The Middle Parts of Fortune: Somme and Ancre, 1916

I found a list of the greatest military novels of all time, which offered a great opportunity although I question any such lists as the rankings can be impacted by a herd mentality. It did have one strong thing in its favor and that was a quote by Erest Hemingway that this book was, “The finest and noblest book of men in war.”. Who am I to quibble with Mr. Hemingway?
The novel takes place shortly after the disastrous battle of the Somme in 1916, the darkest day in the annals of the British Army when they managed to suffer over fifty-seven thousand casualties (nearly nineteen thousand dead and thirty-eight thousand wounded) on the first day of the joint British-French offensive. Designed to give a quick victory to the Allies, the battle turned into a four-and-a-half-month slugfest that cost a total of about one million casualties. The main outcome of the battle (aside from the slaughter) was that the German army finally realized that they were fighting a material war with human material.
There are no descriptions of the battle and how men were able to survive the battle; the entire novel centers on a small group of men who are pulled out of the line for refitting. They talk occasionally about lost comrades, pull guard duty, skip off to the local town to find a drink and are annoyed at officers who try to impose some of the discipline that was overlooked in the trenches.
The main character is known as Bourne, a bit of a loner who tries to get along with everyone. Earlier in the war he was recommended as officer material and with the huge losses in the war, the powers that be approach him on becoming an officer. The experience of war has put the shine off such prospect for Bourne but the natural forces of the military put him on a course that he accepts as he knows the force of the military. There are pages of dialog between him and men of his section, plans are made for drinking parties, and there are the usual complaints and grousing that is found in any similar situation.
I shall not provide the ending of the book or any moral if there is one, but I was disappointed that the ending was clear to see halfway through the book. Of course, in any novel about war the types of endings are rather limited, but it is so clear in this instance that it took the joy out of the reading. Why our friend Mr. Hemingway would make such a recommendation for the book is beyond me, but it proves that one can take recommendations with a grain of salt.

Reading Chinese history can be difficult for a Westerner due to the names, locations, time frames, etc. Dr. Platt has done an excellent job of bringing to the reader an important segment of China’s more recent history (1850s) when somewhere between 20-50,000,000 (that is million) people lost their lives in a civil war. Consider that our Civil War cost about 750,000 lives and you will get an idea of the scope of the war and the misery it caused in China.

The Taiping leadership took many Christian dogmas as their rules and felt that the Western powers would help them in their struggle to overthrow the hated Ming dynasty. The Western powers (mostly Great Britain) did not understand the politics of China however as well as they thought so they decided to back the Ming dynasty with whom they knew they were able to get valuable trading concessions and who were weak and corrupt.

The book is an excellent read and will give the reader a bit of an insight into the history that continues to shape China today. A definite well done to the author.

The politicians and bureaucrats of the EU are incredibly nervous about President Trump. They fear that the party is over and the days of using the U.S. as a financial milk cow via lawsuits, unfair tariffs, billions of dollars of fines and a refusal to adequately support their own militaries during the march of dictators and religious fanatics.

Western Europe in particular is nervous as France, Germany, Belgium and although not in the EU, the U.K. are led by weak political leaders who often are at the mercy of their own shaky coalition governments. Behind the scenes, the faceless bureaucrats who are the real power continue to insist on the failing policies which they promised would deliver a better life but have failed by every standard.

The attached article shows that the real problem with Europe is in fact the EU. The EU bureaucracy is Europe’s “deep state.” Unelected the committees and departments follow their own ideology and pay no price for their remarkable number of failures. From an idea to provide easier trade, the EU has grown into an uncontrollable behemoth which seeks power over those who it believes should serve it.

Perhaps Trump will provide the cover for European politicians to begin to gain a degree of control over their nation’s future as his desire to “balance the books” between Europe and the U.S. is enunciated.

What Is Really Destroying Europe? The EU. :: Gatestone Institute

During the Great Depression, thousands of Americans went to work in the Soviet Union which seemed to hold the answer to the failed policies of Capitalism. Stalin’s demand that electrification be brought to every corner of the Soviet Union meant that dams, railroads, in fact, all the basics of a modern industrial state be built in record time. In order to do this, Stalin made agreements with major U.S. firms, such as Ford, G.E., etc for entire factories including their key workers. U.S. citizens were promised good working conditions, housing, etc. on multi-year contracts to provide the managerial and technical expertise to complete and help manage those projects. Other thousands of Americans signed contracts to work in the Soviet Union on various projects. The history of this migration is told in an excellent book by Tim Tzovliadis, The Forsaken. In his book, he describes how they had to surrender their U.S. passports and for thousands, it meant they could not leave the Soviet Union. As Stalin’s projects were completed, or his paranoia increased, many were arrested and sent to various prisons and gulags.

