Paths of Glory

World War I began a century ago. In memory of this extraordinary event -- it shaped the twentieth century, and in many ways we are still living in its shadow -- by dedicated this month on the Dynamo and the Virgin to the Great War.

I usually enjoy a good war game on Friday evenings. It is a good way for me to unwind after a tough week at work. This week it was Paths of Glory (POG), Ted Racier's classic card-given game on World War I published by GMT games. Prior to the publication of this game, Avalon Hill's Guns of August (GoA) was the standard game for the war. GoA, however, had what seemed to be thousands of counters. It broke the units into divisions and corps, and it was hard to move anything without knocking something over. The variable neutral entry, however, was a nice feature to mix things up. By focusing on armies, PoG has far fewer counters which makes for a neater, easier to play game. The cards offer some variability, but not in the same range as GoA.

The Germans won this war in Fall 1916. They mauled the French. It was a bloodbath. Following a variation I read about on Board Game Geek, I strategically deployed the German 8th Army from the east front to the west. This left a lone German corps to defend against the Russian bear. However, the Russians can not attack German fortresses in the first turn. When they finally did, it was a disaster for Tsar. Meanwhile, the brave British Expeditionary Forces and the Belgians held up the Germans for two turns in Brussels. It looked like the Kaiser had made a mistake in his gamble to strike a knock out blow against the French, but once the BEF was out of the way, the Germans went to work on the French. In the north, the Germans pushed to Amiens and threatened Paris. British troops stabilized the line, but could not push the three entrenched armies out of Amiens. The main German efforts were deployed in the south. Three attacks on Verdun bled the French dry, as every reinforcement was sent to the meat grinder, only to be destroyed. The Germans pushed through the frontier, capturing Belfort, Verdun, Nancy, Dijon, and Bar le Duc. These last two gave the Central Powers their 20 victory points.

Most of the action happened in the west with the British and French hastily building reinforcements and trenches. The Russians could do little to the Austro-Hungarians with few operations points. Once the Germans deployed more forces in the east, the Russians collapsed. Nonetheless, they only captured two Russian victory point cities and the Tsar survived the war. Austria-Hungary mauled Serbia.

Winston Churchill's idea of expanding the war to stretch the Central Powers failed. The British landed at Gallipoli, but the game result was very similar to the real one. With so much going on in the west, the Allies made no headway against the the Ottomans, This is unusual, as the Ottomans have a notoriously fragile glass jaw. Many players have complained that there are too much low-hanging fruit for the Allies in the Ottoman Empire. Italy proved no value to the Allies. And, Romania proved a complete liability as the Bulgarians captured Bucharest and the Austro-Hungarians captured Ploesti.

All this, of course, made me wonder what a settlement would have looked like had the Allies sued for peace in 1916. Would newly re-elected Woodrow Wilson have brokered the peace? France would have probably been strapped with huge reparations. Both England and France would have surrendered some colonial possessions to the Germans. I imagine there would have been some adjustments in the Balkans, including the destruction of Serbia. Belgium would probably have been gobbled up by Germany. While the Tsar survived the war, I imagine that he would have been deposed by the liberals under Kerenesky.

The surrender at Port Hudson, July 9, 1863

One hundred and fifty-one years ago today,  the rebel forces surrendered Port Hudson, Louisiana to the Union. Five days after the capitulation of Vicksburg, the capture of Port Hudson secured complete Union control of the Mississippi River.  My Great-great-great Grandfather Mathias J. Petry was present at the surrender. As a Lieutenant in the 173rd New York regiment, he saw the elephant, as Civil War soldiers referred to their first battle, at Port Hudson. According to his muster roll, he was assigned to brigade commander General Charles Jackson Paine's staff in May and June 1863. Following the surrender of Port Hudson, Mathias moved to the divisional staff. He returned to New York in August. Although his regiment remained in Louisiana, and later participated in the Red River campaign of Nathaniel Banks, it looks like Lieutenant Petry returned to New York, where he remained for most of the rest of the war on what his muster roll described as "detached service." He was honorably discharged in June 1865.

