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HISTORY

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The Germs That Transformed History For eons, epidemics have caused mass deaths and social upheaval, with far-reaching effects on politics, trade, migration, colonization and conquest By Jared Diamond

By on May 23rd, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-germs-that-transformed-history-11590159271?mod=hp_featst_pos2

Mr. Diamond, a professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles, is the author of “Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis,” “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed” and “Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies,” for which he won the Pulitzer Prize.

The Covid-19 pandemic is an almost unique phenomenon in world history. The only precedent for its rapid spread to every continent, killing people everywhere and devastating both local economies and world trade, was the flu pandemic of 1918-19.

In both cases, the germs behind the pandemic weren’t especially lethal. Covid-19 and the flu both fall within the normal range of mild infectious diseases. Compared with smallpox and Ebola, they kill only a small percentage of their victims, and their person-to-person transmissibility isn’t unusual. What sets them apart—what has made them world-wide pandemics—is modern transportation: fast steamships for the flu, and now jet airplanes for Covid-19.

Of course, there have been a great many “mere” epidemics in human history, diseases that have spread more slowly over large areas, but their effects have been profound. Over the course of recorded history and now in the archaeological record, examples abound of germs producing high death tolls and social and political upheaval, with far-reaching effects on local economies, trade, migration, colonization and conquest.

Will Covid-19 transform our own era, too? Are we entering an age of pandemics? It is far too early to say, but the long history of germs as agents of historical change can provide needed perspective—and perhaps a window into how Covid-19 and its likely successors may shape our destiny, for good and ill.

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Harry S. Truman and Israel, Legacy of a Great Statesman An act of fortitude that will always be warmly remembered by Israelis and Jews worldwide. Ari Lieberman

By on May 14th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/05/harry-s-truman-and-israel-legacy-great-statesman-ari-lieberman/

May 14, 1948 will mark the 72nd anniversary of the founding of the modern State of Israel. Israel’s War of Independence was arguably its most difficult. Six-thousand citizens out of 600,000 were killed. More than 2,000 of these were civilians.

But the war did not begin on May 14. It actually began on November 30, 1947 one day following a United Nations General Assembly vote in favor of partitioning Mandatory Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. The following day, Arab brigands attacked two civilian Egged buses on route from Hadera and Netanya to Jerusalem, killing six and injuring several more. That incident marked the beginning of the conflict.

In the first four months of conflict, the outlook for the Jews was bleak. Three successive Arab terrorist bomb attacks targeting high profile Jewish targets in Jerusalem inflicted mass casualties and sapped morale. Two of those attacks – the bombing of the Palestine Post newspaper offices and the Ben Yehuda Street bombing – were facilitated by British soldiers. The topography also favored the Arabs, who held much of the high ground and specialized in ambushing Jewish vehicles heading to isolated outposts.

Making matters worse for the Jews were the British occupation authorities, who openly sided with the Arabs. Right up until the end of their mandate, the British zealously enforced immigration quotas against the Jews but turned a blind eye toward organized Arab infiltration. In addition, they attempted to prevent the Jews from acquiring arms while the Arabs were free to purchase weapons on the open market. In one ignominious incident, four Jewish Haganah operatives were disarmed by British soldiers and released into the hands of an Arab mob where they were promptly lynched.

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Unsung Jewish heroes who helped UK to victory in Battle of Britain finally heard As the battle’s 80th anniversary approaches, London’s Royal Air Force museum seeks to capture the stories of Jews who risked their lives to help repel the massive Nazi invasion By Robert Philpot

By on May 11th, 2020

https://www.timesofisrael.com/unsung-jewish-heroes-who-helped-uk-to-victory-in-

 When British novelist Alan Fenton told a business acquaintance that his two much older brothers had died in World War II, he encountered a surprised response.

After what Fenton recalled as an “embarrassed pause,” his lunchtime companion said: “I didn’t think Jews fought in the war.”

As Fenton later wrote, “Those words were like a blow to the stomach.”

The twins, Basil and Gerald Felsenstein (as the family were then called), volunteered to join the Royal Air Force as aircrew at the war’s outbreak in September 1939. Their horrified father tried to talk them out of it and persuade them to opt for potentially less dangerous options, such as joining the army or RAF ground crew. But the teenagers were adamant and, as Jews, determined to get into the thick of the fight to defeat the Nazis as soon as they could.

