Tag Archives: History

If we don’t learn from it, we are doomed to repeat it

On the Ides of March

(Don’t you hate when you rush to get a post written because the topic is time-sensitive, and then in your rush you actually forget to hit “Publish”?)

After finally defeating its only serious geopolitical rival, the Republic slowly turned into an oligarchy. The wealthy acquired the positions of power, and used their power to get even wealthier. The government became lazy and corrupt; occasional attempts at reform all failed due largely to institutional inertia. The “wealth gap” widened, but as long as the lower classes had their most basic needs met, rebellions and protests were minimal and easily dealt with.

Then a crisis happened (due in no small part to the Republic’s own policies) that struck at the very heart of the Republic. The oligarchs took over, and gave some of their own extraordinary powers to deal with the emergency.

After the emergency passed, one of those oligarchs schemed to take control of the government. The leaders of the Republic were too weak and ineffectual to resist – until that oligarch threatened their prerogatives and started talking about making himself king.

“As with all matters of ancient history, who are we to say who was wrong and who was right in all of that? All we can say for sure is that a man who was really, really full of himself, who believed that the law did not apply to him, and who thought of himself as a king got his ass murdered. Thankfully, history never repeats itself so none of this has any relevance to the present and none of us should give the ideas contained herein any additional thought.” – Craig Calcaterra

Epilogue: The power vacuum created by the assassination sparked a civil war; when that was over and the dust settled, the Republic had turned into an Empire anyway…

 

 

Book Review: Book and Dagger

Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II
Elyse Graham
Ecco Books
Copyright 2024 by the author

You could, if you want, blame Secretary of State Henry Stimson. In 1929, he’s alleged to have stuck his nose in the air and said “Gentlemen don’t read each other’s mail”, and then shut down most of the United States’ foreign intelligence apparatus. So we were caught flat-footed when the Japanese attacked twelve years later.

Now it was up to William Donovan, the newly appointed head of the OSS, to put together his agency from scratch. The “Research and Development” side would be easy – just get a bunch of technical people to design and build all the secret devices of spycraft. But for the “Research and Analysis” department, which would collect and study the mountains of data needed by the US Military, you needed people with highly specialized training.

So that’s why a Yale English professor found himself at a “secure location”, learning how to silently kill someone with a knife, and how to deal with being interrogated by the enemy. Oh, by the way, you’d only need to hold up under capture and interrogation for 48 hours. Not because by that time they’d be done with you, or that you could expect to be rescued by then, but because that’s how long it should take for your contacts to forget they ever knew you and “vanish”….

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Book Review: Pax

Pax: War and Peace in Rome’s Golden Age
Tom Holland
Basic Books
Copyright 2023 by the author

We’ve long been fascinated with the Roman Empire. It’s not just that their language of Latin is one of the grandparents of English, or that a good deal of our shared culture and society can be traced back to Roman origins. There’s something about the Empire that has led it to keep reappearing in popular culture, from the epic costume dramas of the 1950s to the TV shows of more recent times. Could it be we’re obsessed with the details of Roman life – the food, drink, and clothing? Or perhaps it’s the more abstract things – the philosophy, the “ethos”, the “mindset” of what a Proper Roman Citizen aspired to?

Oh, come off it, it’s the palace intrigue, corruption, and depravity of the ruling class. It’s the rise to power of Julius Caesar and his assassination, the depravity of Caligula and Nero, and the slow, sputtering decline of the Empire that attract us.

With this third work (the previous, Rubicon and Dynasty, covered Julius Caesar and Augustus through Nero), Holland continues his chronicling of the Empire. This volume takes us from the reign of Nero through the death of Hadrian – the final ascent to the peak of the Imperial power. It’s an interesting journey; there’s the “Year of the Four Emperors”, revolts in Judea, and fighting on the frontiers from Scotland to the Danube to Persia.

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BOOK REVIEW: Stranded in the Sky

Stranded in the Sky:
The Untold Story of Pan Am Luxury Airliners Trapped on the Day of Infamy
Philip Jett
Turner Publishing Company
Copyright 2023 by the author

In the late 1930s, the epitome of luxury travel was aboard one of Pan American’s “clippers”. These huge seaplanes crossed the oceans while passengers enjoyed all the accommodations and amenities one would expect from a four star hotel. Within the space and weight requirements, of course. A single round trip ticket across the Pacific might cost you the equivalent of $40,000 today. So only celebrities, government officials, wealthy businessmen, and the occasional Pan American employee would benefit. It was still much faster than travel by sea. The airline maintained their own network of dedicated hotels on islands across the oceans to allow for refueling, maintenance, and overnight R&R for flights longer than the planes’ abilities.