Two Reflections on the meaning of Independence Day

Two reflections on the meaning of Independence Day:

Our first reflection comes from the very author of our founding, or as William F. Buckley sometimes referred to it as, enabling document. To Thomas Jefferson the Declaration was an annual reminder of what made the United States unique in a world still dominated by monarchy, a theme that Abraham Lincoln most eloquently expounded on in the Gettysburg Address. "For ourselves," Jefferson wrote in 1826, "let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them." This commemoration of what the document says is so much more an important part of the day than fireworks and hot dog eating contests. Our third president wrote these lines in a letter regretfully declining an invitation to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. As we all know, Jefferson died that day, as did John Adams.

The second reflection comes from the Civil War, the fight to preserve the principles enshrined in the Declaration. On July 4, 1863 a young Rhode Island soldier at Gettysburg named Elisha Hunt Rhodes proudly exclaimed in his diary, "Was ever the Nation's Birthday celebrated in such a way before." There was rejoicing in the nation's capital as news of the great victory enhanced the normal celebration of the holiday. Walt Whitman, who served as a nurse, got some bottles of cherry and blackberry syrup, which he described as "good and strong, but innocent," and served celebratory drinks to recovering solders. Outside the hospital the celebration continued. "Meanwhile the Washington bells are ringing their sundown peals for the Fourth of July," he wrote, "and the usual fusilades of boys' pistols, crackers, and guns." It seems that neither men knew the other half of the story, that in faraway Mississippi rebel general John Pemberton surrendered his force at Vicksburg to Ulysses S. Grant, making it perhaps the greatest of Independence days. It is a reminder that millions before us have fought and died to preserve, protect, and expand the rights that Jefferson wrote of. We should also always remember that there have been times when we seemed so close to losing them.

Sources:

Thomas Jefferson to Roger C. Weightman, June 24, 1826, Writings, ed. Merrill D. Peterson, (New York: Library of America, 1984), 1517.

Robert Hunt Rhodes, ed., All for the Union: The Civil War Diary of Elisha Hunt Rhodes (New York: Vintage Books, 1992), 109.

Walt Whitman, "Specimen Days" in Writings, ed. Justin Kaplan (New York: Library of America, 1982), 729.

Gavrilo Princip

One hundred years ago today Gavrilo Princip murdered Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand. A little over a month later -- days drought with nationalistic bluster and fatally flawed diplomacy -- the most

catastrophic war in history began. Of course, in those early August days of 1914 the belligerents did not know how badly it would turn out for them. They expected a short, glorious war. Instead, they got a protracted, draining conflict that killed millions of their people, and opened the doors of social upheaval that we are still living with today! I always make clear to my students that World War I was the pivotal moment of the twentieth century.

There is a good article here from the Guardian discussing the assassin who more or less set off the chain of events that led to the Great War. Was he a villain for a murderous deed that plunged the world into war (although this was not his intent), or a hero for liberating subjected people from the yoke of a harsh foreign regime in Vienna that gave them no voice? I always thought the most ironic outcome of the war (and their are many) is that Princip got what he wanted, a Slavic state free and independent from Austrian control.

Who is your Charles A. Lindbergh?

Charles A. Lindbergh is buried behind a small church on the south shore of the Hawaiian island of Conde Nast voted world's best island for 19 of the last 20 years (it came in second place once), but it is still a remote location where residents don't have electric, telephone, or water service. It was the perfect place for the reclusive Lindbergh to spend his last years, and a quiet spot for a final resting place.
Maui. It is a stop on the "Road to Hana," a common tourist destination. The road is winding, narrow, and, in parts, unpaved. This part of Maui might still be on the island that

I find Lindbergh a puzzling historical figure. He was both famous and later infamous. Lindbergh skyrocketed to fame as "Lucky Lindy" for his daring, solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927. Thirteen years later, the symbol of American spunk, innovation, exceptionalism, daring, individualism, and countless more attributes, warned his country to stay out of the European war. As the biggest spokesperson for the American First Committee, Lindbergh became the nation's most prominent isolationist. Errant foreign policy views might be more easily forgiven if they had not been compounded with so many favorable comments about nazi Germany. Although he flew combat missions in the Pacific after Pearl Harbor, his pre-war pro-nazi statements are what stand out. He picked a very poor issue on which to step out of the shadows and stake his enormous prestige.

