Dean Swift

Bonapartism & Doubts about Napoleon III

Napoleon III / es.philatelia.net

‘Bonapartism’ was three things put under one invented name: a political movement, a system of government, and a boxed set of political principles. It supported the descendents of Napoleon Bonaparte, and dated from the election of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte as President of the 2^nd Republic of France in 1848.

History tells us that the last named, who became Napoleon III, was the nephew of the Emperor himself. The DNA scientists now inform us that he probably wasn’t, at least on the part of his father. In fact the Bonaparte family have always expressed doubts about the genealogy of Napoleon III. The dilemma is to do with ‘Y’ chromosomes: the Emperor’s are supposedly ‘Corsican/Sardinian’, whereas those of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte are said to be ‘Caucasian’, which negates any consanguinity. This has recently been revealed in the newspaper Le Figaro. Previously, we believed that Napoleon III was a son of Louis Bonaparte, brother of the Emperor and King of Holland. He was married to Hortense de Beauharnais, a daughter from the first marriage of Josephine, who later married the Emperor. I count myself with the group who believe that descendency from the Emperor ceased with the death of his son (consumption or tuberculosis, 1832) at the age of twenty-one. It is recorded that Jerome Bonaparte, youngest brother of the Emperor, once publicly shouted at Napoleon III: “You have nothing of the Emperor in you at all!” (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2014-06-10T16:45:39+00:00 June 10th, 2014|French History, World History|0 Comments

What was the CNT?

/ es.wikipedia.org

The Confederación Nacional de Trabajo was a Spanish labour/syndicalist movement, heavily involved in the Civil War of 1936/1939. The arrival of this trade union movement in 1911 helped Spanish union workers to achieve their first truly national network. It was based on existing trade unions, mainly in Cataluña, all sympathetically inclined towards anarchism. Its chief centres were in Barcelona, Saragossa (Zaragoza) and in rural, still feudal Andalucía. Following the Great War, the CNT became the biggest trade union syndicate in Spain during the economic and social crises that inevitably arose. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2014-06-08T16:31:39+00:00 June 8th, 2014|Spanish History|0 Comments

The Czechoslovakian Crisis

The historic meeting at Bad Godesberg / collections.yadvashem.org

Many years before The Czech Republic and Slovakia freed themselves from the yoke of being simply Czechoslovakia, this crisis evolved from territorial demands made by Adolf Hitler. One of the results of the Treaty of Versailles of unhappy memory was that over three million Germans were living in the Sudetenland, bordering with Germany and Austria. When Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, he stated that he wanted the inclusion of these three million in Germany. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2014-06-07T10:03:11+00:00 June 5th, 2014|A History of Poland, Austrian history, British History, Czech History, French History, German History, Italian History, Russian history, World History|0 Comments

Jan Christian Smuts

Smuts with Churchill during World War II / flickr.com

The South African soldier, hero and future Prime Minister was born in the Cape Colony in 1870. No-one was more in the centre of South African politics during the first half of the 20^th century. Nobody in South Africa but Smuts was regarded as a world-class politician and statesman, even in the 1990s forty years after his death. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2014-06-02T19:24:44+00:00 June 2nd, 2014|African History, World History|0 Comments

The German Revolution

German sailors revolt in Kiev / www.history.com

This was not a socialist revolution, as in Russia and France; nor was it anti-colonial, as it was in North America. It began just one month before the end of the Great War – on October 29, 1918, when sailors of the Imperial Fleet firmly refused to put out to sea from Kiev to engage the British fleet. Not wishing to commit suicide, they formed sailors’ councils which multiplied and spread by 6 November to all major cities, ports and garrisons in Germany and on the Western Front. Unlike Russian, French and American revolutions it was bloodless, as the German regime could not resist it. It was moderate – no-one wished to throw out the existing social system by murdering the nobility. Most members of the Councils based their ideas on new Bolshevik notions. What they wanted to do, they repeated, was to maintain law and order in a country which appeared to be losing the four-year war. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2014-05-28T09:13:35+00:00 May 28th, 2014|German History|0 Comments

The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre

/ paperdroids.com

Perversely enough, it was one of the great film comedies that contained a set piece showing with alarming exactitude what happened in Chicago in 1929. The film is called Some like it hot, written by H.A.L. Diamond and Billy Wilder and directed by the latter. This movie is probably one of the most explosively funny pieces of art ever made, but the Massacre of St. Valentine’s Day was not funny at all.

