The Excavator

WTF Is This??

2026-06-09T00:25:49.540-04:00

The United States of North Israel needs to settle down and enjoy this world cup. Enough with police state tactics. These Senegalese players deserve better treatment. Red carpets should be laid out when they step off the plane, not this nonsense. Be good hosts!

U.S. authorities inspected SENEGAL’s national team players the moment they stepped off the plane.

This was the FIFA WORLD CUP “welcome” for Senegal’s team in the U.S.

FULL detailed INSPECTION. pic.twitter.com/sO3jPpCJni
— Suppressed News. (@SuppressedNws1) June 9, 2026

My Final World Cup Winner: It's Coming Home After Sixty Years

2026-06-07T16:34:30.836-04:00

England to beat Germany in the final on July 19.

After another night of thinking on this, and taking all emotion out of it, I just can't back Brazil.

Nostalgia got the best of me yesterday. And with a serious injury to one of their fullbacks during their most recent game, a position they're already weak in, it's hard to believe in this team. They have the best manager, yes, but their midfield and fullbacks won't be able to keep up. Too much has to go right for them to even make the Semis. I think England will knock them out when they meet in the quarter finals.

England is sliding under the radar, with France and Spain stealing most of the spotlight as the heavy favourites, but they have the best striker, a proven and pragmatic manager who knows how to win, and a deep squad with humble egos. They also have an easy path to the quarter finals. So they really only need to beat three quality teams. They've also shown in recent tournaments they can make it to the final of a big tournament and squeak out victories in close games. They just need that final push.

I have them beating Germany in the final because one way or another France and Spain are going to disappoint. Spain is dealing with injuries, its two key attackers are question marks going into this World Cup, and France is not as balanced in their midfield as other teams. They're extremely top heavy, and I think there's too many mouths to feed up front. England doesn't have that problem. There's one guy the ball should go to and he's been the best finisher in the last year.

In tournament football teams that dumb it down and play simple usually go further. I think Giroud will be a big miss for France. He played a key role in their last World Cup runs. They haven't replaced him. They need someone with his presence.

So I can see Germany beating both France and Spain, only to lose to England in the final. That would be a funny outcome. And objectively England is the better team with the better German manager.

And it will probably be a very boring, 1-0 final. I think we will see the best football in the round of 16 and quarter finals.

I still like Morocco to go far. And I think Portugal has as good of a chance as any to win it all. But it's time for England to win its second World Cup trophy. If it doesn't happen now, when they have one of the deepest teams and a striker scoring goals for fun, then it might take another sixty years.

A Final World Cup Prediction

2026-06-06T06:39:19.230-04:00

Brazil loses to Morocco in their first game in the group stage, but takes revenge against them in the final to take home its sixth World Cup trophy.

I've changed my mind about my World Cup prediction that I made the other day. Some questions have crept in.

And when in doubt about who will win the World Cup you always have to fall back on Brazil. They're always the safe option to go far in the tournament.

But they're actually not the safe option this time around so I like them even more to win it.

I think Portugal's time to lift the trophy will come after Ronaldo finally retires. And as for the Netherlands, I just can't trust a team that lacks a true striker.

I really want to believe in Portugal and the Netherlands because they're two football powerhouses that deserve to claim the world's greatest prize. They have the midfield and defense to compete with the best teams, and their attacking players are good enough to finish their chances in tight games during the knockout rounds. They also have good goalkeepers who can save them if their games go to penalties. So, as far as weaknesses go, there isn't that many to speak of.

But, as always, there will be a few shocks that will turn brackets upside down and create new possibilities for teams to advance.

In my new tournament bracket I have Brazil knocking out the Netherlands on penalties in the round of 32 after finishing second in their group behind Morocco.

That would open up the path for both teams to meet again in the final where Brazil will have learned its lesson and get the better of Morocco the second time around.

If it all goes according to my prediction they each will have to beat a couple of giants in the later stages of the tournament, with Brazil coming up against Germany and Spain in successive matches, and Morocco likely to face England and Portugal on their side of the bracket.

The odds are stacked against them. Their paths will be difficult. For Brazil there will be redemption against Germany. And then glory.

I like the thought of Brazil winning the World Cup right after Argentina won it to reclaim its natural position in the footballing hierarchy.

And Morocco has a lot of positive momentum. Teams that have made semi-final and final appearances in recent tournaments carry belief with them into the next one. It's a natural progression. So they're not a sleeper pick by any means.

This will be my last World Cup post. This is my final prediction. I hope Haiti or Scotland don't go and screw it up and somehow send Brazil home early.

World Cup Thoughts On The Hosts, And A Few Favourites

2026-06-03T07:30:57.308-04:00

On Mexico:

Host nation bump. Fifth game curse. There are many narratives surrounding the Mexican national football team. Their group is sneaky tough but very manageable, especially with the home crowd factor in their favour.

When South Africa failed to make it out of the group stage as a host nation in 2010 they were in a group with Uruguay and France. So Mexico got lucky here.

South Korea and Czechia are strong opponents but beatable. They each will give the home side a good fight. Mexico will be battle tested for the knockout rounds. I have a good feeling Mexico makes it to the round of 16 this summer, where they will possibly face England. And anything can happen in a knockout game.

On USA:

The U.S. also finds itself in a very tricky group, with two particularly nasty opponents in Paraguay and Australia. These guys will claw and scratch their way to a tie or even manage to score a late winner after defending their guts out for ninety minutes. They're not fun to play against. Then you have a Turkish team that plays with youthful exuberance and enthusiasm. They have a lot of talent who have an eye for goal.

I don't like the chances of America finishing 1st or 2nd in this group. That first game against Paraguay will tell us a lot. I could see Paraguay fight their way to a couple of draws and finish with five points after winning their final game against Australia with an extra time set piece header. I think Turkey will come 1st and USA third, most likely setting up a game with one of the favourites in the first knockout round.

On Canada:

I also see Canada finishing 3rd in their group, with a good chance of making the knockout round, where they will come up against either Turkey or America, depending on who finishes first in that group. I just think Switzerland and Bosnia are too good and too experienced, with powerful veteran strikers that Canada's backline won't be able to contain.

Bosnia made the World Cup the hard way. They have momentum on their side after defeating Italy in the final European playoff game. A win like that gives a team tremendous belief, which is critical in a short tournament. I expect them to make it to the round of 16. After denying Italy a spot it would be a shame to see them fizzle out and not even advance past the group stage.

And I want Canada to finish 3rd because I'm hoping for a U.S-Canada game in the round of 32. I think it will be one of the more exciting and open-ended games we will see this summer. But it'll most likely be Turkey vs. Canada. And who knows, Turkey could enter that game with an arrogant attitude and slip up. They've been absent from the World Cup for 24 years so they have a lot to prove. Canada could still claim a big knockout victory after finishing third in their group.

On Portugal and Netherlands:

To win the World Cup you need a combination of health, squad depth, a strong midfield and defense, team cohesion, balance throughout the lineup, a desire to win, a selfish striker, young talented players looking to make a name, a good track record in recent tournaments, and a bit of luck.

After looking at the rosters of all the favourites to win the tournament I landed on Portugal and the Netherlands as the teams best fitting that description. Portugal has the best midfield of all the countries and the Netherlands has the best defense, with guys with a nose for goal from all over the field.

Netherlands has a weak striker, but in a World Cup you need players who can score from every position and the Netherlands have that. In the last World Cup they lost on penalties in the Quarter finals to the eventual winners and in the 2024 Euros they made it to the Semis. So they can taste it. They've been close to the finish line. They'll have the hunger to win. And Portugal will too because of the Ronaldo factor. The whole team will play harder to get him that trophy.

Brazil, France, and Spain will threaten, they will dominate throughout the tournament, but I really think this year we will see a first time winner of the World Cup.

Törni

2026-05-30T09:14:15.953-04:00

"My maxim was, la carrière est ouverte aux talents, without distinction of birth or fortune." - Napoleon.

Some men are born soldiers. Most are not.

The best armies identify inborn talent and natural ability, and elevate individuals possessed with the hunger for war.

The age of mass armies produced millions of casualties because military training, advanced equipment, emotional state propaganda, and scientific management can not turn regular individuals into warriors overnight. Good soldiers aren't made in a lab.

The mass conscription going on in Ukraine currently goes against all military logic, human nature, religion, natural law, tradition, everything. It is evil.

It's not an easy decision to choose to be a warrior and to sacrifice your life for a greater cause. But it must be a willing choice. Otherwise you're just a slave heading to a pointless slaughter.

A lot of Ukrainians are suffering this fate. The war with Russia is a contrived spectacle that should have never been waged. Ukraine was not being invaded. The Russian threat was exaggerated. Painful memories of past Russian transgressions were conjured up by the Neocons and the fools in Washington to get that country in a war frenzy. Those war criminals must ultimately be hanged for their crimes. They sent a generation of Ukrainians to early graves for nothing.

When war is necessary you don't need to drag men out of their homes. In Finland during WWII a man like Törni didn't need to be prodded to fight. And once he discovered that he was extremely good at it there was no holding him back from killing as many Soviets as he could.

But he was one of a kind. With drones and AI now dominating the battlefield the likes of Törni will never be seen again.

II.

Wikipedia:

Lauri Allan Törni (28 May 1919 – 18 October 1965), later known as Larry Alan Thorne, was a Finnish-born soldier who fought under three countries: as a Finnish Army officer in the Winter War and the Continuation War ultimately gaining a rank of captain; as a Waffen-SS captain (under the alias Larry Laine) of the Finnish Volunteer Battalion of the Waffen-SS when he fought the Red Army on the Eastern Front in World War II; and as a United States Army Major (under the alias "Larry Thorne") when he served in the U.S. Army Special Forces in the Vietnam War.

Video Title: Lauri Torni Biography Part 1: Soldier of Three Armies. Source: Forgotten Weapons. Date Published: October 3, 2025.

The One Percent World Cup

2026-05-29T20:25:42.850-04:00

FIFA destroyed what was supposed to be a magical tournament and a global celebration of the beautiful game.

I hope we don't see empty stadiums, but there's a high likelihood there will be a lot of empty seats.

An excerpt from, "World Cup matches in Toronto still aren't sold out. But fans are facing high costs" CBC, May 29, 2026:

Would you rather buy a ticket to a World Cup match or pay a month’s rent at a condo near BMO Field?
With two weeks until kick-off and thousands of tickets still available for the six matches Toronto is hosting, many of the city’s soccer fans appear to be giving a definitive answer.

