Author Archives: Martin van Creveld

That Nasty Five Year Old

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Looking up Israel’s most important news site some time ago, the first thing I saw was a story about a five-year old (not the one shown in the picture of course, who appears to be flying, on his own, from X to Y). Apparently he had brought a “sharp kitchen knife” to kindergarten and threatened to “kill all the girls” by “some kind of magic.” Not a word about the most important question, i.e why; perhaps it is simply too early. Since it is doubtful whether a five year old is able to explain himself in a coherent way about such a matter, let alone escape what adults tell him or her about him or herself, we are unlikely to know in the future either.

The original, Hebrew-language, story may be found at https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/Hkwujg5Uu. Let teachers, social workers, child psychologists, child psychiatrists, education officials, police officers, lawyers, and other good people whose job includes keeping the young in line worry about the case. For many of them it has the advantage that it will keep their hands busy and the cash flowing for some time to come. Until they come up with their learned conclusions, though, I want to say a few words about some other things that are surely going to happen if feminists pursue their “war against boys,” as one well-known female American writer has called it.

  • Much to the joy of the AF clinics and the adoption agencies, more women are going to postpone having their first child until they are over 35 years old.
  • Fewer and fewer children, both male and female, are going to have full-time mothers to look after them; the age at which they are entrusted to “professionals” (most of whom are female, and thus by definition unable to serve a role models for boys beyond a certain age) is going to go down and down.
  • Divorce, that plague of modern social life, has long been initiated mainly by women. Now it looks as if it is going to increase even further. As a result, fewer and fewer children will grow up with both their natural parents living together in a more or less harmonious way.
  • Society is going to define more and more forms of contact between the sexes, as “harassment,” “abuse,” and “rape,” thus causing the number of such cases to explode. As they do so more and more men are going to fall into the clutches either of the police or of the medical establishment. Either way their lives will be ruined, sometimes before they even got under way.
  • Hatred between the sexes, rather than diminishing as women catch up with men and become more like them, will grow and reach levels hitherto unknown.
  • More women, both old and young, are going to be killed or injured by their male fellow students, boyfriends, fiancés, husbands, etc. In the process, the age of both perpetrators and victims is going to decline.
  • As more and more women pursue careers similar to those of men, the gap in life-expectancy between them and men is going to shrink. In time, it may even disappear altogether.
  • As society continues its obsession with “toxic masculinity” and the like, Western values are going to be eroded even more than they already have been. Including equality in front of the law, the right to a fair and open trial, the presumption of innocence, and the requirement that accusers face their attackers and submit to cross examination.
  • As resentment among men increases, democracy will grow more precarious and tend to be replaced by some form of authoritarianism. For what it may look like, see Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (not the TV series, which is totally dumb, but the original book).
  • Geopolitically speaking Western countries, the only ones where feminism is taken more or less seriously, are going to decline in comparison with the rest.

Finally, these propositions are testable. Keep the list for five or ten years, and we’ll see.

So Many Questions, So Few Answers

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F. Wynne, I Was Vermeer: The Rise and Fall of the Twentieth Century’s Greatest Forger, London, Bloomsbury, 2006.

The name Han (short for Johan) van Meegeren, artist, businessman, and fraudster is not one with whom many present-generation people are familiar. However, starting in the late 1920s his name preceded him, so to speak. So much so that, at the time the Dutch Ministry of Justice put him on trial (for forgery as well as doing business with the German occupation authorities) the media were full of his exploits and thousands of people demonstrated for or against him. Nor, as the list of books that have been written about him shows, is interest in him dead even today.

Fredericus Antonius (to use his full Dutch name) van Meegeren was born in 1893 in the city of Deventer to a Catholic family. From early on he displayed artistic talent and wished to become an artist, a tendency his father, a high school teacher, did everything (well, almost everything) he could to break. He nevertheless succeeded in making it through various art schools (including one for architecture) and picking up at least one highly prestigious award. Success, however, was slow in coming, a fact that van Meegeren attributed–with good reason it would seem—to his realistic style. At a time when Impressionism, Expressionism, Cubism and any number of other isms were all the rage, who cared about a painter who was still in many ways following Eugene Delacroix?

Following a period in which he was so out of funds that he, his wife and son were forced to live with his grandmother, during World War I van Meegeren made his living mainly by teaching high-ranking ladies to paint—one of his students was the future queen of the Netherlands, Juliana. This line of business in turn helped him obtain commissions for portraits, the kind of work that has always been well rewarded if not always highly appreciated by the critics. Still being excluded from the first rank of painters rankled. Partly in order to prove himself in his own eyes, partly to avenge himself on the critics, and partly to make money in 1930-32 he started experimenting with the kind of techniques that would enable him to fake the work of the great seventeenth-century Dutch masters, including, above all, Johan Vermeer. It was anything but easy; canvas, paint, brush strokes, signature, the cracks that appear when old paint dries up, the nails that held the canvas to the frame, and many other details all had to be painfully studied and reproduced with sufficient accuracy to fool the best experts in the land.

In doing all this, van Meegeren was greatly helped by the fact that, following one of his teachers, he always prepared his own paint and had often worked as a restorer. In 1932 he was ready. From this point on his unleashed a steady stream of supposed masterpieces, selling them with the aid of agents who, following on his instructions, always told prospective clients that they had been put on the market by mysterious highly-placed men and women who did not wish to have their identities disclosed. Paintings by Vermeer apart, they included works by Frans Hals, Pieter de Hooch and Gerard Terborch. As each one was offered for sale it was submitted to experts for evaluation. Many were certified as genuine and sold for sums that ranged from the hundreds of thousands of dollars into the millions. For van Meegeren the resulting publicity was a boon, encouraging him to produce more fake masterpieces which in turn were sold and generated publicity and so on. Amidst all this he also continued producing his own paintings carrying his own signature. Soon the point came where he no longer cared to follow his income, or so he told the Dutch tax authorities when they later took him to task. He also exchanged his first beautiful wife for two successive younger, equally beautiful, ones; bought property all over; moved into one mammoth villa after another; and lived it up in lavish parties thrown for the great and wealthy of the land.

