George Franchi’s blog

Out of the many groups of people who were targeted by the Nazis for various measures, it was the homosexuals who became the forgotten victims of the regime for many decades after the war had ended.  Not until the 1980s did the process of adequately researching the subject begin and even now in the 2020s much more still needs to be done on the topic.[1] It all began in 1871 after the German Empire (the Second Reich) was proclaimed following Prussia’s victory in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871.  That was…read more

The Phoenician people of ancient history were and still are an enigma.  Considered by historians today to be a distinct civilization, they did not have their own kingdom or empire.  Rather, Phoenicia (1st millennium BC) was made up of a series of independent city-states that occupied the coastal area of what we know as Northern Israel, Lebanon and Syria.  The most important of these city-states were Arwad, Byblos, Berot (Beirut today), Sidon, Sarepta and Tyre.  They shared a common language and writing system (script) in addition to several distinctive cultural characteristics/traits.  Maritime trading activities further unified them, and they would come to each other’s aid in time of war.  Not wishing to engage in campaigns of conquest, their merchants and sailors built up their economies, while their explorers found new lands for resource acquisition, trade and colonization.

Sumeria, the first civilization in history, arose in Mesopotamia, the region between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in modern-day Iraq.  Made up of approximately a dozen city-states that often warred with each other, the Sumerians developed a civilization that, backing out modern technology, was in many ways not very different from the one we have today.  They built the first true cities and had a highly sophisticated society in the 4th millennium BC.  Making important innovations in agriculture, architecture, astronomy, law, literacy, mathematics, and more, their contributions lived on in other cultures after the fall of their own in 1750 BC.  Following are some of their more important developments.

The 1936 Berlin Olympics proved to be an important moment of change in Olympic history.  Many people today believe that Nazi Germany won the right to host the Games, but it was actually the Weimar Government in 1931 (2 years before Hitler came to power) that gets the credit.  However, Adolf Hitler decided to make his Games the biggest and most impressive of the modern era.

In the mid-19th century, Japan was a country that enjoyed almost total exclusion from the outside world and had managed to avoid the fate that had befallen so many other of its Asian counterparts: domination or even occupation by European powers. Their happy state of internal affairs ended in 1853 when Commodore Perry and a US fleet showed up to deliver an ultimatum. It stated that “positive necessity requires that we should protect our commercial interests in this remote part of the world and in doing so, to resort to measures, however strong, to counteract the schemes of powers less scrupulous than ourselves.” The intent was clear: The US meant to force trade on the Japanese nation whether they wanted it or not.

Operation Anthropoid, the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, known as the Hangman of Prague, was conceived out of desperation.  Born in September 1941, the operation was meant to achieve some sort of significant, morale-raising victory after a long series of disasters.  Hitler had already conquered Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Low Countries, France, Yugoslavia and Greece.  His armies were currently going from victory to victory in Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union.  The British needed something, anything to stem the morale-killing stream of endlessly bad news.  The civilians at home and the various branches of the military were in danger of sliding into a state of defeatism.

I came across a very interesting article about the genetic origins of the Minoans and Mycenaeans. Because the original article was published in Nature magazine, I take its results seriously.

The Hundred Years’ War was a 116-year conflict (1337-1453) between England and France that started as a dispute over claims to the French throne. Made up of a series of military campaigns punctuated by multiple truces, it evolved into a broader conflict that saw the introduction of new innovations and tactics. Chivalry saw both its heyday during the war as well as the start of its decline. What we know today as nationalism also had its birth.

It is a sign of the speed at which events are moving that Hurst and Blackett’s unexpurgated edition of Mein Kampf, published only a year ago, is edited from a pro-Hitler angle. The obvious intention of the translator’s preface and notes is to tone down the book’s ferocity and present Hitler in as kindly a light as possible. For at that date Hitler was still respectable.