One of the pleasant things about histories by Figes is that they are so readable. Like two of other histories of his I have read, (“The Whisperers” and “A People’s Tragedy”), Figes has the ability to bring the past alive and make you feel as if you are part of the action. He does not concentrate on battle scenes (although battles are covered), but he centers on the lives of the ordinary soldiers. In this book he gives short shift to Florence Nightingale but points out the breakthrough of a Russian surgeon, Dr. Nikolai Pirogov who used an early form of triage as well as anesthesia.

Despite the common view of the war, it was the French who supplied most of the troops, not the British and it was the French, not the British who better supplied their men with everything, from tents to food to warm coats for the cold Crimea winter, etc. Among the allied armies, approximately eighty percent of the deaths were due to disease, frostbite, etc.

It is also interesting to note that there were very real plans for a coalition whose goals was the breakup of the Russian Empire, including invasions of Russia from the Baltic, uprisings in Poland and an invasion from the Crimea into the area of Kiev. But as the causalities began to mount, the enthusiasm for such great plans began to wane and in the end a settlement was made.

For all the loss of blood and lives, Russia was able to regain her position within 25 years and continue to create problems in the Balkans. Her meddling and ambitions led to World War I thanks to a system that refused to believe that the world was changing and was all too often in the hands of a single man who could be unbelievably foolish.

A big book (about five hundred pages) but an interesting one which never goes off into tangents that do not serve to tell the main story. This is my third reading of these excellent history and each time I pick up some interesting tidbit in which historians (even amateurs such as myself) delight.

What makes a civilization decline?  Is a decline caused by economic or moral faults or do they simply grow old and cannot face the challenges of younger, stronger forces which challenge them?  For Britain after World War I, this topic was discussed at various levels of society.  Having entered the first world war as a great Empire, within four years the average Brit could see the Anglo colonies of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa clamor for more independence while the crown of the jewel, India, began to make small steps towards independence.  What were the causes and could such a decline in power be stopped?

Richard Overy, whose outstanding analysis of World War II, Why the Allied Won has once again created a history that is overwhelming in detail and argument.  Beginning shortly after the end of World War I, numerous books, pamphlets and debates centered on the decline of Western civilization.  These debates were not shallow exercises, but serious discussions as to causes and possible remedies.  Going back to Nietzsche who felt that history was cyclical, was civilization, “merely the current expression of man’s futile efforts to fight the reality of decay with the weapons of illusory order.”?  If progress was illusional, then the certainties of the 19^th century were null and void.  Civilizations, according to Nietzsche come and go, rise and fall, are born and die so there was not a great moral lesson to be learned from the decline of the West.  Nietzsche’s thesis became the starting point for Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West which was hugely popular especially in Germany after the war.  Unlike Hegel who saw a progression of history, Spengler’s saw civilizations almost like plants, which rise and fall as part of a great cycle.  Spengler listed eight ‘ripe’ cultures, “…from the Chinese through the Indian, antique, Arabian and Western” and that each had a cycle of about 1000 years from birth to death.

Originally published in 1932, this excellent little novel is still in print, thus testifying to its excellence.  A story set in the waning days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the main characters, three individual men, spanning 3 generations face first their sudden leap into the nobility by the grandfather as a young man, then the solid life of a district bureaucrat of his son and finally the life of the grandson who is cut out for either the military or the bureaucracy.

Bloodlands, Timothy Snyder’s monumental work has been complimented by Black Earth, The Holocaust as History and Warning. I must admit that I was initially put from this book due to numerous reviews which seemed to focus on one small portion of this work, that of trying to link the lessons of the Holocaust to climate change.  Such a premise held no interest to me as the horrors documented in Bloodlands was the result of conscious decisions by political systems which denied the basic humanity of mankind, whereas the arguments re: climate change are open to sloppy science at the worse as well as subject to hyperbole (we only have twelve years left) which undercut the actual science.

Given the reviews, rather than purchase the book as I would do with any Snyder book, I found it during a cruise in the ship’s library. I was wonderfully surprised that ninety-eight percent of the book was an excellent historical work which consolidated and exposed many forgotten historical facts as well as providing a key analysis between the goals and policies of Hitler’s Germany, Poland and the Soviet Union not only leading up to the Holocaust but also the misconceptions of those three powers and how they impacted the course of history.

