The Road to War: The Origins of World War II - a book review

The Road to War: The Origins of World War II by Richard Overy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the best book you will ever read on the "resumption" of the "Thirty Years' War" in 1939. The book devotes one chapter to each of the main nations involved in the order in which they entered the war. By examining the social, economic and political conditions in each, one understands their actions or lack thereof. Introduction (Poland, Danzig and the Polish Corridor) followed by chapters on Germany, Great Britain, France, Italy, Russia, Japan, and United States.

After the Armistice of November 1918, German expected a negotiated peace treaty. Instead it was hit with the 19th century, vindictive Treaty of Versailles, the contents of which were driven primarily by France who wanted to ensure they were never invaded by Germany again. This left a Germany itching for revenge even before Hitler's rise to power.

Chamberlain's role in preparing Britain for war was far more positive than conventional history makes it out to be. He fully understood the dangers of Hitler's Germany from the very beginning and set out to rearm Britain. However Britain was exhausted both financially and socially from the war. No-one wanted war and the economy was in danger of collapse after 1929. Chamberlain had to walk a fine line in rearming Britain, choosing to rebuild the arms infrastructure first - factories, training etc,. rather than build a great many weapons which might be obsolete when war came (eg bi-planes).

France and Britian almost went to war with Germany in 1938 over Czechoslovakia, threatening Hitler if he used force to annex any part of it. Instead the Munich conference for which Chamberlain is so roundly condemned, persuaded the Czechs to give up control over Sudetenland peacefully. Chamberlain knew appeasement was not likely to work and Hitler confirmed it by taking the rest of the country later in the year. But it bought time for Britain. The guarantee with Poland had less to do with British interest in Poland (none) than drawing a firm line in eastern Europe against further territorial aggression by the Nazis.

For "the rest of the story", please read this excellent book by Richard Overy and Andrew Wheatcroft. I have read other books by these authors and highly recommend them.

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Spanish Holiday - Salou

Tanya and I decided to go to Spain for our spring holiday this year - just because we wanted to see some of the country.  We got a good package price from our travel agent, Marina, in Dnipro.  She is the best! Travel from our village is no small thing.  Taxi, train, bus, airplane and then bus again to our hotel.  At least we didn't have to go part way by mule.  23 hours door to door going and 21 hours returning. Plane from Kyiv to Barcelona was 3.5 hours.

Costa Dorada

We stayed at the four star Hotel Olympus Palace in Salou, about 2 hours by bus SW of Barcelona.  Ours was one of 70 hotels in Salou and of 1315 along the Costa Dorada.  Our room was two star but had the basics, lacking only one more chair and a bit of room as well as a couple extra plug-ins.  The lobby, bar, restaurant, pool, etc were what one expects from a good hotel.  The food (breakfast and supper buffets inclusive in our package) was fantastic.

Catalan seemed to be the main language spoken, though there was certainly Spanish (and every other European language it seemed, just in our hotel). Signs and such were at least bi-lingual in Catalan and Spanish.  Catalonia is in the middle of a  movement to separate from Spain.  Centuries ago it was independent and has been at least semi autonomous for most of its history, including since the 1970's constitution and return to democracy.

Our hotel was about 400 meters from the beach, with the main walkway right beside us.  400 meters doesn't seem like much but the day we got there we started for the beach and in two hours got only half way.  We tried it again the next day and after three hours and little headway, I grabbed Tanya and we went to the beach.  Spain is noted for quality leather goods - shoes and purses.  The walk was lined with shops and we had orders from everyone for purses and shoes.  Masha is growing up - she asked for a real leather clutch purse like the ones her mother has which she won't let Masha use.

The beach is incredible.  Soft clean sand, no pebbles and shallow water until you are a long way out. You could rent an electric car-boat with a slide to go out into deep water.  Wonderful place for families, and families there were by the hundreds the May long weekend (May 1-3). Weather was NOT hot but reasonably warm.  We could have gone swimming but didn't think the sea would have been warm enough.  We were wrong - it was warm enough to swim if you were brave. Tanya said it was as warm as the Siberian rivers she swam in as a kid.  That would make it like a Saskatchewan lake in July-August.

