Thursday, October 22, 2015

I've Just Had a[couple of]n Insight

1. A lot of British histories of the Second World War mention how war planners had expected that "the bomber would always get through" and that in the first little while of a bombing campaign there would be over a million casualties, dead or wounded.

This is always mentioned in retrospect of "the Blitz" which lasted from September 1940 to January 1941 which killed "only" about 40,000 people.

It's never mentioned in the parts of the English historiography about how "the allies" (re: France) "betrayed" Poland when they did nothing but invade Germany only 5 miles before retreating again. They did not want to antagonize Germany. They did not want Paris (or the rest of France) to be destroyed by bombs. They hoped that the "gentlemanly" way in which they planned to wage war would suffice to ensure German humanity.

This is in response to pages 570 -571 of Roy Jenkins's Churchill: A Biography.

2. To Peter Hall's Cities & Civilization; the section on the Ancient Greeks: I have the whole "public opulence/private squalor" thing as being a natural , inevitable result of an accumulation of riches in a poor area. I see rising and declining farmers bargaining with each other. The development of a trading city allows for taxation and rents. Income from that goes to the city. Which helps sustain the material and spiritual needs of the declining farmers.

It is a ransom, paid by the rich, to men who gained through taxation and laws and what-not; to compel the rich to pay for temples which employed craftsmen who also employed and were employed along with everyone else who supported this unexpected market and source of employment.

And it all arose because cutting marble out of rock and images of animals, humans and the gods was cheaper than slave girls or more food from abroad or a private palace. Because your fellow citizens (rich or poor) would not let you.

There. those wur mi 2 incites

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