The War that Killed Achillies – Book Review
The War that killed Achilles: The true Story of Homer’s Iliad and the Trojan War. Caroline Alexander. Penguin Books, 2010. 296 pages. Hardcover. $26.95.
"Poetry and tragic vision were much extolled, the epic’s blunter message tended to be overlooked."
Caroline Alexander, a scholar and author of bestsellers on the Bounty mutiny (The Bounty) and the Shackleton expedition (The Endurance), has turned her attention to ancient military history. But in The War that killed Achilles she focuses less on the historical record than on ancient literature, mythology and epic poetry.
Her book is a summary and exposition of the story of the Trojan War as told by Homer in the Iliad, not essentially a history of the war itself. she does provide the historical background and the cultural understandings of the war through time, as well as discussing the final collapse of Troy and the post-war lives of some of the main characters. But the Iliad only covers a few weeks of the Trojan War; her main focus is on Homer’s arrangement and purpose.
The title of the book itself is rather unfortunate, as Alexander doesn’t consider the death of Achilles as the seminal feature of the war, and his death does not actually occur in the Iliad. The major importance of Achilles’ death is in how it was foreshadowed and understood by Homer’s listeners. Though The War that killed Achilles is in large part a summary of the Iliad, Alexander highlights how the poem revolves around Achilles’ anger, his motives for quitting the fight and his further decision to again don his armor. The book includes in its entirety the chapter narrating his fight with Hector (translated by Ms. Alexander herself).
A major argument in the book is her description of the ultimate pointlessness of war, and how participants must individually justify their own meaning and come to their own conclusion about why they fight and what they are fighting for. as she stresses after summarizing the opening passages of the poem, listeners would have been discontented with the idea that Achilles and the other Achaeans are fighting solely on Agamemnon’s behalf in order to satisfy his brother’s shame in losing his wife. so what Homer has shown is that “the demoralized Achaean army fights under failed leadership for a questionable cause and wants to go home.” This makes the idea of the Trojan War as heroes fighting honorably in an honorable cause quite questionable indeed. in this sense, Alexander’s book explains difficulties posed to the fighters in the war and how they question their leaders’ motives, tactics and strategy.
She begins with a brief account of the translation history of the Iliad into the Western canon, especially its translation into English, and shows how the lesson of the Iliad and the character of Achilles changed through time, depending on what was important to society at the moment: “Poetry and tragic vision were much extolled, the epic’s blunter message tended to be overlooked.” The Trojan War tended to be seen as a catastrophe, but that changed when it gained status as a heroic venture, as an object lesson in instructing a nation’s warriors on “the desirability of dying well for their country.” Under this point of view, Achilles’ contempt for authority and his sullen refusal to fight were ignored or treated with disdain. Aeneas was the consummate heroic figure (with Odysseus of course) while Achilles was mocked.
Throughout, she analyzes the Iliad within the context of other versions of the Trojan War and within epic tradition. much of what would have been understood by listeners was not actually spelled out in the poem but nevertheless would have colored the audience response, based on other traditions concerning Achilles and Greek mythology and history.
The War that Killed Achillies – Book Review
RELIGION IN AMERICAN HISTORY: Jim Wallis, Sojourners, the LGBT Ad, and the Trials of Progressive Christianity
Anonymoussaid…
This is helpful, and it's also important to remember that the evangelical left is "evangelical" in the sense that its supporters generally subscribe to some kind of biblical literalism. Wallis' point (and Ron Sider's before him) is that if you take the Bible seriously and literally, you must prioritize care for the poor and support peaceful resolutions to problems. That's all over the gospels and there's no denying it, and Wallis has argued that the other issues are a distraction from these core obligations, especially the obligation to the poor. If the NT barely mentions homosexuality, the argument runs, why waste so much time and energy discussing it? there is so much important work to do already on points where Christians agree.many well-meaning and otherwise progressive evangelicals I know struggle with gay rights issues. As an outsider to the tradition, I can't imagine that problem going away. most other progressive Christians are not inerrantists, but somehow they would like to believe that even inerrantists can eventually get to a point where they think the Bible says loving, healthy, lasting homosexual relationships are possible and valid in the eyes of the church. I doubt that very much. It's too bad – those of us who support gay rights could use their support – but I don't think it's going to happen.
May 13, 2011 6:05 PMBrantley Gasawaysaid…
Anonymous, while you're probably right that most evangelicals won't "eventually get to a point where they think the Bible says loving, healthy, lasting homosexual relationships are possible and valid in the eyes of the church," there is a minority of LGBT-affirming evangelicals. the most prominent group that has been around since the mid-1970s is Evangelicals Concerned. In addition, I didn't have the space to address it in this post, but the second leading journal of evangelical progressivism, The other Side (which began in 1965 and ceased publishing in 2004), began affirming gay and lesbian Christians in the early 1980s–just as Sojourners took its welcoming but not affirming position.Finally, there are signs at many evangelical colleges that the younger generation of evangelicals are much more accepting of their gay and lesbian peers.
May 14, 2011 6:24 AM
Letter from Military History – November 2010
The Shrinking Hill
One of the odd ironies of history is that it's often regarded as a dead subject, due to its focus on presidents, generals and soldiers who died long ago and often far away. What happened, happened, goes the thinking. It's sooo over.
True, every actor on history's stage is, beyond a fixed span of years, surely dead. but history itself is not dead. Facts are stubborn things, but as elements of history, they are not immutable. Far from being static, the past changes all the time.
Case in point: in early August 1944, the German army in northern France, struggling to avoid encirclement by advancing Allied armies, staged a counterattack at the village of Mortain. Panzers and infantry attacked early on the foggy morning of August 7, surprising elements of the U.S. 30th and 4th infantry divisions. the high ground near Mortain was Hill 317, newly occupied by the 2nd Battalion, 120th Infantry Regiment. A high-value artillery observation point with a view of all the roads around Mortain, the hill was repeatedly and fiercely attacked—and as fiercely defended for nearly six days by four U.S. companies that took 40 percent casualties.
While preparing an article on the heroics at Hill 317, we noticed the hill had apparently shrunk. Immediately after World War II, historical accounts—including the Army's official "Green Books"—referred to the place as Hill 317 (in the Army style of naming a hill for its height in meters). but between the mid-1980s, in battle accounts published by such historians as Max Hastings and John Keegan, and 2004–09, in accounts published by historians John McManus and Antony Beevor, Hill 317 became Hill 314.
Did the hill itself subside? Did someone misread a map? A 3-meter discrepancy could scarcely affect the history of the battle, but the point is clear: even facts as seemingly reliable as heights, names and numbers, published in reputable histories, can change.
The shrinking hill is a tiny reminder of how slippery history can be and how new information can alter it: Long hidden letters to a president are revealed. Long classified military secrets are made public. Journals long forgotten in a foreign archive get translated and published. A dedicated scholar spends years studying hitherto unavailable documents, connects the dots anew and emerges with a revolutionary understanding of even an event as well "known" as Napoleon's failed 1812 invasion of Russia.
So history changes.
Letter from Military History – November 2010
Wellington and Montgomery: General swapping? « Daly History Blog
I’ve been doing a lot of reading on the Battle of Normandy recently for my forthcoming book. And I have always been a big fan of Wellington.
Which got me thinking – what if Wellington had fought the battle of Waterloo in the style of Monty? And what if Wellington had been in command in the summer of 1944?
Montgomery after Waterloo:
Montgomery: ‘the battle went exactly as I planned. I fully intended to draw the French reserves onto my front, thus allowing the Prussians to arrive unhindered. Hougoumont was not important as long as I pretended to hold it. At all times I was in complete control of the situation. we will no crack-about south of Caen’.
At which point Blucher is mortally offended, and Prussian historians spend hundreds of years belittling his every move. meanwhile, German film-makers all but obliterate Montgomery and the British from Waterloo, apart from oblique and stereotypical references.
Almost one hundred and 30 years later, at the St Pauls School Conference in may 1944…
Wellington, to the assembled crowd of Allied senior officers, politicians and King George VI: ‘what I intend to do depends on what Rommel intends to do, and as the Desert Fox has not informed me of his plans, then I cannot inform you of mine’
At Southwick House, 5 June 1944…
Eisenhower: ‘so Wellington, what are your plans?’Wellington: ‘to beat the Germans’
Actually, were Wellington and Montgomery really that different? the only difference to me seems to be that American historians have had no reason to villify Wellington. Even so, during his lifetime Wellington was ridiculed and lambasted for both his adulterous affairs and his politics. Time, however, tends to see petty criticisms fall away and victories stand the test of time.
Related Articles
- Hougoumont cross that survived the Battle of Waterloo is stolen (dailymail.co.uk)
This entry was posted on Tuesday, may 3rd, 2011 at 11:59 pm and is filed under Army, d-day, Napoleonic War, World War Two. you can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. you can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Wellington and Montgomery: General swapping? « Daly History Blog
Review: Azar Gat–A History of Military Thought: From the Enlightenment to the Cold War
Gat, Azar. a History of Military Thought: From the Enlightenment to the Cold War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
few books on military history provide the reader with a comprehensive perspective on military theory, war, strategy and the intellectual origins of each. as the historian and social critic M.E. Bradford observed “Ideas have consequences.” This statement proves to be prophetic in the realm of military history. Classic strategic thought and a general rejection of historicism has become more fashionable in recent years. Studies such as Williamson Murray’s The making of Strategy and Michael Handel’s Master of War attempt to convey continuity between “classic” military theory and practice and modern war. Peter Paret’s Makers of Modern Strategy provides a lineage of modern military thought from Machiavelli to the nuclear age, but the nature of the study does not provide conclusive evidentiary support to the theory that modern military thought originated in the writings of Machiavelli and progressed through the Enlightenment, Romantic Era, and machine age. Case studies work for portraying practical application of strategy, but intellectual history needs cohesiveness. Azar Gat provides the glue that bonds generations of military theory. as he states in the preface to the single volume work, “It offers a panoramic but clearly-focused view of the wider conceptions of war, strategy, and military theory which have dominated Europe and the West from the eighteenth century to our ‘post-modern’ era” (vii). His knowledge of the secondary material is unsurpassed and as the title suggests, the depth of his study fills the gaps between the military theory of the Enlightenment and the modern age.
Book I, entitled “From the Enlightenment to Clausewitz,” focuses on the contradictions between the two world views offered by the great military theorists of each age. Enlightenment theorists stressed a scientific explanation for war and believed war could be classified and pursued as a scientific exercise. Romantic Era reactionaries, best exemplified by Clausewitz, retorted that war could never be labeled as a science because the nature of war relied too much on individual character and what Clausewitz famously labeled “friction.” Gat contends these competing views of war have never been thoroughly dissected or analyzed because scholars have not understood the origins or backgrounds of the two theoretical developments.
Gat begins book one with a discussion of Machiavelli. Gat emphasizes that the idea that war could be systematically studied through historical inquiry originated in the Renaissance. Little in the way of combat had changed since the classical period, and when Machiavelli began writing on the nature of war, he argued that because human nature was “immutable,” warfare could in essence be studied in the same way as politics. Machiavelli’s interest in war, to be sure, originated in his quest for strong political leadership in Italy. a strong military, buttressed by what Machiavelli believed to be the backbone of the army, the infantry, provided Roman leaders with the support they needed to maintain control over unruly political subjects; therefore, Machiavelli determined that politics and the military should be welded into a quest for power. in response to Machiavelli’s claims, the classics were widely studied until the end of the eighteenth century when military theorists began to argue that contemporary models were the best way to ascertain true, effective military strategy. Classic military models were outdated and their reliance on the unscientific nature of war did not account for changing technology in combat.
The immediate rejection of classical models of warfare came from the Enlightenment. Gat credits seventeenth-century thinker Raimondo Montecuccoli with creating a general theory of war. Montecuccoli was highly influential in the eighteenth century because of his scientific approach to war. His Treatise on War reflected the warfare of the seventeenth century, and the topics he addressed, from the conduct of war to the minutia of marching and encamping, displayed his admiration for mathematical resolutions to complex military problems. as Gat states, by the eighteenth century, “It was Montecuccoli’s theoretical vision and conceptual framework that were widely adopted and admired” (26). The scientific outlook attracted Enlightenment thinkers because this view created a rational examination of war and the results of war. Rules and parameters of warfare were established and ultimately Enlightenment thinkers believed bloodshed could be avoided.
