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The foundations of modern Socialism

    

The cellar in the house at Ekaterinburg / angelfire.com

The cellar in the house at Ekaterinburg / angelfire.com

  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. (more…)

By | 2013-05-09T17:53:35+00:00 May 9th, 2013|German History, Russian history, Today, 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…)

The SECOND Reich

Von Bismarck / numaudes.blogspot.com

Von Bismarck / numaudes.blogspot.com

We assume our studious blogwatchers know all that is to be known about the Third Reich, because it was notorious, racist, and the direct cause of half a billion deaths in a Second War to End All Wars. But what do we know about the Second Reich (Empire)? (more…)

Margaret Thatcher, the ‘Iron Lady’

  

R.I.P. / guardian.co.uk

R.I.P. / guardian.co.uk

  Margaret Hilda Thatcher was born in 1925 in Lincolnshire, the daughter of the owner of a small grocer’s shop. She was a scholarship girl, brainy and hard-working, who moved rapidly upwards, starting with Magdalen College, Oxford, where she achieved everything she wanted.

She became the leader of the British Conservative Party in 1975, in the teeth of serious opposition from fellow conservatives such as Geoffrey Howe and Michael Heseltine, who could hardly believe that any mere woman might have such targets. In 1979 she became Britain’s first woman Prime Minister, and went on to serve the longest in that office in the 20th century. (more…)

The Final Solution

  

   Researchers have tried to find cogent reasons for Hitler’s pathological hatred of the Jews. Nothing in his childhood in Austria happened which might have sown the seeds of that poisonous dislike growing in his innermost soul. His military service during the Great War brought him wounds, but what influence could Jewish people have had on him in the trenches? The enemy was British or French, not Jewish. (more…)

The battle of Austerlitz

Battle-of-Austerlitz                                                        Map of the Battle of Austerlitz

Anyone living at the beginning of the nineteenth century might have thought that the battle of Trafalgar, fought in October 1805 would be enough to topple Napoleon Bonaparte from his imperial pretensions and intensely Corsican gut-feeling that he should rule the world, starting with all Europe. But Trafalgar as we know was a sea battle, a crucial one too, but it did not take place between armies on land. Austerlitz, however, did, and it was Bonaparte’s greatest victory, planned almost as if on a model of the battlefield though – that field was in his brain. (more…)

Metternich

Prince Metternich painted by Laurence / en.wikipedia.org

Prince Metternich painted by Laurence / en.wikipedia.org

Of all the great statesmen and diplomats whose many different names have managed to confuse so many history students in the last century or two, this one is perhaps the most important, because of the significance of what he achieved before he finally failed. We have dealt with most of them in this general-history blog – John of Gaunt, Cardinal Richelieu,  Thomas Cromwell, von Bismarck, both William Pitts, Palmerston, Gladstone, Disraeli – the list is long indeed. (more…)

The Kaiser (Wilhelm II of Germany)

  

All in the family; Wilhelm II with, among other, George V and Alfonso XIII. All pictured here are cousins

All in the family; Wilhelm II with, among other, George V and Alfonso XIII. All pictured here are cousins and descendents of Queen Victoria

The future King of Prussia and German Emperor was born in 1859, the eldest son of the then Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia (he later became Emperor Frederick III) and his wife,  daughter and namesake of Queen Victoria of Great Britain and Empress of India. This made George V, against whom Wilhelm went to war his first cousin – an embarrassment to say the least. He was born with a semi-paralysed left arm, several inches shorter than the right one. (more…)

The Seven Years War

  

  Most of the eighteenth century featured wars in Europe, as rulers came and went and tried to dominate other rulers. Nearly always the same countries were involved, and the Seven Years War was no exception: Prussia, Britain and Hanover (then a separate state) ranged up against Austria, France, Sweden, Spain and you guessed it – Russia. The date was 1756. (more…)

Russians versus the Japanese (1904) & the Turks (4 times in the 19th century)

Marshal Kutuzov / en.wikipedia.org

Marshal Kutuzov / en.wikipedia.org

The fight between the Japanese and Russia was (and is) significant because it was all about control of both Manchuria and Korea. The Japanese launched an unexpected and unheralded assault on Russian warships anchored in their Manchurian naval base at Port Arthur. Pearl Harbor 37 years later was a sequel (Port Arthur now has another name of course).

(more…)
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