Prefácio de The Enemy's House Divided (1924), de Charles de Gaulle.
"Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand." (Gospel of Matthew, 12:25)
The German defeat cannot deter French opinion from rendering our enemies the homage they earned, by the energy of their leaders and the efforts of those who carried out their orders. But the exceptional extent of the warlike qualities they demonstrated, from one end of the drama to the other, better enables us to measure the errors that they committed.
We can do so all the more easily because almost all the German personages who played a role of the first rank in the conduct of the struggle have now published their memoirs. And, while it would not be fitting to make use of these writings without very seriously weighing the spirit of self-justification in which they were written, it is possible by comparing them one with another, by counterpoising the theses they maintain, and by grouping their affirmations and negations to discern more or less the principal reversals, and to form a judgment about the action of these personalities.
Among the multiple acts of this drama, the present study is concerned with the episodes that appear to be most freighted with consequences for the course and outcome of the war. Moreover, these seem to be most characteristic of the spirit and conduct of the personalities who were involved in them. It also happens as is easily explained - that the memoirs of the actors are particularly expansive and impassioned in regard to these events.
The five chapters to follow thus have for their subjects, respectively,
- The indiscipline of von Kluck, who from the 2nd to the 5th of September 1914, created the conditions favorable to our offensive at the Marne and called forth our victory;
- The unremitting struggle waged by Grand Admiral Tirpitz against Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg from 1914 to 1919, to compel him to declare unlimited submarine warfare, which he by no means wished to do, and which induced the Americans to take up arms;
- The inability of Germany to establish a unified command in the coalition of central states, even though all the circumstances combined to offer it to them;
- The governmental crisis, thenceforth incurable, provoked at Berlin in 1917 by the intrigue of Ludendorff, who was resolved to seize de facto dictatorial power and did not hesitate, in order to achieve this, to overthrow Chancellor Bethmann, compelling the Kaiser's will, rousing up political parties, and creating a fatal agitation in public opinion;
- Finally, beginning on July 18, 1918, the abrupt and complete moral collapse of a valiant people, a degradation all the more grandiose because this people had, until then, been able to muster a collective will to conquer, an obstinacy in staying the course, a capacity for suffering that deserved the admiration and astonishment of its enemies from the first day of the war, and will assuredly secure the homage of history.
The German military leaders, whose task it was to guide and coordinate such immense efforts, gave proof of an audacity, of a spirit of enterprise, of a will to succeed, of a vigor in handling resources, whose reverberations have not been stilled by their ultimate defeat. Perhaps this study - or, more precisely, the disclosure of the events that are its object may make evident the defects common to these eminent men: the characteristic taste for immoderate undertakings; the passion to expand their personal power at any cost; the contempt for the limits marked out by human experience, common sense, and the law.
Perhaps reading this will cause the reader to reflect that the German leaders, far from combatting these excesses in themselves, or at least concealing them as defects, considered them instead as forces, and erected them into a system; and that this error bore down with a crushing weight at the decisive moments of the war. One may perhaps find in their conduct the imprint of Nietzsche's theories of the elite and the Overman, adopted by the military generation that was to conduct the recent hostilities and which had come to maturity and definitively fixed its philosophy around the turn of the century.
The Overman with his exceptional character, his will to power, his taste for risk, his contempt for others who want to see him as Zarathustra - appeared to these impassioned men of ambition as the ideal that they should attain. They voluntarily resolved to be part of that formidable Nietzschean elite who are convinced that, in pursuing their own glory, they are serving the general interest; who exercise compulsion on "the mass of slaves," holding them in contempt; and who do not hesitate in the face of human suffering, except to hail it as necessary and desirable.
Perhaps, finally, in meditating upon these events, one may wish to measure with what dignity we should clothe that superior philosophy of war which animated these leaders and which could at one time render futile the harshest efforts of a great people and at another constitute the most universal and surest guarantee of the destinies of the fatherland.
This study will have attained its object if it helps in a modest way to induce our military leaders of tomorrow, following the example of their victorious models in the recent war, to shape their minds and mold their characters according to the rules of classical order. It is from those rules that they may draw that sense of balance, of what is possible, of measure, which alone renders the works of energy durable and fecund.
