An Illustrated History  of War and Civilization in the Western World

PRESENTS:

From Renaissance & Revolution to Warfare in the Digital Age.

War and Civilization: The Legends of History Part Two

The REBIRTH of LEARNING:

Following the Dark Ages came the Renaissance, Reformation, Rousseau and Revolution! In Italy under the Borges we had warfare, terror, bloodshed - and that produced Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland we had five hundred years of peace and brotherly love and what did that produce?  The Cuckoo Clock.

"Leonardo Da Vinci" 1452-1519 A.D., "Rodrigo Lanzol Borgia"  [ AKA Pope Alexander VI 1492-1503 A.D. ] and "Martin Luther" 1483-1546 A.D.

The Protestant Reformation

The Protestant Reformation was started in Germany by Martin Luther (1483-1546) a Catholic monk and scholar and religious and political leader who broke up the unity of the Catholic Church by founding the Lutheran Church which resulted in the international establishment of Protestantism. Luther rejected the authority of the pope and held up the Bible as the decisive authority, nailing his objections in 95 theses to the Church house door in Wittenberg. He taught justification by faith -- the doctrine that people are justified or saved by faith in Christ and not by good works. He taught each believer has direct access to God and needed no priest as a mediator, a doctrine called the priesthood of all believers. He rejected all sacraments save baptism , marriage and the Lord's Supper. He was excommunicated from the Catholic Church for many reasons including cutting off the flow of taxes to Rome. He discarded the monks habit and married a former nun. Even his enemies regarded him as one of the most important men of modern times. His translation of the Bible into German revolutionized European culture and learning. The term Protestant arose in Germany from the protest of the reformation leaders against the Catholic majority at the 1529 Diet of Speyer. Wars broke out in efforts to control and or crush Protestantism and its followers were persecuted and massacred in many nations including the French Huguenots on the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre.

The Age of Exploration & Colonies in the New World Following Columbus' celebrated visit to the New World in 1492, many European Nations began empire building. In America, the Aztecs, Incas and Mayans all had great empires before the coming of the Spaniards and practiced various forms of human Slavery. The horror stories of their brutality in combat and staggering numbers of human sacrifices are legendary. After the Conquest of the Mexican Empires by the Spaniards, other European Nations began wars of conquest as well, with the French and Indian Wars (1754-1763) leaving the British in control of North America but at a very high cost.                    "The Voyage of Columbus to the New World" 1492 A.D., "The Landfall of the Mayflower" 1620 A.D.  and "The Boston Massacre" 1770 A.D.
War in the Americas & Western Expansionism        The British felt taxation of the American colonists was just and fair since they had spent so much for their "protection" from the French.  As various British colonies developed economically and politically in the 18th century tensions developed in the empire. The American Colonists resented the heavy taxation and the lack of representation in the administration of these taxes. The first real crack in the Imperial structure came with the American Revolution (1775-1783) and the resulting loss of the 13 American colonies leading to a re-examination of colonial policies.     In the Old World, "land owners" of the upper class had held the same land for a thousand years and the prospect of a commoner obtaining land was unheard of... until now! People in hopes of a better life began flooding into America from Europe. The Colonists traded for land with the native inhabitants at first but later developed a sense of entitlement to the whole continent and began the great westward migration. The elite rich, the top one to five percent stayed east and added to their fortunes with the sweat of slaves from Africa and Ireland. Africans had long practiced the slave trade amongst themselves and sold  Africans to Europeans themselves, usually conquered tribes. The western expansion or "Manifest Destiny" again led to armed conflict in which neither side was blameless just like earlier armed migrations in Africa, Europe and Asia.	Frontier Scouts like Kit Carson, Jedediah Smith and others blazed the trails for American expansion.
Contrary to popular belief, the Europeans did not introduce war to the Americas. The Indigenous Americans were all too often horrifically brutal and waged war against one another over control of land before the coming of the Europeans, even to the point of genocide (ca. 800 A.D.) as with the shocking evidence recently uncovered at Sacred Ridge: "The remains indicate that men, women and children were tortured, disemboweled, killed and often hacked to bits - with their heads, hands and feet removed as trophies for the killers." ~(From The Journal of Anthropological Archaeology)

George Washington and the American Revolution 

One of the outstanding Legends of History is George Washington while serving brilliantly as the commander of the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War accomplished what had never been done in the history of mankind - a successful revolution against a major Imperial power. Because of his significant role in the revolution, the war and in the formation of the United States, he became the first President of the United States and is revered by Americans to this day as the "Father of Our Country".

  " The American victory at Saratoga" 

  " We have had enough of kings" ~ George Washington

After the cruel winter at Valley forge The Continental army emerged  as a highly disciplined fighting force, much to the British army's surprise at Saratoga. After relentless drilling by Washington's Chief of staff Baron Von Struben, from Prussia the frozen temperatures and starvation didn't seem so bad...  The American Revolution took it's force from economic realities like taxation and trade, and historians will certainly agree one particular event that stood out leading to the American Revolutionary was King George III's attempt to outlaw the interest free, independent currency being used by the Colonies, attempting to force them to accept paper notes issued by the Central Bank of England, with interest. This is the heart of the argument against the Central Banking System. It charges the government interest to borrow money from the bank in order to finance the need for a currency. Leaders of the revolution like Adams and Jefferson spoke out against the threat of the banks to personal liberty, even saying they were worse than armies.

Napoleon Bonaparte and The Age of EMPIRES

An Empire, in the strictest sense is a country ruled by an emperor. An empire is usually larger than a single nation consisting of a ruling nation and one or more subject nations. Some nations called themselves empires even though they had no colonies or dependencies. The term is also applied to composite nations regardless of the ruler's title. Thus the domains of Alexander the Great and the Assyrians and Persians are commonly called empires even though the first nation to have an emperor was Rome. Others included The Holy Roman Empire, the Byzantine and the Ottoman and Mongol empires.  Since that time many nations have been called empires; Russia, Austria-Hungary Germany, France (under Napoleon I and III) Brazil, Mexico, Haiti, Ethiopia, and in the east, most notably China and Japan. The largest empire surviving into the modern era was the British Empire, later evolving into the commonwealth of nations.

Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo

     After French philosophers had seeded revolution in America in the first place, the success of the American Revolution inspired the French to have their own Revolution. The most remarkable thing about the French Revolution was how terrible the new government that took its place was. Terror truly ruled France in the form of Madame Guillotine, everyone, from the richest to the poorest lived and died in mortal danger. Out of that Reign of Terror came one of the greatest legends of all history ~

    Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) ~ Hero, Villain, Statesman, Traitor... Napoleon Bonaparte was all these things and more. A great military commander who was also a dictator very fond of Ancient Rome, he emulated Julius Caesar on the battlefield and off and realized many of Caesar's ambitions. After he declared himself emperor of the French he abolished the Holy Roman Empire. After that, the title emperor simply came to mean the ruler of a country.

    Napoleon's time was the Zenith of the Era of the Gentleman's War, the heyday of the professional soldier. Professional Armies had not waged war against helpless civilians since the time of the Ancient Romans. (There were deserters from these armies preying on the populace however, but they were shot.) He was both the most hated and best loved man of his day. Legendary both for brilliant victories and agonizing defeats.

Behind the scenes of his famous battles, especially at  Waterloo, elite bankers made fortunes off the wars' effects on the stock markets and gained more power and influence than he ever dreamed of and have held it since. “Let me issue and control a nation’s money and I care not who writes the laws.”

~Mayer Amschel CENSORED (1744-1812), founder of the House of CENSORED.

"When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes… Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain.”

~Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France, 1815

" The Napoleon of the West and the TEXAS Revolution"

    "Remember the Alamo!" was the battle cry of the Texas Revolution that struck fear into the hearts of the army of General Santa Anna at the battle of San Jacinto. Santa Anna liked to be called "The Napoleon of the west". He claimed large parts of North America but the Americans like the Comanches, Apaches, Navahos and many others whose ancestral lands those were "begged to differ".

     This was NOT a racial conflict! Anglos and Hispanics lived in harmony seeing the ferocious light cavalry of the Comanche Indians, the Warlords of the Plains as their common foe until Santa Anna's tyranny provoked many Hispanic citizens to revolt in fear for their very lives. Entire townships were being slaughtered. Hispanic freedom fighters arose such as Juan N. Seguin - first mayor of San Antonio - the famous scout who reluctantly went out from the Alamo at night through the surrounding enemy camps to get help from Sam Houston - took their stand among history's legendary and heroic defenders of liberty alongside their more famous Anglo-Saxon companeros like Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie defending the walls of the Alamo Mission in San Antonio de Bexar, Tejas. (Texas)

   The Alamo was a military defeat that turned out to be a political victory for the Texans.  It  took 13 days and enormous casualties for Santa Anna to take the Alamo mission. The stubborn defenders held them off long enough for General Sam Houston to build the army of the Texas Revolution.

-The American Thermopylae.