The theoretical military revolution of the eighteenth century began in France. Enlightenment thinkers maintained that the rules of war were subject to military genius and thus they were not completely formalized; however, Enlightenment thinkers were enchanted by scientific analysis of all aspects of war. Gat discusses the great French thinkers, from De Saxe to Guibert. he maintains that true Enlightenment thinkers, in customary fashion, wrote only to alleviate boredom or to amuse themselves. Topics such as siege warfare fascinated French thinkers such as Puysegur because of the tremendous potential for mathematical energy in perfecting the system. Possibly the most influential French military thinker of the Enlightenment period was Jacques Guibert. His influence can be traced to the French Revolution and Napoleonic Era, and ideas such as “mobility, rapidity, and boldness in the conduct of operations” had a profound impact on the conduct of the armies of the Revolution. His most important work, the Essai general de tactique, was the basis of Napoleon’s military training. Guibert’s model of deployment became the basis of military theory throughout Europe, particularly in Germany where the thinkers of the Aufklarung applied the theories of the French Enlightenment in “new and revolutionary directions” (55).
Like their French counterparts, the Aufklareres sought to create a general theory of war. German military thinkers, however, emphasized education rather than building systems. Most military historians point to Frederick the great as the personification of the Enlightenment in Germany, but Gat believes his conduct of war would have appalled the French philosophes. in fact, the Aufklareres advocated a greater involvement for trained officers and an extension of the ranks. Frederick opposed these initiatives. German military theorists believed “that a broad education was also essential for developing the officer’s personality” (61). The Aufklareres advanced the idea that a professional military required academic instruction. To be sure, this idea was born out of the Enlightenment’s emphasis on education. Eventually, military education included the arts, literature, philosophy, and of course history. German theorists argued military theory alone did not ensure a great field commander. The Aufklareres reasoned he must be a man of his times and have a worldly perspective. The result of this process was the creation of dozens of military schools across central Europe.
Though the French and German theorists were important within their own borders, Henry Lloyd transcended the confines of his home country and revolutionized European military thought. instead of focusing on the organization of armies, Lloyd turned his attention to the conduct of operations. His use of maps greatly enhanced his reputation as a sound field commander. This idea, of course, was not Lloyd’s alone. Puysegur contended that “a science of operations had to be based on the study of geography and geometry” (75). Lloyd’s introduction of the line of operations would revolutionize European military thought. Even his critics, such as Tempelhoff, accepted his theory of line of operations. as Gat describes, the idea of the line of operations was not the central theme of Lloyd’s military theory, and though revolutionary, it would take the writings of Adam Heinrich Dietrich von Bulow to transform it “into the centerpiece of a new science of operation” (80).
Bulow believed firearms produced a need for a new theory of warfare. His model was based on a regular need of supplies, the most important of which was ammunition. Bulow thought he had discovered the “mathematical secret of strategy.” Henceforth, there would be “no need for crude considerations and the hazardous trial of battle in order to plan and decide the fate of a campaign”(84). The art of war, in fact, was no longer an art but a science to be studied systematically. According to Bulow, those who were well versed in the science of war were ensured victory. His ideas were attacked almost immediately after the ink dried. by placing the decisive battle at the center of warfare, Napoleon smashed his theory of limited engagements. secondly, Napoleon operated in enemy territory and lived on enemy resources. This struck at Bulow’s suggestion that supply lines were essential to the maintenance of large armies. Gat suggests that “Bulow refused to understand what the whole world had already learnt to accept—that tactics was about fighting and centered on the engagement” (92). The age of maneuver warfare, which Bulow helped create, was soon to be challenged by the Napoleonic wars.
Napoleon revolutionized the way European thinkers viewed warfare. His campaigns represented a watershed in European military theory. Napoleon’s prosecution of his imperial wars seemed to contrast the rational, scientific explanation of warfare during the Enlightenment. Thus, many thought the military ideas of the Enlightenment should be scrapped and replaced with a modern version of combat operational theory. The result would be the works of Clausewitz, but one man, Antoine Henri Jomini, attempted to synthesize the military theory of the Enlightenment with the new realities of Napoleonic warfare. His work was profoundly influential in the nineteenth century but declining by the twentieth. Jomini believed “he had revealed the principles of Napoleonic warfare” (133). This, of course, was self-aggrandizement, but as Gat notes his “greatest achievement was that he provided his contemporaries…with the clearest, most instructive framework…” of Napoleonic warfare (123). Napoleon himself was thought to have read Jomini and adapted his style to fit Jomini’s prescriptions for victory. Possibly the most interesting aspect of both Jomini and Napoleon was that neither man believed they were deviating from the conceptual framework of the Enlightenment. War had parameters. Only in the post-Enlightenment era did European thinkers begin to crush the scientific theories of warfare.
Gat places his analysis of the post-Enlightenment era in the context of a “new climate of ideas” (141). While Enlightenment thinkers would differ on ideas, they all attempted to find “a general theory of war” (141). “Within a few years,” however, “Clausewitz began to formulate the most comprehensive and sophisticated expression of new ideas in the field of military thought, thus laying the intellectual foundations for what was to be a new German military school” (142). Gat argues this new German school was an extension of the climate of ideas swirling around Europe in the mid-nineteenth century. Clausewitz and his followers, therefore, must be considered men of their times. Intellectual currents such as Romanticism and historicism influenced the new German school. Historicism in particular with its emphasis on a rejection of universal standards undermined the idea of parameters in warfare. in the process, the intellectual elite, those who had once been the primary advocates of Enlightenment doctrine, were now the individuals who became the harshest critics of perceived Enlightenment dogma.
Georg Heinrich von Berenhorst was at the center of the counter-Enlightenment attack. Berenhorst believed that “far from being automata, the troops could be inspired with a fierce fighting spirit, particularly when motivated by patriotic enthusiasm” (155). Thus moral factors were more important than rigid scientific analysis. “In fact, the real power of armies rests in the moral and physical force of the troops rather than in all the sciences of the officers” (156). To be sure, this position offered a sharp break from the Enlightenment when armies and campaigns were viewed as large chess matches and the general who could out maneuver the other would win the contest. Berenhorst changed the direction of military studies by suggesting blood and mettle could turn the tide of battle. Berenhorst, however, held an affinity for the Enlightenment, as did the man who would mentor Clausewitz, Gerhard Scharnhorst.
According to Gat, Scharnhorst was a man of the Enlightenment and a true Aufklarung. he believed in the importance of military knowledge and emphasized that “war was susceptible to intellectual study, theoretical and historical, based upon clear concepts and principles derived from experience” (165). Moreover, some elements of warfare could be subjected to mathematical or scientific analysis. Scharnhorst’s legacy, however, is not his intellectual corpus but that of his primary student, Karl von Clausewitz. Clausewtiz, therefore, can be seen as a product of the Enlightenment and the Auflarung movement, and an intellectual disciple of a man who rejected the extremes of the Enlightenment only to agree with the belief in a systematic study of war.
Clausewitz rejected the Enlightenment world-view, and as Gat illustrates, his “conception of military theory was rooted in Kant’s theory of art…” (177). Clausewitz distinguished between art and science, believing that science was the aim of “knowledge through conceptualization” while art was “the attainment of a certain aim through the creative ability of combining given means” (179). Art was assisted by knowledge and therefore war could be described as an art. Rules would give-way to “freely creating genius” (180). Clausewitz agreed with Berenhorst on the moral element of war and criticized those like Jomini who portrayed a lifeless picture of military history. “The important point is again that character and spirit are more essential than cognitive faculties; fundamentally, war is an activity more than an intellectual discipline” (183). Clausewitz believed war relied on the moral capabilities of the commanding generals. he demanded a theory of war that portrayed the complexities of warfare and argued that historical experience could be used as a guide but not as a method to “provide doctrines” (190). Clausewitz would therefore wrestle with how to create a comprehensive theory of war while tied to a pseudo-historicist view of the past.
he began his monumental study on War by posing the fundamental question counter-Enlightenment theorists rejected: can there be a universal theory of war? Clausewitz answered yes because a theory on war should “aim at the ‘lasting spirit of war’” (193). This could be determined by an examination of the universal elements of war through historical study. he formulated that the “true subject of theory” was the “conduct of operations” (197). as Gat eloquently states: “Above historical study and crude rules there exists a universal theory which reflects the lasting nature of war, transcends the diversity and transformations of past experience, and is both generally valid and instructive” (199). This was Clausewitz’s conception of a universal theory of war.
Gat argues Clausewitz created his theory of war through practical experience; his political and military outlook greatly impacted his analysis. Fighting, he maintained, was the essence of war; hence, the destruction of the enemy was the centerpiece of his military outlook. Closely tied to his military outlook were his political views which led him to contend that the state should have primary control over wartime strategy. All state activity should be directed at war making capabilities. “War is fought for the attainment of a political purpose, ‘the purpose of war”” (206). The best way to achieve victory was a frontal assault at the enemy’s center position or the decisive point. in essence, the nature of war dictates that the aim of battle should be the total destruction of the enemy’s ability to wage war. This may be achieved through political means, but ultimately, each side will pursue military escalation until war becomes inevitable. After the destruction of World War I, much of Clausewitz’s theory was discredited, and military thinkers began to search for a new model to deal with the harsh realities of war in the machine age. Even Clausewitz realized before his death that contrary to his previous writings, defense may actually have been stronger than offense and there were instances when limited warfare may be preferable to total war. The transition from Clausewitz to the modern age is the emphasis of Book II.
Book II, entitled “The Nineteenth Century,” traces the development of military theory from the Napoleonic era to World War I. Gat focuses on the major European powers, including the United States, in an attempt to ascertain the influence of Napoleonic warfare, the Prussian-German military school, and the major developments in naval military theory during this transitional period. Gat contends that “nothing fundamental seems to have changed in the way people in the Western world in the nineteenth century viewed war and military theory” (515). Gat reasons this was due to the historical climate of the nineteenth century. The French Revolution stimulated intellectual activity, particularly in relation to military theory, and thus, it would take time for the theories developed by the Revolution to be “rendered inadequate by new paradigmatic changes” (515). Military theorists would wrestle with the implications of total war during the nineteenth century, but it was not until after World War I that the idea of total war was again challenged intellectually. Naval theorists provided the impetus for new challenges to total war, and though the nineteenth century may have been devoid of profound changes in strategic theory, Gat nevertheless provides a vibrant description of the men and ideas what would simultaneously solidify both a Clausewitzian and Jominian approach to nineteenth-century warfare.
“It is important to realize that, in general, there was little difference in military outlook per se between Clausewitz and Jomini; both reflected the spirit and outlook of Napoleonic strategy” (270). To be sure, changes took place in the nineteenth century, particularly in the realm of technology, that would transform war, but the origins of nineteenth century military thought were traceable to Jomini and Clausewtiz. Gat begins his analysis of the nineteenth century with discussions of great Britain and the United States. Both countries adopted the Enlightenment approach to military strategy, though by the end of the nineteenth century, Clausewitz’s influence in the Prussian-German military schools would change the direction of strategic thought in both countries.
The father of British military thought in the nineteenth century was Sir William Napier whose History of the War in the Peninsula had a dramatic effect on British military policy. Napier believed Jomini had uncovered the “true principles of the art of war” (275). His Enlightenment approach to warfare championed the genius of Napoleon and Wellington, for Napoleon “brought the art of war to the pinnacle of perfection, but crushing the tyranny of the magazines, concentrating his forces, moving them on interior lines and substituting battle for manoeuvre” (275). Napier was challenged by British theorists, such as John Mitchell, who emphasized a Prussian-German approach to warfare, but the most popular military text of the age, Edward Bruce Hamley’s The Operations of War was clearly influenced by Jomini, Archduke Charles and Napier. The Jominian thesis would be discredited by World War I, but Gat illustrates that the dominant military theories of the nineteenth century migrated across the channel and had a profound impact on the direction of British strategy.
