Infinite Wisdom

"Present preparedness must not be sacrificed to an illusory future readiness. National emergencies cannot be foreseen and must be met by existing forces."

La Triviata

• Upon occupying Sarajevo, on April 20, 1941, German troops promptly tore down a marker erected by Serbian nationalists to commemorate the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914, and sent it to Hitler.
• Although British naval architect Sir Thomas Slade (c. 1703-1771) designed many fine warships for the Royal Navy, including several 74-gun third-rate ships-of-the-line, he has only one first-rate 100-gun ship to his credit, though that was definitely an outstanding effort, HMS Victory.
• A monument erected in 1932 on the Janiculum Hill in Rome to the memory of Giuseppe Garibaldi’s wife, Anita de Jesus Ribeiro, who died in his arms at 27 during the retreat following the collapse of the “Roman Republic” in 1849, improbably shows the warrior-woman holding a baby in one arm and a pistol in the other hand, while riding into battle side-saddle!
• During the early days of the occupation of Germany following World War II, the 2^nd Battalion, 18^th Infantry (1^st Infantry Division) had its own pastry chef, who came well recommended, having formerly been in the employ of Generalfeldmarschal Erich von Manstein.
• U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali (1992-1996) was the grandson of Boutros Ghali, the first Coptic Christian Prime Minister of Egypt (b. 1908), who died by an assassin’s hand in 1910.
• Julius Caesar was so indifferent to the pleasures of the table that on one occasion he failed to notice that he was eating asparagus dressed with rancid olive oil, and wondered aloud why his table mates were passing it up.
• After dismembering the remnants of Czechoslovakia in March of 1939, Hitler set up a puppet Slovakian Republic, which was promptly recognized by several pro-Axis countries, as well as by the supposedly vehemently anti-Fascist Soviet Union, in a move that was perhaps a “signal” from one dictator to another of a desire for friendlier relations, which were realized in August, with the conclusion of the Nazi-Soviet Pact .
• Erskine Childers’ excellent 1903 adventure novel The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service , about the secret concentration of a German fleet in the Frisian Islands for a surprise invasion of Britain, described an enterprise that, apparently unbeknownst to the author, had actually been considered by the Kaiser’s war planners in 1897, but rejected as too risky.

More...