Conquest, Civil War, Slavery, and Genocide in America

THE UNITES STATES' INVASION OF MEXICO

    The Mexican congress did not want to recognize Santa Anna's deal and wanted war, but European nations held them in check. When Texas joined the U.S. as a state in 1845, the Mexican government broke diplomatic relations with the United States. Once war was declared Santa Anna told his government he had no aspirations for the presidency and wanted to defend his home against the coming invasion. He secretly was in contact with U.S. officials and promised to sell all the disputed territories to them. When he was in control of the army he declared himself president and failed to stop the invasion. U.S. President Polk viewed California and New Mexico as unsettled, ungoverned, and unprotected frontier territories. The U.S. Army easily overcame Santa Anna's troops who were more suited to exhibitions on parade grounds than combat. The Famous leaders of the American Civil War like Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee rose to prominence in these victories. The U.S. paid 15 million to Mexico for the territories as they promised Santa Anna and forgave Mexico's standing debts. As late as 1880 the "Republican Campaign Textbook" characterized  the war as "Feculent, reeking Corruption" and "one of the darkest scenes in our history – a war forced upon our and the Mexican people by the high-handed usurpations of President Polk in pursuit of territorial aggrandizement of the slave oligarchy."  It's easy to criticize Polk looking back at our timeline but he was looking forward. Russia had a strong presence in the Northwest and it was only the Imperial United States' strong military that deterred them from American expansion. Imagine for a moment the lands west of the Rocky Mountains being part of the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin in the 20th century. What President Polk may have prevented is too bitter to contemplate...

"The Sun never sets on the British Empire"

"I care not what puppet is placed on the throne of England to rule the Empire, ...The man that controls Britain's money supply controls the British Empire. And I control the money supply."

"The Charge of the Light Brigade"(1854)  A battle at Baklava during  the  Crimean War. Lt. Percy Smith shown here was the only officer to survive.	"The Defense of Reorke's Drift" (1879) was a battle in the Anglo-Zulu war in Africa in  which 139 British Soldiers defended their garrison against 4,000 Zulu warriors.
Outstanding among the Legends of History is the British Empire and the exploits of her mighty Armed forces on land and sea. "The Sun never sets on the British Empire" was a popular saying during its zenith, so vast was its area. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries the British Empire encompassed the largest land mass and greatest wealth ever controlled by one country. The land surface of the Earth is estimated at 52,500,000 square miles. The British Empire covered 16,000,000 square miles and was represented on every continent. Although it had its origins in the 16th century during the conflicts with Spain in the New World, the term "Empire" was never used officially until Queen Victoria became empress of India in 1876. It was made possible by the British Navy's control of the seas which beginning in 1583 when England claimed sovereignty over Newfoundland.,  Soon after, in 1600 the East India Trading company was chartered and expansion spread into Asia overcoming Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Dutch efforts to stop it.
"HMS Victory and The Royal Navy "	"The Battle of Trafalgar"
To protect shipping routes Britain took control of many countries, gaining much of the territory as a result of wars. They drove the French out of North America after decades of conflict and continuing through the Napoleonic Wars (1800-15) the British won many colonies from the French and Dutch. It was during this time the 13 British colonies succeeded in securing their independence through the American Revolution. There were also other wars of rebellion fought to preserve dominance like the Anglo-Zulu war in Africa. During World War I Britain captured German and Turkish possessions which they administered as mandates under the League of Nations. Eventually these dominions were given complete independence.  The term "Empire" was officially dropped in 1947 when King George VI relinquished the title of Emperor of India when granting independence to India and Pakistan.  From that time the dissolution of the Empire and the development of the Commonwealth proceeded simultaneously. King Edward VII of Great Britain: Evil Demiurge of a Century of War
	Edward VII, son of Queen Victoria, was the author of the First World War, and thus brought about what is probably the most destructive single event in the history of western civilization. Without Edward’s exertions, the war could never have occurred. Without World war One World War Two would not have happened, nor the Cold War... The millions of deaths he caused prevented hundreds of millions of births and the lives lost as a direct consequence of his manipulations are now in the billions... ~ even though he never lived to see the fruits of his labor as he died in 1910.  The Triple Entente is the name given to the alliance among Great Britain, France, and Russia which was formed during the first decade of the 2oth century, and which led to the outbreak of the First World War. This Triple Entente was the personal creation of King Edward VII of Britain, yes the Triple Entente was King Edward’s own idea. It was King Edward who set up the British alliance with Japan, the Russo-Japanese War, and the 1905 Russian Revolution. It was King Edward VII, acting as the autocrat of British foreign policy, who engineered the Entente Cordiale between Britain and France in 1903-04, and who then went on to seal the fateful British-Russian Entente of 1907. It was King Edward who messaged Theodore Roosevelt and other American leaders to help bring about the U.S.-U.K. “special relationship,” which dates from the time of his reign. This diplomatic work was masterminded and carried out by King Edward VII personally, with the various British ministers, cabinets, round tables, and other apparatus merely following in his wake. Edward had a geopolitical vision in the Venetian tradition, and it was one of brutal simplicity: the encirclement of Germany with a hostile coalition, followed by a war of annihilation in which many of Britain’s erstwhile “allies” – notably France and Russia – would also be decimated and crippled. far more than any other single human being,

"And why should we be concerned with these matters today? The main things that have gone wrong with the twentieth century and the baggage it brings geopolitics today are demonstrably rooted in World War One. World War One opened the door both to the Communism of Lenin and Stalin and to the fascism of Mussolini and Hitler. World War One made possible the entire Versailles system, including reparations, which produced the Great Depression. And finally, World War II, with its greater scale of destruction, was essentially the prolongation of the First World War after two decades of fitful truce. And in our own time, the mad hatters and March hares of the London oligarchy, the Rees-Moggs, Evans-Pritchards, and the Hurds, are proposing a return to the Triple Entente as the shape of things to come." ~ Dr. Webster Tarpley PhD

No doubt these facts of history will anger some as King Edward VII has gotten a free pass from many popular historical accounts which blame Germany for the war when England not Germany declared war after strangling their trade among other aggressive acts -  so here's some sources~

David Abrahamsen, “Murder and Madness: The Secret Life of Jack the Ripper” (New York: Fine, 1992) Theo Aronson, “The King in Love: Edward VII’s Mistresses: Lillie Langtry, Daisy Warwick, Alice Keppel and Others” (New York: Harper & Row, 1988) Gordon Brook-Shepherd, “Uncle of Europe: The Social & Diplomatic Life of Edward VII” (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975) Virginia Cowles, “The Kaiser” (New York: Harper & Row, 1963)J.A. Farrer, “England Under Edward VII” (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1992) Sidney Bradshaw Fay, “The Origins of the World War” (New York: Macmillan, 1930)Reinhold Wagner, “Der Groesste Verbrecher an der Menschheit im Zwanzigsten Jahrhundert: Koenig Eduard von England – Eine Fluchschrift” (Berlin: Verlag Karl Curtius, 1915) Stanley Weintraub, “Victoria: An Intimate Biography” (NY: E.P. Dutton, 1987)

The WORLD WARS

 Empires had long been built on and wars fought in the search for and the conquest of gold supplies but no more. Gold was about to be superseded as the means to gain political power. Oil, black gold, became the fuel for the new engines of war.

World War One: "The War to End all Wars"

THE CHANGING FACE OF WAR

 

New War Machines broke the stalemate	War in the Trenches     The Nations who entered into the Great War basically had the conventional outlook and system of the 18th century. Politically they saw it as a struggle between rival coalitions based on traditional diplomatic alliances. Militarily it was supposed to be a clash of professional armies, swollen admittedly by conscription of ordinary citizens but still perceived to be a conflict of champions fought in a giant amphitheatre with the world safely watching from a distance. No one foresaw the cataclysm on a giant scale that it became. The impact of the industrial age was evident in the stalemate in the trenches caused by the machine gun decimating the traditional infantry and cavalry charges. Stubborn French generals with walrus mustaches would commonly send a quarter of a million men in a single week to their deaths in futile efforts to overcome the entrenched machine guns and barbed wire.  The face of war had changed, now wearing a gas mask to protect from the deadly fumes that could easily blow back on the sender. Technology in the form of a long range sniper rifle employed by the U.S. Marine Corps, the airplane and an ancient idea, the armored tank eventually broke the deadlock on land. The war horse had been replaced by the internal combustion engine. Petroleum had mainly been used for oil lamps but was now essential for the motors that ran the new airplanes, tanks, trucks, ships, and submarines.
The Royal Navy of the British Empire had ruled the seas for hundreds of years with military mastery of the world's shipping lanes ~ controlling key island and continental harbors on these routes. Since the time of Bismarck, the British had undermined and interfered with Imperial German railroad development to maintain their trading monopolies. When King Edward VII developed the Dreadnaught class of battleship with 100% 12 inch guns a new era began. Other countries, notably Germany began manufacturing comparable Battleships and began to threaten British interests in South Africa and the massive oil resources of the Ottoman Empire. Epic sea battles between fleets of the new ships raged round the globe... War at Sea
Imperial British Iron duke class Battleship	Imperial German Koenig class Battleship

War in the Air

"Balloon Troopers"	"Balloon Busters"	"The Red Baron"

Observation Balloons had been in use since the American Civil war and were quickly replaced by the new airplanes. The Airplane was regarded as a novelty at first but soon began to greatly affect the out comes of land battles. After ground forces started shooting at them, they began to drop bombs and then were fitted with powerful machine  guns. The age of the fighter ace was born and aerial "dogfights" made men like Germany's Baron Von Richthofen, "The Red Baron" living legends. But there were other changes in the way war was fought brewing...

WHO REALLY WON THE WAR?

            The German army was never defeated and no foreign troops ever even entered Germany, so their surrender has mystified millions to this very day.