Jominian theory would make a more extensive journey across the Atlantic where it would additionally influence the direction of United States military strategy. The American experiment was a direct result of the Enlightenment; hence, the founders, most notably Thomas Jefferson, carried the military ideas of the Enlightenment into the White House. The creation of the United States Military Academy and the professionalization of the officer corps in America was a direct result of the Enlightenment. furthermore, by the 1860s, Jomini’s major texts had been carried to America and translated. Most of the military leadership of the Civil War read Jomini and implemented his strategic prescriptions. Gat uses these two case studies to illustrate the widening scope of military thought, but to be sure, Prussia and France dominated strategic theory in the nineteenth century.
French military strategy in the nineteenth century, formed in large part by Charles du Picq’s Battle Studies, eventually incorporated the idea of the “Cult of the Offensive.” Du Picq believed “fighting performance…was rooted in the most elementary instincts of man’s individual and group psychology” (297). The key to victory in du Picq’s estimation was a disciplined formation. Soldiers were less likely to flee in a disciplined formation because they were protected both physically and psychologically by their comrades. Though du Picq never advocated a strong offensive strategy, the French general staff who read his works before World War I generally accepted his ideas and fused them with their own opinions on offensive combat. Gat reasons that the “Cult of the Offensive” was more complex than a strict allegiance to the ideas of men like du Picq, but French military theorists had a dramatic impact on twentieth-century war planning. other factors, however, such as the “discovery” of German military ideas and a return to Napoleonic concepts of warfare, a new military school that espoused the ideas of French military theorists, the re-introduction of French nationalism into the military through young, aggressive generals and finally a “quest for moral regeneration,” led to the disastrous French military policy of World War I (440). The French did not have a defensive plan because the offense could be supported and vindicated by superior “moral energy, action, and will power” (432).
Gat argues “only in Germany was the reaction against the Enlightenment so profound and all-encompassing as to influence military theory decisively and produce a new conception of its nature” (310). This was due in large part to the German wars of unification. Once Germany became the dominant power in Europe, the military and public mind were fused into a comprehensive world outlook. The changing nature of German economy and society produced the idea of “world power or decline.” To be sure, the dominant military figure of the nineteenth century was Helmuth von Moltke, Clausewitzian disciple and the driving force behind German expansion. Before the 1848 revolutions, many German leaders, Moltke included, tolerated liberals and even accepted some reformist ideas; however, the revolutions had a dramatic effect on Moltke’s psyche, for he believed they were “revolutionary” not “reformist.” Military planners and theorists crushed liberal “revolutionaries” and solidified the empire by “force of arms and state power” (325). Gat contends “Moltke’s world-view, crystallized after the creation of the empire into a hard core of convictions” was typical of a new comprehensive German Weltanschauung. German military planners became more interested in expanding German borders, including a war against France. yet, Motlke and other military theorists generally supported defensive measures during the late nineteenth century.
Technology created a different war climate and brought new challenges for military theorists, and though the essence and spirit of warfare remained unchanged, modern warfare, Moltke believed, was gravitating toward total war. This new reality forced German leaders to accept the unification of the German government and war department and to pursue an expansive foreign policy as well. other European powers, most notably France, would be forced to accept German hegemony at the point of a sword. Eventually, the concept of “world power or decline” filtered into the German military schools. German historians and theorists, such as Hans Delbruck, advanced the “Reich’s ethos in its progressive brand” (372). Eventually, Delbruck would criticize German planning as World War I dragged into a stalemate along the Western front, but for a time there was no better proponent of war than the master German historian. Germany soon discovered that modern technology had changed warfare, but not in the way Moltke had envisioned. Napoleonic warfare was not longer feasible with the invention of modern artillery and the machine gun; total annihilation of the enemy did not seem possible. War now favored the defense, or as Ivan Bloch critically assumed, “war has become militarily impossible to decide and therefore economically and socially suicidal” (378). Millions of deaths on the battlefield during World War I seemed to vindicate his claim.
Book II concludes with an analysis of naval strategy and the interrelationship between Marxism and Clausewitz. Gat argues “a striking similarity existed between naval and military ideas in the nineteenth century” because “the major figures of both military and naval warfare had been, and continued to be, grounded in, and determined by, a common set of technological, socio-political and economic conditions” (441). Imperialism was at the heart of modern naval strategy and stimulated considerable interest in the construction of large fleets. Gat discusses the influence of two great naval theorists in detail: Alfred T. Mahan and Julian Corbett. Mahan systematically highlighted the “historical role and significance of sea power” (450). Gat characterizes Mahan’s philosophy as similar to Moltke’s and demonstrates that Mahan’s naval theory rested on the idea that “war could create the conditions for future greatness, as the British and German cases demonstrated” (458). Mahan resisted technological advancements in naval combat—for example the introduction of the Dreadnaught class battleship—and seemed behind the curve in naval strategy by the early twentieth century. in fact, Gat contends naval strategists faced the same problems land strategists confronted during World War I. Destruction of the enemy’s fleet seemed impossible with increased range and firepower on the open sea. Julian Corbett emerged following the realities of World War I and formalized a new approach to naval strategy. Limited wars, he believed, were the norm in naval combat. he argued that the defense was stronger than the offense and suggested naval theorists look to “the strategic offensive combined with tactical defense” (488). Battles were therefore “the means of enabling you to do that which really brings wars to an end—that is to exert pressure on the citizens and their collective life” (489). Additionally, Corbett warned naval strategists of the dangers of concentration of forces. Keeping the enemy in the dark, he reasoned, was the most effective way of luring his forces into destruction. Corbett had critics, but as Gat correctly states “the advent of nuclear weapons closed the curtain on the nineteenth-century Napoleonic-Nelsonian conception of unlimited war” (493).
Gat’s final chapter of Book II examines the relationship between Marxism and Clausewitz. Most historians emphasize the drastic similarities in Clasuewitz’s and Marx’s view of state power and war as the continuation of policy. Gat contends, however, that historians overstate “the relationship of Engels and Marx to Clasuewitz” (494). as Gat unequivocally states, “neither had any special interest in, or appreciation of, Clausewitz’s work, and…Engels was not influenced by it to any considerable extent” (494). The link between the two, Gat suggests, was a lineage in a “common intellectual matrix” (495). The roots of their respective philosophies were found in German intellectual climate of the nineteenth century, namely historicism and left-wing Hagelianism. yet, while the Prussian-German military school admired Clausewitz’s devotion to the state, Marxists believed his ideas were “naively idealist or downright chauvinist” (513). but Marxists appreciated Clausewitz’s “historicist notions, comprehensive approach to the phenomenon of war, and rejection of all systems,” and Gat believes the historical and intellectual ties between the two were the product of the same “currents of thought” (514).
Gat’s final book in the trilogy, entitled “Fascist and Liberal Visions of War,” assimilates the various factors that produced twentieth-century military thought. Central to Book III is mechanized warfare and the use of the containment doctrine as an alternative to total war. Gat argues that the containment doctrine was not a product of the Cold War but rather a result of the 1930s debate over appeasement or total war. Western powers resurrected the doctrine during the Cold War, but its genesis is found in the ideas of Basil Liddell Hart. Gat, however, does not stray from incorporating the intellectual origins of modern military thought into his discussion of the twentieth century. in fact, he attempts to show the progression and impact of military thought from the ancient period to the present and consistently refers to the earlier themes of Book I and Book II. Gat separates Book III into two parts. The first covers the rise of fascism as an intellectual doctrine and its impact on military thought; the second discusses liberal military theory and the impact British thinkers had on modern and post-modern military thought. as with his other two books, Book III is a thorough intellectual history dominated by a superb grasp of the secondary source material.
Gat argues a close affinity existed between the proponents of machine warfare and the radical visionaries of fascism in the 1920s and 1930s. Machine-age theorists “almost as a rule…drew heavily from the modernist notions and visions, celebration of the machine, and ideals of action, vigour, and speed prominent within proto-fascism” (521). Fascism was spawned by the industrial age, and more importantly by an admiration for progress and benefits of the machine age. Gat contends “machine war visionaries” were attracted to fascism because they were searching for a way “in which to anchor and…develop their own specialized vision” of the future (524). Much of fascist doctrine was grounded in the “neo-Romantic revolt” of the early twentieth century. Intellectuals such as Jules Verne and H.G. Wells created a utopian vision for the triumph of machines and science. While most of the neo-Romantics were strongly socialist and pacifist, machine warfare advocates seized on their ideas and incorporated them into a vision for bloodless combat.
The founding father of machine warfare in the modern age was J.F.C. Fuller. Gat believes “his formal fascist phase was only the logical conclusion of a lifelong intellectual bent” (531). Fuller developed as an intellectual before composing his thoughts on future warfare. he was heavily influenced by positivism and the idea of progress and eventually “rediscovered the military thinkers of the Enlightenment” (543). Fuller blamed a lack of scientific understanding for the failures of pre-World War I military planning. His role as the brains behind the British Tank Corps led to a general policy of using tanks as a dominating offensive weapon. Tanks, he believed, “would protect the infantry advance, create and threaten exposed enemy flanks, and prevent the attack from losing momentum as it moved out of the range of artillery support” (546). Eventually, Fuller would advance the idea of limited troop deployment and mass mechanized armies. Fuller attached his ideas on machine warfare to a rejection of democracy. The modern “people” were led, in his opinion, by demagogues and swayed by ignorant words. Fascism was the expression of the “new scientific age” and should be adopted by those who believed in progress (556).
Though Fuller’s conception of machine warfare eventually would eclipse his contemporary theorists through the work of his friend Basil Liddell Hart, during the 1920s and 1930s Italy was the center of fascist propaganda, and more importantly proto-fascist avant-garde Italian culture. Italian poet Gabriele d’Annunzio personified the modernist, progress oriented fascist of the 1930s. he was infatuated with fast cars and fast airplanes. “D’Annuzio…believed that a new elite of technocrats and virile technological knights would replace the old elite at the head of a modernist society” (563). Poet Filippo Marinetti echoed d’Annunzio when he argued that “the future belonged to a new vigorous elite, composed of artists, inventors, and technicians, that would engage in creative struggle—and war” (565). This intellectual climate eventually produced the most powerful proponent of mechanized warfare in Italy, Giulio Douhet. Douhet believed that modern war, exemplified by the products of industrialism, increased human power thus making “the whole nation…a great factory of war” (576). His greatest fascination was with the airplane, and Douhet is considered the pioneer of air combat. as Gat states, “the aeroplane and flight were among the Fascists’ most potent symbols” (581). Fascist leaders such as Mussolini, Balbo, and Hitler would incorporate the air force into a comprehensive symbol of “Fascism’s image as an advanced, dynamic, and virile movement” (586). and though Germany initially lagged behind their southern neighbors in creating the modernist image of fascism, it would be Germany that would transform European combat with a strong industrial capacity and dedication to machine warfare.
Gat argues that Nazism was only once component of German fascism. The foundations for German fascism can be found in the writings of Ernst Junger. Junger believed that “The machine is more powerful than muscle,” and contended “the technological age will make armies not only mechanical but smaller, placing the emphasis on the most modern advancements of science and the most sophisticated and agile forms of organization” (602). Junger, however, would remain aloof from politics when the Nazi’s took power. other machine warfare proponents, most notably the generals Hitler placed in power, carried the standard of machine warfare to its ultimate conclusion. They had studied and were marveled by American technological advancements and sought to emulate them in Germany. Conversely, Gat illustrates a paradox in Nazism. The Nazi party “cast its futurist utopia in a mythological agrarian and pastoral past” (618). Nazi party leaders hoped to capitalize on the interests of all Aryan Germans, particularly the traditional, middle class Germans who they believed were the backbone of German society. by co-opting this segment of society, the party could implement its designs on restructuring the German military. The Nazi’s admired fast cars and fast airplanes, as evidenced by the Autobahn and the Luftwaffe, but the Nazi party alone did not have enough political power to modernize the armed forces. “Yet Nazi political support and the orientation of right-wing radicals within the armed forces were a significant factor in directing German rearmament—particularly the emphasis on the Luftwaffe but also the development of the Panzer arm—towards modern means of war….” (621).
