Monday, June 06, 2011
Remembering...
""This is D-day", came the announcement over the British radio. The invasion has begun! According to the German news, British parachute troops have landed on the French coast. British landing craft are in battle with the German Navy, says the BBC.
Great commotion in the 'Secret Annexe'! Would the long-awaited liberation that has been talked of so much but which still seems too wonderful, too much like a fairy-tale, ever come true? Could we be granted victory this year, 1944? We don't know yet, but hope is revived within us; it gives us fresh courage, and makes us strong again."
Anne Frank, diary entry, June 6, 1944.
Great commotion in the 'Secret Annexe'! Would the long-awaited liberation that has been talked of so much but which still seems too wonderful, too much like a fairy-tale, ever come true? Could we be granted victory this year, 1944? We don't know yet, but hope is revived within us; it gives us fresh courage, and makes us strong again."
Anne Frank, diary entry, June 6, 1944.
Labels: Anne Frank, D-Day, history, Holocaust, Judaism, WWII
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Quote of the Day
"I bark at no man's bid. I will never come and go, and fetch and carry, at the whistle of the great man in the White House no matter who he is."
--Davie Crockett, Congressman, 1833.
--Davie Crockett, Congressman, 1833.
Labels: Americana, history, Politics
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Freedom
On this day in 1945, Allied forces liberated some 350 American soldiers from a concentration camp at Berga an der Elster.
Berga an der Elster was a slave labor camp where 350 U.S. soldiers were beaten, starved, and forced to work in tunnels for the German government. The soldiers were singled out for "looking like Jews" or "sounding like Jews," or dubbed as undesirables, according to survivors. More than 100 soldiers perished at the camp or on a forced death march.
It was on this day six decades ago, April 23, 1945, when most of the slave labor camp soldiers were liberated by advancing U.S. troops. The emaciated soldiers, many weighing just 80 pounds, had been forced by Nazi commanders to march more than 150 miles before their rescue.
Read the whole thing, and remember.
To this day I can't speak to a German without the Holocaust in the back of my mind.
Splash, out
Jason
Berga an der Elster was a slave labor camp where 350 U.S. soldiers were beaten, starved, and forced to work in tunnels for the German government. The soldiers were singled out for "looking like Jews" or "sounding like Jews," or dubbed as undesirables, according to survivors. More than 100 soldiers perished at the camp or on a forced death march.
It was on this day six decades ago, April 23, 1945, when most of the slave labor camp soldiers were liberated by advancing U.S. troops. The emaciated soldiers, many weighing just 80 pounds, had been forced by Nazi commanders to march more than 150 miles before their rescue.
Read the whole thing, and remember.
To this day I can't speak to a German without the Holocaust in the back of my mind.
Splash, out
Jason
Labels: history, in memoriam, soldiers' issues, WWII
Monday, April 06, 2009
Tom Ricks Lists All-Time Top 10 Military History Books
Catch-22 made the list? One of the top 10 books on military history ever written?
I mean, really?!?!?
Feh. No wonder Fiasco sucked so much.
Here's a few of the books that would be on my top 10 list:
The Last 100 Yards.
About Face, by Col. David Hackworth.
Enemy at the Gates, by William Craig
The Rommel Papers, by Erwin Rommel
Lee's Lieutenants, by D.S. Southall Freeman.
Landscape Turned Red, by Stephen Sears
The Art of Maneuver: Maneuver Warfare Theory, by Robert Leonhard
Strategy, by B.H. Leonhart
Black Hawk Down, by Mark Bowden
On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and On Society
The Art of War, by Sun Tzu
The History of the Peloponnesian War, by Thucydides
The Gallic Wars, by Julius Caesar
Caesar in Gaul
Learning to Eat Soup with a Fork, by John Nagl
The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, by Alfred Mahan (Ricks missed this one? What a piker!)
Anything by John Boyd
The Last Battle, by Cornelius Ryan
Stalingrad, by Anthony Beevor
The Fall of Berlin, by Anthony Beevor
A Peace to End All Peace, by David Fromkin
Anything by Winston Churchill on the subject. Or any other subject.
If we're gonna do fiction, War and Peace, by Lev Tolstoy.
On War, by Karl von Clausewitz
Grant's memoirs.
Sherman's memoirs.
E. Porter Alexander's memoirs.
Patton's memoirs.
The list goes on.
Put your faves in the comments.
Splash, out
Jason
I mean, really?!?!?
Feh. No wonder Fiasco sucked so much.
Here's a few of the books that would be on my top 10 list:
The Last 100 Yards.
About Face, by Col. David Hackworth.
Enemy at the Gates, by William Craig
The Rommel Papers, by Erwin Rommel
Lee's Lieutenants, by D.S. Southall Freeman.
