History

Samuel Pepys’s journals are an invaluable record of British history. A new book reconsiders his infamous sexual exploits.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/45348900

https://oll.libertyfund.org/quotes/thomas-jefferson-slavery-wrath-of-god

This is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to labour. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest.

Podcast discussing the virgin soil theory in America and how the impact of introduced diseases is often vastly overstated while colonial violence is vastly forgotten.

Tel Aviv attacked. Bahrain bombed. Dhahran struck. You might think this refers to a modern conflict involving the United States, Israel, and Iran but it doesn’t. These same places were targets in a very different war: World War II.

Today, warfare in the region often involves ballistic missiles and drones. But in 1940, destruction came from the sky in the form of bomber aircraft. And while today threats are often described as coming from the east, in 1940 the attacks came from the west launched not by Germany, but by Fascist Italy.

Italy’s dictator, Benito Mussolini, was eager to expand his influence. Seeing Germany’s rapid success against France in the summer of 1940, he joined the war on June 10, hoping to claim a share of the victory. When France surrendered on June 22, Britain stood alone against Axis ambitions in the Mediterranean and North Africa.

At the time, Britain controlled vast territories across the Middle East. An Italian colonial plan proposed targeting British economic infrastructure especially oil facilities critical to the war effort. One key region was the British Mandate of Palestine, which included present-day Israel and Palestinian territories.

The port city of Haifa, home to major oil refineries and infrastructure, became an early target. Italian bombers, flying from bases in the Dodecanese Islands, launched long-range strikes across the eastern Mediterranean. On July 15, 1940, five Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 bombers hit oil installations in Haifa, igniting fires and damaging vital facilities.

A second raid on July 24 was far more devastating. Ten bombers dropped around 50 bombs, killing 43 civilians Arabs and Jews and a British police officer. Fires raged, and refinery operations were halted for weeks. The attacks exposed the vulnerability of British-controlled territory in the region.

More raids followed through August and early September, though with less impact. Then, on September 9, a formation of Italian bombers attempted another strike on Haifa. Intercepted by British fighters, they diverted to Tel Aviv. Aiming for port facilities, they instead struck residential neighborhoods. The result was catastrophic: 117 Jewish civilians, seven Arabs, and one Australian soldier were killed.

In response, Britain reinforced local defenses, recruiting Jewish residents into anti-aircraft units marking the beginning of larger-scale Jewish participation in the British Army, including what would become the Jewish Brigade.

The campaign expanded beyond Palestine. On October 19, 1940, Italian bombers carried out a remarkable long-range attack on Bahrain’s facilities, then under British protection. Flying over 4,000 kilometers, the aircraft struck oil installations, causing damage but no casualties.

Though often overlooked, these Italian air raids marked one of the first sustained bombing campaigns in the Middle East. Later, German and Vichy French forces would also conduct operations in the region. But Italy’s early strikes especially the daring mission to Bahrain remain a little-known chapter of World War II history.

Today, as some of these same locations again find themselves under threat, the echoes of that earlier conflict serve as a reminder: the Middle East has long been a strategic battleground, where control of resources and geography shapes the course of war.

In 1940, as the Wehrmacht marched through Paris, France was humiliated. But Charles de Gaulle’s “Free France” held a trump card—hundreds of thousands of soldiers from the colonies. The “Senegalese Tirailleurs” (Tirailleurs Sénégalais)—hailing from Senegal, Mali, Guinea, and Burkina Faso—became the fist that helped the French reclaim their homeland.

They fought in the jungles of Gabon, the deserts of Libya, and finally landed in Provence, liberating Toulon and Marseille. Thousands of them endured the horrors of German prisoner-of-war camps, where the Nazis treated Black soldiers with the same brutality as Jews and Slavs.

But when victory arrived, instead of gratitude, they were met with “whitening” (blanchiment). By order of the high command, African soldiers were hastily replaced by white conscripts so that in the photographs and newsreels of liberated Paris, the army would look “European.” The heroes who had carried the burden of the war were simply loaded onto ships and sent back to Africa.

