Gibbs505
SERVORUM DOMITOR
And it saved FDR from having to persuade congress to declare war on Germany.
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Milestones
- Thread starter admihoek
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Silent_Water
Tribune
There is an interesting interview in German with this Irish historian ...
... about the reasons why Hitler declared war on the USA although he seemed to have done to Roosevelt and the Americans "a great favour" but Hitler most probably thought: "better now than later, because the USA with their inexhaustible resources would become more powerful with every day in the future of this war" and even in the USA, many people have thought that the Japanese military acted in accordance with Hitler, but that was not the case because even the Japanese did not trust him because of his broken treaty with Stalin:
www.t-online.de
... about the reasons why Hitler declared war on the USA although he seemed to have done to Roosevelt and the Americans "a great favour" but Hitler most probably thought: "better now than later, because the USA with their inexhaustible resources would become more powerful with every day in the future of this war" and even in the USA, many people have thought that the Japanese military acted in accordance with Hitler, but that was not the case because even the Japanese did not trust him because of his broken treaty with Stalin:
"Hitler hat den Amerikanern einen ganz großen Gefallen getan"
Vor 80 Jahren attackierte Japan Pearl Harbor, kurz darauf erklärte Adolf Hitler den USA den Krieg. War es eine Tat des Wahnsinns? Ein Interview mit Brendan Simms.
www.t-online.de
wulf
God-Emperor
Loxuru
Graf von Kreuzigung
Abel Tasman, not 'Able'.
In those days, geographers suspected a large continent there in that large ocean, because they thought, otherwise, hthe mass of Earth would not be 'in equilibrium' between the Northern and Southern Hemisphere.
Silent_Water
Tribune
I just remarked that there might be a thread missing here about "incredible birthdays in an almost impossible life", because I nearly missed on 10th of December 2021 the 100. birthday of a famous Jewish-Austrian-German-French journalist with an unbelievable life:
Georg Stefan Troller, who fled from Vienna / Austria from the Nazis as a teenager. He returned to Europe with the US Army as US-soldier and participated in the liberation of Munich and the concentration camp of Dachau. Because of his language skills, he also was officer for the interrogation of German and Austrian prisoners of war.
In the 1960s he fascinated the German audience with his series "Pariser Journal" on WDR. From 1971 he wrote film history with his documentary “personal descriptions” for ZDF.
He also made several "Profile Documentations" for the German, Austrian and French TV about Hollywood stars like Lauren Hutton, John Malkovich, Isabella Rossellini, Kirk Douglas, Woody Allen and Andy García
Troller's subjective reporting and his ability to get to the core of the people with his interviews became a role model for many journalists.
It is a pity that there are only entries in Wikipedia in German and French about him ...
and some interviews because of his 100. birthday like this one:
As I said, an incredible life ...
Georg Stefan Troller, who fled from Vienna / Austria from the Nazis as a teenager. He returned to Europe with the US Army as US-soldier and participated in the liberation of Munich and the concentration camp of Dachau. Because of his language skills, he also was officer for the interrogation of German and Austrian prisoners of war.
In the 1960s he fascinated the German audience with his series "Pariser Journal" on WDR. From 1971 he wrote film history with his documentary “personal descriptions” for ZDF.
He also made several "Profile Documentations" for the German, Austrian and French TV about Hollywood stars like Lauren Hutton, John Malkovich, Isabella Rossellini, Kirk Douglas, Woody Allen and Andy García
Troller's subjective reporting and his ability to get to the core of the people with his interviews became a role model for many journalists.
It is a pity that there are only entries in Wikipedia in German and French about him ...
and some interviews because of his 100. birthday like this one:
As I said, an incredible life ...
Marcius
Tribune
'Obywatelki i obywatele Polskiej Rzeczypospolitej Ludowej! Zwracam się dziś do Was jako żołnierz i jako szef rządu polskiego...'
Forty years ago today, on 13 December 1981, the head of party, government and army, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, declared martial law in Poland, launching the last ever successful attempt to keep an Eastern European country in the Soviet Bloc.
