For a week in late May 1941, the eyes and attention of the British Admiralty and the German Kriegsmarine were focused on the North Sea as the German battleship Bismarck, was attempting to break out on a raiding mission in the Atlantic.  After sinking the pride of the British nave, HMS Hood, Bismarck turned its attention of the Prince of Wales and swiftly caused such damage that the British ship had to run for its life.  Unfortunately for the Bismarck, she was also hit and was badly leaking oil and taking on water.  What followed for the next three days has been the subject of books and movies for over fifty years.  The author was a gunnery officer on the Bismarck and was one of 115 survivors (out of a crew of 2,200).  His story is a firsthand description from “the other side” about a battle that was almost preordained-in my opinion- to failure.

Having visited Istanbul several times, I was looking forward to this book which had received positive reviews from several national sources.  I must admit however, that my expectations were not met.  It might be that the author attempts to cover too much of history in this sever hundred plus page tome.  Starting at 800,000 BC-no, I am not kidding- Ms. Hughes provides us with information on the earliest settlements, how drastic weather created the area, etc.  While that is of interest to a certain group, the three main areas of concentration are the time from Severus and Constantine, the Byzantine and of course, the time of the Ottomans.

 Mr. Zilahy was the most popular Hungarian writer of his time; wrote three novels tracing the Dukay family, a fictitious Magyar family in the Austro-Hungarian Empire through to the takeover by the Communist after World War II.  This book covers the time after World War I through about 1950.

The novel contain a very interesting in insightful study of the Magyar nobility of the time, from their belief in their superiority over their Romanian subjects, their resentment of their German neighbors and their inability to recognize their soon to be realized inability to adapt to a rapidly changing world.  Proud and haughty, they refused to work with the Austrians (the Magyars and Austrians were the two major power holders of the Dual Crown, Austro-Hungarian Empire aka Habsburg Empire) and would block even military budgets over which color knots their officers could wear on their sabers. The book is also filled with interesting historical facts (the belief that Cleopatra’s true source of power was the amber ring and how this led to the founding of Budapest and a rush by women for amber), etc.

Few novels are well written, but Zilahy was successful in weaving an interesting web of actual history with fictional character development, with many experiences drawn from his personal experiences. You feel that you are cast back into that time; the characters are vivid, the situations interesting and you have a cast if personalities to remember long after you have finished the book.  Well worth a read.

I have read biographies of Mussolini and military books, trying in vain to find out why Mussolini was so adored by his I have people.  Hitler, Stalin, Mao, I could understand as they tapped into the needs of the people, promised them what they desired and delivered on many of the promises (although at a huge, terrible price).  Mussolini, aside from killing off (or their fleeing to the US) the Mafia and making the trains run on time, seemed to stagger from one disaster to another.  It must have been the pomp and uniforms that kept many people enthralled and we need to remember that FDR and Churchill both had favorable opinions of the Italian dictator for quite a while.

Orwell was a keen and brutally honest observer of poverty which he experienced firsthand during the early 1930’s.  His descriptions of poverty and the struggle to survive in two of the most famous and richest cities of the world read more like something from the Middle Ages as individuals scurry from place to place hoping to find a meal, a crust of bread or a place of shelter.  In fact, one is tempted to keep looking at the copyright date to make sure it is not a work of historical fiction set in some dark, dismal land and time.

This classic of political writing features essays by some of the brilliant intellectual minds from the 1930s through the mid-1950s.  The studies include those of Arthur Koestler, Ignazio Silone, Andre Gide, Richard Wright, Louis Fischer and Stephen Spender.  All had joined (some for only a few days) their local Communist parties and all had rejected it for a variety of reasons.  Each sought to find a solution to the problems they faced, such as the fall of Capitalism (often predicted, none accurately yet), artistic freedom, someone to stand against Fascism, the end of racism, etc.  Each found that while the theory was supposedly “scientific”, the practical application of the theory in fact worked against the solutions they sought and were run by humans with the same emotions, fears, etc. that have always existed

If you like history, you probably feel comfortable in a discussion about most Western European states including their history.  But how much do you really know about the real foundations upon which the modern states were built?  Norman Davies has put together a book which is exhaustive in detail about those communities, smaller states and some greater states which are bypassed in most history courses.  What role did the Kingdom of the Rock play in the formation of Scotland?  Did you know that Prussia was once a fiefdom of Poland (a fact which most German history tends to miss)?  How about the long history of Burgundia which covered over thirteen hundred years and yet is seldom taught? Of course, you do not want to miss the history of Litva which was a Grand Duchy with Kings.

Although Valentin Berezhkov was not Stalin’s primary interpreter, he did attend many important meetings with Stalin during the Second World War, including Yalta and in Moscow.  With a natural flair for languages, Berezhkov found that he was chosen for important work by Molotov and was suddenly thrust into the middle of history making events.  His memoirs are interesting as they reflect the mind set of suspicion, fear and ambition at the very highest levels of Soviet government. The leaders of the State were constantly looking over their shoulders and testing the ground beneath their feet as their leader, Stalin, the consummate politician watched them for any inking of disloyalty or lack of duty.

The belief that certain people(s) are inherently superior to others and that “lesser” peoples need to be controlled did not begin with the Nazis.  Margaret Sanger, Woodrow Wilson and other Americans joined together with others in Europe decades before the Nazis to argue that birth control would help to control the “lesser” peoples, that blacks could not learn mechanical skills and that somehow the “superior” white race which had created Western Civilization needed to control the animalistic reproductive urges of the “lesser” peoples before they swamped the civilized world.

A few years ago, I was in St. Petersburg and on a tour to the Hermitage.  The guide was a big man, over six feet tall, impressively built with a scar on one cheek.  I was able to ask him a few questions about his life and I found that he had been a Colonel in the Soviet nuclear missile forces stationed in Siberia. When asked why he left such a responsible position to end up on a bus loaded with tourists, he explained that when the Soviet Union collapsed, he was deactivated and yet he preferred his new job.  Why?  As he explained, his base was in the middle of a great forest, snowed in for most of the year, surrounded by vicious bears and all there was to eat was gruel.  The look on his face and the way he said the word “gruel” brought home to me more than any book what his life, which was relatively privileged must have been like for those who were imprisoned in the Gulag.