In a few short years, a drastic shift in world geopolitics had occurred. A new world empire was created. A new empire, not of alliances between nations, but between private corporations. The big three oil companies; Rockefeller's Standard Oil in the U.S., the British-Persian Petroleum Company, from Persia (Iran) up into southern Russia, and Royal Dutch Shell in Indonesia and Southeast Asia  agreed to act as one company forming the first oil cartel. This was a major outcome of World War One. The elimination of most of the colonialism of the 1800's and dividing the world into three oil zones was completed with the Treaty of Versailles. Following years of revolution, Russia had left the war and did not go along with the plan to steal their enormous oilfields. The Bolshevik Russians now had the world's largest oil supply in a new world order where wars were to be won or lost according to oil supplies and did not sign the Treaty.

THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION

    In 1917 Russia withdrew from World War One and had a revolution in which the Czar and his entire bloodline were killed to forever end the monarchy. The revolution was followed by 3 years of civil warfare in which the Bolsheviks (later called Communists) gained complete control of the country. Like the French Revolution before it, a monster was unleashed and the new government brought a bloody reign of terror. The Bolshevik leaders followed the teachings of Karl Marx, a Jewish German Atheist whose Communist Manifesto preached class warfare and revolution, followed by dictatorship in which industry was socialized, wholesale commerce was nationalized and foreign trade became a government monopoly. Some people think Lenin and Trotsky were "not as bad" as Stalin, that the 1917 revolution was not criminal from the start, but only became criminal later. This is one of the greatest lies in history. Lenin and Trotsky killed 4 million people - men, women and children - by mass executions, death camps, and state-caused famine. See The Black Book of Communism for a good introduction to their genocide, which started as soon as they got into power in 1917. Like Karl Marx, many high ranking Bolshevik leaders came from Jewish lineage including V. I. Lenin, supreme dictator, Leon Bronstein (Trotsky): supreme commander of the Soviet Red Army, Grigory Apfelbaum (Zinoviev): executive, Soviet Secret Police. Solomon Lozovsky: deputy Soviet foreign minister, Maxim Wallach (Litvinov): Soviet foreign minister, Yuri Andropov: director, Soviet KGB, later supreme dictator of the Soviet Union. The Bolsheviks viewed their revolution as only the first stage in a world wide Communist revolution and sought to expand their power and influence by taking advantage of national, racial, and economic discontent and trying to destroy religion and its influence in other countries. Bolshevism spreading through Europe was a genuine possibility as political demonstrations often turned to violence on the streets in countries like Germany.

Between the Wars

THE GREAT DEPRESSION and THE RISE OF FASCISM

 

It did not take long for the flame of hope which fired the vision of man at the Treaty of Versailles to subside. The attitude in Germany was that their leaders had betrayed them at the Versailles peace conference, after all the German army was never defeated, nor had one allied soldier set foot in Germany. The reparations were so severe that financiers manipulated the economy with inflation devaluing the currency to make repayment easer, but working class parents had to choose between their children starving or freezing to death as a large basket of paper money could not buy a single loaf of bread. The outrages are too many to list here so suffice it to say that the especially cruel treatment of Germany under the terms of the Versailles peace treaty created festering resentment. The Great Depression, a worldwide economic disaster (ca. 1929-1939) was the longest and worst depression ever experienced. Originating in the U.S., it ended up causing drastic declines in production, severe unemployment, and acute deflation in nearly every country on earth. Encyclopedia Britannica stated: "The Great Depression ranks second only to the Civil War as the gravest crisis in American history." The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia sent shockwaves of terror through Europe and in desperation many turned to the Fascists for protection from the communists who were feared to bring the seizures of property and mass murder they had done in Russia if they came to power.

  In Germany Adolf Hitler did a fabulous job of turning his country around economically when his Fascist Nazi party came to power. He did this by breaking with the international bankers, and trading by barter with surplus goods. Like Abraham Lincoln before him, Hitler issued cash on the authority of the German Government, backed by German labor. As a result of being run for its citizens as opposed to the benefit of the international banking elite, Germany became the most powerful and prosperous state in Europe in just seven years, while breaking the Versailles treaty by re-arming on levels unprecedented in history. Anti-Semitism was widespread in Europe during this period, for example in the mid-1920s, Jewish immigration to Palestine increased primarily because of anti-Jewish economic legislation in Poland. For centuries Germany was the friendliest country in the world to the Jewish community of the Diaspora, indeed the German Emancipation Edict of 1822 had guaranteed Jews in Germany all civil rights enjoyed by Germans, and Hitler's Germany even helped the mass emigration of Jewish Germans to Palestine. The famous German resentment toward the Jewish community in this interim period was a drastic change and was sparked by the pernicious profiteering of International Bankers after World War One and mingled with mortal terror the from Jewish-led Bolshevik mass murder of millions in Russia and these unholy sentiments spread like wildfire growing into unbridled hated of all Jews everywhere and manifested in the elimination of them and other groups from political life and the destruction and takeover of Jewish businesses and property.

THE EXODUS FROM GERMANY

   As a result, many Jews fled Germany to the United States and its open arms and Palestine, which saw heavy immigration in the years 1933-36, but Herbert Louis Samuel, whose appointment as The British high commissioner for Palestine made him the first Jew to govern in the Land of Israel in 2,000 years, slowed the pace of Jewish immigration to Palestine, much to the distress of the Zionists.  Anxious to serve his country well, Samuel made it clear that his policy was to unite all dissenting groups under the British flag. Attempting to appease the Arabs in Palestine, Samuel made several significant concessions. The gates of Palestine were closed in 1941, and for the duration of the war, stranding hundreds of thousands of Jews in Europe, many of whom became victims of Hitler's Final Solution. ~ ref: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org

"Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil" ~ Thomas Mann

The Second World War

BLITZKRIEG!

     On September 1, 1939, the mighty Wehrmacht of the German Third Reich smashed across the borders of Poland calling complex alliances into play and thus began the costliest, bloodiest, most colossal war in the history of man. Hitler was cast as a monster but said he was merely re-claiming German territory unjustly taken in the Versailles treaty. The same month Stalin invaded Poland from the east and began slaughtering Huge numbers of Poles just as they had been slaughtering vast scores of Russians, but the news hardly mentioned it as no one seemed to care about the mass murder of Polish or Russian Christians.

 

The land fighting of the previous war had been largely contained in Europe but the conflagration of this one spread to every continent on Earth. Almost the whole of Europe was enslaved. Everywhere, even in tiny countries people were forced to adjust to the hardships of total war.     Hostilities actually began with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 followed by skirmishes in Ethiopia and the Spanish Civil War, trying out new weapons. Numerous treaties and appeasement attempts failed to circumvent World War Two because this war was really about one thing, which economic system would rule the world. Britain and France immediately declared war. The two mightiest systems of fortification in history, the Maginot and Siegfried lines faced each other along the Franco-German border with gigantic cannons. No army could possibly stand before their awesome firepower... if they came their way.       The Germans simply went around them with their engineers dynamiting a path through the Ardennes forest for their army of tanks to roar through at lightning speed~ Blitzkrieg! The French had been innovators in World War one with the use of the airplane and the tank but failed to apply the lesson of that war, the doctrine that broke the deadlock, the mobile front. The Allied forces were routed and forced to evacuate by sea at Dunkirk.	NAZI BLITZKRIEG!
TOTAL WAR on a GLOBAL SCALE: THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN   "The Blitz" Nazi bomber Squadrons  raided London Night after Night.       With the Luftwaffe (the Nazi air force) controlling the skies, in less than just two months the battle of France was over. Germany planned to make an invasion of Great Britain next ~ Operation Sea Lion, but to do this the Luftwaffe had to destroy the Royal Air Force's Fighter Command before the German invasion forces could make the channel crossing. As Britain stood alone, Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding and Prime Minister Winston Churchill took stock of their fighter force and recognized that the RAF must be destroyed if any invasion of Britain were to succeed.     In the spring of 1940 the Third Reich was the largest Empire the world had ever seen. It directly controlled or influenced almost all of continental Europe, large parts of North Africa, and had not been defeated. Hitler was at the height of his power. Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe casualties in the Polish, Norwegian, and French campaigns were far less than anyone imagined, and the German people were delirious. He had brought them all he promised. He felt he could be magnanimous and sent out peace feelers through Switzerland. Churchill bought time by listening to Hitler’s peace overtures. The Americans contacted him and asked if the Royal Navy would be sent to Canada when (and NOT if) England fell. “We will survive, not surrender!” growled Churchill. In the summer of 1940, 2,936 RAF pilots took part in an historic battle against the German Luftwaffe that was to become the only battle to be fought entirely in the air, The Battle of Britain.  1940:The Blitz; systematic bombing of cities and military objectives, destruction of British sea lanes by bombing and submarine attack all coordinated to smash the Royal Air Force and the will of the British people to resist the coming amphibious invasion, in spite of the most valiant resistance, the Island nation stood at the verge of collapse when the unexpected happened. Hitler called off the attacks. Although the British were thwarting him in North Africa and he was certain he could work out a treaty with them later. THE NAZI INVASION OF RUSSIA       Hitler had decided to attempt what Napoleon had failed to do ~ Invade and conquer Russia- Operation Barbarossa!    On 22 June 1941, Germany, along with other European Axis members and Finland, invaded the Soviet Union. At first, he German Wehrmacht were greeted with flowers as liberators in the Ukraine, but the joy turned to horror as the Nazis began exterminating them, even the women and children. Their bodies were hung by their necks on the side of the road to rot. This cruelty was as much the cause of their defeat as the Russian winter. The Soviets learned surrender meant certain death and the motto "Not one step back" rallied their defense. They bought the time Soviet industry needed with their lives.     The Battle of Russia between the Soviet Army the German sixth army who routed the French were the largest land battles in human history and the enormous casualty figures reflect it. The Nazi Advance was halted at Stalingrad where the tide turned. The United States, while claiming neutrality had long been supplying The Soviet Union and Great Britain with naval convoy after naval convoy of expensive war materials~ Operation Lend Lease, but now, the Soviet factories were in full swing producing the necessary war materials to defeat the invaders. The Soviet T-34 Tank proved to be the finest produced in WW II with its slanted armor and 40 mile per hour speeds they proved too much for the Nazi Panzer divisions as Soviet war production increased and increased. "The Russian Front" The antagonists- Hitler and Stalin in the largest battles in history.   THE JAPANESE ATTACK PEARL HARBOR
Japanese Admiral Yamamoto planned the attack on Pearl Harbor        1941: On December 7th the Japanese navy under Admiral Yamamoto launched an aerial attack on the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii in hopes of destroying the U.S. aircraft carriers and thus breaking the Americans in one fell swoop. The Japanese attack force led by Admiral Nagumo consisted of six carriers with 423 planes. The gamble failed. The three prime targets escaped damage, the U.S. Pacific Fleet aircraft carriers, the Lexington, Enterprise and Saratoga who were not in port during the attack. Casualties included 2,335 servicemen and 68 civilians. 1178 people were wounded. 18 U.S. ships were hit and 180 U.S. aircraft were destroyed.      Behind the scenes: President Roosevelt leads America into the War by refusing to sell Japan any more steel scrap or oil. Japan is at war with China and without scrap steel and oil, Japan knows they will be unable to prosecute that war. Roosevelt knows for certain this economic boycott would provoke the Japanese to attack America, which they did at Pearl Harbor. Interestingly, back in 1939, Roosevelt tried his best to railroad The United States into the war in Europe in an attempt to accommodate the International bankers and the Council on Foreign Relations, but when it failed he knew he would have to try a new tactic. This was of course, what unfolded at Pearl Harbor. The U.S. had broken their code. Roosevelt knew the Japanese attack was coming and that the Japanese Bushido code did not require a declaration of War.  Americans were determined to remain isolationist, but he knew this outrage would immediately motivate them to join the fight and give America a marketable rallying cry like "Remember the Alamo" for the media ~ Remember Pearl Harbor!  Germany immediately declared war on the United States and the alliances on both sides all followed suit until practically the whole world was at war. The U. S. took a pounding in the Pacific losing important bases like Wake Island and the Philippines. In the European theater the Americans were able to land troops in North Africa under General George S. Patton to support the British under General Bernard Montgomery.  Sicily and Italy were invaded soon after the Italians abandoned the Axis. THE TIDE OF WAR TURNS