World War II found van Meegeren, who had just returned from the Riviera, living in he Netherlands. Again using middlemen he contacted, or was contacted by, the representatives of Herman Goering. Known primarily as Hitler’s deputy (though the position was disputed) and as the creator of the Luftwaffe, Goering through a combination of bribes and requisitions, the latter primarily from Jews, had grown into one of the richest  men in all Europe. Like Hitler himself he invested some of his ill-gotten gains in art. It was destined for Karinhall, the enormous private residence the Nazi leader had built northeast of Berlin and named after his late Swedish wife.

As already, mentioned, the war having ended the Dutch ministry of justice lost no time in investigating van Meegeren’s affairs. Its agents, however, were up for a surprise; the artist whom they suspected of having collaborated with the enemy now claimed to be a forger who had made a fool of his German client, selling him every kind of fake and making millions on the deals. As to tax evasion, he claimed that he had long reached the point where the additional million no longer made a difference, with the result that he did not bother to write down the sums he received.

While the presiding judge, obviously a very conscientious one, tried to find his way through the mess, outside the courtroom people demonstrated for or against the hero/traitor Han van Meegeren. The verdict was guilty of forgery and the sentence, the lightest the judge had it in his power to give: one year in prison. Even this van Meegeren, who died of a heart attack in 1947, did not have to serve. Still the controversy around him and his paintings refused to die. In 1967 another commission of inquiry was set up, with the result that some paintings were again declared to be genuine and others to be the work of van Meegeren himself.

How many of the paintings presently in various museums and presented as masterpieces but really produced in the ateliers of modern fakers such as van Meegeren is impossible to say. Better turn our attention from the often saucy details of the story to the more important questions it gives rise to. In doing so I follow the discussion of the author of I was Vermeer, the Irish writer and translator Frank Wynne, albeit in much simplified form. They are as follows:

  • What is beauty? Is it something innate to certain things, or is it merely a question of publicity and consensus?
  • What, if anything, does the fact that an object is beautiful (or not) have to do with the identity of its author?
  • What does the market price of a work of art have to do with its intrinsic value?
  • Supposing a “genuine” work of art cannot be distinguished from its faked copy, why should the first be valued at a hundred times the value attached to the second?
  • Given how profitable many aspects of the trade in art can be, can we trust the experts who are called upon to evaluate it?
  • Can an artist fake his own work, as van Meegeren seems to have done more than once? Or must every object he produces be considered an original, even if it is identical with others he created?

So many questions, so few answers.

Thinking the Unthinkable

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When a dictatorship is in trouble, ten to one that it will seek a way out in the form of war. Judging by China’s increasingly bellicose behavior in respect to Taiwan over the last few weeks, its dictatorship—and, yes, a dictatorship it is—ten to one that it is in deep trouble indeed. Consider:

  • After decades of sustained economic growth during which per capita GDP increased seventyfold, the point seems to have been reached where the formulae first put into place by Deng Xiaoping during the 1980s no longer work. In particular, as President Xi Jinpin himself is well aware, the gap between rich and poor has grown to the point where it threatens the stability of the regime—as it has done many times in the past. New methods are urgently needed. However, so far there is no sign that they are being discovered, let alone implemented.
  • In many places all over China, unbridled industrialization over the last four decades has resulted in ecological disasters without parallels in Chinese, and perhaps human, history. Unbreathable air. Undrinkable water. Vast quantities of poisonous materials seeping into the ground and reducing or eliminating its fertility.
  • China’s decades-long policy of one child per family has long led to a situation whereby fewer and fewer young people have to support more and more elderly ones, forming a major brake on productivity. So far, attempts to remedy the situation by relaxing some controls do not seem to be working.
  • By the best available evidence Corona originated in China. Next, its spread was encouraged by the Government’s reluctance to allow neutral observers to investigate the disease and do what had to be done. Combined with Beijing’s bullying behavior towards its smaller neighbors, this has caused its international credibility to suffer.

These are but a few of the challenges with which the Chinese Communist—in fact it is anything but Communist—Party has to cope. Whether or not they will actually drive the country to war over Taiwan is anyone’s guess; however, it is possible to say a few words about what such a war may look like.

  •  As so often in the past, the war will be preceded by a period of intensified wireless activity, mobilization, troop movements, news-blackouts, etc.  In theory these and many other preparatory measures should be easily detected by the intelligence services of Taiwan and its allies (primarily South Korea, Japan, and of course the USA). But whether they will be detected, let alone believed and acted upon, is another matter altogether. Think of the German offensive against the USSR, think of the Japanese one against Pearl Harbor. In both cases plenty of warnings were available right under the intelligence services’ noses; yet when they came they did so as complete surprises.
  • As so often since 1939, any Chinese offensive is certain to start in the air with attacks on Taiwan’s headquarters, communication- and transportation centers, anti-aircraft defenses, airfields and missile bases. Taking into account numbers alone, the People’s Liberation Army should be able to win these early combat operations. But then numbers are not everything; Taiwan’s defenses are up to date and well trained. From what one reads it appears they are also prepared to fight.
  • The next stage will be fought primarily at sea. Early on the initiative will be in the hands of the Chinese Navy as it tries to blockade Taiwan and soften it up in preparation of the coming invasion. Taiwan, however, has it own anti-submarine forces and is certain to use them in a determined attempt to resist the aggressor and keep its lines of communication open.
  • Suppose which is by no means certain, that at this stage the PLA can prevail. In that case it will surely use its ships to mount a large scale invasion. That, however, does not mean its problems will be over and victory, automatic. As history shows, sea- to land operations are about the most difficult of all and require a high degree of expertise which the PLA, for lack of experience, does not have. The seas around Taiwan are choppy with strong tides and, during certain seasons, torrential rains; not for noting are they known as The Black Ditch. The coast itself is rockyand hard to navigate. Thus an invasion may fail before it even gets properly started—as twice happened to the Mongols when they tried to invade Japan in 1271 and 1284 and also, to use he most famous example of all, to the Spanish Armada in 1588.
  • A coup de main intended to win a war with a single blow may succeed. Or else, as Putin’s initial invasion of Ukraine showed once again, it may fail. In case it succeeds, little else will remain to be said. In case it fails, a prolonged campaign to break Taiwan’s by no means negligible land forces and subdue the island will ensue. The outcome of such a campaign will depend very largely on the joker on the pack, meaning the US and in particular, its navy. To avoid being trapped in the Strait, the US 7th fleet, which is based  in Japan, will be deployed not west of Taiwan, as  laymen might think, but to the east of it. From there it will send its aircraft in an attempt to stop the invaders either before they touch land or at a later point when it will be a question of keeping their supply lines open.