On the 14 February 1929 the law against drinking alcohol in the United States was in its ninth year. The gangsters and their political associates had been making fortunes out of Prohibition, and making enemies between themselves. The fourteenth of February was a cold damp day, any old Thursday except perhaps for the romantically inclined. There was a dark, long brick garage in Clark Street, Chicago; the place was used for repairing and hiding trucks owned by one of the big-time gangsters of the city, one Moran, known as Bugsy. The trucks were used in an extensive liquor-running organisation managed by Bugsy.

That morning almost his entire gang were standing about smoking, waiting for the arrival of their boss, who was late. They were to drive heavily laden lorries to Detroit in a big operation. Once in Detroit they would unload the booze, and drive on to the border with Canada where thousands of gallons of illegal hooch would be awaiting collection. That was the plan anyway. By ten a.m. seven men were nervously waiting for Moran. One of them was Wienshank, a civil servant wanting to join the gang; another was Heyer, a qualified accountant and dead shot; Clark was there, who acted as Moran’s bodyguard and confidant – he was his brother-in-law too; Frank and Peter Gusenberg, paid killers, were hanging around joking; with them was Doctor Schwimmer, friend of Moran’s since childhood and the gang’s medical man. May, a motor mechanic, took advantage of the wait to adjust the transmission on one of the lorries. Suddenly the open doors of the garage were blocked by a large black car: doors opened and stayed open and four men with Thompson sub-machine guns out of sight inside long raincoats walked quickly inside. Two were dressed as policemen, a sight which relieved most of the seven astonished gangsters waiting for their chief. Chicago policemen had the reputation of being as bad or even worse than the crooks. Everything would be all right. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2014-05-27T08:54:33+00:00 May 27th, 2014|History of the Cinema, US History|0 Comments

Gleichschaltung (coordination by putting in the same gear)

/ thisdaythen.blogspot.com

This dubious process began in Germany in February 1933, when civil liberties were suppressed. The newly established Hitler dictatorship meant to rid itself of all independent institutions. In March of the same year The Enabling Act (always a suspicious phrase) made Hitler free of any attempts at restraint by the Reichstag (q.v.). The rights of German separate states (Länder) were removed; eighteen commissioners, members of the National Socialist Party, were put in charge of the Länder; later state parliaments were abolished. The next move was to replace elected bodies by party nominees; in practice the originally sovereign powers of the Länder were transferred to the Reich’s Minister of the Interior. In April, Jews and any others thought politically unreliable, for example non-members of the party were purged, and party members took over their jobs. Hitler was showing his ability to move extraordinarily fast politically, as he would later militarily. In May the Gauleiter of Cologne (Köln) swallowed up all labour unions in the ‘Labour Front’. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2014-05-27T07:55:30+00:00 May 26th, 2014|German History, World History|0 Comments

Giuseppe Mazzini

/ the famous people.com

Giuseppe Mazzini was an Italian revolutionary, born in Genoa, a son of a medical doctor whose radical views were impressed on Giuseppe as a boy. He was born in 1805 and before twenty he had enrolled with the Carbonari. He would spend the rest of his life preparing for the social revolution he believed would unite his country. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2014-05-22T08:09:57+00:00 May 22nd, 2014|Italian History, World History|1 Comment

What was Chartism?

Feargus O’Connor / cottontimes.co.uk

What was Chartism? It was by far the most outstanding political movement inspired by genuine working men in Britain in the nineteenth century. There had been radical movements, such as the Corresponding Society, since the late eighteenth century, but the worst slump in the nineteenth, plus the reforms of the Whiggish government were seen as an attack on the working classes, and the over-used word ‘rights’ began to appear. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2014-05-20T08:58:09+00:00 May 20th, 2014|British History, World History|0 Comments

The ‘Showa’ Restoration (Japan)

November 1930; Hamaguchi Osachi shot in the street / ndl.go.jp

The Showa Restoration . The word showa means ‘Enlightened Peace’ in English. It was chosen as a ‘reign name’ by the Emperor Hirohito. It is hard not to see this as ironic. However, a reliving of the true word was attempted by several young officers during the 1930s; the intention was to restore the ‘true relationship’ between the Emperor and his people, by eliminating party politics, ridding Japan of political parties as a whole, and all democratic institutions at the same time. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2014-05-18T16:36:54+00:00 May 18th, 2014|Asian History, History of Japan, World History|0 Comments

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