A long way out to deep water

May 2 beach crowd

Kids playground near our hotel

So many lovely trees in Salou

Bottle Brush tree

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Tanya sent pictures of purses home for Masha to chose from

Mornings were foggy

Spanish Holiday - Tarragona

Friday morning, Tanya put me on the local bus to Tarragona so she could finish bailing out the Spanish economy and start packing. Tarragona is a port city of about 160,000, about 30 minutes NE of Salou by local bus.  Main industries are chemicals (BASF, Dow, etc) and tourism.   It may have been settled as long ago as 2400 years but became a winter camp for the Roman legions about 2200 years ago. Roman ruins are abundant as are medieval buildings still in use.

After getting a small tourist map I headed for the dead centre of town.  The Necropolis is a combination of Roman burials, followed by early Christian burials of the 2nd and 3rd centuries.  The early Christians adopted Roman burial rites and added Christian symbols.  Many of these burial rites are recognizable today.  About 1250 graves have been identified, often in two or more layers.

Roman sarcophagus

Paleo-Christian symbols

Much of the area has been filled in with sand to prevent continued weather degradation

Explanation of the Necropolis

As you can see from the picture on the left, people were often buried in Amphorae.  The question is how do you get the bodies into them? Dean Martin, you could just pour in.  With an enema and lipo-suction, I could be buried in an empty wine bottle but...

From here I walked clear across town to the Amphitheater.  It had a checkered past.   Romans used it for various gladiatorial games and public executions including the burning of three Christian martyrs in 259 AD.  Seating capacity was 12500 people. The Visigoths drove the Romans out in the 5th century and in the 6th century built a basilica at the one end where the martyrs had been executed.  The Moors took over from the Visigoths in the 8th century and basilicas were no longer in vogue. Another church was built on the site in the 12th century. In the 16th century it was a convent.  In the 18th and 19th centuries, a prison was build on the site.  It was abandoned and torn down to reconstruct the original so much as possible.

Scale model

Remains of basilica at one end of the amphitheater

the other end of the amphitheater 

 

The main entrance

Remains of the Via Augustus Roman road 

Roman Interstate 5 meters wide

 I so wanted to tell someone that the Romans abandoned the amphitheater because it was simply a poor investment - the lions ate all the prophets (the joke only works orally).  However...

Next was the archaeological museum.  Everything was well labelled in Catalan, Spanish and French, the three main languages of the area. Just outside the museum were the ruins of the residence of the Roman Praetor, governor of that part of Spain.

Praetorian residence 

Praetorian residence

Christian tombstone

Roman architecture

Large storage vessels

Amphorae for wine or oil

Roman floor mosaic of all fish found in the sea around Tarragona

In 1811 Napoleon invaded Spain (The Peninsular War).  Tarragona was besieged for several months and when it fell to the French troops, it was not pretty.  

Remembering the French siege of Tarragona in 1811

There was so much more to see but I ran out of time and energy.

The "Saskatchewan" Computer Virus

My computer is down with the "Saskatchewan" virus since Wednesday, which necessitates a clean install of the Windows 7 OS.  There was an earlier restore point but I have never successfully restored my computer settings. I bought my Dell Inspirion locally almost 5 years ago and it came with NO discs.  I took it to the shop and they told me yesterday they had no English version of Windows 7.  I should have taken the computer home then but didn't.  Last night I contacted MS Live Chat from Tanya's computer and found where to download an ISO version to reinstall but needed my compouter with the 25 digit code.  So I wait till Monday.

About 20 years ago when folks were first getting used to the internet and email and all, there were constantly circulating emails warning about viruses.  The Saskatchewan Computer Virus which would clean all files from your HD, was one such email.  The gist of the email body was that since Saskatchewan was a bit behind in technology, to please forward this warning to all your friends and then go to C Prompt and type C colon backslash format.

