History Nerds Thread

[Blergh]

7 hours ago, tearknee said:

Ironically Prussia and Prussian culture and Prussian "the Junkers" were blamed for the crimes of the Nazis even though the Nazis were founded in Bavaria and its organizational HQ remained in Munich until the end in 1945.

Not an invalid point. However, the Russian and German antipathy towards each other has been going on since at least the 1100's AD- long before either nation would become united (and the city fortress of Koningsburg had been considered an outpost of German strength on the Baltic shores so it's not surprising that the Soviets not only invaded it at the tail end of WWII [and treated the civilians horrifically] but also ensured that  the renamed Kalingrad would ALWAYS stay part of Soviet then Russian land via proclaiming it territory of the then-Soviet Republic of Russia which meant that it would legally stay Russia even after the breakup of the Soviet Union.

[JustHereForFood]

On 2/2/2025 at 12:45 AM, Blergh said:

You're not the only one to wonder this. The Russians were somewhat uneasy with Germany's full pre-WWI dimensions to the extent that in the last days of WWII, when the Soviets invaded then occupied the Baltic countries, Poland and the eastern part of Germany, they outrightly conquered the easternmost corner of the former Imperial Germany's domain East Prussia and made it an official part of the Soviet Union under direct control of the Russian state (changing the name of its capital city and main port from Koningsburg to Kalinagrad). Anyway, after the Fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 when the new Russian Republic grudgingly accepted Poland and the Baltic States' independence , they  KEPT that fragment of the onetime German Empire and to this day the Kalingrad Oblast, a little piece of Russia with its regional capital of  Kalingrad  sits wedged between the northern part of Poland and the western part of Lithuania  (both NATO nations) but totally cut off from the rest of Russia.However, this tiny territory's capital IS Russia's only port on the Baltic that remains ice-free year round so there's a bit of pragmatism in holding onto it.

It's a pain in the ass for all surrounding countries.

[Is Everyone Gone]

The Crown Prince Rudolf and the Mayerling incident is one of my Roman Empires. Mayerling actually became an excellent ballet by Sir Kenneth MacMillan.

[Blergh]

On 2/8/2025 at 11:04 PM, Is Everyone Gone said:

The Crown Prince Rudolf and the Mayerling incident is one of my Roman Empires. Mayerling actually became an excellent ballet by Sir Kenneth MacMillan.

OK, but what a horrible mess for every single person and their families involved.

First of all the Crown Prince Rudolf (1858-1889) had been married to the former Princess Stephanie of Belgium (1864-1945) but after the birth of their daughter the Archduchess Elisabeth (1883-1963), he not only badly neglected her but was so blatantly adulterous that he wound up giving her a venereal disease that made her unable to bear any more children after Elisabeth. Oh, yes, poor Stephanie had named her daughter after her mother-in-law 'Sisi' in the vain hope that this would impress her mother-in-law but Sisi shared her son's disdain for Stephanie believing her to be too plain[tagging Stephanie 'the hideous dromedary'] - despite  herself having dealt with a difficult mother-in-law.

Anyway, Rudolf himself had had at best a rocky bond with both his parents  and he suffered from intense mood swings and depression- none of which was helped by his morphine addiction. He even tried to persuade his regular mistress one Mizzi Kaspar to join him in a joint suicide pact but Fraulein Kaspar refused and tried to alert the authorities but they blew her off.  He evidently express suicidal ideations to Stephanie herself who tried to plea with the Emperor but he also didn't her  seriously. Rudolf found a more pliable participant in the 17-year-old Baroness Mary Vetsera who had had an unhappy family life and seemed enthralled with the Crown Prince [despite him being married and there no chance of a divorce]! Anyway, January 30,1889 after a family dinner with himself, Stephanie and his parents the Emperor Franz-Josef making  a rare joint appearance  with his adored but estranged wife Empress 'Sisi', he excused himself then retreated to the hunting lodge with Baroness Vetsera . .after which both which both died suddenly and violently.

In a grotesque footnote, when one of  his aides broke down the locked room where their remains were found, they tried to alert the Emperor straight away. However, the aides were told that news concerning his son and heir could only  be conveyed to him by the Empress herself so it wound up that they had to tell one HER ladies-in-waiting so SHE could tell the Empress to tell the Emperor! Despite the young Baroness Vetsera's written wish to be buried with Rudolf, instead her remains where deposited and buried far away [and hidden away in a series of adventures for over a century] and it wound up that by the time anyone examined her remains, so much time had elapsed that they were skeletal and it couldn't be determined whether she had been shot or whether Rudolf had had the only bullet.  As for Rudolf, the Emperor wanted him buried in the Imperial Crypt but knew that a murder-suicide would have been barred from consecrated ground so the Emperor pressed the case that it was a 'mental breakdown' that had caused that horrific double death! Poor Sisi who had both doted on him but frequently distanced herself from him, felt horrible guilt and would only wear black the rest of her life. One of her daughters was afraid that Sisi herself would take her own life but Rudolf's mother survived until her own assassination nine years later.