Gat concludes part one of Book III with a study in comparisons and contrasts. Chapter five discusses American progressivism and technological modernism. Gat primarily focuses on two American folk heroes of the 1930s: Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh. Both became proponents of American modernism and though only Lindbergh could be classified as a pseudo-fascist, the promotion of American modernism “resonated with fascist sentiments and ideas” (625). Fascism never took root in the United States, but Gat contends it had its American equivalents: “Mid-Western Populism, Progressivism and technological modernism” (631). While American thinkers may have been proto-fascist, Marxists, though proponents of a “modern” or “futuristic” doctrine, did not have the same zeal for machine age warfare. in chapter six, Gat argues this was due to the Marxist reliance on militias or popular armies instead of professional elites. Soviet strategy, moreover, emphasized the “deep battle.” This involved mass patriotic conscription and large citizen armies. as Gat states, “the authors of ‘deep battle’ advocated, not futuristic elite machine armies on the model of Fuller or Douhet, but modern machines cum the masses” (639).
Gat dedicates most of part two, Book III to an analysis of the life and military thought of Basil Liddell Hart. While Hart’s strategic thought has become the subject of scathing criticism, Gat contends “that Liddell Hart’s life-work…was far weightier than it is commonly considered today” (647). His influence on the evolving landscape of Western military thought was profound, and because Western liberal-democracy continues to dominate the world political landscape, Gat believes his ideas will still have resonance in the future. furthermore, in contrast to his friend Fuller, Hart became a staunch liberal, and as a “typical representative of the ‘generation of 1914’….His intellectual development mirrored the development of that generation almost theme by theme” (656).
Mechanized warfare and limited liability were central to Hart’s strategic philosophy. These ideas were in part developed through his close association with Fuller, but Hart would take the credit for a systematic development of their primary components. Hart’s writing style made him accessible to the average reader; thus his more immediate success. Hart advanced the use of air power, “non-destructive gas,” and submarines to immobilize the enemy’s rear and crush his communication centers. Warfare, in essence, would be smaller, faster, and less costly. War could be won without destroying the enemy on the battlefield. in this regard, Gat connects Hart to Enlightenment military thinkers and their emphasis on limited, maneuver warfare.
Additionally, Gat believes Hart solidified the containment doctrine long before it was used during the Cold War. Initially, Hart believed a policy of containment should be used to keep the Germans bottled up in central Europe. This could be accomplished through a variety of means, the most important of which was “collective security.” When collective security failed, Hart urged the British and the French to use economic and diplomatic pressure to limit the fascists in Europe. Hart opposed appeasement of the Germans but could not countenance full scale British involvement on the continent. His doctrine of limited liability found favor in the British Parliament, and hence British military expenditures were directed almost entirely toward the air force and navy until the late 1930s. “The more he crystallized containment, limited liability, and deterrence into comprehensive security programme against Germany, the more extreme he became in advocating the superiority of defense, with which he cemented together the whole concept” (765). of course, the fall of France discredited Hart, as did his opposition to Churchill, but Gat suggests if a united coalition stood against Germany in the 1930s, Hitler may have been stopped. His position seems to vindicate Hart; however, Gat concedes that such a coalition was improbable at best and Hart’s strategic theories would have only worked had all of the major Western powers, including the Soviet Union, been willing to maintain a strong two front defense if collective security did not work. Hart’s ideas did have resonance in the 1950s with the United States policy of containment. in fact, Hart’s views are similar to those espoused by George Kennan. but again, Gat concludes by summarizing Hart’s ideas despairingly:
These methods have had a mixed and often disappointing record from the 1930s onward. They are politically and strategically difficult to apply, often ineffective, and they bring their own sort of psychological strains for those who practice them. Still, given the nature of modern Western societies, of their foreign affairs, strategic requirements, and cultural sensibilities, this way of war-making appears to be their norm, as much as all-out war was for their predecessors (828).
A History of Military Thought, critically acclaimed by Military Review as “the best single author treatment of western operational military theory in the modern world,” can not be matched in depth or intellectual scope. Gat’s belief in a general continuity between Machiavelli and modern warfare is illustrated by his lengthy discussion of Hart in the concluding chapters of Book III. His inclusion of social and cultural history and its impact on military theory broadens and enriches his analysis. serious students of military history can not avoid his conclusions or ignore his comprehensive approach to military theory. Gat’s work is nothing short of a solid, professional, and exceptional work of history.
Review: Azar Gat–A History of Military Thought: From the Enlightenment to the Cold War
The Round-up: Military History
Sidney C. Philips, an easygoing Alabama teenager, enlisted along with a friend. ‘Manila John’ Basilone was the son of immigrants who found happiness in the rough-and-ready life of a marine. Eugene B. Sledge watched his best friend and his brother go off to war and finally rebelled against his parents to follow them. ‘Shifty’ Shofner was the scion of a prominent family with a long record of military service. Ensign Vernon ‘Mike’ Micheel left the family farm to complete flight school. Between America’s retreat from China in late 1941 and the moment that MacArthur’s plane landed in Japan in August 1945, these five men fought many of the key battles of the war in the Pacific. Here, Hugh Ambrose focuses on their real-life experiences and those of their fellow servicemen, enhancing and expanding upon the story told in the HBO® miniseries. Covering nearly four years of combat with unprecedented access to military records, letters, journals, memoirs, photographs and interviews, this volume offers a unique historical perspective on the war against Japan, from the debacle in Bataan to the miracle of Midway, the relentless vortex of Guadalcanal, the black terraces of Iwo Jima and the killing fields of Okinawa and ultimately the triumphant yet uneasy return home. These are the true stories of the men who put their lives on the line for their country, who were dispatched to the other side of the world to fight an enemy who preferred suicide to surrender; men who suffered hardship and humiliation in POW camps; men who witnessed casualties among soldiers and civilians alike; and men whose medals came at a shocking price; a price paid in full by all.
Culminating in the spectacular misdirection that was so essential to the success of D-Day in 1944, Churchill’s Wizards is a thrilling work of popular history filled with almost unbelievable stories of bravery, creativity and deception.
“the Tsar had long dreamt of taking Paris in revenge for Moscow…”
March 1814. With the allied armies of Russia, Austria and Prussia advancing, Paris is in real danger of falling to occupying forces for the first time in 400 years. but at a moment when all efforts should be directed towards the defence of the city, Joseph Bonaparte is concerned with the murder of a retired colonel, and orders Major Quentin Margont to conduct a secret investigation into his death.
Once again Armand Cabasson marries his phenomenal knowledge of the Napoleonic period with his psychiatric expertise to create a gripping and totally convincing narrative.
The Horse Soldiers is the true, dramatic account of a small band of Special Forces soldiers who entered Afghanistan immediately following September 11, 2001 and, riding to war on horses, defeated the Taliban. Heavily outnumbered, they capture the strategic Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif, where they are welcomed as liberators as they ride on horseback into the city, the streets thronged with Afghans overjoyed that the Taliban have been kicked out.
The soldiers rest easy, as they feel they have accomplished their mission. Then the action takes a wholly unexpected turn. during a surrender of Taliban troops, the Horse Soldiers are ambushed by the would-be P.O.W.s and, still dangerously outnumbered, they must fight for their lives in the city’s ancient fortress known as Qala-I Janghi, or the House of War…
Why for centuries was the British Navy the most successful organisation in the world? What does it take to lead such a force?
Britain achieved unparalleled global pre-eminence through one critical advantage – her naval power. while other nations looked to armies for their security, Britain looked to the sea and for over three hundred years the Royal Navy dominated the ocean.
Andrew Lambert, described as ‘one of the most eminent naval historians of our age’ by Amanda Foreman, celebrates the rare talents of the men who shaped the most successful fighting force in world history. From the Armada to the Napoleonic Wars to the second World War, he follows the careers of eleven men who created, refined, and reconfigured the art of the admiral. through their lives and battles, Admirals charts the evolution of naval command over four centuries, while proving that maritime power is a vital and living element of modern Britain.
It’s July 1943. Frederick Mayer, a German-born Jew is recruited to secret operations unit, the OSS. Along with 4 other German-Jews, he volunteers for behind-enemy-lines operations. All have family members in concentration camps. All want revenge.
Mayer and his comrades are dropped into the ‘Alpine Redoubt’ area of Austria, where Hitler plans to gather his SS units and make a desperate last stand against the Allies. This is the most heavily-policed area of the Third Reich, swarming with Gestapo. Capture means certain death; and for Fred and the other Jews, it means a horrible death. yet under Hitler’s nose this tiny army blows up trains, steals secrets and even impersonates German officers.
Eventually Mayer is captured and tortured by the Gestapo, but still he does not break. Meanwhile the Allies are approaching, sounding the end for Nazi Germany. Mayer, in his greatest act of chutzpah, convinces his tormentor, the commander of German forces in Innsbruck, to surrender his forces to him, convincing the officer that it would be better to surrender early than risk being shot defending a lost cause. This is a great World War Two story of derring-do and revenge. And it’s never before been told.
In 1521, Suleiman the Magnificent, ruler of the Ottoman Empire at the height of its power, despatched an invasion fleet to the island of Rhodes. This was the opening shot in an epic struggle between rival empires and faiths, and the ensuing battle for control of the Mediterranean would last sixty years.
Empires of the Sea tells the story of this great contest. It is a fast-paced tale of spiralling intensity that ranges from Istanbul to the Gates of Gibraltar and features a cast of extraordinary characters: Barbarossa, the pirate who terrified Europe; the risk-taking Emperor Charles V; the Knights of St John, last survivors of the crusading spirit; and the brilliant Christian admiral Don Juan of Austria. its brutal climax came between 1565 and 1571, six years that witnessed a fight to the finish, decided in a series of bloody set pieces: the epic siege of Malta; the battle for Cyprus; and the apocalyptic last-ditch defence of southern Europe at Lepanto – one of the single most shocking days in world history that fixed the frontiers of the Mediterranean world we know today.
Empires of the Sea follows Roger Crowley’s first book, the widely praised Constantinople: the last Great Siege. It is page-turning narrative history at its best – a story of extraordinary colour and incident, rich in detail, full of surprises and backed by a wealth of eyewitness accounts.
The Round-up: Military History
An Officer and a Movie on Military Channel
This media release about a new series on Military Channel just arrived at ACG. Pass the popcorn!
Military Channel has signed Hollywood film and television star Lou Diamond Phillips to host the new franchise AN OFFICER AND A MOVIE. Debuting every Friday evening beginning Friday, April 1, AN OFFICER AND A MOVIE pairs Phillips with retired and active duty officers who lived through major battles or have an expertise in the conflicts depicted in notable Hollywood films. as each film makes its Military Channel premiere, AN OFFICER AND A MOVIE provides expert commentary that can only come from being "on the ground" during the action as these officers reflect on the themes of that night’s film and also provide personal insight that puts each movie into a modern context.
"Lou Diamond Phillips is well known for his many feature films including the military movie Courage under Fire and, as the son of a Navy officer, he is the perfect choice to interview some of the U.S. military’s most distinguished leaders," said Henry Schleiff, president and general manager, Investigation Discovery and Military Channel. "the discussions within AN OFFICER AND A MOVIE bring an entirely new and even more realistic dimension to some of the greatest war movies of our time—from The Dirty Dozen to The Great Santini to Hart’s War—and provide valuable new information exclusively for our audience of military history buffs."
In the premiere episode on Friday, April 1 at 8 PM ET, Lou Diamond Phillips and retired Marine Col. Arthur Athens discuss the themes behind the 1979 classic film The Great Santini, starring Robert Duvall, who was nominated for an Academy Award for this role. as the director of the U.S. Naval Academy’s Vice Admiral James B. Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership, the former Commandant of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, Athens is uniquely able to comment on what it means to be a leader in the military and within a family’s home, where in his own life he has ten children.