An excerpt from, "New York and New Jersey subpoena Fifa over ‘manipulated’ World Cup ticketing" The Guardian, May 27, 2026:

The attorneys general of New York and New Jersey have launched an investigation into Fifa’s ticketing practices around the 2026 World Cup, focusing specifically on the matches due to take place at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
The investigation, announced Wednesday by New York’s Letitia James and New Jersey’s Jennifer Davenport, centers on fans who say they were misled about the location of the seats and on claims that Fifa’s own public messaging around tickets has contributed to the inflated prices seen throughout the tournament.
A Fifa spokesperson declined to comment.

An excerpt from, "Should Canada investigate World Cup ticket pricing alongside U.S.?" Global News, May 29, 2026:

As concerns grow about pricey World Cup tickets, two American attorneys general have announced they plan to probe “a range of issues that have arisen with FIFA’s ticketing process.”
This includes dynamic pricing that’s driven the cost of the most in-demand tickets to five figures.
On Wednesday, New York Attorney General Letitia James and New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport released a joint announcement that they’re subpoenaing documents from FIFA regarding its pricing practices for matches at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium.

An excerpt from, "FIFA's World Cup ticket sales outraged fans. Now they are under investigation" NPR, May 28, 2026:

Ticket prices for this tournament aren't just much higher than previous World Cups. For the first time, FIFA has introduced dynamic pricing, leading to sharply higher prices for many World Cup games.

. . .A clear example is for the final match, set to take place in New Jersey on July 19. FIFA initially sold the most expensive tickets at $6,730 — already much higher than the about $1,600 price for the most expensive tickets for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar.

By its latest sales windows starting in April, the same category of tickets cost $10,990.

. . .The prices have sparked widespread outrage — and drawn wide scrutiny on FIFA. Even President Trump, who has established a close relationship with Infantino, told the New York Post he wouldn't pay the roughly $1,000 for nosebleed seats for the U.S. opening game against Paraguay next month.

Compounding the problem, FIFA back in April also unveiled an entirely new category of tickets called "Front Category" seats, offering front row seats across the stadium, that were priced even more expensively.

Foch

2026-05-27T22:51:46.835-04:00

Wikipedia:

Ferdinand Foch (October 1851 – 20 March 1929) was a French general, Marshal of France and a member of the Académie Française and Académie des Sciences. He distinguished himself as Supreme Allied Commander on the Western Front during the First World War in 1918.
. . .Foch was later acclaimed as "the most original military thinker of his generation". He was a disciple of Napoleon, and made use of the lessons taught by Moltke. He became known for his critical analyses of the Franco-Prussian and Napoleonic campaigns and of their relevance to military operations in the new twentieth century. His re-examination of France's defeat in 1870 was among the first of its kind. At the college, Foch was a professor of military history, strategy, and general tactics while becoming the French theorist on offensive strategies. He also employed mathematical terms in his lectures.
During his time as an instructor, Foch created renewed interest in French military history, inspired confidence in a new class of French officers, and brought about "the intellectual and moral regeneration of the French Army". His thinking on military doctrine was shaped by the Clausewitzian philosophy, then uncommon in France, that "the will to conquer is the first condition of victory." Collections of his lectures, which reintroduced the concept of the offensive to French military theory, were published in the volumes "Des Principes de la Guerre" ("On the Principles of War") in 1903, and "De la Conduite de la Guerre" ("On the Conduct of War") in 1904. Both "thought" and "will" were the key words of these teachings. While Foch advised "qualification and discernment" in military strategy and cautioned that "recklessness in attack could lead to prohibitive losses and ultimate failure", his concepts, distorted and misunderstood by contemporaries, became associated with the extreme offensive doctrines (l' offensive à outrance) of his successors. The cult of the offensive came to dominate military circles, and Foch's reputation was damaged when his books were cited in the development of the disastrous offensives that brought France close to ruin and the army to mutiny in 1917.
Foch was seen as a master of the Napoleonic school of military thought, but he was the only one of the Military College Commandants (Maillard, Langlois, Bonnal) still serving. Their doctrines had been challenged, not only by the German school, but also since about 1911 by a new French school inspired by General Loiseau de Grandmaison, which criticised them as lacking in vigour and offensive spirit and contributing to needless dispersion of force. The French Army fought under the new doctrines, but they failed in the first battles of August 1914, and it remained to be seen whether the Napoleonic doctrine would hold its own, would give way to doctrines evolved during the war, or would incorporate the new moral and technical elements into a new outward form within which the spirit of Napoleon remained unaltered. The war gave an ambiguous answer to these questions, which remains a source of controversy among experts.

Video Title: Marshal Ferdinand Foch: Hero of the Great War, Knight of Columbus. Source: Knights of Columbus Supreme Council. Date Published: July 22, 2025.

J. F. C. Fuller

2026-05-26T20:44:06.297-04:00

Wikipedia:

Major-General John Frederick Charles "Boney" Fuller (1 September 1878 – 10 February 1966) was a senior British Army officer, a military historian and strategist, a fascist, and an occultist.
During World War I, Fuller became a staff officer in the Tank Corps and helped plan the tank attack during the Battle of Cambrai. His Plan 1919 for a fully mechanised offensive against the German army was not implemented, due to the end of the war.
As a military theorist, Fuller was highly prolific and his ideas influenced army officers in Britain, Germany and the USA. He emphasised the potential of new weapons, especially tanks and aircraft, and was regarded as one of the progenitors of blitzkrieg.
. . .After the war Fuller, who in January 1919 was promoted to brevet colonel in recognition of "valuable services rendered in connection with the War", collaborated with his colleague B. H. Liddell Hart in developing new ideas for the mechanisation of armies, launching a crusade for the mechanisation and modernisation of the British Army. Chief instructor at the Staff College, Camberley from 1923, he served at the War Office as a GSO1 became military assistant to the chief of the Imperial General Staff in 1926. In what came to be known as the "Tidworth Incident", Fuller turned down the command of the Experimental Mechanized Force, which was formed on 27 August 1927. The appointment also carried responsibility for a regular infantry brigade and the garrison of Tidworth Camp on Salisbury Plain. Fuller believed he would be unable to devote himself to the Experimental Mechanized Force and the development of mechanized warfare techniques without extra staff to assist him with the additional extraneous duties, which the War Office refused to allocate. He was consulted on the development of warfare by Winston Churchill, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the summer of 1928. Fuller was promoted to major-general in 1930 and after refusing the command of the Second Class District of Bombay retired in December 1933 to devote himself entirely to writing.
. . .Fuller visited Nazi Germany regularly and came to know a number of the Nazi Party leaders. He frequently praised Adolf Hitler in his speeches and articles, once describing him as "that realistic idealist who has awakened the common sense of the British people by setting out to create a new Germany". He came to believe that the Nazis had created a "scientific" state. On 20 April 1939, Fuller was an honoured guest at Hitler's 50th birthday parade (attending "with official disapproval" along with Baron Brocket), watching as "for three hours a completely mechanised and motorised army roared past the Führer." Afterwards Hitler asked, "I hope you were pleased with your children?" Fuller replied, "Your Excellency, they have grown up so quickly that I no longer recognise them."
Fuller's ideas on mechanised warfare continued to be influential in the lead-up to the Second World War, ironically less with his countrymen than with the Nazis, notably Heinz Guderian who spent his own money to have Fuller's Provisional Instructions for Tank and Armoured Car Training translated. In the 1930s, the German Army implemented tactics similar in many ways to Fuller's analysis, which became known as Blitzkrieg. Like Fuller, theorists of Blitzkrieg partly based their approach on the theory that areas of large enemy activity should be bypassed to be eventually surrounded and destroyed. Blitzkrieg-style tactics were used by several nations throughout the Second World War, predominantly by the Germans in the invasion of Poland (1939), Western Europe (1940), and the Soviet Union (1941).
. . .He continued to speak out in favour of a peaceful settlement with Germany. In July 1939, he was reported by the Evening Standard as the prospective BUF candidate at the 1940 general election. In October 1939, he conferred in private with Barry Domvile and Lancelot Lawton; a source described him on the occasion as "very interesting but very bloodthirsty". Between October 1939 and February 1940, he took part in a series of secret meetings held by the Marquess of Tavistock, a Hitler enthusiast, to discuss plans for collaboration with the Third Reich.
. . .By 1951, Fuller became a propagandist and supporter of the Munich-based Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations, and he contributed to the crypto-fascist West German journal Nation Europa from 1951 to 1958. He later joined the League of Empire Loyalists, formed in 1954.
He spent his last years believing that the wrong side had won the Second World War. He most fully announced that thesis in the 1961 edition of The Reformation of War. There, he announced his belief that Hitler was the saviour of the West against the Soviet Union and denounced Churchill and Roosevelt for being too stupid to see so. Fuller died in Falmouth, Cornwall, in 1966.
. . .Fuller is perhaps best known today for his "Nine Principles of War" which have formed the foundation of much of modern military theory since the 1930s, and which were originally derived from a convergence of Fuller's mystical and military interests. The Nine Principles went through several iterations; Fuller stated that "the system evolved from six principles in 1912, rose to eight in 1915, to, virtually, nineteen in 1923, and then descended to nine in 1925". For example, notice how his analysis of General Ulysses S. Grant was presented in 1929.
The United States Army modified Fuller's list and issued its first list of the principles of war in 1921, making it the basis of advanced training for officers into the 1990s, when it finally reconceptualised its training.
. . .Cabalistic influences on his theories can be shown by his use of the "Law of Threes" throughout his work. Fuller did not believe the Principles stood alone as is thought today, but that they complemented and overlapped each other as part of a whole, forming the Law of Economy of Force.
. . .These Principles of War have been adopted and further refined by the military forces of several nations, most notably within NATO, and continue to be applied widely to modern strategic thinking.

