Dimitri > Recent Status Updates

"ABDA proved much better at producing acronyms than scoring points off the rampaging Japanese"

"Whereas Nimitz could have done King's job, King could not have done Nimitz's so well" [by temperament]

"it was as if their leaders, including Yamamoto, who was as least as responsible for the imminent attempt by the Japanese to overreach themselves, did not exist unless they were on the attack: I strike, therefore I am"

A bitter dispute developed whether the planned third assault should go in. Yamamoto backed the veto. Thus were the fuel tanks and other vital shoreside facilities of Pearl Harbor saved from all but incidental damage. They were to have been the prime target of wave number three. Their destruction would have rendered the base useless & forced the US Navy back to the West coast, over 2.000 miles to the East.

De zaak is dat Nederland het Huis van Oranje voor een poos missen kan & de Republiek rijp is voor een eerste stadhouderloze regering. In niets wezenlijks zal Jan De Witts aanstaande politiek van die verschillen welke casu quo door Willem II zou gevolgd zijn.

aan de andere kant had toen De Groot verscheen Europa sedert Machiavelli zovele oorlogen aaschouwd en was de wens naar een minder barbaarse orde van zaken zo levendig geworden dat een nieuwe handleiding welkom moest zijn.

In de grond der zaken bestaat er geen verschil tussen de gereformeerde theologie van de 17e eeuw en de middeleeuwse scholastiek. In beide tijdvakken ziet men mensen met macht van redenen en van gewijde teksten een van te voren vaststaande waarheid verdedigen, of zij putten uit Aristoteles, uit Calvijn of rechtstreeks uit de Bijbel.

"Er is in Europa voor de uitvinding der boekdrukkunst even vlijtig gelezen als in de eerste tijd daarna. Slechts kost het ons meer moeite dit aan te nemen omdat de boeken, zo zij in de smaak vielen, vervangen werden door herdrukken, terwijl de handschriften deels werden vernietigd, deels eenlingen bleven"

"[Dat] onze landgenoten op het gebied van de kerkbouwkunst geen voorgangers of uitvinders geweest zijn. Zij hielden meer van hun dijken dan van hun kerken, omdat hun dijken een schepping waren van hun eigen brein, hun kerken slechts een van buiten geleerde les"

Ondanks 2vNederduitse hoofdstukken kruistochten met een snuifje Froissart komt Huet met zijn Nederlandsche volksaard inderdaad pas op dreef in de 16e eeuw...

The unfortunate commander [C-inC Scott] experienced the deep humiliation of being adjuged incompetent by the North, whose cause he had unnaturally espoused, whose armies he had sent into the field as invaders of the land of his birth. The retribution was righteous. No penalties of fortune were too severe for a general who had directed an army to trample upon the graves of his sires & despoil the homes of his kindred.

The financial complications of Mr. Lincoln's government were in striking contrast with the abundant & easy means which the Southern Confederacy had at least so far been able to carry on the war. The latter had been reduced to a paper currency but it had for the basis the great staple of cotton [ 3.70 out of 4.68 milion bales, supplying 80% Of England's consumption]

Pollard does not give the value of this 1860 crop

"Fraglos war sechs Wochen später die Landung in Halbinsel Alsen ein noch größerer Erfolg als die Erstürmung der Schanzel von Düppel am 18. April.

Die Bestürzung im Ausland um die Kanonade auf Sonderburg war groß. Der Kronprinz sah sich veranlasst in einem geharnischten Brief an Victoria "über die kindischen Attacken der Britischen Presse".. Hätte Friedrich Wilhelm gewusst dass seine königliche Schwiegermutter seit Beginn der dänischen Kreise alles unternommen hatte, ihre Regierung zu Mäßigung gegen die Deutschen zu drängen, wäre sein Schreiben wol höflicher.

So lange die Marine nicht eine Landung auf Seeland ermögliche um den Frieden in Kopenhagen selbst zu diktieren, bleibe Preußen nur die Okkupation der jütischen Halbinsel.

The uprising had spread to neighbouring tribes by the end of July & word was spreading throughout the Middle and Lower Euphrates that the "Ingliz" had been defeated , too weak to withstand the rebel forces, clearly in the process of relinquishing control over the country.

the siege of Rumaytha was just the beginning. in a little over a month the number of insurgents would swell to over 100k, with British forces compelled to withdraw from every town except Hilla/Kufa/Samawa, all surrounded. the great revolt, inevitable outcome of the incoherent policy of Britain since 1918, had begun.