AN OFFICER AND A MOVIE will include Kelly’s Heroes, Hart’s War, Windtalkers, Three Kings, and The Dirty Dozen among others. after The Great Santini, the next three premieres include:
Heartbreak Ridge — Friday, April 8 at 8 PM ET
Bridge at Remagen — Friday, April 15 at 8 PM ET
Victory — Friday, April 22 at 8 PM ET
An Officer and a Movie on Military Channel
This Day … In Jewish History: This Day, April 20, In Jewish History
April 20 in Jewish History
121: Birthdate of Marcus Aurelius 16th Roman emperor. The “Philosopher” Emperor reigned from 161-180 and he was a cut above those who came before and after him. But he had a low opinion of the Jews, referring to them as “stinking and tumultuous” as “he rode through Judea.” he reportedly preferred the company of the barbaric Teutons in the north to that of the Jews. this attitude may have been shaped by the difficulty the Romans had in defeating the Jews during their successive rebellions against Rome. Only 25 years before Marcus Aurelius came to power, it had taken the full force of the Roman Empire four years to finally defeat Bar Kochba and Rabbi Akiva.
570: Birthdate of Muhammad or Mohammad, the founder of Islam.
636: At the Battle of Yarmuk the Arabs took control of Syria and Palestine away from the Byzantine Empire. It is considered by some historians to have been one of the most significant battles in the history of the world, since it marked the first great wave of Muslim conquests outside Arabia, and heralded the rapid advance of Islam into Christian Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia. The battle took place only four years after the prophet Muhammad died in 632. Considering the way the Christians had been treating them, the conquest by the Arabs left the Jews in a comparatively better position.
1298: in Rotttingen, a small German town in Franconia, a local noble named Rindfleish, accused the local Jews of profaning the host. he then incited the Burgher and local populace to join in the killing. Twenty one Jews were murdered. The killing soon spread to a hundred and forty communities in Bavaria and Austria. in all tens of thousands of Jews were either killed or wounded. The killing stopped when the civil war raging through Germany ended. Albrecht, the newly chosen Emperor, brought an to the end of the violence and even punished some the participants.
1303: Pope Boniface VIII issues the bull creating The University of Rome La Sapienza. Considering the fact that Boniface believed in the concept that “outside the Church, no Salvation” meaning that the key to salvation required membership in the Catholic Church, it is safe to assume that there were no Jewish students or faculty at the school. Relations between the Jews and the school have obviously changed as can be seen by the “wide-ranging cooperation agreement” that was signed by Tel Aviv University and Rome’s Sapienza University in March of 2010. The agreement, allows for exchanges of students and professors, as well as joint research projects and master’s programs. The Italian economist Franco Modigliani and Zionst Ze’ev Jabotinsky were two of the most prominent Jews to attend the University of Rome during the 20th century.
1314: Pope Clement V passed away. Clement was the first of the “Avignon Popes. in the first year of his reign, 1305, he became the “first pope to threaten Jews with an economic boycott in an attempt to force them to stop charging Christians interest on loans.”
1505: Philibert of Luxembourg expelled the Jews from Orange Burgundy. At this time Luxembourg is ruled by Phillip the Fair, King of Spain – where Jews had been expelled in 1492. Phillip’s mother was Marie of Burgundy. in this case the Jews merely seemed to have gotten caught up in the dynastic swirl that was so much of European History prior to the French Revolution.
1615: Led by Dr. Chemnitz, the guilds of Worms “non-violently” forced the Jews from the city. Chemnitz was a lawyer and he devised a series of schemes where the Jews were deprived of food and the ability to leave and enter the city. a deputation came to them on what was the seventh day of Pesach and gave them an hour to leave the city. as the Jews left, the thousand year old synagogue and the adjacent burial grounds were attacked and desecrated by the “non-violent” citizens of Worms, Germany.
1657: after a battle of almost two years Asser Levy one of the original 23 settlers was allowed to serve on guard duty . Levy had been denied the right to serve, having been told to pay a tax instead. this was the European way of doing things. Levy would have none of it. Serving guard duty marked him as a full-fledged citizen. It was an early indication that the new World would indeed be a new world for the Jews. Levy who was the ritual slaughterer of the town opened his slaughterhouse on what is now Wall Street. he further petitioned to be allowed the rights as a Burgher or freeperson on the town, which he received albeit reluctantly by the burgomasters of new Amsterdam.
1728: The London Gazette reports that twelve individuals (including four Jews) who had been previously captured by Moroccan pirates are now released under a new peace treaty between England and the Emperor of Morocco. Rachel, David, and Raphael Franco along with Blanco Flora had been captured while en route from London to new York. The Gazette reports that they were returned to England on “His Majesty’s Ship Monmouth.” interestingly enough, though the other victims are listed by name and nationality i.e. William Pendergrass/English, Joseph Patroon/Spanish, Alboro Tordaselas/Gibraltar— the four Jews (Rachel, David and Raphael Franco, and Blanco Flora), are listed as “Jews,” under nationality. These events of 1728 preceded the era of Jew Bills and the civil and religious liberties of Jewish people were far from secure. they were indeed people without a country. Our research shows the Franco family to be of Portuguese/Sephardic extraction, who generations before undoubtedly fled the Inquisition of Portugal. Raphael Franco became a powerful merchant in the diamond and coral trade operating between India, Brazil and England.
1799: in a proclamation, a copy of which is quoted below, Napoleon “promised” the Jews of Eretz Israel the “reestablishment of ancient Jerusalem”, coupled with a plea for their support. this was the first promise by a modern government to establish a Jewish state. in 1799, the French armies under Napoleon were camped outside of Acre. Napoleon issued a letter offering Palestine as a homeland to the Jews under French protection. The project was stillborn because Napoleon was defeated and was forced to withdraw from the Near East. The letter is remarkable because it marks the coming of age of enlightenment philosophy, making it respectable at last to integrate Jews as equal citizens in Europe and because it marked the beginning of nineteenth century projects for Jewish autonomy in Palestine under a colonial protectorate. after the defeat of Napoleon, it was largely the British who carried forward these projects, which have in hindsight been given the somewhat misleading name of “British Zionism.” Napoleon conquered Jaffa but retreated from Acco (Acre); Napoleon’s Proclamation of a Jewish State was stillborn, and his declaration of equal rights for Jews was repealed in part in 1806.
Letter to the Jewish Nation from the French Commander-in-Chief Bonaparte issued at General Headquarters, Jerusalem 1st Floreal, April 20th, 1799, in the year of 7 of the French Republic by BUONAPARTE, COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF OF THE ARMIES OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC IN AFRICA AND ASIA, TO THE RIGHTFUL HEIRS OF PALESTINE.
Israelites, unique nation, whom, in thousands of years, lust of conquest and tyranny have been able to be deprived of their ancestral lands, but not of name and national existence!
Attentive and impartial observers of the destinies of nations, even though not endowed with the gifts of seers like Isaiah and Joel, have long since also felt what these, with beautiful and uplifting faith, have foretold when they saw the approaching destruction of their kingdom and fatherland: And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. (Isaiah 35,10) Arise then, with gladness, ye exiled! a war unexampled in the annals of history, waged in self-defense by a nation whose hereditary lands were regarded by its enemies as plunder to be divided, arbitrarily and at their convenience, by a stroke of the pen of Cabinets, avenges its own shame and the shame of the remotest nations, long forgotten under the yoke of slavery, and also, the almost two-thousand-year-old ignominy put upon you; and, while time and circumstances would seem to be least favorable to a restatement of your claims or even to their expression ,and indeed to be compelling their complete abandonment, it offers to you at this very time, and contrary to all expectations, Israel’s patrimony! The young army with which Providence has sent me hither, let by justice and accompanied by victory, has made Jerusalem my head-quarters and will, within a few days, transfer them to Damascus, a proximity which is no longer terrifying to David’s city. Rightful heirs of Palestine! The great nation which does not trade in men and countries as did those which sold your ancestors unto all people (Joel,4,6) herewith calls on you not indeed to conquer your patrimony ;nay, only to take over that which has been conquered and, with that nation’s warranty and support, to remain master of it to maintain it against all comers.
Arise! Show that the former overwhelming might of your oppressors has but repressed the courage of the descendants of those heroes who alliance of brothers would have done honor even to Sparta and Rome (Maccabees 12, 15) but that the two thousand years of treatment as slaves have not succeeded in stifling it. Hasten!, now is the moment, which may not return for thousands of years, to claim the restoration of civic rights among the population of the universe which had been shamefully withheld from you for thousands of years, your political existence as a nation among the nations, and the unlimited natural right to worship Jehovah in accordance with your faith, publicly and most probably forever (JoeI 4,20).
1808: Birthdate of Louis-Napoleon. a nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, he became Napoleon III, Emperor of France from 1852 to 1871. On July 19, 1870, Napoleon III declared war on Prussia in what is known as the Franco-Prussian War. a number of Jews, including Jules Moch and Leopold see, attained high rank in the French army. see later became Secretary General of the Ministry of the Interior. The war also marked the beginning of Rabbis serving as chaplains in the German army. after the War the region of Alsace and part of Lorraine became annexed to Germany. Many Jewish families preferred to emigrate rather than be under German rule.
1832: Congress established a park at Hot Springs, Arkansas when it designated its famous natural springs as a natural resource preserve as people from around the country flocked to the 143 degree water as a medical treatment for arthritis and other bone ailments. Jews were connected with Hot Springs from its earliest day. Jacob Mitchell, a Jewish immigrant from Galicia, arrived in Arkansas in 1830 along with his two brothers. Mitchell somehow acquired an old Spanish land grant to a portion of the springs, and he and his heirs spent the next forty years unsuccessfully fighting the federal government in court over their rights to the springs. regardless of the status of the litigation, Mitchell became an active part of the city’s commercial scene when bought a hotel in Hot Springs in 1846 and opened a bath house.
1856(15th of Nisan, 5616): First Day of Pesach
1861: in Baltimore, MD, a pro-Southern mob attacked the printing shops that produced Der Wecker and Sinai, two “abolitionist publications. Rabbi Einhorn, an out-spoken foe of slavery, felt threatened enough to agree to the request of his congregation that he leave the city. Einhorn would move to Philadelphia where he would resume publishing the Sinai.
1865: “an estimated 25 million Americans attended memorial services for Abraham Lincoln in Washington and around the country.” in new York several synagogues held well-attended services in memory of the recently assassinated President. At Shearith Israel, after the choir sang a variety of Psalms, Rabbi J.J. Lyons “delivered a short but eloquent address, in which he frequently” referred “to the qualities of the man and the unswerving loyalty and honesty of the statesman, whose loss they were…suddenly called upon to mourn.” this was followed by a recitation of the Kaddish and “a special prayer for the recovery of Secretary of State Seward who had been wounded on the same night that Lincoln had been killed. The service ended with a prayer for “ the future prosperity of the country” and the chanting of psalms by the choir. At B’nai Jeshurun, the chanting of Psalms was followed by a Dr. Raphael’s sermon in which he praised the virtues of the slain President. At the Broadway Synagogue, the chanting of opening hymns was followed by a prayer for the government before the opened Ark and a sermon by Rabbi S.W. Isaacs based on Genesis, chap. xv., v. 1: “Fear not, Abraham; I am thy shield. Thy reward shall be exceedingly great.” Services were also held at several other synagogues including the Norfolk Street Synagogue, the Greene Street Synagogue and Temple Emanu-El.
1875: Birthdate of Edouard Alexandre de Pomiane, also known as Edouard Pozerski author of the 1929 epic “The Jews of Poland: Recollections and Recipes” who passed away in 1964
1882(1st of Iyyar, 5642):Rosh Chodesh Iyyar
1888: The Jewish Messenger reports that Orach Chaim has contributed support for a new York City Chief Rabbi. “This action is the more significant as it is the first uptown congregation to join the downtown contingent and mostly composed of Germans while the other uptown orthodox congregations are mostly composed of the Polish element.”
1889: Birthdate of Otto Heinrich Frank, father of Anne Frank. Frank survived the Holocaust and passed away in 1980.
