Zombie Pirate Ninja Monkey

Shame on Brown and on England

Those who know me are aware that my views are hardly those of a right-on, Guardian-reading liberal.

However, to turn on the television today and see Gordon Brown whoring out the city of London to the single most murderous regime in the world today - China - in order to run propaganda for their brutal state and its oppression of Tibet live on rolling BBC news was sickening.

I knew Dr Brown, the father of our current Prime Minister.  He was a quiet, caring and principled minister in the Church of Scotland.  And while I am sure that he would be tremendously proud of his son's achievements, I wonder just what he would have thought of Brown's decision to give his stamp of approval, grinning on the steps of Downing Street, to an oppressive state run by geriatric killers and corrupt military-industrial concerns.  A decision informed not by principle but by import-export agreements, political prestige and by mutual back-scratching over London's 2012 chance to feed at the same trough.

And useful idiot after useful idiot is wheeled out to stand against a background of dancing morons in fancy dress to proclaim that "politics shouldn't interfere with the Olympics."  No politics, please... while Prime Ministers and ambassadors for murderers bare their teeth in ugly smiles for the cameras.  And a team of tracksuited Chinese Ministry for State Security  thugs are allowed to parade throught the heart of our capital, while their colleagues round up monks and peasants in a small, faraway country of which, it seems, Brown knows little.  And cares less.  While the BBC - the BBC - tightens the focus of its cameras each time crowds of protestors would otherwise be in shot on this jolly tour of old London town.

Never forget that the Chinese communist party has killed tens of millions of its own citizens since taking power.  Hitler was a lightweight pretender next to the Communist Party of China.  Even the Holocaust pales compared to what Mao and his successors have done.  Does that seem like hyperbole to you?  Then your historical knowledge is lacking.  Does it seem tangential?  Then you must love sports a very great deal to wish to banish all thought of how they are being used.

And how fitting, therefore, that the "eternal Olympic flame", like the tradition of the relay of the Olympic torch, was invented not by Greeks but by Hitler's National Socialists.

I'm a Scot, and one of my countrymen once spoke about far away trouble, using China as an example.  Read what economist Adam Smith said, and each time he speaks about an earthquake in China, think instead of state-run murder in Tibet.  And each time he talks of losing a finger, think of Brown worrying about his precious 2012 Olympics:

Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe, who had no sort of connexion with that part of the world, would be affected upon receiving intelligence of this dreadful calamity. He would, I imagine, first of all, express very strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he would make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of human life, and the vanity of all the labours of man, which could thus be annihilated in a moment. He would too, perhaps, if he was a man of speculation, enter into many reasonings concerning the effects which this disaster might produce upon the commerce of Europe, and the trade and business of the world in general. And when all this fine philosophy was over, when all these humane sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would pursue his business or his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion, with the same ease and tranquillity, as if no such accident had happened. The most frivolous disaster which could befal himself would occasion a more real disturbance. If he was to lose his little finger to-morrow, he would not sleep to-night; but, provided he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren, and the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object less interesting to him, than this paltry misfortune of his own.

"Now this is not the end..."

"...It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

I have various things about which I need to post, soon.  Things unrelated to Eve.  But this one will be quick and easy, as well as satisfying a few of those who I see hit the site with Eve-related searches, fifty or so times a day.

A little over a year ago, Goonfleet was being bullied out of the game by Band of Brothers, the most arrogant, hated, yet also largest and most powerful force in the game.  We were a rabble of insignificant newbies, and they had characters dating back to the beginning of the game in 2003.  They told us that we were finished.  They posted on the forums that we would never be allowed to build up again, and that they would hunt us down and grief us out of the game if we ever attempted to do so.  Only an invitation by the Russians of Red Alliance saved us from destruction and collapse.

In the spring, Bob looked to be delivering on their promises.  Skilfully making use of weaknesses in the game mechanics, particularly with their supercapitals, they had pushed us back to the borders of our last holdings.  Our founder and leader, unwilling to be associated with defeat, had distanced himself from us, and his replacement was in a role he was ill-suited for.

Then, everything changed.  A new leader emerged (All hail Sesfan.  Sesfan is #1).  As Bob attacked towards the Detorid region, key fleet commanders, especially Suas and his Spec Ops team, ground out a skillful delaying action in Tenerifis, while preparing a counter-strike towards the key 9-9 system.  The period is a blur of horrendously late nights, and I forget the order of things, but BoB, at the moment of their final attack, found themselves caught off balance when we atacked behind their front-lines, our recon teams having noticed the first signs of logistic over-stretch in their tower dispositions.  They recoiled, lost momentum, then gathered themselves for yet more attacks.  It was the perfect moment for our destruction of their flagship supercapital, "Darwin's Contraption", a move which signalled the end of their period of invulnerability, and forced them to fight us in fleet actions instead.

Then, in 9-9, we broke their siege in a series of long, hard fights which culminated in the destruction of their battle-fleet in an action on the 46-DP gate by a Goonfleet force of equal numbers, without significant allied support.  With that victory, Tolon broke their morale.  Bob and their allies were never seriously to attack the 9-9 system again.  The path into Omist and western Tenerifis was open.  Now we would be tested on the offensive.

Months of hard battle later, we have slowly, inexorably pushed westwards.  Bob resisted hard, and they threw their vassal alliances in the way in numerous attempts to stall us, but they face the difficulty that Goonfleet has internalised the memory of Bob's arrogance and griefing.  Even newbies are quickly indoctrinated.  The term indoctrinated is apt, since the Mittani, head of the Goonfleet Intelligence Agency, openly admits to being informed by the work of Goebbels and of the Soviet propogandists.  The result is a willingness to face endless hours and days of intensely boring siege warfare, or long weeks of cloaked trade interdiction in enemy rear areas by Black Ops, all in the knowledge that it makes our loathed enemies so unhappy, and so shatters their will to continue, that hundreds have given up and left the game entirely.  These people were arrogant bullies, and now they hate being beaten in battle after battle and siege after siege by the people they despise as jumped-up parvenus.

Faced with a renewed war on their northern front against IAC and AAA, Bob decided to attempt a version of the Schlieffen plan: withdraw all but holding forces from the south in order to amass overwhelming force in the north, together with their key ally and vassal, the Mercenary Coalition, in an attempt to knock the IAAAC out of the war.  MC presented this plan, the "Steamroller", and demanded that Bob stick to it.  We kept pricking at Bob's pride by repeatedly attacking their southern allies, destroying each in turn, and sure enough, Bob would come south each time, exhausting their capital pilots and logistics fleets with hours of travelling, while leaving the northern front exposed.  MC lost their own, newly launched, flagship titan, partially as a result of this, and demanded that Bob refocus on the north.