A Saskatchewan virus, like the 26 oz flu, is self inflicted.

"How did you get to be successful?"
"Good decisions"
"How did you learn to make good decisions?"
"Experience."
"How did you get experience?"
"Bad decisions"

I am still working on the getting experience part. 

Rorke's Drift - a book review

Rorke's Drift by Michael Glover
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The successful defense of the fortified mission at Rorke's Drift on the border between Natal and Zululand Jan 22-23, 1879, was immortalized in the movie Zulu, starring Michael Caine. The battle in which about 140 men, mostly British regulars, of whom 39 were hospitalized, successfully held off some 4000 Zulu warriors, received far more attention than several other examples of British military valor in face of insurmountable odds.

The author attempts to explain what happened and why, drawing on a number of sources on the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879 and British politics at the time in this concise 146 page book. The Anglo-Zulu War is usually presented from a South African perspective, which is relatively simple, in that the defeat of the Zulus ensured the safety of both Boer and British settlers in the four colonies of Cape Town, Natal, Orange Free State and Transvaal. The book lacked only a few more maps and one or two more chapters detailing the second campaign to be an excellent condensed history of the war.

Britain did not want the colonies, considering them a costly nuisance that they were stuck with, gold and diamonds not yet having been discovered. The Dutch had established Capetown in 1652 and over the next two hundred years, Dutch, German and Huguenot settlers gradually expanded out into the country. Britain took it from the Dutch and kept it after the Napoleonic wars. When they tried to enforce British laws on the Boers, abolishing slavery and arresting whites for murdering Blacks, the Boers packed up and left on the Great Trek, establishing the other three colonies. Public opinion in Britain forced the government to annex them to protect the Blacks from the Boers. The Boers' attitude was "Then the British can protect us from the Blacks". Which required soldiers AND budget expenditure. There were not enough soldiers to defend the colonies; a few thousand regular foot and no cavalry.

The British Army was a mess, to say the least. The Crimean War, in which the Charge of the Light Brigade was the least of the problems had exposed how badly in need of reform it actually was. Leadership was not the real problem, it was organizational management. Different parts of the army reported to different Ministries and Treasury parsimoniously squeezed every farthing of expenditure before approving it. Attempts were being made at reform but as is usual in the military, change was resisted as the greatest enemy. Wolseley who had the ear of the establishment in London, was in charge of reforms, promoting those in his inner circle and poisoning the wells of those who were not.

The Zulu nation had come together in the early 19th century under Dingiswayo. Shaka succeeded him and by 1825 the Zulu warriors struck terror into the hearts of Whites and Blacks alike, massacring everyone in sight, including his own people until he was murdered. By the 1870's Cetshwayo had established a kingdom, Zululand, with capital at Ulundi, bordered by Natal, Transvaal, Orange Free State and the Atlantic, with an army of 40,000 warriors, armed with short, stabbing sears, (assegai) and cowhide shields.

If they decided to go raiding in force, they could wreak havoc in the thinly settled colonies. Cetshawyo did not want trouble and preferred a negotiated settlement with the British but whether he could or would control his army was the question in the minds of the Whites. He was sent an ultimatum which he could in no way accept; the intent was to trigger a war and defeat him. Cetshwayo, in rejecting the ultimatum, said he would not invade Natal but if the British army crossed into Zululand he would fight. They did and he did.

Chelmsford, a good officer, respected by his men, was in charge of the military expidition. His problem was how to invade Zululand without leaving Natal totally defenseless against a Zulu army that traveled light and could cover 50 miles a day. London had VERY reluctantly agreed to send him two battalions of infantry and two companies of engineers who would arrive December 1978. There were also 9,000 poorly armed natives and 1100 mounted colonial troops for a total of 18,000 men, 1,000 wagons, 10,000 oxen.