1889: Birthdate of Albert Jean Amateau, rabbi, businessman, lawyer and social activist. Born a Sephardic Jew in Milas, Turkey, Amateau attended the American International College in Izmir (Smyrna), Turkey. he immigrated to the United States in 1910. in the early 1920s, Amateau began a movement to bring more Jews into the workplace and government. he was also involved largely in the affairs of deaf people. after he returned from the Army (he served in World War I), Amateau was ordained in 1920 at the Jewish Theological Seminary, and he became the first rabbi of a congregation of the deaf. in 1941, Amateau developed the Albert J. Amateau Foreign Language Service, a business providing translators for lipsync dubbing for motion pictures. The business continued in operation until 1989. an ardent supporter of his homeland of Turkey, Amateau began various Turkish-oriented organizations while residing in the United States. in 1992, at the age of 103, he helped found the American Society of Jewish Friends of Turkey and was named as its president. Amateau was also an advocate of peace, and in 1937, he assisted with negotiations between Jews and Arabs of Palestine. Amateau died in 1996 at the age of 106 years, 10 months.
1894(14th of Nisan, 5654): an article entitled “Festival of the Passover” states that “Pesach, the Jewish festival of the Passover, begins the evening and continues for a week.” Furthermore, “the households of the Orthodox and many of whose who have accepted the modern or reformed” customs will host a Seder.
1900: Max Nordau introduced Herzl to Alfred Austin who gives him a friendly letter to Lord Salisbury, the British Prime Minister. Herzl sought British support in his attempts to persuade the government at Constantinople to allow the development of a Jewish homeland. . Salisbury did not receive Herzl “on account of the war worries”.
1912: Birthdate of David Ginsburg, “a liberal lawyer and longtime Washington insider who helped found the Americans for Democratic Action and led the presidential commission on race relations whose report, in 1968, warned that the United States was ‘moving toward two societies — one black, one white, separate and unequal.’”
1912: in the Bronx, a memorial service is to be held at the Montifore Congregation for the crew and passengers who died when the Titanic sank.
1912: a banquet celebrating the fifth anniversary of the Free Synagogue hosted by Rabbi Stephen Wise was postponed as public mourning for those who lost their lives on the Titanic continues.
1913: a general strike by 4,000 kosher bakers began today when 1,000 of them quit work in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Brownsville. The strike had originally been scheduled to start on April 29. The early strike date really was of little significance since the bakers would have quite working tomorrow any way do the fact that Passover starts tomorrow evening.
1913: Morris Siegel, known to his friends and family as “Morris the Apple Peddler” attended the the Brit Milah today for three boys – his three sons all of whom were born eight days ago. The crowd of well-wishers grew even larger when the entire class of his 13 year old son Harry arrived at the event.
1915: Birthdate of South African-born, American psychologist Joseph Wolpe.
1917: as the Russian military position continued to deteriorate and Russian soldiers demanded immediate peace with the Germans, mutinies broke out. in one instance an artillery officer named Khaust who had demanded that his fellow Russians lay down their arms was saved from an angry assembly of soldiers by a Jewish soldier known simply as Rom who intervened on their behalf.
1920: “Chaim Weizmann arrived at the Hotel Royal in San Remo, two days after the San Remo conference had convened.” Still smarting from the failure of the British to stop the riots aimed at the Jews of Jerusalem that had broken out earlier in the month, the usually reserved Weizmann, congratulates Phillip Kerr, Lloyd George’s private secretary, on the “first pogrom ever conducted under the British flag.” The unusual outburst took place in the hotel lobby, a public denunciation that caught the British leader off guard and led to cooling off period for the Zionist leader.
1920: in the aftermath of World War I, Palestine ceased to be a part of the defeated Ottoman Empire (now Turkey). The League of Nations made Palestine a British Mandate which meant recognition of the terms of the Balfour Declaration.
1922: Philadelphia Athletics 2nd baseman Heinie Scheer appeared in his first major league baseball game.
1926: Warner Brothers, which was owned by the four Warner brothers and Western Electric announced the creation of Vitaphone, a process to add sound to film. Vitaphone would be the sound system used in the making of “The Jazz Singer,” the first talking motion picture.
1936: Jews repelled an Arab attack in Petach Tikvah. this attack was part of the Arab Uprising that lasted from 1936 until 1939. The Arabs aim was to put an end to the dream of a Jewish homeland. while they failed militarily, they were handed victory by a British decision to virtually put an end to Jewish land purchases and immigration. this effectively slammed the door shut on the Jews of Europe on the eve of the Shoah. Petach Tikvah or “Gateway of Hope” was originally founded by religious Jewish pioneers who had been living in Jerusalem. what would eventually become a city, was a collection of mud huts built by 26 families on malaria infested piece of land seven miles east of what would one day become Tel Aviv. Petach Tikvah took its name from a verse in Hosea “And I will give her…the valley of Achor for a gateway of Hope (2:17).” The moshav would be abandoned for a brief period and then re-started with support from Baron Rothschild. Petach Tikvah became a model and inspiration for the moshav movement. unfortunately, Petach Tikvah is no stranger to Arab violence. During the 1920′s, the defense of Petach Tikvah had helped to defeat an earlier Arab attempt to destroy the efforts by Jews to resettle and rehabilitate land that had been designated as “the Jewish Home.’ in the latest Arab Uprising, Petach Tikvah has been the scene of a suicide bombing in 2002 and the scene of a thwarted bombing in 2003.
1936(28th of Nisan, 5696): Zvi Dannenberg died today of wounds suffered on April 15 when he and Israel Khazahn were attacked by Arabs as they traveled from Nablus to Tulkarm.
1936: Bronislaw Huberman, founder and organizer of the Palestine Symphony Orchestra announced that Arturo Toscanini has decided to include music by Mendelssohn on the first program he will conduct with the symphony. there is an element of political protest in this announcement since Mendelssohn has been banned by the Nazis.
1938: Despite bomb throwing which has become a daily occurrence in Jerusalem, an enthusiastic crowd filled Jerusalem’s Edison Hall for Toscanini’s fifth concert of the season with the Palestine Orchestra.
1938: German planes fly over Austria on Hitler’s birthday dropping tiny Swastikas. this is the “new” Austria after the Anschluss which had taken place in March of 1938.
1938: The Palestine Post reported that for the third night in succession bombs had been thrown in the center of Jerusalem, injuring Edwin Eisler, 18, and Banu Baland, 35. forty “illegal” Jewish immigrants who had been in Palestine for many years, declared a hunger strike in order to persuade the mandate’s authorities to change their status from “illegal” immigrants whom the courts failed to deport, to that of recognized permanent residents, so that they could bring here their families from abroad.
1939: On Hitler’s fiftieth birthday, all Catholic churches in Greater Germany hoisted the swastika in celebration.
1939: The Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungshauptamt (WVHA; Economy and Administration Main Office) was upgraded. It was concerned with SS economic matters, particularly at concentration camps.
1939: At a meeting of the British Cabinet’s Palestine Committee, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, ever the appeaser, stressed that it of ‘immense importance’ with regard to British strategy ‘to have the Moslem world with us. If we must offend one side, let us offend the Jews rather than the Arabs.’ this pronouncement was a complete violation of the Balfour Declaration and the terms of the Mandate. It set the stage for the effective closing of Palestine to Jewish immigration in May of 1939; a policy that bought death for the Jews but failed to win the goodwill of the Arabs.
1941: German newspapers in Greece come out blaming Jews for ruining Germany after World War I. During this same period in April, the Greek newspaper new Europe wrote in capital letters “DEATH TO THE JEWS.” The paper reported that the Jews were the cause of economic problems in Germany. Levy stated the Greek paper called for the destruction of the “Jewish race once and for all.”
1942: The Battle for Moscow comes to an “end.” The war in the East will grind on. But thanks to the gritty, desperate defense of the Soviet capital, the German Army has been stopped and what was to have been a lightning war turns into a war of attrition. as bad as the Holocaust was, defeat at Moscow would have made it even worse. The Soviet victory here, along with other Soviet victories later in the war caused General Douglas McArthur (of all people) to declare that the Red Army was the Hope of the World.
1942: At Mauthausen, “forty-eight people were shot at two minute intervals as a present to Hitler on his birthday.”
1942: At a birthday banquet for Hitler in East Prussia, Hermann Göring announced that he was responsible for the Reichstag fire of February 27, 1933, that set off Nazi reprisals against purported Communist subversion.
1943:On the second day of Pesach, the Warsaw uprising continued for a second day. The ghetto is bombarded with fire frp, mortars and machine guns. Germans kill all the sick in the Czyste hospital. Then they set the hospital on fire. Jewish resistance was stubborn and organized. The Nazis, who had swept France in a mere six weeks, could not believe that the Jews of all people were providing this kind of a fight. according to one account, some of the Jews could not believe they were doing it either.
1945: Jerusalem’s District Commissioner, James Huey Hamilton Pollock, met with Arab leaders in an attempt to reach a solution as to how Jerusalem should be governed. Jewish leaders had accepted a British proposal that would have the position of Mayor rotate among each of the three main religious groups in the city. The Arabs had maintained that the mayor must be Muslim. The compromise would allow for a partition plan.
1945: Prime Minister Churchill telegraphs his wife who is in the Soviet Union stating that “Here we are all shocked by the most horrible revelations of German cruelty in the concentration camps.”
1946: The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry completed its report, urging the British to end the land purchase restrictions imposed on the Jews as part of the
1939 White Paper and to grant 100,000 Palestine certificates immediately. The British rejected the proposal, reused to allow immigration on anything approaching that scale.
1946: “five Yemenite Jews were killed when a three-inch shell exploded…in Nathanya” a town halfway between Tel Aviv and Haifa.
1948: On the eve of Pesach, “the last food convoy after Operation Nachson, made up of some 300 trucks brought provisions to Jerusalem.
1948: a convoy that included Prime Minister David Ben Gurion set out from Tel Aviv to the besieged city of Jerusalem. Ben Gurion wanted to spend Pesach in Jerusalem with the beleaguered defenders as a way of raising moral. The trip was extremely dangerous because the Arabs controlled the high ground on both sides of the highway and had successfully beaten back several other such attempts. while Ben Gurion, who was traveling in one of the lead vehicles, made it through, the rest of the convoy came under heavy attack and was forced to turn back after suffering heavy casualties. this was only one of the many battles fought to open the road to Jerusalem. Long after the war was over, travelers on the modern-four lane highway from the coast to Jerusalem could see the burned-out hulks of the Jewish vehicles that serve as constant reminder of the price the Jewish people paid for Jerusalem.
1949: Twenty-five year old outfielder Cal Abrams plays in his first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
1950: During a debate in the House of Commons Prime Minister Atlee’s Labor government announced that it would continue to refuse to sell arms to Israel while continuing to sells arms to Egypt, Iraq and Jordan. according to sources in Tel Aviv, the British have said they would consider sales of weapons to Israel if she reaches a full settlement with the Arab states. no such pre-condition has been attached to sales to the Arab states.
1967: Birthdate of Mike Portnoy, drummer in the progressive metal band Dream Theatre.
1970(14th of Nisan, 5730):Ta’anit Bechorot; Erev Pesach
1970(14th of Nisan, 5730): Poet and translator Paul Celan passed away.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Celan
1970: Bruno Kreisky became the first Socialist and the first Jew to serve as Chancellor of Austria.
1970: Pini Nahmani, an Israeli pilot being held in a Damascus prison, celebrated a Seder made possible by two Haggadot and some Matzah crumbs sent by the Chief Rabbi of Zurich.
1971: Barbra Streisand recorded “We’ve Only Just Begun”
1974: South African Jewish professional association footballer Martin Cohen was part of the White XI that played their black counterparts today “in a racially charged match at Rand Stadium. after initially going down 1-0 to the black side (the goal was called off-side by referee Wally Turner), Cohen scored a crucial goal before Neil Roberts put the game away.”
