Tag Archives: Political History

Book Review: Dresden: A Survivor’s Story by Victor Gregg

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[FULL DISCLOSURE: I received my copy of this book free from the author. I was not paid for this review and the opinion expressed is purely my own]

Victor Gregg’s Dresden: A Survivor’s Story is a short work describing the author’s experience as  POW who got caught in Dresden in February, 1945 when the Allies bombed the city in what would become known as the Firebombing of Dresden.  The attack essentially destroyed the city center and killed an estimated 25,000 German’s.  Wikipedia has a pretty good article on the attacks that also discusses the controversy surrounding them that has grown up since the war.  To sum up the controversy, general anti-war people claim they were a crime and so do Neo-Nazi’s.  Both claim that Dresden was not a legitimate military target or that if it was the bombing did not hit them.

Back to the book.  Dresden: A Survivor’s Story, is the story of what one man saw and did just before, during, and just after the bombing.  Printed the book would only amount to roughly 40 pages.  It is an engaging tale and the author writes with a witty sarcasm that keeps the narrative flowing.  The events he relates surrounding the Dresden bombing seem fantastical but are probably accurate representations of what actually happened.  There is no doubt that the bombing of Dresden and it’s aftereffect were horrific.  Mr. Gregg’s narrative reflects this.  The only part of the book I take exception to is the afterword which I felt was a poorly written attempted rationale for why the Firebombing of Dresden was a war-crime.  I leave it to the individual reader to research it on their own and make the decision of whether a war-crime (A term I object to) occurred or not.

Editorializing: Personally, I find the whole talk of war crimes to be farcical.  It would be comical if so many people did not take the notion so seriously.  The term and the associated crimes against humanity, genocide, etc. Have been so misused that they no longer have meaning.  The traditional Laws of War stood the Western World in good stead for centuries and nothing that was done in WWII seems to me to have mitigated against their use.  What has happened in the last hundred years is a Quixotic attempt to civilize war, an activity that is inherently uncivilized.  The right of the victors would have sufficed perfectly to put the perpetrators of the holocaust against a wall but for some reason, the West felt the need for legalized vengeance.  Their invention of these crimes has subsequently turned around and bit them ever since.  There was no need to justify the destruction of Dresden, it was an enemy city and thus subject to attack.  The severity of said attack was and is irrelevant.  There is no such concept of proportionality in warfare, nor should their be.  Warfare is doing what you think you need to do to compel your enemy to submit; no more and no less.

Overall this is a well written work of personal reflection.  I recommend it for people that would like a description of what it was like to be in Dresden during and immediately after the bombing.  There is no great amount of detail here but it gives a good general description of what living through such an event was like.

Historical Resources on the Web

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Updated 29 April 2013

Below the fold is a list of historical sources on the internet, this includes both primary and secondary source collections.   I am constantly updating this list when I run across useful sites.   Please point me at sites I miss in the comments section.
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Book Review: The Reagan Diaries by Ronald Reagan

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I read The Reagan Diaries when they first came out and had occasion to reread them not long ago when I had nothing better to do.  I mainly read the book, not because I am a rabid Reagan conservative, although I have been so accused, but because Reagan was president when I was a kid in Junior and High School and he is also the first political figure who I really paid any attention to while they were in office.  I vaguely remember Carter being president, but only because my dad got angry every time his name was mentioned.  I learned some of my first curse words when Carter would come on TV. :)

Reagan was a pretty earth-shaking figure who broke America out of its post-Vietnam malaise and made us realize what a great country we are again.  For that alone he should be on the list of great presidents.  He is also an almost endless font of pithy quotations.  But enough about the man and more about the book.

The book itself consists of Reagan’s entries into his personal diary while he was president. The thing that came through to me while reading the diary entries was the depth of sincerity in them.  He truly believed he was doing what he did for the right reasons and his humanity, faith, and earnestness come through in his words.  A person does not have to agree with him to realize that he was a selfless person who became president out of a desire to serve his nation instead of personal aggrandizement.  The Reagan that you get to know through his diary entries is a man like the rest of us and not a conniving politician as he is often made out to be.

I found the Reagan Diaries to be enjoyable to read and the glimpse they provide into the Reagan administration is illuminating because he is writing for his own benefit and not that of posterity.  A very good book that should be of interest to anybody who follows contemporary politics and wants to get to know the man behind so much rhetoric tossed around in the present.

Book Review: The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson

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Niall Ferguson’s The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, is one of the best economic histories I have read.  It seeks to be a global history of money and does a good job of it.  It is somewhat tilted towards Europe and Western countries but only because that is where the majority of financial innovation has come from, especially in the last 300-400 years.last 400 years.