In the classical French garden, no tree seeks to stifle the others by overshadowing them; the plants accommodate themselves to being geometrically arranged; the pond does not aspire to be a waterfall; the statues do not vie to obtrude themselves upon the admiring spectator. A noble melancholy comes over us, from time to time. Perhaps it comes from our feeling that each element, in isolation, might have been more radiantly brilliant. But that would be to the detriment of the whole; and the observer takes delight in the rule that impresses on the garden its magnificent harmony.
Mais:
http://www.lefigaro.fr/livres/2013/11/06/ARTFIG00536-de-gaulle-avant-de-gaulle.php
http://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxwrrqPyqsnITUZiU2NMLU1IMGc
Battle of Romani
BACKGROUND
In December 1915 there was a change of plan on the British side as far as the Egyptian theatre was concerned (see the Defence of the Suez Canal). A Commission under Major-General Sir Henry Horne recommended that the defensive line should be moved forward from the west bank on to the east, and far enough away from the canal for it to be beyond the range of the enemy's heaviest guns. Three new defensive lines were constructed and the supply railways from Cairo doubled in capacity. This construction effort was largely undertaken by locally-recruited workers, organised as the Egyptian Labour Corps. It was stated that 12 Divisions would be required to defend the canal from the quarter of a million Turks believed to be massing in Palestine (although this proved to be a gross over-estimate: the railways and water supplies in Palestine could not support that size of a force). The Egyptian theatre was placed under the command of Lieut-General Sir Archibald Murray, recently arrived after being Chief of General Staff to Sir John French on the Western Front. Murray proposed to the War Office to undertake limited offensive action to be able to control the area of El Arish. While it would require major construction of railways and water supplies, this would effectively prohibit the Turks from the coastal route to the canal, and also put British troops in striking distance of the central route, well away from the canal. CIGS Sir William Robertson gave a cautious approval in March 1916. As the British pressed forward along the coast in April 1916, the Turks made a strong raid at Oghratina and Katia and scored a notable tactical success. It was not followed up, giving Murray vital time to build his force and consolidate at Katia.
BRITISH BECOME AWARE OF TURK BUILD-UP IN SINAI
A strong force consisting of the Turkish 3rd (Anatolian) Division and "Pasha 1", a German group including five machine gun companies, two trench mortar companies, plus heavy and anti-aircraft artillery, left the Beersheba area on 9 July 1916, crossed the Sinai and reached Oghratina and Bir el Abd ten days later. The British took steps to strengthen its own forces in the Katia area, ready to meet this threat. The Turk intentions were obvious. Unable to attack along the coast, they would try to cut off Romani from the south - and that would take them into a most difficult area of waterless soft sand dunes.
BRITISH ORDER OF BATTLE
The British forces in the Katia/Romani area were under command of No. 3 Section of the Suez Canal defences, commanded by Major-General the Hon. Sir Herbert Lawrence. He was headquartered at Kantara.
The ANZAC Mounted Division was formed in Egypt under Major-General Harry Chauvel in March 1916 and given the responsibility of patrolling the dunes area to cover the continued railway construction work as the British pushed on eastwards. Its units were spread between Romani, Hill 70 east of Kantara, and Ballybunion Station.
The 52nd (Lowland) Division, recovering from its efforts at Gallipoli, moved to Romani once the railway reached that place. By the time the Turks were ready to make another effort, it had been joined by a brigade of 53rd (Welsh) Division.
The 42nd (East Lancashire) Division was also placed under orders of Lawrence on 24 July 1916. It moved into position along the railway from Kantara to Gilban Station.
LAWRENCE PLANS HIS MOVE
Lawrence decided to wait until the Turkish troops advanced. Knowing the Turkish infantry would struggle in the dunes, he would make a frontal counter attack in the centre and swoop round the Turkish left with his mounted forces. There was a chance he could annihilate the attacking units. By 24 July the Turks had moved to within 10 miles but Romani, but they then halted for ten days. It was no longer clear what their intentions were, and Sir Archibald Murray ordered Lawrence to make his own offensive preparations. If the Turks had not moved by 13 April, Lawrence was to attack them.