We again provoked a response by Bob, who fell for it, and MC accounced the end of their contract and withdrew, doubtless to prepare for defence alongside Bob unless our diplomats can come up with a fairly spectacular coup.  Bob's offensive in Catch vs IAC and AAA stalled again, then they began to be driven back there also, being saved from a humiliating reversal only by unexpected server downtime.

Finally, their southern pet alliances began to dissolve in the face of our relentless advance: Red Moon Federation, Southern Coalition, Digital Renegades, even Rise with their fortress systems and constellation sovereignty fell in the Feythabolis.  In the north, Bob's installed tenants were wiped from the map in a matter of weeks by a rejuvenated "Old North" coalition and their unaligned neighbours, the dangerous Triumvirate.  Bob, short of cash and facing months more of morale-crushing defeats on three fronts now, saw one of their most capable allies - M.Pire - scornfully refuse their clumsy attempts to extort money for them having first abandoned them.

At the same time, having clearly hoped for a new Miracle of Brandenburg, like that which saved Frederick the Great and shattered the coalition of his enemies, Bob has had to face the fact that, even though our fleets are often supported by those of our French and Russian allies, our diplomats are superb at holding together disparate groupings while terrifying those in our path.  At the same time, our strategic Black Ops force has proved able to shut down entire regions, denying them and their resources to the enemy and forcing him to huddle in his stations.

So now they have released this video, which I have to say is very well done.  A clear attempt at a new propaganda approach, they have discarded the arrogant approach and are portraying themselves as the underdogs, taking care to seem gracious in their acceptance of defeat.  Even then, we are referred to as "thugs": a nomenclature we might be happy with but which is clearly aimed at those outside our coalition.  It is well produced, but there are gaffes: MC are portrayed as falling back in defeat under Bob's orders, where in fact they withdrew undefeated and in a state of high dudgeon.  We are shown not, not defeating fleets, but rather destroying towers, maintaining Bob's myth of fleet superiority (prove again and again to be untrue when lag is not there to save them).

Bob are withdrawing from three of their remaining six systems.  This adds to their having been expelled from four or five more.  They probably hope we will rush to attack their home systems, become over-stretched and overbalanced, and be driven back in a morale boost for them.  Perhaps they hope to drive us back as we did them.  I imagine that we will, instead, inexorably and careful erect infrastructure and staging posts on our way to besiege them, taking time to populate local markets while sending our most skilled Black Ops and Pandemic Legion pilots to harass and dismay the refugee camp of allies which makes up their home systems now.  Their plan is a terrible one, which yields rich areas of easy targets in a game where that is the most attractive resource available.  Already, pirate organisations are pushing south from Fountain to exploit them.

Young Stalin

I've just read Simon Sebag Montefiore's biography of Stalin's early life and career, Young Stalin, and it is not often that one is forced so radically to alter one's entire view of someone so famous.

I am not saying that I came away from the book struck by how Stalin was actually just a regular guy, or that he was deeply misunderstood and not at all a monster.  Anything but: the Stalin presented to us is quite clearly a case of the boy as father of the man.

But I - like just about everyone else in the West, I should say - had always fallen for Trotsky's version of events.  I thought that Stalin's early life was that of a grey, dour, methodical man who ground his way to the stop through scheming, opportunism and a mastery of the processes of bureaucracy.  I had a view of him as the methodical counterpart to Hitler's sub-artistic, charismatic leader of men: an impression gleaned in large part from Allan Bullock's great study of the pair.

In fact, it transpires that the young Stalin - or Soso, as he was known by many at the time - was by far the more glamourous, artistic and even charismatic.  While Hitler daubed postcards, Stalin wrote poetry.  And not doggerel: Stalin organised a huge bank robbery in Georgia - one reported around the world at the time - thanks largely to having someone on the inside.  That insider helped Stalin because of his love of the young revolutionary's poetry: poetry written as a schoolboy which, nonetheless, was published widely long before Soso became Stalin.  He was a beautiful singer, a dedicated and brilliant student, and a talented (if sometimes mercurial) teacher.  The later cult of personality had much to work with.

This Stalin - despite the pockmarks of childhood disease, a limp and a crippled arm - leaves a trail of lovers and illegitimate children behind him.  He is adored and feared.  Ominously, he already has an obsession with betrayal by the time he is a seminarian training for the priesthood.  In his teens, he beats and organises the ostracisation of a former friend who betrays one of his circle.  By his early twenties, a police spy is murdered after Stalin (correctly) guesses at his pretense.  He has potential recruits lead past him in the street, while he stands behind a window and watches.  Some, he chooses.  Others, he rejects as traitors.  He believes he can tell a spy at a glance.  And in Georgia, agents of the police are everywhere.

Was Stalin one of them?  Montefiore certainly leaves us with the impression that Stalin played a double game, using the police to get rid of rivals and enemies.  He was ruthless: that much is no surprise.  He got a job at the Rothschilds' refinery in Batumi, and almost immediately had it set ablaze.  The workers fight the fire, which entitled them to a bonus.  But, as Stalin surely knew, the bonus was not paid, due to the suspicion of arson.  So Stalin then uses that to call the workers out on strike, despite knowing that the managers' suspicions are right!  Similarly, he organised a May-Day rally, personally encouraged the workers to attack, assuring them that the Cossacks would not shoot them, clearly despite knowing that the soldiers certainly would do just that.  Then he uses the resulting deaths to his own ends.  Stalin was already casual with the lives of others, in order to promote the cause.

He was also, unlike Hitler, a young man of repeated and successful action.  Raising funds for the cause, he joins a pirate gang.  Much successful pirating later, he kills his colleagues, takes the money, and takes it back across the Caucasus on donkey-back, quoting his own poetry as he goes.  This Stalin appealed greatly to Lenin, who saw Stalin as a direct man of action, long before his rise to prominence in 1917.  The directness Lenin meant can be seen in Stalin's right-hand man - Kamo - who would beg Stalin to let him slit the throats of victims, and who would literally cut out the heart of an enemy.  Stalin was able to control such men and women - bandits, revolutionaries, psychopaths and conspirators alike - because they wanted to follow "the young man with the burning eyes".  This is very unlike the Stalin I thought I knew.