Neither young man survived the war. Gerald — whose role was to lie flat in Halifax bombers and direct the pilot until its explosive cargo was released on enemy targets — died in a raid over Germany in March 1943. Just under two years later, Basil died in a patrol over Japanese-occupied Burma.

Basil Felsenstein. (Courtesy RAF Museum)

“They fought for a cause they believed passionately in. And they died for it. I am enormously proud of them,” said Fenton, who was born seven years after Basil’s death.

Their stories are among those being collected by London’s RAF Museum as part of its new Jewish “Hidden Heroes” project. As the UK prepares to mark the 80th anniversary of the “Battle of Britain” this summer — when the country’s air force successfully repelled a planned German invasion — the program aims to raise awareness about the role played by Jewish personnel in the RAF during WWII.

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The Pogrom That Started the Palestinian Arab-Israeli Conflict The opening shot – exactly one hundred years ago in 1920.

By on May 11th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/05/pogrom-started-palestinian-arab-israeli-conflict-joseph-puder/

Exactly one hundred years ago, in April, 1920, marked the opening shot of the Arab Israeli conflict. It was a pogrom against Jews in Jerusalem and its surrounding areas. The pogrom, also called by some the Nebi Musa riots, took place between Sunday, April 4, and Wednesday, April 7, 1920. It cost the lives of five Jews, and 200 others were injured. The violence was instigated by the British occupation administration and led by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini, who later became Hitler’s ally. The Jaffa riots a year later (May 1-7, 1921) killed 47Jews and wounded 146. Much like these days, the Arab-Palestinian terrorists used knifes to kill vulnerable Jews, such as women, children, and the elderly. A British investigative commission called the pogrom “cowardly, and treacherous.” 

The pogrom was not a mere criminal affair, it was motivated by religious and nationalist sentiments that denied Jewish rights to sovereignty anywhere in the region. The Arab (the term Palestinians didn’t exist at the time, and Jews were actually called Palestinians) attackers carried such slogans as “Death to the Jews”(Atbach al-Yahud), “Palestine is our land, and the Jews are our dogs.” The Jaffa riot was proceeded by the August, 1929 riot, which wiped out the ancient Jewish community in Hebron, and killed 133 Jews. Known as the Arab Revolt of 1936-1939, it was led once again by Haj Amin el-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem. This time the death toll was much greater, estimated by historian Benny Morris to be about 300 Jewish dead.

The pogrom of April 1920 occurred at a confluence of several historical and political events. In Syria, the Hashemite Emir Feisal, son of Hussein the Sharif of Mecca, was ensconced in Damascus, awaiting with his Arab tribesmen army for the fulfillment of British promises. Under the Mc Mahon-Hussein Correspondence, an Arab state in the Levant, including the native Arabia, was promised by the British to Hussein. At the same time, Britain and France, in 1916, concluded the Sykes-Picot Agreement which divided the former Ottoman Empire between them. The British government had also come out with the Balfour (at the time British Foreign secretary) Declaration in 1917, that promised a National Home for the Jewish people in their ancestral home – Palestine. The Balfour Declaration promises were confirmed at the San Remo conference in April, 1920. 

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Blitzkrieg Lessons for 2020 By Taylor Dinerman

By on May 10th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/coronavirus-pandemic-blitzkrieg-lessons-for-2020/

The problem is greater than just a few moments of panic.

  E ighty years ago, on May 10, 1940, Winston Churchill took over as Britain’s prime minister and Hitler launched his attack on Holland, Belgium, and France. The Blitzkrieg, as it became known, was a spectacular military success: In less than six weeks Nazi Germany defeated the Allied armies and occupied the Low Countries and a big part of France while at the same time kicking the British off the Continent.

How the Germans did it has been the subject of numerous books. But one thing that emerges is that, both at the time and later, the Allies, and the then-neutral Americans, failed to understand what really happened. A set of myths developed, many of which were believed and propagated by various military experts and intelligence services.

Most historians put the critical turning point on the morning of May 15, when in a moment of panic the French prime minister Paul Reynaud told Churchill, “We have been defeated.” The panic was based on mostly distorted and inaccurate information from the French army’s high command and from the intelligence services. The offensive was expected, but the location was not, with the attack coming about a hundred miles south of where the allies thought the main thrust would take place. The army’s command structure was unable to adapt quickly enough to the new situation, and this in turn created panic at the highest levels of government.