To draw on popular representations, can the Lindbergh of Jimmy Stewart's The Spirit of St. Louis (1957) and Philip Roth's The Plot Against America (2004) be the same person? The same question can be asked of other historical figures, particularly our presidents. How can Lyndon Johnson be responsible for ushering through long overdue civil rights legislation, and, at the same time, the catastrophic policies in the Vietnam War? How could Woodrow Wilson successfully compromise to gain passage of key pieces of legislation that served as the foundations of the liberal state fail to do so over the League of Nations? There are countless other examples, but I think you get the point. The answer is, of course, we, as humans, are full of contradictions. Exploring them is one of the things that make being a biographer and historian so fun and interesting. Was the good a person achieved more beneficial than the harm they are responsible for? I thought about this question a lot as our tour bus meandered along the Road to Hana, and I have to admit, that I think I will remember Charles A. Lindbergh more as "Lucky Lindy" than as the "ex-hero" or the "copperhead."

Recent Read: Natan Sharansky, The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror

I finally got around to reading Natan Sharansky's The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to

Overcome Tyranny and Terror (2006). Sharansky's argument is that freedom is good for everyone. The more freedom, the more security. Everyone will be happy and peaceful. Dictatorships are bad for their people, and threats to peace. It is an argument that President George W. Bush repeated during the invasion of Iraq.

Sharansky's struggle for freedom began as a dissident in the Soviet society of fear, where after years of agitation he was labeled a spy, and sent to the gulag. After Ronald Reagan personally mentioned Sharansky in a conversation with Mikhail Gorbachev, the dissident was fattened up, released, and allowed to immigrate to Israel. Sharansky entered politics in his adoptive land, and formed a party whose objective was to assimilate the massive influx of Soviet emigres into Israeli Society. The party was so successful, that it lost its purpose. A powerful figure in Israeli politics, Sharansky was active in the negotiations with Yasser Arafat throughout the 1990s. He believes that peace in the Middle East is elusive because of the dictators hold such tremendous power over their fearful and subjected people.  These regimes are propped up with a false ideology ruthlessly supported by state organized media, and maintained by a brutal oppression of civil rights and free thought. Sharansky sees the same pattern in Syria or the Palestinian Authority as he saw in the old Soviet Union.  These authoritarian regimes are abetted by the foreign policy realists in the West. As an example, he recounts a conversation he had with former president Jimmy Carter. In discussing his experience advocating peace in the Middle East, Carter stated he had a good partnership with Syrian dictator Hafez Assad because he felt that he could always trust the dictator to keep his word. To Sharansky, this line of thinking lacked moral clarity. Even if one could take a dictator's word to the bank, it still did not change the fact that they crushed human freedom and degraded the humanity of their peoples. The entire book is an argument for idealism in foreign policy and against realism or relativism.

Historians will find interesting insights on US-Soviet Detente (he opposed it), Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan (he speaks highly of the Gipper), his arrival in Israel (he was shocked by the division he found within a democratic society), and the Middle East peace negotiations in the 1990s (he wanted to couple concessions with guarantees of more open, transparent government). Future historians will undoubtedly look to this book to gain an insights into early year of the Global War on Terror.

70th Anniversary of D-Day

If you have a few minutes to spare on this 70th anniversary of the D-Day invasion, I recommend that you check out the Big Red One online museum HERE. They have a bio of the Medal of Honor recipient, Theodore Roosevelt Jr's cane, and some other items.