1976: Paula Hyman spoke about the history of Jewish women in America on new York radio station WEVD
1977: Woody Allen’s film “Annie Hall” premiered
1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that Yitzhak Navon was elected the fifth president of the State of Israel on his 57th birthday. The minister of defense, Ezer Weizmann, was expected to leave for Cairo in another bid to renew the stalled Israeli-Egyptian peace negotiations. in Washington, efforts were made to set the stage for another, possibly more promising, summit between Prime Minister Menachem Begin and US president, Jimmy Carter.
1986: an Irishwoman arrested in connection with an attempt to blow up a crowded Israeli airliner was freed tonight after two days of questioning with no charges brought against her, the police said. Anne-Marie Murphy, 32 years old, was arrested at London’s Heathrow Airport carrying explosives on Thursday as she was about to board an El Al flight to Tel Aviv. she carried a bag containing about 10 pounds of explosives stashed in a false bottom. The police said she may have been duped into taking the bomb onto the plane. Detectives are still questioning her fiancé, Nezar Hindawi, a 35-year-old Jordanian who was arrested on Friday.
1986: World famous pianist Vladimir Horowitz performed in his Russian homeland. a non-observant Jew, this performance was one of his last before he went into his final retirement. “It’s better to make your own mistakes than to copy someone else’s.” “My future is in my past and my past is in my present. I must now make the present my future.”
1987: Two Israeli soldiers and three Palestinian guerrillas were killed today in a shootout after the Palestinians cut through a Lebanon border fence and crossed into northern Israel, an Israeli Army spokesman said. The Israeli radio said three Palestinian guerrillas who slipped past Israeli troops in southern Lebanon and crossed the border near the Menara kibbutz ”were wiped out,” but not before they had killed the two Israeli soldiers who had tracked them to their hiding place in an apple orchard 500 yards inside Israel. Al Fatah, Yasir Arafat’s faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization, took credit for the operation.
1991(6th of Iyyar, 5751: Movie director Don Siegel passed away. Born in Chicago in 1912 and educated in England, Siegel had a long and storied career. in 1945, two shorts he directed, Hitler Lives? and a Star in the Night, won Academy Awards, which launched his career as a feature director. Among his long list of film credits were a series of Clint Eastwood films including Coogan’s Bluff, Two Mules for Sister Sarah and the classic Dirty Harry.
1993: At a solemn outdoor ceremony tonight at the place where several hundred poorly armed Jews battled the Nazis 50 years ago, the leaders of Poland and Israel hailed the valor of the uprising and called for a new beginning in the often difficult relationship between Jews and Poles. as a chilly darkness enveloped the monument to the heroes of the Warsaw ghetto and candles flickered in windows around the plaza, President Lech Walesa obliquely referred to anti-Semitism in Poland as “acts not always worthy, actions not always meritorious.” But, he said, “We believe we are wiser today because of experience.” Yitzhak Rabin, the first Israeli Prime Minister to visit Poland, where three million Jews died in the Holocaust, set a tone of reconciliation by stressing that some Poles had tried to assist Jews during the occupation. Gore Leads U.S. Delegation. The Polish and Israeli leaders were joined by Vice President Al Gore and a delegation of American Jews, including Edgar M. Bronfman, president of the World Jewish Congress. mr. Gore, who met earlier with members of the small Jewish community that remained in Poland after World War II, described the ghetto uprising as “sacred text for our time,” adding, “It warns us of the unfathomable power of evil, the pestilence of a human soul that for a time can dissolve nations and devastate civilization.” But for the Poles, the presence of mr. Rabin, who is to visit Auschwitz on Tuesday, was the most striking. “We come here tonight,” he said, “to strengthen our friendship with the Polish nation because there were also Poles who, in Europe’s darkest days, were extending their helping hands to us and didn’t just look on indifferently.” Clusters of red-and-white Polish flags and blue-and-white Israeli flags stood at either side of the 36-foot-high monument, which is built of gray-green feldspar ordered by Hitler in 1942 to build a victory memorial to the Third Reich. after the speeches, a light-and-sound show staged by a Polish director, Isabela Sywinska, enveloped the monument and the several thousand onlookers, many from abroad. Theatrical smoke rising from the back of the memorial simulated the destruction of the ghetto by fire. The noise of a train signified the cattle cars that took about 300,000 Jews from the ghetto to the Treblinka death camp. a cantor intoned songs from the ghetto and a prayer, El Moleh Rahamim, which is commonly said at Jewish burials. The commemoration took on a special significance this year, not only because it is the 50th anniversary and perhaps the last to be attended by any large number of survivors, but also because it was the first such ceremony since the fall of Communism. Previous major anniversaries had been largely boycotted by both survivors of the ghetto and Western leaders, who felt they could not dignify the periodic anti-Semitic campaigns of the Communists by attending. For some of the survivors, most in their 70′s and 80′s, the “ethnic cleansing” in former Yugoslavia made this anniversary of the fight against the Nazis particularly poignant. The anniversary also comes amid signs of growing anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe. But several Jewish leaders in Poland said their sense of heightened anti-Semitism largely reflected greater freedom of expression. they said surveys showed that Poles who said they opposed anti-Semitism were by far the larger group. The Polish Academy of Science took surveys in 1990 and then in 1992 that showed that both anti-Semitism and opposition to anti-Semitism had grown, according to Konstaty Gebert, a Jewish writer and journalist here. The survey showed that in 1990, 12 percent of the respondents were anti-Semitic and 22 percent were opposed to anti-Semitism. by last year, a repeat survey showed that both groups had doubled. none of the surviving fighters — there are thought to be six or seven — spoke at the ceremony. one surviving leader of the uprising, Marek Edelman, now in his early 70′s, is a cardiologist in Lodz, Poland. The issue of whether Dr. Edelman, who takes a fairly unsentimental view of the battle against the Nazis, should speak became embroiled in maneuvering between the Polish and Israeli Government organizers. Dr. Edelman, according to Polish acquaintances, refused to speak if another survivor, Stefan Gerak, who lives in Israel, spoke at the ceremony. mr. Gerak, who is with the Israeli delegation, also says he was a leader of the uprising, which Dr. Edelman disputes. “Marek feels terribly let down by the Israelis and the Polish Government,” said mr. Gebert, one of 50 Polish intellectuals who signed a letter published in the newspapers today hailing Dr. Edelman as a hero. “For 49 years he couldn’t participate at the anniversaries because of political reasons — the Communists were in power — and now he pays the price of petty democratic squabbling. this is the last time he would have been able to participate — this is the last big anniversary.” But Dr. Edelman accompanied President Walesa in laying a wreath at the monument this evening and the Polish President went out of his way to mention Dr. Edelman in his speech. Despite this squabble mr. Gebert, like many of the survivors, seemed pleased that the commemoration had brought together Poles and Jews from Israel in a heartfelt and substantive manner. “For the first time the Poles and the Jews from the diaspora are doing something together,” he said. “There have been 20,000 technical hitches but it has worked.” in the past, Israel and Poland have frequently traded accusations on the issue of anti-Semitism. When he was in office, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir said, “Poles imbibe anti-Semitism with their mother’s milk.” And mr. Walesa used what were interpreted as anti-Semitic motifs in his 1990 Presidential campaign. But in 1991 mr. Walesa visited Israel as President, and in an address to the parliament he asked for forgiveness. But in many ways, today’s ceremonies were marked by the contacts between individuals: American Jews visiting Poland for the first time since they left; Israelis touring Warsaw, once the heart of Judaism in Europe, and perhaps most important, Polish Jews who stayed behind talking with those who had emigrated. Vice President Gore addressed a group of 35 Polish Jews at the Jewish Historical Institute this afternoon and then answered questions ranging from Yugoslavia to American baseball. afterwards, as the gathering broke up, a short, balding man in his 70′s, Jakub Gutenbaum, looked at a well-dressed, blond woman of similar age. they recognized each other and hugged. “Now I look at you, I remember you from the camp,” gasped mr. Gutenbaum to the woman, Stella Kolin, from Forest Hills, Queens. they had last seen each other as 13-year-olds in the ammunition factory at Maidanek, near Lublin. mrs. Kolin fled Poland in 1945. Today the two elderly survivors left the hall clasping hands, and smiling. When World War II began in September 1939 with Hitler’s invasion of Poland, Warsaw was home to nearly 400,000 Jews, second only to new York City. Early the next year, the Nazis forced the Jews to wear white armbands marked with the Star of David. by October 1940, the nazis had created a ghetto and pushed the Jews into the area, which was sealed with a 10-FOOT-HIGH WALL. by the end of 1941, historians estimate that 100,000 people had died of hunger and exposure in the overcrowded, unsanitary district. Then, on June 22, 1942, the Nazis issued an order to begin what they referred to as resettlement. Initially, residents of the poorest houses, hospitals and orphanages were deported. Later, buildings were systematically emptied and children were herded to the UMSCHLAGPLATZ – the loading station – and into cattle cars for the journey to the death camp at Treblinka. Within six months, approximately 330,000 Jews had been put to death, according to historians of the Holocaust. Early in 1943, the Nazis announced their intention to destroy the Warsaw ghetto. this gave its remaining 60,000 occupants some time to devise underground bunkers, store rations and prepare for the worst.
A few hundred young men, most of whose families had already died in the death camps, staged the abortive uprising on April 19, 1943, one day before Hitler’s birthday. they fought with a few weapons smuggled into the ghetto by the Polish underground. The fighting lasted for three weeks as the Nazis burned the ghetto house by house. Cornered in their bunker at 18 MILA STREET, most of the leaders of the uprising committed suicide rather than allow themselves to be captured by the Nazis. as a final indignity to the Jews, the Nazi commander ordered the TLOMACKIE SYNAGOGUE blown up, as a symbol, he said, that the uprising had been crushed.
1997: The new York Times featured reviews of “Rabin: Our Life, His Legacy” by Leah Rabin and “The Boys: The Untold Story of 732 Young Concentration Camp Survivors” by Martin Gilbert.
2000: in Shanghai, 100 Jews attended Pesach services at Ohel Rachel Synagogue.
2003: The new York Times included reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including recently released paperback versions of “Sunday Jews” by Hortense Calisher in which she “explores the disparate fortunes of an extended Jewish family living on the Upper West Side after World War II” and “be My Knife” by David Grossman.
2003(18th of Nisan, 5763): Biophysicist, Sir Bernard Katz passed away. Sir Bernard Katz was born in Germany in 1911. he fled to great Britain when the Nazis came to power. Katz was noted for his work on nerve biochemistry. he shared the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 1970 with Julius Axelrod and Ulf von Euler. he was knighted in 1970.
2004: The Public Law Department of the Buenos Aires University School of Law and the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation organized and presented The International Seminar “Diplomacy and the Holocaust.”
2006(22nd of Nisan, 5766): Eighth Day of Pesach including recitation of Yizkor.
2007: Haaretz reported that sixty-six civilians were killed in hostile actions since last Independence Day, mostly during the second Lebanon War, bringing the number of civilians killed in terror attacks since the state’s establishment in 1948 to 1,635, according to National Insurance Institute (NII) Director Dr. Yigal Ben-Shalom.
2007: The Jerusalem Post reported that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had condemned as “hurtful” and “spurious” comments made by former Sephardi chief rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu that the victims of the Holocaust were made to suffer because of the sins of the Reform Movement. Olmert went on to praise the Reform Movement as an important element in the “House of Israel.”
2008(15th of Nisan, 5768): First Day of Pesach
2008: San Francisco chefs Gayle Pirie and John Cook are and putting a slow Food spin on the Passover Seder for the second night of Passover. The Seder, held at Foreign Cinema is sponsored by Heeb and is the magazine’s inaugural “Slow Food Seder.”
2008: The new York Times book section featured a review of “Dictation” the most recent work of Jewish author Cynthia Ozick.
2008: The Washington Post book section featured a review of a biography of the Jewish poet Louis Zukofsky entitled “The Poem of a Life” by Mark Scroggins and an interview with American poet Edward Hirsch whose grandfather was a stringer for a Yiddish newspaper who wrote poems and copied them into the backs of books.