An excerpt from, "The foundations of the science of war" by John Frederick Charles Fuller, 1926, London: Hutchinson & Co, Pg. 13-14:

The origins of this book may be of some interest, as the system outlined in it has been one of gradual growth, and, whatever value it may possess, it is the result of fifteen years' study and meditation.
In the autumn of 1911 I spent my leave in northern Germany, and returned to England convinced that a European war might break out at any moment. This realization stimulated my interest in military history, and to prepare myself for the inevitable and rapidly approaching struggle I turned to the Field Service Regulations (1909 edition) for assistance. On the first and second pages of Part 1. I found the following :
The fundamental principles of war are neither very numerous nor in themselves very abstruse, but the application of them is difficult, and cannot be made subject to rules. The correct application of principles to circumstances is the outcome of sound military know- ledge, built up by study and practice until it has become an instinct.
This was excellent, but what were these fundamental principles? If they are neither numerous nor abstruse they must be few and simple, but not one was mentioned in the book, consequently it appeared to that, unless I knew what they were, the Field Service Regulations was of little use. I determined, therefore, to discover these hidden truths.
I turned to the Correspondence of Napoleon and studied it closely, and during 1912 I had come to the conclusion that the principles which had guided Napoleon were as follows:
. . .The principle of the Objective--the true objective being that point at which the enemy may be most decisively defeated ; generally this point is to be found along the line of least resistance. The principle of Mass — that is, concentration of strength and effort at the decisive point. The principle of the Offensive ; the principles of Security, Surprise, and Movement (i.e. rapidly).
I had now got six working principles, and, being satisfied with them, I was able to devote more time to Hall and Knight's elementary mathematics, the bugbear of the old Staff College examination, which I passed in the summer of 1913.
Whilst at the Staff College I applied my principles and found them a great help. Then came the war, and, in December 1915, I wrote an anonymous article for the R.U.S.I. Journal entitled " The Principles of War with Reference to the Campaigns of 1914-15." This article was published in February 1916, and to the former six principles I added two new ones — the principle of economy of force and the principle of co-operation. In the summer of 1917 General Kentish, who was then in command of the Commanding Officers' School in Aldershot, asked me to lecture on these principles, and I did so, and also on several other occasions. In March 1918 my lecture was published by him as a pamphlet.
So far these principles could only be looked upon as a pure hypothesis deduced from the campaigns of Napoleon and checked by the events of the Great War. In 1919 I was able to give them more thought, and I began to collect evidence in order to test them. This year a committee was assembled by the Army Council to rewrite the Field Service Regulations, and the chairman of this committee one day said to me : "I believe you have written something on the principles of war. May I have it ? ' I gave him a copy of the above-mentioned pamphlet. In 1920 the principles I had laid down were, in a slightly modified form, included in the new edition of the Field Service Regulations.
In July 1920 I wrote an article for the first number of The Army Quarterly entitled "The Foundations of the Science of War," in which my system was explained, and in 1922 I developed this system in chapter iii. of my book, The Reformation of War, which was published in February 1923. Between August 1922 and January 1923, being on half pay pending taking over an appointment at the Staff College, Camberley, I outlined and eventually wrote a series of some fifty lectures on "The Science of War " and "The Analysis of the Art of War." These lectures were given to the 1923 batch of Staff College Students, and were based on the following theory:

Balck

2026-05-25T17:43:00.424-04:00

"Hermann Balck, Hitler’s Forgotten General" by Phillip Kay-Bujak (Pen & Sword Books, September 2025).

Wikipedia:

Georg Otto Hermann Balck (7 December 1893 – 29 November 1982) was a highly decorated officer of the German Army who served in both World War I and World War II, rising to the rank of General der Panzertruppe.
. . .At the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Balck was serving in the Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH) as a staff officer in the Inspectorate of Motorized Troops, which was in charge of refitting and reorganizing the growing panzer forces. In October he was placed in command of one of the mechanised regiments of the 1st Panzer Division, with which he served during the Battle of France. The 1st Panzer Division made up a part of Guderian's panzer corps. Balck's regiment spearheaded a crossing over the Meuse, and established a bridgehead on the far side.
During the winter of 1940 through the spring of 1941 he commanded a panzer regiment, and led this unit during the Battle of Greece. He later commanded a panzer brigade in the same division. He returned to staff duties with the OKH in the Inspectorate of Armoured Forces in July 1941. In May 1942, Balck went to the Eastern Front in command of the 11th Panzer Division in Ukraine and southern Russia. Following the encirclement of the 6th Army at Stalingrad in the Soviet Operation Uranus, the German southern front faced a generalized collapse. Balck's division took part in the efforts to stop the Soviet advance. In battles along the Chir River his division destroyed an entire Soviet Tank Corps and much of the Soviet 5th Tank Army. For this and other achievements Balck was made one of only twenty-seven officers in the entire war who received the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords, and Diamonds.

Description of "Hermann Balck, Hitler’s Forgotten General" by Phillip Kay-Bujak:

Though less famous than Rommel or von Manstein, Hermann Balck was considered by peers and enemies to be among the most talented German commanders of the Second World War. He was a veteran of the First World War, in which he served as a junior officer on the Western, Eastern, Italian and Balkan fronts and was wounded seven times. In 1940 he led the successful crossing of the River Meuse with dramatic consequences.
Balck led from the front in the new and very dynamic and aggressive command style of Auftragstaktik- continuously touring forward HQs to brief officers personally, regardless of personal risk. He refused two offers to join the General Staff preferring to remain in combat roles. Balck was a pivotal moving force behind the growth of the Panzer forces. In 1942 he commanded a depleted division against massive odds, virtually destroying Soviet 5th Tank Army. He was rewarded with the Knights Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds (one of only 27 recipients) He briefly commanded Grossdeutschland Panzergrenadier Division and suggested Hitler was wrong in how the Waffen-SS was constructed. Philip Kay-Bujak argues that, had Hitler ignored Balck's criticisms of the Waffen-SS and promoted him Field Marshal, Balck might have changed the course of the war on the Eastern Front. It was also Balck that nearly defeated the Americans at Salerno in 1943.
Commanding Army Group G, in 1944 he came up against General Patton but could not halt his advance in Alsace. First sacked then reinstated by Hitler, he fought on until surrendering to US forces on 8 May 1945 to avoid capture by the Soviets. Post-war, as a convicted war criminal, Balck chose obscurity and refused to take part in US interviews but by the 1980's he changed his mind on both and advised NATO on how to win a land war against Russia - his tactics are still relevant today.

"Order in Chaos: The Memoirs of General of Panzer Troops Hermann Balck" by Hermann Balck, University Press of Kentucky, 2015 (Google Books):

German general Hermann Balck (1897–1982) was considered to be one of World War II's greatest battlefield commanders. His brilliantly fought battles were masterpieces of tactical agility, mobile counterattack, and the technique of Auftragstaktik, or "mission command." However, because he declined to participate in the U.S. Army's military history debriefing program, today he is known only to serious students of the war.
Drawing heavily on his meticulously kept wartime journals, Balck discusses his childhood and his career through the First and Second World Wars. His memoir details the command decision-making process as well as operations on the ground during crucial battles, including the Battle of the Marne in World War I and his incredible victories against a larger and better-equipped Soviet army at the Chir River in World War II. Balck also offers observations on Germany's greatest generals, such as Erich Ludendorff and Heinz Guderian, and shares his thoughts on international relations, domestic politics, and Germany's place in history. Available in English for the first time in an expertly edited and annotated edition, this important book provides essential information about the German military during a critical era in modern history.

Hoffmeister

2026-05-25T13:14:32.205-04:00

How Hitler Was Defeated

The Canadian Encyclopedia:

Major General Bertram (Bert) Meryl Hoffmeister, OC, CB, CBE, DSO & Two Bars, ED, Canadian Army officer, businessman (born 15 May 1907 in Vancouver, BC; died 4 December 1999 in Vancouver, BC). During the Second World War, Hoffmeister commanded the Seaforth Highlanders in Sicily, the 2nd Infantry Brigade at Ortona (1943) and the 5th Canadian Armoured Division, which distinguished itself under his courageous leadership in Italy and later in North-West Europe. Military historian Jack Granatstein has referred to Major General Hoffmeister as one of “the best Canadian fighting generals of the [Second world] war.”When the war ended, Hoffmeister resumed his career in the BC forest industry and was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1982.
. . .By February 1945, Hoffmeister’s division of 20,000 troops, 450 tanks, 5,600 wheeled vehicles and 320 carriers had sailed from the port of Leghorn, Italy to Marseilles, France and made their way north to join the First Canadian Army in the liberation of the western Netherlands, including the cities of Amsterdam, Rotterham and The Hague, as well as the liberation of Arnhem and Apeldoorn.
By early September 1944, Canadian and Allied forces had already defeated the Germans allowing for the liberation of southern parts of the Netherlands and providing Allied ships access to the vital port of Antwerp, Belgium. By the close of the war in May 1945, the First Canadian Army had liberated all of the Netherlands and provided food and medical aid to the starving population.

An excerpt from, "Forgotten Fights: The Canadian Black Watch at Verrières Ridge, July 1944" by David O'Keefe, National WWII Museum, June 8, 2020:

July 25 marks the 76th anniversary of the breakout by General Omar Bradley’s First US Army in Operation “Cobra,” which is the fulcrum of the Normandy narrative following the spectacular success of the landings on June 6. Lost in the commemoration of service and sacrifice on July 25 is the bloody Canadian-led clash on the eastern flank of the bridgehead—known as Operation Spring—that unfolded in concert with the American push and proved vital to that monumental victory.
Since the D-Day landings, American, British, and Canadian forces had been locked in a deathmatch with the Germans in the bocage country, battling tooth and nail to gain much needed elbow room in the crowded bridgehead. Having recovered quicker than expected from their initial shock, the German defenders had managed to rope off the bridgehead by early July, and as a result, a near stalemate developed. With success measured by feet and yards in an attritional struggle reminiscent of the charnel house battles of the First World War, the Western Allied effort paled compared to that of the Soviet Red Army juggernaut rampaging across Eastern Europe, churning up hundreds of miles at a clip, crushing German divisions and stealing world headlines.
Politically, the lack of decisive action and a corresponding dramatic victory weighed heavily on Allied command plagued by the backbeat of a Presidential election year in the US and increasing war weariness in Great Britain. As one Canadian Brigadier quipped, “the whip was out” to force a decision in Normandy, and General Eisenhower, under immense pressure, pushed 21st Army Group commander General Bernard Law Montgomery (Monty) to act more decisively. Dissatisfied with Montgomery’s current plan to hold with General Miles Dempsey’s Second British Army at Caen to permit Bradley’s Army to bash in the door at St. Lo, Ike ordered a two-fisted offensive to begin immediately. The results were Operations “Cobra” for the Americans and “Goodwood,” with its Canadian subsidiary “Atlantic,” for the Anglo-Canadian forces.
Goodwood, launched on July 18, ended abruptly just two days later despite promising success in its initial stages. Ultimately, the much-ballyhooed Goodwood failed when Dempsey’s armoured forces slammed headlong into the German-controlled Verrières-Bourguebus feature that sat roughly five miles south of Caen. This embryonic line, which by the second week in July formed the main German defensive hinge in Normandy, held firm, inflicted grievous losses and robbed the most elusive of all elements for success—momentum—from the British breakout bid.
However, amongst the misery came one bright spot; during the Canadian subsidiary operation, a small rupture of the German line appeared at the westernmost end of the feature known at that point simply as Verrières Ridge. An initial attempt by the fledgling 2nd Canadian Corps to exploit the breach failed, but out of this costly interlude, Operation Spring was born.