As for Stephanie, about a decade later she would remarry someone whom both her own father and daughter considered to be too low rank for an Austrian crown princess dowager and she wound up estranged from her daughter. Yet, somehow she DID have a much happier 2nd marriage than her first had been.

As for the Archduchess Elisabeth? Due to that annoying Salic Law that the Hapsburgs had been tethered by that forbade a woman or even a male heir of a female line from inheriting the throne, she was ineligible for the Imperial throne. Instead her well-meaning grandfather wanting her to have security, would have a marriage arranged by her paternal grandfather that had a wobbly start mainly due to the fact that her new husband had already been engaged to someone else but His Imperial Majesty had ordered his potential grandson-in-law to break that engagement and marry Elisabeth. They would have four children before a lengthy separation before Elisabeth was finally able to obtain a divorce then marry her longtime companion.

One last footnote to this is that Stephanie had not only been born a Belgian princess but she happened to have been the paternal niece of Princess Charlotte of Belgium (1840-1927) who would go down history as the Empress Carlota of Mexico and after her return from Mexico, Carlota became somewhat unhinged even before her husband  Emperor Maximilian's  1867 execution !  Maximilian had been Franz-Josef's younger brother. Carlota would live the rest of her long life well-cared for in a castle in Belgium with her caregivers doing their best to shield the emotionally fragile Carlota from outside upheavals.  where her niece/niece-in-law Stephanie visited her shortly after Rudolf's evident suicide. Carlota wound up upsetting poor Stephanie almost immediately with her pointing to the younger woman and proclaiming 'They killed him, TOO!'!

Edited February 13 by Blergh

[tearknee]

Quote

Today is the 80th anniversary of the Allied bombing of Dresden. Thanks to decades of dishonest propaganda, first by the Nazi regime in its last months, and later by the East German regime and the "peace movement,", this event has become encrusted in mythology. Here are the Top 10 Myths About the Bombing of Dresden:

1. "The raid killed 250,000 people” A week after the raid, the Dresden police chief reported to Berlin that about 25,000 people had been killed. Propaganda Minister Goebbels added a zero and announced the death toll as 250,000. That figure was repeated by David Irving in his book “The Destruction of Dresden.” He later acknowledged the correct figure in a letter to The Times, but continued to repeat the higher figure in his lectures. Kurt Vonnegut repeats the higher figure in his novel Slaughterhouse Five, and anti-American propagandists of both left and right continue to use it.

2. "Dresden was the worst single air attack of the war” The Dresden raid killed fewer people than the RAF raid on Hamburg in 1943 (45,000) or several other big raids. Death tolls depended on the effectiveness of civil defence systems. Dresden had virtually none, thanks to the laziness and corruption of the Nazi Gauleiter Martin Mutschmann. The worst single air-raid of the war was the US bombing of Tokyo in March 1945, which killed 200,000.

3. "Dresden was not a military target” Dresden was a major communications and transport centre and contained over 100 military factories, notably the Zeiss optical works.

4. "The raid had no military purpose” The raid on Dresden was part of a co-ordinated series of raids on cities in eastern Germany designed to dislocate transport and communications in the zone in front of the Red Army, which was preparing to cross the Oder river. The raids were intended to assist the Soviet forces, a fact never mentioned in later East German and “peace movement” propaganda.

5. "Dresden was undefended” It’s true that Germany’s fighter force and anti-aircraft defences were severely degraded by this stage of the war, and that Dresden’s flak guns had been removed and sent to the eastern front. But Allies did not attack Dresden *because* it was undefended. They had no way of knowing in advance what defences they would meet. In fact four Allied bombers were shot down during the attack.

6. "The war was nearly over” The war in Europe was far from over in February 1945. The Germans were still holding the Rhine in the west and the Oder in the east, and still had a million men in the field. They were still occupying the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, northern Italy and half of Czechoslovakia. Thousands of Allied soldiers were dying every day.

7. "Churchill personally ordered the bombing” The series of raids of which the bombing of Dresden a part was carried out to assist the Soviets, and was approved by the War Cabinet. But Churchill did not specifically approve the bombing of Dresden, let alone order it. To repeat, the bombing of Dresden was nothing exceptional - it was just one of an ongoing series of attacks. There was a much bigger attack on Berlin on 4 February and also attacks on Leipzig and Chemnitz.

