“One of the many unhappy oddities of the contemporary United States is that so many of us are Bible-obsessed yet have never read the Bible.” – Harold Bloom, Omens of Millennium
Category: History
“It is only when all sides of an issue are forcefully presented and the various solutions thereof closely scrutinized that the final plan has any validity.” – Maj. Gen. Orlando Ward, U.S.A., The War Department: Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare, 1941-1942, United States Army in World War Two
“A brigadier general then in OPD [Operations Division of the General Staff, United States Army] told the author that, after some extracurricular scientific reflection in the early spring of 1945, he conceived the idea that the release of atomic energy for military purposes might be practical. He said he innocently aired the suggestion in the War Department that the Japanese might be working on such a weapon and wondered if the United States should not be doing something about it. He was considerably surprised at the intensive security check to which he was suddenly subjected. The fact that OPD officers in general had no idea of what was in the immediate future is indicated by their consternation when a project for construction of an artificial harbor for use in the March 1946 attack on Japan was approved with ‘priority above all military and naval programs except MANHATTAN project.’ OPD officers told the author that they could not guess nor discover what the mysterious MANHATTAN was and doubted that it could be more important than the harbor for 1946. One S&P [Strategy & Policy Group] officer said he received oral orders from General Hull [Director of Operations Division] to quit trying to find out anything about MANHATTAN.” – Ray S. Cline, Washington Command Post: The Operations Division, United States Army in World War Two (internal citations omitted)
“Christianity in the early barbarian West may have thought it was being assimilated by a warrior aristocracy, but it ended up—even before the Crusades—accommodating itself to the heroic values of the nobility. The blending of the two cultures would have begun at the time of conversion, but it was an extended process.” – Roberta Frank, “The Beowulf Poet’s Sense of History”
“Security consciousness in OPD [Operations Division of the General Staff, United States Army] was so well established by the end of the war that the author and associate historians, though explicitly authorized by the Chief of Staff and the OPD chief to see all War Department files, had many administrative battles with the executive office and the record room before officers in charge became convinced that the chief of OPD had really meant that anyone, particularly a civilian, should see everything in Division files. While the historians found most of the staff members extremely co-operative, the policy of tight security was very strong.” – Ray S. Cline, Washington Command Post: The Operations Division, United States Army in World War Two
“The War Department, like every other installation in the zone of interior, found it harder and harder to maintain high standards for its enlisted detachment. Toward the close of 1943 OPD [Operations Division of the General Staff, United States Army] was authorized to overcome its difficulties in staffing its secretariat by using enlisted women (Wacs [Women’s Army Corps]) as well as enlisted men and civilians. By recruiting increasing numbers of enlisted women, the Division added to the strength of its clerical staff and in general maintained its exacting standards of competence. By V-J Day enlisted women made up nearly one-third of the strength of the total Division secretariat, nearly equaling each of the other two components.” – Ray S. Cline, Washington Command Post: The Operations Division, United States Army in World War Two
“The enlisted men and the junior officers of the Army, who seemed always to be feeling the effects without ever getting a glimmering of the cause for the confusion, coined the word ‘SNAFU,’ a term roughly equivalent to ‘Situation normal, all fouled up.’ ” – Ray S. Cline, Washington Command Post: The Operations Division, United States Army in World War Two
“Stalemate is not armistice or ceasefire. It is a condition in war in which each side conducts offensive operations that do not fundamentally alter the situation. Those operations can be very damaging and cause enormous casualties. The World War I battles of the Somme, Verdun, and Passchendaele were all fought in conditions of stalemate and did not break the stalemate.” – Frederick W. Kagan, et al., “Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 19 [2023]” Institute for the Study of War
“In the 21st century, a tendency toward the elimination of the differences between the states of war and peace is becoming discernible. Wars are now not even declared, but having begun, are not going according to a pattern we are accustomed to.” – General Valeriy Gerasimov, “The Value of Science Is in the Foresight: New Challenges Demand Rethinking the Forms and Methods of Carrying Out Combat Operations”
“Anguish and grief, like darkness and rain, may be depicted; but gladness and joy, like the rainbow, defy the skill of pen or pencil.” – Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself
“I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery; he must be made to feel that slavery is right; and he can be brought to that only when he ceases to be a man.” – Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself
“It would astonish one, unaccustomed to a slaveholding life, to see with what wonderful ease a slaveholder can find things, of which to make occasion to whip a slave. A mere look, word, or motion,—a mistake, accident, or want of power,—are all matters for which a slave may be whipped at any time. Does a slave look dissatisfied? It is said, he has the devil in him, and it must be whipped out. Does he speak loudly when spoken to by his master? Then he is getting high-minded, and should be taken down a button-hole lower. Does he forget to pull off his hat at the approach of a white person? Then he is wanting in reverence, and should be whipped for it. Does he ever venture to vindicate his conduct, when censured for it? Then he is guilty of impudence,—one of the greatest crimes of which a slave can be guilty. Does he ever venture to suggest a different mode of doing things from that pointed out by his master? He is indeed presumptuous, and getting above himself; and nothing less than a flogging will do for him. Does he, while ploughing, break a plow,—or, while hoeing, break a hoe? It is owing to his carelessness, and for it a slave must always be whipped.” – Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself
“I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of the south is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes,—a justifier of the most appalling barbarity,—a sanctifier of the most horrid frauds,—and a dark shelter under which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of slaveholders, find the strongest protection. Were I to be again reduced to the chains of slavery, next to that enslavement, I should regard being the slave of a religious master the greatest calamity that could befall me. For of all the slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have found them to be the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others.” – Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself
“In August, 1832, my master attended a Methodist camp-meeting held in the Bay-side, Talbot county, and there experienced religion. I indulged a faint hope that his conversion would lead him to emancipate his slaves, and that, if he did not do this, it would, at any rate, make him more kind and humane. I was disappointed in both these respects. It neither made him to be humane to his slaves, nor to emancipate them. If it had any effect on his character, it made him more cruel and hateful in all his ways; for I believe him to have been a much worse man after his conversion than before. Prior to his conversion, he relied upon his own depravity to shield and sustain him in his savage barbarity; but after his conversion, he found religious sanction and support for his slaveholding cruelty. He made the greatest pretensions to piety. His house was the house of prayer. He prayed morning, noon, and night.” – Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself
“Master, however, was not a humane slaveholder. It required extraordinary barbarity on the part of an overseer to affect him. He was a cruel man, hardened by a long life of slaveholding. He would at times seem to take great pleasure in whipping a slave. I have often been awakened at the dawn of day by the most heart-rending shrieks of an own aunt of mine, whom he used to tie up to a joist, and whip upon her naked back till she was literally covered with blood. No words, no tears, no prayers, from his gory victim, seemed to move his iron heart from its bloody purpose. The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped longest. He would whip her to make her scream, and whip her to make her hush; and not until overcome by fatigue, would he cease to swing the blood-clotted cowskin (a whip made of raw cowhide).” – Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself
“No position will stand if the attacker makes his assault long enough, strong enough, and skillful enough.” – Mark Skinner Watson, Chief of Staff: Prewar Plans and Preparations, Vol. 1-1, United States Army in World War II
“Wars are won on sound strategy implemented by well-trained forces which are adequately and effectively equipped.”– General Leonard T. Gerow, United States Army
“More than eighty spellings of Shakespeare’s name have been found, among them Shagspeare, Shakspere, and even Shakestaffe. Shakespeare himself did not spell the name the same way twice in any of his six known signatures and even spelled it two ways on one document, his will, which he signed Shakspere in one place and Shakspeare in another. Curiously, the one spelling he never seemed to use himself was Shakespeare.” – Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way
“We speak with remarkable laxness and imprecision and yet manage to express ourselves with wondrous subtlety—and simply breathtaking speed. In normal conversation we speak at a rate of about 300 syllables a minute. To do this we force air up through the larynx—or supralaryngeal vocal tract, to be technical about it—and, by variously pursing our lips and flapping our tongues around in our mouth rather in the manner of a freshly landed fish, we shape each passing puff of air into a series of loosely differentiated plosives, fricatives, gutturals, and other minor atmospheric disturbances. These emerge as a more or less continuous blur of sound. People don’t talk like this, theytalklikethis. Syllables, words, and sentences run together like a watercolor left in the rain. To understand what anyone is saying to us we must separate these noises into words and the words into sentences so that we might in our turn issue a string of mixed sounds in response. If what we say is suitably apt and amusing, the listener will show his delight by emitting a series of uncontrolled high-pitched noises, accompanied by sharp intakes of breath of the sort normally associated with a seizure or heart failure. And by these means we converse. Talking, when you think about it, is a very strange business indeed.” – Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way
“The old cavalry units had been converted variously into infantry or artillery or armor or reconnaissance units, plus one vestigial type that lingered briefly; this was a ‘horse-portee’ unit, in which the horses were bodily transported in motor vans for the long road hauls and then unloaded for use in local reconnaissance. This device, totally abandoned in February of 1942 as fantastic, was the last effective struggle made by the American cavalryman in behalf of his horse’s place in the overseas combat forces. For decades the mounted service had been the mainstay of frontier fighting and the school in which some of the Army’s most distinguished and aggressive field commanders both in World War I and World War II had received their tactical training; the horse cavalry now was finished as a major arm.” – Mark Skinner Watson, Chief of Staff: Prewar Plans and Preparations, Vol. 1-1, United States Army in World War II