Chelmsford crossed the majority of his troops and supplies, including 220 wagons, at Rorke's Drift (ford) on the Buffalo River, setting up a base camp and hospital in the mission buildings, leaving a large qualtity of bagged mealie (corn) and boxes of biscuit, with about hundred men to guard the ford until reinforcements arrived. He reached the conical hill called Isandlhwana on January 20, where he made camp and sent out scouts in force. In mud and rain, it had taken 10 days to move 10 miles. The wagons were to be unloaded and sent back for more supplies.

Early the morning of January 22, the scouting parties from the south east sent back word of large numbers of Zulus and requested troops to go on the attack. Chelmsford took half his troops leaving roughly 1000 men to defend the camp and headed about 10 miles east.

The Boers had warned Chelmsford to laager the wagons and fortify the camp. In December 1838, 500 Boers stood off some 15,000 Zulu warriors from the safety of their circled wagons so they knew where of they spoke. But laagering is a particular difficult job and the rear of the camp was assumed to be secured by the hill behind them and the number of men left to defend it large enough. The rear was not secure; the camp for 4500 men was too big.

Into this mix, throw a loose cannon named Durnford, in command of native infantry and about 300 mounted native cavalry. His instructions from Chelmsford were to re-enforce the troops at the camp. Instead he took off to the North East and ran into the entire Zulu Army of 20,000 men who promptly charged. Th ecamp commander had to scatter his troops to try to rescue Durnford. From there it was just a matter of time. As long as the troops held together and had ammunition, their front firing line kept the Zulus at bay but their flanks were unprotected and they were over run. Of about 1700 men, only three or four hundred mounted men escaped.

If you have seen the movie Zulu Dawn, they had it backwards of course. Burt Lancaster's Durnford is made out the hero and Peter O'Toole's Chelmsford the villain.

Two of the survivors came by Rorke's Drift and told of the disaster, warning that 4000 Zulus were on their way. These were the reserves who had not "washed their spears" and were itching for glory. The two men in charge of the station, Lieutenants Chard and Bromhead had time for the troops to make barricades of the mealie bags and biscuit boxes. The re-enforcements never arrived and any troops which were not British regulars ran or galloped as fast as they could to escape, leaving about 100 able bodied men. The attack came at about 5:00 pm and lasted most of the night. The Zulus were brave but badly led and took serious casualties, breaking off the attack in the early morning.

England was aghast at the Isandlwana massacre. Nothing like it had happened since the retreat from Kabul in 1841. The government and Wolseley were desperate to blame Chelmsford who was not one of the inner circle, to keep their own mismanagement of the South African situation out of it. However he got his report to Queen Victoria who came down firmly on his side. To this day he has his supporters and detractors. The courageous defense of Rorke's Drift gave the government just the opportunity they needed to shift attention away from the disaster, so they spun it mercilessly.

For further details and good maps, see Wikipedia which has a very detailed series of articles on the Military History of South Africa. Start with the Anglo-Zulu War and follow the various links.




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There is a Doctor in the house

Yesterday my second youngest daughter successfully defended her thesis and is now Doctor Hingston.  She completed her study of Disabilities in Victorian Literature at the University of Victoria, BC, which she began in 2009.  For four of those years she also taught two classes in English Literature and moved from teaching first year students to upper years.

As a friend said about his son's PhD thesis in organic chemistry, "In deference to his parents, the first few sentences were in English".  That is how I feel too. But she is published and has presented at enough international conferences that obviously someone understands.

The international conferences are a meat market for grad students.  It is all about networking and impressing those in the audience whom you hope will be in a position of influence when you approach them for a position.

That is her next challenge.  Find a job or a post-doc. The problem of course is that most universities are hiring high priced administration and use very lowly paid contract "Adjunct Professors" to do the teaching.

However for now she is just celebrating completion of her degree.  Papa and all her siblings are proud.

Celebrating a successful defense at the Faculty Club

Man . . . seeks Woman

So how did you meet your spouse?  If the answer is at a family reunion, I probably don't want to know the details...or maybe I do, if she/he was married to your cousin at the time.

Finding a mate for those of us whose parents do not do the arranging can be a bit of a problem.  At the age of 18 to 25, finding that "one person" who is supposed to be perfect for you for the next 65 years is at best a crap shoot.

