, Andrew and Andrew Priest, eds. US Presidential Elections and Foreign Policy: Candidates, Campaigns, and Global Politics from FDR to Bill Clinton. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2017.

Rusk, Dean and Richard Rusk. As I Saw It. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1991.

Simpson, Connor. “Newly Released Secret Tapes Reveal LBJ Knew but Never Spoke Out About Nixon's ‘Treason’.” The Atlantic. Last modified March 16, 2013.

Taylor, David. “The Lyndon Johnson tapes: Richard Nixon’s ‘treason’.” BBC. Last modified March 22, 2013. .

Vandiver, Frank E. Shadows of Vietnam: Lyndon Johnson’s Wars. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1997.

A Master's student in the Kent State University Department of History, Ben Allison specializes in the history of US foreign policy in the 20th and 21st centuries, especially vis-à-vis the Soviet Union/Russia and the Middle East. Allison's other areas of historical inquiry include policing, military, and national security history. He is also heavily involved in various political science fields, studying international relations, terrorism and counterterrorism, and insurgency and counterinsurgency. His book on anti-civilian violence in jihadist insurgencies, coauthored with Dr. Samuel S. Stanton, Jr. (Professor of Political Science, Grove City College) is under advance contract with Lexington Books. Allison hopes to earn a PhD in either History or International Relations. For more about Ben, visit BenjaminAllison.com, or email him here.

10 Ancient Wonders That Still Exist in Iraq

2019-02-28T00:00:00Z

On Feb. 28, 1991, Operation Desert Storm was declared over and the United States emerged as the clear leader of a new world order. As this week’s Historiat column explains, Desert Storm deserves to be hailed for its multinational success and its example in regards to global cooperation. But something didn’t go right because in 2003, America went back to Iraq, with far fewer allies in tow, and has stayed there ever since.

Iraq is home to many ancient empires and as (or if) it develops economically, more of the treasures of these ancient civilizations will surface. Iraqi archaeology techniques will become more sophisticated. The splendors of ancient Mesopotamia will eventually be revealed to the world. As of today, only the ruins of the Babylonians and Romans can be positively identified and worked on by archaeologists.

Centuries of static Ottoman governance have so far condemned the architectural feats of the Arabs, Persians, Assyrians, and other peoples who built their societies in Mesopotamia to the dustbin of history. The post-World War I British-ruled Iraq blessed looting. The Ba’athists who viciously lorded over Iraq continued the Ottoman practice of allowing Iraq’s ancient splendors to collect dust. The Americans unleashed a smorgasbord of looting and destruction. And everybody knows how awful ISIS has been in regards to humanity’s ancient artifacts.

Despite all this, Iraq’s ancient treasures are slowly but surely being discovered and worked over by archaeologists from around the world. Here are 10 ancient treasures still in Iraq:

10. Al ‘Ashiq Palace. Built during the Abbasid caliphate in (from 877-882), the Qasr al-’Ashiq is a shining example of Arab architecture during its first Golden Age. Here is a picture, but do note the graffitti.

9. Ziggurat of Ur. Believe it or not, the Ziggurat of Ur is still standing, though not much is left. Mesopotamia’s urban centers apparently loved building ziggurats, but few survive to this day. Saddam Hussein’s administration tried to restore the Ziggurat of Ur, but it was only partially successful and I doubt the subtleties of neo-Sumerian architecture were taken into account. Nevertheless, at least one major ziggurat still stands, and it’s in Iraq.

8. The city of Hatra. The ruins of this ancient Roman city made headlines a few years back after ISIS went about destroying as much of the city as it could. The damage done to Hatra by ISIS was minor, according to official government reports, but you can never be too certain. Wikipedia has a beautiful gallery of Hatra’s splendor. Hatra has so many treasures in it, some of them are good enough to make the list on their own.

7. Arch of Ctesiphon (Taq Kasra). Built by a Persian dynasty somewhere between the 3rd and 6th centuries, the Taq Kasra is a huge arch that once welcomed travelers and locals alike to the ancient city of Ctesiphon. It still stands today, and if Iraq ever becomes safe enough to build up a tourist industry, this ancient Persian beauty is sure to be on everybody’s to-do list.

6. Qalatga Darband. This is one of the newest discoveries in Iraq. It was a city that built during Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Near East, though archaeologists and historians are still arguing over whether his armies built it or just improved upon a city that was already there. Qalatga Darband is located in Kurdistan, where political and economic stability is a bit more dependable than elsewhere in Iraq.

5. Ishtar Gate. The location of the ancient city of Babylon has been known since at least the days of British rule (post-World War I), and it has had its fair share of looting. The Ishtar Gate was built by Babylon’s famous monarch, Nebuchadnezzar II, and was excavated in the early 20th century by British and German archaeologists. The gate was rebuilt using its original bricks for a German museum, but a fake gate exists in Iraq commemorating the country’s ancient heritage. Museum artifacts are a big political topic in some circles, and the Ishtar Gate is often used by both sides as a case study.

4. Al-Ukhaidir Fortress. Another Abbasid architectural treasure, the Al-Ukhaidir Fortress is located in present-day Karbala, which has been the site of much carnage and bloodshed (Karbala is considered holy by Shi’ites, on par with Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem). The fortress is currently being considered for a spot on the much-coveted UNESCO World Heritage list.

3. Qal'at Jarmo. Located in the foothills of the Zagros Mountains, Jarmo is a neolithic village that has been worked and re-worked by archaeologists for about 80 years now. Its existence has been essential in explaining how humanity’s agricultural revolution first took off.

2. The gates of Nineveh. Nineveh was one of Mesopotamia’s cultural and economic hearths, and the ancient ruins that still survive there are a testament to its greatness. Its ruins are located across the river from the modern city of Mosul (another bloodbath) and the city recently made headlines thanks to an ISIS campaign aimed at destroying its ruins. The gates of Nineveh are famous among locals, archaeology enthusiasts, and, apparently Islamists trying to burn down civilization one ancient gate at a time.

1. Great Mosque of Samarra. The mosque with the spiral minaret. Here is a picture, so you’ll understand why words fail me. Its top was blown off back in 2005, but the mosque itself has been razed and re-raised several times throughout its long and glorious existence. When it was completed in 851, the Grand Mosque of Samarra (a commercial city) was the largest in the world.