Forty years ago today, on 13 December 1981, the head of party, government and army, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, declared martial law in Poland, launching the last ever successful attempt to keep an Eastern European country in the Soviet Bloc.
Loxuru
Graf von Kreuzigung
If he had not taken action, a Soviet intervention would have arranged it.
Marcius
Tribune
This is the subject of endless discussions among late Cold War scholars, I think. Perhaps, perhaps not. In the final analysis it all hung upon the fickle will of four Soviet gerontocrats -- Brezhnev, Party ideologist Suslov, Marshal Ustinov and KGB Chairman Andropov -- neither of whom lived through the next four years. They were less than keen to do Poland with Afghanistan already on their plate, perhaps they would've accepted something social-democratic in Warsaw, but they hadn't been eager to do the Kabul thing at first. Dangerous times.
Silent_Water
Tribune
By the way as addition to the last topic: This evening on my most-loved French-German TV-& satellite-station ARTE and some internet-reports there in other languages:
Frank Petrexa
Tribune
On a more upbeat note after all the sad news of late, the Parker Probe, speeding along under the power of the sun's gravity and the Venus sling shot, has entered the magnetic zone of the sun's corona. Be sure to check out the grainy video--like something from the early days of "cinematography".
www.goodnewsnetwork.org
NASA Probe Enters the Sun's Atmosphere for the First Time, Immediately Teaching Us New Things About Our Star
Instantly learning an awful lot, the 3-year journey of the Parker Solar Probe to enter the Sun's atmosphere was completed.
www.goodnewsnetwork.org
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Frank Petrexa
Tribune
I read somewhere that the order was given to move into Poland, but the Soviet units involved were so unready the order couldn't be executed. (I believe this was a book called "Inside the Soviet Army": among other things, it quoted an officer who said he slept in his vehicle with a pistol because "these people (his troops) now have guns". Readiness is something that isn't clear until the "balloon goes up". MacArthur had his new P-40's destroyed on the ground by a daring Japanese attack from Taiwan at the limit of their air range. His air commander claimed that MacArthur had ignored his warnings. Maybe that's blame-shifting, but on the other hand MacArthur was notorious for dismissing intelligence he did not like and underestimating the capabilities of his opponents.
Marcius
Tribune
The agony took seventeen days.
Thirty years ago today, on 25 December 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as president of the Soviet Union.
Silent_Water
Tribune
Some additional German thoughts to the decline of the Soviet Union 30 years ago:
The older I become, the more I get the feeling that this world is getting more and more erratic and unpredictable, because the history of nations and their states can make a "180-Grad-Wende" (= "180-degrees-turn") as we say in German and no one can really predict when and how it happens.
I always found it "funny" that the last communist German general secretary, Erich Honecker,
- after his downfall and resignation - went into exile to CHILE !!! The same Chile that was only a few years ago one of the worst right-wing dictatorships of General Pinochet! But at that time, the GDR politically had already turned 180 degrees around and Chile turned 180 degrees around, too.
History can move very slowly for decades or even centuries and then suddenly, in only a few hours or days, everything can be overturned by an incredible simple incident, which is in German "der Tropfen, der das Fass zum Überlaufen bringt" (= the drop that makes the keg overflow) !
The peaceful opening of the inner German borders within hours on 9th of November in 1989, between the FRG and the GDR was caused in a second by a mistake of a new GDR-secretary for press relations, "Günter Schabowski",
who was the "worst walking disaster area" ever since for his fellow East-German communists, but the German people as a whole loved him for his silly mistake ever since, because just before his press conference, he got a piece of paper from the new general secretary of the communist government, in which the possibility of free travelling between the two German states should be declared possible, but this was not discussed by the GDR ministers on this day and it was only a suggestion, but no one told this to Mr. Schabowski.
When asked by an Italian journalist in this press conference at 7 p.m., when this possibility of free borders between the both Germanys should "start", Schabowski turned the paper around, could not find anything more written hints and said: "As far as I can tell you, ... as I understood it ... I think ... it is a decision which is valid ... beginning ... right now!"
