20th Century

Sudeten Deutsch Memorial

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Saw this interesting little bit of history this morning and figure I would take a photo. This has less to do with warfare itself than with the aftermath of war. This is a plaque dedicated to the role that Bayreuth, Germany played in the resettlement of ethnic Germans in the wake of the mass expulsion of these people from their homes in Eastern Europe after Germany’s defeat in WWII. Their is a good piece with a brief history of post war ethnic movements in Europe by the BBC Here: ArticleNo More War or Expulsions

from February to October 1946 the Bayreuth Main Train Station hosted 33 Cargo trains containing 39,281 expellees from the Sudetenland.

The city and county are thankful for the reception

Sudeten German Organisation July 2010

Book Review: Jewell of the Mall – World War II Memorial by Stephen R. Brown

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[FULL DISCLOSURE: I received my copy of this book free from the author for purposes of reviewing it. I was not paid for this review and the opinion expressed is purely my own] I received Jewel of the Mall in the mail the other day not quite knowing what to expect from a coffee-table book about the National World War II Memorial. I thought it would be a book of pictures full of accompanying text attempting to put them into context. This is not the case though, this book is 116 pages of great pictures that convey the feeling of majesty and grandeur you get from actually being there.   … More after the Jump…

Book Review: Holy Wars: 3000 Years of Battles in the Holy Land by Gary Rashba

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HOLY WARS: 3000 Years of Battles in the Holy Land is one of the better primers about conflict in the Holy Land to appear within the last few years.   It consists of 17 chapters covering the initial Israelite conquest of Canaan in 1400 B.C. to the Israeli offensive against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon in 1982.   The more recent Israeli-Palestinian conflict is covered in the epilogue.   The work is 288 pages and includes extensive notes at the end of each chapter as well as a well sourced bibliography and index.   The Kindle edition, which is what I have, was mostly free of editing errors and the only … More after the Jump…

D-Day 68th Anniversary

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Just a reminder for everyone to stop today and take a moment to reflect on the events that happened 68 years ago today on the shores of Normandy in France.   This is the day that the Allies opened up the long-awaited Second Front against Hitler’s Germany.   The invasion took place along almost 50 miles of French coast using five named invasion beaches.   From south to north the beaches were named Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword.   The first days objectives were not reached over most of the front and in many places it would take weeks to reach objectives that were supposed to have been taken … More after the Jump…

Book Review: Why Germany Nearly Won: A New History of the Second World War in Europe by Steven D. Mercatante

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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] At first glance Why Germany Nearly Won: A New History of the Second World War in Europe is another of the rehashing’s of WWII in the East and West that have become so popular since the fall of communism in the 1990’s and the opening of previously closed Russian archives.   That first glance would be wrong.   Steven Mercatante has produced a very well written history of the war in the East that goes to the heart of why the Eastern … More after the Jump…

Spaceplanes

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In addition to being a historian and political junkie I am also a Space nut. I was hugely disappointed to see the shuttle program shut down with its replacement being cancelled because we plan to rely on the private sector. I do plan on buying SpaceX stock if they ever have an IPO though. I ran across the below infographic on Space.com and decided to pass it along because I think the whole spaceplane concept is intriguing. Source SPACE.com: All about our solar system, outer space and exploration

Book Review: Military or civilians? The curious anomaly of the German Women’s Auxiliary Services during the Second World War by Alison Morton

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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] I was contacted by Ms. Morton about reading and reviewing her book: Military or civilians? The curious anomaly of the German Women’s Auxiliary Services during the Second World War and jumped at the opportunity as the subject matter of the book, German Woman serving with the Wehrmacht is one that has been virtually ignored in English scholarship as she rightly points out in her introduction and demonstrates by including the text of an email she received from the director of the Imperial War Museum in which he demonstrates total ignorance about any female auxiliaries used … More after the Jump…

The Grave of Richard Wagner

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I recently visited the grave of Richard Wagner behind the Wagner Museum in Bayreuth, Germany and thought I would share the photos I took while there.  The grave itself is not very remarkable and the only way you know it is is his is because there are signs pointing to it.  There is no marking on the grave itself saying it is where Wagner and his wife are buried.  There is an outstanding site with a wealth of information on the composer at the Richard Wagner Archive.   The gravestone for the dog says Here rests and guards Wagner’s Russ.  Russ was the name of his dog.  

