Typical Spartan school discipline and learning
Sparta as the English call this spectacular place in the southern Peloponnese (Greece) was a city/state, and the capital of the state of Laconia. This small country was invaded by Dorian Greeks and occupied, in 950 BC. Roughly two hundred years later the newly named ‘Spartans’ emerged as the dominant race, using a large number of slaves brought from surrounding states by force to do all the work on the land.
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This campaign was the advance of the Allies through France following the successful invasion of D-Day. It is important because it contains the blindest and most incomprehensible mistake made by a commander-in-chief in all History. But we will come to that later.
The Conference at Yalta. The youngest of the three old men is Stalin; Roosevelt (seated centre) was dying, and Churchill (left seated) was exhausted
Combined with the Soviet invasion of Germany from the east, the campaign would lead to the end of the Second World War and the inevitable Treaties. Following the Normandy invasion most German armies were withdrawn from France, though not all. British and Commonwealth troops entered Brussels on 3 September, 1944, and Antwerp was relieved one day later. The port could not be used immediately because pockets of German resistance had been left behind in the mouth of the Scheldt, and had to be dealt with.
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Captain Bligh of the ‘Bounty’ leaves the mutinous Fletcher Christian in the open boat he navigated over 3000 miles to safety, not losing a man in his loyal crew. An artist’s impression
The very nature of living together in ships sailing sometimes alone in a thousand square miles of ocean used to mean discomfort, hard discipline and rigid rules. An early Victorian man-of- war might carry more than two hundred men and officers in a space not much larger than a modern semi-detached. The end of the eighteenth century saw many mutinies in British and European fleets.
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Socialism has many names and faces: Marxism, Bolshevism, Leninism, Stalinism and Social Democracy all mean Socialism, which is a political theory of social re-organisation, putting limits on private ownership of industry or land. The word probably appeared first in France (after the French Revolution showed that monarchies and governments could be toppled) and Britain (where only a hundred and twenty years ago two-thirds of all land was in private or religious hands).
Socialists know (and will not brook any argument) that the community as a whole should own and control the means of production, distribution and exchange to ensure a fair division of a nation’s wealth. This means state ownership of industry, or ownership by the workers themselves. These ideals are admirable, but like all creeds including Christianity everything comes to depend on individual human beings, who may or may not be humane.
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‘Off to work we go’: inmates from the camp on their way to work at IG Auschwitz
This was a cartel formed by the leading chemical companies in Germany after the First World War. ‘IG Farben’ is the diminutive of the rather more tongue-stretching Interessen Gemeinschaft Farbenindustrie which has been translated as ‘Community of Interests of Dye Industries’. Three of the many companies which joined were BASF, Bayer and Hoechst.
It was by far the largest corporation or cartel in Germany between the two world wars, controlling five hundred companies (in ninety-two countries). Corporative arrangements were made between Farben and Standard Oil (USA), Imperial Chemical Industries (Gt. Britain), and Mitsui (Japan), which makes the period 1929 – 39 so interesting. You may have noticed that the nationality of the first two of these commercial giants formed the major part of the Allies in World War II, while the third joined Hitler’s Axis.
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Columbus (Colón) greeted by natives after his earth-shaking voyage
Four hundred years before the British Empire never enjoyed the setting sun, the Spanish Empire rose, flourished, dwindled and vanished. From the late fifteenth century, Spain, a fraction smaller than France, forged an empire including the Canary Islands, most of the West Indian Islands, all central America, all of South America except Brazil, parts of the Low Countries and parts of Italy, plus the Philippines.
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MPAJA in action against the Japanese, 1942
The campaign was a military action in South-East Asia between December 1941 and August, 1945 during the Second World War. General Tomoyuki secured free passage through Thailand because of an agreement with the Vichy administration in France (pro-German). He then invaded northern Malaya in December 1941 while his companions were assaulting Singapore with great success. While Japanese aircraft bombed the city, British, Indian and Australian troops retreated to the south. It was a failure, as they were then taken prisoner after the fall of Singapore in February 1942.
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Old Franz-Josef
It is difficult not to feel sympathy for Franz Josef, Emperor of Austria/Hungary. A dashing European prince of eighteen, he succeeded to the throne abdicated by his uncle in 1848, and stayed on it until the middle of the Great War, a world conflict he had helped to make. His reign was neither successful nor happy; his empire grew smaller and smaller and his power lessened by the year. His much loved Empress and wife ‘Sissy’ was murdered by a lunatic; his son Rudolf committed suicide, but not before murdering his fiancée; his brother Maximilian was executed by a Mexican firing squad, and the murder of his nephew and heir Franz-Ferdinand in Sarajevo plunged Europe into total war.
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Knights of both Orders share a rare word in peace
The difference is simple, and not very subtle; the Templars ceased to exist, and the Hospitallers certainly exist right now, working for the sick. Originally the latter were of a military order, the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem. The name comes from the dedication to St. John the Baptist of their headquarters in Jerusalem.
These are not their only names: from 1310 they were the Knights of Rhodes, and from 1530 the Knights of Malta, but they were established themselves first in (or around) 1070 with Muslim permission, managing a hospital for sick pilgrims in Jerusalem. They only became a formal order of knights when the city fell to the first Crusaders in 1099.
They wore a black habit, with a white eight-pointed Maltese Cross. They elected a Master and under him were at first purely military, in an order which spread quickly across Europe. In questions of order and discipline they followed Augustinian rules (q.v.) and divided themselves into three classes or ranks: knights, chaplains and serving brothers.
Driven out of Jerusalem by Saladin himself they moved to Acre, from which they were expelled a century later, transferring to Cyprus. In 1310, however, they captured the island of Rhodes and remained there until 1522. Then Emperor Charles V made them a present of the island of Malta, which they had to defend by force against the Turks, but they could not deal in a similar fashion with Napoleon: by this time the Order had lost its influence and supporting voices.
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The assault on Cape Breton Island was successful
The War of the Austrian Succession in Europe actually saw a component part in North America, the first time such a thing should happen. Up until 1744 Europeans fought each other in the New World regularly, but not many expected the taking of Louisberg on Cape Breton Island by a combined British Navy/New England force commanded by W. Pepperell in 1745. Thus it was that a British army was able to see for itself what American colonists were capable of. Pepperell’s report is favourable.
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