Further thoughts

While the British, Americans, and Ottomans did not do enough to preserve and protect Iraq’s treasure trove of humanity (indeed, all three occupations did much to make matters worse), the worst perpetrator was easily Saddam Hussein. The dams that he built in the name of “modernization” wiped out the ruins of whole cities and flooded several important neolithic archaeological sites.

Have a great weekend.

Brandon Christensen is a weekly columnist at RealClearHistory and a contributor to the site's Historiat blog. He also blogs at Notes On Liberty. Send him mail. Follow him on Twitter.

Iraq's Evolution From 'Ally' to Foe

2019-02-25T00:00:00Z

On Feb. 28, 1991 the first Gulf War was declared “over” and the victors packed up and went home. Iraq’s armed forces were crippled and Kuwait had been liberated from Baghdad’s grip. The American-led multi-national military force that repelled Iraq from Kuwait was hailed in almost all corners of the globe as a paragon of multilateral cooperation and a new world order.

George H.W. Bush, former head of the republic’s most prominent clandestine spy agency, mustered up enough international support to justify the invasion of the Gulf and the crippling of Iraq’s military. Thirty-five countries participated in Desert Storm, and Germany and Japan, neither of which sent any actual troops to region, wrote generous checks to the coalition for the war.

It seemed as though the world was finally on its way to cooperating on large-scale projects that involved enforcing agreed-upon rules, and that the capitalist United States of America was going to lead this new world order with a gentle guiding hand rather than socialist revolution.

Today, though, Iraq is still in the news cycle, which means terrible things happen there regularly. What happened?

In 2003, the United States turned its back on multilateralism as a way of policing agreed-upon international rules. That didn’t help. What helps even less is Iraq’s own recent, postwar history. Iraq lined up on the side of the Soviets in the early phase of the Cold War. Iraq’s leaders were anti-colonialist, pro-secular, and pro-socialism, which made working with the Soviet Union easier to do than working with the United States. Iraq’s financial support for Palestinian militancy earned the country a spot on the State Department’s terrorist sponsors list in late 1979.

The relationship between the United States and Iraq changed in 1980, though, when the latter invaded Iran and started a brutal eight-year war against the Ayatollah and his minions. Suddenly, Iraq and its military was awash with American military aid and American weapons. While it is tempting to conclude that the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88 was the result of American machinations (Iran had just thrown out a pro-American dictator in 1979), the resulting support for Iraq by Washington was just happenstance.

The unintended consequences of the republic’s support for Saddam Hussein in the 1980s are still not very well understood, especially when compared to the support Washington gave to the mujahideen in Afghanistan. Most people (well, most people who spend time on sites like RealClearHistory) understand that Washington’s support for guys like Osama bin-Laden in the 1980s had to do with bogging down the Soviets in a demoralizing, unwinnable war rather than any kind of ideological sympathy.

The alliance between Washington and the mujahideen in Afghanistan is pretty well understood today. The alliance between Washington and Saddam Hussein is not. The U.S. and Iraq had a common enemy: the pro-Shi’a, anti-American revolutionaries in Iran. The alliance was one of convenience, not ideology. Politics still drives much of this ignorance, I think. Leftists are keen to point to Iraq as a major GOP failure, which makes Republican willingness to acknowledge mistakes almost nil.

At any rate, as the war between Baghdad and Tehran ground down to a halt, Iraq found itself in debt to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Hussein and other elites also found Iraqi society to be in turmoil. Eight years of war was not rewarded with a decisive victory, and the economy had only gotten worse throughout the 1980s. Saddam Hussein demanded that Kuwait forgive Iraq’s debts. Kuwait refused to oblige. So, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and started the First Gulf War. The rest, they say, is history.

Brandon Christensen is a weekly columnist at RealClearHistory and a contributor to the site's Historiat blog. He also blogs at Notes On Liberty. Send him mail. Follow him on Twitter.

10 Airports Named After Heroes

2019-02-21T00:00:00Z

Hey, let’s get right to the point this weekend:

10. O’Hare International Airport (Chicago). Named after Edward “Butch” O’Hare, the pilot who single-handedly turned back nine heavy bombers trying to attack his aircraft carrier, Chicago’s O’Hare is one of the most recognizable in the world. O’Hare was America’s first WW II ace.

9. Bradley International Airport (Hartford). Hartford, Conn. is actually one of America’s busiest, most prosperous cities. It used to be home to the Hartford Whalers, a professional hockey team that plied its trade in the NHL. Bradley is named after a 24-year-old pilot (“Eugene M. Bradley of Antlers, Oklahoma”) who died in a dogfight exercise in August of 1941. Bradley’s P-40C fighter plane crashed at Windsor Locks Army Air Field during a training flight, and the field was subsequently named after him.

8. Mitchell International Airport (Milwaukee). Named after Billy Mitchell, the “father of the U.S. Air Force,” Milwaukee claims Mitchell as its own since he grew up in the city. It probably helps that Mitchell’s grandfather was a prominent economic and political figure in Milwaukee, too.

7. Logan International Airport (Boston). Officially “General Edward Lawrence Logan International Airport,” Boston’s decision to name its airport after a local war hero is a touching one, given all the talent that comes out of that town. Logan was also a Democratic state senator. Logan reached the rank of major general and was tasked with the reorganization of the 26th infantry after World War I.

6. Charles de Gaulle Airport (Paris). The second largest airport in Europe is appropriately named after the most prominent French military name of the 20th century. It is also known as Roissy Airport, which is the name of one of the local communes in the area. Voila!

5. Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (Austin). Ever traveled to the capital city of the Republic of Texas? Too bad. It’s one of America’s hidden treasures. It’s named after Captain John August Earl Bergstrom, a pilot who was part of the famous 19th Bombardment Group that saw a lot of action in the Pacific during World War II.

4. Genghis Khan International Airport (Ulan Bator). Officially spelled “Chinggis Khaan,” it’s only fitting that the capital city of Mongolia’s only international airport be named after Mongolia’s most famous export.

3. Lambert International Airport (Saint Louis). Albert Bond Lambert wasn’t much of a war hero, but he did serve honorably in World War I, mostly as an instructor in how to parachute from planes and navigate the air via balloons. Lambert was much more well-known for his post-war, civilian aviation work.