300, seen at last

I finally saw 300 on Sunday.  It was just as good as I expected.  And my expectations were high.

There are a few idiot reviewers showing off their ability to read an encyclopaedia article on Thermopylae and decrying the film for this or that inaccuracy.  The point is that this is a story elevated to the level of myth, of heroes doing awe-inspiring things.  And we are so jaded, seeing miracles with every visit to the cinema, that "merely" showing the courage, bravery and discipline of the Greeks over those three days wouldn't satisfy viewers who think that of course heroes can beat hundred-to-one odds.  So we see rhinoceroses and elephants; Xerxes becomes a towering, androgynous Latin American; arrows truly do blot out the sun; the earth really does shake beneath the feet of the eastern armies.  The pedants are like art critics in 1874 complaining that Monet's "Impression, Sunrise" didn't look realistic enough.  This is cinematic impressionism.

There are small weaknesses.  The old Vietnam-war-movie problem of "who is who under the helmet" means that the enemy tend to be signalled by making them as foreign from the Greeks* as possible: The Persian Empire thus ends up very African in character (insert western-centric tinfoil-hat theory here).  Delios' (Faramir's) accent is awkward and stilted.  In such a battle, brutality and blood must be represented, but a couple of decapitations are lingered over for too long.  And the director decided that the ladies needed more time with Queen Gorgas on screen, which means several utterly unnecessary cuts back to Sparta.

Fortunately, the bit at home is utterly unrelated to everything that goes on in the rest of the film, so, when watching on DVD, it will be a matter of pressing the skip button once and you're back to the battle.  Since the rest of the movie is basically a shot-for-shot filiming of the book, the sub-plot about Gorgas that is tacked on has not managed, through some hideous process of angiogenesis, to infiltrate and corrupt the "proper" movie.

The other bit that annoyed me in a purely pedantic way is that the Spartans only fight "properly" - in a phalanx - once.  The first fight is amazing, with the clash, the press of spears and co-ordinated movement of the Spartans immensely atmospheric.  The other fight scenes degenerate into one-on-ones that the Persians could only have dreamt of them engaging in.  Greek hoplite battles against lighter opponents were sometimes unusual in that the enemy's rout could be the time when most Greek losses occurred.  This happened at Marathon.  But I admit that a film full of grindingly realistic phalanx warfare would have been tedious.

And, putting that aside, the way that the battle scenes use variable speed of playback to present very beautiful recreations of forms from friezes and from black- and red-figure pottery is spectacular and moving, barring only the odd gratuitous decapitation.  The placement and poses of the actors in the scene of Leonidas' return with the wolf is like seeing a scene from the Elgin Marbles come back to life.  This evocation impressed me more than anything else about the brilliantly exquisite cinematography.

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*To those who complain that the Greeks didn't look anything like Greeks: do they really believe that 2,500 years of population movements, of invasions and occupation by Macedonians, Romans, Goths, Bulgars, Ottomans and more have left the Greek appearance untouched?  Leonidas looked damnably close to typical Greek black-figure pottery heroes.

Then we will fight in the shade....

I'd not been aware that a movie based on the Spartans' stand at Thermopylae (in fact, based on artist Frank Miller's retelling) was due out in March, but I saw the link over at Tabula Rasa, and am extremely grateful that I did.  Now, it is true that you could stick Nine Inch Nails' music as the soundtrack to a trailer for Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Cafe and I'd be tempted to see it*, but after seeing the promo (here, for the best version, or here and choose the top-left of the three, and select at least "alta" for resolution) I am looking forward to this more than any movie for years.

One useful thing about filming just about anything to do with the Spartans is that they write their own scripts.  The term "Laconic" - meaning a terse statement - comes from the Spartans' famous one-liners.  Thus, in the trailer, we hear a phrase uttered by Dienekes when told that Persian arrows were so numerous as to blot out the sun: "Good, then we can fight in the shade."  In another conflict, when Phillip II of Macedonia threatened the Spartans by saying "If I win this war, you will be slaves forever", the Spartan embassy returned with the response "If".  Another example from the Thermopylae battle was that Xerxes offered to let the Spartans live if they would surrender their weapons, only to receive the response molon labe: "come and get them."

It is interesting to see yet another historical movie about the conflict between East and West being made, following as it does recent films such as Troy, Kingdom of Heaven, Alexander and others.  This is reminiscent of the Godzilla movies of Japanese cold-war years (large, lumbering, uncontrollable, violent outsider who alternates between attacking and defending the Home Islands), or of the westerns and alien-invader movies of post-war United States, although modern audiences, raised with a more developed form of movie criticism (Mark Kermode, Roger Ebert and all) are probably more aware of the intended allegory.

Thermopylae, a stand by 300 Spartans (together with some almost-as-heroic Theban volunteers and some this-was-your-idea-you-only-had-to-do-one-thing-and-you-couldn't-even-get-that-right Phocians) against a huge army - almost certainly somewhere between eighty and two hundred thousand Persians and allies -  is one of the formative tales of the Brave Free West against the Threatening Despotic East.  It, together with the larger tale retold by Herodotus of the Persian wars, has shaped much of our politics, our culture and our language in the millenia since. Undoubtedly, the conquest even of Greece up to the Corinthian isthmus by the Persians would have had huge consequences: as it was, the Persians sacked Athens.  Had they held it, what would have happened to Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Euripides, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Thucydides and the rest?  Modern philosophy, comedy, tragedy, history, medicine and more sprung from that remarkable century-and-a-half or so following the battles of Thermopylae, Salamis, Marathon and Plataea**.  The 300 could be said to have defended us all.

The Spartans held a pass which was at that time about 14 metres wide, and their fitness, training (they were raised to war from childhood) and drill (they sang in order to keep exact pace in their evolutions) were unmatched.  Their heavy armour and specialised weaponry (large shield for protection from blows and arrows, long spears which could be used in mutual support by well-trained men, and short swords for close work) meant that, so long as their rear was secure and their morale high, they were far the superior of their foes on the first day of the battle, both the Medes and the elite Persian Immortals.  As wave after wave of attackers was forced towards the Spartan lines, the process of clambering over a literal wall of dead comrades and facing an unbroken line of iron and spear-points must have been spirit-crushingly terrifying for the men involved, quite apart from the effect on their ability to maintain cohesion as units.