Scott’s book gives us a ground level view of the living and working conditions at the steel city of Magnitogorsk. That city, built literally in the middle of nowhere, was sited there due to the proximity of the raw materials needed for the production of steel. Unpaved streets, lack of sewers, communal living with poor food, extremes in weather, lack of proper clothing, tools and no safety procedures give us an image of a wild west town which fought against nature and man’s stupidity rather than against rampaging Indians. Yet, people flocked to the area for work and because they believed they could be instrumental in building a better, freer, more equal world. Their idealism is wonderful to see, but also sad as what they are doing is helping to build a totalitarian state which would slaughter millions of their co-citizens.

This is an excellent book which gives the reader a look at history from the trenches.

Western Europe seems to be on a death ride of their own making, especially Germany and France, followed by Belgium and other Western European members of the EU, along with the U.K. An unbending belief in “green” energy which has driven employers from Europe and has led to high energy costs plus the first German lay-offs in their bread-and-butter auto industry, while unmanaged immigration has led to thousands of no-go zones, increased violent crime and the burning of hundreds of churches as well as absolutely horrid stories of sexual grooming gangs. Meanwhile the electorate is moving to the hard right. Europe’s political center has all but disappeared with no willingness on the part of the traditional political leaders to learn that repeating failing policies is not the way to address their problems.

The article linked below gives us an overview of failed European leadership. Years ago, Europeans viewed U.S. organizations like the Tea Party and Donald Trump as movements which could ever happen in Europe. Today we see movements springing up on the conservative side of the political spectrum. They are seriously challenging the confused and clueless traditional parties who have held power for decades when times were good; today’s challenges seem to have sapped the center and left of realistic solutions to problems their policies have created.

Is there a movement or leadership with the will and courage to face so many challenges? Or will their societies continue to decay until life becomes intolerable for most Europeans and they turn to a leader on a white horse? We have seen it done before in Europe.

Brussels: Is the Capital of Europe Crumbling Before Our Eyes? :: Gatestone Institute

From the earliest moments that any Communist seized any degree of power, be it during the Russian Revolution or in China, Albania, Korea, etc., they have exhibited the will, desire, and ability to use the most barbaric tortures on real or suspected enemies. Reading of their tortures one can often look at the tortures and punishments of medieval times in Europe, the Middle East or Asia as the work of amateurs,
How many MILLIONS suffered traumatic mental injuries, maiming and death at the hands of those who supported a regime based on Marxist “science”? How few of those who inflicted those terrible tortures were ever brought to justice? When the Nazi empire was brought down, there was at least an effort to bring to justice the architects and supporters of the regimes. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said when Communist regimes fall. That is a great mistake, for the extensive list of their crimes is not brought into the light of day, to educate the next generations who may be swept away by the lofty ideals of those criminals.

President Reagan once said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” Millions of individuals have placed great hopes on the new Trump administration as they believed that in four short years, our fundamental freedoms were in danger of disappearing. Those who welcome the second term of President Trump believe he will restore the DOJ, FBI and other federal law agencies to political neutrality while returning the military to its primary functions and purge itself of DEI which has weakened its ability to meet the anticipated challenges from China and others. The list goes on and on, the economy, the budget, EV mandates, the Ukraine war, the Middle East, Russia, and so on. They believe that his second term will be even more successful than his first. That is a tall order.
When he began his first term, he faced challenges that seemed large at that time; President Obama left a feeble economy, unchallenged advances in the Crimea and the Middle-East, a fast growing and aggressive China as well as various domestic issues stemming from a ballooning federal bureaucracy that was drowning small business in an ocean of new regulations. The challenges this time are much greater as he faces:
• An inflation rate that is being fed by:
• A federal national debt that grows by nearly one-trillion dollars every one-hundred days
• New federal rules and regulations which cost the American citizens about $15,000 and have a total cost of about $1.37 trillion over the past four years.
• Repairing our standing in the Middle East after the Biden administration managed to all but kill the Abraham Accords while trying to second guess our best ally in the region,
• Continue to force the European nations to increase their defense spending in the face of little or no growth in their economies.
• Proving realistic military spending after four years of budgets which did not keep up with inflation let alone provide for adequate growth.
• A national deficit and budgets which drive inflation restrict borrowing for new growth.
• The list goes on and on.
Will he and his team be able to successfully attack that list of problems and others which cover every aspect of our daily lives? Let us hope so, for we need a renaissance to free us from the trials and tribulations of the past four years and the “hope and change” of the Obama administration. The next few years shall be trying, but we all need to recognize that fundamental changes, within the limits of the Constitution, need to be made. There can be no more of the Executive ignoring the Supreme Court, no more of a back-room cabal of unknown players making national decisions and no more of a federal bureaucracy that sees the American people as an ATM machine to foot the bill for their ever expanding quest for more power of our everyday lives.
Let us, as we always should, wish our new President strength and wisdom and may an honest and fearless team surround him.