This is simply incredible in such a dictatorship until this moment, but this must also have been the moment, when ten-thousands of East-Germans jumped up in front of their TV's and told their wives or their husbands: "Darling, take the children, I start my Trabant-car and we all will drive right now to the nearest border station. I must see this with my own eyes if this is true!"
The first border opened at 8.30 p.m. in Berlin because of the thousands of East-Berliners who asked their policemen there if they had not seen the TV news. They did and they tried to get answers from their officers but there came nothing any more this evening and so, they really opened the border stations, first in Berlin, later that night more and more all over the borders to the Western Federal Republic of Germany.
We Germans will remember that night and our history which had one of its luckiest moment in that night forever, which is also shown in this historical music video "The Ice melts on our Skin", the only one which was ever made partly on top of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin:
This was probably the most incredible night in German history and I was awake the whole night! We Germans in those days probably all really loved "our Russian friend Gorbi" in the declining Soviet Union, because without him and without the decline of the Soviet Union, Germany could look today still like the both Korean states which are an anachronistic example of history as we Germans believe.
But all these developments were not so sure that no one could one day try to reverse some of them and we all should be clear about that every new trial to change the now existing borders in Europe without peaceful talks before would automatically lead to the brink of a new bigger and possibly very international war in Europe and the most famous German theorist of war history, ...
... called what happens then "die Friktion des Krieges", (= "the frictions of war") which means, that mistakes, accidents and coincidents can decide all wars, no one can really predict the end of a war, every participient in a war will usually always lose more than he thought in the beginning and no one, who goes into a war will come out as the same person.
And so, I hope that everyone in power today in Washington, especially Moscow or Beijing has heard or read something by Clausewitz before he makes a decision which can destroy our world.
The older I become, the more I get the feeling that this world is getting more and more erratic and unpredictable, because the history of nations and their states can make a "180-Grad-Wende" (= "180-degrees-turn") as we say in German and no one can really predict when and how it happens.
I always found it "funny" that the last communist German general secretary, Erich Honecker,
- after his downfall and resignation - went into exile to CHILE !!! The same Chile that was only a few years ago one of the worst right-wing dictatorships of General Pinochet! But at that time, the GDR politically had already turned 180 degrees around and Chile turned 180 degrees around, too.
History can move very slowly for decades or even centuries and then suddenly, in only a few hours or days, everything can be overturned by an incredible simple incident, which is in German "der Tropfen, der das Fass zum Überlaufen bringt" (= the drop that makes the keg overflow) !
The peaceful opening of the inner German borders within hours on 9th of November in 1989, between the FRG and the GDR was caused in a second by a mistake of a new GDR-secretary for press relations, "Günter Schabowski",
who was the "worst walking disaster area" ever since for his fellow East-German communists, but the German people as a whole loved him for his silly mistake ever since, because just before his press conference, he got a piece of paper from the new general secretary of the communist government, in which the possibility of free travelling between the two German states should be declared possible, but this was not discussed by the GDR ministers on this day and it was only a suggestion, but no one told this to Mr. Schabowski.
When asked by an Italian journalist in this press conference at 7 p.m., when this possibility of free borders between the both Germanys should "start", Schabowski turned the paper around, could not find anything more written hints and said: "As far as I can tell you, ... as I understood it ... I think ... it is a decision which is valid ... beginning ... right now!"
This is simply incredible in such a dictatorship until this moment, but this must also have been the moment, when ten-thousands of East-Germans jumped up in front of their TV's and told their wives or their husbands: "Darling, take the children, I start my Trabant-car and we all will drive right now to the nearest border station. I must see this with my own eyes if this is true!"
The first border opened at 8.30 p.m. in Berlin because of the thousands of East-Berliners who asked their policemen there if they had not seen the TV news. They did and they tried to get answers from their officers but there came nothing any more this evening and so, they really opened the border stations, first in Berlin, later that night more and more all over the borders to the Western Federal Republic of Germany.