For years, Hitler’s Germany attempted to woo Poland into an alliance which would result in a joint German-Polish invasion of the Soviet Union; the goal was the fulfillment of Hitler’s dream of Lebensraum but also (as the Poles realized) making Poland a client state of Germany.  For Stalin, the eliminate of Poland was key, in large part due to the Soviet’s defeat by the Poles in 1921 and Stalin’s part in the defeat, and to create a bigger buffer against Germany.  For the Poles, caught between two more powerful neighbors, the key was to play one off against the other by having non-aggression pacts with both Germany and the Soviet Union.

Robert Harris, the author of Fatherland has taken a key event in the history of France and created a novel that is a thriller and educational.  Written from the perspective of a key player in the events, the reader is drawn into a world of the “deep state” before the term was used.  It serves to remind us that those who have power seldom are ready to relinquish it, especially when they know no other life and possess no other skills that those they have acquired in the acquisition of their power.

 After their loss to Germany in the war of 1870, the French nation was torn between a paranoid fear of another German attack (a preventative war) and the French desire for revenge.  France, which had always been the predominant military land power on the continent was humiliated; it was other people’s lands which were despoiled and looted, not the sacred soil of France!

To achieve their desire for revenge, which included repossessing the key provinces of Alsace and Lorraine which the French had taken from the Germans centuries before, the French military was lavished with money and prestige.  They represented the honor of France and stood for the glory which had to be taken back from the new German empire.

In 1895, a Jewish officer of the General Staff was convicted in a secret military trial of passing secrets to the Germans.  Sentenced to life on Devil’s Island, he was isolated from the world; his wardens were not allowed to speak to him, he was chained to his bed at night, his view restricted by high wooden fences, his mail restricted and censored, his was a living hell of a punishment, especially for a man convicted on forged evidence. 

The rest of the story is well known, how another French officer by the name of Picquart gradually comes to realize that the prisoner, Alfred Dreyfus is innocent of the charges and that Major Esterhazy was in fact the real traitor. Shocked by the injustice done to Dreyfus, Picquart reports his findings to the army powers that be only to find out that they had known of the injustice but had decided that to save the “honor” of the army, nothing was to be done.  In fact, new evidence was “discovered” which further condemned Dreyfus.  What follows is an example of a handful of brave men including Picquart who fight against powerful forces within the government who use every tool at their disposal including humiliation, intimidation, and violence to cover up their crime against Dreyfus.  What is the importance of one man against the needs of the State?

In this excellent novel, we see nobility in the acts and courage of a man willing to lose all in the pursuit of justice.  We see prejudice in the antisemitism of France at that time. We also see courage, fear, and determination, not in fictional characters, but in those who lived these trying events. I can see readers finishing the novel and wondering which of those traits they would possess in a time of trials.

Given the war in the Ukraine, I thought this might be a good time to repost this review which I originally posted in December 2019. Although as written it could be a history, it was written before so many events and was ignored by so many “leaders” in the West who were more concerned about their ideology or keeping their power. Why face reality when those who yell the loudest and demand the most of you are among the villians in this book. I guess that is the story of mankind; take the easy way and let someone else clean up the mess.

Mao Tse-tung once said that “political power comes from the barrel of a gun”, but Vladimir Putin could just as easily say that “political power comes from the end of a pipeline”.  This excellent book analyses how Putin uses his countries gas companies for both tactical and strategic means to his end; to regain the power, and perhaps the territory which was lost by the collapse of the Soviet Union.  How can he do this?  By providing the European nations the energy they need at a below market price and by letting them know that he holds the comfort and economies of many nations within the EU in the palm of his hand.

Of course, he could not pursue this course if it were not for the lack of political will on the part of numerous European leaders and their own ideology regarding energy in the 21^st century.  By pursuing “green energy”, being intimidated by the “green” movement (which is often subsidized by Russia to serve its own ends) and by insuring that the social safety net is kept in place. European leaders have mortgaged their energy futures to a nation which uses its energy reserves almost regardless of short term financial considerations all in the pursuit of increased European dependence on Russian energy.