"The Battle of Midway" The Japanese Naval Air Supremacy was destroyed

    In the Pacific theater of War, the Japanese advance had been relentless and brutal, they had exceeded their most optimistic estimates in rapid conquest of territories and things like getting their newly gained oil fields operational. This was to be the last great naval war in history. Spreading all the way to the islands north of Australia, the Japanese seemed invincible when the U.S. fleet suffered a disastrous defeat near Guadalcanal and their Marines were forced to fend for themselves without reinforcement or re-supply. The 1st Marine Division stopped the ferocious Japanese Banzai charges at Guadalcanal.

     Bold action by the U.S. Navy caught the Japanese fleet off guard at Midway Island and sunk their aircraft carriers with their planes on deck refueling and re-arming. With the destruction of their naval airpower, Japan could no longer win the war, but surrender was unthinkable under the Bushido code. There were to be no more Japanese Banzai charges, now they dug in in caves and bunkers and waited for the American offensives. Death was preferable to the disgrace of surrender, even civilians fled and committed suicide because they had been told the Americans were cannibals. In Europe, when the Axis could no longer win, they surrendered, but it proved much harder to go in and kill each and every soldier after their army was defeated than anyone had expected. The Japanese held islands had to be taken one at a time, one deadly invasion after another.

       In 1944 the international elite bankers moved forward with their plan to seize global financial powers. In New Hampshire, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank (initially called the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development or IBRD) are approved with full U. S. participation. What the IMF and World Bank did was create on a world scale what the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 had done in the U.S., creating a banking cartel of privately owned central banks, the IMF was given authority to issue money called, "Special Drawing Rights," or SDR's. Member nations would end up being pressured into making their currencies fully exchangeable for SDR's. Voting power in the IMF gives the US and the UK (the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England), effective overall control of it. The World’s New financial system, or the Anglo-American World Order was in place. 

THE AIR WAR OVER EUROPE

    In Europe, The United States began building up its Air force in England had begun the strategic bombing of Germany. Legendary in the annals of warfare are the B-17 Flying Fortresses and B-24 Liberators of World War II.  The battles between them and the German Luftwaffe were the most epic and ferocious air battles ever. 

Famous for bringing their boys home with tails shot off, engines aflame and missing wings, the skies over Europe were  black with planes in 1943 & 1944 in the most massive bombing raids in human history. In spite of this Incredible durability one in three did not return from Germany, the fighting was so tough.

 Crushing the Nazi war machine was the primary goal, eliminating Germany's ability to wage war - but on the ground civilian casualties were horrific. In Dresden for example firestorms were created so severe civilians were torn out of the shelters and whipped around in the air until their skeletons finally hit the ground. The bomb shelters did not work against saturation bombing with incendiaries and explosives by the Royal Air Force and the U.S. Army Air Corps night and day with temperatures as high as 1800 degrees Fahrenheit. Estimates of the casualties ran as high as 250,000. 

When confronted with the civilian casualties British Prime Minister Winston Churchill pointed out that the Nazis had bombed civilians in London first.

"The Welcoming Committee"

EXPANDING TO A TWO FRONT WAR IN EUROPE

	\
General George S. Patton and his boy	U.S. paratroopers on the Eve of D-Day	Rommel Inspecting Coastal Defenses of Fortress Europe

THE INVASION OF FORTRESS EUROPE

Throughout 1942 and 1943 Stalin was furious about the Soviet army having to bear the brunt of fighting the bulk of the Nazi army on the Eastern front in Russia and demanded a second front in Western Europe to relieve the pressure. A long the West coast the Nazis had up built massive fortifications to repel the expected Allied invasion force. The Allies had promised Russia an invasion but not until they had fully prepared their armies for such a gigantic task. By the summer of 1944 the Allies had built up a force to make the venture feasible. A parachute force led the attack to sever communications and seize strategic defensive positions.  On June 6th, they attacked Normandy with an armada of over 4,000 ships protected by a great canopy of aircraft, disgorging General Eisenhower's troops on the 60 miles of beachheads in the largest amphibian invasion in human history. Very little went as planned during the Normandy invasion. The Germans offered stubborn résistance pounding the beaches with giant explosive rounds and raining machine gun fire from fortified positions above the beaches.  Turbulent waves caused the majority of landing craft to miss their targets all day. The defenses were even stronger than expected, and inflicted heavy casualties on landing U.S. troops. Under heavy fire, the engineers struggled to clear the beach obstacles; later landings bottlenecked around the few channels that were cleared. Weakened by the casualties inflicted in landing, the surviving assault troops could not overcome the heavily defended exits off the beach causing delays for later landings. Small penetrations were eventually achieved by groups of survivors making improvised assaults, scaling the bluffs between the most heavily defended points. By the end of the day, two small isolated footholds had been won and over the next few days the objectives of D-Day were met and the Allies began moving inland...

Fortress Europe World War Two

June 6th 1944 ~ D-DAY on Omaha Beach

  Entrenched behind the Norman hedgerows the Nazi contained  the allies in their cramped beachhead until General Patton's tank column broke through at St. Lo with a blitzkrieg of his own. The Nazis went back to the stationary front strategy of World War one and France at the Maginot line and it cost them the war. The Allied blitzkrieg liberated France Belgium and the Netherlands but stalled at the Siegfried line on the German border. Nazi Marshal Von Rundstedt led a mighty counterattack but Eisenhower overwhelmed him. In the east, the Russians were reaping a great harvest of victories and the furious blows from the west and the east precipitated the fall of Nazi Germany. Hitler committed suicide and the war in Europe ended. In Japan, the U.S. B-29s saturation style incendiary bombing started a firestorm in Tokyo much like in Dresden but the Japanese will to fight was undaunted. An invasion seemed even more horrible than in Europe.

ON TO BERLIN

The American Paratroopers (above) lost 7 out of 10 men in the invasion.  

BASTOGNE ~ The battle of the Bulge

The U.S. Army Crossing The Seigfreid line 1945.

HELL IN THE PACIFIC

The Japanese army's resistance in the Pacific archipelago was shocking in its stubborn ferocity, fighting harder and nastier as the Americans approached closer and closer to Japan. The Americans achieved naval and Arial supremacy to such a point that only Island based Kamikaze suicide aircraft were able to oppose the U.S. landings as they approached. General Douglas Macarthur had  kept his promise to return and liberate the Philippines but the Japanese army made him pay a price of 94,000 U. S.  Army casualties including 10,000 dead and their resistance caused the destruction of the cities they liberated. 

Peleliu: The clean out of the Japanese forces around Umurbrogol mountain on Peleliu was the most difficult fight that the U.S. military encountered in the entire Second World War. The legendary 1st Marine Division was brutally mauled and it remained out of action until the invasion of Okinawa on April 1, 1945. 1st Division casualties totaled over 6500 during the month on Peleliu, a third of the entire division. The 81st Infantry Division additionally suffered over 3000 casualties during their fighting on the island.