“Overnight to Hawaii” – 1940 Pan American Clipper promotional film:

In the early hours of December 6/7, 1941, the Hong Kong Clipper was in Kowloon Harbor in it’s namesake territory, waiting to begin its regular shuttle flight to Manila. The Pacific Clipper had already departed Honolulu, heading for Auckland, New Zealand, via stops in Canton Island (in what is now Kiribati), Fiji, and New Calendonia. The Anzac Clipper was ready to leave San Francisco for its journey to Singapore, stopping at Honolulu, Midway Atoll, Wake Island, Guam, and Manila. The Philippine Clipper was already along that route, heading for Wake Island…. Continue reading →

BOOK REVIEW: Crooked

Crooked: The Roaring ‘20s Tale of a Corrupt Attorney General, a Crusading Senator, and the Birth of the American Political Scandal
Nathan Masters
Hachette Books}
Copyright 2023 by the author

When most people think of Warren Harding’s presidency, one of the first things that will come to mind is the “Teapot Dome” scandal, where federal oil reserves were sold off to oil companies to the benefit of people in the Harding administration. Less well-known to us today, but even more outrageous was the contemporary scandal at the Veterans’ Bureau. The Bureau was purchasing goods for far more than market price, surplus goods were sold off for much less than they should have been, and millions of dollars were flat out unaccounted for.

Senate committees were investigating all this. But the biggest scandal was, quite simply, that the US Attorney General and the Justice Department weren’t doing anything at all to help the investigations.

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BOOK REVIEW: Empire of Ice and Stone

Empire of Ice and Stone: The Disastrous and Heroic Voyage of the Karluk
Buddy Levy
St. Martin’s Press
Copyright 2022 by the author

It’s the explorers going for “firsts” that get all the press. First to the South Pole, first to summit Everest, etc. The ones doing the actual science and cartography, filling in the blank spaces on the map, are the ones who get forgotten – even if their travels and travails are far more interesting and exciting.

In 1913, Vilhjalmur Stefansson decided to lead an expedition to the “High Arctic”, setting out from Alaska and moving up into the Canadian north. The “Canadian Arctic Expedition” would map the territory and do assorted scientific explorations, looking for sea life and recording the weather – and staking claim to any new lands. Stefansson, meanwhile, knew where the real profit was; he arranged for exclusive publication rights to pretty much everything produced by the expedition. There would be two ships to take all the scientists; Stefansson would captain the Alaska; Robert Bartlett would head the Karluk. Continue reading →

BOOK REVIEW: The Last Campaign

The Last Campaign: Sherman, Geronimo and the War for America
H.W. Brands
Doubleday Books
Copyright 2022 by the author

A while back I got involved in a discussion on what movies or TV series could not be made today. The 60s comedy F Troop immediately came to mind. Even in what was clearly a comedy, there’s not a chance in heck that you’d be able to get away with stereotyping the natives in such a manner today.

The contrarian in me started wondering what you’d have to do if you wanted to have your “pitch” for a reboot taken seriously. Obviously, the natives would have to be the only sane, decent, honorable, and intelligent characters. And you’d want them played by Native American actors (assuming you could get enough willing to take the roles).

Then you’d want to get a decent enough grasp on the history of the “Indian Wars”. That’s where H.W. Brands comes in.


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Let’s Kill Hitler!

The opening scene of the Doctor Who episode “Let’s Kill Hitler” (Series 6, Episode 8) ends with a secondary character (Melody Pond) holding a handgun and saying to The Doctor, “I’ve got a gun, you’ve got a time machine. What the hell, let’s kill Hitler!”

Aaaaand instead of some serious contemplation of the ethics of killing a person – even someone like Hitler – or The Doctor lecturing on how “You can’t rewrite history! Not one line! Believe me, I know!”, they wind up converting the episode into “Let’s Quickly Shove Hitler Into a Closet, and Spend the Rest of the Episode Doing Character Development”.

It was a real disappointment.

One of the most popular “alternate histories” is that where Germany / The Nazis win the Second World War. It’s justifiable to remind us of the evils of Nazism / fascism, but it’s at the point of being so overdone it’s boring.

What would be more interesting to see would be how WWII or even the rise of Nazism could be avoided in the first place.

What if you could go back in time, and stop Hitler? Continue reading →

Book Review: The Vortex

The Vortex: A True Story of History’s Deadliest Storm, an Unspeakable War, and Liberation
Scott Carney and Jason Miklian
HarperCollins
Copyright 2022 by the authors

In November, 1970, a cyclone slammed into East Pakistan. It was the deadliest storm in history, leaving some half a million dead in its wake. Fifteen months later, after a brutal and genocidal war, the nation of Bangladesh was born. As Carney and Miklian show, the events were not unconnected.

Through a mass of documentation and interviews with people who were there, Carney and Miklian have recreated the setting and placed you right in the action.

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Forty Acres and a Mule

General William Sherman had a problem. As the military commander in charge of large areas of the South in the late stages of the Civil War, he had many thousands of Black refugees that he had to provide with food and shelter. A delegation of Black leaders had approached Sherman and offered a solution: give them some land they can settle on and work as their own.

On January 16, 1865, Sherman issued Special Field Orders No. 15, which designated a large amount of unclaimed and abandoned land in his remit to be divided into lots of roughly forty acres each to be given to the refugees for homesteading (Spare mules that the Army no longer needed were given out later).

There was a bit of a catch in the order, though.

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