2. Lindbergh Field (San Diego). The common term for beautiful San Diego’s international airport is Lindbergh Field, named after the famous pilot Charles Lindbergh. Lindbergh is well-known. He fought bravely in the Pacific Theatre during World War II. Here is a short essay explaining why San Diego’s international Airport still goes by “Lindbergh Field.”

1. TBA Russian Airports. Late last year, Vladimir Putin and his henchmen decided to hold a voting contest throughout the Russian Empire called “the Great Names of Russia.” Instead of getting to vote for their own politicians, the Russians were able to choose new names for their airports. Reports have been spotty on the results, but I’m sure Dmitry Karbyshev will get his name on an airport somewhere.

Have a good weekend.

Brandon Christensen is a weekly columnist at RealClearHistory and a contributor to the site's Historiat blog. He also blogs at Notes On Liberty. Send him mail. Follow him on Twitter.

10 Unheralded Presidents

2019-02-18T00:00:00Z

Yesterday was President’s Day, a day usually associated with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. In the spirit of the holiday, I thought it’d be fun to highlight a short list of presidents who are unheralded and long forgotten. (Those who were assassinated or had an untimely death while serving as president are disqualified.) So, without further adieu:

5. Rutherford B. Hayes (presidential term: 1877-81). A Republican during an era of Republican domination of the presidency, Hayes lost the popular vote but won the office as a result of the electoral college. But just barely. Hayes was only allowed to enter office if he agreed to end Union occupation of the South, which he did. Hayes was not only responsible for ending Reconstruction, but also for reforming the civil service, which had been known for corruption since the Andrew Jackson era. Hayes had promised voters that he would run once and only once for president of the United States, and he kept that promise, stepping down in 1881 and retiring to his home in Ohio.

4. Chester A. Arthur (presidential term: 1881-85). Arthur didn’t quite succeed Hayes, but after James A. Garfield was assassinated six months into his presidency, Arthur took over and became one of the most respected presidents of the 19th century. Another Republican, Arthur continued to work on civil service reform and modernizing the Navy, as well as keeping an eye on the recently conquered South. A big, fat blotch on Arthur’s resume is his signing of the anti-immigrant Chinese Exclusion Act, but other than that Arthur was one of the finest presidents in the history of the republic. Like Hayes, Arthur stepped down after one term and retired to his New York City home.

3. Grover Cleveland (presidential terms: 1885-89 and 1893-97). That’s right, Cleveland was the guy who served two presidential terms that weren’t back-to-back. What’s even crazier than that is the fact that Cleveland was a Democrat, and the only one to hold the office of the presidency between 1869-1913. Throughout that time period, the presidency was dominated by Republicans and Cleveland’s honest persistence. Cleveland was such a good president that this short piece cannot hope to do him service, but I will throw this factoid out there for your next cocktail party: Grover Cleveland once did time as the Mayor of Buffalo (home of long-suffering Bills fans).

2. Martin van Buren (presidential term: 1837-41). Who? Exactly! Martin Van Buren was the guy elected to mop up after Andrew Jackson. Van Buren was actually a key advisor to Jackson during Old Hickory’s presidency, but his own tenure was obviously less confrontational. Without Van Buren’s stewardship, the United States could have easily descended into Civil War far sooner than it did. He continues to be the only president who spoke English as a second language (his childhood tongue was Dutch).

1. John Quincy Adams (presidential term: 1825-29). Perhaps Q is a little bit more famous than the other four men on this list, but his presidency in definitely unheralded. That’s probably because his diplomatic achievements were so great. Adams is largely credited for being the architect of the Monroe Doctrine, which sought to keep Europeans out of the New World. During his short tenure as president, Adams saw the formation of political parties happen right before his eyes. Thus the political party in the United States was born.

Further thoughts

The office of the presidency was not designed to be sexy or powerful. It was designed to be a counterweight to the legislative and judicial branches of a federal government, and not much more. Somehow, though, all the glory seems to go to those presidents who did more than run a branch of the government.

For those of us who think good presidents run a government simply and effectively, the Roosevelts and Bushes and (of course) Woodrow Wilson were bad presidents. America was made great by men like Grover Cleveland, Calvin Coolidge, and Martin Van Buren. If you prefer this line of thinking, check out Ivan Eland’s short book Recarving Rushmore. You’ll like it.

Brandon Christensen is a weekly columnist at RealClearHistory and a contributor to the site's Historiat blog. He also blogs at Notes On Liberty. Send him mail. Follow him on Twitter.

10 Reasons to Love 'Silent Cal'

2019-02-14T00:00:00Z

This week’s Historiat post focused on Calvin Coolidge’s deft use of the radio, at that time a new medium of mass communication, to reach the American people. While doing research for the post it quickly became apparent to me that Silent Cal is one of the most understudied presidents in American history, on par with the likes of Grover Cleveland, Chester Arthur, or Rutherford Hayes. Here are 10 Reasons to Love Silent Cal:

10. He was a small government conservative, which is probably why he doesn’t get a lot of attention from historians, who lean overwhelmingly to the left of the political spectrum. Small government conservatives avoid crazy world wars and expansive, expensive federal policies that attempt to remake American society into a utopian image. Often, they are elected to clean up the messes made by predecessors who tried to use their power to fight major wars and remake American society. Coolidge was one such example of a small government republican foisted into the role of president in order to clean up the mess made by a big government ideologue.

9. Fought against racism. Silent Cal spoke out often against the chronic racism of the South and its party, the Democrats. Lynching had gotten so bad in the 1920s that the Republican Party made anti-lynching legislation part of its platform in the early part of the 20th century. Coolidge tried to push through anti-lynching legislation that would make that heinous act a federal crime, but as an executive there was not a whole lot he could do about it except use his bully pulpit (which he did, and often). He used his bully pulpit (and the new medium of radio) to speak out in favor of racial equality and against the white supremacist ideology that dominated the South and the Democratic Party at the time. Kurt Schmoke, the President of the University of Baltimore, has a great, short essay on Coolidge’s fight against the K.K.K. during his presidency.