So far, one mini revolt in the Mosul area, scattered by the usual arial bombardment & one mass deportation at Tal'Afar.

As yet (june 1920) it seemed the only disturbances likely to threaten British rule in Iraq during the coming mobths months wiuld emanate from Damascus, with its sheming Ottoman officers, or from Bolshevik agents infiltrating from Persia.

Within a mere six weeks all that would change.

The battle of Shu'ayba is probably the least known battle in the least known theatre of the First World War. But it was significant for two reasons. Firstly the strategic one, because if the British had lost, Basra would almost certainly have fallen & with it their whole bridgehead in Iraq. Secondly.. the majority of combatants on the Ottoman side were irregular Arab tribesmen. The call to Jihad worked this time.

The Navy was now building more oil-fired ships but the great battleships of the fleet remained coal-burning. Fisher continto campaign for these super weapons of the day to be fuelled by oil. This would increase their speed from an average of 20 knots to a world-beating 25.

After the evacuation of Somalia, an advance on Nairobi was seriously contemplated, but coordination with the army out of Lybia fell through with the first British advance out of Egypt.

As John Gooch has put it, Mussolini had no real military strategy, only a political one. Every decision he took was designed to ensure he enjoyed the most favourable terms when the war was won

Two of his concubines were identified with Aphrodite; they must've been very good at their work. All sources insist that Demetrius the Besieger was a handsome man & he was never short of women to share his bed. Meander listed the great beauties of the day and ended wrily "you've had them all".

Now that's a tinder profile.

The Peace of the Dynasts (315 BC) proclaimed that the current administrations were temporary; Alexander IV would come of age & inherit the lot. In reality, the Successors regarded theirs as spear-won kingdoms; from now on they made less use of magical Argead name to legitimate their position. A few years later, Cassander read "IF Alexander comes of age" had the teenager poisoned along with his mother Roxanne.

Ramses II wins Kadesh single-chariotedly with a lion sidekick.
With all the timeless horrors of war and so much gay rape.

"Indeed I used to feel as if I wandered, like a child just able to walk, between the thighs of the multitude of Great Gods. There is no sound I have known like the rustling of that Great Hall at night. In my second life as High Priest I used to wander by myself through the ailes and hear the stones communicating with each other before dawn."

Echoes of the Greek myth of the Collosses of Memnon!

Clearly, since the Roman Army was no longer an undifferentiated force apt to fight anywhere, regional patterns of deployment had become useful: dromedary troops for the desert, mounted archers for open frontiers such as those of Dacia & above all the Euphrates, light spearmen for mountain country [with echoes of Velites & Macedonian peltasts?] and so on.

THE ROMAN EMPIRE HAD NO REAL INNER LINES.
The "donut" shame around the Mediterranean in an age were sea travel was unpredictably slow rendered the concept of a strategic reserve useless, compared to what Luttwak calls a "regional defence policy" : hold with local forces until relieved by Legions X day marches away.

In Derna the Australians found streets of well-designed, single-storey houses standing in shady gardens, well watered from the wadi behind & planted with cauliflowers, radishes and onions.. This could indeed be a pleasant place, warm enough in summer to remind the inhabitants that they were in Africa, but with Mediterranean breezes, winter rains to swell their produce & a red soil rich enough to bear it.

The army under Tiberius served as a mobile striking force estimated at 150.000 legionaries plus an equal number of auxiliaries. For practical purposes their deployment was that of a field army on potential hot spots between recently pacified & unconquered lands.

Whenever a government feels the need to promise peace and prosperity to its citizens by means of a proclamation, it is time to be on guard and expect the opposite.

The "five-day raid" began at camp Nibeiwa. Shards of 25 lbs H.E. steel and stone screamed across the wastes or sliced horribly into yielding flesh. Ponderous and irresistible, the lines of Matildas appeared. Brave Italian gun crews often met fearful deaths in that first charge, for as their shells bounced harmlessly off the armour the tanks came on and on to crush both gun and crew beneath the afwul weight of steel.

The problem of mechanisation of more appropriately non mechanisation of our army represented one of the largest gaps in our organisation, a cancer which excluded any capacity for large manoeuvres, especially in North Africa. The Italian "Binary" Infantry division disposed of 135 vehicles; the German "Ternary" equivalent had over a thousand.

Armoured Division general Guiseppe Mancinelli, GHQ.