Blogging the Bookshelf » History

Means and Ends – “The Trial of Henry Kissinger” – Christopher Hitchens

Tim — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 23:40:06 +0000

If one can demonstrate that there was such a plan (to remove the President of Cypress), and that Kissinger knew about it in advance, then it follows logically and naturally that he was not ostensibly looking for a crisis – as he self-pityingly asks us to believe – but for a solution. The fact that he got a crisis, which was also a hideous calamity for Cyprus and the region, does not change the equation or under the syllogism. It is attributable to the other observable fact that the scheme to remove Makarios, on which the ‘solution’ depended, was in practice a failure. But those who willed the means and wished the ends are not absolved from guilt by the refusal of reality to match their schemes.

I found this to be an interesting quote, given that the last sentence in particular could be equally used to condemn Hitchen’s position on the Iraq War…

Through a Trapdoor at the end of a rope – “The Trial of Henry Kissinger” – Christopher Hitchens

Tim — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 04:30:05 +0000

Some statements are too blunt for everyday, consensual discourse. In national ‘debate’, it is the smoother pebbles that are customarily gathered from the stream, and used as projectiles. They leave less of a scar, even when they hit. Occasionally, however, a single hard-edged remark will inflict a deep and jagged wound, a gash so ugly that it must be cauterised at once. In January 1971, General Telford Taylor, who had been chief prosecuting counsel at the Nuremberg trials, made a considered statement. Reviewing the legal and moral basis of those hearings, and also the Tokyo trials of Japanese war criminals and the Manila trial of Emperor Hirohito’s chief militarist, General Tomoyuki Yamashita, Taylor said that if the standards of Nuremberg and Manila were applied evenly, and applied to the American statesmen and bureaucrats who designed the war in Vietnam, then ‘there would be a very strong possibility that they would come to the same end [Yamashita] did.’ It is not every day that a senior American solider and jurist delivers the opinion that a large portion of his country’s political class should probably be hooded and blindfolded and dropped through a trapdoor at the end of a rope.

International Law – “The Trial of Henry Kissinger” – Christopher Hitchens

Tim — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 23:30:05 +0000

Many if not most of Kissinger’s partners in crime are now in jail, or are awaiting trial, or have been otherwise punished or discredited. His own lonely impunity is rank; it smells to heaven. If it is allowed to persist then we shall shamefully vindicate the ancient philosopher Anarchasis, who maintained that laws were like cobwebs: strong enough to detain only the weak, and too weak to hold the strong.

I can’t see how this isn’t the perfect description of ‘International law’…

So Why Didn’t an Australian Kill Hitler? – “Fromelles” – Patrick Lindsay

Tim — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 04:30:06 +0000

The Luftwaffe bombed (Fromelles) on 27 May 1940, destroying some buildings when British ammunition trucks parked there were hit and exploded. The following day the Germans occupied the town once again. Then things went along uneventfully until 25 June, when France surrendered to the Germans. That very day, Chancellor Adolf Hitler, the former humble lance-corporal who had served with the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment at Fromelles, swept back into the village in triumph. With his entourage, including former comrades from 1916, Hitler spent the evening near Fromelles quietly celebrating victory over France at the second attempt. Hitler and his comrades-in-arms then toured the battlefield and were photographed outside the blockhouse where he took refuge during the battle from the advancing Australians, about 800 meteres along Rue de la Biette, down the hill from the Fromelles church and behind Rouges Bancs. Hitler then moved off to visit his old billet and his regiment’s cemetery in Fournes, never to be seen again in Fromelles.

So theoretically, an enterprising Aussie at Fromelles in WW1 could have shot Hitler and prevented the Holocaust!

Don’t Forget me Cobber – “Fromelles” – Patrick Lindsay

Tim — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 02:02:05 +0000

Bean highlights the work of one of the rescuers, 40 year old Victorian farmer, Sergeant Simon Fraser of the 57th Battalion, and quotes from a letter Fraser later wrote him:

“It was no light work getting in with a heavy weight on you back, especially if he had a broken leg or arm and no stretcher bearer was handy. You had to lie down and get him on your back; then rise and duck for your life with the chance of getting a bullet in you before you were safe.

Fraser recalled finding a group of wounded near the German line and, after bringing them in safely, hearing another call for help. He went again and eventually found this man too. He was a big strapping man wounded in the thigh – too heavy for Fraser to carry on his back – so he helped him into a sheltering shell hole and promised to return with a stretcher. As he moved off, he heard another wounded Digger near by call: ‘Don’t forget me, cobber!’. Fraser was able to return with stretchers and bring them both in safely.

The cry, ‘Don’t forget me, cobber!’ has come to symbolise the selfless devotion of those who risked, and often lost, their lives to bring in their wounded mates…. And it prompted the wonderful sculpture by Peter Corlett that today stands in the Australian Memorial Park at Fromelles. This statue immortalises Simon Fraser’s heroism and stands as a superb symbol of the sacrifice and devotion that characterised the battle and its aftermath. Fraser survived Fromelles and was promoted to Lieutenant in April 1917. Sadly, he fell at the battle of Bullecourt and, ironically, his body was never found.