To sum up, the above difficulties notwithstanding a Chinese attempt to subdue  an isolated Taiwan would stand a reasonable, if by no means certain, expectation of success. However, launching it in the teeth of American military power, the greatest on earth, would be a very risky venture indeed. And this without even considering the ever-present threat of nuclear escalation, whether deliberate or accidental, which literally might bring about the end of he world.

Thinking the unthinkable, as 1960s-vintage strategists used to say.

Confessions of a Marine Corps Sensitivity Trainer

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This week someone sent me the following document, originally published at the end of 200I. Considered it too good miss, so I posted it as is without asking for permission. If anyone objects, I will be sorry. But of course I will take the stolen goods offline immediately:

By

Philip Gold

1973 was not a good year to be a Marine. Nam was over. Rebuilding hadn’t begun. And an awful lot of us, myself included, just wanted out. I opted for grad school. But on three occasions in those final months before returning to the halls of ivy, I almost left via the brig.

First came the Inspector Generals (IG) inspection. IGs are the guys they send out from D.C. to see if you’ve complied with the accumulated tonnage of orders, regulations, requirements and general odiosity from the Corps. Usually IGs were bearable, since the inspectors knew they would eventually go back to the operating forces and didn’t want to annoy their once and future comrades too badly. In fact, I wouldn’t have worried at all, except that I’d recently disposed of several hundred classified documents by shredding, and had inadvertently shredded the destruct roster as well, and had no way of accounting for anything.

Fortunately, I did have my master sergeant, aka “Top,” a gent whom nothing had bothered since the Korean War, not even getting invited to those up close and personal “tactical” atom bomb tests of the 1950s nor two subsequent Vietnam tours.

Inspection day dawned with visions of Portsmouth dancing in my head. I sent my scuzziest lance corporal out with a six-by (truck, to you) full of unauthorized gear, with orders to drive around the base until the inspection was over. He returned two weeks later and, when asked about the truck, replied, “You mean I had a truck with me?” But that’s another tale.

The IG team, “all friends of Top,” skipped the crypto vault and headed straight for my field radios: the old AN/PRC-25 backpack variety. You see, the telephone-style handset had a couple connectors inside. Upon sufficient bouncing about, they’d come loose, touch, and short out. So the Corps had issued a technical instruction to epoxy the connectors in place. Unfortunately, there was no epoxy in the supply system, and no one was allowed to spend the 89 cents or whatever on their own. So the IG team set to unscrewing mouthpieces. If you hadn’t epoxied the connectors, they wanted to know why you’d violated the order. If you had, they wanted to know where you got the glue.

Top offered to explain it all to them over a liquid lunch at the staff club. Apparently, he did. And I was safe … until getting stuck at the VIP table at the Camp Pendleton Passover Seder.

Now, as you can imagine, Jewish Marines weren’t all that common back then. Originally I had no intention of making the Seder, but the base Jewish chaplain importuned, and I figured the Reb, as the other chaplains called him (not always respectfully), had enough tsuris without hosting yet another unattended gala. As it turned out, a couple dozen folks blew in, including the base commanding general and the First Marine Division commanding general, and their ladies … two couples with even less desire to be there than I.

A few minutes into the pre-meal rituals, I noticed that the generals and their ladies were imitating everything I was doing, liturgically meaningful or not. So I started making up traditions. They kept copying. Why, they asked, are we doing it this way and everybody else is doing something different? Oh, I assured them, that’s the Ashkenazic custom. We’re going Sephardic. Up at the officiating table, the Reb was turning colors, red to yellow to green, and back again.

We came to the commemoration of the Ten Plagues. Usually, you either dip your finger in your wine glass as each Plague is named or you spoon a bit of wine onto your plate. I started us on finger-dips for two Plagues, then shifted to spoons for two more, then had them banging spoons on plates for two Plagues after that. At this point, they noticed the Reb choking on Plague No. 7 and realized what was going on. Fortunately, generals can never admit they’ve been snookered by lieutenants. That, or they were at least as dinky dau … and/or far more gracious … than I.

Probably just as well that it ended when it did. I was getting ready to walk them around the table for Plagues No. 8 through 10.

Several weeks later, I did have people walking around a table.

Back then, there was racial tension. Lots of racial tension. So the Marine Corps decided that everyone should have Human Relations (HumRel) instruction, 20 hours worth, spread over five mornings. Unfortunately, I was hanging around the battery office, looking for my early-release papers, when the quota for a HumRel trainer came in. So they shipped me off to a weeklong instructors’ course. I graduated first in the class, having gotten a 98 on the true-false test, and they sent me back to teach the gun bunnies what was to become known as sensitivity.