An excerpt from, "Hoffmeister in his Proving Ground, Sicily, July-August 1943" by Douglas E. Delaney, Canadian Military History 12, 3 (2003):

Hoffmeister realized, or came quickly to realize, the effect of a leader’s personal courage in war. Syd Thomson (who later commanded an infantry battalion under Hoffmeister during the Battle of Ortona) said it best:
During a sticky battle, morale is as important, if not more important than good tactics. On the scale of 1 to 10, morale will go from 4 to 9 just by the appearance of a senior commander in the line when and where the bullets are flying. Bert understood this.
Hoffmeister expected this sort of example from all his officers and showed no mercy for those in whom it was lacking. One officer who cowered during the engagement at Valguarnera - taking his subordinates with him in hasty retreat – Hoffmeister relieved immediately after the event. That officer may very well have been capable of making good tactical decisions; he had probably done so in training. But this was war – an infantryman’s war; it took more than sound management skills, regimental pride or charisma to make organizations work. It took courage.
Sections, platoons, companies and battalions were comprised of individual soldiers who were subject to the same fears and apprehensions as any other human beings. Yet soldiers in combat had to face those fears more intensely, and more often. Good commanders, like Hoffmeister, carried soldiers beyond their apprehensions and convinced them that they were all on the “same airplane.”

Rommel

2026-05-24T13:04:14.565-04:00

Wikipedia:

Rommel was a highly decorated officer in World War I and awarded the Pour le Mérite for his actions on the Italian Front. In 1937, he published his classic book on military tactics, Infantry Attacks, drawing on his experiences in that war. In World War II, he commanded the 7th Panzer Division during the 1940 invasion of France. His leadership of German and Italian forces in the North African campaign established his reputation as one of the ablest tank commanders of the war, and earned him the nickname der Wüstenfuchs, "the Desert Fox". Among his British adversaries he had a reputation for chivalry, and his phrase "war without hate" has been uncritically used to describe the North African campaign.
. . .Rommel was famous in his lifetime, including among adversaries. His tactical prowess and decency in the treatment of Allied prisoners earned him the respect of opponents including Claude Auchinleck, Archibald Wavell, George S. Patton, and Bernard Montgomery.
. . .Nevertheless, there are many officers who admire his methods, like Norman Schwarzkopf who described Rommel as a genius at battles of movement saying "Look at Rommel. Look at North Africa, the Arab-Israeli wars, and all the rest of them. A war in the desert is a war of mobility and lethality. It's not a war where straight lines are drawn in the sand and [you] say, 'I will defend here or die." Ariel Sharon deemed the military model used by Rommel superior that used by Montgomery. His compatriot Moshe Dayan considered Rommel a model and icon. Wesley Clark states that "Rommel's military reputation...has lived on, and still sets the standard for a style of daring, charismatic leadership to which most officers aspire." During later desert wars, Rommel's theories attracted interest from policymakers and military instructors. Chinese military leader Sun Li-jen had the laudatory nickname "Rommel of the East". Certain military historians are sceptical of Rommel as an operational, let alone strategic level commander. They point to Rommel's lack of appreciation for Germany's strategic situation, his misunderstanding of the relative importance of his theatre to German High Command, poor grasp of logistical realities, and, according to Ian Beckett, "penchant for glory hunting". Citino credits Rommel's limitations as an operational level commander as "materially contributing" to the demise of the Axis in Africa, while Addington focuses on the struggle over strategy, whereby Rommel's initial brilliant success resulted in "catastrophic effects" for Germany in Africa. Porch highlights Rommel's "offensive mentality", symptomatic of Wehrmacht commanders as a whole, that tactical and operational victories would lead to strategic success.
. . .Joseph Forbes comments: "The complex, conflict-filled interaction between Rommel and his superiors over logistics, objectives and priorities should not be used to detract from Rommel's reputation as a remarkable military leader", because Rommel was not given powers over logistics, and because if only generals who attain strategic goals are great, such highly regarded commanders as Robert E. Lee, Hannibal, and Charles XII would be excluded. General Siegfried Storbeck of the Bundeswehr, remarks that, Rommel's leadership style and offensive thinking, although carrying risks like losing overview of the situation and creating overlapping authority, have been proved effective, and been analysed and incorporated in the training of officers by "us, our Western allies, the Warsaw Pact, and even the Israel Defense Forces". Maurice Remy defends his strategic decision regarding Malta as, although risky, the only logical choice.
Rommel was among the few Axis commanders targeted for assassination by Allied planners. Two attempts were made, the first was Operation Flipper in North Africa in 1941, and the second was Operation Gaff in Normandy in 1944. Research by Norman Ohler claims Rommel's behaviour was heavily influenced by Pervitin which he took in heavy doses. Ohler refers to him as "the Crystal Fox"—playing off the nickname "Desert Fox".
. . .According to revisionist authors, an assessment of Rommel's role in history has been hampered by views formed for political reasons, creating what historians have called the "Rommel myth". The interpretation considered by some historians to be a myth is the depiction of the Field Marshal as an apolitical, brilliant commander and victim of Nazi Germany who participated in the 20 July plot against Hitler. There are authors who refer to "Rommel Myth" or "Rommel Legend" in a neutral or positive manner, though. The seeds of the myth can be found first in Rommel's drive for success as a young officer in World War I and in his popular 1937 book Infantry Attacks, which was written in a style that diverged from other military literature and became a best-seller.

An excerpt from, "Infantry Attacks" by Erwin Rommel, Greenhill Books, London, 1995, Introduction by Manfred Rommel:

My father wrote Infantry Attacks (Infanterie Greift an) in the first half of the 1930s. It was intended as a textbook for the infantry and in it my father drew on his own experiences as an infantry officer during the First World War. Anyone who reads it will notice that my own future existence was repeatedly and seriously in danger, for my father only survived the battles he was in by sheer luck. Had he not done so, I would not have been born in 1928. My father, incidentally, said once that in order to become a hero one must above all survive. Later on, I found this same thought expressed in the works of Elias Canetti.
From my early childhood, as soon as I began to be awarc of the world around me, I knew my father was a hero, Everybody said so; nobody doubted it. That would not have been possible in any case, as my father had been awarded the highest and very rare Prussian order for valour "Pour le Mérite', in the famous shape of a bluc Maltese cross, and established by Frederick the Great. The French name for the award made many of my compatriots uncasy at a time when most Germans only dealt with their French ncighbours over gunsights. I remember some building labourers who considered me, then aged four, to be the correct fount of knowledge on why my father's medal had such a suspicious French name. Nevertheless, this order was regarded by people at that time with the same respect we would now accord the Nobel Prize. When my parents werc out, I used to take my father's medals out of the drawer, pin them on my chest and look at myself in the mirror: unquestionably a most impressive sight.
At that time my father was living in Goslar, in the Hartz mountains, as commander of a Jagerbataillon (literally: hunter battalion), which during the Napoleonic Wars, had been in the service of the King of England in the conquest of Gibraltar. This battalion consisted mostly of descendants of foresters, who only respected a man if he was a hunter. So my father had no choice but to qualify as a hunter and to adorn his home with horns and antlers of the beasts he had shot. He removed all our ancestors portraits and used the wall space for his trophies. He would even have removed the pictures of my mother and myself and substituted trophies instead, had he not encountered strong opposition from the family.
I have always been extremely fond of my father, because he was a warm-hearted person, because he devoted a great deal of time to me, bccause he even listened to me and declared me to be intelligent, and because he was an inventive and imaginative story-teller of both fact and fiction.
In this book, however, nothing is fiction. Easily though it reads, it is the result of self-criticism. My father was a good mathematician, and as a mathematician he was used to doubting conceptions and vicws. He submitted his own actions-to his critical judgement, and considered that only through self-criticism and continuous evaluation of experiences had he become a good tactician and qualified military leader. So, after the First World War, he devoted a great deal of time to critical study of the operations in which he had been involved and the battles in which he had commanded. He made enquiries of other officcrs and soldicrs and carefully evaluated the information he reccived. With my mother, he even visited, on a motorbike, the part of Italy where he had stayed during the war, taking hundreds of photographs and making sketches. It goes without saying that my father did not indicate his profession on the passport he used for the trip as 'military commander' but as engineer,' in order to avoid any unpleasant memories for the Italians.
During the Second World War, too, my father tried always to record his adventures and experiences on paper as soon as possible in order to find out what could have been done better. His writings were published after the war.
My father was professional soldier. In the German Reich prior to 1933, professional soldicrs were not allowed cither to become involved in politics or to vote. Therefore the soldiers considered themselves as apolitical and thereby not responsible for politics. This principle was a sound one and perfectly acceptable as long as there was democracy in Germany. But after Hitler had become Chancellor of the Reich in 1933 and had reccived a majority of two-thirds of the votes of the German Reichstag, this principle became fatal. In general, it is worth mentioning that all secondary virtues such as bravery, discipline, loyalty and perseverance only have validity so long as they are used in a good causc. When a positive cause becomes negative, these virtues become question- able. The German army had to experience this bitter truth during Hitler's regime. Hitler's attention was drawn to my father when he read Infanterie Greift an. In 1938 he summoned my father and appointed him, in the event of army mobilisation, commander of the Führerhauptquar- ticr, an administrative military post to which my father was little suited. However Hitler respected him as a soldier, and in 1940gave him command of a tank division which played an important role during the German offensive against Anglo-French troops that year. In 1941, my father was appointed German commander in North Africa. He stayed there, with some interruptions, until March 1943, when Hitler, as a result of my father's pessimistic views on the future of the war so far as Germany was concerned, relieved him from his post.
In spring 1944, my father became supreme commander of the German Army Group B in Northern France, Belgium and the Netherlands. After the Normandy landings, it became clearer by the day that the German troops were going to face an annihilating defeat. In this situation my father decided -if necessary on his own responsibility -to surrender in France when the Allied troops broke through. This he judged the appropriate moment taking into account the men under his command. He wanted to avoid, at all costs, the possibility that in the last phase of the catastrophe Germans might shoot Germans in his area of command. My father also had links with the conspirators in Berlin, but did not think they would be able to achieve a revolution or attempt an attack on Hitler himself. On 17 July, 1944, my father was severely wounded in Normandy during an attack by British low-flying aircraft. When Graf Stauffenberg, on 20 July tried to assassinate Hitler, my father was still urconscious. As is well known, Stauffenberg's attempt failed, Hitler set in motion exhaustive investigations amongst the conspirators, and in the process it became known that my father had intended to turn against Hitler. Hitler, therefore, decided to exterminate my father, and this decision was implemented on 14 October, 1944. Two generals, charged by Hitler with this mission, delivered Hitler's 'offer' to our house at Herrlingen near Ulm: that my father should agrec to be poisoned. Provided he agreed, he was assured that the customary measures against his family - removal to a concentration camp - would not be taken. Nor would investigations be made about his staff officers, My father, who was convinced that Hitler would never put him public trial, decided on death. He asked for the favour of ten minutes' on respite to say goodbye to my mother, myself and his staff officer. This he was granted, And so we knew how he had to die. Hitler arranged a state funcral for him, and at Hitler's command the NS-Press celebrated my father once more as a war hero, so that those whom Hitler sent into the senseless battles of the last months of the war, could take him as their inspiration.