Consider that the EU has reserves of shale oil and natural gas, but refuses to spend the monies to exploit them.  They would rather purchase the oil and natural gas from the Russians and the U.S. They don’t want to spend their money on their defenses and are more concerned with maintaining their social programs; in short, they are living at the sufferance of other powers.

For nearly twenty year, Kim Philby was the premier Soviet spy, rising through the ranks of the British Secret Service, acting as the head of Soviet counterintelligence for the British (he was charged to chase himself), and worked closely with both the CIA and the FBI (under Hoover).  This book starts out with an excellent introduction by Phillip Knightley who studied Philby for thirty years, and an exciting foreword by Graham Greene who not only knew Philby, but even visited him in Moscow after Philby fled the U.K.  From there however, the book fails to meet the promise.

Philby, in his position, was able to pass literally mountains of secrets to the Soviets and was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of anti-Soviet agents across Europe.  He was a true believer; he did not betray his country for money, but he did believe in the goal of Communism.  Even though he knew the true scope of Stalin’s crimes against his own people, he kept the faith based on a belief (as modern-day apologists proclaim) that it was not the “system”, but it was rather the wrong person at the top.  Yet he like today’s apologists never face the question of what kind of system is it that allows a murderer like Stalin to take control and exist for so long.

The concept of “broken windows” policing should apply on a national level; when we see politicians or bureaucrats ignoring the laws and traditions that have been the basis of our nation, we need to take corrective action. When our basic rights are abused, we need to act. When the very value of our citizenship is discounted, we need to respond. These are the premises and foundation of Victor Davis Hansons’ excellent new book, The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America.

I purchased the book because I have been increasingly concerned about the decreasing value of my personal citizenship. How is it that citizens can be mandated to limit travel, wear masks, show proof of vaccination while during the last year, two million individuals from over 150 countries have entered our nation illegally and be allowed to disappear into the vastness of our nation by the government officials who have sworn to uphold our laws? How is it that those who enter our nation illegally are not 100% assessed for Covid, quarantined, etc.? In a naked power grab, politicians in various cities decree non-citizens can vote in local elections thus decreasing the power of our citizenship. The supremacy of national laws? Worthless as hundreds of cities openly ignore Federal law, making tax paying citizens pay for the education, health care, etc., of those who decided that they and not we the citizens should decide our rules for living in our nation.

Given the situation in the Ukraine, I thought a brief reminder of the system that shaped Putin might be timely. Putin wishes to reconstitute the Soviet Union and those who would appease him and not treat him like the outlaw he is, need to be reminded of his system and those he admires.

I have no doubt that the title for the most biographies written about any politician would belong to Winston Churchill, but his life compared to Stalin’s was an open book.  For Stalin, the ideal time to write a biography with new information is past as his contemporizes die off and the archives are once again closed.  Montefiore was the right biographer at the right time at the right place.  He has written a biography that is well paced, filled with colorful antidotes and supported by excellent research. Considering his topic, the greatest mass murderer until Mao, this book brings home the ruthlessness of Stalin without exhausting the reader by an impression of overwhelming despair.

From 1671 until the fall of the Raj and the independence of India, many thousands of English women would make a long and often dangerous journey to the Raj to find a husband. The voyage was known as “The Fishing Fleet” and those women who failed in their quest went back to England on a voyage called “The Empties.”  Most of the women were away from home for the first time and as the running of the Raj was a male endeavor, the women who landed at Madras, Calcutta and Bombay were outnumbered by English males who substituted sports for sex while they paid their dues in an attempt to create a successful career. Thrown into a whirlwind of parties, balls, and sightseeing, they were the center of attraction and could receive numerous proposals after speaking to a man for only a few minutes.

The process started while the English presence in India was the domain of the East India Company who would pay for the passage and a stipend for eligible women to make the long voyage. After the Mutiny, this type of arrangement fell off, but given that there was a surplus of eligible women in the U.K. (approximately 750,000 a year), well, what was a girl to do?