World History – Page 8 – General History

War in the air Part II: Per Ardua Ad Astra

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…)

By Dean Swift| 2014-09-24T18:09:08+00:00 September 24th, 2014|A History of Poland, Austrian history, British History, Czech History, French History, German History, Greek History, History of Czechoslovakia, History of Ireland, History of New Zealand, Scottish history, US History, World History|0 Comments

War in the air: part I; the early days

Air combat / en.wikipedia.org

In the very late nineteenth century hot-air balloons were first used in Europe for observing enemy troop movements. War in the air had started. Later the same balloons were used for comparatively accurate direction indication for artillery. In Woolwich, England, the British Army Balloon School was founded (in 1878) to train soldiers in this new mode of war. The balloons were soon found to be limited in manoeuvrability and the new airships or dirigibles replaced them. The Germans were particularly fast in this new development, and began arming the airships too.

After the success of the Wright brothers in 1903, fragile wood and canvas aeroplanes powered by engines began to appear everywhere in Europe and the United States, but it was in France that the enormous potential of fighting from and in the air was first recognised. When the Great War started in 1914 aircraft were available that could fly up to 120 miles per hour – and stay in the air for up to two hours with the aid of freshly designed fuel tanks. The aeroplanes were small, and at first could take only two crew, the pilot and the observer/gunner. They were most uncomfortable, but at least the airmen could return to their airfield (if they survived war in the air) to sit in the sun and drink tea. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2014-09-24T09:39:55+00:00 September 23rd, 2014|World History|0 Comments

Four illustrious Cecils

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 16^th 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 Dean Swift| 2014-09-22T16:12:46+00:00 September 22nd, 2014|British History, English History, Today, World History|0 Comments

The USSR and its leaders

/ commons.wikimedia.org

This article deals with the former Soviet Union, a.k.a. Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The USSR was a federation of fifteen republics, forming what was the world’s largest sovereign state from the 1920s until dissolution in 1991. To call it a ‘sovereign’ state is perhaps a misnomer, as the regime that ruled the Soviet Union was 100% Communist, having executed most of the Russian royal family in Siberia in 1918. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2014-09-18T17:18:35+00:00 September 17th, 2014|Russian history, World History|0 Comments

The Inquisition

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…)

By Dean Swift| 2014-09-09T16:33:42+00:00 September 9th, 2014|British History, Church history, French History, German History, History of Portugal, History of the Cinema, Jewish History, South American History, Spanish History, World History|1 Comment

A brief history of Russia

Peter the Great, a portrait made in 1838 / en.wikipedia.org

Russia is a vast area of land occupying most of eastern Europe and much of northern Asia. So little is known about this country that Winston Churchill said of it in 1939 “I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia: it is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” But we do know that it has boundaries to the north with the Arctic Ocean; to the west with Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Belarus, the Ukraine (including the Crimean Peninsula) and the Black Sea. Latvia, Estonia, Belarus and the Ukraine were Soviet Republics when the USSR existed (Finland was Russian in the nineteenth century). Russia has borders to the south with Georgia, Azerbaijan,the Caspian Sea, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia and North Korea. As might be expected, closeness to all these except the Caspian Sea has meant trouble of one kind or another. To the east there are the seas of Okhotsk and Bering. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2014-09-04T10:58:29+00:00 September 3rd, 2014|Russian history, World History|0 Comments

After devastation, the Reconstruction of the United States

/ history.martinez.com

The American Civil War had left most states, especially in the South, in chaos and sad decline. American boys from North and South had killed each other, most of them not knowing exactly why – except that they knew, as all soldiers do, that politicians must be held responsible for the insane slaughter. The South was punchdrunk and reeling from physical and economic devastation, but those southerners left were moving, by the early Seventies of the 19^th century towards recovery, by dint of hard work and guts. The North, except for her sons, had lost little in comparison, as few incursions into northern states during the war had occurred. In the South the ranches and adjacent lands had been burned, the cattle herds decimated or worse, towns had been destroyed wholesale by soldiers hardly controlled by senior officers who often turned a blind eye. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2014-08-29T08:59:23+00:00 August 29th, 2014|A History of North America, US History, World History|0 Comments

Names to confuse you (they have another meaning)

Cherry blossom / derwentvalleyphotography.wordpress.com

English is a rich language not only because of an immense vocabulary, but also because many words in daily use have another, purely historical meaning. Take for example: (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2014-08-20T16:51:23+00:00 August 20th, 2014|English Language, World History|0 Comments

Nine kings at Buckingham Palace

Nine kings – an historic photograph made in 1910

The photograph, still in pristine condition, obviously made by a master photographer, is historic in that it shows no less than nine holders of European thrones, some stable, some shaky. The date is May, 1910, and the shattering Great War is but four years off. Standing in the back row (from left to right) are Haakon VII of Norway, Ferdinand I of Bulgaria, Manoel II of Portugal, Wilhelm II of Germany (The Kaiser), George I of Greece and Albert I of Belgium; seated in the front row are Alfonso XIII of Spain and Frederick VIII of Denmark with their host, in whose palace the photograph was taken in the central position – George V of Great Britain. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2014-08-16T11:37:59+00:00 August 16th, 2014|World History|0 Comments

The Two Koreas

Distracting the traffic in Pyongyang / koryogroup.com

The Korean Peninsula is divided into two, the northern part is officially called The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, while the southern part is simply The Republic of Korea. Unofficially, the world knows these two respectively as North and South Korea.

North Korea is a ‘socialist’ state, with borders to the north with China, to the north-east with Russia; to the west is Korea Bay and the Yellow Sea; to the east is the Sea of Japan. Very asiatic. Separation from South Korea is provided by a demilitarized zone of 1,262 kilometres. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2014-08-12T16:50:06+00:00 August 12th, 2014|Asian History, Today, US History, World History|0 Comments