James Vincent Forrestal

2026-05-23T19:55:38.798-04:00

Men at the top of their careers and professional conquests do not committ suicide. Only in movies do disgruntled souls jump from windows.

Forrestal was slandered before he was killed.

And the murder of Forrestal is not ancient history. His killers still rule Washington today. They only murder as a last resort. They took care of Massie with political pressure and a media campaign. But they're not afraid to kill in the open if the situation demands it and the threat is too big to silence otherwise. To them Massie was a political nuisance who could be dismissed politically.

But in multiple other cases they've drawn blood. And blood must be avenged, especially when the best and the brightest of a nation are killed.

Wikipedia:

James Vincent Forrestal (February 15, 1892 – May 22, 1949) was the last cabinet-level United States secretary of the Navy and the first United States secretary of defense.
. . .Although Forrestal told associates he had decided to resign, he was reportedly shattered when Truman abruptly asked for his resignation. His letter of resignation was tendered on March 28, 1949, and his condition steadily deteriorated. On the day of Forrestal's resignation from office, he was reported to have gone into a daze and was flown on a Navy airplane to the estate of Under Secretary of State Robert A. Lovett in Hobe Sound, Florida, where Forrestal's wife, Josephine, was vacationing. William C. Menninger of the Menninger Clinic in Kansas was consulted and he diagnosed "severe depression" of the type "seen in operational fatigue during the war". The Menninger Clinic had successfully treated similar cases during the war, but Forrestal's wife, his friend and associate Ferdinand Eberstadt, Menninger, and Navy psychiatrist Captain George N. Raines decided to send the patient to the National Naval Medical Center (NNMC) in Bethesda, Maryland.[39] He was checked into NNMC five days later. The decision to house him on the 16th floor instead of the first floor was justified in the same way. Forrestal's condition was officially announced as "nervous and physical exhaustion"; his lead doctor, Captain Raines, diagnosed his condition as "depression" or "reactive depression". As a person who prized anonymity and once stated that his hobby was "obscurity", Forrestal, with his policies, had been the constant target of vicious personal attacks from columnists, including Drew Pearson and Walter Winchell. Pearson's protégé, Jack Anderson, later asserted that Pearson "hectored Forrestal with innuendos and false accusations".
Forrestal seemed to be on the road to recovery, having regained 12 pounds (5.4 kg) since his admission into the hospital. However, in the early morning hours of May 22, his body, clad only in the bottom half of a pair of pajamas, was found on a third-floor roof below the sixteenth-floor kitchen across the hall from his room. Forrestal's alleged last written statement, touted in the contemporary press and later biographers as an implied suicide note, was part of a poem from W. M. Praed's translation of Sophocles' tragedy Ajax:
Fair Salamis, the billows' roar,
Wander around thee yet,
And sailors gaze upon thy shore
Firm in the Ocean set.
Thy son is in a foreign clime
Where Ida feeds her countless flocks,
Far from thy dear, remembered rocks,
Worn by the waste of time–
Comfortless, nameless, hopeless save
In the dark prospect of the yawning grave....
Woe to the mother in her close of day,
Woe to her desolate heart and temples gray,
When she shall hear
Her loved one's story whispered in her ear!
"Woe, woe!" will be the cry–
No quiet murmur like the tremulous wail
Of the lone bird, the querulous nightingale–

Sir Stanley Maude

2026-05-23T14:26:41.565-04:00

Wikipedia:

Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Stanley Maude KCB CMG DSO (24 June 1864 – 18 November 1917) was a British Army officer. He is known for his operations in the Mesopotamian campaign during the First World War and for conquering Baghdad in 1917.
. . .Maude arrived to catch the end of the British failure at the Siege of Kut where he was promoted to temporary lieutenant general, replacing Lieutenant General G. F. Gorringe as commander of the newly dubbed Tigris Corps (III Indian Army Corps) in July 1916. Despite being instructed to do no more than hold the existing line, Maude set about to re-organising and re-supplying his mixed British and Indian forces. He was made commander of all Allied forces in Mesopotamia in late July 1916, replacing Sir Percy Lake.
. .Given reinforcements and more equipment, Maude directed his force in a steady series of victories. Advancing up the Tigris and winning the battles of Mohammed Abdul Hassan, Hai and Dahra in January 1917, recapturing Kut in February 1917, he took Baghdad on 11 March 1917, shortly after his rank of lieutenant-general had been made permanent, "in recognition of his distinguished service in the field as Commander-in-Chief of the Forces in Mesopotamia".[27] (He issued the Proclamation of Baghdad on 19 March.) From Baghdad, he launched the Samarrah Offensive and extended his operations to the Euphrates and Diyala rivers.
. . .After a lull over the summer, in November 1917, whilst his forces were engaged at Ramadi and Tikrit, Maude contracted cholera (some sources[which?] claim it was caught from drinking unboiled milk) and died in the same house as German Field Marshal von der Goltz nineteen months earlier.

An excerpt from, "The life of Sir Stanley Maude" by Charles Edward Callwell, London, Constable and Company, Ltd., 1920, pg. 320:

When endeavouring to sum up the salient features in the character, the qualifications and the methods of Sir Stanley Maude as soldier and man, the biographer enjoys this great advantage : the achievements of the subject of this Memoir were so conspicuous, his popularity amongst those who came into close contact with him was so unquestionable, and his nature was so unselfish, that there is no temptation to gloss over such minor shortcomings as ought in the interests of truth and of example to be touched upon. Where assets are so rich and overflowing, there is no excuse for concealing a few liabilities. Maude's fellow-countrymen will ever regard him primarily as a soldier, and it is in his capacity of soldier that he will in the first instance be discussed here. Nor can an examination of his attributes as an officer be more appropriately initiated than by indicating certain points in his disposition and in his normal procedure which lay him open to some tempered disparagement. Reference has already been made to them in passages scattered through earlier chapters of this volume.
By nature Maude was exceedingly tenacious — an invaluable trait for a soldier to possess in many situations. As one of his warmest friends indeed says of him in the striking appreciation quoted on p. Ill : ' When he did speak he put the pros and cons clearly and concisely and gave a decided opinion, from which nothing would turn him.' (The italics are the author's.) Fixity of purpose was one of his most valid professional resources, because he was generally right. But no man can always be right, and if Maude by any chance happened to be wrong, this characteristic of his lost its merits — as is illustrated by an incident which occurred when he was serving as a regimental subaltern in the Coldstream Guards.

The Coming Western Revolt Against Israel And Islam

2026-05-20T20:45:52.187-04:00

They asked nicely. The next generation of leaders won't.

The AI Crisis

2026-05-17T16:22:06.896-04:00

Video Title: The AI Crisis. Source: New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove. Date Published: May 17, 2026.

General Suvorov - Russia’s Legendary Commander Who Never Lost a Battle

2026-05-17T14:43:40.796-04:00

Video Title: General Suvorov - Russia’s Legendary Commander Who Never Lost a Battle. Source: Generals And Napoleon. Date Published: June 1, 2025. Description:

General Alexander Suvorov is regarded as one of the most successful military commanders in history. Known for his unbroken string of victories and unorthodox tactics, Suvorov shaped the Russian army and left a lasting legacy on European warfare. Special guest & author John Kuehn walks us through his legendary career and his unfortunate death right before the Napoleonic Wars.

John Geiger - The Third Man Factor

2026-05-15T22:47:08.714-04:00

Wikipedia:

John Grigsby Geiger CM is a Canadian journalist, author and shipwreck hunter. He is best known for his book The Third Man Factor: Surviving the Impossible, which popularized the concept of the "third man", an incorporeal being that aids people under extreme duress. The book is the basis for a National Geographic Channel video entitled Explorer: The Angel Effect, in which Geiger appears. In turn, a second book on the topic, based on, and taking its name from the National Geographic video, was published in 2013. His other works include the international bestseller Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition.
In 2008, Geiger authored, with Peter Suedfeld, the scholarly study, ‘The Sensed Presence as a Coping Resource in Extreme Environments.’ In 2009, The Third Man Factor: Surviving the Impossible was published in 13 countries. The foreword was written by Vincent Lam. The book is about the third man factor where people at the very edge of death, often adventurers or explorers, experience a sense of an incorporeal being—a "third man"—beside them who encourages them to make one final effort to survive. The experience, which resembles a guardian angel, has been reported by scores of people, including well-known figures like Sir Ernest Shackleton, Joshua Slocum, Frank Smythe, Charles Lindbergh, Reinhold Messner, Ann Bancroft, and Stephanie Schwabe.

Video Title: John Geiger - The Third Man Factor. Source: ideacity. Date Published: March 1, 2018.

Dr. Lando DC w/ Leo Zagami: The Frankist Monster

2026-05-15T15:07:10.128-04:00

"The Rise and Fall of a Frankist Monster: Exposing Jeffrey Epstein and The Most Powerful Jewish Sect in the World" by Leo Zagami.

Video Title: Dr. Lando DC w/ Leo Zagami: The Frankist Monster. Source: Alfa Vedic. Date Published: May 14, 2026. Description:

Dr. Lando DC is joined by the renowned write-researcher, Leo Zagami for an intriguing expose on the much larger story behind the Jeffrey Epstein narrative.

Off The Left Eye: Why Old Age Makes Us Like Children Again—But Wiser

2026-05-11T22:24:00.000-04:00

Video Title: Why Old Age Makes Us Like Children Again—But Wiser. Source: Off The Left Eye. Date Published: May 11, 2026.