We had a text. Actually, an “Our American Values” quasi comic book. In the 1960s, most basic manuals had gone comic book, including the M-16 rifle disassembly and maintenance guide (Chapter One: “How to Strip Your Sweet 16”), but that’s another story. First four sessions, we sat around a conference table and reacted to the drawings and balloons.

“What do you think, Private Smith?”

“Dunno, sir.”

“What do you think, Corporal Jones?”

“Oh, I agree with Private Smith.”

Fridays were different. That’s when we discussed conditions at the local base, including self-segregation, interracial sex, dapping (elaborate black-power handshakes), et cetera. When we got to the dating stuff, the scrawniest brother at the table made a comment about white male sexual prowess, as explicit as it was uncomplimentary. The nearest Caucasian immediately reached over and began acquainting his head with the tabletop, and there ensued several minutes of mass violence and general bad manners.

Once was nasty enough. When it happened the second cycle, I figured there was a pattern emerging. So did my captain. So did my colonel. So did a general or two, who suggested via the chain of command that a bit more decorum, and no more incident reports that had to go to headquarters, might be nice. Especially if I wanted to avoid being held on active duty for the investigations, which might take forever. So Thursday evening before my final class, I called the area guard shack.

“This is Lieutenant Gold. I’ll be teaching sex education tomorrow and would like the reaction force standing by.”

Next morning, 20 or so Marines sat around the table, revving up. I announced the subject, then opened the door. In marched a dozen Marines in riot gear. They surrounded the table and made not a sound, save for a discreet tapping of their batons on the wall behind them.

We had a fascinating seminar, an open, genuine, and informative exchange of views. I subsequently spent 14 years as a college professor. Would that all my classes had been so … well received.

 

Foreshadowing the counter-revolution

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Starting today, I am running a series of dialogues with Larry Kummer – writer at and editor of the FabiusMaximus website. This format worked well in my book, The Gender Dialogues, conversations with a feminist. This is chapter one of a new dialog.

Although its origin is unknown, here a common example of young conservatives expressing Crimethink in their favorite medium:

MvC:

Schadenfreude is an ugly thing , but here we are.

LNK:

That nails it. A black lesbian female athlete is near the top of our social pyramid. Many young conservative men are unwilling to bow before the new order.

So far this is covert resistance. Perhaps we will get a William Tell moment, where someone refuses to genuflect before a Leftist totem. Now, as then, the price will be high.

MvC:

The revolt, when it takes place, will be ugly indeed. But they have been asking for it.

LNK:

The Left’s power has grown great, now encompassing most of the major instructions in America. Now its rate of growth is about to accelerate. For example, one of the next conversions is that of the Roman Catholic Church – that is, large elements of it (e.g., in America, Europe, and the HQ in Rome). Like all the other victories of the Left, the preliminary steps have been obvious – but the conclusion will still surprise people.

I predicted much of this, but did not foresee the two most amazing aspects. First, the Left’s fantastic rate of growth. I wrote this post two  years ago: The Left sweeps across America like a tsunami, or Rommel did France. Most reviewers said that it was too alarmist (back them most on the right responded to the Left’s wins with mockery or pearl-clutching). Today it looks prescient, but I underestimated the Left’s power.

Second, even more fantastic – despite the Left’s astonishing wins, there is as yet little organized opposition. As you said, we have passed all the exits leading to pleasant solutions. If there is a counter-revolution, which today seems unlikely, must be ugly if it is to have any odds of success.

 

 

You Have Been Warned!

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In Israel, and by no means only in Israel—see the recent shitstorm around Robert Kelly—the man-hunt is on. Not a day goes by that does not bring new stories about men who sexually harassed, attacked, abused, and, yes, raped. In every single case women, are presented as clueless victims. In every single case, asked to explain why they did not do something—such as slap their alleged attacker or at least get out of his way—the woman claims that he has “enslaved” them, “taken away their souls,” “brainwashed them,” “turned them into robots,” etc.

Strangest of all, the media do not try to expose these creatures for the miserable wretches they are. Instead they, the media, keep praising the “courage” with which, often flanked by entire armies of female psychologists, social workers, and lawyers, they turn on their alleged tormentors and denounce them. Following which, the man in question is finished when he is found guilty and also when he is not.

As a former professor who has had his troubles with  female students, and who has witnessed several of his male colleagues accused, put in front of a kangaroo court, and punished for alleged “sexual harassment,” I have some experience in the matter. So here is a list, admittedly a very incomplete one, of recommendations for other men to follow.

Never, ever, buy a woman a drink. That is because, if you do, she may later complain that you put something in it. Let them buy their own drinks (and yours as well, while she’s at it). If you are together and she wants to go to the restroom, make her take her drink with her.

Never, ever, give a woman a ride. Several of my acquaintances did so, only to have the woman in question try to blackmail them later on.

Make sure you never, ever, find yourself alone with a woman in an elevator. Not even one made of glass, as many nowadays are.

Remember good old St Thomas Aquinas? A man, he said, can do anything a woman can; but the opposite is not true. Rare indeed is the woman whose skills are such that she cannot be replaced by a man.  If, in spite of this, you have no choice but to hire a woman (if only because the law, in the name of “equal opportunity” and diversity” obliges you to do so), never ever speak to her in person or allow yourself to be alone in the same room with her. The best thing to do is to have her, of them, in separate room or rooms with a sign, “out of bounds for all male personnel” on them. Communication with the female employees to be solely by computer, which will record every word.

Don’t ever compliment a female employee and do not give her a dressing down. If you do either, there is a fair chance that she will turn it against you, either by claiming that you have tried to make her or by way of avenging herself on you for not accepting her advances. Prohibit your male employees from talking to their female fellow workers; instead, let all communication pass through an elderly female employee you feel you can trust. That incidentally, was the method many firms used before 1950 or so.

