A Cold Night in Paris

A Cold Night in Paris

On a bitterly cold night in November 1407, a group of men lay in wait along the Rue Vielle du Temple.  The street is in the Marais which today is one of the toniest areas of Paris. The men had spent days building their cover story and tracking their quarry.  Around 8 pm, Louis of Orleans rode down the street accompanied by several squires.

The assassins crowded round Louis’ entourage as their leader bellowed, “kill him!”  As many as a dozen men attacked.  They were armed with swords, knives, bow and arrow, and axes.  Louis was knocked to the pavement and in less than ten minutes, he was dead, hacked to pieces with his skull split from crown to jaw.  One of his squires lay dead beside him. The assassins fled to the scene of the crime. By the next day, they had slipped out of Paris.

Sex and the Election

Sex and the Election

Mudslinging has always been featured in our political elections.  The mud often involves attacks against women and their presumed or actual sexual activities.  One of the most famous of these attacks was against Rachel Jackson. 

Rachel married at an early age to a ne’er-do-well. They soon divorced and she moved back to Nashville, Tennessee, where she met and married Andrew Jackson.  Unfortunately, her divorce was not final when they married.  After discovering their error, they remarried legally.  No one would have cared about their marital status if Andrew hadn’t decided to run for president in 1824.  

The Seduction of Nationalism

The Seduction of Nationalism

Our country has been insulted! Our honor is at stake!  Declare war now!  

In 1870, the French press howled for a military response to the rise of Prussia. The French feared that they would soon be eclipsed by the economic and military power of Prussia. They believed they still had the best army in the world and could win easily.  They fell into the trap of jingoistic nationalism.

Two Bullets That Changed the World

Two Bullets That Changed the World

At 10:10 am on June 28, 1914, two people were murdered and the world changed forever.  The murders of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and his wife Sophie are considered the spark that started World War I.  Their deaths didn’t have to start a war.  Their deaths were an excuse used by nations fighting for military superiority. 

In 1914, the world looked much like today with a globalized elite controlling most of their nations’ wealth, labor unrest, and unsettling social changes. Nationalism and a belief in racial superiority guided government policies. 

Five Minutes with an 88

Five Minutes with an 88

On June 6, 1944, more than 130,000 ground troops and 23,000 airborne troops flooded into Normandy on D-Day, but a week later they were behind schedule as the Allies struggled to break out from their beachhead.

The British reached Bayeux on June 7th four miles shy of their D-Day objective, the city of Caen.  Whoever controlled Caen also controlled access to the Caen Canal, the northern Orne River and entry into northeastern France, but Caen couldn’t be reached. 

Coolness Under Fire

Coolness Under Fire

George Henry Thomas was born in 1816, near Yorktown, Virginia, into a family of prosperous farmers.  At the age of 15, his family narrowly escaped being murdered during Nat Turner’s slave revolt when their farm was attacked.  Despite his narrow escape, Thomas never exhibited prejudice, treating everyone equally and fairly.  

When Thomas was 19 years old, he received an appointment to West Point Military Academy. One of his roommates was William Tecumseh Sherman and Ulysses S. Grant, arrived as a plebe during his final year.   Thomas received his commission in 1840 and was a career officer. 

Failure Was the Only Option

Failure Was the Only Option

At 10:00 am on July 20, 1944, Graf Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg arrived at Hitler’s headquarters in Ukraine to attend the daily military briefing.  On the drive from the airfield, he armed a bomb in his briefcase. It can’t have been easy; Stauffenberg was missing an eye, his right hand and two fingers of his left hand, due to combat injuries. 

The military conference took place in a wooden hut. Stauffenberg’s briefcase was propped against a table leg near Hitler.  Stauffenberg soon excused himself and left the room. A few minutes later around 12:40 pm the bomb exploded, disintegrating the building and killing several people instantly. 

Songs of Love, Songs of War

Songs of Love, Songs of War

As the Dark Ages faded into the feudal world of the Middle Ages, a new form of popular music developed. The songs told stories about knights and ladies, forbidden love and battles. These pop tunes were known as chansons d’amour (songs of love) and chansons de geste (songs of war).

Songs of love resembled modern “historical romances” (aka bodice-rippers) with heart-broken lovers and cuckolded spouses.  Songs of war created an idealized image of knights and often ended in a heroic death, like Song of Roland.

Adolf is Dead!

Adolf is Dead!

The toilets overflowed.  The air reeked of sewage and too many bodies.  The ground shook from a constant artillery bombardment that knocked concrete chunks from the ceiling. Some inmates risked death above-ground just to get a breath of less rancid air. 

Under the ruined flower beds in the garden of the New Reich Chancellery, diehard loyalists huddled in the Fuhrerbunker.  Most stayed drunk, even in the presence of Hitler who was a teetotaler.  He didn’t notice because he was higher than a kite on drugs.  

Fighting in the Dark

Fighting in the Dark

The Confederate troops advanced at 4:00 pm on November 30, 1864 as the daylight faded. They were serenaded by military bands as they advanced toward Franklin, Tennessee. They crossed open fields spreading in an arc from the Harpeth River on their right flank to Carter’s Creek Pike on the left flank.  