What I found especially interesting were his explanations of the way sophisticated financial instruments actually work.  It often seems as though investment and investing have a language specifically designed to confuse and confound the layman.  Dr. Ferguson’s explanations of derivatives and other financial instruments were understandable and serve to somewhat demystify the world of finance.  Of note also is the way in which he explains that these financial instruments are used to create wealth, with the emphasis on create.  He perfectly explains how people like George Soros become billionaires without actually doing anything productive but rather by predicting which way the market will go and essentially betting they are right with other peoples money.

He also tackles entitlements in both Europe, Japan, and the US and providing an excellent anlaysis of the flaws in the current western model entitlement system.  Perhaps the best line in the book is “Yet welfare reform is coming to North America, whether anyone wants it or not.”  He then goes on to explain in detail why this is so.

The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, is not a work of political science though.  Ferguson lets his own opinion shine through at times but by and large what he is presenting here is exactly as described:  A history of the development and use of money and in the end an explanation of why we cannot get away from it even though there are many groups on the left and right that would love to see that.  Ferguson is right when he claims that no one has yet come up with a more efficient way of moving capital to where it can be used than money.  This work explains all of that and also how unscrupulous people have learned to manipulate the system that makes the modern world move.

This is another outstanding book by Niall Ferguson and nothing less than what I expected from someone who I have come to believe is perhaps one of the most balanced and perceptive historians writing today. I have not yet read a book by Dr. Ferguson that was not a joy to read and even if I do not agree with everything he says, his works are always thought provoking, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World is no exception. I highly recommend this book.

Who Are We Fighting?– Public & Military Perception Of Islam, Radical Islam, and The War On Terrorism

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This is a guest post

Since the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked by radical Islamic terrorists in 2001, a sense of enmity, fear, and distrust has grown between the West and the Islamic world. While the stated official policy of the United States has always been that the nation is fighting specific groups of militants and terrorists rather than Islam itself, all too often, civilians as well as members of the armed forces and law enforcement agencies show that they do not truly make any distinction. Spokesmen from military and public policy research centers, point out that all too often, ordinary Americans assume that all Muslims in the world, roughly 1.5 billion of them, are the avowed enemies of the United States and other Western powers.

In May of 2012, the Seattle Times reported an event in which a Lieutenant Colonel of the U.S. Army was forced to stop teaching a military officer course at the Joint Forces Staff College because of the implications that the course made about Islam. The Lieutenant Colonel taught his students that Islam as a whole has already declared war on the United States, and that the United States must respond by regarding the entire Islamic world as an enemy and confronting it accordingly. He even outlined plans to mount nuclear attacks on the Islamic holy cities of Medina and Mecca. The course was halted only after it had been taught repeatedly for several years. In doing so, Pentagon officials identified the class as being contrary to official perspectives and academically unsound.

The feeling that there is an insurmountable ideological divide between Islam and the West is not isolated to this one instance at the Joint Forces Staff College. It can be seen among various media figures, politicians, and religious leaders who call for war against Islam in general, burn the Qur’an in public, and even advocate extreme measures of attack against the Islamic world. For instance, political and social philosopher Leonard Peikoff responded to the 2001 attacks by advocating general attacks on entire Islamic populations with weapons of mass destruction.

Al-Qaeda – the Islamic terrorist group responsible for the attacks on September 11, 2001 – is known worldwide. Other extremist and terrorist groups such as al-Shabaab and the Taliban have significant influence in their respective spheres of influence. However, even taking all of these into consideration, the percentage of Muslims in the world who are actually associated with radical Islam is actually quite small. What critics of Islam must understand is that, by labeling all Muslims as enemies, terrorists, and supporters of terrorists, they force the majority of Muslims to choose between supporting a foreign power and supporting their religion. Those who cannot be coerced into radicalism by other Muslims for the sake of ideology, may then be forced into radicalism by non-Muslims for the sake of self preservation. Thus, instead of fighting an enemy force numbering in the tens of thousands, the Western powers must fight an enemy numbering more than 1.5 billion.

Critics of Islam and Islamic extremists both claim that there is no such thing as a moderate Muslim, they say that extreme Islam is the only true Islam, and they get away with these statements because such polarization suits their respective agendas. However, the plain truth of the matter is that most Muslims are not radicals or extremists, and the Western powers should be glad of this. It makes no sense to alienate the vast majority of Muslims around the world, who simply wish to adhere to their own beliefs and practice their own religion, by branding Muslims everywhere as deranged terrorists. It is provably false and a dangerous position for a nation which prides itself upon freedom.