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War in the air Part II: Per Ardua Ad Astra

 

 

A scene from the film The Battle of Britain / omfdb.org

A scene from the film The Battle of Britain / omfdb.org

  The Blizkrieg from Nazi Germany that opened the Second War in 1939 showed that apart from tank power, air power was a vital component of Hitler’s war efforts. Germany pounded the meagre defences of Poland from the air, breaking communications, causing death and chaos on a scale not known by the suffering Poles not even during their centuries of abuse by neighbours. Dive-bombers called Stukas were used by the Luftwaffe, and a malevolent touch was added by their fitted sirens, terrorizing populations as the bombers hurtled almost vertically down from brilliant blue skies, releasing their lethal cargo at the last moment before straightening out. Many pilots, very young and with very little experience, did not straighten out, with the result that the Stuka made a bigger hole in the earth than its bombs. The efficient and very fast Messerschmidt I09 and 110 fighters attacked the ramshackle Polish aircraft without mercy, destroying most of the aeroplanes on the ground even before the pilots could climb into them. Many of these young ill-disciplined but courageous young men escaped to England, and were to take an important part in the air Battle of Britain. Assault parachutists were dropped from heavier German aircraft – a new use of air power pioneered by the Germans and quickly copied by Germany’s enemies. Parachutists were extensively used in the attack and invasion of Crete in 1941. (more…)

Four illustrious Cecils

William Cecil / tudorplace.com.ar

William Cecil / tudorplace.com.ar

William Cecil was the first illustrious Cecil, men from an ordinary background who managed, by determination, hard work, guile, ambition and not a little luck to reach very near the top in English history. William worked as a young lawyer with the Dukes of Somerset and Northumberland. He was born in 1520 and was made Secretary of State at thirty. He cleverly avoided the fates of both his bosses (executed for some reason or other) and when Henry VIII’s daughter by Catherine of Aragon – Mary – became Queen he rapidly became a fair imitation of a devout Roman Catholic by conversion.

   Mary Tudor died (rather fortunate for England, for she had been Bloody) and Elizabeth her half sister, born of Anne Boleyn, became Queen. She made him her Chief Secretary of State, and for the following forty years he was her chief advisor, counsel, and loyal subject. He was also the architect of her successful reign as he kept an iron grip on the Administration, influenced the Queen’s pro-Protestant foreign policies, and got rid of the troublesome Mary Queen of Scots by getting Elizabeth to sign the essential death warrant. The Queen, as always, sat on various fences at once by using special Tudor skills of her own, and bitterly complained after the execution that William had ‘tricked her into signing’. This was the nearest that he sailed into the wind, and indeed he was banned from the Court for a while, but Elizabeth soon needed him again. Working closely with the cunning Francis Walsingham (q.v.), who ran the 16th century forerunner of the SIS, he knew all about King Philip of Spain’s intention to invade Britain, and made more than adequate preparations for the country’s defence against the Gran Armada. (more…)

By | 2014-09-22T16:12:46+00:00 September 22nd, 2014|British History, English History, Today, World History|0 Comments

The Boston Massacre, Tea Party & the Intolerable Acts

Depiction of the Tea Party painted by Louis Arcas / down withtyranny.blogspot.com

Depiction of the Tea Party painted by Louis Arcas / down withtyranny.blogspot.com

By March, 1770 a strong sense of resentment and general feelings of unrest among American colonists, who came mainly from Britain but were intermixed with many citizens from other European states, led to violent action against British regulations and troops. On the fifth of March in that year, British troops under the command of a nervy officer were ill-disciplined enough to open heavy musket fire against a mob of revolting citizenry in the major colonial city of Boston. The fusillade killed five Bostonians, and nine British soldiers were tried for murder in a hastily gathered tribunal. As the people of Boston predicted, the result of the trial was seven acquitted (including the nervous commander), and two soldiers convicted of manslaughter. It was not good enough, and led to further trouble.

