Patrick Shrier Herman Cain is the one real person running for president, not a career politician. He is probably the best candidate out there and I am waiting for the left-wing Smear Machine to go into overdrive on him. Here s a pretty good piece in The American that talks about how can the Tea Party be racist since most of us love Herman Cain.
I got a chance to visit the Geichberg Castle yesterday and decided to post a picture esay of the castle and a brief description of the fortifications and discuss the strong and weak points of the fortifications. The Geichberg is a castle located about 10km west of Bamberg Germany in Unter Franken or Lower Franconia in English. The castle was completed no later than 1125 as that is the first time it was recorded in documents. It has been destroyed and rebuilt several times in in its history. The current incarnation originally dates from 1390 but was extensively renovate in the early 17th century. According to the … More after the Jump…
The work of neither Sun Tzu nor Clausewitz is adequate to describe naval warfare except in the most general terms. While it is true that until recent times warfare on both land and sea was largely two dimensional, there are factors at work in naval warfare that defy explanation in either Sun Tzu or Clausewitz. The vagaries of wind and weather played a much greater role in medieval naval warfare than on land. The weather was often a determining factor in whether an engagement happened at all. The naval commander was at the mercy of the weather during the age of sail, something that ground commanders did not have to … More after the Jump…
Dr Beachcombing over at strange history sent me this post of his through email a few days ago and I decided to link to it. It regards the quality of the scans available for books in the Google Books service. Â He takes particular umbrage with the poor quality of some of the Google scans of books they have up and also with the way they use IP mapping to determine if a user can even access the scan in the first place based on the geographic location of their IP Address. Â Read his post first, my reply to his email is below: Beach, Sorry, it has taken me a couple … More after the Jump…
I originally saw Neiberg’s Fighting the Great War mentioned in a review essay covering recent works on WWI. The essay had good things to say about the work and then I decided to check and yes, the book had been reviewed by the Journal of Military History in the Jan 2007 issue, Vol. 71 no. 1 pg 242. I subscribe to the Journal so I pulled it it out and read the review. The review is generally favorable and recommends the book as a general history of the war. I did not have the same impression of the book as did the reviewer in JMH.I found the book to be … More after the Jump…
The Mexican-American war of 1846-1848 was not inevitable but both sides placed themselves on a collision course that seemingly made it so. A combination of Mexican unwillingness to recognize Texas independence and the desire of Texans for statehood with American desire for westward expansion set the stage for the first offensive war in the short History of the United States. Tensions between Mexico and the United States had been building for decades, ever since the Mexican government invited Anglo settlers into Texas in the 1820’s. The war with Mexico was the result of long-standing Anglo grievances that were mostly of the Mexican government’s own making. Perhaps … More after the Jump…
Europe in the tenth and eleventh centuries was a continent in transition. The states of Europe were still in flux and the kings of Europe had limited authority outside their own personal demesne. Although individual French kings did wield considerable power, they waged a constant struggle to have their authority recognized by the great magnates in France, especially after the fall of the Carolingian dynasty in the ninth century[1]. The rest of Europe was no exception, in England the king was engaged in a great struggle with his leading barons and the Pope that would not be settled until the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215[2]. … More after the Jump…
I dabble in the stock market and one of the stocks I owned until recently was 5 shares of Citigroup stock. I picked it up in late 2008 at $6 a share hoping to vulture-like profit share. In the interests of full disclosure, I bought it before they got any TARP money. It has since declined even further and sat in my stock portfolio like unwanted cheesecake consistently valued at less than I paid for it. I decided about a year ago that as soon as it broke even I would sell it and wash my hands of the company I dislike anyway. I dislike Citigroup … More after the Jump…
I am planning a vacation trip to Malta this summer with my family and like all vacations I take there will be an element of historical tourism involved. I have always wanted to visit Malta and I am finally getting a chance. As preparation for that I am reading a few books with accounts of The Great Siege of 1565, the last battle of the Medieval Crusades. The first book is Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World by Roger Crowley. Crowley does an excellent job of bringing the siege to life and … More after the Jump…
This will be a series of posts laying out the general history of the major Fronts in World War I. The First World War was unnecessary in that if the diplomats of Europe had truly wanted to stop the war there was ample opportunity in the five weeks between the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the start of the fighting.[1] The outbreak of war in 1939 can be directly traced to the terms of the Peace dictated at Versailles in 1919, and World War II was incomparably more destructive than World War I both in terms of lives lost and property destroyed. It was fashionable in the aftermath … More after the Jump…
The Conquest of Gaul tells the story of the Roman Conquest of what is now France, Switzerland, most of the Low Countries, and parts of present day Germany. It was written by Julius Caesar, the Governor of the Roman province of Transalpine Gaul from 59 B.C. until he was declared Dictator of Rome in 44 B.C. He presents a linear account of the conquest of Gaul set forth as a series of books, each book covering one year of his governorship. The first seven books were written by Caesar himself as yearly reports to Rome. The seventh book covering 51 B.C. was written after Caesar’s death … More after the Jump…
All classical military theorists point out that military strategy and national policy are intermingled. Clausewitz devotes a lengthy portion of his treatise to the ways in which military action should serve the needs of the state; indeed, his most famous quote concerns politics and war. Most of the combatants in World War I seem to have forgotten that policy drives strategy. When the Elder Moltke was Chief of the German General Staff, German war-plans and policy neatly interlinked however, during Schleiffen’s tenure as Chief of the General Staff that link between policy and strategy was lost. The Great Memorandum of 1905 ignored political reality in favor of … More after the Jump…
The conventional explanation for why the Western Front in World War I settled into a stalemate is that the power of defensive weapons was stronger than the offensive methods employed. The theory is that the defensive potential of machine-guns, artillery, repeating rifles, and trenches was unbreakable with infantry and artillery alone. This simplistic explanation does not suffice under close scrutiny though. If this were so, why were the Germans not stopped in France until after they had removed troops to the Eastern front for the Battle of Tannenberg and why were the French stopped cold when they attempted to invade Germany in August 1914? The reasons for … More after the Jump…
Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898) was probably the most accomplished politician that Germany has ever produced. He was almost single-handedly responsible for the emergence of the nation of Germany during the nineteenth century. He was appointed Prime Minister of Germany in 1862 by the Prussian King Wilhelm I (1797-1888) in the middle of a constitutional crisis in Prussia in which the Reichstag refused to authorize a state budget. Bismarck handled this crisis with ease by using the machinery of state to collect taxes without the Reichstag thus making them irrelevant. He continued to collect taxes and finance the state for four years until finally the Reichstag was … More after the Jump…
This book is an interesting read to say the least, Dr. Citino makes the case that there is a specifically German “way of warâ€. That way, is what he calls operational maneuver. He traces the development of this “way of war†from the 17th century battles of the Frederick William I, the “Great Elector†of electoral Brandenburg and scion of the Hohenzollern Dynasty through to the end of World War II and the final defeat of Nazi Germany. I am not myself so convinced that the discussion should end there based on my experience talking to current German soldiers about war and battle during partnership exercises while I have been … More after the Jump…