Frank Miller's adaptation is liberal in its adaptation of the historic version - Ephialtes the traitor, who betrayed the Greek cause, is portrayed as a hunchback, for instance - but it looks gorgeous.  Having been a bit disappointed by Troy, and bored out of my skull of Alexander the Great, I would like to be cautious, but even if the film is great I can just keep watching that gorgeous trailer: the scene of the Persian arrows in flight is stupendous.  Those who know me are aware that if I know a film has a sad ending I will avoid it.  But this one's is so glorious as so make me avoid that rule.

 

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*Here, I use "true" in the sense of "not true"

** There might have been no Alexander the Great, but my own feeling is that the Romans would still have risen, and that the Persians would then have been over-extended and forced to retreat into Asia in any case.  But the cultures that followed would surely have been substantially different, not least that of Byzantium.

Reflections on Italy

I'm back from Italy and, even after being back at work for a few days, I am still relaxed.  After spending the best part of a month there in the last couple of years, I see myself as an expert on the country, fully immersed in its culture and able to make arbitrary, sweeping statements about vast tranches of Italian society.

• Italians are not the mad, angry, fist-shaking drivers that they are made out to be.  They drive stupidly fast.  The normal Italian's speed on any road is between 50 and 70 percent higher than the limit, and that applies to almost all drivers.  But I was forgiven u-turns and cut-ins that would have got me outright road-rage in Britain.  People were generally courteous, if prone to tailgating.  I never heard a horn once.  Greeks, now: those are some angry, impatient drivers.  They are the Indians of Europe.  Or the Albanians of the, erm, other bits of Europe.
• Perugia is much under-rated.  It is a really lovely city with spectacular views and incredible surviving archaeology: you can pass into the city through a gate built by the Etruscans over 2000 years ago, and the traffic-free centre of the city, built on a plateau, surrounded by cliffs and high above the eastern Umbrian plains, is delightful.
• Ravenna has incredible buildings, some 4th and 5th century.  The Duomo next to the mausoleum of Galla Placidia is like a small version of the Hagia Sophia, with the advantages that it is still a church and is not ruined by 20-foot wide, plywood cutouts in Arabic.  The 50 metres of Byzantine mosaics in the Arian church built by Theoderic surpassed anything I found in Istanbul, thanks to the lack of Iconoclastic and Turkish intervention*.  Breathtaking.
• Ravennites are, however, a quiet and humble people, who don't like to boast endlessly about the attractions of their city.  On the contrary, their shy nature makes finding any attraction in their city without careful reconnaisance beforehand a little like orienteering in a forest at night.
• If you want to freely plunder an archaeological dig centering on 3rd century Roman buildings, just go to the Zona Arcaheaologica in Ravenna between 12pm and 2pm.  There is a very nice but obsessive-compulsive woman who only speaks Italian and mops the toilets every ten minutes despite the absence of visitors and there is.. well, nobody else.  Just a very small, lazy dog and its stuffed toy.  Even the cleaning woman is about half a kilometre away from the actual dig, which has a low fence and an ajar gate for protection.  I could have filled my pockets with potshards, 1700-year-old mussel shells, beautiful oil lamp handles and more.
• Italian women have a reputation for stylishness and beauty.  Frankly, the stylishness is a myth, even in the north. I have never seen such badly dressed women (the men had a certain old-world chich thing going), even in Eastern Europe.  The looks thing may be a matter for personal taste, but they clearly have nothing on the Czechs, for instance, and I strongly believe that they fail to compete with most of the UK, too ("not Angels but Angles", after all).  France, Spain, Turkey: all compared favourably.
• If, leaving the Mausoleum of Gallo Placidia in a contemplative mood, you choose to place your arm around your companion and give them an affectionate tickle in the small of their back, it is important to check that this is not the elderly wife of the man behind you.  On the upside, the lady in question was delighted.  To be fair, her spouse was not so well pleased.  I left before he could instigate a blood feud.
• Italians mainly have natural, dark hair.  After last night, I know that this is because getting your hair bleached is considerably more painful after plenty of exposure to sunlight.
• Finally, they're not joking about the Italian army.  I encountered a small convoy of them in the hills above Lake Trasimeno while driving to Rome.  They were, I promise you, reversing at the time.

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*I should note that I am, theologically, on the side of the Iconoclasts and the Turks on this one.  I just balk at putting it into practice.

The Glenbuck Cherrypickers and Wikipedia

I have taken the plunge and created my first Wikipedia article, on the subject of perhaps the most remarkable football team ever to exist: the Glenbuck Cherrypickers.  Only in existence for fifty years, and drawing for players upon a (now-long-disappeared) town of only a thousand men, women and children, the Cherrypickers gave the world no fewer than fifty professional footballers, many playing (and managing: Bill and Bob Shankly were both products of Glenbuck) at the highest level in the Scottish and English leagues (then by far the premier footballing competitions in the world).

For contrast, that is equivalent to London producing 50,000 top-flight professional footballers a year, every year, for half a century.

But why do I tell you all this, when it can be found on Wikipedia?  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the nursery of Scottish football: the Glenbuck Cherrypickers.

When Ship Naming Goes Wrong

Over at the War Room, Brad posts about the possible names for the Joint Strike Fighter.  Some are good - Spitfire or Lightning are cracking names with great traditions - while others - "Black Mamba", anyone? - are decidely bad.

Brett at Airminded replies, pointing out the terrible, whimsical names that british pre-war planes had, and imagining going to war armed with craft called the Fawn, Flycatcher, or Tabloid.  And he also says, in a reply at the War Room post:

>> Oh, I completely agree about Royal Navy ship names!
>> You just can’t beat names like Indomitable, Resolution,
>> Revenge, Dreadnought, Invincible …

I don't want to come across as some RAF-defending partisan, but, you have to remember that there have also been some pretty poor RN ship names.  Given how long the senior service has been around, there are an awful lot of them.   The Flower class corvettes in World War 2 are an example: who wants to go to war in the HMS Abelia?  HMS Pink was put out of her misery in 44 by a U-Boat, as was the Bluebell in 45.  I'm not sure which would have been worse: to serve on HMS Starwort, the Hyacinth, the Marigold or the Sunflower.  Obviously there were more: there were a *lot* of Flower class corvettes.  But the fact is that Airminded's nightmare scenario was real: we fought WW2 with a ship called the Rhododendron.

For every HMS Agamemnon there has been an "HMS Alice and Francis" or an "HMS Ann and Judith" (fireship).  For every Repulse a Racoon.  For every Prometheus there is a Postboy, a Popinjay, a Pilchard, a Pigmy, a Pantaloon or a Plumper.