   The American Revolution (q.v.), happened because of colonists’ rage at attempts to impose direct taxation in the colonies without representation in London, in addition to a general increase of discontent with British rule within most of the thirteen colonies. In 1773, again in Boston, a ‘democratic’ group of working men mixed with larking students from colonial bourgeois families stripped off their clothes, dressed again as American natives, boarded ships in the harbour carrying (heavily taxed) tea sent from Emgland, and tipped nearly three hundred and fifty chests of the stuff into the harbour. There was little opposition. The harbour changed colour, and other North American ports disallowed entry to tea-carrying ships. With typical laconic American humour, this mild incident quickly became known as The Boston Tea Party. Recently, a new US political group has called itself ‘Tea-Party’ with an eye to history.

   Parliament in London over-reacted to the Boston Tea Party, as might be expected: In 1774 the Members decided to punish naughty Massachusetts and Boston in particular. They passed the Boston Port Act, the Massachusetts Government Act, the Administration of Justice Act and something called a Quartering Act, which I assume had no connection with hanging, drawing and quartering. Later the angry English MPs added a Quebec Act for good measure. In fact the latter addressed a different problem, but colonists decided they were all intolerable so they lumped them together and named called The Intolerable Acts, by which name they are still remembered.

   In July, 1776 the American colonists adopted their Declaration of Independence, but much bloodshed and mayhem followed and they had to wait until the Treaty of Paris in September, 1783 for the recognised and legal independence of the United States of America. The rest, as they say, is History.

By | 2014-09-15T08:11:11+00:00 September 12th, 2014|A History of North America, British History, US History|0 Comments

The Inquisition

Popular conception of question time in the Spanish Inquisition / newsbiscuit.com

Popular conception of question time in the Spanish Inquisition / newsbiscuit.com

This was a Catholic tribunal founded on a temporary basis in France and Germany. Its purpose was to seek out heresy, prosecute and punish it. In the thirteenth and later centuries how you decided to worship God in Europe was not optional. Heretics were severely punished, often capitally, by burning alive. The latter is probably the most painful way to die, but the Church believed that only by burning could the non-conformist devil in a person be driven out and destroyed.

   The country of Spain, and later its empire, is chiefly associated by historical novelists with the Inquisition, also known as the ‘Holy Office’ or Santo Oficio. A medieval inquisition was set up in the kingdom of Aragon, with headquarters in Tarragona, but this was superceded in the late fifteenth century by the newly invented Castilian or Spanish Inquisition, founded by a papal bull by Sixtus VI in 1478. The branch was devoted first and foremost to investigating how converted Jews and Muslims were behaving now that they were Christian. The Spanish Jews and Muslims of Castilla had been forced to embrace Christianity in the stern form of Catholic Faith in 1492 and 1502 respectively. (more…)

William Cobden

Cobden's ideal England, done by computer / craftform.com

Cobden’s ideal England, done by computer / craftform.com

Cobden was a self-educated farm labourer from Surrey, England who became one of the first professional journalists. By this I mean that he wrote for the papers of the early 19th century for a living, not as a hobby for some ex-graduate. He was born in 1763, and by 1802 he was publishing his own Political Register as an enemy of the French Revolution and supporter of his own government. As such he could be labelled ‘conservative’, but in 1804 he ran foul of the law and was convicted of criticising the government’s conduct of the war against France. The terms ‘freedom of the Press’ or indeed ‘freedom of speech’ had yet to be introduced.

   Personal experience of governmental repression gradually turned Cobden into a radical, blaming ‘misgovernment’ for England’s economic troubles, attacking ‘corruption’ where he thought he saw it, the patronage system, and control of Parliament by the rich and landed aristocracy and gentry fuelled by their own interests. He saw how the poor existed, and defended them as under-privileged. Perhaps he was blind to the tremendous forces which were changing society, because he loathed the factories and the new industrial towns. While Britain grew richer every year, Cobden saw the agricultural worker as an example of a glorious past – growing and tending his crops, breeding fine cattle, feeding often and well from his farm’s produce, weaving his own cloth etc. It was all a dream, but it was Cobden’s dream. (more…)

By | 2014-09-08T10:40:17+00:00 September 8th, 2014|British History, Philosophy|1 Comment

Balliol, John and Edward

The Old Library at Balliol, an Oxford college founded by the father of John Balliol / balliol.ox.ac.uk

The Old Library at Balliol, an Oxford college founded by the father of John Balliol / balliol.ox.ac.uk

John Balliol was born in his native Scotland around 1250, the exact year is uncertain, because of faulty records. When Margaret ‘The Maid of Norway’ died in 1290, John was a claimant to the throne, and was supported in his petition by none other than Edward I (‘Hammer of the Scots’), King of England. The reason for this was probably that another claimant was Robert Bruce, whom Edward had reasons for disapproval.