Landscape Turned Red, by Stephen Sears
The Art of Maneuver: Maneuver Warfare Theory, by Robert Leonhard
Strategy, by B.H. Leonhart
Black Hawk Down, by Mark Bowden
On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and On Society
The Art of War, by Sun Tzu
The History of the Peloponnesian War, by Thucydides
The Gallic Wars, by Julius Caesar
Caesar in Gaul
Learning to Eat Soup with a Fork, by John Nagl
The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, by Alfred Mahan (Ricks missed this one? What a piker!)
Anything by John Boyd
The Last Battle, by Cornelius Ryan
Stalingrad, by Anthony Beevor
The Fall of Berlin, by Anthony Beevor
A Peace to End All Peace, by David Fromkin
Anything by Winston Churchill on the subject. Or any other subject.
If we're gonna do fiction, War and Peace, by Lev Tolstoy.
On War, by Karl von Clausewitz
Grant's memoirs.
Sherman's memoirs.
E. Porter Alexander's memoirs.
Patton's memoirs.
The list goes on.
Put your faves in the comments.
Splash, out
Jason
Labels: Books, history, Thomas Ricks, Warfighting, writers
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Teach your children
"Children, if your parents haven't been teaching you what it means to be an American, let 'em know -- and nail 'em on it. That would be a very American thing to do."
Labels: culture, history, Latin America, Reagan
Sunday, September 07, 2008
More on Obama (not) joining the military
Obama graduated in 1979. He says now he didn't join because there was no active military conflict at the time.
The Iranian hostage crisis began less than six months after Obama would have graduated high school. The Cold War was in full swing. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan in December of that same year. We had troops on the DMZ in Korea the whole time, and it was flaring up from time to time. The President of the United States had narrowly survived a rabbit attack that spring. And most significantly, the Empire had just destroyed the planet Alderaan.
Clearly, Obama had, shall we say, "other priorities."
The Iranian hostage crisis began less than six months after Obama would have graduated high school. The Cold War was in full swing. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan in December of that same year. We had troops on the DMZ in Korea the whole time, and it was flaring up from time to time. The President of the United States had narrowly survived a rabbit attack that spring. And most significantly, the Empire had just destroyed the planet Alderaan.
Clearly, Obama had, shall we say, "other priorities."
Labels: history, Obama, Politics, soldiers' issues
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Jason Reads the Heller Decision (So You Don't Have To!)
Well, you don't have to. But I recommend you do, because the majority decision, written by Justice Scalia, is rich with historical evidence and anecdote from the founding era.
But if you are pressed for time, the Scalia's decision, for the 5-4 majority, can be encapsulated into four main points:
1.) The right to keep and bear arms is an individual, not a collective right.
2.) The right extends not just to service in a militia, but also for the purposes of self defense.
3.) The right applies to firearms in current common usage. The argument some raise that the 2nd Amendment protects only arms in existence in the 17th century "borders on the frivolous."
4.) Justice Stevens is an idiot.
Splash, out
Jason
But if you are pressed for time, the Scalia's decision, for the 5-4 majority, can be encapsulated into four main points:
1.) The right to keep and bear arms is an individual, not a collective right.
2.) The right extends not just to service in a militia, but also for the purposes of self defense.
3.) The right applies to firearms in current common usage. The argument some raise that the 2nd Amendment protects only arms in existence in the 17th century "borders on the frivolous."
4.) Justice Stevens is an idiot.
Splash, out
Jason
Monday, March 17, 2008
The Wearing of the Green
In observation of St. Patrick, a brief military history of Cromwell's brutal quelling of the Catholic uprising in 1649.
We wear green in a spirit of revelry now. And we take the shamrock lightly. But there was a time and place where simply wearing a shamrock was a deadly serious act of political defiance, which could get you tortured and hanged.
Pleist amach,
Jason
The (Catholic) Confederates faced a disadvantage that negated the town's impressive fortifications, however: there was a traitor in their midst, Captain James Stafford. Had Stafford's treason not occurred, Wexford would no doubt have been a tougher nut to crack. On October 11, Stafford gave Cromwell entrance to the town. The scenes that followed mirrored those at Drogheda. Many Franciscans and other priests were killed. Three hundred women were massacred while standing at the cross in the public square. They had hoped that being near the cross would soften the hearts of the Christian soldiers. Instead it identified them as Catholics, and they were put to death. The churches were then destroyed. The total number of dead at Wexford was about 2,000.
We wear green in a spirit of revelry now. And we take the shamrock lightly. But there was a time and place where simply wearing a shamrock was a deadly serious act of political defiance, which could get you tortured and hanged.
Pleist amach,
Jason