Black September 1994

Darniaq discusses Black September over at his blog.  Black September being the month in 1994 when AOL gave its users full access to teh intarweb.  He compares the reaction of us pre-94 grognards to music fans, horrified when the hoi polloi discover their favourite band.  The comparison is, frankly, a touch tendentious.

If the analogy were apt, then I would agree with Darniaq.  I remember, when reading Ibsen's An Enemy of the People in my teens, being revolted by the elitism of the summation: that by the time the common herd have discovered a position, the cognoscenti must move on.

But as one poster (Brask) suggested, the 1994 influx destroyed the character of the thing that was there.

The music analogy is easily dismissed: if I like a band, and they have a huge hit, it actually impacts very little upon me.  Unless the nature of the band itself changes, all that alters is my view of myself as risque and edgy.  The internet itself was (with apologies to Timothy Burke for my rampant qualifier use) essentially and fundamentally altered by AOHell, 1994.

It's not a musical-tastes-type thing.  It's an immigrant thing.  Many of us enjoy small, community-type sites.  F13, for example, is a small and extremely offensive, argumentative village.  People wander in, pick fights, and are thrown out again if they breach the incredibly lax standards of the village.  These newcomers are outnumbered.  The web felt like a small city.  You didn't know most people, but you came across the same names, here and there, on occasion.  Almost everyone knew the customs.  Some people had lived there or on the BBS outskirts for a decade.  There was etiquette and there were traditions.

When AOHell came to pass (in fact, they made the change in several tranches), the newcomers outnumbered the citizens.  Like the Greeks in 1450's Constantinople we went from protected and privileged few to minority in a very small time.  All the rules that made the exchange of information and ideas smooth and efficient (how to reply to emails, when not to cross-post, never to top-post, never to "me-too-body-copy" ) and so on were largely indefensible positions, the restatement of which went from something one gently did to the odd newcomer, to a request to call artillery on your own position, such was the response from the offended, largely anti-intellectual masses.

Hmm, that makes F13 Mystras.  I am not sure that is very apt.

I know this is a declension narrative.  I am aware that came after has huge advantages: I like being able to buy stuff from amazon and dabs; to book my holiday and quickly find car insurance.  But if Greeks still visit the Hagia Sophia, almost six centuries on, and think how much more beautiful it all was before the barbarians came, then we're allowed 12 years of remembering the good old days, surely?

Date geekery

Two upcoming dates that display my varying forms of geekiness.

One is the 4th of May.  You know: May 4th?  Just after 1 in the morning?

Ach, let me spell it out for you.  At exactly three seconds after two minutes past one, on May 5th 2006, your digital clock will display:

"01:02:03 04:05:06"

I, for one, can hardly wait.  I may actually throw a party to celebrate this once-in-a-century event.

The other date that just struck me recently is of more political and historical consequence.  Next year, 2007, will the the three hundredth anniversary of the Act of Union, 1707, which marked the union of the Scottish and English parliaments, and the foundation of "Britain".  I will predict now that this will not be a date that anyone is rushing to associate themselves with.  In Scotland, even those who are anti-independence tend also not to be very pro-English at such times.  In England, Scotland and things Scottish - especially politicians - are for the first time in my life coming under scrutiny for our disproportionate success in a variety of public areas.  All in all, this anniversary will be marked, on the whole, with a few TV programmes, some staunchly unionist establishment voices saying how jolly good the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution turned out to be for all concerned, and much mainstream shuffling of feet and booking of fortuitous holidays.

"Gospel" of Judas

Quite a few papers and news websites, today, are covering the "discovery" of a so-called "Gospel of Judas".  Of course, the actual discovery happened about thirty years ago, and what has happened now is a translation, but that's not as punchy, so "discovery" it is.  And we have a ton of apocryphal gospels, ranging from the Gospels of Thomas and Mary Magdalene to the Gospel of Kevin the Temple Pool Cleaner and the Gospel of Shep, Peter's collie.

Anyway, when it comes to the Christological significance of the discovery, I'm more than moderately certain that the text will show all the usual nonsense that will flag it as a second-century-onwards Gnostic creation (reference to hidden knowledge not imparted to the masses is the obvious one) from the sort of people who today write Da Vinci Codes.*  As such, it will tell us something about how people saw the events of the gospel period by the time a couple of centuries had passed (and at a time when the Synoptic gospels, in particular, were coalescing into their final form), what narratives were seen as credible at the time and so on.  How it retells known events will tell us a lot more about Judaic and Gnostic mysticism at the time.  It probably doesn't contain much new information about the actual historical events (though one cannot rule out some sort of interesting transmission of snippets and background).

What interests me is the treatment of Judas.  I've never bought the whole Judas Iscariot story, which smacks, to me, of post-facto rationalisation.  I mean, look at it: you have Judas, following around after a man who is healing the sick, giving sight to the blind, physically resurrecting dead people.  You've been close-knit, travelling together for hundreds of miles up and down Galilee, and now he's got the capital alive, abuzz.  And we're supposed to believe that he just decides to turn state witness one day?

More than that, he betrays Jesus, supposedly, by identifying him to the cops.  Now, call me daft, but this is 1st century Jerusalem, with a five figure population.  And someone has been going around, not just vaguely suggesting (and refusing to deny) that he is the anointed one, the long-awaited Messiah and so on, but backing it up with regular miracles.  I am not sure that in order to find out what he looks like you need to infiltrate his twelve closest followers.  Everybody knows what he looks like.

And it doesn't hang together with what went before.  It doesn't make sense.  In a story-telling culture, where little nuances, expressions, even jokes and teasing on occasion, have been picked up and transmitted to us, Judas' volte-face comes out of nowhere.  We're not even told he was getting a bit awkward.  Just Bang!  Straight into a Cash For Kisses row.  The most notorious kiss-and-tell ever.

And yes, once we get into unsupported, mad conspiracy theories, I am vaguely uncomfortable that the post-Pauline Christian world, increasingly gentile in character after a struggle between the two traditions represented in the writings of Peter and Paul, passes on to us a story where a man called Judas, the Greek form of Judah, the name of Jewish land itself, is the betrayer.  If I hadn't read Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, I would be indulging in some moronic logic myself.

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* In all fairness, I should note that the average 3rd century Gnostic gospel-producer was capable of considerably better writing than is dreamt of in Dan Brown's philosophy.  They were also far more knowledgeable about, oh, 14th century Catholicism for starters...

