I Suppose I Can Consider Myself Published Now

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I got my first article published this past week.   I belong to the Society for Military History and in a recent society newsletter, they asked for people who had recently worked in an archive to submit a guide.   I visited the Austrian Kriegsarhive last spring while doing research for my MA thesis and emailed them contact person that I would be interested in providing a guide for the Kriegsarchive.   I got a positive response and pulled out my notes and recollections of my visit and over the next week or so, I wrote up a guide.   It has now been posted on the SMH website at: … More after the Jump…

Are there similarities between the War in Vietnam and the War in Afghanistan? – Part 2

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The last question that needs to be answered as concerns the parallels between Afghanistan and Vietnam is why we are not pursuing a campaign of territorial conquest.   In Vietnam, the U.S. did not seek to gain and maintain control of territory; rather they sought to combat only the military forces of the insurgents.   That is why the now legendary “body count” was so important in Vietnam.   The same thing is not happening in Afghanistan, at least to the extent that the “body count” is important.   The metric I see being used to determine progress in Afghanistan in place of the “body count” is tracking how many attacks occur within delineated sectors of territory.   This metric is probably just as useless in determining victory or progress, as was the body count.   So many factors go into determining how many attacks occur in a given region that the actual number of attacks is meaningless.

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Bureaucratic Redundancy

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I generally try to avoid posting or saying negative things about work for fear that the fickle-demons of the internet will find out and get me in trouble but I have to share this one. I saw this today at work and just thought it was one of the dumbest things I have ever seen in my 20+ years of government service.   I have to go through all the SOPs at work and ensure they are in the correct format as part of yearly update drudgery.   What did I find that is so stupid you ask?  We actually have a SOP at work about when and who is … More after the Jump…

Heroe€™s Portraits: Sergeant William Wilson, US Army

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I had to include Sergeant William Wilson because he is one of the nineteen people who have been twice awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and because he belonged the regiment that I was assigned to for both of my deployments.   My unit Forward Operating Base was also named in his honor in Iraq in 2004-2005. There is actually not much known about him.   His citations are below but they do not provide much in the way of detail about the actions in which he earned the award or about him in general.   He is buried in the San Francisco National Cemetery.  WILSON, WILLIAM Rank and organization: … More after the Jump…

Book Review: Soldat: Reflections of German Soldier, 1936-1949 by Sigfried Knappe

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Book Review: Soldat: Reflections of  German Soldier, 1936-1949 by Sigfried Knappe and Ted Brusaw

I realized this morning that it has been a while since I posted a book review and I just finished re-reading this book yesterday and thought I would post a review of it.

This is a ghost-written account of Major Knappe’s time in the Wehrmacht between 1936 and his release from Russian captivity in 1949.   I first read this book in the mid-90s when it was first released.   At the time, I was very much into reading about World War II and thought that reading a book from the German perspective would be enlightening.   I was not disappointed with this book.

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The Tolerance of the American Left

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Last month, after Rep. Giffords and five others were killed outside of a Safeway store in Tucson, AZ. the opinion pages were full of folks on the left blaming conservatives, the Tea Party, talk radio, and Sarah Palin for rhetoric that led the shooter to target Rep. Giffords.   A month and a half later we now know that rhetoric, political or otherwise, had absolutely nothing to do with why Jared Loughner decided to shoot his congresswoman.   We knew that almost as soon as we knew the shooter’s name;  that did not stop the left from laming conservatives anyway. The left tries to portray themselves as some sort of … More after the Jump…

The Military Aspects of Feudalism in Europe in the early Middle Ages

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The feudal system’s origins can be traced back to late Roman imperial practices of land tenure.   The biggest difference between feudal and late Roman practices is the feudal system contained a military obligation in return for holding land.  

            The kings and leaders of the early Carolingian empire maintained bands of fighting men known as comitati, these bands of fighting men evolved into the later aristocracy of the Frankish kingdom.   In the early eighth century Charles Martel began the practice of granting lands known as benefices to retainers in return for specified terms of military service.   These lands were not hereditary at first there retention being conditional on fulfillment of service, but over time they became hereditary.