"The Battle of Iwo Jima"	"The Guadalcanal Campaign" stopped the Imperial Japanese advance in the Pacific		"The Old Breed" The American First Marine Division assault on Peleiu Beach
Iwo Jima was located exactly halfway between U.S. airfields and Japan. Japanese fighters from Iwo Jima's airfield were able to assault U.S. bombers coming and going. The airfields HAD to be taken. It was the first attack on the Japanese home islands and they had dug an extensive underground tunnel network with machine gun nests and artillery strategically placed around the volcanic island with its soft black ash two feet deep. The Marines sunk in it upon landing. The fighting was as merciless as it was tenacious. Of the 21,000 Japanese soldiers defending the Island 20,000 were killed and those who surrendered were surprised by many of the American soldier's kindness actually offering them water, cigarettes, and coffee. American casualties numbered over six thousand, but 18,000 airmen and their planes were rescued returning from bombing raids when the airfield was in U.S. hands. The flag raising atop Mount Suribachi was seen by the entire world in newsreels and on film and has become the symbol of American military might.    Okinawa and not the Philippines was chosen to be the staging Island for the invasion of Japan. It proved to be the bloodiest battle of the Pacific War and was the largest of the U.S. amphibious invasions and the last major campaign of the War in the Pacific. The most ships, the most troops put ashore, most supplies used, most bombs dropped, and most naval guns fired against targets on shore than any other Pacific operation. The landings were easy as the defenders waited patiently until the Americans entered their "killing zones" too deep inland for naval or effective Arial support. The Japanese commander lost patience with fighting on defense and disobeyed orders mounting a charge and was cut to ribbons by "The Old Breed", the 1st Marine Division, turning the tide of the battle in favor of the Americans. Thirty-four allied ships were sunk, mostly by Kamikaze suicide aircraft attacking in groups as large as 350 at a time crashing into them loaded with bombs, and 368 ships and craft were damaged. The fleet lost 763 aircraft. Total American casualties were nearly 13,000 killed (including nearly 5,000 Navy dead and almost 8,000 Marine and Army dead) and 36,000 wounded. Navy casualties were tremendous, with a ratio of one killed for one wounded as compared to a one to five ratio for the Marine Corps. Combat stress also caused large numbers of psychiatric casualties, a terrible hemorrhage of front-line strength. .
Kamikaze suicide planes reeked havoc on the U.S. invasion fleet at Okinawa with 2700 planes. More than 5,000 more Kamikazes were waiting in Japan, America was war-weary and troop morale was low. The estimations of the cost of an Invasion of the Japanese Islands seemed impossible to calculate and Russia was about to enter the Pacific war.

Warfare in the Modern Era

    Before, during and after the Second World War Western societies became more and more Modern. Characteristics of Modernity included industry based capitalistic economies with goverments claiming to be democratic, while actually being ruled by an oligarchy divided by social classes based on economic status. Modernity includes strict patterns in everyday life, urbanization, sharp declines in birth and death rates, integration of women into every level of business and government, unprecedented sexual freedoms, institutional adoption of non-religious ideas, a bureaucratic central government with a standardized education system and expansive use of technology especially in communications and entertainment. Advances in technology that made World war Two so different included unprecedented rapid changes in tactics during actual combat brought about by radio communications, faster moving vehicles, radar reducing the chance of surprise attack  and of course the development of more effective and deadlier weapons including the Atom Bomb.

The BIRTH of the ATOMIC AGE

THE FIERY HOLOCAUST of ATOMIC WAR

"Give 'em HELL, Harry!" President Harry S. Truman authorized the use of the Atom Bomb.

1945: There was genuine fear of a troop rebellion if the U.S. European army was transferred to Japan for an invasion, not to mention fears about what Stalin would do there if the Soviets were left entirely unchecked. U.S. President Harry S. Truman however had another alternative;  On July 16th, at the first successful test of the atomic bomb at the Trinity site, in New Mexico. It's creator, J. Robert Oppenheimer, (interestingly from another elite family connected to the [NAME CENSORED]) exclaims, "I am become Death, the Destroyer of worlds." He is right, in less than a month, two more are dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, resulting in the deaths of 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 80,000 in Nagasaki.      Tough Decisions: President  Truman had to make tough decisions regarding use of atomic weapons; in his auto-biography he stated saving not only American, but Japanese lives was his motive to drop the atomic bomb on Japan. A blockade might have starved Japan into surrender, but Truman was also hoping to intimidate Stalin not to try and invade Western Europe, which was a major concern. There were more deaths in the Battle of Okinawa than all those in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Casualties totaled more than 38,000 Americans wounded and 12,000 killed or missing, more than 107,000 Japanese and Okinawan conscripts killed, and perhaps 100,000 Okinawan civilians perished in the battle.

The Japanese said they wanted to die for their god-emperor, and the war weary Americans now had the power to accommodate them without casualties of their own. With unilateral annihilation as their only option Japan surrendered on September 2, the first defeat in their nation's history.

The Aftermath of Two World Wars

 The Cold War (1946-1989)

THE IRON CURTAIN

       The Allies disagreed about how the European map should look, and how new borders should be drawn in the wake of the war. Stalin and Soviet Russia quite rightly felt that the US and Britain had delayed the second front in Europe to weaken them, British PM Winston Churchill once said: "I'd made a deal with the devil if he's help us defeat Hitler" and that's not far from how they viewed him. It was no secret that communism had plans of world domination and the Russian army was right there in Western Europe. The first battle of the Cold War was the Berlin Airlift after the surrender of Germany. The U.S. dropped food and supplies to sectors of Germany being starved to death by the Soviet Union. The U.S. having a monopoly on Atomic weapons kept Soviet leader Stalin from invading Western Europe but he was still quite formidable. Russia had been invaded twice in the 20th century with staggering losses recently over 27 million. They wanted a more defensible western border at the very least and Stalin made sure they got it. Churchill was also quoted as having said: An Iron Curtain had descended upon Europe from the Baltic to the Adriatic (seas) and called for an Anglo-American Alliance against the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Great Britain and France were no longer great world powers, their empires were quickly lost forever. Now the power lay with the United States and the Soviet Union, the world's new super powers.

THE KOREAN CONFLICT          There were a few years of uneasy peace following World War Two and then the first Soviet atomic test was internally code-named First Lightning  August 29, 1949, and was code-named by the Americans as Joe 1. The design was very similar to the first US "Fat Man" plutonium bomb and with it operational, the Soviet Union was no longer held in check. The Soviet's first move was to back North Korea invading South Korea. The country was divided about the new government after Imperial Japan, who ruled Korea from 1910 on  was defeated. The North Koreans routed the South and The United nations mobilized military forces under Japanese Governor and WWII American Pacific Commander General Douglas Macarthur.      He began brilliantly, cutting off the enemy supply lines with a surprise amphibious landing at the unguarded port of Inchon, considered an impossible option due to terrain and tides.  The U.N. force led by the U.S. military easily routed the North Koreans and chased them all the way to the border of China, the Yalu River. Truman wanted to hesitate, put Koreans at the front. bring in more U/N. forces and open negotiations for a peaceful cease-fire. Macarthur wanted to put "the fear of God in the Communists" and pressed the attack. The Chinese radio broadcasts were saying the United States was invading China and like the Japanese broadcasts, that US Soldiers were going to eat their children.      Macarthur underestimated the Red Chinese who sent so many soldiers to meet "the invaders" that they covered the Earth to the horizon in all directions as they swarmed across the Yalu into North Korea. Just as suddenly as the tide turned before it turned again and the U'S. Marines were surrounded at the Chosen Reservoir. The battle took place about a month after the People's Republic of China sent the People's Volunteer Army 9th Army to surprise the US X Corps commanded by Major General Edward Almond at the Chosin Reservoir area. A brutal 17-day battle in freezing weather soon followed. Between 27 November and 13 December, 30,000 United Nations troops (later nicknamed "The Chosin Few") under the field command of Major General Oliver P. Smith were encircled and attacked by about 120,000Chinese troops who had been ordered by Mao Ze dong to annihilate the UN forces. .

RETREAT - HELL!!

The sub-zero temperatures were a nightmare with huge numbers of men freezing to death on both sides. Unable to dig in, bodies were used for shelterThe UN forces were nonetheless able to make a fighting withdrawal and broke out of the encirclement while inflicting heavy casualties on the Chinese. When the U.S. Marines were accused by the press of retreating the C.O. replied: "Retreat? Hell! We were just advancing in the other direction.After these reversals of fortune, in which the capitol changed hands four times, the last two years of combat became a war of attrition, with the front line near the 38th parallel. The war in the air was never a stalemate. North Korea was subject to a massive bombing campaign. Jet fighters confronted each other in air-to-air combat for the first time in history, and Soviet pilots covertly flew in defense of their communist allies." The "police action" raged on for years as a bitter stalemate until an armistice was signed in 1953. The war is still officially unresolved to this day.

THE TRUMAN DOCTRINE

WWII American Pacific Commander General Douglas Macarthur said: "With ...modern atomic weapons war has become so terrible that nations must find a new way to resolve their differences." The Soviets crushed all anti-communist resistance in their newly conquered countries. When the slightest stirrings of dissent appeared in the Bloc, Stalin's strategy was that of the Bolsheviks in dealing with domestic pre-war rivals: they were removed from power, put on trial, imprisoned, and often executed in vast numbers. During the Cold War the United Nations claimed to be the world's police force but was not without war crimes of its own...

