The Fall of France: “for you, the war (of 42 days) is over!”
France´s surrender / learning.blogs.nytimes.com For many, if not all, of our seasoned history-lovers, the fact that the Second World War might have been over by the middle of 1940 is unknown. But for [...]
More about Finland
In our last post (No. 300) we took a brief look at the Finnish-Russian War of 1939/40. This war was incalculably important in the history of the twentieth century, but few historians have applied themselves [...]
The Finnish-Russian War: David & Goliath?
/ english.ruvr.ru Not really, because this war was not won by ‘David’. Otherwise, the similarities are notable. In November, 1939, only a couple of months after the beginning of World War II, Soviet [...]
Hiroshima and later
Hiroshima after the atomic bomb / taringa.net Hiroshima had a population of roughly 300,000 in 1945. It was a military base, port, and popular seaside resort in the western part of Honshu Island, [...]
The Continental System (Blockade)
Constant blockade of the ports: the Continental System / xtimeline.com When I was a schoolboy (the Punic Wars q.v.), Bonaparte’s genial idea was called ‘The Continental System’, a good name but implying a [...]
What is Isolationism?
Well, very soon we will know what it is. And I might add it is a great pity there is not more of it around. Loss of it caused the Korean and Vietnam wars; too [...]
The Blogger Kite
I have been forced to reach the conclusion that this planet is full of persons whose self-appointed task it is to find errors, large or small, in the writing of history or science blogsites. These [...]
Ernst Rohm & the Night of the Long Knives: the end of the SA
Rohm, once a great friend of Hitler’s / lasegundaguerra.com Rohm was born in 1887. By twenty-six he was an Army captain, thrice wounded in the First World War. His views on the old [...]
Alexander I, Tsar of Russia
Alexander I, Tsar or Czar of Russia / theesotericcuriosa.blogspot.com The future Tsar was born in 1777, a son of the supposedly mad Tsar Paul. Contemporary chroniclers have it that young Alexander was implicated [...]
Evelyn Waugh’s ear-trumpet
Evelyn Waugh with ear trumpet and rare moustache / oxfordtime.co.uk I am sure there are Waugh-fans, or, better, Waugh-wolves who can answer a simple question: In their respective biographies of Evelyn Waugh, Christopher [...]
The Gestapo: a brief history
A family group photograph / elnacionalista.mforos.org With movies made about the Second World War as popular as ever, the name ‘Gestapo’ is familiar to almost everyone. Exactly what it was and its functions [...]
Gone are the PSOE’s ladies at the cauldron
In Spain, Mr Rajoy and his team are slowly and laboriously edging their country back to sanity and a more stable economy, though the process will be long and tedious. Hercules cleaning up those Augean [...]
The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
Almost all our readers have heard of the seven wonders. Some might be able to name them. Fewer will know what the seven wonders of the ‘modern world’ are, and anyway naming them invariably causes [...]
Georges Boulanger (1837 – 91)
Georges Boulanger / en.wikipedia.org If Georges had been, as his surname suggests, a pastrycook by profession instead of a wholly political general, his patisserie would have been the pride of Paris. Indeed, there [...]
The Spanish Road Tax (Rodaje)
I would need to be told what other EU countries do about charging road tax to vehicle owners. In Britain it is simply called Road Tax, and you pay according to type of vehicle. The [...]
The Franco-Prussian War (1870/71)
Artist’s impression of a battle in the Franco-Prussian War / en.wikipedia.org These modern days of a loving relationship between Germany and France force a wry smile. First we watched with a certain quantity [...]
The Vichy Government (Vichy France)
The irony of a Vichy gendarme saluting a Nazi official before the Arc de Triomphe / es-wikipedia-org Three-fifths of France fell to Nazi Germany soon after World War II was declared, though the [...]
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