8. A true constitutional federalist. Coolidge’s anti-lynching stance is all the more remarkable because he was, by and large, a man who sought to keep the federal government limited. The lynchings were so heinous, however, that Coolidge and other Republicans believed federal legislation was necessary to fight the Klan. America’s 30th president was far more careful when it came to other kinds of federal legislation, though. Coolidge vetoed several bills given to him by Congress, including a spending bill that would have given World War I veterans significantly more money thanks to a budget surplus (Coolidge’s veto was overridden). Coolidge also routinely vetoed farm subsidies, and at one point deigned to remind the American people that “farmers have never made much money,” and “I do not believe we can do much about it.” In five years Coolidge vetoed 50 bills (music to a libertarian’s ears).

7. Coolidge was quiet, and quite against Washington social life. Ever wonder where Coolidge got his nickname “Silent Cal”? It wasn’t until he got to Washington, as vice president to Warren Harding, that Coolidge became known as Silent Cal. Apparently the socialites who invited him and his lovely wife to parties thought he was odd because of his silence, and mockingly nicknamed him Silent Cal. For Coolidge, though, the nickname was a badge of honor. In the world we live in today, where bombasts and outright demagogues grab all the headlines, Coolidge’s words are all the more important: “The words of a President have an enormous weight, and ought not to be used indiscriminately.” If only today’s political class had as much respect for history and power as Coolidge.

6. Foreign policy. Republicans were elected back into the presidency after Woodrow Wilson’s disastrous campaign to make the republic into a world power. Part of the Republican platform called for the U.S. to stay out of the newly created League of Nations, and Coolidge did just that. While not opposed to the idea of a League of some sort, Coolidge did not think the League of Nations as it was constructed would serve American interests. Coolidge was not an isolationist, though. Instead, he harkened back to an earlier era, and focused on maintaining consistency in regards to the Monroe Doctrine. The Coolidge administration recognized a new revolutionary government in Mexico, established a police force in the Dominican Republic, and continued to occupy both Nicaragua and Haiti. Coolidge’s only foreign visit during his presidency was to Havana (ninety miles off the coast of American soil), which marked the last time an American president would visit the island until Barack Obama did so in 2016. Many historians give Coolidge low marks for his foreign policy, arguing that he did too little, and as a result contributed to the rise of fascism in Europe and East Asia. The reality, though, is that Coolidge had a sophisticated, constitutionally focused, tradition-based understanding of international relations, and placing the blame of fascism’s rise on Coolidge and other Republicans instead of on Woodrow Wilson, who sought to make the world safe for democracy by destroying three old, multi-ethnic empires and replacing them with democratic polities, is disingenuous (at best).

5. Native Americans. Coolidge and other Republicans were not content with fighting anti-black racism and anti-Semitism. In June of 1924, Coolidge signed the Indian Citizenship Act, which gave all Native Americans living on reservations American citizenship. This was no small feat, as just a generation before Americans and Indians were engaged in a brutal struggle for control of the lands west of the Mississippi, and few Americans thought that Indians deserved to have equal political status with whites. With one simple, quiet stroke, Coolidge took a big step towards equalizing the three American races that Tocqueville did such a good job describing in 1835.

4. A team player. Coolidge did not like Herbert Hoover, but he refrained from publicly criticizing him. In an age where loyalty and cooperation are viewed as weaknesses, especially in the realm of politics, Coolidge’s team mentality was refreshing. Coolidge was such a good team player, in fact, that he went to bat for Hoover during his run for presidency in 1929. Coolidge’s sophisticated small government republicanism clashed mightily with Hoover’s vulgar technocratic utopianism, but the Republican Party’s commitment to ending the racism of the Democrats held the two clashing ideologies together throughout Coolidge’s one full term and both of Hoover’s runs for president. Without Coolidge’s public support for Hoover, it is unlikely that the republic would have made as much progress as it did in regards to fighting racism and anti-Semitism.

3. Stepped down after one term. Unlike Franklin Roosevelt, who continued to seek the power of the presidency long after its burdens affected his health, Coolidge chose to look after himself and his family after his first full term in office, and refused to seek a second term. When GOP operatives came calling for him in 1932, after Hoover’s disastrous term was nearing its end, Coolidge politely declined to run again. Clearly, Coolidge’s presidency was not about power, and his refusal to re-enter politics after a full term as president speaks volumes about his sophisticated small government republicanism. (One a somewhat related note, don’t forget to check out “10 Dictators Who Gave Up Power” here at RealClearHistory.)

2. Immigration. At odds with the rest of his anti-racist administration, Coolidge’s immigration policy was his weakest link. Although he was not opposed to immigration personally, and although he used the bully pulpit to speak out in favor of treating immigrants with respect and dignity, Coolidge was a party man, and the GOP was the party of immigration quotas in the 1920s. Reluctantly, and with public reservations, Coolidge signed the Immigration Act of 1924, which significantly limited immigration into the United States up until the mid-1960s, when new legislation overturned the law.

1. Debt. Under the Coolidge administration, the federal debt was significantly reduced (by about one-quarter), even though the Republicans inherited a $22.3 billion deficit from the disaster that was World War I. Coolidge remained the last president to put a significant dent into the federal deficit until Bill Clinton came along in the 1990s. While not terribly exciting or sexy, the reduction in federal debt is probably the most important contribution that Calvin Coolidge made, as President of the United States, to the republic. In an age where Democrats and Republicans spend and spend and spend, the administration of Calvin Coolidge continues to look better and better.

Further thoughts

Coolidge does not get the attention of historians the way Andrew Jackson or Teddy Roosevelt do, but there are a number of studies dedicated to America’s 30th president. Three books on Coolidge worth reading are Robert Sobell’s Coolidge: An American Enigma (2015), Robert Ferrell’s The Presidency of Calvin Coolidge (1998), and Amity Shlaes’ Coolidge (2014).

Have a good weekend.

Brandon Christensen is a weekly columnist at RealClearHistory and a contributor to the site's Historiat blog. He also blogs at Notes On Liberty. Send him mail. Follow him on Twitter.

Sobering Stats: 15,000 U.S. Airmen Killed in Training in WW II

2019-02-12T00:00:00Z

World War II was immense. So many numbers boggle the mind. Every day from Sept. 1, 1939-Aug. 14, 1945, 27,000 people were killed. That’s nine 9/11s every day for six years. Nearly 14 million Americans served during the war, the U.S. manufactured 300,000 airplanes. Even narrowing the focus, the numbers still amaze.

