In which we learn of the dangers of compassion

Alexander I, King of Hair Parting.

Alright history fans, this is a new one for me. There aren't many opportunities for a ridiculous death and a turning point in a country's history to coincide but somehow Greece managed to pull it off.

So there was this thing back in the day. World War One, I believe they called it. Actually, that's not the focal point of this rhyme I am about to spit. Anyhow, Greece had been trying to get the Ottoman Empire to get out of its house for a large number of years. Apparently Turks smell a lot worse than fish after three days and Greece was getting sick of it. In fact, Greece had been more or less continuously at war with the Turks since the first Greco-Turkish War in 1897, an ill-fated attempt to answer the call for unification from the Greek majority on the island of Crete. A consequence of the failed military endeavor was a movement for military, economic and societal reforms spearheaded by Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos, who took power in 1910.

So, at this point in time, all of the little countries in the Balkans are reaching a critical mass of disgruntled discontentment which, in the vernacular of the region, means lots of wanton stabbing and pillaging. Essentially, everybody (including Greece) wanted to annex the Ottoman-controlled territory of Rumelia, which stretched roughly from the coast of Albania in the West to Istanbul in the East. Everyone was convinced that the majority of that territory was part of their historical homeland, and they were all willing to screw each other over to get it. In fact, the Serbians kicked off the war with Turkey just to prevent Albanian rebels from securing their foothold in territory that they had their eyes on. Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, and Greece joined forces in an alliance called the Balkan League against the Ottomans.

Greek artillery shooting at rocks.

Now that Greece wasn't terrible at everything thanks to the reforms of Venizelos as well as the efforts of British and French military missions sent in 1910 and 1911 respectively, they actually pulled the war off this and did quite well. A far cry from the popular opinion preceding hostilities that "if there is war we shall probably see that the only thing Greek officers can do besides talking is to run away" as one British consulate put it.

So the war ended in 1913 with the Ottomans in full retreat. There was no question the the Balkan League was victorious, but the Treaty of London (1913), mediated by the Great Powers, only provided for the cessation of almost the entirety of Ottoman Europe to the League, not the particulars of how that territory was to be divided.

The Balkans are not soup.

Big mistake. The Bulgarians were pissed off at not being able to easily claim a disproportionately large chunk of the new territory, and declared war on their former League allies to assert their dominance. This time, however, Romania and the Ottomans joined with Greece, Serbia, and Montenegro to defeat the Bulgarians. To cut a long story short, the Bulgarians got their asses handed to them on a steaming platter, having lost more men than the rest of the belligerent nations combined (93,000 on both sides in two months!), and they eventually asked for an armistice. The resulting Treaty of Bucharest (also 1913) doubled Greece's size in both population and territory, with the area increasing from 25,014 to 41,933 square miles and its population from 2,660,000 to 4,363,000 people.

However, matters were far from settled between the Greeks and the Turks. The outbreak of World War One was complicated immensely by vicious disagreement and enmity between King Constantine I and Prime Minister Venizelos. As the war began the Greeks had to choose between neutrality and aligning themselves with the Allied forces. Outright participation in the war on the side of the Central Powers was not an option, both because of Greece's vulnerability to the Royal Navy and because the Ottoman Empire had joined in on Germany's side, and cooperation with them was just not proper conduct.

Mops versus Moustaches -- Battle of the Century

 

King Constantine favored neutrality because of his personal attachment to Germany. Not only was he educated there, but his wife Sofia was the sister of Kaiser Wilhelm II! Things seemed like a no-brainer from his point of view. On the other hand, Venizelos was in favor of joining the Entente, as he believed that Greece would be able to regain more of its lost territory from the Ottomans. Conflict in parliament made the King force Venizelos to resign twice, with the King invoking the Greek constitutional right giving the monarch the right to dismiss a government unilaterally, which he did to remove the Prime Minister and all of his supporters.

During his time in and out of office, Venizelos invited the British and French to land troops on Greek shores, a political move deemed treasonous and unconstitutional by the King's supporters. However, the Prime Minister had enough support to stage a coup, forming a second national government in opposition to the crown based in Thessaloniki. In response, Royalist paramilitary fighters attacked Allied troops and Venizelos supporters, resulting in armed conflict and a blockade of Greece by Allied warships. The King abdicated the throne in response to the threat of a bombardment of Athens, and left the country in the hands of Venizelos, and the throne in the hands of his young son Alexander.