The Migration of Myths And The Cross-Cultural Participation In Shared Divine Truths

2026-05-09T22:52:00.001-04:00

Wikipedia:

Wilfred Cantwell Smith, (July 21, 1916 – February 7, 2000) was a Canadian Islamicist, comparative religion scholar, and Presbyterian minister. He was the founder of the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University in Quebec and later the director of Harvard University's Center for the Study of World Religions. The Harvard University Gazette said he was one of the field's most influential figures of the past century. In his 1962 work The Meaning and End of Religion he notably questioned the modern sectarian concept of religion.

. . .Smith pointed out that terms for major world religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, and Shintoism did not exist until the 19th century. He suggested that practitioners historically did not view their practices as "religion" until cultural self-regard prompted them to see their practices as different from others. For Smith, the modern concept of religion emerged from identity politics and apologetics.

Through an etymological study, Smith argued that "religion" originally denoted personal piety but evolved to mean a system of observances or beliefs, a shift institutionalized through reification. He traced this transformation from Lucretius and Cicero through Lactantius and Augustine, with the term "faith" predominating in the Middle Ages. The Renaissance revived "religio," which retained its personal practice emphasis. During the 17th-century Catholic-Protestant debates, religion began to refer to abstract systems of beliefs, a concept further reified during the Enlightenment, exemplified by G.W.F. Hegel's definition of religion as a self-subsisting transcendent idea.

An excerpt from, "Towards a World Theology: Faith and the Comparative History of Religion" by Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Orbis Books, 1989, Pg. 6 - 11:

My task in this introductory chapter is to help us become more aware of this truth; or simply to remind us of it. The unity of humankind's religious history is obvious, once one sees it. We have, however, been assiduously trained not to see it. Even more strongly, we have been pressured not to think it; and not to feel it. Yet today it beckons our minds. I cannot, of course, at best do more than hurriedly suggest it and partially illustrate it, in one brief presentation here. An ambition of mine has for some time been to try my hand, before I die, at writing a world history of religion in the singular: century by century, rather than in the more customary fashion of system by system. For the moment, we must content ourselves rather with a perspective opened up by two or three, I hope illuminating, examples.
First we turn to Russia in the nineteenth century, to the figure of Leo Tolstoi. As is well known, this intense and brilliant aristocrat underwent in mid-life a drastic spiritual conversion. After a somewhat dissipated youth, and then for a time the career of an army officer, he had become a relatively well-to-do landlord and illustrious writer; then, in what seemed a sudden right-about-face, he turned, in a dramatic renunciation, from worldly success to an ascetic life of non-violence, poverty and social service. It was a religious conversion of a fairly classic pattern. Behind him lay sufficient fame, and within him sufficient power, that the move had considerable repercussion.
This shift by Tolstoi from the worldly life to the spiritual, by which his personal religious crisis was resolved, appeared sudden. Yet it may be recognised as the product of profound forces that had for long been operating in his mind and personality. In his subsequent Confessions, widely circulated, he indicates that the conversion was crystallised rather suddenly by his reaction to a transparent fable from the Lives of the Saints. Clearly the entire process was enmeshed in the large context of his ambivalent but deep relations to the Church and to the whole Christian complex, most conspicuously his study of the Gospels, as he makes clear in his powerful writings produced at about this time: his attacks upon institutionalised Church and State and his exalting of the humble and meek. This one particular fable, however, seems to have served as a catalyst. In this tale, the human condition is portrayed as like that of a man who, fleeing from a furious beast, falls into a well and is held from dropping into the jaws of a devouring dragon below only by clinging to a bush that will, he sees, presently inevitably give way, since it is being nibbled at by two mice, one white and one black, that go round and round and slowly but relentlessly gnaw at its roots. The two mice are day and night; the bush, which tastes sweet at first but soon loses its savour, is one's worldly position; man knows that he or she must in due course die.
This myth, or parable, evidently made a profound impression on Tolstoi, quite changing the course of his existence. He had come to find his life hauntingly vacuous: meaningless despite his position, wealth and fame. His readiness to turn his back on his worldly goods, and to start afresh by going forth into the world in ascetic piety, was given form by this particular fable and triggered as he accepted it for himself. Of it he writes in his Confession, 'This is no fable. It is a real unanswerable truth.'
Our reason for noting this tale is that it formed part of a complex that had indeed had an altogether remarkable power; not only in Tolstoi's life, but in that of many thousands, if not millions, of others. It came to him from Christian hagiography, in an account of the lives of Saints Barlaam and Josaphat, to use their Latin names. This story, still alive and effective in nineteenth-century Russia, had there and elsewhere a striking---one could almost say, stunning---history.
Throughout mediaeval Christendom it had been extremely popular: more influential than nowadays we can readily conceive. Indeed, it is hard for our non-ascetic and literarily cluttered minds to credit the onetime widespread prevalence of such a legend. The Russian tale was taken from an early Greek version, from which had come also a Latin, which in turn spread of course in Western Europe. Among other Slavonic languages into which the tale was rendered, and in which it became popular, were Czech and Polish. The West had vernacular versions not only in Italian, Spanish, French, German, and the like, as well as Swedish and Norwegian, but also in, for instance, Icelandic, in which there was a translation as early as about 1204. The mediaeval Christian consciousness was in no negligible part formed by this story. Its central theme is the renunciation of worldly power and wealth by a young prince, Josaphat, who, under the influence of the preaching of an otherworldly hermit, Barlaam, is baptised a Christian, abdicates his throne, and goes off into the wilderness in ascetic piety. He has left the world of pomp and pelf and worldly power to seek instead moral and spiritual truth.
Although the story as presented is explicitly Christian, the scene is set in India. Josaphat is portrayed as an Indian prince, converted by Barlaam, a Sinai desert monk.
The Greek version, underlying, as we have said, virtually all the Christian mediaeval ones, east and west, was for long attributed to John of Damascus. It is now known, however, to have been produced rather in the eleventh century on Mt Athos by a Georgian monk; and to have been taken by him from a simpler Georgian rendering, of the tenth or more probably the ninth century.
It was the Georgians - that 'Christian nation of the East' - who had turned the story into a Christian tale.
Their original, however, was Islamic. They had taken the story from a Muslim source, circulating in Arabic. The motif was the same: Muslim piety also at that time was receptive to an otherworldly spirituality articulated in a tale of a wealthy prince who turns his back on the material world to go out in search of salvation in devout asceticism. The Arabic version itself maintained a long and widespread popularity in the Muslim community. For example, in the nineteenth century an edition was lithographed in Bombay, and the new Ahmadiyyah movement in Islam took it up and adapted it for its own purposes. One may note in passing also that, alongside the continuingly prevalent popularity of the Muslim Arabic version, from the Greek rendering of the Georgian Christian modification of this tale there came also later a Christian Arabic version, which circulated among Christians in the Near East.
The story was not, however, original with the Muslims. Rather, they gave it an Islamic form; but they had got it in Central Asia from the Manichees - that fascinating community which for some centuries in Western Asia established itself, grew and flourished, and looked for a time as if it might prove to be one of the most expansively successful of the world's religious movements. Theirs was a syncretising movement; and it is not surprising to discover that they in turn had incorporated into their spiritual lore from Sogdian, Middle Persian and old Turkish sources this particular story, along with others, from the Buddhist movement, which in the first half of the first millennium A.D. had in missionary zeal firmly penetrated Central Asia.
For the legend is indeed a Buddhist one. It was fundamentally the story of Siddhartha Gautama and his setting forth from his palace home, having turned his back on family, wealth and worldly power to go off in search of enlightenment. He became 'the Buddha' on gaining that enlightenment under the Bo tree; at the time of his Great Renunciation he was, not yet a Buddha, but a future Buddha, or 'Bodhisattva'. This word appears then in the Manichee versions as Bodisaf, in the Arabic version as Yudasaf, in the Georgian as lodasaph, in the Greek as loasaph, and in the Latin as Josaphat.
The particular form of this Buddhist story that gave rise to the wide-spreading tale is itself an amalgam, partly found in a text known as the Lalitavistara, composed in Sanskrit in the fourth or perhaps the second century A.D. The Mahayana movement had picked up the motif, and presently carried it also to China and Japan.
The story of origins does not stop here, however. The particular fable with which we began, that of the man in the well with the circulating black and white mice nibbling away at his precarious hold on life, a tale that had become incorporated into the Barlaam and Josaphat legend, and which struck Tolstoi with symbolic force, the Buddhists had added to the story of their own saviour. They picked it up for incoporation from either a Hindu or a Jain source. For both these communities are known to have made use of the fable, in their own spiritual teachings.
There is some suggestion that it may ultimately have had a pre- Aryan origin.
Let us, next, supplement our following back of the complex and rather astonishing career of this story by retracing our steps, forwards. From its prevalence in the Muslim world it spread then also to Jewish circles. Abraham ben Hasdai in Barcelona in the early thirteenth century produced from the Arabic, with appropriate adaptations, a Hebrew version, and this became widespread in the Jewish world. Of the Jewish tale, the sixteenth century saw a Constantinople edition, and an Italian; the eighteenth, German and Polish. Also in the eighteenth century a German translation appeared, followed by another German paraphrase; and as recently as the nineteenth century it re-emerged in a Yiddish version.
We may, however, push the matter still further. Although it is entrancing to discover that Tolstoi, in nineteenth-century Russia, had his spiritual life given shape by a story that we can trace from the Jains, and perhaps from pre-Sanskritic India, and although it is also significant that his writings about his conversion, although suppressed for a time within Russia, were published in Geneva and translated into most Western languages and circulated far and wide, none the less the story does not end there. It is not merely a question of the West's being influenced from the Orient, a situation that has marked its religious history for long. Also striking is that at the turn of this century, in London, a young and brilliant Westernising intellectual from India, who had come there to study British law, met such works of Tolstoi's and was in his turn profoundly stirred by them. His name was M. K. Gandhi.
The impact made on the young Gandhi by reading Tolstoi was great; not only in the sense that it hit him hard at the time, but also in that it changed the course of his life also, with consequences ramifying throughout his career and ultimately throughout the world. He did not immediately abandon 'the world.' He did turn to a concern for service to others; for spiritual inwardness; and for moral purity and ascetic discipline. He read the Bhagavad Gita first in London, in English. In South Africa, somewhat later, when the welfare of his fellow Indians took precedence for him over his own career and other concerns, he established near Johannesburg as the embodiment of his then vision what he chose to call Tolstoy Farm. For a time, Tolstoi's influence was perhaps as decisive in Gandhi's thinking and feeling as that of any one thinker. No doubt over the years, not least after he left England and later South Africa and settled once more in India, he turned more and more back to his own Indian tradition, in a complex way both Jain and 'Hindu': and there (and in the influence that of course he had consciously and unconsciously absorbed from it as a child) he rediscovered nurture for, deepening of, and elaborations from, his in one sense new spiritual and humane orientation. Yet, as with Tolstoi, and with others, a particular matter had served as a catalyst for spiritual capacity deep within him, long tacitly developing, and for spiritual response to an ancient tradition round about him. One might almost say that he spent the rest of his life as it were repatriating to India and exploring the Indian basis of and articulations for the impetus and aspiration of a style of moral living that India as a whole had never lost but for which Europe had at a given moment supplied him with the activating symbol --- a figuration that Europe itself a millennium or so earlier had borrowed for its own spiritual life, and whose dynamic he was now, as it were, taking back home.
We should seem, then, to have come full circle: from India to India via Sogdiana, Baghdad, Georgia, Mt Athos, Kiev, Geneva, London and Durban.
The circle does not stop spinning, however. Gandhi's most important twenticth-century disciple, it has been suggested, is perhaps Martin Luther King, whose non-violence both as a formulated ideal and as a deep character orientation he learned in substantial part from Gandhi.