Today, with the Wuhan coronavirus presenting a completely unexpected challenge to governments all over the world, panic, or something like it, seems to be gripping leaders at all levels. In Michigan and Maine the governors have obviously tried to hide their panic behind masks of authoritarian bluster. In New York, Andrew Cuomo had a very public ventilator-shortage breakdown, though he recovered. The media naturally stuck the tape of his panic down the memory hole.

The problem is greater than just a few moments of panic. It involves the sad fact that some people who’ve been credentialed as experts are incompetent time-servers, men and women who fit the requirements of leading big organizations but lack the imagination and daring to deal with the unexpected. In war it is all too often the case that peacetime generals are just not up to the job. In the current time of plague, few of the public-health experts who are attached to what one might call “top-down” solutions have covered themselves in glory. Political leaders should have learned to be skeptical.

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MAY 8, 1945-GERMANY SURRENDERS-THE END OF THE WAR IN EUROPE

By on May 8th, 2020

On May 8, 1945, both Great Britain and the United States celebrate Victory in Europe Day. Cities in both nations, as well as formerly occupied cities in Western Europe, put out flags and banners, rejoicing in the defeat of the Nazi war machine during World War II.

The eighth of May spelled the day when German troops throughout Europe finally laid down their arms: In Prague, Germans surrendered to their Soviet antagonists, after the latter had lost more than 8,000 soldiers, and the Germans considerably more; in Copenhagen and Oslo; at Karlshorst, near Berlin; in northern Latvia; on the Channel Island of Sark—the German surrender was realized in a final cease-fire. More surrender documents were signed in Berlin and in eastern Germany.

About 1 million Germans attempted a mass exodus to the West when the fighting in Czechoslovakia ended, but were stopped by the Russians and taken captive. The Russians took approximately 2 million prisoners in the period just before and after the German surrender.

Meanwhile, more than 13,000 British POWs were released and sent back to Great Britain.

Pockets of German-Soviet confrontation would continue into the next day. On May 9, the Soviets would lose 600 more soldiers in Silesia before the Germans finally surrendered. Consequently, V-E Day was not celebrated until the ninth in Moscow, with a radio broadcast salute from Stalin himself: “The age-long struggle of the Slav nations… has ended in victory. Your courage has defeated the Nazis. The war is over.”

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SYDNEY WILLIAMS ON V-E DAY MAY 8, 1945

By on May 7th, 2020

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

On this day, when we remember the victory that brought seventy-five years of peace to Europe, we should never forget the men and women who fought to preserve civilization.

While V-E Day is celebrated on May 8, the “Act of Military Surrender” was signed in Reims by General Affred Jodl, on behalf of Nazi Germany and accepted by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces, at 2:41AM May 7, 1945. When guns finally ceased, Europe had been at war for five years and eight months. Americans had been fighting for three years and five months. An estimated 75 million people lost their lives during those years, including 405,000 Americans.  

I was four years old, living at my maternal grandparents’ home in Madison, Connecticut, with my mother, two sisters and a brother. My father, with the 10th Mountain Division, was in Roverto, just west and north of Italy’s Lake Garda’s. In his History of the 87th Mountain Infantry, Captain George Earle wrote: “After the memory of the seared browns of the Apennines and the recent dust of battle, the May colors of the foothills of the Alps seemed unbelievably fresh and vivid.”  The war in Italy had ended five days earlier.

While some equate our experience with COVID-19 today as our generation’s trial, it is not the same. Certainly, healthcare workers, who daily face the possibility of infection, knowingly confront peril. But those of us who “shelter-at-home” have little in common with foot soldiers in foxholes, airmen in combat, submariners being depth-charged, or marines storming beaches. We wear masks and socially distance.

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Coral Sea, the forgotten battle that saved America By Robert Arvay

By on May 6th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/05/coral_sea_the_forgotten_battle_that_saved_america.html

Seventy-eight years ago this week, (May 4–8, 1942) the United States Navy, despite being outnumbered and outgunned, repelled a large Japanese invasion fleet in the Battle of the Coral Sea, just east and north of Australia.  It was the first naval battle in history in which the opposing fleets never came within sight of each other.  All of the fighting was done when aircraft from both opposing fleets attacked the other’s ships and planes.

