My Amazon Review of Rachel Chrastil's "Bismarck's War:....:

Organization vs. Incompetence

 

I was disappointed in reading Xavier history professor Rachel Chrastil’s history of the Franco-Prussian War. To be sure it is very detailed, and it included many personal vignettes, it leaves out much. In describing battles, she leaves out maps denoting the positioning of the forces and while included in the text, there should have been detailed exhibits consisting of the Tables of Organization and Equipment of the respective forces. I would have also liked to see some discussion in the economic sinews of war of both France and Prussia.

 

After tricking Napoleon III into declaring war against Prussia via the infamous Ems dispatch in July 1870, Prussia wipes France on September 2 at the Battle of Sedan. Napoleon III is captured and immediately a republic is declared in France. The war should have ended then and there, but France fights on for another year bringing with concomitant carnage on both sides. Chrastil rightly attributes Prussia’s victory to superior organization and generalship led by Helmut von Moltke over France’s incompetence.

 

To me it would have been a far better read if she spent more time on the big picture rather than the minute details of the battle. However, one detail did stand out to me. Coralie Cahen, a Jewish woman, helped organize the care for the French wounded and became the Florence Nightingale of the war. Who knew?

 

Europe learned the wrong lesson from the war. Instead of being fearful of mass carnage, the continent began arming to the teeth that would reach its zenith in 1914. 

For the full amazon URL see: Organization vs. Incompetence (amazon.com)

The House Gets it Right, at Last.

Yesterday under the leadership of House Speaker Michael Johnson and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, the House of Representatives passed the $95 billion foreign aid supplemental that will send needed military supplies to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. (See: Shulmaven: Israel, Iran and the Nazi Gaza War Protesters ) And for good measure the House threw in a forced sale/ban on Tick Tock. 

The leadership succeeded in overcoming challenges from the anti-Israel Hamas Caucus in the Democratic Party and the Putinista Wrecker Caucus apparently being led by Moscow Marjorie Taylor Green in the Republican Party. At last, the center finally held. The measure now moves on to the Senate where it will hopefully pass on Tuesday, much to the relief of the struggling Ukrainian defenders. With shouts of "Churchill not Chamberlain" it seems that the House is beginning to recognize that we are in a prewar situation and has to act accordingly.

Further, in another victory for the center, Congress passed a two year reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) which enable warrantless surveillance outside of the United States even if it involves contact with U.S. citizens. This law has served us well for over four decades.

Speaker Michael Johnson put his job on the line with his actions and let us hope that he understands that standing up to the bullies in his own party, will strengthen him, rather than bring him down.

Israel, Iran and the Nazi Gaza War Protesters

Last night Iran launched a massive air attack on Israel that was thwarted by the integrated Israeli air defenses along with help from the United States and regional allies. It was a credit to Israeli diplomacy that Jordan and Saudi Arabia aided Israel. Iran's dastardly attack will deservedly be met with a stern Israeli response, that hopefully will give the ayatollahs second thoughts about resuming their aggressive actions.

Meantime in the United States the Gaza war protestors were cheering Iran on with the slogans "hands off Iran" and "death to America." I guess they really love how well Iran treats its female and gay populations. Indeed, the Gaza War protesters have become the new Nazis in their unceasing efforts to shut down Israeli and Jewish artists and political figures at  numerous venues. Their behavior is very reminiscent of what the Nazis did in pre-Hitler Germany. Simply put we have to put and end to the hecklers' veto. I recently noted in a book review where the Nazis prevented the Berlin opening in December 1930 of the antiwar film "All Quiet on the Western Front." (See: Shulmaven: My Amazon Review of Frank McDonough's "The Weimar Years: Rise and Fall 1918-1933" )

In response Congress should immediately pass the supplemental appropriation for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan that has been held up by the Republican wrecker caucus in the House. (See: Shulmaven: Crunch Time for Ukraine, Israel and the Border ) Further voters should vote out of office the Hamas caucus within the Democratic Party that voted against supporting Israel's Iron Dome system and the sending of F-35 jets. I close to note that the Iranian attack is further evidence that we are living in a prewar period with its attendant dangers. ( Shulmaven: Shulmaven Anticipates Hal Brands Foreign Affairs Article on Pre-WW II and Today )

My Amazon Review of David Downing's "Union Station"

 Los Angeles-Berlin Axis

After years in Europe the Anglo-American journalist John Russell and his actor wife are now living in Los Angeles. This the eighth book of David Downing’s station series, with all of the prior stations being in Berlin from the late 1920’s to the late 1940’s.  (See: Shulmaven: My Amazon Review of David Downing's "Wedding Station")Russell is partially employed by a German newspaper and Effie has become a sitcom star on American TV.  Although their life in LA is of wine and roses, Russell gets caught up in a political corruption scandal and Effie is now facing issues with HUAC and the McCarthyism of the era.