The tragedy unfolded at the Thiaroye transit camp near Dakar. Soldiers returning from German captivity and the battlefields discovered that the French administration refused to pay their back wages for years of service and their discharge bonuses. Furthermore, they were offered an exchange of their accumulated francs at an exploitative, predatory rate.

On December 1, 1944, veterans, outraged by this injustice, staged a protest. It was not an armed mutiny, but a non-violent, albeit loud, demonstration. They even blocked the car of a French general inside the camp, demanding a dialogue.

The general promised to pay their hard-earned wages. However, instead of money, French colonial units and gendarmes surrounded the camp at dawn. Under the cover of armored cars, they opened machine-gun fire on their own rescuers—the very men who had fought beside them in the trenches of Europe.

The official report at the time claimed 35 deaths. Later historical research points to figures as high as 300 or more. Those who survived were sentenced to prison terms and stripped of their medals and pensions.

For decades, France sought to forget this incident. It was only in 2014 that President François Hollande officially recognized the massacre and handed over copies of archival documents to Senegal.

It was a bitter paradox of history: the people who helped France cast off the chains of Nazi occupation received a bullet from “Free France” for attempting to defend their rights.

The Thiaroye massacre became the spark that later ignited the flame of the African colonies’ struggle for independence.

Key Facts for Context:

Economics: Historians believe the French treasury was empty, and colonial authorities decided to save money on payments to those who, in their view, “could not stand up for themselves.”

Memory: In 1988, the film Camp de Thiaroye (dir. Ousmane Sembène) was released. It was banned from being screened in France for many years.

On August 15, 1945, the world celebrated victory. World War II had ended, and across the globe, transport echelons began their long journeys: hundreds of thousands of American, British, and Soviet soldiers were returning home from the camps. Families waited for miracles, and those miracles often came true.

In China, however, the anticipation turned into national mourning that did not end with the signing of the surrender. When the time came for the official repatriation of prisoners of war (POWs), Tokyo announced a figure that sounded less like a clerical error and more like a death sentence. Out of the millions of captured Chinese soldiers who had fought against the Japanese army for eight years, Japan officially returned alive only… 56 people.

That is not a typo. Fifty-six. Against the backdrop of millions of prisoners and casualties, this figure looks like a statistical error.

Behind this number lies the darkest chapter of the Pacific War. Unlike the Western Allies, who were formally covered by the norms of the Geneva Convention (though it is well known how poorly the Japanese observed them), in the eyes of the Japanese command, Chinese soldiers had no right to live.

For the Imperial Army, raised on the Bushido code, surrender was the ultimate disgrace, and a surrendered enemy was a creature that had lost the right to be called human.

What happened to the rest? The answer is scattered across the mines of Manchuria, the secret laboratories of “Unit 731,” and the nameless pits of Nanjing. Chinese POWs were used as “logs” (maruta) for biological weapons testing, burned alive during the “Three Alls” policy — 三光作戦 (1. Burn all, 2. Kill all, 3. Loot all) — or simply executed on the spot to avoid wasting resources on their maintenance.

The 56 “lucky” ones who managed to return were more than just survivors. They were living witnesses to a system that purposefully and methodically ground millions of people to dust, leaving behind not even their names on prisoner lists.

He was born on November 23, 1882, in Hamburg. He spent nearly 30 years of his life in China, working for the Siemens company. In 1934, like many German citizens of that time, he joined the NSDAP. A typical expat, a successful businessman, a loyal citizen of the Third Reich. It would seem his story could have been lost in the archives as just another biography of an ordinary party functionary.

However, in 1937, when the Japanese army invaded Nanking, something awakened in Rabe that Nazi ideology tried to root out of a person—compassion. While other foreigners hastily left the city, Rabe decided to stay. Together with a group of like-minded individuals, he organized the “Nanking Safety Zone.”