That distinction (of being first) is often credited to the later, and more famous, Battle of Midway, but it rightly belongs to the brave men who fought, many of whom died, in the Coral Sea.

Because of the courage and sacrifice of undaunted American warriors, two Japanese aircraft carriers were put out of action, with a third, smaller Japanese carrier sunk.  However, there was a great cost.  The United States lost the aircraft carrier USS Lexington and two other ships, with heavy loss of life.  At the time, the Allies regarded the battle as a disappointing defeat, but history was to reveal a brighter outcome.

Had the U.S. lost the battle, it likely might have lost the subsequent Battle of Midway, opening the path to a Japanese invasion of Pearl Harbor and even the U.S. mainland.  Instead, the USS Yorktown, significantly damaged in the Coral Sea, managed to return to Pearl Harbor in time to be repaired and fight, and to sink two of the four carriers that the Japanese lost at Midway.

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The fall of Saigon By Silvio Canto, Jr.

By on May 2nd, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/05/the_fall_of_saigon.html

45 years ago, I was in college trying to pass my classes and looking at some job offers in the local banks.  As I recall, the economy was okay for college graduates but the word “recession” was mentioned in some circles.  Watergate was behind us and the new President Gerald Ford was months away from facing a challenge from the former Governor Ronald Reagan of California.

During my time away from school work, I was dancing to Van McCoy’s “The hustle”, enjoying Elton John’s “Philadelphia Freedom” and laughing to tears watching “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”.

Over in Vietnam, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong walked into Saigon and we’ve known it as “Ho Chi Minh City” ever since.

They walked in because the South Vietnam army, our ally, was totally overmatched by large and ruthless divisions pouring from the North. 

As a South Vietnamese soldier told me a few years later, they killed everybody that they suspected of supporting the government in Saigon. They didn’t care whether it was man, woman, or child.

The tragedy of Vietnam is that the USSR could not believe that we let South Vietnam collapse in 1975, as Stephen J. Morris wrote on the 30th anniversary of the disintegration of Saigon:

If the United States had provided that level of support in 1975, when South Vietnam collapsed in the face of another North Vietnamese offensive, the outcome might have been at least the same as in 1972. 

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The Muslim Genocide of 2.5 Million Christians The religious as opposed to nationalistic aspects of the Armenian Genocide. Raymond Ibrahim

By on May 1st, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/05/muslim-genocide-25-million-christians-raymond-ibrahim/

Last Friday, April 24, marked the “Great Crime,” that is, the genocide of Christians—primarily Armenians Assyrians and Greeks—that took place under the Islamic Ottoman Empire, throughout World War I.  Then, in an attempt to wipe out as many Christians as possible, the Turks massacred approximately 1.5 million Armenians, 300,000 Assyrians, and 750,000 Greeks.

Most objective American historians who have studied the question unequivocally agree that it was a deliberate, calculated genocide:

More than one million Armenians perished as the result of execution, starvation, disease, the harsh environment, and physical abuse.  A people who lived in eastern Turkey for nearly 3,000 years [more than double the amount of time the invading Islamic Turks had occupied Anatolia, now known as “Turkey”] lost its homeland and was profoundly decimated in the first large-scale genocide of the twentieth century.  At the beginning of 1915 there were some two million Armenians within Turkey; today there are fewer than 60,000….  Despite the vast amount of evidence that points to the historical reality of the Armenian Genocide, eyewitness accounts, official archives, photographic evidence, the reports of diplomats, and the testimony of survivors, denial of the Armenian Genocide by successive regimes in Turkey has gone on from 1915 to the present.

Similarly, in 1920, U.S. Senate Resolution 359 heard testimony that included evidence of “[m]utilation, violation, torture, and death [which] have left their haunting memories in a hundred beautiful Armenian valleys, and the traveler in that region is seldom free from the evidence of this most colossal crime of all the ages.” 

In her memoir, Ravished Armenia, Aurora Mardiganian described being raped and thrown into a harem (consistent with Islam’s rules of war).  Unlike thousands of other Armenian girls who were discarded after being defiled, she managed to escape. In the city of Malatia, she saw 16 Christian girls crucified: “Each girl had been nailed alive upon her cross,” she wrote, “spikes through her feet and hands, only their hair blown by the wind, covered their bodies.” Such scenes were portrayed in the 1919 documentary film Auction of Souls, some of which is based on Mardiganian’s memoirs.

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