"The Red Baron" Jean Christophe Iseux von Pfetten On The Success of The China Model

2026-05-04T09:00:00.000-04:00

Apethorpe Palace, home of Tudor and Stuart monarchs, now the property of Jean Christophe Iseux von Pfetten, and made available for public tourism in July and August.

Wikipedia:

Jean Christophe Iseux, Baron von Pfetten zu St. Mariakirchen (born 11 November 1967 in Lyon), is a diplomat, academic and landowner.
Pfetten was the first European appointed as member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference at local level.
Pfetten hosted a series of private meetings on Iran's nuclear programme attended by top military commanders from Iran and Israel as well as senior officials from the P5 nations.
. . .Pfetten received his BSc and MSc (Physics and Chemistry) from the University of Strasbourg, and, his Dipl. Eng. Geophysicist from the Institut de Physique du Globe (admissible to the Ecole Normale Supérieure) and thereafter won a European Erasmus scholarship. In 1989 he patented two inventions in the fields of nuclear submarine and of hydraulic fracturing which he presented at the SPE (Society of Petroleum Engineers) Production Operations Symposium on April 7–9, 1991 in Oklahoma, USA. In the same year he received a master's degree in management studies from Templeton College, Oxford University and a Master of Philosophy in international relations from Trinity Hall, Cambridge University. In 1992 he attained a master's degree in political science from the University of Bonn.
. . .Pfetten currently holds non-executive positions on the boards of several multinationals. Pfetten has been credited with attracting around 2% of total foreign direct investment into China since 2002.
. . .The Financial Times, Newsweek and The Spectator reported that between June and October 2013 Pfetten organized two rounds of back-channel diplomatic meetings on the issue of Iran's nuclear program. The first round, hosted by the Institute for East West Strategic Studies and held at Green Templeton College, Oxford, brought together senior Chinese and Israeli officials. A second, more confidential round of talks, hosted by Pfetten in his French chateau, was moderated by former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke and French Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie. Attendees included Major General Huang Baifu, vice chairman of the China Institute for International Strategic Studies; a former chief of general staff of the Iranian Air Force; as well as General Doron Avital, chairman of the Israeli Knesset's Security and Defense Committee. Pfetten told The Financial Times that the "Track II" meeting was "aimed at persuading Beijing to take a more pro-active involvement in the Middle East" and emphasized 'the willingness of China and the US to work hand-in-hand in resolving the Iranian nuclear issue.'

Wikipedia:

Apethorpe Palace, formerly known as "Apethorpe Hall", is a Grade I listed country house, dating to the 15th century, close to Apethorpe, Northamptonshire. It was a "favourite royal residence" for James I. After restoration by English Heritage the house was sold in 2015 to Jean Christophe Iseux von Pfetten as his "private residence", under an arrangement where it is "open during July and August for pre-booked tours only", these managed by English Heritage.

An excerpt from, "Red Baron's Jacobean Apethorpe Palace marks its rebirth with party" by Maev Kennedy, The Guardian, June 13, 2016:

Just 18 months after Jean Christophe Iseux, Baron von Pfetten, spent £2.5m on a house with 48 bedrooms but no running water, he has decided to give a little party. A few score of his closest friends, including the Duke of Kent, are invited for champagne, music and dinner on Tuesday evening, with entertainment by the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
. . .Von Pfetten, a diplomat, Oxford academic and champion foxhound breeder, has been nicknamed “the Red Baron” for his years as an adviser to the Chinese government on everything from inward investment to Iran’s nuclear programme; the Chinese guests will include a government member and the head of an oil company.
. . .The house served as a borstal for much of the 20th century until it was bought in poor repair by a Libyan businessman, Wanis Mohammed Burweila, said locally never to have spent a single night there. He left abruptly, never to return, after the murder of PC Yvonne Fletcher at the Libyan embassy in 1984.
The house only survived through the heroic efforts of the elderly gardener, and the caretaker, George Kelley. Their salaries stopped but they kept the grounds in check, patrolling the house, chasing off vandals, putting buckets and saucepans under leaks, collecting dead pigeons and blocking up broken windows. Despite their efforts, the house seemed doomed to join the long roll call of lost mansions until the government finally stepped in to save it. Kelley, who was awarded an MBE in 2008 for his efforts, has now retired but returns most days to walk his dog in the grounds.
Von Pfetten insists Apethorpe will be a family home but not a closed world, and has signed an agreement to admit the public for 50 days of each of the next 80 years – this year by guided tours in July and August.

An excerpt from, "Democracy in China" by Jean Christophe Iseux von Pfetten, Xinhua, March 7, 2023:

The re-emergence of China as a considerable source of economic and political power in the international sphere, the disturbances to Western democracy, and the attempt of various people to re-establish something akin to the Cold War between the West and the East, make it essential, if we are to avert another world catastrophe, that we understand each other better. In particular, the West needs to understand how China works today.
China and the West are deeply different in their culture and history. Western thought is based on a monotheistic tradition, derived from Christianity. There is one God, and religion consists of a bundle of elements, including ritual, dogma, eschatology and ethics. In Asia, on the other hand, there is no such bundle.
At the heart of the difficulty to understand China through a Western lens is the difference in logic between the West and the East. In practical terms, Western logic gives the Western world a Judeo-Christian principle of right and wrong (or black and white, with few shades of grey), while Eastern logic gives China a Confucian "Doctrine of the Mean" (principle of harmony with many shades of grey, and little that is black or white), where everything is in a transitional state of becoming (yin and yang).
Western social structure is based on extreme individualism, particularly in the Anglo-sphere, as opposed to the group-based system of China where family comes before the individual -- the individual still being respected within the group.
There are many other deep differences. The basically competitive and aggressive, militaristic world of the West, with constant wars, struggles and fights, is totally different from the tradition of China based on harmony, the avoidance of war if possible, and collaboration rather than competition (Sun Tzu).
. . .The multi-party system is difficult to apply to China for reasons to do with stability. China has experienced many appalling civil wars, invasions and outside imperialist pressures. This means that it is incredibly difficult to create a system that holds together a population of almost 1.4 billion people, extending over an area as large as Western and Eastern Europe and Western Russia combined. China is also culturally hugely diverse, with many minorities and many languages.
China's 2,000-year-old imperial and bureaucratic system, established by the first Qin Emperor in 221 B.C., is being replaced by a new system, which combines old and new. This is being done through consultation within the wider society at every level of the administration and with lively debates among intra-party factions. The process answers the modern principle of multi-party representation. I have witnessed this process during my time sitting at the CPPCC in Changchun, where wide-range consultations with local farmers were conducted at a grassroot level before any changes to internal directives were implemented relating to China's entry into the WTO.
. . .The Western system needs to be re-thought in the age of the Internet, heightened globalization, multiculturalism and massive technological and social changes.
The CPC's historic mission is to accomplish the rejuvenation and modernization of the Chinese nation, building-up the CSCDS to become a model that works for China, is not a threat to the world, and provides basic human rights for all. While many Western countries privilege "liberty" and individual rights, in China it is different.
More communal and less nebulous "rights" seem more important -- the rights to enough food, housing, jobs, security, peace, health, education -- and hope for the future. These are what the Chinese government has provided at an amazing pace over the last 40 years. It is not surprising, that the trust in the Chinese government by the people over the period 2016-2021 was over 90 percent, whereas it was below 40 percent in the United States, according to recent Pew Research Center polls.

Video Title: GLOBALink | CPC's ability to meet people's needs contributes to its success: expert. Source: New China TV. Date Published: October 11, 2022.

Video Title: China Insights - Jean Christophe Iseux von Pfetten. Source: youcafoscari. Date Published: December 18, 2015.

Late Merovingian France

2026-05-03T18:50:00.002-04:00

"Late Merovingian France: History and hagiography, 640-720"

by Paul Fouracre and Richard A. Gerberding, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1996.

Wikipedia:

Richard A. Gerberding is professor emeritus and former director of classical studies at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. He taught Latin and Ancient History courses at Willamette University between Fall 2013 and Spring 2015.
Gerberding's early studies were in psychology but he became dissatisfied with the subject and switched to history which he felt offered a greater insight into human nature. Later, he was one of the founders of The Society for Ancient Languages.
Gerberding wrote the entries for "Gregory of Tours" and "Fredegar" in The Encyclopedia of Medieval France (Garland Publishing, 1995) and on "Pippin the Short" in The Encyclopedia of Medieval Germany (Garland Press, 2000). He wrote the chapter on "The Later Roman Empire" in Volume I of The New Cambridge Medieval History (Cambridge University Press, 2005).

Wikipedia:

Paul J. Fouracre is professor emeritus of medieval history at the University of Manchester. His research interests relate to early medieval history, the history of the Franks, law and custom in medieval societies, charters, hagiography and serf-lord relations in the eleventh century. His recent work on the cost of the liturgy, focusing on the social and economic effects of providing "eternal light", is a study of the interplay between belief and materiality.
Fouracre was co-ordinating editor of Early Medieval Europe from 2005 to 2009 and editor of the first volume of The New Cambridge Medieval History (2005). From 2014 to 2017 he was editor of the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library. He is a Member of the Chetham Society, serving as a Member of Council since 2004 and as President since 2005.