“An army is an army. It is not a political group. It is not a citizens’ meeting.” – General George C. Marshall (in testimony before the Senate Committee on Military Affairs, 77th Congress, 1st session)
“A vagrant is anybody a cop don’t like.” – John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
“Beside an irrigation ditch a preacher labored and the people cried. And the preacher paced like a tiger, whipping the people with his voice, and they groveled and whined on the ground. He calculated them, gauged them, played on them, and when they were all squirming on the ground he stooped down and of his great strength he picked each one up in his arms and shouted, Take ‘em, Christ! and threw each one in the water. And when they were all in, waist deep in the water, and looking with frightened eyes at the master, he knelt down on the bank and he prayed for them; and he prayed that all men and women might grovel and whine on the ground. Men and women, dripping, clothes sticking tight, watched; then gurgling and sloshing in their shoes they walked back to the camp, to the tents, and they talked softly in wonder: We been saved, they said. We’re washed white as snow. We won’t never sin again. And the children, frightened and wet, whispered together: We been saved. We won’t sin no more.” – John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
“The great highways streamed with moving people. There in the Middle and Southwest had lived a simple agrarian folk who had not changed with industry, who had not farmed with machines or known the power and danger of machines in private hands. They had not grown up in the paradoxes of industry. Their sense were still sharp to the ridiculousness of the industrial life. And then suddenly the machines pushed them out and they swarmed on the highways. The movement changed them; the highways, the camps along the road, the fear of hunger and the hunger itself, changed them. They were migrants. And the hostility changed them, welded them, united them—hostility that made the little towns group and arm as though to repel an invader, squads with pick handles, clerks and storekeepers with shotguns, guarding the world against their own people. In the West there was panic when the migrants multiplied on the highways. Men of property were terrified for their property, Men who had never been hungry saw the eyes of the hungry. Men who had never wanted anything very much saw the flare of want in the eyes of the migrants. And the men of the towns and of the soft suburban country gathered to defend themselves; and they reassured themselves that they were good and the invaders bad.” – John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
“The lessons of war are painfully learned, yet with war over are quickly forgotten until it is time to begin learning them again by the same painful process as before. They can at least be chronicled by the historian, to facilitate the relearning.” – Mark Skinner Watson, Chief of Staff: Prewar Plans and Preparations, Vol. 1-1, United States Army in World War II
“One of the largest difficulties in adjusting a peace-minded people to the temporary pursuit of war is that the facts of war are often in total opposition to the facts of peace. An industrialist trained in economy will employ for a given job just enough means to perform the job. He will avoid all excessive use of manpower and material alike. Nothing could be more rational than this instinctive economy of force. But war is irrational and war is waste, fundamentally; likewise its processes are appallingly wasteful of the less important—and sometimes wisely so, the peacetime economist is astonished to learn. Unlike the industrialist just mentioned, the efficient commander does not seek to use just enough means, but an excess of means. A military force that is just strong enough to take a position will suffer heavy casualties in doing so; a force vastly superior to the enemy’s will do the job without serious loss of men and (often more important still) with no loss of the all-important commodity, time; it can thereafter plunge straight ahead to the next task, catching the enemy unaware and thus gaming victory after victory and driving a bewildered enemy into panic.” – Mark Skinner Watson, Chief of Staff: Prewar Plans and Preparations, Vol. 1-1, United States Army in World War II
“A democracy is not ruled by warriors, even in wartime, but by civilian authority.” – Mark Skinner Watson, Chief of Staff: Prewar Plans and Preparations, Vol. 1-1, United States Army in World War II
“Europe isn’t a continent, unless the word is defined Eurocentrically. Europe is a peninsula; the division between Europe and Asia is arbitrary, unlike the divisions between other continents.” – James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me
“If knowledge is power, ignorance cannot be bliss.” – James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me
“The presence of the problem of man’s free will, though unexpressed, is felt at every step of history. All seriously thinking historians have involuntarily encountered this question. All the contradictions and obscurities of history and the false path historical science has followed are due solely to the lack of a solution of that question. If the will of every man were free, that is, if each man could act as he pleased, all history would be a series of disconnected incidents. If in a thousand years even one man in a million could act freely, that is, as he chose, it is evident that one single free act of that man’s in violation of the laws governing human action would destroy the possibility of the existence of any laws for the whole of humanity. If there be a single law governing the actions of men, free will cannot exist, for then man’s will is subject to that law. In this contradiction lies the problem of free will, which from most ancient times has occupied the best human minds and from most ancient times has been presented in its whole tremendous significance.” – Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (trans. Louise and Aylmer Maude)