Now you see where I'm heading with this, don't you?

Greece entered the war on the side of the Allies and performed admirably, and the Turks were given a sound thrashing. However, the Treaty of Sevres, drawn up in 1920 at the close of the war, was anything but satisfying to Greek ambitions despite the large amount of territory they gained:

 Venizelos, in a lengthy memorandum to the Allies (30 December 1918), had described in detail the distribution of the intrinsically Greek population which resided in areas adjacent to the Greek state. However, the Sèvres Peace Treaty was never ratified by the contracting parties, and thus it was never enforced. For Turkey, the Treaty of Sèvres signalled the end of the Ottoman Empire; for Greece, impoverished and without any help from its allies, it left the country exposed to the perils of Kemalist nationalism. 

For those not versed in the vocuabulary of fez enthusiasts, the word "Kemalist" signifies allegiance to the ideals of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the national revolutionary hero of Turkey. This guy was pretty intense. He essentially led a massive military campaign to turn the former Ottoman Empire into a westernized secular republic (with himself as dictatorial military leader of its free and liberated peoples as it were).

Thanks to the fact that Greek territory was full of Turks and Turkish territory was full of Greeks, and the Allies didn't seem to care, war seemed inevitable. The question was, who would start fighting so soon after the world war?

Actual psychopath

Enter the true villain of this tale.

Look at those eyes, full of regicide and bananas.

Yes, fellow time travelers, quit gawking and believe the rhymes I am about to spit.

The good King Alexander was on one beautiful October day taking a walk with his dog in the Royal Gardens in Athens. Suddenly, his pet was beset by two psycho monkeys. No really, I'm totally serious. Maybe his dog was a freakish yellow dachshund and nature took the wheel. Maybe they were secretly Turkish operatives working to assassinate the King. Or maybe the monkeys were just having one of those days (they didn't really know why, but they wanted to justify rippin' someone's head off etc). The King went beast mode and proceeded to crack open a can of whoop-ass on the monkeys in defense of his dog. In the process, he was bitten a few times, but successfully fended off the monkeys, who were put down by his guards. It turns out that these monkeys were infected with what was probably Herpes Simian B virus, which causes unremarkable oral lesions in a monkey but will kill the hell out of humans. Ten days after getting bitten, King Alexander I of Greece was dead from infection.

His father, King Constantine, was back in the saddle again, and decided to celebrate WITH A WAR.

Next time, we'll talk about that war, about which Winston Fathill said: "it was a monkey bite that caused the death of those 250,000 people."



--Matt

P.S. I dare you, I double-dog dare you, I DEFY you to find me a monarch death sillier than that. (Seriously if you do I'll write a post about it.)

Those prehistoric Greeks really overdid it with the amateur demolitions.

In which breakfast is interrupted.

Typical day in Hawaii

So I often think of things completely unrelated to what I'm eating when I sit down for breakfast. This morning, I had a particularly juicy realization, which I decided to share with you assholes. Its not like you had anything better to do anyway so shut the fuck up and listen.

Okay so remember way way way back in the day, when as a result of some sneaktastic economic policies, the United States provoked Japan into shoving a stick of dynamite up our collective asses, which we ended up calling the attacks on Pearl Harbor?

I guess "The Battle of Dynamite Ass Harbor" doesn't sound quite as worthy of remembrance.

Now the problem with living on a rock in the middle of the goddamn ocean is that you can only hold so many folks on it at the same time. You also can't eat rocks. Japan's massive economic progress in the early 20th century meant that overpopulation and lack of resources was quickly getting to be an issue. The solution obviously was to boogie over to the nearest country, beat the shit out of them, and move in. Korea was annexed by the Empire in 1910, and the Chinese region of Manchuria became a Japanese puppet state in 1932. The Japanese were basically shipping large portions of industry, agriculture, and people to their new conquests and living at the expense of the natives.

