7 October was not the end of the Blitz or even of the Battle of Britain, but it is the end of my post-blogging of 1940, at least for now. The main reason for this is because I’m running out of primary sources, especially the Daily Mail. But as I think I’ve shown, in the […]
Politics intrudes onto the front page of the Daily Mail today, in the form of a Cabinet reshuffle. But this being wartime, people are perhaps more likely to invest these normally mundane ministerial changes with great significance. The Mail certainly does, leading with the story that Sir John Reith, former Director-General of the BBC (and
Friday witnessed the signing of the ‘Axis-Japanese Pact’ in Berlin. The Observer‘s diplomatic correspondent believes the pact is ‘chiefly aimed at the United States’, and ‘is intended to steal a march on what is regarded as the inevitable alignment of Britain, America, Russia, and China’ (7): Under it, the Axis and Japan pledge each other
There is tragic news today. Not that there has been any shortage of that lately, but this is on a different scale, at least qualitatively. A British passenger liner has been sunk by a U-boat in the Atlantic, with heavy loss of life. The ship — its name has not yet been published — was
There’s no doubt what’s newsworthy today. The Daily Mail trumpets the big battle over the Home Counties yesterday, the ‘most shattering defeat’ the Luftwaffe has ever experienced (1): The Air Ministry state that between 350 and 400 enemy aircraft were launched in two waves against London and south-east England. Of these no fewer than 175
This photograph of Australian soldiers was taken during the First World War. It’s not particularly unusual: just a group of mates getting together to record a memento, perhaps after a weekend’s carousing in the fleshpots of Cairo or Paris. Mateship is a important concept in Australian culture. The OED defines it as ‘The condition of
Last August I took up Twitter. I’ve just reached a thousand tweets (or will have, when this post is auto-tweeted), so it seems like an appropriate time to reflect on how useful the whole thing is. I was initially sceptical, but I find that Twitter does complement blogging very well. It’s a good place to
Because I’m too lazy to write a proper post, here are some of my recent tweets: The 1st use of the word “Luftwaffe” in The Times was on 24 May 1939, as the owner of 2 yachts entered in a race to Germany. The 1st use of the word “Luftwaffe” in the Manchester Guardian was
[Cross-posted at Cliopatria.] A couple of interesting posts at The Russian Front suggest that the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-5 should be thought of as a World War Zero, or alternatively that the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-8 should be. It’s often useful to play around with the names we give to historical events and phenomena, because
[Cross-posted at Cliopatria.] A random thought while sitting in a lecture today: if there is (or can be) such a thing as total war, does that imply that total peace is a meaningful concept? Firstly, what is total war? One definition, drawn from the ubiquitous set of conference proceedings edited by Stig Förster et al