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The Crimean War part one – The Narrative

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This war has always interested me; mainly because of the use of technology and the admittedly fuzzy reasoning for the war in the first place.   The war was probably the last European Great Power War that was fought for limited dynastic and prestige reasons.   The ostensible cause of the war was a dispute in 1852 between the Orthodox and Catholic churches over control and access to some of the shrines in Jerusalem.   The Russians decided to get involved as the self-appointed guardians of Christian places in the Turkish Empire and the French got involved in their self-appointed role as the guardian of Catholics.   At that, war was not declared until October 1853 and the shooting did not really start until November when the Russian Black Sea Fleet decimated the Turkish navy.

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History, the News, Egypt, and American Foriegn Policy

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Niall Fergusson, one of my favorite current historians recently wrote a piece in Newsweek that perfectly captures what I think is the best way to use history as a guide in determining the best way to act in the present.   Of course, he is slamming the current US Administration in this piece so that rather makes me happy too.   The piece is here.   He also went on “Morning Joe” on MSNBC and expanded on his views.

His biggest point is that the administration blew it with Egypt because they changed their mind so many times.   I love it how he uses a quote from Otto von Bismarck to illustrate what Obama did not do.   Here is the quote from the story:

“The statesman can only wait and listen until he hears the footsteps of God resounding through events; then he must jump up and grasp the hem of His coat, that is all.” Thus Otto von Bismarck, the great Prussian statesman who united Germany and thereby reshaped Europe’s balance of power nearly a century and a half ago.

Last week, for the second time in his presidency, Barack Obama heard those footsteps, jumped up to grasp a historic opportunity … and missed it completely.

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The Actual Writing of a Thesis-Part 6

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I just finished writing the rough draft of my MA Thesis.   It is currently sitting right around 73 pages.   I would guess I will end up adding about 4-5 more ages as I do my final revisions before submitting the rough draft this coming Sunday when it is due.   It was  both easier and harder to write than I thought it would be.   I also am very curious to see what comments my thesis adviser will have.   I already have comments on my intro ad first chapter and will spend the rest of the week incorporating the changes he suggested into the rough draft.   … More after the Jump…

The Thirteenth-Century Crusade Against Novgorod

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            Beginning in the thirteenth century the Swedes attempted to continue their expansion to the east into the territory of the Lapp people and the Orthodox Russians of Novgorod.   They harnessed the rhetoric of Crusade as they expanded to the east to gain more control of the Lapp people and exploited the fur trade, hunting, and fishing of the indigenous people.

            It was not just economic concerns that animated the Swedes and Norwegians to expand to control the far-northern trade, religion played a role.   The Catholic Swedes sought to extend the Latin Church’s influence to the east and north while the Orthodox Russians sought to do the same with their brand of Christianity.   Prior to the thirteenth century this impulse had went hand in hand with normal expansion, religious affiliation went hand in hand with political control, indeed religion facilitated control of subject peoples.[1]  Religious uniformity helped mask the differences among the various ethnicities that occupied the far north.

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Little Blue Penguin

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This is a Little Blue Penguin from Australia.   I saw it in a story on Livescience yesterday and since I think Penguins are cool and don’t want to be serious all the time I decided to post the picture and accompanying link.   Unfortunately the Livescience story is down but here is another page with info on them.

The Wendish Crusade

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            The people of Northern Germany known as the Wends were not one homogenous people but rather organized themselves in a tribal structure.   The tribes from the Saxon border west were the Wagrians, Polabians, Abotrites, Rugians, Liutizians, and Pomeranians.[1]  These tribes were loosely organized under local princes and there was no overall king or authority figure.   The Wends were polytheistic nature worshipers who had many shrines and temples throughout their lands.   The priestly class was the most influential next to the secular lords and the Wends were deeply superstitious even going so far as to avoid battle if the auguries were unfavorable.

            The Wendish Crusades were Crusades in name only, the Danes and Saxons used the Crusading name to mask a naked grab of the territory of the pagan Wends.   The Danes and Saxons had been encroaching on Wendish territory prior to the start of the Wendish crusades in 1147, but their gains had only been short-lived and limited to forcing some of the Wendish nobility to pay tribute.[2]  The Danes and Saxons who had only come to Christianity in the eighth and ninth centuries took wholeheartedly to the message preached by St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) to fight the pagans “until such a time as, by God’s help, they be either converted or deleted.”[3]

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