The folks in Europe and America understandably got their panties in a cinnamon twist over that situation. However, Franklin Delano "Big Poppa Pump" Roosevelt, President of the United States at the time, saw an opportunity to get in the war that was already raging in Europe. Most folks at home, despite the indignation they exhibited towards the violence in Asia and Europe (the unmitigated gall of it!), did not want to commit to a war, in other words they displayed isolationist tendencies. This isn't to say that they didn't care about the suffering of the people at war, they just didn't want America to be involved in what they already knew was going to be another World War after the first went so deliciously.

So FDR figured that a good way he could get a lot of people killed in faraway places (good for the economy, that) was to provoke an attack on the United States. Once America was made into a victim, its people would put up with anything the government wanted to do until victory was achieved. That strategy had worked in the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World War 1, now World War 2, the Vietnam War, and arguably in the modern War on Terror. 

Japan's position as a fucking rock in the middle of the goddamn ocean meant that supply lines were vital to keep their boys krumpin' shit up in mainland Asia. Without oil, rubber, and ammunition, war cannot be waged effectively. America had been, believe it or not, selling war materiel to Japan during their wars of expansion. However, in 1940 Japan invaded French Indochina in an effort to embargo all imports into China, including war supplies purchased from the U.S. This move prompted the United States to embargo all oil exports. Japan estimated that if it couldn't get more fuel from somewhere, it had less than two years worth of oil remaining. Bit of a problem.

Japan figured that if they rolled on over and blew us up, they could convince FDR to lay off and let them wage war in peace. They didn't really count on Americans not taking shit like a surprise attack bombing lightly. Things like that should really go in the book of war right next to "Not fighting with your land armies in fucking China", a rule that they also broke with flying colors.

The 2011 World Cup Final

The attack began on December 7, 1941. The code word "Tora" used by the Japanese to indicate that complete surprise was achieved is translated in Japanese as "虎" or "tiger", hence making the code for achieved surprise "Tiger, tiger, tiger".

Apparently the architect of the attacks on Pearl Harbor was Sagat from Street Fighter.

Yes that was the entire reason I wrote this post.

--Matt

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto in dress uniform

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiQwWI6cF8E&feature=related

In which Britain gets that up smash.

The Marathas when they didn't suck.

Okay so yesterday I sat down and said to myself: “Self, you are looking real snazzy today. You look like you're all set to write up one of those blog posts that you have been procrastinating on for a long time.” Myself was right, as usual. Once I started it all just flowed like a really good piss. An appropriate simile, because we're going to 19^th Century India, a place where if you pissed, you were probably going to die.

Today's adventure is about the Maratha Confederacy and the Second Anglo-Maratha War, which took place in India between 1803 and 1805. This will probably be the first of two entries on Brits smackin' around Indians, because that happened for a long time.

The Marathas were a people who loved a good scuffle. They were descended from the ancient Hindu dynasties of the Yadavas and the Silaharas, men from the Northwest, towards harsh desert and mountains. Nobody really cared about them until the early sixteenth century when local Maratha chieftains served as mercenary captains in the armies of the Muslim kingdoms of Deccan India. Basically, the Marathas were the equivalent of Blackwater founding its own country. After many years of protracted fighting with their neighbors, Shivaji, the son of one of those mercenary chiefs, united the many Maratha clans between 1664 and 1680 by sheer chutzpah. He systematically kicked the asses of every neighboring kingdom. Even when the big bad Mughal Empire—the impressively powerful rulers of most of India at the time—came to kick him in the face, he fought a war with them for twenty-seven years, from 1681 to 1707.

Roll the tape back, let me lay that down again.

TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS OF CONTINUOUS WARFARE.

And the Mughals lost.

Shivaji was obviously someone who was a lot different than his contemporaries. His army was lightly armored and highly mobile, allowing them to outrun and outmaneuver their heavily armored foes. He also abandoned the ancient feudal system wherein the various warlords and rulers of the kingdom supplied him with their own armies, preferring a centralized military that was paid in cash, like the professional armies of Europe. The problem with thinking outside the box in this era is that you are probably the only one who does that sort of thing. When Shivaji died, he was succeeded by a series of rulers who were weak and close-minded. The feudal system made a comeback as the Maratha kings curried (lol) favor with powerful men by giving them land. Soon the office of king was under the essential control of the Peshwa, or chief minister. The various Sardar, or feudal lords, controlled their own private armies again.