The Moscow Option: An Alternative Second World War by David Downing

Too many counterfactual historians, when addressing World War II, seem to suffer from a sneaking sympathy for the Wehrmacht. Furthermore, it is often accepted at face value that, if Hitler had not directed the thrust of his Panzers twice (towards Kiev in '41, and away from Stalingrad into the Caucasus in the summer of '42) then the Germans would have defeated the Soviets.

Downing falls into neither of these traps. He explicitly refuses to give the Germans those things which would have given them potentialy war-winning advantages: an economy geared for sustained warfare or a political acceptance of liberation in occupied Russia. To do so, he rightly considers, would require fundamental moral and philosophical changes in the nature of the regime that were profoundly at odds with both National Socialist ideology, and with Hitler's personal Weltanschaung.

Downing allows - as the title and cover suggest - for Germany taking Moscow. He also allows the Japanese a decisive triumph at Midway.

The result is a counterfactual book that runs contrary to the trend in this area. Downing is not saying "what could the Axis have done differently that would have allowed them to win?" Instead, he guides us to the conclusion that, given their early decisions, whatever the Axis powers did, they were doomed to fail.

This is not to say that he subscribes to a neo-Marxist analysis of "historical inevitablism". Rather, it is an intriguing exposition of how the logistical, manpower and strategic factors that faced the Axis would eventually have ground them down to an extent that rendered operational-doctrinal advantages irrelevant.

Thoroughly enjoyable on the level of a page-turner, this also provides a range of historically-grounded argument that will interest the military historian without alienating the casual reader.

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(I posted this at Amazon, too: it's not plagiarism, it's me..)

After The Victorians

I've recently finished A.N. Wilson's latest book, "After The Victorians".  What an odd read.  Which is not to say I didn't enjoy it.  But very odd.  By way of precis, the book deals with the British (far more than with Britain herself) from 1901 until 1953, and is a sequel to his previous work, "The Victorians". 

It is history - and popular history at that - but unlike other popular historians like Woods or Beevor, Wilson makes no real attempt to tell the greater story of the times, instead telling a multitude of smaller tales.  At times "After The Victorians" reads more like a collection of sources than any sort of narrative.  Much of the book is made up of telling quotes, poignant vignettes and diverting references to little-known characters.  This lends the book some of its charm, as well as a generous serving of annoyance.

On the positive side, what it does is make the book incredibly atmospheric.  Sometimes, with his choice of stories to tell, Wilson evokes sustained senses of fading grandeur, or of greyness and mundanity.  But sometimes the method is teasing, infuriating or downright confusing.  A paragraph may be - and very often is - a decade out-of order compared to those on either side of it, but there are very, very few of those unfashionable date things to let the reader know.  Relying on the book as an account of these fifty years would lead to a very odd perception of the period.  And Wilson is also surprisingly sympathetic to rather unlikely cases, such as Dr.Crippen (who we learn was no doctor), or the Rector of Stiffkey (clearly mad and probably a little paedophilic).

On balance, I enjoyed the approach.  It harked back to the sort of anecdotal history that existed in the older books we used at primary school, and was full of re-tellable stories and snippets about some of the major players.  Wilson has taken the trouble to produce quotations - usually without comment or gloss - that speak directly to an early 21st century reader.  We see that the British press and government have almost always worried about terrorists and immigrants, usually identifyingone with the other.  Thus, we see Josiah Wedgwood writing to Churchill in 1922:

"It is fatally easy to justify them [i.e. draconian anti-terrorist laws] but they lower the character of a whole nation.  You know as well as I do that human life does not matter a rap in comparison with the death of ideas and the betrayal of English traditions.Rebelling against civilisation and society will go on anyhow and this is only a new form of the disease of '48; so let us have English rule and not Bourbon."

Churchill dominates much of the book, and receives much attention even in his less active periods.  He shares the limelight, surprisingly, with nobody so much as kings and queens, Kaisers and Tsars.  Wilson emphasises their roles greatly.  But this does not save them from the bitchy scandal in which he seems to delight.  He revels in scandal, particularly anything of an oedipal nature, be it about Kaiser Wilhelm or D.H.Lawrence.  He repeats as fact (presumably with justification) fairly shocking rumours about living people - the current Queen and her pet husband being an example - that I would have to research fairly carefully before repeating.  Some of the rumours seem to come as surprising news, even to those with an interest in their targets.

Despite the title, the author cannot tear himself away from focussing on Victorians, rather than men and women of the subsequent age.  Thus, Churchill shares the stage less with Attlee and Eden than with Curzon and Kipling, Nicolson and Wells.  The impression one cannot help but receive is that, as the age of giants ends, that of very little men indeed is bound to follow.

In a period dominated by two immense world conflicts, Wilson seems to have taken a deliberate decision not to be "just another war-century history".  Those areas directly involving the book's hero, Churchill, get a bit of coverage, but otherwise the wars are mentioned fairly en passant, as they relate either to art, to the labour movement, or to Anglo-American relations and the linked topic of Empire.  The latter subjects are seen through the lens of what he sees as the betrayal of Britain by the Americans, and the deliberate bringing-about of the older power's downfall. His arguments here are powerful and well-rehearsed, and probably constitute the closest thing the book has to a central theme.  They are also extremely unlikely to prove popular with the accusation's targets.

While understandable, the apparently deliberate avoidance of focus on the great wars can seem a little obtuse, particularly with regard to the first, which defines the shape of much of the last two-thirds of the period and yet is treated surprisingly cursorily.  Also neglected is any real discussion of the role of Britain in Africa in the first half of the century.  While India is discussed at length, references to the African continent are both rare and fleeting: a mention of South Africa here, a Mau Mau there.  Even South Africa is almost invariably mentioned in relation to Asian themes, be they Ghandi or the Chinese mine-workers.

Finally, I'd have to say that I've never seen an author so often and oddly repeat himself.  Whole paragraphs - for example an account of the American losses at Pearl Harbour - are repeated with only a few changes to wording, and without the addition of some summation or analysis to justify such repetition.  Given the anecdotal nature of much of the book, many of these repeated stories left me feeling I was listening to the stories of a brilliant, delightfully catty, but slightly aged and forgetful uncle.

The Fall of the Roman Empire

I recently finished reading Peter Heather's newest book "The Fall of the Roman Empire".  As an author, he usually writes about those on the north-eastern side of the Roman limes: the Goths and Huns, and the OUP describes him, racily, as the leading authority on the barbarians.  Which, surely, has rarely have been a handier subject than today.