They had marched all the way from Atlanta, Georgia after evading the Union forces commanded by General William T. Sherman.  Sherman’s troops laid a 50-mile wide swathe of destruction through Georgia on the way to South Carolina, but managed to lose track of the opposing army. Confederate General John Bell Hood marched back to Tennessee hoping to either draw the Union forces after him or to reclaim Tennessee for the South. Tennessee had been under Union control since 1862.

Witness to Secession

Witness to Secession

“What a dear, delightful place is Charleston,” proclaimed Mary Chesnut, in March 1861.  Mary loved the nightly dinners and dances while her husband was a delegate to the secession convention.  South Carolina became the first state to secede from the U.S.

Mary Boykin Chesnut was born into a South Carolina family that owned plantations in South Carolina and Mississippi.  Her father was a prominent Nullifier.  Nullifiers argue that the Constitution’s 10th Amendment reserves all powers to the states unless specifically assigned to the federal government; and therefore federal laws don’t apply to a state without the state’s consent.

A Man for the Ages

A Man for the Ages

A polymath is an exceptionally educated person; someone who is an expert in many subjects.  Maimonides is the perfect example.  He was good at everything.

Maimonides was a scientist who studied mathematics, astronomy, and logic. He was a philosopher who wrote treatises on ethics and politics.  He was also a lawyer and a medical doctor, serving as the personal physician to the Muslim caliph in Cairo.  In addition to these secular topics, he was a rabbi who still influences Jewish law. 

The Vietnam Generation

The Vietnam Generation

Each generation faces a major political or social upheaval that forever shapes their view of the world.  For baby boomers, that event was the Vietnam War.  How did we get involved in that mess?

America’s involvement in Vietnam started after World War II, as the Cold War began. Vietnamese nationalists, like Ho Chi Minh, helped the Allies defeat the Japanese occupation in the expectation that Vietnam would become independent.  They were wrong.

The Big Fella

The Big Fella

The line between a freedom fighter and a terrorist depends entirely on one’s point of view.  Freedom fighters are heroes; terrorists are despised. Today, there are still arguments about which category best suits Michael Collins.  

An Average Man

An Average Man


Fedor von Bock was tall, slim and stood ramrod straight. He was a cultured, educated man who spoke four languages.  He believed the highest honor for a soldier is to die in service to his country.

How did such a thoroughly decent man become an enabler of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime? By being an average man.

Free Love

Free Love

Each year as Valentine’s Day approaches, thoughts turn to romantic love.  Everyone is searching for their perfect match so that they can live happily ever after.  Victoria Woodhull’s quest for true love led her to challenge every social convention from marriage vows to prostitution to women’s suffrage. 

Aerial Innovator

One of the military innovations of World War I was air warfare. When the war started in 1914, the military establishment in every country dismissed aircraft as a weapon of war, but a few younger officers envisioned the possibilities. One of those young officers was Oswald Boelcke.

Boelcke was born in 1891, the third of six children born to a school headmaster. With his parents’ permission, he joined the Prussian Cadet Corps in 1911. While serving with a communications unit he noticed the nascent air corps, and by 1914 he was a licensed pilot.

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In 1914, Oswald and his brother Wilhelm, also a pilot, were flying observation missions over enemy trenches. Oswald quickly realized that planes would be suitable for aerial combat and occasionally disobeyed orders by engaging in dogfights with enemy planes. His aggressive style earned him the Iron Cross (Second Class) in October 1914 and First Class in February 1915.

In April 1915, he was transferred to a unit where he met Max Immelmann. They created tactics for aerial combat which are still studied and used today. Immelmann is best known for the “Immelmann loop” which involves rolling to escape an enemy plane and then turning to counterattack the enemy from the rear.

Boelcke created a list of seven tactical maneuvers known as the “Dicta Boelcke.” The seventh dictum says that “foolish acts of bravery only bring death” and advocates working as a team. It’s one of the earliest examples of the principle of formation flying and massed attacks by aircraft—both now standard procedures.

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In January 1916, Boelcke was awarded the Ordre Pour le Merite or Blue Max, the German equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor. He was 24 years old. In a letter to his parents, he described wearing the Blue Max as “worse than having a warrant out against you” because everyone stared when seeing such a young man wearing the ultimate military honor.

Boelcke quickly tired of the media attention. To avoid the press, he created a list of answers which he dubbed “Aircraft Defenses Against Troublesome Questioners” which he provided to inquisitive people. The first answer is “sometimes it is dangerous, sometimes it is not.”

In the summer of 1916, the German air corps was reorganized into Jadgstaffeln (called Jastas) and Boelcke was given command of Jasta 2. On October 28, 1916, in an aerial dogfight, Boelcke accidentally touched wings with another pilot from his Jasta. Both planes crashed and Boelcke was killed by the impact.

His Jasta was renamed in his honor and his protégé, Manfred von Richtofen (a/k/a the Red Baron) took command until 1918 when he was killed in a dogfight. When the war ended in 1918, Jasta Boelcke was led by a young flyboy named Herman Goering.

For more information about Oswald Boelcke, see Knight of Germany by Professor Johannes Werner (2009 translation by Claude W. Sykes for Casemate). Professor Werner’s original 1932 text was written at a time of severe social and political turmoil in Germany. His advocacy of patriotism and German nationalism may be a bit jarring for some readers.

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