If you are a physician, or psychiatrist, or psychologist, or some other kind of psychotherapist, avoid treating women as much as you can. If again in the name of “equality,” you are forced to do so, make sure you take appropriate defensive measures. Such as having another woman (one you think you can trust) present, reordering everything on video, etc.

Ditto if you are a teacher, instructor, coach, physiotherapist, or a member of a similarly dangerous profession. 

If you must have sex, visit a prostitute. The last thing prostitutes want is trouble. As a result, they tend to more honest and less likely to go after you than most women are. Or else, better still, get yourself a sex doll. They are improving all the time. In any case, given all the cosmetic procedures women undergo these days, the distinction between them and sex dolls is steadly being eradicated.

If, in spite of everything, you are going to make love to a woman, have her sign a form first. The form should specify that she is doing what she does while in full possession of her faculties, without coercion and out of her own free will. To make sure, have her sign it in front of a notary. Better still have her sign two forms, one before, one after. But do not kid yourself. A woman can always claim that she signed under duress or else while drunk or otherwise mentally incapacitated (as, it seems, many women are most of the time). So the protection this measure affords is limited.

In case, which is quite possible, all these precautions are no avail and you are made to stand trial, the following measures may help a little:

Hire the best available female lawyer but only after you’ve checked, and checked again, that she can be trusted.

If there is to be a jury trial, have your lawyer make sure, as far as possible, that the jury is made up of young men and elderly women.

Have your female relatives and acquaintances sit in on the trial and show, at every opportunity, how unafraid of you they are and how much they love you.

If, which is very likely, you are convicted and sent to jail, forget your male pride. It will only land you into more trouble. Instead, use every opportunity to show how contrite you are, how much you regret your beastly actions and sympathize with your “victims”, and so on. Doing so is the only way to gain an early release or be put on parole.

Good luck.

Neither to Swallow, Nor to Puke

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Despina Stratigakos, Hitler at Home, Yale University Press, Kindle ed., 2015

Ms. Stratigakos, a professor at the University of Buffalo, is a historian who knows her way about architecture and design. Or perhaps I should call her an architect and designer who knows her way about history and how to write it. In this book, one of four she has authored (and two I’ve read), she treats us to a tour of the Berghof, Adolf Hitler’s retreat in the Bavarian Alps. The outcome is as fascinating as books of this kind can be.

The story starts in 1927 when Hitler, then 38 years old and the leader of a small but noisy party in the German parliament, was introduced to the area by one of his adherents. So much did he like the house, known as Haus Wachenfeld after the owner, that he decided to rent it and make it his vacation home. Not long thereafter he bought it, putting it on his sister’s name so as to avoid paying taxes. From this point until the summer of 1944, when he left it for the last time, his fate and that of the Haus were inextricably linked.

Not that the Berghof, (translatable as either Mountain Farm or Mountain Court), as Hitler renamed it, was ever his only home. Not long after he first visited Berchtesgaden, as the area was and still is called, he also acquired a large and comfortable flat in the center of Munich. The city where, the four years he spent in the trenches apart, in which he had lived from 1912 on and in which the National Socialist Party was born some seven years later. Following his appointment as Chancellor in January 1933 he also had at his disposal an entire complex (or, following Hindenburg’s death and the merger of his post with that of the president, two complexes) of buildings on the Wilhelmstrasse, in Berlin’s government quarter. Prof. Stratigakos describes both of these complexes in considerable detail right down to location of the vestibules and the toilets as well as the colors used in each room.

All this is interesting enough. Prof. Stratigakos, however, focuses her attention on the Berghof. Why? Because, much more than the other two quarters the Fuehrer occupied, Hitler used it for propaganda purposes to celebrate his lifestyle and cement his bonds with the German people over whom he ruled.

Needless to say, Hitler was not alone. The list of those who aided him in this effort is a long one. The first was Paul Troost, the architect who presided over the first expansion and modernization of the Berghof in 1932-33. After his death, which occurred in 1934, the work was taken over by his widow Gerty; most of the interior decoration of the house, including such details as the selection of colors, curtains, furniture, decorative articles, tableware, and so on can be traced to her influence. Heinrich Hoffman, Hitler’s official photographer, who took thousands of pictures of the man and his home and selected hundreds of them for publication in every kind of medium available at the time. Nazi bigwigs such as Youth Leader Baldur von Schirach who wrote adulatory texts to accompany the photographs. And Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, who saw to it that the material should be distributed all over the Reich.

From the hands of these and countless others, the popular image of the Fuhrer emerged. No lover of great cities but a simple resident of a simple house in a simple village in a simple, if exceptionally beautiful, district. Relatively poor (one of the few criticisms I have of Prof. Stratigakos’ work is the emphasis she puts on the sums spent on the Berghof; whatever else, they did not compare with the 160 or so castles belonging to the Hohenzollern family).

No snob, but “our Hitler” as Goebbels liked to call him; a man among men (and women who, from beginning to end, were among his greatest admirers) with whom he was on easy terms. Dressed in simple clothes; no elaborate headdress, no rows of glittering if often meaningless medals on his chest. Good with women whom he treated with an old-fashioned sort of respect reminiscent of his Austrian homeland. Good with children whom he invited to parties and fed with cakes. Good with dogs which he was always trying to train. And possessed of a small weakness (a sweet tooth) that would make those in the know smile indulgently.