The US proclaimed the Truman doctrine or the doctrine of containment to stop the spread of communism combined with the Marshall Plan, with economic assistance for all European countries with the notion of preventing the catastrophes that happened after World War One from happening again. Truman then created the CIA and the Department of Defense to orchestrate containment.  1949; The Korean War: The day after the Soviet Union successfully tested their first hydrogen bomb (a bomb so powerful it used an atomic bomb like those used on Japan as a mere detonator) the Korean War began with a communist invasion. President Truman shocked the world when he fired Macarthur because they differed on the use of Hydrogen weapons in Korea where fighting had begun with "The wrong enemy in the wrong hemisphere". Truman was determined to prevent another "total war" and set clear limits. Mutual Assured Destruction A GENERATION ON THE BRINK       The Soviet Union and the United States quickly built up gigantic nuclear arsenals with enough firepower to destroy the world many times over. Mutual assured destruction demotivated either side to attack. In fairness to the Soviets, they had been invaded TWICE in the 20th century with casualties that dwarfed those of the allies by 27 million to 3 million. They had VERY good reason to be defensive and take steps making sure it didn't happen again.  In the U.S., THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX  had formed during because of the GREAT need for oil and industry to win World War II and U.S. President Eisenhower, the former Supreme Commander of Allied Forces claimed nothing like it had existed before when he stepped down and warned us to beware of it. America's next President, John F. Kennedy stood up to the communists in the Cuban Missile Crisis and the world was only a heartbeat away from destruction, but when he stood up to his own bosses he was mysteriously assassinated. Like the only other U.S. Presidents who had been assassinated, Lincoln and McKinley he had tried to abolish the federal reserve and the debt money system with a system like Hitler used. Like Julius Caesar, the reasons for his assassination are debated to this day.	Every day both sides sent up planes armed with Atomic Weapons
"The Helicopter Soldiers" MMXVIII	WAR IN VIETNAM       Kennedy's Vice President and successor, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson  aka LBJ "played ball" with the Military Industrial complex and the Tonkin Gulf incident of 1964 may rank with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy as events that Dr. David Kaiser of the U.S. Naval War College describes as "controversies in American political history that dwarf all others." Claims Johnson's administration deliberately triggered the Vietnam War by orchestrating the Tonkin Gulf incident and duping Congress are supported by The Pentagon Papers.      The U.S. came to the aid of the French to secure their colonial resources when Truman would have preferred to aid in Ho Chi Minh's request to form a democracy. Centuries of tyranny and oppression made the Vietnamese stubborn beyond anything the Americans could understand, they thought they had come to liberate the people from tyranny, but found they had inherited a relationship with a corrupt regime from the French.  Many U.S. soldiers felt their government did not have the moral high ground as they had in World War Two, others did not care as long as the spread of communism was halted. .Jungle fighting and US strategic bombing in Southeast Asia with the communists was every bit as ferocious as it had been with the Japanese. An admirer of  George Washington, Viet Nam's Ho Chi Minh copied his methods and avoided the superior forces of the U.S.  and fought only when he knew he could win.    An interesting feature of this war was Air Cavalry or as the Vietnamese called them ~ "The Helicopter Soldiers". For the U.S., Military victories turned into political defeats as cities like Hue were destroyed and at least  four million North and South Vietnamese were killed. American deaths were around fifty thousand and in a war of attrition that should have meant victory but Vietnam was the first television war and seeing the deaths every night on the news discouraged support at home.  LBJ  prosecuted the war in Vietnam vigorously and provided the big oil cartel ample opportunities for growth in Southeast Asia after the war.
It was President Richard M. Nixon, the most outspoken anti-communist, that went to China and then started detente with the Soviet Union and worked hard to find "Peace with Honor". During the Cold War tensions were so great that the world wondered every day if they would see the blinding flash and sighed when they looked in the direction they knew the enemy's primary targets lay in. The balance of power was a balance of terror until the Cold War finally ended in 1991. In Solemn Memorial The CHRISTIAN & BUDDHIST HOLOCAUSTS of the COLD WAR       The scale of mass murder unleashed by the Soviet Union under Stalin (est. 66 million, mostly Christians) and the Red Chinese under Mao Zse Dung (est. 80-150 million, mostly Buddhists) made the Nazis under Hitler (est. 250 thousand to 6 million, mostly Jewish) seem like rank amateurs in comparison. For over six decades, the mass media has been condemning even today's NON-Nazi Germans, reminding everyone continually of the stories of war crimes committed by their Nazi ancestors. Since so much has been done to perpetually re-tell the story of the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews, I respectfully present the notion that all these other tens of millions of innocent lives should also be occasionally mourned with the idea of future prevention, especially when considering accounts like those of Russian Nobel Prize winning author Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his "Gulag Archipelago" reveals nearly two-thirds of those in charge of the 66 million murders happened to be Jewish communists. I only call attention to this fact to say that NO race, religion, or nation of man is blameless regarding war crimes, there are only degrees of guilt. No one can fairly accuse Russia of whitewashing Soviet era history as these books are required reading in Russian Schools today, but the American media is covering up these crimes. In recent years the famous six million victims figure has come under serious scrutiny from scholars and even extant Jewish records indicate that only a quarter of a million were stranded in Central Europe at the start of the war. I am not trivializing these deaths, even the death of ONE loved one is a catastrophe, but can you rattle off the top of your head how many Americans died in WWII? Or Russians? You probably can't, but that six million number has been repeated so often that EVERYONE knows it. If we are to continuously remind the world of the Jewish Holocaust, is it not only fair and just then that we also condemn the murders of the Gulag Holocaust, that we expose the culprits of these monstrous crimes and remind the world of what was done to these 66 million innocent victims, most of whom were Christians? What about the pain and suffering endured by so many other ethnic and religious groups, including the 80-150 million Chinese, Tibetan Buddhists and the 4 million Soviet and Eastern European Christians back in the Bolshevik era? Don't these tens of millions of innocent people killed and tortured deserve to be remembered as well? Isn't it important to realize TWO MORE HOLOCAUSTS - EACH more than ten times worse - happened to Christians and Buddhists so very soon after the Jewish Holocaust? I repeat; NO race, religion, or nation of man is blameless regarding war crimes, there are only degrees of guilt. ALL of us - from EVERY nation, race, and religion, need to do our share if these kinds of heinous crimes are to be prevented in the future.   BEYOND THE COLD WAR       The same powers behind the scenes that really won World War One and Two had won the Cold War, a new generation of Warlords, namely the oil cartels, the world bankers and the war profiteers. Clearly our World Leaders don't want a nuclear war or another "total war" like World War Two. "Limited wars" like Vietnam and Iraq with their dubious origins and "Police actions" like the Korean conflict have been non-stop since the coming to power of the Military Industrial Complex in World War Two as the rewards are too great to entirely renounce war as conflicts over political and economic matters continue to arise. Our leaders seem to want to preserve the old fashioned conflict of champions fought in a giant amphitheatre with the world safely watching from a distance we had before the cataclysm of World War One but with America fighting wars in six nations at once this containment seems unlikely.   The NEW TRIBALISM ~ CULTURES in COLLISION   “Apart from political maps of mankind, there are natural maps of mankind… One of the first laws of political stability is to draw your political boundaries along the lines of the natural map of mankind.” ~H. G. Wells in “What Is Coming: A Forecast of Things to Come After the War” 1916        Wells shows us there are three kinds of maps, geographic, political and natural.  The nations that were conceived by the Old Empires leading up to and following World War one ignored tribal boundaries and the victorious authors of the Versailles treaty after World war One redrew the map of Europe with no thought to the well being of Austrians, Germans, Hungarians and merged other nations with foreign lands to divide, punish and weaken the ordinary peoples as well as the governments of these defeated countries. In so doing they made the second world war inevitable. Long after World War Two peace only came to Europe after nations like Czechoslovakia were divided into tribal-linguistic states like the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Today, nations like Pakistan for example disrespectfully drawn on maps by the Old Empires are experiencing  the same thing. Pashtuns, Afghans, Kurds, were tribal names abbreviated as "PAK" and grouped as PAK-istan -"istan" meaning "the land of". The Kurds homelands in the Middle East are divided into four countries and any effort to consolidate them would be met with "extreme prejudice". The nationalism of the 20th century is not turning into peaceful globalism as the leaders had hoped, but into a new and intense tribalism. In Europe and America, massive immigration is creating new and hostile tribal and linguistic divisions instead of peaceful assimilation. The 21st Century promises to be full of more bloody and genocidal tribal conflicts as modern transportation makes the world smaller every day. Today Christians of all races are slaughtered regularly in The Middle East and Africa and the mass media chooses to deliberately ignore it.   WARFARE IN THE DIGITAL AGE     Warfare continues to change as technology advances. In 1991, the world was staggered by the power and accuracy of the U.S. military's new weapons technologies in Operation Desert Storm, but America, the lone superpower has slowly declined since then while China has slowly emerged as a world super power in its own right. Since World War II the power of naval aircraft carriers at sea guaranteed overwhelming dominance, but this era seems to be quickly coming to an end as land or ship based missiles can now be corrected in flight with GPS and employ heat seeking targeting systems to eliminate naval carrier groups before they even enter the war zone.     The boundaries of the "safe amphitheatre" to conduct war in are being threatened again with the greatest advances to military technology since the machine gun. With developments like stealth technology and guided missiles firing 20 miles from jet aircraft radar warning systems and "dogfights" are things of the past and satellite guidance and surveillance systems eliminate the kind of surprise attacks seen in World War Two. Scrambling these communication networks is the next counter-move of course. New hand held infantry weapons like the computerized XM25 individual airburst system minimizes the age old advantage of shooting behind close cover and new sniper rifles can shoot 4000 feet. As transportation and communication continue to advance unmanned drone planes like the Reaper and Predator can strike behind enemy lines without risk to the remote pilot. In spite of all these technological advances, nothing organized armies have come up with has overcome the Guerilla tactics introduced in the Boer War of the 19th Century that were so successful in Vietnam against the U.S. and Afghanistan against the Soviets because of the use of innocent civilians as human shields and the willingness of these insurgents to exist long term in extreme poverty and miserable living conditions.    Materials for a roadside bomb can be bought for the price of a pizza and take out a VERY expensive military vehicle. Even in the 21st Century it seems Afghanistan is still "Where Empires go to die". H. G. Wells in his classic "The Outline of History" predicted that the 20th century would be a full century long war.  In "1984" George Orwell predicted endless war. They couldn't possibly have been more right. Satayana once said: "those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it."     I prefer: "Those who DO study history are doomed to sit by helplessly and watch while idiots repeat it".   The FRIGHTFUL COST of WAR:        War costs money...trillions of dollars. War takes human lives...millions of them! War makes children old, breaks parent's hearts, kills morale. War destroys cities, art treasures, civilization! The first World War ALONE cost thirty million lives and twelve trillion dollars when adjusted to modern U.S. dollars and it was in many ways not as costly as later wars ~     With the money at the time we could have built a three bedroom two bath house furnished with fine hardwood furniture on five acres of quality land for every family in The United States, Canada, Australia, England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, France, Belgium, Germany and Russia. There would have been enough left to build and stock a first class library and a proper university in every town of twenty- thousand people or more. Think of it...Out of the balance we could have paid the salaries for life of 125,000 teachers and 125,000 nurses. The remaining balance could have bought 1919 Belgium and France and everything in them. Think of what a world we could have without war.   Will there EVER be a GREAT ERA of PEACE?     The world grows smaller and our weapons more powerful everyday and mankind's only hope for continued survival outside of an intervention by GOD is to mend our ways and return to basic values and all learn to tolerate each other's differences.