It was here that the most bitter paradox of the war manifested: Rabe used his status as an NSDAP member and the swastika as a shield. He was certain that the Japanese—Germany’s allies—would not dare to bomb an object flying the flag of the Third Reich. He placed swastika flags on the roofs of hospitals and shelters where civilians were hiding. And it worked. Risking his life, Rabe personally stood in the way of Japanese soldiers, preventing massacres, and documented the horrors of the Nanking Massacre, hoping that Hitler would stop his “allies.”

In the Safety Zone, Rabe managed to save between 200,000 and 250,000 Chinese. He shared his last food supplies, nursed the wounded, and literally snatched people from the hands of executioners, appealing to “Aryan dignity” and his party badges.

Upon returning to Germany in 1938, he tried to show the Reich leadership photographs of the atrocities committed by the Japanese. In response, the Gestapo confiscated all his evidence, and Rabe himself was detained for a time. After the war, the paradox reached an absurd level: due to his NSDAP membership, Rabe underwent denazification, was stripped of his livelihood, and was interrogated by both Soviet and British intelligence services.

A hero who saved hundreds of thousands of lives, he died in 1950 in poverty and obscurity. His name was rehabilitated only decades later, when the world learned of his diaries. He is often called the “Oskar Schindler of Nanking”—a man who remained human even while being part of an inhuman system.

Note: The story of John Rabe formed the basis of the biographical drama “John Rabe” (2009), which details his confrontation with the Japanese occupiers.

He was born on September 26, 1895, in Würzburg into the family of a commercial agent. He served in the First World War as a machine-gun officer, receiving the Iron Cross of both classes and sustaining several wounds. After the war, he became involved with the Freikorps, suppressing communist uprisings, then joined the NSDAP, graduated from university, and earned a doctorate in political science. Seemingly, a typical Nazi careerist.

However, even then, another side of him was emerging: alcoholism, gambling addiction, thievery, and, most importantly, a pathological attraction to minors. In 1934, he was convicted of the sexual abuse of a minor, stripped of his titles and doctorate, and sentenced to two years in prison. Another similar case followed. A normal society would have long since written him off. But Dirlewanger had an old friend from the Freikorps—Gottlob Berger, who was close to Himmler. Thanks to him, in 1937, he was sent to the Condor Legion in Spain, where he once again distinguished himself through brutality.

In 1940, Berger and Himmler decided to fully utilize his “talents.” Thus, the SS Sonderkommando Dirlewanger was formed—initially composed of convicted poachers (whose skills in the woods and with weapons were deemed useful for anti-partisan operations). Later, they began recruiting all sorts of criminals, rapists, murderers, deserters, and eventually, political and foreign collaborators. The unit grew from a company to a battalion, regiment, assault brigade, and finally, to an entire SS division.

This was not an army but a gang in black uniforms. Their mission was fighting partisans in the occupied territories, primarily in Belarus and Poland. In practice, they carried out mass punitive actions against the civilian population. Khatyn, Borki, Ola, and dozens of other Belarusian hamlets and villages are on their conscience. During the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, the “Dirlewanger men,” alongside the Kaminski Brigade, carried out a massacre in Wola.

Dirlewanger himself encouraged all of this. An alcoholic and a sadist, he personally participated in torture and executions, allowing his subordinates any atrocities. His unit became a symbol of the extreme horror of the Nazi occupation.

Toward the end of the war, the division was crushed in the pocket near Halbe. Dirlewanger himself was wounded for the 12th time and captured by the French in May 1945 (in Althausen, Baden-Württemberg). He was guarded by Polish soldiers serving in the French Corps. Between June 4th and 5th, 1945, he was brutally beaten in the prison with rifle butts to his head and abdomen. Oskar died from the beatings around June 7th at the age of 49. Officially, the cause of death was listed as “natural causes.”

Note: It was the SS Dirlewanger unit that the partisans fought against in the Soviet film “Come and See.”