Tsar Nicholas II
At the beginning of 1917, the outlook for the Russian army on the Eastern Front was pretty bleak. A brief glimmer of hope had shined in the summer and early fall of 1916, when Russian general Aleksei Brusilov had led a highly successful advance on the German…
While weather and its effects on both battlefields and trenches was a recurring theme during World War I, in no battle was this problem more pronounced than what occurred during the battle of Passchendaele in the late summer and early fall of 1917. Rain and mud were the defining…
At the end of Chuck Klosterman X: A Highly Specific, Defiantly Incomplete History of the Early 21st Century (2017, Blue Rider Press), Klosterman makes the curious curatorial decision to group seven essays about heavy metal before concluding with four essays about death. I say this is curious because…
In order to get a sense of what it was like to experience those early days of Passchendaele, one has only to listen to the voices of those who were there. In looking at the accounts written by those who were involved with the battle, you can come to an…
If you have been reading the news lately, you might be familiar with what some have called the Seattle minimum wage disaster. According to this recent study from the University of Washington, Seattle’s recent hike, which raised the minimum wage from $10 to $13, caused the average…
Passchendaele, or the Third Battle of Ypres: a battle of mistakes not learned.
On July 31, 1917, the British Expeditionary Force launched the initial assault that would be the Third Battle of Ypres, although it is better known to us as Passchendaele. Passchendaele was yet another in a long line…
The New York Times has a problem. Well actually, The New York Times has a litany of problems—cries of “fake news,” the so-proclaimed death of journalism, etc.—but all of those are external problems. The New York Times has another problem, an internal problem, a…
Erich Ludendorff
In previous submissions, I dealt with two themes found in Patty Jenkins’s new film, Wonder Woman. My third and final examination of the most prominent World War 1 elements in this film concerns one of the primary villains, German general Erich Ludendorff. In the film, Ludendorff is a…
As a largely simple-minded society, we are fascinated with the idea of an individual pivot. Someone forsaking their chosen path to venture unknown down a possibly related, possibly not other path baffles us. Why did Michael Jordan pivot from basketball to baseball? Why did Arnold Schwarzenegger pivot from…