Category Archives: History

Roman Roads: Built to last

Posted on March 30, 2024 by odeboyz
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Book Review: Robert Harris ~ Archangel (1998)

Posted on March 27, 2024 by odeboyz

The wonderful thing about Harris is that he’s reliable. He isn’t a book-a-year author featuring drunken, music-loving Detective Inspectors, or psychopathic vigilantes as the principal character. He writes *proper* novels. His stories are carefully plotted. Brilliantly well-written, researched and with … Continue reading →

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The CIA’s 2024 Annual Threat Assessment: Intelligence Community Assessment

Posted on March 20, 2024 by odeboyz

The CIA isn’t interested in the rights and wrongs of international conflicts. Their focus is their impact on the USA. The Gaza Conflict is interesting in this respect. It is facile to think it is tightly located there. “Conflicts, particularly … Continue reading →

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Germany’s New Army, 1955

Posted on February 27, 2024 by odeboyz

In the first two years, the Bundeswehr accepted 125,000 veteran soldiers and 37,000 officers. Thirty-one of its thirty-eight generals had served on Hitlers general staff. Eighty per cent of all commanding officers in 1961 had been decorated with the Iron … Continue reading →

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Stalin’s Patriotism

Posted on February 7, 2024 by odeboyz

Having learned they had captured Joseph Stalin’s son, the Nazis had an idea: exchange the boy – artillery Lt. Yakov Dzhugashvili – for Field Marshal Friedrich von Paulus, the commander who surrendered Stalingrad.  Stalin’s answer….All Soviet prisoners, he said, are … Continue reading →

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The End of Nazi Germany

Posted on January 21, 2024 by odeboyz

The toll of the final struggle was immense, for Germans as well as for their victims and the Allies. Of the 5.3 million German soldiers killed in the war, half died in the final ten months. The Nazis threw Hitler … Continue reading →

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Book Review: Ben MacIntyre ~ Agent Sonya (2020)

Posted on December 20, 2023 by odeboyz

Historians often write beautifully and are highly literate. But they don’t create new genres. MacIntyre has pulled off the feat of writing biography, history and thrillers: simultaneously. He chooses remarkable and well documented stories. This provides a structure to work … Continue reading →

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Film Review: Napoleon (2023) (Joaquin Phoenix)

Posted on December 6, 2023 by odeboyz

I shouldn’t go to historical biopic films. I tut-tut and nit-pick and definitely don’t enter into the spirit of the thing. Oppenheimer lulled me into a false sense of security. Disaster! I hated it and nearly walked out. Why? The … Continue reading →

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Crimea, 2014: Vladimir Putin’s Triumph

Posted on November 15, 2023 by odeboyz

Russia’s annexation of Crimea was textbook perfect. Putin gained the tacit approval of the international community. This was essential for an unqualified success. A consequence was that the Ukraine itself was undermined. Putin’s justification for the annexation, the correction of … Continue reading →

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Elvis Presley’s ‘In The Ghetto’, 1969

Posted on November 2, 2023 by odeboyz

As the snow flies On a cold and gray Chicago mornin’ A poor little baby child is born In the ghetto (In the ghetto) And his mama cries ‘Cause if there’s one thing that she don’t need It is another … Continue reading →

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