  Balliol was the claimant chosen and he swore fealty to Edward both before and after his investiture at Scone in 1292. He was then forced to cancel the Treaty of Bingham (signed in 1290) with its guarantees of Scottish liberties. This reinforced his popularity with English rulers but made him unpopular with the Scots. (more…)

By | 2014-08-04T17:52:24+00:00 August 4th, 2014|British History, Scottish history, World History|0 Comments

Sir Oswald Mosley and the Blackshirts

Sir Oswald and Blackshits of both sexes in 1936 / melbourneblogger.blogspot.com

Sir Oswald and Blackshits of both sexes in 1936 / melbourneblogger.blogspot.com

Oswald Ernald Mosley was born in 1896 into a family with a baronetcy. He came from ‘the ruling classes’ and later used his knightly title and high connections as a political tool. He entered the game as a Conservative Member of Parliament in 1918 after serving in the Great War, became an Independent in 1922 and crossed the floor in 1924 to join the British Labour Party, not without some risible comment from members of that rising party.

   He joined Ramsay Macdonald’s government in 1929, heavily under the influence of the writings of John Maynard Keynes. He thought, for example, that one could reduce unemployment by restricting foreign imports, making purchasing power more elastic, and relying on the nation’s banks to finance industrial development. These plans may have made sense but they were rejected. so he resigned in 1930 to set up his own ‘New Party’. Mosley had not failed to note the rapid upward mobility of a Bavarian ex-corporal called Hitler in the floundering, nearly starving Germany of the early Thirties. Then there was an election and all the New Party’s candidates including Mosley himself lost their deposits dreaming in vain of parliamentary seats. (more…)

By | 2014-07-29T12:08:29+00:00 July 28th, 2014|British History, World History|0 Comments

The War in the Pacific

/ pinterest.com

/ pinterest.com

Officially, this war lasted from December 1941,

/ ww2db.com

/ ww2db.com

when the United States entered the Second World War, until 1945. But the Pacific War really started with the Sino-Japanese War which began in 1937, when Japan’s concern was to defeat China. This was to be achieved by expanding in South-East Asia, so that Japan could control the raw materials on which she so much depended – oil from Dutch East Indies and Burma (now Myanmar); and tin and rubber from Malaya. She had to cut off China’s supply routes from the south, even if this involved friction with the United States. Moving further south involved risk of conflict with Russia in Manchuria (the Russians came off best after a battle with Japan’s army in 1939 at Nomonhan. Then a non-aggression pact was signed with Russia in April, 1941: thankfully, Adolf Hitler did the double-cross and invaded the Soviet Union in June with his Operation Barbarossa (q.v.) (more…)

After the Abdication – HRH or not HRH?

/ Britannica.com

/ Britannica.com

The popular Prince of Wales who should have become the crowned and annointed Edward VIII (q.v.) gave up his throne because Church and State would not recognise his plan to marry a twice-divorced lady from America. As we know, the Prince married his lady from Baltimore, and abdicated as well. When all the fuss had died down in the Thirties, and the Prince became the Duke of Windsor, the question arose as to whether or not his American wife should become ‘Her Royal Highness’, as indeed her husband was HRH. (more…)

By | 2014-08-02T17:49:14+00:00 July 17th, 2014|British History, English History|0 Comments

Charles, the 2nd Earl Grey

/ onelondonone.blogspot.com

/ onelondonone.blogspot.com

The second earl was born in 1764, was elected county Member of Parliament for the whole of Northumberland when he was but twenty-two years of age, representing the Whig party dominated by Charles James Fox. A devout reformist, he presented Bills for parliamentary reform in 1793 and 1797, with the intention of demolishing the so-called ‘rotten’ boroughs: both bills were defeated. (more…)

By | 2014-07-14T09:17:35+00:00 July 14th, 2014|British History, English History, Today, World History|0 Comments
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