Three of every four German submariners died. The Soviets killed more of their own soldiers than total U.S. combat deaths. Even those who have studied the war for years cannot help but be stunned by such figures and many, many more.

But even more than 70 years on, there are still relatively unexplored areas of the war whose numbers are also quite astonishing. So it is with the number of Americans killed during aircrew training. The number of pilots and crew that died in training accidents in the U.S. during the war is 10 times the number of American deaths on D-Day. The heroism of those that stormed the Normandy beaches has been celebrated in countless books and movies.

Yet the fact that 15,000 young men died in aircrew training in the U.S. is virtually unknown. Aviation was still in its infancy during the 1930s. Only a tiny fraction of Americans had ever been on a plane. Even civil aviation was far from safe, military aviation even less so. In 1930, the accident rate for military aviation was 144 accidents per 100,000 flying hours. By 1940, the rate had been reduced to 51 accidents per 100,000 hours, a reduction of more than two thirds. But even this improved rate would be considered intolerably unsafe today.

As war loomed, the U.S. dramatically ramped up aircraft production and aircrew training. Many new aircraft designs were rushed into production. Even though there were dozens of aircraft manufacturers in the U.S., to meet the numbers demanded by the military, only large scale producers could hope to get contracts. So companies such as GM and Packard that had never produced planes or aircraft engines before were given huge contracts because they had the manufacturing capacity. The resulting retooling and production achievements were indeed impressive, but came at a cost. Many planes were put into use without proper testing, and in many cases even when design flaws were known, there was no time to investigate and take corrective action. Engine failures and on-board fires were common.

The crews knew what they were dealing with. The B-24 bomber was nicknamed the “flying coffin” due to its many problems. Not surprisingly, more trainees died in B-24s than any other plane. But the war took precedence over safety. The planes continued to fly. With the massive increase in aircraft production came a commensurate increase in aircrew training. From mid 1939-August 1945, the U.S. trained hundreds of thousands of new pilots. In 1939, fewer than 1,000 pilots graduated basic flight training, and in 1943 that figure had grown to 165,000. Over the course of the war 200,000 trainees flunked out or died in training accidents.

The huge increase in pilot training numbers (including many who just didn’t have what it took), coupled with the operation of tens of thousands of complex aircraft that had been hurriedly designed and produced, spelled disaster. A comparison of two years tells the story:

Year Number of Accidents Aircraft Wrecked Fatalities

1941 1304 228 199

1944 20,883 5,387 5,616

And this was just in the continental U.S. There were many thousands more wrecks and deaths overseas. Looking at totals for the entire war is even more sobering. The U.S. suffered 52,173 aircrew combat losses. But another 25,844 died in accidents. More than half of these died in the continental U.S. The U.S. lost 65,164 planes during the war, but only 22,948 in combat. There were 21,583 lost due to accidents in the U.S., and another 20,633 lost in accidents overseas.

Many more planes were lost due to pilot error or mechanical failure than were shot down by the enemy. More than 1,000 were lost while being delivered to their duty stations from the U.S. So the danger of non-combat flying did not end with the conclusion of training. The planes continued to be unreliable, and to make things worse, once overseas, many green pilots were given the controls of planes in which they had little to no flying experience.

As the figures show, non-combat flying continued to be extremely hazardous whether in training in the U.S. or after arrival overseas. The courage displayed by aircrews in combat over Germany and Japan, and the losses they sustained, is one of the most memorable stories of World War II. But it should not be forgotten that nearly 15,000 young men died in training accidents without ever leaving the United States. Although they never faced flak or Messerschmitts, their sacrifice was as real and memorable as those shot down over Germany.

Source: Army Air Forces Statistical Digest of World War II

Bob Blanchard received a B.A. in history from the University of Vermont, after which he began a long career with the U.S Customs Service. Throughout his career he continued to pursue his interest in history, particularly the Second World War. Now retired and living in northern Vermont, he is co-owner of a firm that provides technical support for freight companies involved in importing into the U.S. He can be reached at kingscollegeca@yahoo.com.

'Silent Cal' Embraced the Radio

2019-02-11T00:00:00Z

Calvin Coolidge is one of the most understudied Presidents in American history. He stepped in when President Warren G. Harding died unexpectedly in San Francisco, and then ran for the presidency himself in 1924, winning after taking every non-Southern state except for Wisconsin (which was home to the upstart Progressive Party’s candidate, Robert LaFollette). President Coolidge was a conservative Republican from New England.

Silent Cal’s demeanor might also contribute to his lack of attention in American history textbooks. Nobody wants to write about a scandal-exempt presidency or a peace-time executive or a boom-and-bust-free economy. Historians, especially the left-wing historians who dominate the American academy today, would prefer to focus on big issues that paint their heroes and villains in a light that fits their worldview. Silent Cal does none of those things, yet he was an immensely popular president (and state governor, of Massachusetts from 1918-20). Coolidge’s conservatism has also been misunderstood or misrepresented in history textbooks. His opposition to much of the “progressive” legislation that landed on his desk (only to be promptly vetoed) had more to do with his conception of the American federal system than with small government ideology.

Indeed, as governor of Massachusetts Coolidge supported child labor legislation, worker representation on corporate boards, wage hikes, and government safety regulations, all policies that he vetoed as president. To Coolidge, this type of legislation was consistent with the nature of state and local governance, but not that of the federal government, which is, under the constitution, to be restricted to a few specific policies.

President Coolidge was not suspicious of technology or innovation, either. On Feb. 12, 1924, Coolidge gave the first radio speech in American history to be considered “political” in nature, a short speech announcing his intention to run a presidential election campaign. This followed a Dec. 6, 1923 speech given to Congress and foreshadowed a president who became quite at home with using the radio as a medium to communicate with the American people. On March 5, 1925, Coolidge’s second inauguration was the first in history to be broadcast over the radio.

Franklin Roosevelt gets more credit from historians for being the early 20th century’s most prodigious user of mass communication technologies (at least in the United States), but Silent Cal, in his own way, could give FDR and his fireside chats a run for his money. If FDR perfected the art of mass communication through the medium of radio, then Coolidge - the man labeled “Silent Cal” by Washington socialites - popularized it.