Things to Come?

     Can we look for nuclear war in the Middle East when the Tigris and Euphrates rivers dry up? Biblical prophecies of Nuclear war in the Middle East come to mind... (Ezekiel. 38,39 Zecariah. 14) but that has nothing to do with history... or does it? At the time of this writing our prospects for world peace don't look good, even if the global elites establish the fourth World Government predicted in the Book of Daniel they are desiring. In 2010 the Federal Reserve celebrated its 100th anniversary on Jekyll Island and after the recent world wide financial crisis one wonders if they haven't established the money system predicted in the Book of Revelation. Visit 'Things to Come' below for an amazing look at prophecies describing soon to come Nuclear Warfare in the Middle East and the effects of these Weapons on armies and cities with amazing accuracy and detail. With respect to the beliefs of others, I personally entertain dreams of a coming thousand year reign of Jesus Christ on Earth fulfilling mankind's hope of perfect government with universal justice and peace on Earth one day.

 Almost ALL of the signs of his coming have been fulfilled, here are a few:

 * The rebirth of the nation Israel in May 1948 * The Jew's recapture of Jerusalem in 1967 * The rise of Russia (Magog) as a powerful enemy of Israel. * The Arab confederation against Israel. *  The rise of a military power in China that can field hundreds of Millions of soldiers. * The revival of the dark occultic practices of ancient Babylon. * The revival of the old Roman empire in the form of a multi-national confederacy. (The European Union) * The unprecedented turn to drugs.  * The coming of plagues. * The increase in internal revolutions. * The increase of wars. * Open homosexuality as a political force.* The increase of famines.* The increase in pollution. * The increase in earthquakes. * The increase in lawlessness. * The decline of the family unit. * The open departure of many Christian Churches policies from the Bible's teachings. * The move toward a one world government. * The move toward a one world religion. *

Many of these seemed absolutely IMPOSSIBLE a generation ago... believe it ~ or not!

Bibliography/ Acknowledgements

"It is best not to use only one source or only modern sources for researching history unless you know the bias of the author. The prejudices of the authors above are easily sorted out by reading their differing accounts of the fall of Jerusalem when Titus came in and destroyed the temple. ( 70 A.D. ) Once you know the bias of the author, his work is a more solid contribution to your research. For example, H. G. Welles was openly anti-Semetic, Will Durant was openly anti-Christian, Eusibius was a Christian minister, Bishop of Cesarea, and Cornelius Tacitus was a Roman Pagan, Flavius Josephus was both Jewish and a Roman Citizen and they all tailored history to fit their belief systems." ~H. D. Johnson   

Some key sources for THE LEGENDS OF HISTORY and recommended reading:

THE HISTORIES by HERODOTUS aka the father of history ( 9 vols. 557 B.C.- 479 B.C. ) THE ANNALS OF TACITUS   ( 2 vols. extant Roman history AD 56 – AD 117) CASSIUS DIO ROMAN HISTORIES ( HISTORIA ROMANA0 ( 80 VOLS. written in the 3rd century) THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY   by    H. G. WELLES   Doubleday   (2 vols. written in the 19th century) THE STORY OF CIVILIZATION   by   WILL & ARIEL DURANT  Simon & Schuster    (11 vols. 1935-75) THE ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY  OF EUSEBIUS PAMPHILUS Baker book house    (written in the 4th century) THE WORKS OF FLAVIUS JOSEPHUS - THE WARS OF THE JEWS, ANTIQUITIES OF THE JEWS, etc. (4 vols. 75-94 AD) EDWARD GIBBON, THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, (3 vols. 1776-1789) ELIZABETH DONNAN, DOCUMENTS ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE HISTORY OF THE SLAVE TRADE IN AMERICA  (4 vols. 1930-35) THE BLACK BOOK OF COMMUNISM  edited by MARK KRAMER translated by JONATHAN MURPHY (Harvard University Press 1999) THE JEWISH VIRTUAL LIBRARY - (~ www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org ~ the most comprehensive online Jewish encyclopedia in the world) THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA (12 vols. 1905) THE JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL ARCHAEOLOGY (Vol. 178 #10, Nov. 6, 2010) THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO by ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN  Harper & Row 1973 ( 3 vols. 1918-1956)

 Thank you for visiting "The Legends of History" multi- media educational art gallery...

Coming Soon from Brandywine Press!

INDEX of GALLERIES ~ LINKS to LARGER ART    Enter a world of Beauty and Imagination... The Realistic and Fantastic Art Galleries of Contemporary American Illustrator Howard David Johnson Click on these Fun Educational Realistic Art Gallery link icons  for Two-fisted Tales of VALOR & Frontline Combat featuring Legendary Warriors of History, Knights and ladies of Arthurian Legend, Celtic, Nordic, Asian and Olympian gods & monsters, unicorns, dragons, fairies... and more! Angel Art King Arthur Norse Mythology Greek Mythology Legends of History Fantasy Art Celtic Mythology Great Religions  Mythic Women Fairy Paintings Asian Mythology Russian Mythology \ Mermaid Art  History Part Two Classic Fairy Tales History of Dragons Pencil Portraits I Studio Photography Colored Pencils II Art Instruction Realistic Paintings Pre-Raphaelite Art Legendary Women Warrior Women The Art of War  Mythic Creatures About Realistic Art Science Fiction Art Beautiful Women Art NuVeau  Fantasy Pin ups Fairy Lore Flower Fairies Spartan Warriors  Lost Atlantis   Lady of Shallot Catholic Art  Art of the Bible Symbolist Art Surrealist Art Commercial Art Business Center Style & Technique  Biographical Paintings in Oils ELVES Digital Techniques DINOSAURS

        Did you know the real life Robin Hood ( before the legend was Christianized ) actually fought the ancient Romans during the reign of Emperor Claudius and was really a Celtic Warrior named Caracticus? Consider 20th century American President Theodore Roosevelt. He lives in history because of his heroic charge up San Juan hill with his legendary roughriders. When this story was printed in William Randolph Hearst's newspapers it catapulted him to fame and ushered him into the White House as a glorious American War Hero. Everyone has seen the paintings and statues of Teddy Roosevelt and his roughriders dressed in khaki, mounted on horseback and charging fearlessly forward waving their swords. In reality, it was a group of Heroic African American Buffalo Soldiers who took San Juan Hill in spite of their heavy casualties. They did not wear khaki. They were not mounted on horseback, but were foot soldiers in the same dark blue uniforms of the U.S. cavalry as worn during the Indian Wars. Roosevelt's group actually took a nearby Hill against light resistance but Hearst said that would not sell newspapers so he created an American Myth. So as we see, here is something taught to children in schools as history is just not true at all, but yet, this myth shaped the true history of the world in  the 20th century and beyond.