 

All of the activity takes place in 1953, the year of Stalin’s death, the subsequent struggle for power in the Soviet Union and the anti-Soviet riots in Berlin. Russell’s journalism takes him back to Berlin to investigate a candidate for Congress and Effie is there for a film festival. There is much intrigue in Berlin with several border crossings between east and west as Russell meets up with old friends. Russell fears that Soviet spy chief Beria is out to get him because he possesses compromising evidence on him that would be useful to his Kremlin opponents.

 

Along the way we get a sense of the very segregated Los Angeles of that era and the growing controversy of what is to happen to the Chavez Ravine tract the city has acquired. The Dodgers would move in later in the decade.

 

Downing tells a good story, but to me his dislike for America gets harder and harder to take, especially at the end. He seems to ignore that 1953 was a great year for middle-class white Americans and the Russell family was doing quite well. Downing also throws in a gratuitous hit on Israel, just for good measure. However, once you get over his political biases, he writes a very fast-paced historical novel

 Los Angeles-Berlin Axis (amazon.com)

My Amazon Review of Frank McDonough's "The Weimar Years: Rise and Fall 1918-1933"

 On the Road to Perdition

 

Third Reich historian Frank McDonough has written a year-by-year tick tock history of the Weimar Republic from its founding in 1918 to its demise on January 30, 1933. It is largely a political history where he sometimes goes into excruciating detail about the various cabinet changes over the years. His hero is Gustav Stresemann, prime minister and for many years foreign minister. He was perhaps Germany’s most influential politician from 1925 -1929 where he negotiated a détente with the West though the Locarno Treaty. Unfortunately, deliberate, or not there was not Locarno for the East where Stresemann had designs on the eastern territories taken away from Germany at Versailles.

 

McDonough rightly notes that the premature deaths of Foreign Minister Walter Rathenau by assassination in 1922 and the deaths by disease of President Friedrich Ebert and Stresemann severely eroded the talent of the regime. I have written elsewhere that Stresemann’s death in 1929 removed the last politician of stature who could have stood up to Hitler.

 

Weimar was plagued from the beginning by a flawed constitution and its lack of legitimacy among the German Right. The two fundamental flaws in the constitution were proportional representation that allowed for the smallest of parties to have a voice in Reichstag and Article 48 which enabled the president to rule by decree. That would haunt the government as the economic crisis of the 1930’s hit.

 

Further, it was this government that signed the Versailles Treaty that established Germany’s sole guilt in starting World War I and placed a severe reparations burden on the economy. It was a tough start and that along with crippling inflation almost brought the government down. However, as Robert Gerwath noted in “November 1918: The Great Revolution” Weimar survived and with Dawes Plan loans in 1925 actually prospered.

 

So why did Weimar collapse? To McDonough the faults lie with the lack of responsible parties on the Right and with President Paul von Hindenburg, the hero of World War I, who in the late 1920’s was supportive of the government, returned to his monarchal roots as a Prussian land baron. It was he, along with the intrigues of Franz von Papen and Kurt von Schleicher who brought down the hapless Heinrich Bruning government in 1932. Bruning’s government was imposed on the Reichstag by Hindenburg. He never had a parliamentary majority and with the lack of foreign currency reserves he was forced to impose a draconian austerity policy on an economy already in depression. To me Bruning did not have much of a choice. By the way, the best tick-tock on the end of Weimar is in Rudiger Barth’s and Hauke Friedrichs’ “The Last Winter of the Weimar Republic.”

 

Indeed, the decay was evident in December 1930 when Nazi goons disrupted the German premier of the anti-war film, “All Quiet on the Western Front.” So great were their disruptions that the film was banned a week after the failed premier. This has a familiar ring today in America where pro-Palestine mobs are canceling Jewish performers and Israeli officials.

 

 

Away from politics McDonough discusses the flowering of culture in art (abstract expressionism), architecture (Bauhaus), and film (Metropolis). Indeed, Berlin was second only to Hollywood in film production in the 1920’s. There was also the very free and licentious culture of Berlin’s nightclub scene. It was not for nothing that the recent German TV series was called “Babylon Berlin.” What McDonough does not mention is that this Avant Garde culture just might have turned off small city and rural Germany who overwhelmingly voted for Hitler in 1932.

 

However, my two primary concerns with McDonough’s otherwise excellent work is that he down plays economics. He should have taken seriously the works of Frederick Taylor’s “The Downfall of Money,” and Tobias Straumann’s “1931: Debt Crisis and the Rise of Hitler.” Simply put, Weimar was not up to the task. However, to his credit, McDonough does not that Hitler’s opposition to the Young Plan in 1930 made him respectable.