The radio changed the way Americans lived and died, and its advent marked a monumental shift in not only American history but world history as well. Were historians to give Coolidge a fair shake, they would see, too, that his conservative, small government principles also changed the way Americans lived and died.

Doolittle Raid Was About American, British Morale

2019-02-10T00:00:00Z

History is always relevant if we’re willing to learn from it. A good example is the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo Japan on April 18, 1942. By way of quick background, the United States was forced into World War II after the surprise Japanese attack on our naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Japan had been aggressively moving against other countries in the Pacific realm for several years, taking territory and raw materials to satisfy its expansionist aims.

The Japanese correctly saw the U.S. Pacific Fleet, stationed at Pearl, as the biggest threat to their continued activities and so devised a plan to mount a surprise attack on Dec. 7, 1941 against our forces. The surprise worked. The attack sank or disabled eight of the nine battleships in the fleet (only the USS Pennsylvania, in dry dock, escaped major damage), destroyed dozens of aircraft on the ground and killed more than 2,300 U.S. military and civilian personnel, all for the loss of only 29 Japanese aircraft.

The following day, Dec. 8, 1941, the Japanese attacked our main air base in the western Pacific, Clark Field in the Philippines, destroying dozens of U.S. fighters and bombers on the ground, effectively neutralizing our military strength in that region. Therefore, in less than two days, the Japanese dealt the U.S. military two huge defeats, setting the stage for the fall of the Philippines and leaving the entire Pacific essentially unprotected from Japanese attack.

What is less known but unquestionably just as significant as the dual attacks on Pearl Harbor and Clark Field is the Japanese sinking of the British battleships Repulse and Prince of Wales in the South China Sea, just three days after Pearl Harbor, Dec. 10, 1941. The British had dispatched significant naval forces to protect their interests in the Pacific, especially then-colony Singapore, from Japanese aggression. Britain, although a small country in terms of landmass and population, had long been among the world’s pre-eminent naval powers. From Admiral Nelson’s many decisive victories in the late 1700’s-early 1800’s (culminating with his defeat of Napoleon’s fleet off of Trafalgar in 1805) to Admiral Jellicoe’s leading the British Grand Fleet in all-out battleship warfare against Germany’s High Seas Fleet at Jutland in 1916 to the powerful mastery of the seas enjoyed by the Royal Navy right through the beginning of World War II, British naval tradition was a source of national pride and identity, very much part of the fabric of their culture.

Only seven months prior (in May 1941), Prince of Wales had played a central role in one of the greatest wartime triumphs ever achieved by Britain: the sinking of the German battleship Bismarck. The Bismarck—a fast, modern, heavily-armed ship—was intended to be a North Atlantic commerce and cargo-ship raider. If it managed to break out into the vast undefended expanse of the North Atlantic, it would be free to extract potentially crippling losses from the nation-saving material assistance coming over to England by convoy from the United States. “Sink the Bismarck!” became a national rallying cry in Britain in May 1941, as the deadly German ship attempted to make its way into the open waters of the Atlantic.

The Brits sank it, and the Prince of Wales played a major part, inflicting the initial damage on the Bismarck that led to its eventual demise. If ever an inanimate object—a warship—could become a national hero, the Prince of Wales did.

As stunned and shocked as America was after Pearl Harbor and Clark Field, Britain’s response was one of utter disbelief and horrified astonishment over the sinking of Repulse and Prince of Wales. As 1941 turned into 1942, the Philippines were falling to the Japanese in yet another humiliating defeat for America, Britain was deadlocked in a bitter struggle of attrition against the Germans in North Africa, and Germany was inflicting incredible casualties on the Russians on the Eastern front.

The allies — led by America and Britain — were losing everywhere. Morale was low. Eventual victory seemed impossible. Something needed to be done. A bold, unexpected stroke to rock Japan back on its heels and give a beleaguered public something to cheer about.

President Roosevelt and Army Air Corps Lt. Colonel James Doolittle came up with a daring plan: Strike Japan from the air, using carrier-launched planes. Attack Tokyo, right over the heart of Japan, when Japan was at its militarily invincible height. In a stroke of immeasurable luck, America’s aircraft carriers were not at Pearl Harbor at the time of the Japanese attack. They were out at sea on maneuvers. In a stroke of immeasurable strategic shortsightedness, Japanese Admiral Yamamoto elected to withdraw his forces back to Japan instead of ordering a follow-up strike, in spite of the fact that Pearl’s air cover was gone. A follow-up attack could well have finished off the U.S. Navy completely, since the carriers returned to Pearl later that day.

But the Japanese didn’t strike again and America’s carrier force was intact. So the plan was this: assemble a task force centered around the carrier USS Hornet and sail towards Japan. Once the force was about 400 miles away, they’d launch their planes and then reverse direction for a fast escape.

The Navy had no planes that could fly 400 miles to Japan, then fly several hundred more into China, where the plan was they’d land in more-or-less friendly territory and the crews would then somehow make it back home.

Doolittle decided to use 16 twin-engined Army B-25 medium bombers to fly off the Hornet. The B-25 had the range and payload capability that was needed for the mission, far in excess of any Navy plane then in service. Flying a large two-engine medium bomber off a carrier’s deck had never been done before. The crews of five practiced for weeks on land airstrips painted to the Hornet’s dimensions. The B-25’s themselves were stripped of all unnecessary weight to make the task easier: The bottom gun turret was removed, the upper and side guns were taken out and replaced with wooden broom sticks painted black to look like guns, the heavy precision Norden bombsight was removed and replaced by a lighter, simpler device, and extra fuel tanks were installed to extend the planes’ range.

En route to target, the ships encountered a Japanese fishing trawler about 800 miles out from Japan. (Different reports over the years have put this distance anywhere from 170 miles beyond the 400-mile out launch point — 570 miles out — to 400 miles short of the launch point — 800 miles out.) The boat was quickly sunk by gunfire from an accompanying U.S escort cruiser, but there was no way to determine if the trawler was just a harmless fishing vessel or a radio-equipped spy ship disguised to look like a fishing boat. Unsure if their cover had been blown, Doolittle’s planes either had to launch immediately or the task force had to turn around.