One of the major military changes that came with the rise of the Peshwa and Sardar was that the Maratha forces became mostly cavalry-oriented. The Peshwa also attempted to adopt Western-style officers and artillery corps. However, at the battle of Panipat in January 1761, they screwed it all up. Itching for a chance to try out the shiny new Imperial army against an encroaching force of some 60,000 Afghan troops, the Peshwa could not coordinate his cavalry and infantry, resulting in the utter annilhation of the 28,000 strong Maratha force. Meanwhile, the Sardar couldn't decide whether to ride to the rescue with their 30,000 reinforcements or just lay back and count rocks or something. Rocks beat paper--I mean Peshwa.

“But Matt!” you bluster. “Why do we care about that stuff, man?”

Well hold your horses, I'm getting to that.

Long story short, the 1761 Battle of Panipat was a decisive moment in Maratha history, both politically and militarily. After that gigantic foul-up, no one really took the Peshwa seriously anymore, and the Maratha Sardars began to exert their independence. By the late eighteenth century, the Sardars had become independent rulers, and the once-mighty Maratha kingdom had fragmented into a loose-knit confederacy racked by internal conflict. 

So while the various Sardars were gallumphing around arguing with each other, those zany Brits had been creeping onto the scene, and we all know what happens when the Brits come creeping around.

The Brits cosplaying a malignant growth.

The East India Trading Company (or E.I.C.) was a lot more than a simple trading company. By a series of five acts around 1670, King Charles II provisioned the Company with the rights to autonomous territorial acquisitions, to mint money, to command fortresses and troops and form alliances, to make war and peace, and to exercise both civil and criminal jurisdiction over the areas they acquired in their conquests. During all this fighting in Maratha territory, the Brits had not been idle. The E.I.C. had just finished four wars in a row against the Marathas' southern neighbor of Mysore. The Company now had a substantial foothold in India, and were not about to stop there. On December 3^rd 1802, the British, taking advantage of the internal disputes within the Maratha Confederacy, forced the Peshwa to sign the Treaty of Bassein. Under this treaty, the Maratha Confederacy essentially became a protectorate of the British.

I don't know about you, but that would rustle my jimmies. The Maratha Sardars were pretty rustled themselves, but they tried to negotiate with the British about the exact terms of the treaty. The British, instead of negotiating seriously, worked to keep Sindhia and Holkar, the two most powerful Sardars, from allying with each other against the Company. They succeeded, and when active hostilities broke out in August 1803, Sindhia's Army of Hindustan stood alone against the might of the E.I.C. Thus began the Second Anglo-Maratha War. (Yes there was a first one, but it wasn't as important as the other two so back off.)

This may seem like a conflict that was ridiculously stacked against the Marathas. However, the Sardars, who knew what the Brits were capable of, had been very interested in modernizing their armies because as it turns out, even curly mustaches can't protect you from a bullet in your nostril. So, to avoid lead boogers the Sardars had begun to talk with the French about training troops in the European style, so as to make their facial hair pointier and more adept at parrying musket balls. Before the first official war with the Brits was fought, the Marathas had raised around eighty battalions of regular infantry and various artillery sections, trained and led by Europeans in the British style.

However, this apparent leadership advantage would prove to be the leak in the slurpee straw, so to speak. Even before the war began, the British made sure everyone on the other side knew that they would handsomely reward any officer who left the Maratha army and came over to the British. Most of the mid-level and junior Maratha officers were British or Anglo-Indian, and many took up the British offer. This might not have been a big deal, but the leader of the officer corps, a Frenchman named Pierre Cuiller, goofed big time. Instead of countering the British offer, Cuiller just fired all British and Anglo-Indian officers from the army, including those who were still loyal to the Marathas! Overnight the Maratha Army lost the majority of its officer corps. These European officers formed the bulk of the veteran command element of the Maratha battalions, and their sudden departure ensured that the outcome of the impending war with the British had already been decided. Oops.

