Tag: First World War

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You’re gambling with World War 3.
—President Trump to President Zelensky.

I was a miner,
I was a docker,
I was a railwayman
Between the wars.
—Billy Bragg, Between the Wars
(more…)

1,101 words

I am feeling a bit reflective these days. Perhaps it is because of the research I am currently involved in, or perhaps it is the state of the world in general.

After Sweden recently announced plans to acquire new land for burials in the case of war, it now appears to be Great Britain’s turn. I found the outrage about reusing ordinary graves somewhat curious. It’s certainly a matter of custom. (more…)

3,545 words

Dick van Galen Last with Ralf Futselaar
Translated by Marjolijn de Jager
Black Shame: African Soldiers in Europe, 1914 – 1922
New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015

Dick van Galen Last (1952 – 2010) was a librarian and senior researcher for the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. His Ph.D. dissertation was on the use of sub-Saharan African troops during World War I and the following French occupation of the Rhineland in the 1920s. The dissertation was edited and published as a book after his death. (more…)

2,098 words

Thomas Dalton, PhD
The Jewish Hand in the World Wars
Castle Hill Publishing, 2019

Mel Gibson, who’d previously outraged the organized Jewish community with his excellent film The Passion of the Christ, was pulled over by the police in California in July 2006 for driving erratically. During the stop, Gibson caused a furor when he drunkenly said, “The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.” Throughout the media firestorm that followed, no reporter addressed the issue of whether Gibson’s statements are in fact true or not. (more…)

Joseph Nash, The Autumn Manoeuvres, Officers Playing at Kriegs Spiel, or the “Game of War” (1872) (Courtesy of Wikipedia)

1,349 words

In my last essay, and against my better judgement, I quoted from memory something that Winston Churchill might or might not have said. I could be wrong; people attribute all sorts of things to Churchill that he never said. This, of course, launched a discussion about the Second World War in the comments. (more…)

You can buy the book When Israel Is King here.

1,303 words

Jerome & Jean Tharaud
When Israel Is King
Allentown, Penn.: Antelope Hill, 2024
First published by Robert M. McBride & Company in New York, 1924

Shortly after the First World War, Hungary was forced to endure a Jewish-led Communist government that turned the Central European nation into a mix of today’s occupied Palestine and Pol Pot’s Cambodian dystopia. How this occurred is described in a 1924 book that was recently republished by Antelope Hill, When Israel Is King. (more…)

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Hungarian translation here; Czech translation here

If I could choose to be anyone from the twentieth century, I would not hesitate for a moment to pick Ernst Jünger.

The man did just about everything it was possible to do in his time, and stretched the limits of what one individual can accomplish in a lifetime to their breaking point. His incredible lifespan alone (he died a month shy of his 103rd birthday) spanned the Kaiserreich, the German Revolution, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, the Federal Republic of Germany, and finally, reunited Germany in his final decade — and was active in all of them. (more…)

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The song “Aqualung,” the title track on a Jethro Tull album from 1971 bearing the same name, is quite familiar to those such as myself who were born in the middle of the Pleistocene epoch. Although it’s one of the best-known songs in Jethro Tull’s repertoire owing to its striking riff, its full meaning isn’t obvious. From a superficial reading of the lyrics, it seems to be about a bum checking out girls from a park bench while suffering from chronic bad health. (more…)

Hitler issuing his declaration of war against Poland in the Reichstag on September 1, 1939.

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Part 5 of 5 (Part 1 here, Part 4 here)

A German war with Poland was now a certainty, but a new continental war involving Britain and France was not. The most important obstacle to the widening of the conflict was that Britain quietly viewed French participation as an indispensable precondition of her own involvement, and the French had not committed themselves to action against Poland. (more…)

Winston Churchill and Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax

1,907 words

Part 4 of 5 (Part 1 here, Part 3 here, Part 5 here)

Hitler’s cancellation of military operations for August 26 left him with only five days before September 1, after which, according to his generals, a military campaign in Poland would no longer be feasible. If war was to be prevented, it had to be done within this time. (more…)

Joseph Stalin and Joachim von Ribbentrop during the signing of the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact on August 23, 1939.

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Part 3 of 5 (Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 4 here)

By August 1939, everyone understood that a war between Germany and Poland was extremely probable. The great question was whether it might still be prevented from developing into a general European war. Hitler was under an important time constraint: since October rains transform Poland into a sea of mud, German military leaders warned him it would be unsafe to postpone the launch of hostilities past September 1. (more…)

David L. Hoggan

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Part 2 of 5 (Part 1 here, Part 3 here)

Given that both the United States and the Soviet Union were far larger and more powerful than Germany, and that the British themselves were still presiding over an enormous empire, one may wonder why Britain’s leadership was in such agreement on the supposedly urgent need to resist a far smaller power’s efforts to consolidate more of the German-speaking population of Central Europe within her borders. (more…)

2,781 words

Part 1 of 5 (Part 2 here)

David L. Hoggan
The Forced War: When Peaceful Revision Failed, 2nd ed.
Newport Beach, Calif.: Institute for Historical Review, 2023

David Hoggan (1923-1988) was an American historian who received his doctorate from Harvard University in 1948 with a dissertation on The Breakdown of German-Polish Relations in 1939. (more…)