Book Review: Kirov by John Schettler

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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] Kirov by John Schettler is the Philadelphia Experiment in reverse.  It is the tale of a Russian cruiser that through some anomaly that is never fully explains finds itself catapulted eighty years backwards in time from 2021 to 1941 to just weeks prior to the meeting of Roosevelt and Churchill at Argentia Bay in Newfoundland.   The cruiser in the novel is the resurrected, upograde, and fully modernized guided missile cruiser Kirov that currently exists in the Russian Navy today.  Of course the cruiser used in the book is a fictionalized version but … More after the Jump…

Europe and Modern War

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Saw an interesting piece awhile ago on the South African Business Day website called: GIDEON RACHMAN: Threat of war seems unreal in an age of peace. The essential point is that although war seems to have been eradicated in Europe, don’t count it out if the Euro crisis gets as bad as it possibly can. I think it is naive in the extreme to think that because there has not been a major war in Europe for the past 65+ years that one cannot happen.   We should keep in mind that it was 49 years between the Congress of Vienna ending the Napoleonic Wars and the Prusso-Danish war of … More after the Jump…

Book Review: The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman

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The Guns of August is one of the classic histories of World War I. It was originally published in 1962 and has remained a mainstay of accounts of the opening months of the war ever since. The book reads more like fiction than reality as Mrs. Tuchman brings the main players alive through her descriptive style of writing. She effortlessly recounts the events of August, 1914 and tries to bring the reader into the mood of that month when world shaking events were happening. Not all of her conclusions about the cases of the war have withstood the test of time and she repeats some stories that have since been … More after the Jump…

Book Review: Helmet for my Pillow by Robert Leckie

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When I was in the hospital earlier this year for back surgery I had nothing better to do for three days than lay in my bed so I had my wife bring my laptop and the DVD’s for The Pacific and Band of Brothers. After watching the series I decided to order Leckie’s book and rad it to see how faithful to his memoirs they kept his part of the story. I had read E.B. Sledge’s With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa when I was in high school and so just pulled it off the bookshelf and reread it. Helmet for my Pillow is somewhat like With the … More after the Jump…

Where are the honest Nazi’s?

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I was reading an article in the current issue of the Journal of Military History and it hit me once again that there are no memoirs from Germans in World War II that are really honest about what they thought. The article in question is Hagermann, Karen. Mobilizing Women for War: The History, Historiography, and Memory of German Women’s War Service in the Two World Wars Journal of Military History, Vol. 75 no. 4 (October 2011), 1055-1094. I actually don’t have a problem with the article itself, it is written well although I don’t necessarily agree with the vaguely feminist premise of the article itself, it is pretty interesting. What … More after the Jump…

Book Review – Iron Kingom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947 by Christopher Clark

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This massive tome lays claim to being a complete history of Prussia, and if he doesn’t achieve it, he doesn’t miss it by much. It is fairly large at over 700 pages but Dr. Clark has a pleasant writing style that makes the book easy to read. He is not so much recounting events as using the historical events to tell the story of Prussia. The book opens with the retelling of the Allies abolishment of Prussia as a political unit in 1947 then goes right to the beginning of Prussia with the establishment of Prussia as a political unit under German sovereignty under the Great Elector in the years … More after the Jump…

Happy Veterans Day

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Today is Veteran’s Day in the US and Armistice Day in Britain and France. It is a day to remember the end of the fighting in World War I on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918. It is also the day set aside in the US to remember all veterans, not just those of World War I but also those that served in our nation’s other wars and those that served during peacetime. It takes something special to serve your country and a little bit more to do so voluntarily. There is always the possibility of going to war and giving your life … More after the Jump…

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