 

My second concern is that he failed to emphasize the long-standing division in the Left between the Socialists and the Communists. The split started during World War I and was exacerbated by the Socialist government with the support of the Army and the Free Corps in putting down the communist Spartacist Revolt in early 1920. Later in 1929 a different socialist government put down the “Bloody May” communist demonstration in 1929. McDonough doesn’t even mention this and with the communists calling the socialists “social fascists” it less of a surprise seeing them join forces with the Nazis in bringing down the Bruning government and in supporting a transit strike in Berlin in late 1932. Thus, part of the blame for the rise of Hitler has to fall on the disunity of the Left. As I have written previously the global impact of the Russian Revolution was to split the Left and harden the Right. It certainly played out in 1930 Germany.

 

With my concerns aside, McDonough’s book is important. I learned much from it and there are certainly lessons for today.

For the full amazon URL see: On the Road to Perdition (amazon.com)

My Amazon Review of Ian Buruma's "Spinoza: Freedom's Messiah"

Cancelled

At a time when cancel culture is running rampant in the West, it is useful to note that pernicious as it is, it is not new. In Dutch born Ian Buruma’s biography we find the 23-year-old Baruch Spinoza banned from his Sephardic synagogue in Amsterdam for his heretical ideas about G_d and the origins of the Bible. At the time Spinoza had yet to publish anything, but his ideas were so powerful that he threatened both the Jewish and Christian communities alike. Mind you this occurred in 1656 at the height of the Dutch enlightenment. Along the way we learn much about life in the milieu of the Dutch Republic.

Spinoza would go on to write a major book on the philosophy of Descartes and later several books on his own philosophy. He was part of a coterie of intellectuals that viewed him as a cult figure; a reputation that was enhanced by his ascetism and celibacy.

Spinoza’s god was nature itself. Thus, to study nature in the spirit of open scientific inquiry was the pathway to finding G_d. For espousing freedom of thought, Spinoza was cancelled. Although Spinoza did not believe in organized religion, he did believe that it served the purpose of inculcating the values of justice and charity within the broader population.

Buruma himself was cancelled as the editor of the New York Review of Books in 2018 because he didn’t bow down the #MeToo orthodoxy. In writing about Spinoza, Buruma has exacted a modicum of justice against the radical hyenas of the Left. 

For the full amazon Review see: Cancelled (amazon.com)

President Biden's State of the Union: Strong on Form Weak on Substance

Very reminiscent of Harry Truman's "give'em hell" 1948 campaign, President Biden came out swinging against his nameless predecessor and the Republican House of Representatives in his state of union address. ( See: Shulmaven: New Yorker Follows Shulmaven on Biden Election Strategy. ) He was confident, strong, and relaxed and at least for the time being silenced the "bedwetters" in the Democratic Party concerned about his re-election prospects. Further I wouldn't be surprised to see a meaningful bounce in his poll numbers in the coming week.

In terms of substance there was much to be desired. He opened his speech citing Franklin Roosevelt's 1941 state of the union (see below):

" In January 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt came to this chamber to speak to the nation. He said, “I address you at a moment unprecedented in the history of the Union.” Hitler was on the march. War was raging in Europe. President Roosevelt’s purpose was to wake up the Congress and alert the American people that this was no ordinary moment. 

Freedom and democracy were under assault in the world. Tonight I come to the same chamber to address the nation. Now it is we who face an unprecedented moment in the history of the Union. And yes, my purpose tonight is to both wake up this Congress, and alert the American people that this is no ordinary moment either."

President Roosevelt's speech which has become to be known as his "Four Freedoms Speech" was delivered on January 6, 1941. Only a week before Roosevelt gave fireside chat where he declared the United States to be "an arsenal of democracy." The difference today is that President Biden is nowhere near declaring America as an arsenal of democracy. Indeed his proposed defense budget will show a meager 1% increase. Given the tone of his speech and the prewar environment we are now living in, he should have called for a massive increase in defense spending. (See: Shulmaven: Shulmaven Anticipates Hal Brands Foreign Affairs Article on Pre-WW II and Today) Thus his rhetoric is way ahead of his actions.

The other troubling parts of his speech is that he revived all of the old Democratic Party tropes about taxing the rich, going after big Pharma, and spending program upon spending program. He fails to understand that middle-of-the-road voters in 2020 thought they were voting for a Bill Clinton and instead got a Lyndon Johnson. This could come back to haunt Biden as his rhetoric could very well scare away the Nikki Haley voters he will need in November.