We Germans will remember that night and our history which had one of its luckiest moment in that night forever, which is also shown in this historical music video "The Ice melts on our Skin", the only one which was ever made partly on top of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin:
This was probably the most incredible night in German history and I was awake the whole night!
We Germans in those days probably all really loved "our Russian friend Gorbi" in the declining Soviet Union, because without him and without the decline of the Soviet Union, Germany could look today still like the both Korean states which are an anachronistic example of history as we Germans believe.But all these developments were not so sure that no one could one day try to reverse some of them and we all should be clear about that every new trial to change the now existing borders in Europe without peaceful talks before would automatically lead to the brink of a new bigger and possibly very international war in Europe and the most famous German theorist of war history, ...
... called what happens then "die Friktion des Krieges", (= "the frictions of war") which means, that mistakes, accidents and coincidents can decide all wars, no one can really predict the end of a war, every participient in a war will usually always lose more than he thought in the beginning and no one, who goes into a war will come out as the same person.
And so, I hope that everyone in power today in Washington, especially Moscow or Beijing has heard or read something by Clausewitz before he makes a decision which can destroy our world.
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Marcius
Tribune
Twenty-five years ago today, on 26 December 1996, JonBenét Ramsey was found dead at her family's home in Boulder, Colorado.
O.J., Oklahoma City, TWA 800, the stained blue dress, JFK Jr and the still unsolved Ramsey case: the dissonant chords in the symphony of the calm, fat American Nineties that seem so remote in the new 'atonal' millennium.
Nonetheless -- only yesterday.
O.J., Oklahoma City, TWA 800, the stained blue dress, JFK Jr and the still unsolved Ramsey case: the dissonant chords in the symphony of the calm, fat American Nineties that seem so remote in the new 'atonal' millennium.
Nonetheless -- only yesterday.
Loxuru
Graf von Kreuzigung
A calm fat world, after it suddenly found itself without Cold War, but then forgot to clean up the mess it had left behind!
Just like happened after the First World War!
Silent_Water
Tribune
Mhm, when you have ever read some parts of Alexis de Tocqueville's thoughts about "Democracy in America", you simply must come to the conclusion that he was possibly the greatest political theorist ever of all political long-time-developments in the world. When Tocqueville was as right in his predictions as I fear, even two world wars could not really have changed the world in its most dangerous antagonism as he saw it already in 1835.
In 1835 (!!!), he predicted than one day, there would be a bipolar world, one half dominated by the USA with possibly "too much" freedom and liberty, one half of the world with probably "much too few" freedom and liberty, dominated by Russia. (Please remember now the size and the relatively few influence of both in the imperial "British world" of 1835!)
The reason for his prediction was that these two states would have no limits in the future he could foresee, both states were still growing, their human and natural resources seemed to have no limits or boundaries etc.
But what surprised me - personally as being a German - the most in his predictions ( again: this prediction made in 1835 !!! ) was that he thought even a future revolution in Russia with the killing of the last Tsar similar to the French Revolution with the killing of the last king would not change the suppressive nature of Russia's history because the thinking of human beings in all kinds of state affairs takes a longer time to change than 3 or 4 human generations!
This was also the reason for his additional prediction in 1840 that South America's states like Brazil or Argentina would never be so powerful like the USA or Canada in North America, simply because they copied the history of European noble societies in which the population was like peasants always waiting for the decisions of her noble masters without own initiatives.
Tocqueville also predicted that the situation in Russia might even be worse than in South America from his perspective of 1835 / 1840 because the majority of Russians in those times were "bondsmen and serfs", taking all decisions of the Tsar or his government in stoic silence without any own ideas regarding the decisions from their own government like a natural catastrophe against which you cannot do anything. Tocqueville thought that this is the mentality of slaves and this will not change by a revolution when the revolution is not followed by a "civil society" with a bigger middle class, which can postulate its own goals in politics.
I am afraid, Tocqueville was absolutely right, because I could never see an influential middle class in Russia, not even any products which were ever manufactured in high quality for a middle class. Or do you know any Russian consumer products which could be sold on the markets of the world according to Western standards? (Except special computer programs, possibly.)