VOTES FOR WOMEN!

Well, boned as they were, the Marathas still tried to put up a fight. Thanks to their record of military excellency prior to the Brits showing up to their doorstep, they were revered as fierce warriors throughout the whole of India:

“...the capital of a Mahratta prince was the saddle of his steed, the Mahratta base was the whole Western India, and the fortresses of the Western Ghats, perched on inaccessible rocky pinnacles. Secure in these, they sallied forth with waves of horsemen over the length and breadth of India, plundering, laying and levying tribute as they rode. Even distant Calcutta feared them...”

That's pretty scary stuff right there, especially if you were some poor chap from Liverpool who woke up one day wearing a red coat and pointing a gun at angry natives in the jungle (more likely than you'd think in the service of His Majesty or the Company).

So who comes flapping onto the scene but Arthur Wellesley himself.

Hold on a second, I want you to paint my heart as well...

What? You don't know who Arthur Wellesley is? He's nobody important really, its not like he's the guy who thrashed Napoleon at Waterloo or anything. You could call him the Duke of Wellington, or the General formerly known as Duke. But this was before he earned his noble title, so he was just some random scrub they sent to cause trouble in the brush.

Wellesley had been given command of the entirety of the East India Company's military and political assets in India upon his arrival in June of 1802. By August 23^rd, 1803, he had managed to force the entire Maratha army under the command of Anthony Pohlmann (a Hanoverian mercenary) into a major battle at the town of Assaye.

All 19th Century armies fought in colored boxes, historical fact.

The Marathas were arrayed behind a huge number of artillery batteries in a defensive line that stretched between two rivers. This meant that the only viable option of attack for Wellesley was to charge straight into the teeth of the Maratha guns. He ordered a large line of infantry to move towards the guns on his left flank. As you can imagine, while this was incredibly ballsy, it also meant that a devastating barrage was continously hammering the advancing British infantry until they were only 50 yards from the Maratha lines. Artillery in these days would use a nasty type of ammunition against closing infantry called canister rounds. Imagine the cannon being turned into a giant shotgun, with proportionately larger pellets, and you can imagine what kind of damage these cannons were doing to the British.

The Brits took it like men, and charged with bayonets fixed at the Maratha guns. The artillery crews fought bravely, but got their collective faces kicked in. The British charge kept its momentum, pushing through to the line of Maratha infantry behind the guns. Well, I don't know about you, but screaming men in red who just stabbed all my friends running at me might invoke feelings of terror. The Marathas ran screaming.

Meanwhile, on the British right flank, Wellesley had ordered a battalion of pickets (skirmishers) and the 74^th Highlanders to move obliquely towards the town of Assaye, in order to extend his comparatively small line and to deny Pohlmann the opportunity to outflank him. However, he did not mean for the picket force to advance all the way to the city alone and unsupported, which is exactly what they did of course. Soon, they were within krumpin' range of the city's defenses, and the Marathas were in full clobbering mode. The skirmishers were killed almost to a man, and the 74^th Highlanders managed to form a fighting square behind hastily built fortifications made entirely out of the bodies of their dead. Talk about manliness.

Wellesley causing a proper ruckus.

Wellesley knew that meant trouble, because the destruction of his right meant that his army was very vulnerable to a flank attack. He instead ordered a cavalry detachment to ride to the rescue. The Marathas were forced away from the British right, and routed enmasse towards the River Juah, where they attempted a last-ditch defense before fleeing the field. The British, too exhausted to pursue, called it a day.

British casualties in the Battle of Assaye amounted to 428 killed, 1138 wounded and 18 missing; a total of 1,584 – over a third of the force engaged in combat. The 74^th and the picket battalion were decimated; from a strength of about 500, the 74th lost ten officers killed and seven wounded, and 124 other ranks killed and 270 wounded. The pickets lost all their officers except their commander, Lieutenant Colonel William Orrock, and had only about 75 men remaining. Of the ten officers forming the general's staff, eight were wounded or had their horses killed. Wellesley himself lost two horses; the first was shot from underneath him and the second was speared as he led a charge. The number of Maratha casualties is more difficult to ascertain. Despatches from British officers give a figure of 1,200 dead and many more wounded but contemporary historians have estimated a total of 6,000 dead and wounded. The Marathas also surrendered seven stands of colours, large amounts of stores and ammunition and 98 cannon – most of which were later taken into service by the East India Company.