TURKISH ATTACK DEVELOPS
Late on 3 August 1916, Turkish units carefully followed the 2nd Australian Light Horse Brigade as it withdrew from its daily routine of shadowing the Turkish positions. It intended to get up onto Wellington Ridge, south west of Romani and despite efforts during the night and next day, were held off by fire from the 1st and 2nd Australian Light Horse Brigades. In the centre, the Turks shelled the British positions but made no major effort at a direct attack. The New Zealand and 5th Mounted Brigades, pushing up from Hill 70, steadily drove the Turkish left back beyond Mount Royston. By the end of 4 April, the main Turkish force was committed and exhausted in the dunes, just as had been predicted.
BRITISH FAIL TO DESTROY THE TURKISH FORCE
The British force at Romani did not seize the opportunity to destroy the Turkish forces. 42nd (East Lancashire) Division, ordered up from reserve, was slow to arrive; 52nd (Lowland) Division in Romani was not committed to attack speedily enough. Although efforts were made on 5 August, the greater part of the Turkish force escaped. Over the next two days further British probing was beaten off and on 9 August an attack by the ANZAC Mounted Division against Bir el Abd was repulsed. After this, the Turkish troops withdrew to El Arish.
CASUALTIES AND LESSONS
British casualties in this action were c. 1100, mostly in the mounted units of ANZAC Mounted Division. Turkish losses included 4000 prisoners and are generally reckoned to amount to c. 8000. For the British, lessons were learned: HQ had been too far from the front to be able to react quickly and seize opportunities; there were too few aeroplanes for reconnaissance; the British Territorial infantry could not move as quickly in desert conditions as their Turkish counterparts. But it was an important victory, at a time when the British sorely needed good news in the Middle East. Romani could be said to be the point at which British strategy in Egypt ceased to be about defending the Suez Canal and started to be about the defeat of the Turkish armies in the field.
HARRY CHAUVEL: OUTSTANDING MILITARY LEADER
The defeat of the Turkish attack at Romani was partly due to the clumsy tactical choices made by their German commander Kress von Kressenstein and partly due to the excellent performance of the British mounted force. This was ably commanded by New South Wales-born Henry 'Harry' Chauvel. Aged 51 at the time of the battle, he had served in the Queensland permanent army forces since 1896 and also had some military and police experience before that. Chauvel continued his good work throughout the Palestine campaign and is generally thought to be among the more able commanders of the Great War. Romani was his first serious action.
Fonte:
http://www.1914-1918.net/romani.html
Mais:
Egypt during WW1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinai_and_Palestine_Campaign
Verdun 1916: Quando a morte se fartou
(Fabricio Gustavo Dillenburg)
Erich von Falkenhayn, comandante do Estado-Maior alemão, como seu adversário francês, também almejava um rompimento com a guerra de posições, livrando-se da maldição da guerra estática que impedia manobras, fundamentais para garantir, novamente, a iniciativa. De fato, o início de 1916 dava claros indícios, para os alemães, de que o inimigo agiria com mais vigor, principalmente porque, como tudo levava a crer, os britânicos seriam incorporados às ações com maior amplitude de coordenação.
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Segundo suas memórias, Falkenhayn estudou laboriosamente o terreno, buscando um objetivo no qual fosse possível colocar os franceses em uma armadilha mortal. Desejava encontrar um ponto no qual os franceses se vissem obrigados a alocar todos os recursos disponíveis, forçando uma luta desesperada que consumisse a sua capacidade de resistência. Seu conceito de guerra, segundo suas próprias palavras, era esvair a nação inimiga, sangrando suas melhores tropas.
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Uma decisão, entre os comandantes alemães, foi tomada: a fortaleza de Verdun seria o alvo e, o instrumento, o V Exército - orgulhoso representante das mais duras tradições prussianas - sob o comando do príncipe herdeiro Guilherme e do General Schmidt von Knobelsdorf. Partindo do pressuposto de que as intenções de Falkenhayn eram verdadeiras, o propósito não seria, necessariamente, tomar o local, mas prover uma área de extermínio, na qual a artilharia e a infantaria alemãs pudessem agir com maciço poder de destruição.