How do you meet a suitable population of people from whom you can select, or be selected by, one that gives you the best odds of making something work over time.

Church or church organizations have always been a good place if one is religiously inclined.  Having a common set of beliefs is a good foundation for a marriage, though there still can be religious differences i.e. he thinks he is God and she doesn't.

In my grandfather's and father's time, community dances were a common meeting place for young people, at least in rural Saskatchewan.  With my generation, "We met at the bar" was a frequent response.  (Saskatchewan took a while to allow women in the bars).

Now, according to surveys, on-line is the most common way of meeting someone .  No kidding.  If they can auction cattle by satellite and internet, why not people?  Of course there are some dangers.  What you see is not always what you get,  though there are telltale signs.  Andy Borowitz says it should set off alarm bells if she invites you to dinner and asks you to bring duct tape, large industrial garbage bags, a shovel and a chainsaw.

An acquaintance of mine has her profile on dating sites at all times.  Her luck isn't that good, having attracted a couple married guys and a stalker from whom she had to get police protection.  On the other hand, I read her profile and the words neurotic nutbar were not mentioned once.

So when my friend, we'll call him Ivan to protect the guilty, decided after 11 years of widowerhood, during which time he raised two teenage daughters to adult hood and married one of them off, that in his upcoming retirement, he should seek female companionship, where else would he turn but to a seniors' internet dating site.

Ivan writes a general letter (email) about once a year which normally makes me laugh till the tears run (down my leg) and this year was a classic.  Here is his letter and his ad (reprinted with permission):

Concerned that life might be forlorn without the social fabric offered by seasoned Delbertian professionals, I am seeking solace at a seniors dating site and guidance from  Watson, pretender to HAL, for my retirement:

In search of a woman who understands me:

As stable as gyp rock, with the resiliency of quality underlay, and the durability of a matt finish (contemporary palette), this flaneur extols the practicality of sensible shoes. Now in the 10th anniversary of his 50th year, he enjoys the crooning of Glenn Gould (with piano accompaniment), theatre or verse in iambic pentameter, and the company of the distaff population. With a sophistication rivaled only by the Canterbury Tales, he can be found with his peers developing talking points in preparation for a fleeting moment of Andy Warhol fame.  To be soon retired, he has enrolled, once again, in the cavern of deep thought to encounter the world on a new level. Apprehensions, concerns, and suspicions of subscribers to this fine resource of eligible seniors may be resolved at arm's length or in person.

Possibilities:

Dear "It's all about me"

I, too, am younger than I appear and am none the worse for wear. With a long career at StatsCan behind her, this graduate of the dismal science, also, has a penchant for some different. A flower child of means, yet average in all respects, begins classes in September. What are you taking?

             Sincerely,

             Attractive at any age

A glossary for those who ain't me

1. Watson - IBM's premier AI computer is the reigning and undisputed World Champion of Jeopardy (Jan 2011) and owes its success to the cognitive technology and analytical processing which supports its extraordinary capacity to comprehend and communicate with natural language.

2. HAL - HAL 9000, a computer in the movie, 2001 - A Space Odyssey (still advanced by today's standards) 

3. flaneur - an idler, lounger, or loafer; in literature: a casual witness to life whose thoughts and conclusions may contain truths and/or inaccuracies.

4. Glenn Gould - World recognized Canadian concert pianist (deceased) who gave up public performances in favour of studio recordings, in the belief that he would have greater artistic control and to ensure that the sound would be as close to perfection as possible. However, no matter what the sound engineers did, they could not get rid of his humming, moaning, and singing that is present in all of Gould's studio recordings.

5. theatre or verse in iambic pentameter - Shakespearian stuff 

6. distaff - a staff for holding the flax, tow, or wool in spinning; symbolic of women's work, and then by extension, women.

7. Canterbury Tales - stories by commoners for commoners; stories that stoop to entertain.

8. Andy Warhol -  said "in the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes"

9. dismal science - economics