Wellesley would remark later: "I should not like to see again such a loss as I sustained on the 23rd September, even if attended by such a gain". Despite the grief he felt for his casualties, he always regarded Assaye as his finest military moment across his entire career.

“Well Matt”, you bleat. “Again we beg the question: why do we care?”

Well kids, that's a good question. The fighting between the British and the Marathas did not stop after the Battle of Assaye, important as it was to the eventual British conquest of India. In fact, there was still another war yet to come before the British could claim dominance over most of India. The defeat of the Maratha army at Assaye led to the major concession of territory to the British, giving them control over a large portion of Eastern India. This land gave the British a much more permanent foothold in India, and allowed them to successfully mount the Third Anglo-Maratha War 12 years after the Second.

The Indian territories after the Second Anglo-Maratha War

Stay tuned for part two, where I'll talk about the Third War, which resulted in a lot more important stuff happening than the Second did.

--Matt

Somebody call the constable

Apparently you people actually want more content. Well whoop-dee-hoop-dee-doo, let me browse the cupboards to see if I have any History left...

Aha! There seems to be a few boxes left. I'll start cooking these up.

Forthcoming, in no particular order, are posts about:

• The Anglo-Maratha Wars, 18th Century
• Admiral David "There Seems to be Something Wrong with our Bloody Ships Today" Beatty, WW1
• Baron Roman Nikolai Maximilian von Ungern-Sternberg, the "Mad Baron" of  the Mongol Empire, Post-Russian Revolution

I've been real busy since my last post, but now that it's summer I should be able to actually write stuff. Keep your dials tuned here, folks!

Battle of Narvik, 1940

For the first installment of our rousing adventure through time, we're going back to... World War II! 

“But wait,” I hear you say. “I came to this blog expecting something other than the same old rehashes!” Belay your blubbering, fellow time-travelers, for I decided to aim for an event that isn't very well known, despite its importance to the course of the war as a whole.

German plan to repeatedly stab a giant penis.

Did you know that before that Adolf fellow put his steel-plated boot a thousand miles up France's tricoloured derriere in the May 1940 Blitzkreig, he had extended the theatre of war north into Scandinavia? When asked in April 1942 what he thought the most decisive actions of the war had been thus far, Hitler chose only two: The Battle of Moscow, October 1941-January 1942, and the Norwegian Campaign of April-June 1940. 

"Hitler!" you again rudely interject. "We know you like vikings and all but seriously man, what the hell were you thinking?" At first glance, Norway is the land of bearded Norsemen, unfortunate parrots, and not a whole lot else. Plus, at the time, Norway was completely out of vikings and so had no military to speak of. What could possess the Germans to attack here?

There's actually a few good reasons for this! Take a look on the map here at all those flaky bits on Norway's seaward edge that look like delicious pie crust. Those are the famous fjords that are the subject of much pining, and they make for excellent ports with great natural protection. Hitler reasoned that if he was able to capture this coastline, he would have a string of U-Boat bases and airfields in the ideal position to raid Allied shipping, to defend the Baltic Straits, and to prevent his mortal foe Stalin from receiving supplies through the Arctic Sea trade route over the top of Scandinavia. 

However, the crucial factor behind his invasion was the so-called "Achilles Heel" of the German war effort. No matter what the Belgians tell you, one cannot build tanks out of wood. Germany had a ton of wood, but it wasn't hard enough to power the planned thrust into the Low Countries in May 1940. Germany had a major dependency on imported iron ore so its factories could crank out the hard stuff.

The hard stuff in action

Germany's main source of imported iron ore had been Sweden in the years leading up to the war, with the tall blonde guys providing 55% of Germany's total iron supply. The other half came from other sources, mostly from the French. However, when the war started, France stopped sending Hitler supplies because they were not complete idiots. Hitler knew that his flow of Swedish hardness was critical to the continuation of the war, as did the Allies. Since the Swedish ports were encased in ice for half the year, (What's up with the Swedish and hard stuff?) the iron would be sent by train to Norway to be shipped to Germany. The most important port in all of Norway for sending Swedish ore to Germany was Narvik. 