The cover notes say that Heather offers a new and radical interpretation of the collapse of the Western Roman Empire: that it was not the failings but the success of the Roman Empire that led to its downfall.  Here, the name of the book is important, and I am sure that the contrast with Gibbons' "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" is completely intentional.  Heather, basically, strips away any process of decline.  Essentially, he says that the Roman Empire was strong - and in many ways getting stronger - right up until the first impact upon the Danubian provinces of the Hunnic migrations in the 360's.

He's certainly a big barbarophile: he never really says it out loud, but one does get the feeling that he is arguing less in defence of the late western Empire against charges of decadence, and more in favour of the barbarians.  A sort of "the better team won" thing, and obviously, it's better if your team beats Manchester United than Accrington Stanley.

It is traditional for treatments of this period to dive into the "how small were the invading tribes that destroyed Rome?" reverse auction.  Heather's figures are definitely towards the lower end of the bidding - low five figures, in the main - but his analysis of tribal confederations (caused, he says, by a mixture of Hunnic and Roman activities amongst the Germanic peoples), and the localised impact of these concentrated forces when facing static, 3rd rate Roman border defence forces - is convincing.

The real oddity of the book for me is the ending.  After 450-odd pages of narrative, analysis and evidence-gathering the conclusion - that the Romans provided just the right mixture of example, grooming and provocation to harden and consolidate the Germanic tribes into a weapon capable of their destruction - is only really presented in just one paragraph (the very last).  I'm not sure how to put this so as not to sound insulting, but this structure can't help but strike one as oddly undergraduate.  It's as if reading all those essays and dissertations has left Heather feeling that he has to tack on a "Janet-and-John" conclusions paragraph.  There is also a strange sensation that he'd reached his essay word-limit, or that the examiner had instructed him to stop writing.

The book is fun, and at times sparklingly funny.  But I wish he'd spoken less about Alaric's "Gothic supergroup".  I have trouble enough not seeing the cliched long hair, unkempt beards and womanising habits of the 5th century tribes as suspiciously Led Zeppelin, without Peter Heather light-heartedly describing them in a way that smacks of the wonderful Stonehenge scene in Spinal Tap, but performed by proto-Goths Bauhaus.

The Electronic Palimpsest

Finding five-year-old writings on the internet is more like 5th century historical research than you would think.

Actually, I'm really rather serious there.  I'll be quick with this one, so bear with me.

The last couple of posts I've made have seen me going back to old message-board postings, tracking down dead blog entries and the like.  Now, when it comes to google, I have m4d l33t skillz like you wouldn't believe.  As Rutger Hauer says in possibly his finest work (the video to Kylie Minogue's On a Night Like This), "That which you find impossible, I find easy."  I can get old cached stuff, and I know about the Wayback engine and similar projects.  But there is a wealth of real, valuable information that is gone forever.

Coincidentally, I just finished reading Peter Heather's Fall of the Roman Empire,and the similarities between the problems of sources for historians of the late Roman Empire and somebody looking for stuff only two or three years old is surprising.  The originals are gone, but digests exist, as well as commentaries which quote more or less directly from the original.  Where you find apparently unrelated sites giving near identical quotes, your confidence that you are looking at the original rises.

Re-quoting can occasionally be traced, especially where idiosyncratic changes are made, or a particularly creative interpretation is either cited or copied.  Caution is essential, and the context of the commentary that surrounds the quote tells one a lot about how reliably representative of the original this exceprt is likely to be.  Close reading is invaluable as a tool.

So when looking for some of the posts for Khaldun/Burke referred to in "Shell Games - Part 2", below, the originals had gone, as part of a deliberate move on the part of an involved actor: the host and target, SOE).  But other posts survived which quoted and commented upon Burke.  From those, I was able to recover enough to make useful citations.  And, on the upside, it didn't require the idle Porphyrogenitus to set teams of civil servants to the task.

And here's something that a careful archaeological historian can avoid with discovered texts.  Accessing cached google entries often actually destroys them if the site no longer exists.  It's as if reading a book burns each page once you turn to the next. Google goes back, checks this old page that is apparently interesting, finds the original is no more, and flushes the contents.

Of course, there are no real internet palimpsests available.  While actually getting hold of the server's disk array in a lab might theoretically make overwritten texts available, in reality this is not an option.  Once that forum - World of Warcraft -style - is written over with newer posts, then the original is gone.

Wise moves for the Ummah

Via Drink-Soaked Trotskyite Popinjays for War, a piece from the Saudi Religious Policeman (himself a moderate Moslem), suggesting some positive PR moves that the Ummah (community of the faithful) might consider:

1. A Council of Muslim scholars today produced the definitive "New Quran". Based on the original version, it omits all that Dark Age anachronistic stuff about stoning adultresses, beating wives, beheading Kuffars, amputations, lashing, lying to unbelievers and Jews, the so-called sin of Apostacy, and eternal Jihad, and instead concentrates on the good bits about worshipping God, loving all his creatures, respecting our fellow-men, and being charitable to one and all. It will henceforth be the definitive religious text for the Faith. The "Old Quran" will be retained merely for its historic and poetic interest.

2. The Supreme Council of Imams yesterday announced that, after a fourteen-century continuous war which it finally realized it would never win, a peace treaty has been finally concluded with the Kuffars, who would henceforth be known as "fellow-humans". All territorial claims to the rest of the world have been dropped, specifically including Bali, Southern Spain, and Israel. Any acts of war or terrorism by individuals or communities will be punished by excommunication, banishment, permanent prohibition from entry to the Two Holy Mosques, and denial of burial in Muslim graveyards.

3. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has today declared itself open to all religions. All faiths will be permitted to worship openly without let or hindrance. As evidence of its serious intent, it is allocating space in Makkah and Madinah for the building of a Christian church, a Jewish synagogue, Hindu and Buddist temples.

4. A travelling exhibition, entitled "No More Lies", has this week started its round-the-world tour in New York. It disavows all the previous lies espoused by the Muslim Ummah, including the classic""Protocols of the Elders of Zion" is an authentic document" lie, the "4000 Jews got a phone call on 9/10 not to go to work tomorrow" lie, the "we don't know what nationality the hijackers were" lie, and the "Holocaust was a journalistic practical joke" lie.

5. Muslim charities today declared that henceforth, just like Western charities, they would help suffering people around the world, regardless of race or religion. They were able to demonstrate their sincerity by going to the assistance of people affected by a natural disaster in Latin America.

6. Imams throughout the world celebrated "World Faith Day" by preaching that Islam was only as good as, but no better, than all other world religions, and that all were equally valid ways of seeking personal salvation.