The last large expansion and renovation of the Berghof took place in 1937-38. By that time it was well on the way in being turned from a relatively modest private residence into a kind of second capital where the owner spent as much of his time as he could. Important guests—including Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, former British Prime Minister David Lloyd-George, and Heinrich Himmler, the SS commander responsible for carrying out the Holocaust—visited. Important officers, e.g some 200 generals on the eve of the invasion of Russia, received their marching orders. With the Fuehrer’s brutal deputy, Martin Bormann, in charge, paved roads, guest houses, barracks for the SS guard, vast underground storerooms and communication corridors appeared as if by magic. So did the houses of Hitler’s paladins including Goering, Speer, Goebbels, and Bormann himself. The demands of total war—especially in terms of raw materials and workers—did something to slow the building process. However, until July 1944 when Hitler left his house for the last time, it never stopped.

To repeat, I found almost all of this fascinating. Still the author will have to forgive me for writing that the most interesting, as well as the most important, chapter is the last: containing, not detailed descriptions of the Berghof, nor the use that was made of it for purposes of propaganda and bolstering the regime, but the fate that overtook it after the war’s end. Having already been heavily bombed by the RAF, first it and the surrounding area were occupied and looted by American troops. Not always with success, since secret storerooms and corridors are being occasionally discovered right down to the present day. Then what remained of the house was dynamited along with most of the remaining structures. Then the entire area, some 150 square miles in size, was returned to the Bavarian Government.

Then the debate what to do with it got under way in earnest. Who, if anyone, should be allowed to visit the remnants of the various structures and if so, under what conditions and for what purposes. Whether there should, or should not, be a visitor center and, if so, what it should tell visitors. How to avoid turning the area into a sort of ghoulish holiday park (complete with a miniature gas chamber, perhaps?). How to prevent it from attracting Nazis, Neo-Nazis, extremists, and ordinary right wingers. The kind who would gather to worship the man who liked to describe himself as the greatest German of all times.

Stuck in Germany’s throat, Hitler and everything pertaining to him is. To quote a Hebrew phrase that seems singularly appropriate, neither to swallow, nor to puke. And so, as then Chancellor Helmut Schmidt warned his countrymen decades ago, it will remain for a thousand years to come.

Alexandra

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History has not been kind to Alexandra Feodorovna. Born in 1872 to a fairly minor (as belle epoque grand dukes go), German grand duke, married (in 1894) to Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, she is often presented as a melancholic, not too bright, woman. One whose chief interests—how dare she—was neither feminism nor any public role she might have played, but religion, her children, embroidery, and singing hymns. One who, it having been discovered that her only son, heir to the throne Alexei, was a hemophiliac, went almost out of her mind trying to look after him and worrying about him. With good reason, for more than once he was on the point of death and more than once he begged his parents to put him out of his misery by killing him. Things were made even worse when she turned to Rasputin, an uncouth, semiliterate, but highly charismatic self-proclaimed holy man from Siberia, for the kind of spiritual aid she so desperately needed but apparently could not find either at court or with her husband.

Partly because of her German origins, partly because many members of the Tsar’s family and court officials considered that he had betrayed them by marrying below his station, Alexandra was never popular at court. Nor, later on, did her closeness to Rasputin improve matters. But that was only part of it. Not only was Alexandra not the type that happily waves to crowds, but she never attained a complete mastery of Russian (she and her husband used to communicate in English). As a result, she was not terribly well received by the rest of the population either.

The outbreak of World War I did nothing to improve the lot of this unhappy woman. First she did her best to prevent her two countries from going to war against each other, storming into her husband’s presence and proclaiming, prophetically as it turned out, that “this is the end of everything.” Starting in 1915 she found herself accused of being in favor of Germany, even a German spy, a claim for which no evidence has ever been found. After the March 1917 Revolution she and her family were arrested, first by the Kerensky Government and then again by Lenin and his Bolsheviks. Held first in Tobolsk (in Siberia) and then in Yekaterinburg (ditto) under conditions that grew steadily worse. In the spring of 1918 there was some talk of sending the royal family to England in quest of asylum; but these hopes were dashed when the Emperor’s cousin, King George V, fearing for his own throne, refused to let them in. The end came in July of the same year when, probably on Lenin’s personal order, the Tsar, his wife, and their five children (four daughters, one son) were taken to a cellar and died in a hail of submachine gun bullets.

So far the traditional view. It so happened, however, that I came across a work by one Anna Viroubova. Born in 1884, the daughter of a high Russian official, for twelve years (1905-12) she was the Empress’ closest companion and confidante. In 1917 she too was arrested, first by Kerensky and then by Lenin. Held under rather unpleasant conditions in the infamous Petrograd (as it then was) Fortress of Peter and Paul, later she was released and went to live with her mother in the same city. From that apartment she was able to keep up an illicit, but fairly regular, correspondence with her imprisoned former mistress, the latter’s husband the former emperor, and their offspring. In 1920 she escaped to newly independent Finland where she spent the rest of her life, finally dying in 1964.

Nothing like prison to clear the mind, they say. Perhaps that is why the Empress’ letters to Viroubova, as printed in the latter’s 1923 book, showed her in a light I had never known existed. Here was a courageous woman. One who, amidst all her tribulations, knew how to give and receive love.

I quote. From Anna Viroubova, Memories of the Russian Court Normandy Press. Kindle Edition, 2016, p. 167.

March 1918.

“We are endlessly touched by all your love and thoughtfulness. Thank everybody for us, please, but really it is too bad to spoil us so, for you are among so many difficulties and we have not many privations, I assure you. We have enough to eat, and in many respects are rich compared with you. The children put on yesterday your lovely blouses. The hats also are very useful, as we have none of this sort. The pink jacket is far too pretty for an old woman like me, but the hat is all right for my gray hair. What a lot of things! The books I have already begun to read, and for all the rest such tender thanks. He [the Emperor] was so pleased by the military suit, vest, and trousers you sent him, and all the lovely things. From whom came the ancient image? I love it. Our last gifts to you, including the Easter eggs, will get off today. I can’t get much here except a little flour. Just now we are completely shut off from the south, but we did get, a short time ago, letters from Odessa. What they have gone through there is quite terrible…”

Ibid, p. 167.