8. "Dresden was deliberately fire-bombed to kill civilians” The use of incendiaries was standard in all bombing attacks, but the creation of a firestorm was not something that could done to order. It depended on climatic circumstances such as temperature and wind-speed. Since Dresden was bombed in winter, a firestorm was less likely. The Dresden raid was no more intended to create a firestorm than any other.

9. "The Allies dropped white phosphorous anti-personnel bombs.” Phosphorous was used as the fire-starter in incendiary bombs, which were intended to lodge in rooves and start fires. They were not anti-personnel bombs.

10. "Allied fighters strafed civilians in the streets” This story began with an article in the Nazi newspaper Das Reich. German survivors repeated it after the war, and they probably believed it, but it never happened. The Allied fighters over Dresden, which were at the limit of their range, were there to protect the bombers, not to descend into the firestorm below.

 

[Blergh]

Of course, what's amazing about Dresden is that even though the city center was totally destroyed by the bombing, after the War, the East Germans and Soviets painstakingly worked to restore it to its original glory so that to this day few visitors would ever imagine that the city had been utterly ruined by the end of WWII!

Yes, they did so while ignoring the ruined parts of virtually every other part of the onetime nation of East Germany including its very capital of East Berlin which would also be filled with blah Soviet architecture rather than have its earlier glory as the Prussian Empire  capital city  restored (with a few exceptions such as Brandenberg Gate though soon stuck in the no-man's part of the Wall ).

[tearknee]

Most of these myths were deliberate fabrications.

[tearknee]

Austria-Hungary’s ultimatum to Serbia - the latter’s non-compliance with which would start the First World War just three days late - expired on Saturday, July 25th of 1914.

The UK - blissfully unaware of the ‘blank checks’ already given by Kaiser Wilhelm II and Tsar Nicholas II to Austria-Hungary and Serbia respectively - was that weekend still confident that it could affect a diplomatic solution in the Balkans

That might be illustrated by the fact that the two key figures in Britain - Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey and Prime Minister Herbert Asquith - both spent that weekend uh um...

 

[Blergh]

The Archduke Franz Ferdinand had quite a few faults(e.g. hunting animals to an alarming degree even for the times)  and likely would have been just made things worse had he lived to succeed the Emperor Franz Josef.

However, he WAS a devoted husband and father to his morgnatic wife Countess Sophie and their children (one of his main conflicts with his uncle Franz Josef was that Sophie had been a mere countess rather than a princess of a Catholic nation or deposed realm that was the rule for Austrian empresses-to-be and he wound up having to agree that she could never be empress and their children could not succeed to the imperial throne).

Anyway, after the two of them had become mortally wounded in Sarajevo on June 28,1914  (on the 525th Anniversary of the Fall of Kosovo to the Ottomans), some of Franz Josef's dying words were to plea 'Sophie-love, Sophie-love, don't die! Stay alive for the CHILDREN!'

[tearknee]

I wonder what Princip would have thought of what he brought about had he lived to 1919 and the Paris Peace Talks?

[Is Everyone Gone]

So I was reading that Versailles had no toilets, bathing was rare, and they grew oranges to mask the stench.

One wonders how people wore all those fancy clothes with such poor hygiene.

[Ohiopirate02]

10 minutes ago, Is Everyone Gone said:

So I was reading that Versailles had no toilets, bathing was rare, and they grew oranges to mask the stench.

One wonders how people wore all those fancy clothes with such poor hygiene.

A lot of this gets blown out of proportion. Full immersion baths may have been infrequent, but people were cleaning the important parts on a near daily basis. They also changed their undergarments daily.

[Quof]

1 hour ago, Ohiopirate02 said:

cleaning the important parts on a near daily basis

Tops 'n Tails

also known as Whore's Bath

[tearknee]

Some like to argue that R. W. Reagan was a great president, mainly because of his supposed role in ending the Cold War. I am skeptical, but was willing to be persuaded.

Author Max Boot gives Reagan every possible credit for that and some other achievements. He gave some great speeches, including "Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall." He certainly restored the US's optimism and self-confidence after the travails of Vietnam, Watergate and the Iran hostage crisis, which ruined the presidencies of Johnson, Nixon and Carter. He was by Boot's account personally a very likeable man, generous and sentimental, and a kind and indulgent employer. 