Groaning Wounded – “Fromelles” – Patrick Lindsay

Tim — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 23:30:05 +0000

The reality was that, from midnight on the day of the battle, the flow of casualties had swamped the capacity of the medical staff and the stretcher-bearers and the front-line trenches were chock full of the wounded and dying… While the front lines were a confusion of wounded and dying, many more still lay exposed in no-man’s land. … Bean, who had rushed to Fromelles from the Somme when he heard about the battle, was greatly moved:

“Especially in front of the 15th Brigade, around the Laies, the wounded could be seen raising their limbs in pain or turning hopelessly, hour after hour, from one side to the other …

There followed a stillness never again experienced by the 5th Division in the front trenches. The sight of the wounded lying tortured and helpless in no-man’s land, within a stone’s throw of safety but apparently without hope of it, made so strong an appeal that more than one Australian, taking his life in his hands, went out to tend them.”

The Diggers organised rescue parties, and once darkness fell they crept out on their hands and knees and scoured no-man’s land to try to find and bring back those who were still alive. The sheer numbers of the wounded mean that they quickly ran out of stretchers and were forced to carry the rescued on their backs. Hugh Knyvett was one of them:

“One lad, who looked about fifteen, called to me: ‘Don’t leave me sir’. I said: ‘I will come back for you sonny’, as I had a man on my back at the time. In that waste of dead one wounded man was like a gem in sawdust – just as hard to find.

Four trips I made before I found him, then it was as if I had found my young brother. Both of his legs had been broken, and he was only a schoolboy, one of those overgrown lads who had added a couple of years in declaring his age to get into the army. But the circumstances brought out his youth, and he clung to me as though I were his father. Nothing I have ever done has given me the joy that the rescuing of that lad did, and I do not even know his name.”

At one stage Knyvett heard a groan. Unbelievably, he claimed this was a rarity. For, despite their terrible injuries, the wounded tried everything they could not to cry out:

“Why. Some had gritted teeth on bayonets, others had stuffed their tunics in their mouths, lest they should groan. Someone had written of the Australian soldier, in the early part of thw war, that, ‘they never groan’ and these men who had read that would rather die than not live up to the reputation that some newspaper correspondent had given them.”

5533 Casualties – “Fromelles” – Patrick Lindsay

Tim — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 04:30:05 +0000

On the afternoon of 20 July, the battalions which had attacked the previous evening gathered near their divisional headquarters and their losses were chillingly clear. Each of the three Australian brigades lost more than 1700 men, either killed, wounded, missing or captured. In one terrifying night the Australians suffered a total of 5533 casualties – 178 officers and 5355 men. This was more than the combined total of all Australian losses in the Boer, Korean and Vietnam Wars.

No Man’s Land – “Fromelles” – Patrick Lindsay

Tim — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 02:00:06 +0000

In one remarkable attempt to reach safety, a group of eleven men of the 8th Brigade, under the leadership of Captain Frank Krinks, decided to make a run for it as a group, vowing to stay and help any of their number who found trouble. Having decided to leave their weapons and rely on a surprise dash to safety, they struck trouble in the second German trench when two of them were captured. But, as they had promised, the others turned on the captors and frightened the stunned Germans into releasing them. They then bolted into no-man’s land. Krinks and three companions eventually reached safety in the front of the British trenches. But, as Bean noted, there was a tragic sequel:

‘The 30th Battalion was immediately after the fight sent to reserve, but Krinks and his three companions returned to the trenches as soon as it was dusk, and, taking a stretcher, went out into no-man’s land bringing in Wells on a stretcher when a sentry of their own brigade catching sight of the figures, fired, killing Wishart and Watts with a single shot.’

We Prefer to be Killed by Germans – “Fromelles” – Patrick Lindsay

Tim — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 23:30:05 +0000

When they realised they were being shelled by their own guns, the Diggers reacted sharply, as Hugh Knyvett recalled:

‘Our first message… was very polite ‘ we preferred to be killed by the Germans, thank you’… two of our officers being killed, our next message was worded very differently, and we told them that ‘if he fired again we would turn our machine guns on them’. I was sent back to make sure that he got the message… this battery did not belong to our division.”

Lumumba – “The Origins of AIDS” - Jacques Pepin

Tim — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 23:32:05 +0000

In September 1960, Lumumba was dismissed by Kasavubu, and in turn Lumumba dismissed Kasavubu. The constitution did not allow for either of these moves. After a few days of confusion, Lumumba was definitively overthrown in a bloodless military coup led by the very person he had just appointed head of the army, colonel Mobutu. Lumumba’s appeal to Moscow had provided the perfect justification, if one was needed. Mobutu quickly expelled all Soviet advisers. Placed under house arrest, Lumumba tried to escape to Stanleyville where his support remained strong, but he was captured after a few days on the run, imprisoned and then transferred to his arch-enemies in Katanga. One might wonder how the central government in Léo could transfer a prisoner to the Katanga secessionists, against whom they were fighting a low-grade civil war. The explanation is simple: Belgium controlled both ends of the equation, and thought it would be easier to eliminate this dangerous man in Katanga, where he had no political or tribal support. There, in January 1961, five hours after his arrival, he was executed by a firing squad supervised by Belgian policemen. Days later, his body was cut up and dissolved in acid. A state crime had been committed, ordered by the Belgian minister of African affairs, who had cleared this decision with his prime minister.