All 80 of the B-25 crews said, “We go now!” Not a single dissent among the group, all of whom had volunteered for what was almost certainly a suicide mission.

Incredibly, all 16 planes — heavily-laden with fuel and bombs — took off successfully and headed toward Japan. They achieved complete surprise, struck a factory complex and flew away towards China without a single loss to Japanese defenses. It was a total success and the Japanese military planners and public alike were indeed awe-struck and rocked back on their heels. Not even five months after Pearl Harbor, amidst never-ending catastrophic news from every front around the world, American boldness and unfathomable bravery struck a blow for the Allies and their people, lifting the morale and spirits of everyone, everywhere, to an incalculable degree.

This was Presidential leadership at its finest. Roosevelt understood the need for our country, and the British too, to have a ‘victory,” to buttress the will of the people to go on fighting, to end the string of bad news. The Doolittle mission didn’t accomplish anything of great material significance—the number of planes was too few, their bomb loads too small — and the idea of risking the loss of an invaluable American carrier task force for what was, in all candor, simply a publicity stunt, was total lunacy, from both a logical and strategic standpoint.

However, rallying public support behind a difficult nationally-shared concern of major import is as important a task as a president has. George W. Bush was able to garner similar support and enthusiasm when he stood among the 9-11 ruins with a bullhorn and said, “..and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!” Presidents Kennedy and Reagan were similarly and legitimately inspirational, any number of times.

In this respect, the President plays a major role, whether it’s to lead a rally for public support for a great national scientific effort or deliver a reassuringly-fatherly address after a national emergency or tragedy, or present the country with a reasoned, logical, non-condescending explanation of why the country is about to embark on a difficult course that will result in the betterment of our situation in the long run.

History is a good teacher. Roosevelt’s decision to green-light the seemingly illogical Doolittle Raid serves as an excellent example of the sort of bold, big-picture, for-national-benefit actions that a President can — and should — take.

Epilogue—Results of the Doolittle Raid:

All 16 planes made it safely out of Japanese airspace, but being low on fuel because of the greater-than-planned flying distance, all crash-landed in either eastern China or eastern Russia. Three crew members were killed during the landings. Eight crewmen were captured by occupying Japanese soldiers in China; three were executed and five were imprisoned, one of whom died in captivity. The rest eventually made their way back and resumed their military service. Doolittle thought he was going to be court-martialed for losing all 16 planes and failing to get his crews home quickly, but instead, he received the Medal of Honor and a promotion to brigadier general when he returned home in June 1942.

Sources

10 Walls That Have Actually Been Built

2019-02-07T00:00:00Z

You knew this was coming. At some point in time, you just knew. I’ll skip straight to the facts, folks. I’m not going to use this space to bag on President Trump or the European populists who want to keep refugees from the Middle East out. Walls have been a part of human history as long as trade and government have been a part of human history. It’s just a fact of life. Here are 10 walls in history that have actually been built:

10. Let’s start off with the easiest one: the Great Wall of China. Technically a series of fortifications that began in the 7th century BC, the Great Wall of China as it is popularly depicted - stone walls with carefully-placed watch towers hemming and hawing through lush, green mountain sides -- was built to keep invaders from the north out. The Great Wall was also useful for customs officers and other government officials trying to keep tabs on economic activity. Contrary to popular myth, the Great Wall of China is not a man-made object you can see from the moon (that honor belongs to the Kennecott Copper Mine in Utah and the “greenhouse complex” in Andalusia, Spain).

9. Walls of Constantinople (4th century-1453). Begun in the 4th century with Constantinople’s founding as the new capital city of the Roman Empire, the Walls of Constantinople grew more elaborate and famed abroad as the city grew older and more established. (For example, the famed Theodosian Walls -- double walls built to the west of the original wall -- were constructed in the early part of the 5th century.) Constantinople’s walls survived sieges by Arabs, Russians, Persians, non-Ottoman Turks, and Bulgarians. The walls survived cannons and naval bombardments from the seas surrounding the city. For 900 years the Walls of Constantinople protected the inhabitants of Christianity’s capital city. It is ironic, then, that Constantinople’s walls first fell, in 1204, to Venetian mercenaries (among other factions) during the Fourth Crusade. In 1453, the Walls of Constantinople once again buckled, this time for good, to the forces of the Ottoman Empire.

8. Kano city wall in Nigeria (11th-14th centuries). The walls protecting the west African city of Kano were 50 feet high (the Walls of Constantinople, in contrast, reached up to about 40 feet). Although intimidating, the city walls of Kano did not protect its inhabitants for long. In 1513 the powerful Songhai Empire and its cannons conquered Kano and the city lost its independence for good, passing from one empire to another up to the present day, when it grew to be the second largest city in Nigeria and the de facto capital of the republic’s Muslim north.

7. Hadrian’s wall (est. 122 AD). This wall marked the northern limit of the Roman Empire. Did you know that Hadrian’s Wall is the largest piece of intact Roman archaeology in the world today? Perhaps the most interesting thing about Hadrian’s Wall, at least to a bunch of history enthusiasts like us, are the theories as to why the wall was built in the first place. Surely, the sparsely populated region north of Roman Britain was not worth such an expensive public project. Was it an ostentatious display of power, then, over the barbarians? Was it part of Hadrian’s overall foreign policy strategy of tightening up internal control of the empire before seeking to expand again? Or was Hadrian’s Wall built for something else entirely?

6. Korean DMZ (1953-present). The demilitarized zone on the Korean Peninsula is essentially one long wall. It extends from the Yellow Sea to the Sea of Japan and was built immediately following the ceasefire between the North Korea-China alliance and the United Nations. When North Korea eventually collapses (an inevitable outcome of its socialist policies) and freedom becomes the norm there, the DMZ will become quite the tourist attraction. The entire zone is 160 miles long and 2 ½ miles wide, with tunnels dug by the North Koreans, guard towers, and the ruins of a medieval castle all waiting to fill the coffers of a unified Korea’s tourism department.

5. Berlin Wall (1961-89). Let’s stick with the Cold War theme. The socialists who built the wall in Berlin called it the “Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart,” but by 1961 all of the fascists had long since been defeated. Was the Berlin Wall built to keep people -- “fascists” -- out, or in? With socialism’s blatant failure apparent to all, it seems we now know the answer. This is a far cry from contemporary calls to keep out migrants, or ancient calls to keep out invaders. Still, it’s hard to discount the powerful images of Berliners smashing the socialist-built wall to pieces.