Looks kinda like sprinkles from up here...

The lucky skunks in Narvik were right in the pathway of the Gulf Stream, which meant that even though they are up in the frozen armpit of the world, the waters there were free of ice. But don't break out the bathing suits just yet, Lars. The water may not be frozen but its still too cold to swim in them without suffering.

Goddamnit Lars

The Allies knew that they had to do something to disrupt Germany's iron supplies. When Soviet Russia invaded Finland in November of 1939, the world was like "Hey Russia that ain't cool man." Public opinion in real countries like America and Britain leaned heavily towards "We should help the snowmen fight against the armed drunks". In Britain in particular, public pressure on Parliament to officially back Finland and their tiny military in their struggle against Russia gave the belligerent members of the British War Cabinet (including Winston Churchfat) to propose occupying Narvik with British and French troops, ostensibly in order to send goodies to Finland. In no way whatsoever was this a move intended to block Swedish iron from getting to Germany. Nope. Not at all. 

What kinda name is Eduard anyway?

Hitler didn't believe that for a second. He saw the scheme taking form and sent his boy Eduard Dietl to take Narvik before the Royal Navy did. Dietl was an old salt, and was a decorated veteran of the First World War. He actually joined the German Worker's Party around the same time Hitler did, so they were pretty tight bros. He commanded an elite force of German mountain troops called Gebirgsjaegers in German. These were tough bastards for sure, trained  to fight in treacherous terrain and blinding snow. 

Snow? Zero out of three craps are given.

On April 9, 1940, Dietl packed 10 Kreigsmarine (German Navy) destroyers full of these hard bastards and sailed merrily up to Narvik. Once there, the Norwegian Navy was waiting for them...

With two ironclads.

It took less than sixty seconds for them to get slapped six ways to Søndag. The 1,000-man port garrison at Narvik were likewise hilariously useless. The Norwegians fired a single machine-gun burst, which missed, and didn't fire any other shots the whole time the Germans came ashore. Apparently, their commander, Colonel Konrad Sundlo, was a member of the Norwegian Nazi Party, and would not allow his men to resist the German invasion. Dietl knew Sundlo's loyalties, as well as the poor state of the disarmament-oriented Norwegian military, and so he came ashore in the first wave with his staff completely unfazed. He might as well have walked into Narvik alone. Sundlo quickly surrendered the town after Dietl gave him a mean look. The Norwegian soldiers all pussied out after that, except for 200 soldiers under Major Sverre Spjeldnaes (oh god my tongue). He and his men marched to the outskirts of town with all their weapons and gear. The German perimeter guards ordered them to gehen sie back to the kitchen. But this guy, he struck himself a toothy grin and said:

"We'll march on anyway, good day to you sir."

Not bad.

Actual photograph of Spjeldnaes at the perimeter of Narvik

A few days after this display of unbridled manliness, the Pain Train arrived at Narvik. On April 13, the Royal Navy showed up and brought the wrath of God down upon the Kriegsmarine destroyers, sinking them all. Dietl was like "Oh I see," but quickly recovered his wits. He formed the surviving sailors from the wrecks into a 2,700-man infantry unit, nicknaming them "Gebirgsmarines", or "Mountain Marines".

Kreigsmarine ships post-slappage

 Despite the added bonus of men with guns, the Germans were still stuck in Narvik with no way out as long as the Royal Navy was chilling there. To make matters worse for Dietl and his men, the Allies began to land 24,500 dudes around Narvik the next day. The Allies had the advantage of numbers and artillery. The one true advantage that Dietl had on his side was mastery of the air. The Luftwaffe (German Air Force) worked overtime dropping supplies and reinforcements into Narvik. However, things got really bad really quickly for both sides.