No matter how large the failure of official Communist policy, there was no turning back. In the United States, when a policy fails, we simply throw more money at it as that is obviously why the failure. In the Soviet system, increased demands came to be the obvious answer to a failed policy.

Years ago, I learned that the Soviet Union built more tons of machines in a certain category than any other nation in the world. They built so many of them that they had warehouses of those machines, all locked up and rusting as they could not sell them. Why? Well, the order had come done to build so many tons of those machines so the plant executives, all good Communists, simply made their machines heavier; so heavy that in fact a standard factory floor would crack and collapse under their weight. No one wanted those heavy machines. But it gets better as after the good Communist managers had delivered their required tonnage of machines, they built a few more useless, heavy machines and for their efforts they all received medals for a job well done. The same games were played in agriculture (dampen the wheat so it is heavier, and you exceeded your quota) and other industries as the glories of centralized planning spread throughout the entire Communist system.

One of the advantages of building a library is the luxury of being able to go back and re-read the books which are worthy of being in your library. There are certain books in my library that I have read several times over the years; why? Some are wonderful novels (such as the trilogy by Sienkiewicz) or the dissent novels by Rybakov. Others are histories filled with a myriad of facts or insights (think of Richard Evans, Richard Overy or William Manchester). I love that they can clutter my brain with obscure facts that I can pull out during a conversation or discussion on a related topic. Those books are special and fall into a special category of those which can be re-read every five years or so and be as fresh and entertaining as the first time they are opened.
Retribution by Max Hastings is one of those rare military books that falls into that special category. It has all the prerequisites of a great history book. It provides a broad overview of events, then focuses down to the strategies and tactics involved in those events. Another key element is that it is loaded with obscure facts which I find so interesting and even useful (in the right company at the right time), an example of the obscure is when he writes about the development an problems with the largest single expenditure of the war (even more costly than the Manhattan Project). Did you know that “The construction of a B-29 required 27,000 pounds of aluminum, over a thousand pounds of copper, 600,000 rivets, nine and a half miles of wiring, two miles of tubing.”. Do you care? But it is that type of detail that when you realize the U.S. produced thousands of those planes that you begin to realize the enormity of the war. Or that with the defeat of Nazi Germany, Canada announced that only those citizens who did not wish to stay in the war to defeat Germany could cease war activities.
His narrative is especially excellent when he goes down to the basic level; that of those doing the actual fighters. Some are British troops fighting in Burma, one of the worse areas of combat in the war and the least reported and celebrated. The humidity, rains, foot paths which turned into thick, boot sucking mud, poor food and an enemy who fought with determination even though many died of hunger. What about the survivors of the kamikazes? How could they survive, how many volunteered, how many were drafted into the ranks and how did it feel for those who taught the new pilots to see their poorly trained students take off knowing that they were doomed. Every nation which fought in the Pacific is highlighted as brave and pathetic stories are woven through the book.
This was my third reading of this history, and it will occupy a special place in the library; a place where timeless quality of writing and research is noted and I confess, I shall read it again in a few years and enjoy it just as much.

As a graduate student, I had a professor who was from the Ukraine. He was a teen during the Soviet then German then Soviet occupations. During our discussions, he mentioned the “steps on the porch” and how everyone would stop breathing if, during the evening, steps were heard. Why? Because most likely, those steps were from the Soviet secret police (NKVD) or the Nazis, either SS, Field Police, or collaborators. A “visit” from any of those forces seldom turned out well as someone was either taken away for questioning which meant torture, or it was a raid for hidden food, or simply an exhibit of power, meant to keep that household or the village living in fear. In the least, one had to learn how to answer questions that played to the mind set of the occupier.
At the end of WWII, over seven percent of the Hungarian population was held in Soviet controlled camps, either in Hungary or in the Soviet Union. Throughout the Soviet era, estimates as high as thirty per cent of Hungarians were at some point arrested, deported, tortured, or seriously questioned by the secret police. A true example of the “workers’ paradise”!