“Well, all is God’s will. The deeper you look the more you understand that this is so. All sorrows are sent us to free us from our sins or as a test of our faith, an example to others. It requires good food to make plants grow strong and beautiful, and the gardener walking through his garden wants to be pleased with his flowers. If they do not grow properly he takes his pruning knife and cuts, waiting for the sunshine to coax them into growth again. I should like to be a painter, and make a picture of this beautiful garden and all that grows in it. I remember English gardens, and at Livadia [in the Crimea] Just now eleven men have passed on horseback, good faces, mere boys—this I have not seen the like of for a long time. They are the guard of the new Kommissar. Sometimes we see men with the most awful faces. I would not include them in my garden picture. The only place for them would be outside where the merciful sunshine could reach them and make them clean from all the dirt and evil with which they are covered. God bless you, darling child. Our prayers and blessings surround you. I was so pleased with the little mauve Easter egg, and all the rest. But I wish I could send you back the money I know you need for yourself. May the Holy Virgin guard you from all danger. Kiss your dear mother for me. Greetings to your old servant, the doctors, and Fathers John and Dosifei. Viroubova, Alexandra.”

Ibid, p. 168, 21 March.

“Darling child, we thank you for all your gifts, the little eggs, the cards, and the chocolate for the little one. Thank your mother for the books. Father was delighted with the cigarettes, which he found so good, and also with the sweets. Snow has fallen again, although the sunshine is bright. The little one’s leg is gradually getting better, he suffers less, and had a really good sleep last night. Today we are expecting to be searched—very agreeable! I don’t know how it will be later about sending letters. I only hope it will be possible, and I pray for help. The atmosphere around us is fairly electrified. We feel that a storm is approaching, but we know that God is merciful, and will care for us. Things are growing very anguishing. Today we shall have a small service at home, for which we are thankful, but it is hard, nevertheless, not to be allowed to go to Church. You understand how that is, my little martyr. I shall not send this, as ordinarily, through ———, as she too is going to be searched. It was so nice of you to send her a dress. I add my thanks to hers. Today is the twenty-fourth anniversary of our engagement. How sad it is to remember that we had to burn all our letters, yours too, and others as dear. But what was to be done? One must not attach one’s soul to earthly things, but words written by beloved hands penetrate the very heart, become a part of life itself. I wish I had something sweet to send you, but I haven’t anything. Why did you not keep that chocolate for yourself? You need it more than the children do. We are allowed one and a half pounds of sugar every month, but more is always given us by kind-hearted people here. I never touch sugar during Lent, but that does not seem to be a deprivation now. I was so sorry to hear that my poor lancer Ossorgine had been killed, and so many others besides. What a lot of misery and useless sacrifice! But they are all happier now in the other world. Though we know that the storm is coming nearer and nearer, our souls are at peace. Whatever happens will be through God’s will. Thank God, at least, the little one is better. May I send the money back to you? I am sure you will need it if you have to move again. God guard you. I bless and kiss you, and carry you always in my heart. Keep well and brave. Greetings to all from your ever loving, Alexandra.”

Shinzo Abe, or the Art of the Possible

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Back in 1943, the year in which political scientist Quincy Wright published his monumental A Study of War, he put Japan at the top of his list of aggressive and militaristic nations, ranking it ahead even of Germany. Considering that Hitler was in power and that, during the four decades since 1900, Germany had been widely blamed for having launched not one but two world wars, this fact sheds an interesting light on the way people used to think.

But nothing lasts forever. Following Japan’s defeat in World War II, brought about partly by a series of bloody battles against vastly superior Allied forces (those of the US, Britain, China and, for good measure, the Soviet Union as well) and partly by two nuclear devices dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively, the country’s public opinion became as bitterly opposed to war as it had previously been militaristic. The most important symptom of this opposition was the reluctance, which lasted for decades on end and still remains a major factor in Japanese politics, to change the Constitution. One which, originally dictated to it by the American General Douglas MacArthur, “forever renounce[d] war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.”

Enter Shinzo Abe. Born in 1954, the scion of a well-known political family and a Liberal Democrat, (meaning, slightly right of center), twice he served as prime minister (2006-2007 and 2012-2020).  Making a total of nine years, more than any other post-1945 Japanese prime minister. Both in- and out of office he never left any doubt concerning the need to increase his country’s ability to assert itself if necessary. Without, however, going too far in provoking either his domestic electorate or foreign countries, both friendly and hostile. Now that he has fallen victim to an assassin, it is worth listing some of the most important efforts he and his fellow Liberal Democrats have been making or trying to make. If not in this order, then at any rate in this direction.

  • Cementing Japan’s alliance with the United States as its protector against Soviet-Russian/Chinese/and North Korean aggression.
  • Starting in 1991, having suffered the humiliation of by helplessly standing by while others crushed Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, they gradually expanded Japan’s participation in various international peace-keeping efforts. Including, from 2004 on, sending naval and air forces to the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan to assist in those efforts.
  • Using various accounting tricks to boost the country’s defense budget from about one percent of GDP to double that without too many people noticing.
  • Reinterpreting—not modifying—Japan’s Constitution in a way that would allow Japanese troops to come to the aid of an ally under attack.
  • Creating a National Security Council as an instrument for reinforcing the prime minister’s role in security affairs. Some Japan-watchers called this “the most ambitious reorganization of Japan’s foreign and security policy apparatus since the end of World War II.”
  • Putting an end to Japan’s long-standing official denials that it had American nuclear weapons stationed on its territory.
  • Building a couple of aircraft carriers, albeit that they are much smaller and less capable not only than the American ones but also than the new ones on which the Chinese Navy has been working.
  • Relaxing, though not lifting, Japan’s ban on exporting all kinds of military-related equipment; with Ukraine under Russian attack and begging for any assistance it can have, the importance of this measure does not have to be pointed out.
  • By way of putting the plum on the icing, visiting Tokyo’s Temple of the War Dead and paying his respects to the kami (spirits). Including some characterized by Japan’s opponents as war criminals.