German troops sprint through Narvik

Imagine dipping your lower half in a bag of icecubes. Now imagine staying like that for a month while running around shooting people. Not very fun, now is it? Soldier on both sides had to deal with extreme temperatures and terrain while trying not to get killed. Things in the area that were not Narvik included:

• Snow
• Rocks

Not exactly the Hampton Inn. At least the canned food rations were probably better than the complimentary breakfast, but it probably wasn't tuna fish so still not very good. Dietl wrote in his war diary: "Our troops are visibly exhausted, constantly in the open, in bad weather, in low temperatures and in the rain, with insufficient clothing." (Translation for Brown Students: They lived in Perkins)

Narvik on fire after Gunter burned the canned wurst again

By late May, Dietl and his men had been forced into a 30km-long narrow corridor stretching from Narvik to the nearby Swedish border. Things looked especially bleak for the Germans when a sudden French push from the south forced them completely out of the town of Narvik on May 28. That's right, the Germans actually lost the battle for Narvik!

"Hold on a minute!" I hear you say with frothing indignancy lacing your utterances. "How come the Germans held onto Narvik if they lost the battle?" Good question for once, fellow time-travelers! It all boils down to delicious delicious coincidence. The same day that the Allies recaptured Narvik, Belgium capitulated after Hitler's Blitzkrieg campaign that had begun earlier in the month tore them a new asshole. France would not be long in following, and Britain decided that its resources were better spent closer to home. The Allies withdrew from Narvik after freshly haven taken the city. The Norwegian troops left behind did their best to annihilate the remaining German forces over the following weeks, but on June 8, 1940, Norway surrendered to Germany. Dietl and his men got off like lucky skunks, saved from the brink of defeat.

Germany was able to keep its vital port (although the Allies wrecked the ore handling facilities during their withdrawal), and Dietl became "the hero of Narvik". Thanks to lots and lots of propaganda, as well as the many awards and honors bestowed on him after the battle, Dietl became a military superhero on par with Rommel; a household name in Germany. He's not very well known today most likely because unlike Rommel, he was a die-hard Nazi party supporter, and some of his wartime conduct was in violation of the Geneva Convention (example being that he used forced Norwegian labor during the battle for Narvik). Narvik itself seems to have fallen into obscurity because there was no clear winner. The Allies could claim that they "won" because they captured the port and voluntarily withdrew from the field. However, the Germans ended up with both the port and the whole country of Norway under their control. 

Call it what you want, but the German occupation of Narvik after the battle provided them with the freedom to acquire iron ore as necessary to feed their factories. It was no Battle of the Bulge, but it was still pretty important in its own way.

--Matt

In which Jimmies are rustled.

History is the story of people being mad at each other. I suppose that means this blog is about the flowing tapestry of mad that has been angrily woven throughout human history. You'd be hard-pressed to find something important (or unimportant for that matter) that has happened in the last bushel of centuries we've had that wasn't initiated by someone saying to him or herself:

"Man, that dude over there sure rustles my jimmies!"

Actual photograph of jimmies being rustled

You might be saying to yourself, "Well that's just terrible, sir! Frankly, I am saddened by this sorry state of affairs. In fact, I shall write a letter to the management in which I shall state in very strong language the distaste I have for conflict and the generally uncouth practice of rustling!"

Well I'd tell you to settle down there, sirrah! In fact, it is my contention that if it weren't for folks getting mad at each other over little things like "who touched my cheese?" or "You just shelled my island!" or "Belgium", we'd have a lot less of an interesting time in history class.

Can you imagine having to sit through an hour and a half of "The French and the Germans sat next to each other and twiddled their thumbs for a hundred years the end"?

I SAY THEE NAY!

BETTER.

In a way you could refer to history as "Anger and Other Tales", but that doesn't sound nearly as academically legit as just plain "History". We history folk do love our academic legitimacy, because we are not sociologists. 

Anyway!

Ever hear the old saying "History is written by the victor?" That is not only very true, but it reveals the nature of history down to its creamy nougat core! In order for there to be a victor there has to have been a conflict. And you don't have to have guns or killing to have a conflict.

History

So this is a blog about history, and all of the crazy stuff that happened during it because someone got their panties in a burning trajectory over Moscow or something equally entertaining . Its not all about fighting but it sure isn't gonna be boring either! Let me know if there's a particular event in history you'd like to see me write about, and it shall be done!

--Matt