Description of "Late Merovingian France: History and hagiography, 640-720":

This collection of documents in translation brings together the seminal sources for the late Merovingian Frankish kingdom. It inteprets the chronicles and saint's lives rigorously to reveal new insights into the nature and significance of sanctity, power and power relationships. The book makes available a range of 7th- and early 8th-century texts, five of which have never before been translated into English. It opens with a broad-ranging explanation of the historical background to the translated texts and then each source is accompanied by a full commentary and an introductory essay exploring its authorship, language and subject matter. The sources are rich in the detail of Merovingian political life. Their subjects are the powerful in society and they reveal the successful interplay between power and sanctity, a process which came to underpin much of European culture throughout the early Middle Ages.

Slander Comes Before The Slaughter: From Ancient Rome And Medieval Islam To Modern Israel And Global Government

2026-05-03T03:22:00.011-04:00

"In the summer of 782, ‘4500 Saxon prisoners were beheaded on a single day at Verden on the River Aller in northern Saxony, on the orders of Charlemagne, King of the Franks.’ So, bluntly, reported the author of the Royal Frankish Annals, the main Frankish narrative for the period, which were written up in 790 or so. By the time those annals had been put into print at Cologne in 1521, Charlemagne had come to be venerated as a saint, and also, with more historical justification, celebrated as the founder of both France and Germany. The annals made the beheadings at Verden known to a wide audience just as Germany’s identity was becoming contentious; Charlemagne’s reputation survived because the Saxon victims were thought to have been pagans, their fate necessary to his Christianisation of Saxony. By the 18th century, however, that no longer washed. French as well as German writers were appalled by the barbarian warlord whom Voltaire called ‘a thousandfold murderer’, and in the 19th century the events at Verden made Charlemagne a problematic hero for German nationalists. The issue was revisited by historians in the 1930s. To those, mainly northerners, who denounced the brutality, others, often southerners, replied that the exemplary punishment was justified by its outcome. Non-historians took sides as well. While Himmler put up a monument to the Saxon dead, Hitler forbade his chief ideologue, Rosenberg, from calling ‘a hero’ like Charles the Great ‘the butcher of the Saxons’, adding that ‘without violence, no one either in Charles’s times or in ours could have brought together the German peoples with their thick heads and their particularities.’

Charlemagne is still widely regarded by Western Europeans as a foundational figure. In 768 he inherited a Frankish kingdom covering modern France plus Belgium and Luxemburg, and extended it to include the Netherlands, much of Italy and most of modern Germany: by the time of his death in 814, he ruled an area almost exactly co-extensive with the original European Community. Scholars in all those countries have contributed to the huge modern historiography on Charlemagne. Aachen, where he made his capital from the 790s onwards, and where the Charlemagne Prize is awarded every year to the politician who has contributed most to European co-operation, is a site of memory for 21st-century Europeans. That his name is less well known in the UK is symptomatic of British isolation within Old Europe.
Yet Verden 782 stubbornly resists euphemism. Alessandro Barbero, in Carlo Magno: Un padre dell’ Europa (2000), notes that even before 782 the Franks were represented as new Israelites, and interprets the massacre as inspired by Old Testament precedents such as the slaughter of the Amalekites and Moabites. In Charlemagne (1999), a large book, Jean Favier mentions the event in a single line, without comment. Dieter Hägermann, in the still larger Karl der Grosse (2000), devotes four pages to exculpation. But German historians still differ sharply: what one recently characterised as ‘an orgy of violence’, another minimised by suggesting that the word decollare in the annals, meaning ‘behead’, was a medieval typo for delocare, ‘relocate’." - J. L. Wilson, 'Go away and learn,' London Review of Books, April 2004.

Barbarian. Infidel. Goyim.

Regardless of the term a conquering civilization uses to classify the outsider, the enemy, and the stranger, the effect is the same: mass slaughter.

In every imperial civilization, petty tribe, and religious cult, slander comes before the slaughter.

Even Christians, known for their religious piety and turn-the-other-cheek approach to violence, murdered pagans who did not yield to the Christian God wherever they found them. During their heyday they killed with the best of them. They built churches on the worship sites of their enemies. The transfer of sacred geological power to Christian hands was always a bloody event.

The state killers today don't need religion to wash their crimes away but they do need something very close to it.

The terms in fashion today by the pedophile ruling elites to denigrate their victims before the coming global slaughter are "useless eaters" and "terrorists."

The killing off of a majority of humanity is being dressed up with scientific reasoning and the lingo of state security.

Modern climate science and climate security have always been linked with mass killing policies. The engineering of the weather serves a multitude of purposes, but at its core it is about global depopulation.

The gay and trans agendas are also mainly about the worldwide campaign to achieve a massive reduction in the global population.

We saw during the manufactured Covid event that governments the world over are willing to kill their own populations by the hundreds of thousands at a time, especially the best and brightest in society.

And that drawn-up event was only the start of the global genocide. They learned a lot during that crisis which they will apply to the next one with greater precision and will.

What they learned is that modern societies adapt quickly and comply to new social rules and standards almost instantly.

In a matter of weeks businesses, shops, workplaces, and government offices were basically following the same script.

At the end of the day man is a social animal, and where the herd is directed to go, even off the cliff, is a simple matter. It takes a few words from positions of authority to change the direction of society. And if that fails, violence against a rebellious few can bring the herd back into line.

And we see this now most of all in a war-torn society like Ukraine, where the people in power are running away with loot to faraway islands while the large underclass of Ukrainians are being led to pointless deaths in eastern Ukraine.

In this case, the nearby enemy provided by the Russian threat was enough to secure early compliance from wayward Ukrainians, but the longer the war has gone on without success the greater the need for the captured Ukrainian state to sweep aside all pretenses and wage war against its own people.

In Iran, the turn towards tyranny happened quickly after the staged Revolution in 1979 and the subsequent war with Iraq. Wars allow for the consolidation of state power unlike anything else, which is why the state of Israel has been at war for its entire existence. Without constant war Israel wouldn't exist. It wouldn't know how to function in peacetime, without the eternal threat of enemies.

What would Israel be without Palestinians or Jews without Goyim? What would a Muslim be without the Infidel to cast aspersions upon?

Psychologically these cults and states wouldn't know how to operate. Slandering and slaughtering is all they have ever done.

The Concept of the Carolingian Renaissance by G. W. Trompf

2026-04-30T22:19:00.001-04:00

"The Idea of Historical Recurrence in Western Thought, from Antiquity to the Reformation" by G. W. Trompf, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1979.

Wikipedia:

Garry Winston Trompf ("G.W. Trompf", born in Melbourne, Australia, on 27 November 1940) is emeritus professor in the History of Ideas at the University of Sydney and adjunct professor in Peace and Conflict Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Sydney.
He is noted for research in the history of ideas, in religious studies, and in the anthropology of Melanesian cultures.
Trompf has been described as "Australia’s only historian of ideas," is considered a leading authority on Melanesian religions, and is noted for his development of "retributive logic" (the logic of payback) and his analysis of historical recurrence (the recurrence of similar events in the rises and falls of empires, in the history of a given polity, or in any two specific events which bear a striking similarity).

An excerpt from, "The Concept of the Carolingian Renaissance" by G. W. Trompf, Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Jan. - Mar., 1973):

Any return to the "Renaissance debate" may seem somewhat futile, like the proverbial fouettement d'un chat perhaps, yet it may be refreshing to enter that worn battleground of historical controversy from a different angle, and to begin our "renaissance" investigations, not in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but in the eighth and ninth, not with Petrarch and the Quattrocento humanists, but with Northumbrian, Frankish, and Italian scholars of a very much earlier, less civilized Europe. Traditionally, the so-called Carolingian renaissance has found its embodiment in none other than the person of Emperor Charlemagne himself, alike acclaimed as unifier of the West, defender of the Roman Church, restorer of stability and justice to barbarian Europe, and grand patron of a cultural and artistic revival. From Charlemagne's own reign until the present day, scholars have spoken of this famed ruler, and the culture flourishing under him, in virtually the same breath. Leaving aside the acclamations of his own day, which were, as we shall see, adulatory enough, we can note a nostalgia for the Carolingian age d'or even among public and literary figures of the immediately succeeding generations. "Karolus bone memoriae," wrote Nithard, embroiled in the troubles which follow Charlemagne's death, "omnem Europem omni bonitate repletam reliquit. And memories of the new Davidic monarch drew out those heroic songs about his brave warriors doing battle with the new Philistines on the Spanish March. The Chanson de Roland was not alone as a medieval monument to Karolus Magnus; many were the legends about this revered Emperor, and for ambitious French monarchs, such as Philip II (Augustus) one could think of no one better to emulate than the one first "appointed by God to be the leader of all Latin Christendom." Charlemagne became a "saint"; in the Chanson, his white beard, his hieratic and patriarchal appearance implied a supernatural role as "God's vice-regent and the Father of all Christendom": in Dante's Paradiso he stands in the circle of Mars with such fine defensores fidei as Joshua and "the lofty Maccabee." Late medieval writers continued to extol; Charlemagne rated among the "Nine Worthies" popularized in de Longuyon's Les Voeux de Paon, artists did not forget him, and his name was uttered by the kings of France and the crusaders of Europe to remember and marvel. To some extent, of course, the greatness of his person overshadowed the civilization he fostered, but the Carolingian "age of gold" in general, with its unity, its chivalric idealism, still continued to seize the popular and scholarly imagination.

Rosamond McKitterick on Roman authority in early medieval Europe

2026-04-30T12:55:00.003-04:00

Wikipedia:

Rosamond Deborah McKitterick (born 31 May 1949) is an English medieval historian. She is an expert on the Frankish kingdoms in the eighth and ninth centuries AD, who uses palaeographical and manuscript studies to illuminate aspects of the political, cultural, intellectual, religious, and social history of the Early Middle Ages. From 1999 until 2016 she was Professor of Medieval History and director of research at the University of Cambridge. She is a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College and Professor Emerita of Medieval History in the University of Cambridge.
. . .McKitterick has been described as a "doyenne in her field; her decades of tireless research and teaching have been poured into a steady stream of major publications on Carolingian subjects." Thomas F. X. Noble considers McKitterick to be "one of the most original and productive historians of Europe's early Middle Ages".

Video Title: Rosamond McKitterick on Roman authority in early medieval Europe. Source: State Library Victoria. Date Published: February 21, 2017. Description:

In the 2017 Foxcroft Lecture, Cambridge scholar Rosamond McKitterick looks at how and why the authority of Rome was established in early medieval Europe.