All that having been said, here is a list of measures Shinzo and his fellow Liberal Democrats, probably because they believed the opposition would be too strong, did not push through:

  • While Japan’s defense budget has been growing, it still ranks only seventh in the world. That is way below that of a number of other countries whose economies are smaller than its own.
  • No Japanese forces have seen combat against the troops of any other power, nor is there any intention of changing this policy.
  • Though Japan has long been in possession of a large and sophisticated nuclear industry, as far as public knowledge allows us to judge it has never made any strong move toward the construction of nuclear weapons.
  • Finally, while public opinion has slowly been shifting towards building stronger armed forces, the Constitution has never been revised and does not look as if it is going to be anytime soon.

It is as Bismarck said: politics is the art of the possible.

And How about Progress?

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It seems just a few years have passed since the best-selling Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker published two extraordinarily optimistic works, The Better Angels of Our Nature; Why Violence Has Declined (2011) and Enlightenment Now (2018). As the author says, his intention was to show that humanity is marching towards, if not perfection, at any rate a greatly improved existence. Depending on the geographical location and the country in question, fewer wars and fewer people who lose their lives in them. Less crime and less violence.  Fewer perinatal deaths among women and infants. Greater control over nature. Better healthcare. Diseases that, once considered incurable, have since been eradicated or are on their way to being so. Growing life expectancy (some visionaries have claimed that the first immortals, people destined to live forever or at least to age 200, are already walking among us). Greatly expanded economic production which, along with developing technology, is pointing towards the eradication of poverty and a future in which everyone, if not rich, will at any rate have enough to eat. More democracy, more justice, more human rights. More and often better education; less superstition, more science. Less slavery, more mobility and more travel. More opportunities. An improved social order that is steadily making the lives of billions brighter, happier, more enjoyable.

Says Hegel—I take it for granted that anyone who reads this blog will know who he was, so no need to explain—that Minerva’s owl only spreads its wings at dusk. Meaning, the very fact that more and more people have come to believe in something—progress, say, or democracy, or socialism, or the widespread existence of a “rape culture”–is itself part cause, part outcome, of the collapse of that “something.” Why? Because history, unlike the natural world, moves neither in cycles nor in a straight line but in an unending process of action-reaction.  An idea–for Hegel, an idealist, it is always the idea that comes first–is born. It spreads. Spreading, it gives rise to opposition (as any idea necessarily does; no opposition, no idea). The two, the idea and the opposition to it, interact. They study each other, learn from each other, wrestle and merge. Until a new idea is born out of both its parents’ bodies, enabling the process to continue, All this takes place all the time, at every level, moving us ever forward towards what Hegel regards as the final goal. Meaning, a world in which a single idea—that of freedom—dominates and all contradictions are resolved.

To repeat, only a few years have passed since Pinker took up the cudgels for progress. In those years, what a reaction! Too many people on this crowded earth of us. Global warming causing sea levels to rise and glaciers to melt. Storms that alternate with droughts. Wherever we look, spreading pollution: on land, at sea, even in outer space. Restrictions on tourism, only recently declared to be the greatest industry on earth but now increasingly seen as a threat to the environment. In some places—not always the least-developed ones–life expectancy has begun to decline. Corona, counting its victims in the millions, remains a threat as some other emergent diseases may also do.

More money is being spent on the military than ever before. War, large scale war, has broken out in Europe and may be about to break out in East Asia as well (e.g. between China and Taiwan). Depression is spreading, as is the use of all kinds of dubious drugs supposed to combat it. A growing volume of seemingly random violence in which innocent people, schoolchildren included, are killed. Vast and growing socio-economic gaps between people, classes and countries. In many countries, democracy is turning questionable and authoritarianism is raising its ugly head. Even within that model of humanitarian perfection, the EU, some members are not immune.

To continue the list, the value of much non-professional higher education is being questioned. Contact between people belonging to different religions and cultures, rather than teaching toleration and mutual respect, often gives rise to more hatred and greater fanaticism. Police states using technological progress—the kind which, Edward Snowden tells us, he and so many others originally welcomed as an instrument of liberation—to spy on everyone all the time. The beginning of a reaction to wokeness that may very well put an end to whatever progress—if, indeed, it is progress–has been achieved in this direction and spread.

Two centuries after Schiller wrote, and Beethoven set to music, the idea that “all people are becoming brothers” there is even a movement, or at least the beginning of a movement, made up of scientists and scholars who believe that we are at a critical turning point. Meaning  that, following some two and a half centuries of visible and sustained progress, that progress has now peaked and is about to go into reverse.

Which view is correct? As several entries in this blog testify, when considering the future it is always useful to consult George Orwell. Here is what, shortly before his death in 1950, he had to say about the matter:

The world of [1984] is a bare, hungry, dilapidated place compared with the world that existed before 1914, and still more so if compared with the imaginary future to which the people of that period looked forward. In the early twentieth century, the vision of a future society unbelievably rich, leisured, orderly, and efficient — a glittering antiseptic world of glass and steel and snow-white concrete — was part of the consciousness of nearly every literate person. Science and technology were developing at a prodigious speed, and it seemed natural to assume that they would go on developing. This failed to happen, partly because of the impoverishment caused by a long series of wars and revolutions, partly because scientific and technical progress depended on the empirical habit of thought, which could not survive in a strictly regimented society. As a whole the world is more primitive today than it was fifty years ago.

Is this the direction in which we are moving?