Military History
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Niccolo Machiavelli
May 3, 1469: On this day in 1469, the Italian philosopher and writer Niccolo Machiavelli is born. A lifelong patriot and diehard proponent of a unified Italy, Machiavelli became one of the fathers of modern political theory. Machiavelli entered the political service of his native Florence by the time he was 29. As defense secretary, he distinguished himself by executing policies that strengthened Florence politically. He soon found himself assigned diplomatic missions for his principality, through which he met such luminaries as Louis XII of France, Pope Julius II, the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, and perhaps most importantly for Machiavelli, a prince of the Papal States named Cesare Borgia.…
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The Rubicon: Both an actual event and also an often used metaphor
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Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. World War I began
On July 28, 1914, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. World War I began as declarations of war by other European nations quickly followed. The ‘Great War’, which began on 28 July 1914 with Austria-Hungary’s declaration of war with Serbia, was the first truly global war. It began in Europe but quickly spread throughout the world. Many countries became embroiled within the war’s first month; others joined in the ensuing four years, with Honduras announcing hostilities with Germany as late as 19 July 1918 (with the record going to Romania, who entered the war – albeit for the second time – one day before it finished, on 10 November 1918). Detailed below…
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The Rubicon: Both an actual event and also an often used metaphor
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Jun 18, 1940: Hitler and Mussolini meet in Munich
On this day in 1940, Benito Mussolini arrives in Munich with his foreign minister, Count Ciano, to discuss immediate plans with the Fuhrer, and doesn’t like what he hears. Embarrassed over the late entry of Italy in the war against the Allies, and its rather tepid performance since, Mussolini met with Hitler determined to convince his Axis partner to exploit the advantage he had in France by demanding total surrender and occupying the southern portion still free. The Italian dictator clearly wanted “in” on the spoils, and this was a way of reaping rewards with a minimum of risk. But Hitler, too, was in no mood to risk, and was…
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The Rubicon: Both an actual event and also an often used metaphor
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D-Day: June 6, 1944
D-Day. (2011). The History Channel website. Retrieved 7:57, June 6, 2011, from http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/d-day. [American Troops Landing on D-Day, Omaha Beach, Normandy Coast], 1944 Robert Capa (American, born Hungary, 1913–1954) Gelatin silver print Source:Robert Capa: [American Troops Landing on D-Day, Omaha Beach, Normandy Coast] (1987.1100.501) | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art Although the term D-Day is used routinely as military lingo for the day an operation or event will take place, for many it is also synonymous with June 6, 1944, the day the Allied powers crossed the English Channel and landed on the beaches of Normandy, France, beginning the liberation of Western Europe from Nazi control…
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The Rubicon: Both an actual event and also an often used metaphor
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In Honor of Those Who Suffered in Stalin’s Gulag
source: http://www.artukraine.com/paintings/getman.htm THE GULAG COLLECTION: PAINTINGS OF THE SOVIET PENAL SYSTEM BY FORMER PRISONER NIKOLAI GETMAN “I was born on December 23, 1917 in the town of Kharkov, Ukraine” Nikolai Getman Book: “The Gulag Collection: Paintings of the Soviet Penal System by Former Prisoner Nikolai Getman” Published by The Jamestown Foundation Washington, D.C.; Year 2001 1. ESSAY NUMBER ONE FROM THE BOOK————————— In 1946 an artist named Nikolai Getman was imprisoned in the Soviet Union’s GULAG. During the 1920s, the Soviet Union developed a system of extreme repression and terror that inflicted forced famines, purges, executions, and arrests on the people of the Soviet Union. Under Josef Stalin, forced-labor camps…
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The Rubicon: Both an actual event and also an often used metaphor
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May 22, 1455:The War of the Roses
In the opening battle of England’s War of the Roses, the Yorkists defeat King Henry VI’s Lancastrian forces at St. Albans, 20 miles northwest of London. Many Lancastrian nobles perished, including Edmund Beaufort, the duke of Somerset, and the king was forced to submit to the rule of his cousin, Richard of York. The dynastic struggle between the House of York, whose badge was a white rose, and the House of Lancaster, later associated with a red rose, would stretch on for 30 years. Both families, closely related, claimed the throne through descent from the sons of Edward III, the king of England from 1327 to 1377. The first Lancastrian…
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The Rubicon: Both an actual event and also an often used metaphor
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The Seven Years War begins May 15, 1756
May 15, 1756: The Seven Years War, a global conflict known in America as the French and Indian War, officially begins when England declares war on France. However, fighting and skirmishes between England and France had been going on in North America for years. In the early 1750s, French expansion into the Ohio River valley repeatedly brought France into armed conflict with the British colonies. In 1756–the first official year of fighting in the Seven Years War–the British suffered a series of defeats against the French and their broad network of Native American alliances. However, in 1757, British Prime Minister William Pitt (the older) recognized the potential of imperial expansion that would…
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The Rubicon: Both an actual event and also an often used metaphor
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Apr 28, 1945: Benito Mussolini executed
Apr 28, 1945: Benito Mussolini executed On this day in 1945, “Il Duce,” Benito Mussolini, and his mistress, Clara Petacci, are shot by Italian partisans who had captured the couple as they attempted to flee to Switzerland. The 61-year-old deposed former dictator of Italy was established by his German allies as the figurehead of a puppet government in northern Italy during the German occupation toward the close of the war. As the Allies fought their way up the Italian peninsula, defeat of the Axis powers all but certain, Mussolini considered his options. Not wanting to fall into the hands of either the British or the Americans, and knowing that the…
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The Rubicon: Both an actual event and also an often used metaphor
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The War Symphonies: Shostakovich Against Stalin
The War Symphonies: Shostakovich Against Stalin. Rhombus Media/Bullfrog Films, 1997. Director, Larry Weinstein. Music by the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic and the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra; conductor Valery Gergiev. 82-minute VHS video. Shostakovich angers Stalin with his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. From The War Symphonies. 28.8 | 56k “Music illuminates a person and provides him with his last hope; even Stalin, a butcher, knew that, and that was why he hated music”: so wrote Soviet composer Dmitrii Shostakovich (1906-1975), the subject of The War Symphonies. The central argument of this excellent documentary is that Shostakovich was “the voice of his time.” Living under and occasionally cooperating with a dictatorial…
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The Rubicon: Both an actual event and also an often used metaphor