We’ll always have Paris

11 Comments

1. Venerator Sti Lot says:

   28 December 2013 at 9:52 PM

   Wow! I saw an interesting excerpt from a talk by Professor Alan Dershowitz recently about how, the nature of history being what it is, we would never have known the extent of the death and destruction prevented if Churchill had been in a position to tackle the Nazis as early and as hard as he thought necessary.
2. Polycarpio says:

   29 December 2013 at 2:27 AM

   During my first night in Rome (on my honeymoon), I had a troubled sleep that was invaded by lucid dreams of the rumble of a thousand chariots and a myriad marching armies’ thundering boots, which I interpreted as the echoes of that city’s awesome history resonating in my head. It was lovely and frightening.
3. Priam1184 says:

   29 December 2013 at 9:27 AM

   I took a train ride from Paris to Brussels a few years back and went across many rolling peaceful green fields; at some point it occurred to me that almost a century ago those peaceful fields were covered with barbed wire, trenches, artillery craters, and millions of men machine gunning each other to death. History is an incredible thing and the world can change on a dime so it is always best to keep one’s eyes open.
4. robtbrown says:

   29 December 2013 at 9:32 AM

   Venerator Sti Lot says:

   Wow! I saw an interesting excerpt from a talk by Professor Alan Dershowitz recently about how, the nature of history being what it is, we would never have known the extent of the death and destruction prevented if Churchill had been in a position to tackle the Nazis as early and as hard as he thought necessary.

   I’m a Churchill admirer–the British bulldog stood up to the Nazi war machine.

   On the other hand, the strategy he advocated for the war might have delayed the defeat of Germany. The US wanted a direct attack on Germany, Churchill a concentration on peripheral areas.
5. robtbrown says:

   29 December 2013 at 9:37 AM

   Priam1184 says:

   I took a train ride from Paris to Brussels a few years back and went across many rolling peaceful green fields; at some point it occurred to me that almost a century ago those peaceful fields were covered with barbed wire, trenches, artillery craters, and millions of men machine gunning each other to death. History is an incredible thing and the world can change on a dime so it is always best to keep one’s eyes open

   I know a man who was the first Medal of Honor recipient from the Viet Nam War. A few years ago he visited the site of the battle, which he said is now a rubber plantation.
6. Muv says:

   29 December 2013 at 9:49 AM

   Imagine being in a bookshop, leafing through a book and looking at pictures of Second World War bomb damage to an English city, and then realising you are staring at a photo not only of the street you are in, but the same very section of it. It was a rather sobering experience, believe me.
7. gracie says:

   29 December 2013 at 1:01 PM

   The National Geographic did an article on paranormal sightings a number of years ago. One of the stories was of Roman soldiers seen to be marching through what is now the cellar of a Treasury House in York, England:

   http://www.real-british-ghosts.com/roman-ghosts.html
8. Venerator Sti Lot says:

   29 December 2013 at 7:26 PM

   robtbrown,

   Thank you for your knowledgeable response!

   I, too, am (in many, many ways) a Churchill admirer, but have not read enough about him in detail! I re-found the excerpt from a lecture given a couple weeks ago at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, posted on YouTube as “Alan Dershowitz: urges Israel to act as it sees fit on Iran.” The Churchill-related part is from 9:36, and rewatching it, I see that while he variously refers to 1937, the Sudeten crisis, and an entry in Goebbels’s diary about expecting a military response, it may be that he is in fact simply constructing a hypothetical case (perhaps in the context of supposing Churchill had become Minister for Coordination of Defence in 1936 rather than Sir Thomas Inskip).

   Possibly interesting in the background, here, is the excerpt from a speech of 16 November 1934 variously posted on YouTube, in which Churchill seems both to dismiss the idea of offensive military action and yet clearly set out the Nazis’ methods – many of which are not exclusively theirs, and did not perish with their regime, as methods!
9. Finarfin says:

   29 December 2013 at 8:13 PM

   Fascinating photos. I’m in the midst of reading Andrew Roberts’ book “The Storm of War”, so the contrast between the the two scenes in each photo stands all the more vividly in my mind.

   I also can’t help but think of the poem by Thomas Macaulay “The Battle of Lake Regillus”, the part where it contrasts the peacefulness of the old battle ground (from the perspective of one who was living a 193 years after the battle itself) to the turmoil of when the battle was raging:

   III.
   Now on the place of slaughter
   Are cots and sheepfolds seen,
   And rows of vines, and fields of wheat,
   And apple-orchards green;
   The swine crush the big acorns
   That fall from Corne’s oaks.
   Upon the turf by the Fair Fount
   The reaper’s pottage smokes.
   The fisher baits his angle;
   The hunter twangs his bow;
   Little they think on those strong limbs
   That moulder deep below.
   Little they think how sternly
   That day the trumpets pealed;
   How in the slippery swamp of blood
   Warrior and war-horse reeled;
   How wolves came with fierce gallops,
   And crows on eager wings,
   To tear the flesh of captains,
   And peck the eyes of kings;
   How thick the dead lay scattered
   Under the Porcian height;
   How through the gates of Tusculum
   Raved the wild stream of flight;
   And how the Lake Regillus
   Bubbled with crimson foam,
   What time the Thirty Cities
   Came forth to war with Rome.
10. Angie Mcs says:

    29 December 2013 at 10:15 PM

    I dont know if they came from the same site, but I had seen some similar overlaid photos of London a few months ago. It is particularly stunning to see what Europe went through, such a mass of rubble throughout the UK and the Continent. In these photos, I find it incredibly chilling to see Hitler, smartly turned out in his trenchcoat, the Eiffel Tower behind him. What we take for granted now as tourists and younger residents, still sends shivers down the spines of elderly survivors. Most of all, I felt a surge of pride and awe at the photos of American soldiers on the beaches and marching into towns, from which the Nazis had fled. To think of what these young men gave for this country and what is happening now, being denied expressing their faith and openly turning to that faith for solace, is too much. May they rest in peace. As forHitler and his cronies, will they ever know any rest?

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