            If Teddy Roosevelt had not been elected president, neither would his nephew, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who provided very real and crucial leadership during the Great Depression and the Second World War. Neither would Theodore Roosevelt have built the Panama Canal or established the conservation of our natural resources. So here we see Modern Myth not only influencing, but creating History. In reality, I perceive Theodore Roosevelt was a much greater president than history gives him credit for. Although it is true his kindness created the "Teddy Bear", he really was also fit and trim, vigorous and active, and a very tough president in his foreign policies. He was instrumental in America's emergence as a world power. It is also true that he came from the upper upper class - old money in New York with a background of great wealth and limitless luxury and chose to be an outdoorsman, a cowboy, and soldier. When he was given office, he embraced the concept of being a good Shepherd , of seeking justice for all Americans - for this he was called a" traitor to his class".

         Actually, he is the savior of his class. In my estimation, it is President Theodore Roosevelt who is most responsible for the end of the then imminent threat of communist revolution or takeover in America. Throughout the early 20th century Socialist Revolutions were sweeping across the globe. Conditions for the workers in America were appalling. Child Labor, dangerous working conditions, ungodly long hours, degradation, and shockingly low pay. When Karl Marx wrote his "Communist Manifesto" he never dreamed of an affluent MIDDLE class. A middle class that is comfortable and savoring, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is not going to rise up in murderous anger and "Storm the Bastile". What Global Communism could not contend with was America's happy and prosperous middle class. Theodore Roosevelt practically invented America's affluent middle class and eliminated the threat of Communist revolution in America.  Although he was well loved, he was also hated and caught tremendous heat from the wealthy elite for sharing a small portion of their wealth with the common man. He saved them from a Second American Revolution by customizing capitalism to a kinder, gentler form than the horrors of the late 19th century. Like General Winfield Scott, who won The American Civil War before it started, he defeated his foes with an idea. If the Robber Barons had had their way, their greed could well have caused America to fall to communism. Today, we have a new generation of robber barons but no Teddy to stand up for the little guys. I feel the true history about American President Theodore Roosevelt is more amazing than the myth, but they are interwoven and inseparable, without the one, we would not have the other. He was both a glorious and a tragic figure. As a leader and as a man I believe he is badly underestimated. It was only when his beloved son, nicknamed "Quinnykins" died fighting in World War One that he finally saw through all the myths and glamour to see the awful truth about war face on. He never got over his guilt for glorifying war to his son. We could all learn a lot from his experiences.

        War costs money...trillions of dollars. War takes human lives...millions of them! War makes children old, breaks parent's hearts, kills morale. War destroys cities, art treasures, civilization! The first world war alone cost thirty million lives and 4 trillion dollars when adjusted to the buying power of modern U.S. dollars. With the money at the time we could have built a three bedroom two bath house furnished with fine hardwood furniture on five acres of quality land for every family in The United States, Canada, Australia, England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, France, Belgium, Germany and Russia. There would have been enough left to build and stock a first class library and a proper university in every town of 20,000 people or more. Out of the balance we could pay the salaries for life of 125,000 teachers and 125,000 nurses. The remaining balance could have bought 1919 Belgium and France and everything in them.

           I see History as an endless waltz. Three beats over and over. War, Peace, and Revolution. Three beats over and over in an endless cycle of death, destruction, and regeneration. An Endless Waltz... and those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to dance this deadly waltz and pay this Frightful price for War. As modern technology such as jet aircraft and thermonuclear missiles make the world smaller & more dangerous everyday, tolerating each other's racial, social, & religious differences & living together in peace has now become key to the continued survival of mankind through the 21st century...

~H D Johnson 2013

CLICK ON THESE LINKS OR E-MAIL FOR  THE JOHNSON GALLERIES' VARIOUS BUSINESS SERVICES:

PUBLISHING LICENSES * ORIGINAL ART * POSTER ART * ART BOOKS * ART INSTRUCTION * BOOK COVERS * COMMISSION  PORTRAITS

*****

CLICK ON THESE LINKS OR E-MAIL FOR  THE JOHNSON GALLERIES' VARIOUS BUSINESS SERVICES:

Essay One:

Realistic Art: THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THEY STAY THE SAME...

(A Brief essay dealing with attitudes toward Traditional Realistic Paintings, Pastels, Colored Pencils and Art Numérica )

"Painting, in art, the action of laying colour on a surface, or the representation of objects by this means. Considered one of the fine arts"

~Encyclopaedia Britannica. 

"Painting. noun. 1.) The act or employment of laying on colors or paints. 2.) The art of forming figures or objects in colors on canvas or any other surface, or the art of representing to the eye by means of figures and colors any object; the work of an illustrator or painter. 3.) A picture; a likeness or resemblance in shape or colors. 4.) Colors laid on. 5.) Delineation that raises a vivid image in the mind; as in word painting.

~ Webster's Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language

Soft Pastels, Acrylics, and Colored Pencils combined

    Snobbism in the arts is nothing new. Some people will tell you that oils are the only valid medium for realistic paintings. That Colored Pencil, Digital, and other Realistic Painting and Drawing Media are not valid  for "real" art. Young artists, Don't let them bother you. Their forerunners used to condemn Pastels before they gained acceptance and called them "crayons" when Johann Alexander Thiele (1685-1752) invented them.  Mercilessly disrespectful art critics of the time could not stop the Experimentalists no matter how viciously they attacked and derided them. "Crayon-painting" as it was called in England was practiced early on by persecuted pioneers in Switzerland and many other nations. What a debt we owe to these master artists who refused to knuckle under to the pressure of those short-sighted critics during those historic and experimental times. It took until 1870 with the founding of the "Societe` Des Pastellistes" in France that respect came  at last to these heroic & immortal visual artists.

        In England the liberation of the Pastellists from slight regard and undeserved disrespect came with the first exhibition of "The Pastel Society" at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1880. Pastel Painters like Mary Cassat and others from America and other nations forever silenced  the snobs with their masterworks and gained recognition at long last for Thiele's invention as a valid art medium. I am persuaded that history will repeat itself.  Like Pastels, I believe these wonderful new colored pencils and even Digital Realistic Art Media will one day receive the recognition they deserve as powerful mediums of artistic expression just as pastel paintings did. What is your definition of art? Have you thought about it?

Mine is: "anything that makes you feel or think."

     Consider dancing... it can be a little skip in the step or rise to the level of the incomparable Russian Ballet. Did you know that just the materials alone for a single oil painting cost up to a thousand dollars these days? Did you know that they are toxic? Even paying the artist less than minimum wage no one but the super rich can afford them anymore. Something's got to give. Realistic paintings in oil have been highly prized for centuries and the appeal and following of realistic art is undiminished to this day. Oil paintings featuring Abstract Art and Realistic Art are generally the most treasured form of all the visual art media and with good reason. But snobbish art critics  favoring abstract art have declared  that realistic paintings, or illustrations are not art for a century. With so many representationalist  paintings by so many immortal master artists hanging in the Louvre, the Hermitage, and the British Museum and others I think the disrespect for realistic illustrators that dominated the 20th century is academically ridiculous as well as vain and intolerant, insisting theirs is the only valid opinion. What is your definition of Art? I believe almost any form of human expression can be raised to the level of "high art" especially  visual art and Realistic illustration...

      By my own definition of art, which is: "anything that makes you feel or think" most abstract paintings are not "real art"to me personally, because abstract paintings usually neither make me feel or think,  generally focusing obsessively on technique and avoiding any coherent content. I usually draw a complete blank mentally and emotionally when I look at them. In 1979 the Houston Metropolitan Museum of Art displayed a triptych of 3 giant paintings they paid fifty thousand dollars for-  three blank white canvasses entitled "untitled". Then there was "The incredible new artistic Genius" with an I.Q. of 62 ...Congo the chimpanzee with his gala New York art exhibition...an elaborate prank played on the Snobbish American Art critics about a generation ago by research scientists in the field of primatology. Imagine how upset they were when he created one of his "ingenious masterpieces" right before their eyes.

( My Source for this is the Time Life Science Library volume entitled "The Primates". )

      Art education has been almost completely removed from American Schools as a result of generations of this kind of  fabulous nonsense contributing to America's cultural illiteracy crisis. Now, the works of Leonardo Da Vinci, Michaelangelo, and other notables are being removed from school libraries.  After generations of this, most American college graduates today cannot name even one living visual artist, abstract or realistic.

There is no way that mandating more math, requiring more reading, or scheduling more science will replace what we have lost as a culture.    

What is your definition of Art?

~HDJ

*****

But how does this new Digital Art media fit in with formal definitions of Art?

       Art ( noun ) [ Middle English, from Old French, from Latin ars (stem art-). ] 1. Human effort to imitate, supplement, alter, or counteract the work of nature. 2. The conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colors, forms, movements, or other elements in a manner that affects the sense of beauty; specifically, the production of the beautiful in a graphic or plastic medium. 3. The product of these activities; human works of beauty, collectively. 4. High quality of conception or execution, as found in works of beauty; aesthetic value. 5. Any field or category of art, such as painting, music, ballet, or literature. 6. A non-scientific branch of learning; one of the liberal arts. 7. a. A system of principles and methods employed in the performances of a set of activities: the art of building. b. A trade or craft that applies such a system of principles and methods: pursuing the baker's art. 8. A specific skill in adept performance, conceived as requiring the exercise of intuitive faculties that cannot be learned solely by study: the art of writing letters. 9. a. Usually plural.  Artful devices; stratagems; tricks. b. Artfulness; contrivance; cunning. 10. In printing: Illustrative material as distinguished from text.

~ The American Heritage College Dictionary of the English Language

*****

info@howarddavidjohnson.com

Thank you for Visiting... Your  business, letters, & links are always welcome.

*****