British History – Page 14 – General History

Charles M. Talleyrand-Périgord (‘Since the masses are always eager to believe something, for their benefit nothing is so easy as to arrange the facts.’

Talleyrand / wikipedia.com

The French statesman was born in 1754 with a club-foot, a piece of bad luck he shared with Kaiser Wilhelm II and Lord Byron. None of the three allowed their pronounced limp to impede an upwardly mobile career. Byron, a poet who loved boxing, swam the Hellespont, an act of physical courage most athletes with both feet intact would shy away from. The Kaiser thought his kingly first cousins found his limp funny and mimicked it. He was thus only too anxious to have a world war, and achieved that ambition. Charles Talleyrand found the French army closed to him, so he became a priest instead. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2013-05-27T11:51:44+00:00 May 27th, 2013|A History of North America, Austrian history, British History, Church history, French History, German History, World History|0 Comments

Caustic Congresses III: the Peace of Utrecht (1713)

Great men conferring / dailykos.com

Of all the peace conferences that turned caustic almost at the moment of signing, the Peace of Utrecht which ‘ended’ the War of the Spanish Succession (q.v.) wins a prize. The year was 1713; the comparatively peaceful eighteenth century was just beginning. The seventeenth had been full of blood and thunder.

The Congress met at Utrecht in the Low Countries without the presence of Austria. Philip V (Felipe Quinto) stayed as King of Spain but had to renounce his claim to the French throne, and to accept the loss of Spain’s European empire. Later, Austrian emperor Charles VI found he could not carry out his plans for expansion without allies, and accepted the terms of Utrecht at Rastadt and Baden in 1714, one year later. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2013-05-24T10:46:19+00:00 May 24th, 2013|African History, Austrian history, British History, Dutch History, French History, German History, History of the Low Countries, Spanish History, World History|0 Comments

Caustic Congresses II: the Treaty of Versailles

The Treaty of Versailles / AKJ Images/Imperial War Museum

This treaty has been blamed by many historians as a more than indirect cause of the Second World War. It was supposed to be a treaty made between the Allies and Germany to be signed on 28 June, 1919, but negotiations continued until 1923. Germany however did not take part in the debates aired before the actual signing. Most intelligent Germans therefore thought it was a dictated agreement for peace, which could not be morally binding. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2013-05-23T10:35:44+00:00 May 23rd, 2013|A History of North America, A History of Poland, Austrian history, British History, French History, German History, Philosophy, Russian history, US History, World History|0 Comments

Caustic Conferences

Wars are expensive, brutal and finally useless, as long as human beings will kill others in an argument over territory or sovereignty. The longer they last the worse, it seems, the agreements invented in the ‘peace treaties’ are. This is the first of a series of analyses of famous Congresses or Peace Treaties which left a decidedly nasty taste in the mouth on both sides. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2019-01-15T18:33:01+00:00 May 22nd, 2013|Austrian history, British History, Dutch History, French History, German History, History of Finland, History of the Low Countries, History of Turkey, Italian History, Russian history, Scandinavian history, World History|0 Comments

Erich Ludendorff

Erich Ludendorff / commons.wikimedia.org

Germany is a country of tradition, contrast and discipline mixed with a craving for modernity and change. The actual Chancellor is a lady from the Centre/Right who was in her youth a devoted Communist. In the First and Second World Wars almost all of the ‘officer class’ were titled irrespective of whether Germany was a monarchy or a republic. Rare it was to find a senior army officer without a von in his name. Only recently retired was Freiherr Bertoldt von Stauffenberg, a Count as well as being a son of the heroic leader of German military resistance against Adolf Hitler, recently ‘immortalized’ by Mr Tom Cruise in a rather bad film called Valkyrie. Cruise, who is not very tall, played Klaus von Stauffenberg, who was tall. Actually Rommel was one of the few very senior officers in the Second War who was not a von. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2013-05-21T09:52:25+00:00 May 21st, 2013|A History of North America, Austrian history, British History, German History, History of the Cinema, Russian history, US History, World History|0 Comments

The campaign in North-West Europe (September 1944 – May 1945)

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 Durham Light Infantry moving up / durhamlightinfantry.webs.com

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. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2013-05-14T09:53:40+00:00 May 14th, 2013|A History of North America, British History, Commonwealth History, Dutch History, French History, German History, History of New Zealand, History of the Low Countries, Russian history, Today, US History, World History|0 Comments

Some naval mutinies

Mutiny at sea / www.history.com

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. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2013-05-12T18:20:27+00:00 May 12th, 2013|British History, History of the Cinema, World History|0 Comments

IG Farben

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. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2019-01-15T18:34:19+00:00 May 9th, 2013|A History of North America, A History of Poland, Austrian history, British History, Czech History, Dutch History, German History, History of Czechoslovakia, History of Japan, History of the Low Countries, Italian History, Jewish History, Russian history, Today, US History, World History|0 Comments

The Malayan Campaign and Emergency

Ge, Sir Gerald Templer / allmalaysia.info

Gen. Sir Gerald Templer / allmalaysia.info

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. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2013-05-05T11:03:19+00:00 May 5th, 2013|A History of North America, British History, Commonwealth of Nations, French History, History of China, History of India, History of Japan, History of the Far East, US History, World History|0 Comments

King George’s War & King William’s War

The assault on Cape Breton Island was successful / louisbourghistory.blogspot.com

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. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2013-04-30T08:24:27+00:00 April 30th, 2013|A History of North America, British History, English History, French History, US History, World History|0 Comments