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While Washington squandered its strength to guard itself, Richmond sought ever greater concentration of its forces around Johnston.

No Nerve? Perhaps.

McClellan did have 100.000 men & dozens of heavy guns, force enough to dictate the pace at which his campaign would proceed.
Johnston had 55.000 & was seeking to stay out of his grasp, already anticipating another strategic retreat nearer the capital.
McDowells forces were rapidly assembling at Fredericksburg, preparing, Jackson supposed, to join McClellan by an overland descent from the north.

Johnston had ordered Jackson to remain on the defense in the Valley, protecting Richmond and its railroad, but Lee's letters as of 21 April with the nebulous authority of deskbound "commanding general of the confederate armies" urged him to secure the Rappahannock by attacking the Federal flank at Fredericksburg.

Jackson had achieved what he set out to with his winter expedition. Romney [close to the Potomac and the Baltimore & Ohio railroad] was again Southern, with Union fronts to the west and north had been shoved farther apart [away from Winchester in the Valley itself]

With its armoured wings peeling of to the isolation of Leningrad & encirclements in Ukraine, Army Group Centre itself would go over to the defensive.. after blood drenched weeks when Timoshenko sucked 9 German divisions into a savage battle of attrition in the "Yelnaya bend", the Soviet barrier 50 miles east of Smolensk on high ground vital for the development of any blow directed against Moscow.

Locked up in the Kremlin, master of a world which he had created by his own selective killings & which reflected back upon him only those images he had himself ordained, steeped in his own genius & fed on its outpourings, Stalin could rage away dissension and doubt from whatever quarter it came.

The designation of Special to a military district signified that these were operational groupings capable of carrying out operations for a limited period without the mobilisation of additional reserves; ordinary district armies were for all practical purposes administrative organisations. The special districts had their headquarters in Riga (Baltic) Minsk (Western) & Kiev.

the Terezin treatment of TB was standard: a whole lung collapse to allow it to stop working & regenerate. Only after the war did antibiotics make TB a disease of the past. Still, the SS purposefully started sending patients to Auschwitz. The pneumothorax procedure healed some well enough to make it through the selection.

Extermination camp videos, the calm testimonial of Auschwitz commandant Hoss, a few other SS witnesses & Stroop's glowing report on the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto round off the trial...

[at the meeting of 23 mai 1939, planning the attack on the Low Countries fresh off the attack on Norway] "the heads of the Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine & also general Keitel were all present. Their later actions show they agreed in spirit: give your word & break it! That is their code of honour.."
"Mr. Roberts, if you could limit yourself to reading from the document..."

The great battles in Alsace-Lorraine & the siege of Paris left the southeast vulnerable; the radical left had a window of opportunity in Lyon & Marseilles, even while Garibaldi smashed his Mobiles against the Germans.

(de Ladmiraults IV corps at Gravelotte) waited with as much confidence as ludicrous red trousers allowed. Their trenches & rifle pits had dropped those lovely scarlet targets below the line of sight & their comrades in the artillery wheeled the cumbersome mitrailleuses into place for use against any who moved across the open slopes before them.

They held the center; the Germans presumed it was the right flank..

A small crisis erupted just before the sentencing as the French judges wanted to drop Count One, the conspiracy charge, as it had no basis in their legal system. Still, this was the cornerstone of the charge of Aggressive War.

To create a corporate identity & overcome a traumatic negative experience, nearly everyone subscribed to the legend of Terezin as a success story where Jews excelled at physical labor as they had in business, while a celebrated cultural life blossomed.

After two months of Russian-Habsburg see-saw in autumn rains around Rovko & Lutsk in the south, all of Poland was in Central hands by October, governed by the Germans from Cracow & the Austrian half from Lublin.

Russian fortresses such as Novogeorgievsk were death traps as much as counter attacks but in defence they could be formidable if well led, with enough ammo, from a riverbank.

The abandon of fortresses in Poland as proposed by Suskhomlinov had always been overruled by artillerists & other fortress enthusiasts; among others Grand Duke Nikolai & his inner circle. Now, with the war minister in disgrace, it was difficult to adopt a policy he championed.

Von Mackensen captures Lemberg on 22 june 1915. The population welcomed them.

The 10 month Russian occupation saw Russification by the closure of Polish schools & the exile of Ukrainian Catholic priests.

Now Lviv in Ukraine.
"Anything's better than the Russians."
Not much has changed.

Tough the SS viewed Jews as human beings of lesser value, they were happy to use them as a resource. They had Jewish gynecologists perform abortions on their lovers & found Jewish doctors equally useful when it came to other ailments.

Almost all of the higher-ranking SS men were married & their wives lived in Prague. Between two-week visits, some men had extramarital relationships with secretaries & phone operators at HQ. Together with frequent drinking, these liasons strengthened the cohesion of the collective WE ARE BORG & dedication to work on site.

They had joy, they had fun.
By 1130 they did not have multiple fiefs in southern Italy but a Kingdom in the sun.

Mehr oder weniger ernstshaft erwogen (beim Besuch in New York, juni 1930) werden Verfilmungen von Grand Hotel, Jud Süss, Im Westen Nichts Neues, Krieg der Welten, das Leben Zolas...!

The George Staunton who spoke before the House of Commons on 7 april 1839 might seem difficult to reconcile with the scholar who had tried a lifetime to build a more respectful opinion of Chinese civilisation in Britain, but DEFENDING the war had always been a part of him as well, in the belief that the East India Company had kept the corrupt local authorities of Canton "in check".
(Now a role for a naval squadron)

Regular trade resumed after Napier's blustering attempt at gunboat diplomacy, without gunboats within range & without the diplomacy to follow established protocol through Canton merchants with Quing officials.
Jardine & Matheson did not give up so easily.

In essence, the 2nd coastal exploration of 1832 identified a wedge the Company could drive right through the firmament of China. A natural alliance of British trade interests & the multitude of Chinese merchants with their desire for free commerce, both of them set against the jealous government of the Manchus.

Most of the common Chinese people this missionary spoke to tough, didn't know much more than that Europe was a small country inhabited by a few merchants who speak different languages & who maintain themselves primarily by their commerce with China.

The strategy to crush the White Lotus rebellion by 1804 is compared to the "strategic hamlet" strategy of the U.S. in Vietnam: fence in the reliable farmers, turn the countryside into open season against rebels and the unreliable farmers feeding them.

Would a South African metaphor work here?

"Overall the fighting power of the K.ü.k. Army was hugely dimished after 3 months in the Carpatians, reducing it to little more than a barely trained militia. The latest march bataillons had trained with wooden rifles due to a shortage firearms, receiving only real weapons when they reached the front line."

Each horse assigned to the heavier gun of the driving battery had to pull approx 370 kg (limber loaded with ammo, sitting crew, share of gun) while in riding batteries with their lighter guns and the crew mounted individually, each horse had to pull only about 275 kg.

[On the accuracy of cavalry reconnaissance] reports can be inadequate or intercepted. The staff's interpretation could be in error or the result wrongly distributed. in the author's experience at the divisional level "the first report is 50 percent wrong"

The authors' conclusion sees an overemphasis in the optimal use of manpower rather than (MG augmented) firepower as the lessons of the Boer & Russo-Japanese wars were translated into the 1906 manual's dispersed formations - insofar as the army corps commanders took notice to really modernise their training.