2008: The Sunday Chicago Tribune reported that two Torah scrolls were taken from Kenosha synagogue. Just days before the beginning of Passover, two Torah scrolls each worth an estimated $40,000 to $60,000, were reported stolen from a Jewish temple in Kenosha, officials said. On Tuesday, Rabbi Tzali Wilschanski of the Congregation Bnei Tzedek Chabad realized his laptop, which he had used during a class the night before, was missing.
He checked to see whether the Torahs were safe, and discovered they were missing too. he said he last saw them April 5. Several valuable silver ornaments used to adorn the scrolls were not taken, leading Wilschanski to suspect that the robbery was not a garden-variety theft.
“If this was a hate crime, it would explain why they took something that is so dear to us,” he said.
“If this was not a hate crime, it was the work of very sophisticated criminals who know that the Torah scrolls are much more valuable than the silver pieces.” there were no signs of forced entry into the temple at 1602 56th St., but a deadbolt lock was open, Kenosha police Sgt. Hugh Rafferty said. while police do not have any suspects in custody, they are following several leads, he said.
2009: in Washington, D.C., Adina Hoffman, a Jerusalem-based writer, critic and founder of Ibis Editions, discusses and signs “My Happiness Bears no Relation to Happiness: a Poet’s Life in the Palestinian Century, “her new biography of Palestinian poet Taha Muhammad Ali.
2009: Opening session of “Durban II Counter at the Fordham University School of Law. The American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists sponsor this counter-conference organized to address the real issues of “racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and other forms of intolerance.”
2009: Human Rights Watch said in a new report issued today that Hamas security forces killed at least 32 Palestinian political rivals and those suspected of collaborating with Israel during and after the Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip. The report also said “unlawful arrests, torture and killings in detention” were making a mockery of Hamas’s claims to uphold the law in Gaza, which is ruled by Hamas, an Islamic group.“Hamas should end its attacks on political opponents and suspected collaborators in Gaza, which have killed at least 32 Palestinians and maimed several dozen more during and since the recent Israeli military offensive,” the report by Human Rights Watch, an advocacy group, said. It said that gunmen believed to be from Hamas killed 18 Palestinians, most suspected of collaborating with Israel, and that another 14 Palestinians had been killed by people said to be members of Hamas security forces since Israel ended its offensive.
2009: Today President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran used the platform of a United Nations conference in Geneva on combating racism to disparage Israel as a “cruel and repressive racist regime,” prompting delegates from European nations to desert the hall and earning a rare harsh rebuke from Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
2010(6th Iyar, 5770): Yom Ha’Atzmaut
2010: The US premier of “I Was there in Color,” is scheduled to take place as part the Yom Ha’Atzmaut celebration at the JCC in Manhattan.
2010: Or Ashual, a 17-year-old student at the Kfar Saba Amana girls’ school, became the 2010 winner of the World Bible Quiz competition today, which took place on Israel’s 62nd Independence Day at the Jerusalem Center for the Performing Arts. The first runner-up was Elad Nachshon of the De Shalit high school in Rehovot, while third place went to Avner Netanyahu, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s 15-year-old son, who is a ninth-grader at a school in the capital. The younger Netanyahu was also the winner of last month’s National Bible Quiz.Ashual bested 15 other finalists from all over the world, including the Americas and Australia. The theme of this year’s competition was the revitalization of the Hebrew language, and Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky recounted his personal story of first encountering the difficult Hebrew of the Bible in Soviet imprisonment – one of the challenges he overcame that provided him with strength, encouragement and inspiration.an excited and proud Binyamin Netanyahu sat through the event with his wife, Sara, and son Yair, and presented the traditional prime minister’s question, which was handed to him after the contestants had already taken their places away from the audience, in a break from the competition’s tradition.both Nachshon and Avner Netanyahu are in the secular education system. Netanyahu’s maternal uncle, Hagi Ben-Artzi – who, like his two brothers, Amatzia and Matanya, is a past winner of the National Bible Quiz and a product of secular schools – pointed out to The Jerusalem Post the magnitude of the achievement, saying that it marked a return of Bible studies to a central place among the nonreligious population after some three decades of religious domination in the contest.“I’m saluting my father here; it’s all thanks to him,” Ben-Artzi said of his own success decades ago, and of Avner Netanyahu’s Tuesday achievement. he credited his father, Shmuel Ben-Artzi, with making Bible studies a central part of his children’s upbringing and continuing to instill the Bible in his grandchildren. “[Avner and his grandfather] meet every day to study the Bible,” Hagi Ben-Artzi said. upon handing the first prize to Ashual, the premier acknowledged how excited he was over his son’s participation, and expressed his awe at the participants’ achievements. “[Former prime minister] David Ben-Gurion said that the foundation of our existence here is the Bible,” Netanyahu said. “I was brought up learning the Bible; so were my brothers. The Bible is again becoming the Book of Books for all of Israel.”
2011(16th of Nisan, 5771): second Day of Pesach
2011: Beit Avi Chai, in collaboration with Merkaz Hamagshimim Hadassah, is scheduled to hold its second annual English speaking amateur theatre festival: “Stage One”.
Created, Compiled & Edited by Mitchell a. Levin Cedar Rapids, IA
Copyright; April, 2011; Mitchell a. Levin
This Day … In Jewish History: This Day, April 20, In Jewish History
The Military Philosopher: Clausewitz, Mars, and Murphy
In 1831, a Prussian Major-General died at the age of 51 having never commanded an army or even a battlefield during his military service. However, his legacy would be his lifelong effort to examine and even dissect that phenomena that defined his life – war itself. Carl von Clausewitz had served Prussia and briefly Russia through the wars with first revolutionary and then Napoleonic France, studying both these and earlier wars seeking to fully understand war and warfare. The fruits of this effort were written, edited, and re-written throughout his life and would be published after his death by his widow as “Vom Krieg” or “On War.”
Over the fifty-odd years that I have studied military history, war, and warfare, I didn’t actually get around to reading Clausewitz for about half that time. this was actually a good thing since the Michael Howard/Peter Peret translation wasn’t published until 1976 and for my money this is the English-language version you want to use – unless you actually read German and can think like a 19th Century German philosopher.
When I first began to read “On War” during my time in the Naval War College’s Command and Staff course, was the realization that Clausewitz recognized just how much of a gamble war was and remains. I would summarize his approach very much as, “okay, guys, going to war is really, really not a good idea primarily because of the infinite number of things that can and will go wrong – and it never, ever comes out the way you expect it to. However, that said and if you are still absolutely determined to go to war – here’s how it works.” It’s almost as if Clausewitz believed that the real name of the God of War wasn’t Mars but rather Murphy.
“On War” has been mined by many people for epigrams and quotes, which were all too often taken out of context in hopes of overawing critics of whatever hobbyhorse was being advocated, much as people borrow from the Bible to prop up a weak argument. But like its subject, “On War” is a complex work whose true value and meaning come from the interactions between the various ideas – just as war is truly defined by the sum total of the interactions between its numerous elements. despite such abuses, some of the work’s ideas are of particularly relevance as the United States and some friends and allies begin air (and possibly other) military operations over Libya.
The first thought that comes to mind is that starting a war is a lot easier than ending it, something pretty clearly on many peoples’ minds and reflected in much of the public commentary. The corollary second thought is that no war ever ends the way you expected it to when it started and this is true of just about every war I have studied. There are several reasons for this; in particular there is what Clausewitz called friction. Friction is Clausewitz’s label for the innumerable little things that will go wrong when you try to translate a military plan into reality – think of the old children’s rhyme “for want of a nail” and you get a glimmer of the idea. also, you can try to move any large number of people around and get them to do what you want them to do when and where you want to do it. all of the little problems, questions, confusions, etc. that keep it from happening constitute “friction.”
Clausewitz was also aware of the problem often referred to as “mission creep” in the ongoing discussions on Libya. He knew from experience the reality that a country would go to war with a certain goal in mind – perhaps to seize a city or a province, recapture a city or province lost in the last war, punish a rival ruler or country by destroying all or part of its territory or its armed forces, or just old fashioned raid, loot, and pillage the enemy countryside for a while. this happens because most of the people deciding about whether or not to go to war are politicians – who may at best take the advice of the people who will be doing the fighting, but at least as often do not.
The most important contribution that the generals make in their explanation to the politicians is to set before them the all important relationship between ends and means; “if you give me this much military force, I can do this; if you give me this much more military force, I can do that.” as we have seen in recent years, political leaders who ignore such advice, almost always regret it.
Once the war has begun it either goes better than expected or worse. Either way, this raises a new challenge to the politicians,
– if the war is going worse or is not achieving the goals originally set out for it the politicians must decide whether to settle for less than victory or increase the military forces committed to the war,
– and with the required increase in military forces they will consider whether not the greater forces involved also entails setting out a new and larger goal;
- if the war is going better than expected, there is always the temptation to set out a new and bigger goal to replace the original one and “cash in” on the success. However, seeking an expanded, larger goal may in turn spark increased resistance from an enemy who now can expect to lose more than was originally at risk.
So the politicians (in the Middle East, in Washington, London, Bonn, Rome, Paris, etc) declare that Gadhafi must not be allowed to fly his aircraft over Libya. The generals use a mix of bombers and missiles to destroy the Libyan radars and command and control centers for its air defenses so that their planes may now fly unencumbered and unchallenged as they keep pro-Gadhafi aircraft on the ground. and then the politicians declare, “That’s not what we meant!” sometimes, you have to believe that the generals all wish they had decided to be professional athletes or street musicians instead of generals.
The Military Philosopher: Clausewitz, Mars, and Murphy
Kew re-visited « Daly History Blog
I’m at the National Archives in Kew for a few days last-minute research for my forthcoming book ‘Portsmouth’s Second World War Heroes’.
I’ve been going to Kew since 2004, when I was working on my undergraduate dissertation. Since then I’ve been back there working on Magazine articles, family history, journal articles and just random self-interest stuff. I’ve looked at Admiralty, War Office, Ministry of Defence, Air Ministry, Board of Trade, Treasury, Foreign Office and other Documents. Theres something pretty enigmatic about anywhere where you can walk in and choose from 11 million records and order one of them to read – many written in the vary hand of luminaries like Winston Churchill, Nelson or Monty.
Kew is an enigma all of its own. its always had a nasty case of change-itis, and its obviously an insitutional thing. In the time I’ve been going there the registration desk has moved at least four times, the first floor help desk has been revamped three times, the restaurant about three times, the museum once, as well as the cyber cafe. most Archives and Libraries could only dream about being able to change things so often. whilst improvement is no doubt a good thing when its genuine, you can’t help but think that a lot of the changes at Kew are classic cases of ‘Emperors new clothes in a governmental setting’. and why oh why do they insist on having such a politically correct menu? The restaurant used to to great roasts, Lasagnes… food like that. Today, however, the most palatable thing I could find was Morrocan spicy meatballs and spaghettti. which has played havoc with my stomach!
My first visit to Kew was to a rather sedate government archive repository, attended by professional researchers and the more serious family history enthusiasts. But since the Family Records Office at Islington closed and was merged with Kew, the TNA has become a mecca for family historians. Even more so with programmes like who do you think you are?. whilst I think its great that so many people are interested in history of any kind, it must be frustrating for the staff at Kew. From what I’ve seen more people seem to turn up at Kew without a clue than those who do. and then of course there are those who think they can just turn up and someone else will do all the donkey work for them… a lot of friends and family have mentioned going to Kew, but its the kind of place where you need to know exactly what you’re looking for before you go. and thanks to their online catalogue and research guides, its pretty easy to do so.
So wh0′s been getting the Kew treatment today? None other than Wing Commander John Buchanan, Flight Lieutenant Patrick McCarthy and the Venables Brothers – all of whose places in history should now be that much more in context thanks to the relevant RAF Operational records. Tomorrow I plan to finish off with Buchanan’s time leading a Squadron during the Siege of Malta, and then looking at Sapper Ernest Bailey and Operation Freshman, War Office casualties on the SS Portsdown, the Royal Navy’s policy on the sending of Boy Seamen to sea after the Royal Oak Disaster, and the Royal Marines Mobile Naval Base Defence Organisations.
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