4. Wall Street wall (1600s). Ever wonder why the financial center of the world’s richest, most powerful, and most technologically advanced society in history is called “Wall Street”? It’s because the Dutch built one there in the early 17th century to protect themselves from British and Native rivals. Another theory is that the area was settled by Walloons, a people from Belgium, and the Dutch called them Waals. The wall was brought down by the British in 1699, regardless of how it got its name.

3. Athenian “long walls” (479 BC-86 AD). The long walls of Athens were incredible; they were veritable wonders of the ancient world. The long walls were just that: long walls that connected Athens to her port cities, Piraeus and Phaleron. The initial conception for the walls happened during the time of the invasion of Xerxes, but actual construction of the long walls did not begin until the Peloponnesian War against Sparta and the Peloponnesian League. The walls were built as a lifeline from the sea to Athens; as long as the walls remained, it was impossible for ancient armies to defeat sea-strong Athens. The long walls were so effective against Sparta and her Peloponnesian allies that the alliance had to fight Athens on the sea, where it was strongest, in order to starve the commercial republic into submission. When the Peloponnesians finally captured Piraeus in 405 BC (thus starving Athens), the main demand from the Spartan victors was that the long walls come down. The walls were rebuilt just one decade later (394 BC), and stood until the Romans conquered Greece in 86 AD.

2. Wall of Jericho (Stone Age). The Wall of Jericho is most famous for its role in the Book of Joshua, where the Jews simply walked around the walled city of Jericho with the Ark of the Covenant in tow for seven days and, on the seventh day, the wall collapsed after loud shouting from the conquering Jewish army, leaving the city open for Jewish forces to enter. The problem is, though, that the Book of Joshua describes a Bronze Age event, but archaeologists date the Wall of Jericho to the Stone Age. The Wall of Jericho was, according to archaeologists, built, maintained, and destroyed in the Stone Age. There is no Bronze Age equivalent of Jericho’s Stone Age wall in the archaeological record. The phrase “history is written by the victors” has never been so apt.

1. Kumbhalgarh Wall (“Great Wall of India”). Built in the middle of the 15th century, according to the most up-to-date sources, Kumbhalgarh Wall is the second longest wall in the world after the Great Wall of China and one of the India’s best-kept secrets. Located in Rajasthan, in northwestern India, the wall hosts a series of fortifications and protects over 300 Hindu and Jain temples. The history of this area is still foggy, but Kumbhalgarh was a Hindu fort that eventually came under the dominion of the Muslim Mughal Empire (the wall was in use until the 19th century). There is still plenty of work for historians out there, you just have to know where to look!

Further thoughts

I read an excellent book recently titled The Birth of the People’s Republic of Antarctica. It was written by John Calvin Batchelor, a radio personality in New York who has his own show. Mr Batchelor is a conservative Republican. The book is about refugees. It’s one of the most original stories I’ve encountered in years. Here is a link .

Have a good weekend.

Brandon Christensen is a weekly columnist at RealClearHistory and a contributor to the site's Historiat blog. He also blogs at Notes On Liberty. Send him mail. Follow him on Twitter.

Lessons From Bill Murray's 'Groundhog Day'

2019-02-04T00:00:00Z

So, Punxsutawney Phil predicted an early spring this year. Thanks to Bill Murray’s classic performance in the famous film, you know what I’m talking about. America has a lot of strange, offbeat traditions or holidays, which is to be expected in a commercial republic of 328.4 million people that bridges the world’s two largest oceans.

Immigration into the republic played, and continues to play, a role in the strange and offbeat traditions of America’s regions. The contributions that immigrants bring to the republic are immense, and include cultural as well as economic positives.

The strangeness of some, if not all, of our traditions is, counterintuitively perhaps, emblematic of the cultural power of American film to enrich not only American life, but life around the globe. Hollywood’s impact on global culture by itself is astounding, but when you think about the cultural production of life in developing economies like India (which now has Bollywood) and Nigeria (Nollywood), it’s hard not to be humbled by our place in the world. American films shape the views of billions of people around the world.

But why did American cinema ascende the globe? Why didn’t, to use one example, France’s filmmaking industry assume prominence? Or Soviet cinema? The most reasonable answer would be that cinema took off in popularity around the same time that the United States came out as the clear winner in World War II. Our commercial republic avoided much of the territorial and industrial devastation that the other victorious powers absorbed in the war. A more interesting answer would be that policies in competitor states like France or the Soviet Union regarding cultural production led to poor quality filmmaking. French sociologist Jacques Delacroix has a non-scholarly article on this latter argument here, if you’re interested.

Groundhog Day is obscure, and could have remained a regional oddity if it were not for Murray’s film. A “Pennsylvania Dutch” tradition, versions of Groundhog Day first appear, in writing, in the United States, in 1840. The German-speaking peoples who settled the New World had a tradition of weather predicting by a furry animal (usually badger or fox or even a bear), and this was continued by using the groundhog in place of the Old World’s forest-dwelling rodents. That’s a weird tradition. Not in a bad way, mind you, but it’s weird, and Americans accepted it, processed it, and gave it a whole new life. Now, well-cultured people around the world celebrate this odd holiday by watching the film that celebrates a universal parable in its own unique way. And thousands descend on the tiny town of Gobbler's Knob every year to see the event in person.

The film itself was directed by Harold Ramis, who was Murray’s co-star in Ghostbusters (he was Egon), and co-written by Ramis and Danny Rubin (who now lectures in Harvard University’s English Department). The film only met with modest success at the box office, but like all classics, like all producers of culture, it has stood the test of time and become one of most-loved comedies of all time in American life.

Groundhog Day might even be one of the best comedies in global life, too. Imagine what life would be like without the freedom to express yourself. For many people in the world today, that is the way it has always been and always will be. For Americans, it’s unfathomable. That’s the lesson I drew from Punxsutawney Phil this year. That’s why I love living in America.

Brandon Christensen is a weekly columnist at RealClearHistory and a contributor to the site's Historiat blog. He also blogs at Notes On Liberty. Send him mail. Follow him on Twitter.