Cricket, Wellington and Waterloo

My uncle forwarded me a question from a friend today at work: "at 18:30 on 18 June 1815 - if offered, would Wellington have 'taken the light'?"

This probably qualifies as counterfactual history, in as much as the umpires at Waterloo did not, to the best of our knowledge, offer Wellington the light.  And counterfactual history is, as always, a delight.  The question is even better because of the way it is couched.  Cricket has the image of being the least warlike of sports (in the absence of "legitimate leg side theory").  More than that, there is a curious, poetic beauty about the idea of being "offered the light" (a phrase which, for me, ranks alongside being "invited to follow-on": a genteel way of describing being forced to face the depths of one's humiliating situation).

My only argument with the terms of the question would be that the answer is a little obvious for the time given.  By half past six, the Prussians had arrived on the battlefield and drawn off the young guard; Ney had exhausted much of the French cavalry in pointless mass charges unsupported by the other arms; and Napoleon had squandered much of his reserve in bloody failure against Hougomont.  More than that, it was at five or so that the Old Guard was repulsed in their charge.

More difficult to judge, perhaps, would be an offer of the light at 16:00 or so.  At that point, Ney's charges have occurred.  Hougomont has done its work to the French reserves, but at terrible cost to the defenders.  It may yet fall, and expose the British flank.  On top of this, la Haye Sainte on the other flank is falling to the French; both Young and Old Guards are intact and uncommitted; the Heavy Brigade is mauled; the Dutch-Belgian Brigade has withdrawn; Picton, the reserve on that flank, is badly mauled; and several regiments on the forward slope of the Anglo-Allied position have effectively ceased to exist as fighting units.

The situation looks much more grim at this point.  More than that, the bulk of Wellington's army (except the flanks) was unengaged at that point, and could be withdrawn in fair order, towards a source of hardened veterans of the peninsular war - effectively an opportunity to take the light.  The commander is the older Wellington of Toulouse, not that of Assaye (when he forded a river on a flank march, then frontally attacked his enemy when they changed their disposition).  At Fuentes de Onoro he had shown his willingness to accept an inconclusive result in order to fight another day, and Salamanca was a battle that almost didn't happen, after Wellington had earlier decided to withdraw on strategic grounds.  Wellington's army had to remain in being: a severe defeat might yet have driven the Prussians back to the Rhineland (as Gneisenau had planned) and might indeed have inflicted serious damage upon the coalition.

But, as at Salamanca, Wellington saw a tactical opportunity that outweighed the advantages of relying purely on his strategic resources.  His opinion of Napoleon had fallen after the disasterous cavalry attacks ("the man's nothing but a pounder"): he didn't know that those were the work of Ney.  He also must have known that the delay in the start of the French artillery attack until 11:35 was more than he could hope to gain again, and would have suspected, surely, that the resulting state of the ground had precluded horse-artillery adequately supporting Ney in his Quixotic efforts (although Ney himself needed no help from the weather).  And Grouchy's detached corps might appear if Napoleon was given time to regroup.

Most of all, Wellington seems to have sincerely believed that Blucher would rally and re-appear.  This was, on the face of it, hugely unlikely: the Prussians had been soundly defeated and should be retreating in poor order.  But Wellington had faith that they would appear, and gambled his army upon them doing so.  What is more, had he retired prematurely, leaving the field with the possibility that the Prussians would appear as promised and face the entire French army, he would have been harshly treated.  After Ney's charges, by about 4.30PM. he is reported as saying 'The battle is mine; and if the Prussians arrive soon, there will be an end of the war.' (reported by Captain Gronow).

Perhaps he also shared Napoleon's view that the result of a retreat would inevitably be that each of the Prussian and Anglo-Allied armies would be forced to fall back upon their lines of supply: the former to the east, the latter to the north.  This had been Napoleon's habitual method throughout over 15 years: concentrate your forces at the vital point, and separate those of your enemy before dealing with each from a central position.

So no.  I think Wellington had his battlefield, was happy with it and was, by late afternoon, confident that he would at least hold the field until nightfall.  But he may, indeed, have been playing for the draw at that point.

On (not) first looking into Taylor's Origins...

I've been reading A.J.P. Taylor's Origins of the Second World War recently. I could say re-reading, but I've only studied it before, not read it. The difference is substantial. Now, I am reading it cover-to-cover, for pleasure, without taking notes.

The difference is that I am not focussing on his specific opinions on aspects of the inter-war years. I'm not particularly looking for references to the bluff that was Italian foreign policy, or the development of appeasement in British relations with Germany. I'm able to look - and marvel - at the sheer mastery of the subject which Taylor possesses.

By mastery I don't mean his technical knowledge of the facts. What I mean is that Taylor is clearly the master. It is his subject. He is the daddy.

He is expressing an analysis of the inter-war years that is at variance with just about everyone who went before him. It is radical, and even dangerous. It would have seen him imprisoned in 1950's West Germany and far worse in the Soviet Union or its satellites. He spreads the blame amongst all the participants, with the French emerging particularly badly. Hitler, in foreign affairs, is shown to be just another German, in a post-Bismarck line stretching to Stresemann.

And he is creating this largely from wholecloth. There are hardly any footnotes and references: probably a dozen in the first hundred pages (I don't have my copy here). What footnotes there are are cite primary sources (minutes of meetings, telegrams etc.), and not other textbooks. One reference (in the main body text) to Trevor-Roper and Bullock is little more than a disinterested slap-down. To me, this lack of footnotes says several things:

• Taylor is writing something that nobody has adequately stated before. There is nobody to cite in support.
• He doesn't suffer from the urgent desire to prove his learned nature with seven or eight references per page to his wide reading. He cares more about clarity.
• Taylor really doesn't feel he has to show that he is in agreement with others. He is right, and he knows it.

These attitudes shine through in the generality of the text. It's wonderful writing: footsure and confident. He expresses his opinion, he tells you why he is right, and he moves on. Best of all, he hasn't been infected with the French disease of tortured, post-modernist language that would begin to arrive within about fifteen years. Depressingly few academic (as opposed to popular) historians today would have the confidence (even, perhaps, the ability) to write the same sort of study without writing in Academish: a twisted form of English that demonstrates just how erudite the writer his through the use of horribly broken lanugage that would restrict me to calling it "problematic".  I can't help but think that Levi-Strauss planned it that way: "you Eeenglish ruined our beaches een 1944, and now we will ruin ze Eeenglish language".