No, Russia's strength and power is only based now for centuries on its military's capabilities of weapon's development and this military's reason to exist is the existence of real or rather imagined enemies and I am afraid there is no good ending to the predictions of Alexis de Tocqueville.
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wulf
God-Emperor
I clearly recall watching those momentous events happening, and feeling happy for the German people. I grew up during the cold war, and was glad to see things start to change. I did not know the story of the journalist's mistake, so thank you for posting that.Some additional German thoughts to the decline of the Soviet Union 30 years ago:
The older I become, the more I get the feeling that this world is getting more and more erratic and unpredictable, because the history of nations and their states can make a "180-Grad-Wende" (= "180-degrees-turn") as we say in German and no one can really predict when and how it happens.
I always found it "funny" that the last communist German general secretary, Erich Honecker,
- after his downfall and resignation - went into exile to CHILE !!! The same Chile that was only a few years ago one of the worst right-wing dictatorships of General Pinochet! But at that time, the GDR politically had already turned 180 degrees around and Chile turned 180 degrees around, too.
History can move very slowly for decades or even centuries and then suddenly, in only a few hours or days, everything can be overturned by an incredible simple incident, which is in German "der Tropfen, der das Fass zum Überlaufen bringt" (= the drop that makes the keg overflow) !
The peaceful opening of the inner German borders within hours on 9th of November in 1989, between the FRG and the GDR was caused in a second by a mistake of a new GDR-secretary for press relations, "Günter Schabowski",
who was the "worst walking disaster area" ever since for his fellow East-German communists, but the German people as a whole loved him for his silly mistake ever since, because just before his press conference, he got a piece of paper from the new general secretary of the communist government, in which the possibility of free travelling between the two German states should be declared possible, but this was not discussed by the GDR ministers on this day and it was only a suggestion, but no one told this to Mr. Schabowski.
When asked by an Italian journalist in this press conference at 7 p.m., when this possibility of free borders between the both Germanys should "start", Schabowski turned the paper around, could not find anything more written hints and said: "As far as I can tell you, ... as I understood it ... I think ... it is a decision which is valid ... beginning ... right now!"
This is simply incredible in such a dictatorship until this moment, but this must also have been the moment, when ten-thousands of East-Germans jumped up in front of their TV's and told their wives or their husbands: "Darling, take the children, I start my Trabant-car and we all will drive right now to the nearest border station. I must see this with my own eyes if this is true!"
The first border opened at 8.30 p.m. in Berlin because of the thousands of East-Berliners who asked their policemen there if they had not seen the TV news. They did and they tried to get answers from their officers but there came nothing any more this evening and so, they really opened the border stations, first in Berlin, later that night more and more all over the borders to the Western Federal Republic of Germany.
We Germans will remember that night and our history which had one of its luckiest moment in that night forever, which is also shown in this historical music video "The Ice melts on our Skin", the only one which was ever made partly on top of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin:
This was probably the most incredible night in German history and I was awake the whole night!
But all these developments were not so sure that no one could one day try to reverse some of them and we all should be clear about that every new trial to change the now existing borders in Europe without peaceful talks before would automatically lead to the brink of a new bigger and possibly very international war in Europe and the most famous German theorist of war history, ...
... called what happens then "die Friktion des Krieges", (= "the frictions of war") which means, that mistakes, accidents and coincidents can decide all wars, no one can really predict the end of a war, every participient in a war will usually always lose more than he thought in the beginning and no one, who goes into a war will come out as the same person.
And so, I hope that everyone in power today in Washington, especially Moscow or Beijing has heard or read something by Clausewitz before he makes a decision which can destroy our world.
Loxuru
Graf von Kreuzigung
I recall that, some 40 years ago, in the early Eighties, Tocqueville and his views suddenly became presented in the public, by newspapers, etc...
The rest of the decade, some leading politicians apparently considered referirng to Tocqueville as a demonstration of their knowledge and capabilities.
It sounded something like : "As de Tocqueville once wrote, (follows a statement attributed to Tocqueville, to illustrate the politician's viewpoint)...." Some did it regularly.