Having said that, however, Boot's book, based on hundreds of interviews and several years research in the archives, concludes that Reagan was an ignorant, lazy, disengaged president, who was already past his best when he was elected at 69, and got steadily worse as he aged, particularly after he was shot in 1981. He lived in a fantasy world of heroes and villains fed to him by the John Birch Society and other extreme right-wing operatives. His brilliant speeches were full of lies, distortions and fake quotes from Marx and Lenin. He was easily manipulated by his staff, because he never read his papers or informed himself enough to make independent decisions. He made terrible Cabinet appointments (notably Al Haig, Ed Meese and Don Regan), who led him into disasters such the Lebanon mission (270 dead Marines) and the Iran-Contra scandal, which ruined the last year of his presidency.

Reagan was elected on the standard Republican quadriga of increasing defence spending, cutting all other spending, sharply cutting taxation and reducing the deficit, despite the arithmetical impossibility of doing all four at once. In fact, he only did the first, with a 5% increase in the Defence budget, on top of the 5% already carried out by Carter. He cut taxes for his wealthy friends, but increased the overall burden of taxation. He greatly increased government spending. His economic ignorance, fed by charlatans like David Stockman, caused a massive increase in the deficit. This helped trigger the recession which set in after he left office and cost George H W Bush the 1992 election.

One of the villains of Boot's account is Nancy Reagan, who was much smarter than Ronnie, and much more ideological. She manipulated him shamelessly, getting him to sack anyone who contradicted her (or her astrologer). Reagan was totally emotionally dependent on her and could never refuse her. Mainly because of her, he was alienated from all four of his children. Behind a genial bonhomie towards everyone, he had no real friends. Boot concludes that he was essentially a hollow man, whose only real talent was acting. That of course was why he was recruited to run for Governor of California and then for President. In Washington as in Hollywood, he read the lines he was given, but had little idea of what the movie was about.

On Reagan's alleged contribution to the end of the Cold War, Boot gives him credit for being willing to overcome his prejudices and engage seriously with Mikhail Gorbachev. But the story that Reagan had a plan to bankrupt the Soviets by ramping up defence spending is quite untrue. Firstly, Reagan's belief that the Soviets in the 1970s had achieved military parity with the US was a myth, as the CIA tried unsuccessfully to tell him. Second, the military buildup in response to this mythical threat was begun by Carter, not by Reagan. Third, the Soviets did not in fact increase their own military spending during the Reagan years, so there was no arms race which bankrupted the Soviets. Fourth, both the Soviet military and its economy were already in long-term decline, due to the inherent unworkability of the socialist system. It was Gorbachev's belated recognition of this that led first to the end of the Cold War and then to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

We are now living with the long-term consequences of the Reagan presidency. Reagan's real "achievement" was the overthrow of the New Deal settlement established by Roosevelt and built on by Truman, Eisenhower and Johnson. This led directly to the ruin of the American working class and most of the middle class as well, leaving what we now see: a society polarised between a selfish ultra-wealthy oligarchy, an alienated intelligentsia, and a poorly educated, semi-employed mass of angry and frustrated people who are easy prey for populist frauds like Trump. 

The supreme irony of Reagan's career is that he was elected as the champion of conservative principles, but within 20 years of his death those principles no longer existed outside a few academic circles. The Republican Party is now a xenophobic, protectionist, illiterate, semi-fascist party which no self-respecting conservative could support. The American electorate is now forced to choose between a tired and dispirited liberalism infested by identity politics [toxic to most voters], and a rapid slide into lawlessness and despotism. Last November, with their eyes open, they chose the latter. It is definitely not morning in America anymore, and Ronald and Nancy Reagan must take a large share of the blame for that.

[fastiller]

5 hours ago, tearknee said:

Having said that, however, Boot's book, based on hundreds of interviews and several years research in the archives, concludes that Reagan was an ignorant, lazy, disengaged president, who was already past his best when he was elected at 69, and got steadily worse as he aged, particularly after he was shot in 1981. He lived in a fantasy world of heroes and villains fed to him by the John Birch Society and other extreme right-wing operatives. His brilliant speeches were full of lies, distortions and fake quotes from Marx and Lenin. He was easily manipulated by his staff, because he never read his papers or informed himself enough to make independent decisions. He made terrible Cabinet appointments (notably Al Haig, Ed Meese and Don Regan), who led him into disasters such the Lebanon mission (270 dead Marines) and the Iran-Contra scandal, which ruined the last year of his presidency.


 

 

A friend works for NBC and has done for decades.  She recalled being a lowly PA (like way down the ladder) at either the weekday or Sunday Today program.  Sometime before the '84 election, she was sent to the airport to collect Lee Atwater who was to be a guest on whichever program.  Atwater had an underling with him; in the car they were openly discussing election strategy and keeping Reagan's declining mental abilities from the public.

[tearknee]

Atwater in 1988... i won't say anything