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A tensão sobre a França, entrementes, se fazia sentir, quase ao ponto da ruptura, e não havia um aliado próximo - com exceção dos próprios ingleses - para lhe socorrer. A pressão pontual poderia fazer com que o exército francês, já debilitado, se esvaísse em recursos, sem chance de retraimento, sob pena de perder o próprio país. Para Falkenhayn, que queria evitar, num primeiro momento, "a melhor espada inglesa", não restava dúvidas: o sul do Somme (Belfort ou Verdun) - setor que manteria a Grã-Bretanha fora do combate imediato - deveria ser o túmulo das forças francesas.
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Verdun era um antigo ponto forte, dividido ao meio pelo rio Meuse (Mosa), considerado a porta de entrada para o centro do país. No centro da área havia uma cidadela, erguida no século XVII e reforçada no século XIX, que contava com instalações subterrâneas para as tropas. Além de seus muros, distante, aproximadamente, oito quilômetros, construiu-se um anel reforçado por cerca de trinta pontos-fortes, sendo quase dois terços protegidos sob a terra. Torres móveis, com canhões de 75 a 155mm, serviam como defesa ativa. Mas, infelizmente para os franceses, não havia coesão entre os fortes, construídos em dureza, armamento e posicionamento variáveis.
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Com seus grandes espaços arborizados e suas bucólicas colinas, sem artilharia, Verdun foi recheada com trincheiras, solução paliativa às suas torres desnudadas. No momento crucial, quando o ataque alemão foi iniciado, menos de trezentas armas, carentes de munição, estavam disponíveis.
O inimigo estava ciente das dificuldades da França em socorrer Verdun com tropas oriundas da retaguarda, devido ao precário sistema de transporte na área, algo que os alemães poderiam compensar muito bem, pois administravam uma estrada de ferro a menos de vinte quilômetros da cidadela. Além disso, era evidente a importância de Verdun para os franceses, sobretudo por seu caráter psicológico.
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Linhas telefônicas não haviam sido completamente instaladas, a comunicação entre as trincheiras era medonha e abrigos contra ataques de artilharia eram raros e esparsos. Quando o General Philippe Pétain foi designado para substituir Herr, poucos dias antes do ataque alemão, mostrou-se indignado com o estado das coisas.
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Em 12 de fevereiro de 1916, as forças alemãs já haviam deslocado 1.400 peças de artilharia e pelo menos nove divisões, dispostas em uma frente estabelecida a leste do Meuse, contra duas divisões francesas e, comparativamente, apenas um quarto do número de canhões. Faziam parte das forças germânicas, inclusive, o monstruoso morteiro Grosse Bertha, de 420 mm, apoiado por morteiros austríacos de 305 mm e canhões navais e 380 mm, além dos novíssimos lança-chamas. Uma repentina queda de neve, contudo, seguida de forte neblina, impediu que o ataque iniciasse na data marcada, favorecendo um pouco a defesa, que corria contra o tempo para melhorar suas posições.
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A situação, bastante desfavorável à França, era reforçada pela total segurança logística germânica, cujas tropas estavam servidas por nada menos do que uma dúzia de linhas ferroviárias, a maioria de bitola larga, além de disporem de três pontes e considerável apoio aéreo. Comparativamente, os franceses possuíam apenas uma ferrovia de bitola estreita e uma estrada. Outras duas vias de acesso estavam inacessíveis: uma havia sido capturada, a outra podia ser bloqueada pelo fogo da artilharia alemã.
A ofensiva, que teve início sob a palavra-chave Gericht (tribunal), deu-se em 21 de fevereiro de 1916. Embora tenha enfurecido o comando alemão, a semana e meia de atraso, devido ao tempo ruim, representou para os franceses um auxílio impagável para reforçar Verdun com tropas, alimentos, munição e equipamento (insuficientes, apesar da percepção geral de que haveria, ali, um ataque). Às 7h15min da manhã, afinal, esgotou-se o seu tempo e o inferno se abriu às margens do Meuse. O primeiro tiro foi dado por um canhão Krupp de 380 mm, que atingiu a catedral de Verdun, distante 32 km. Nas horas que se seguiram, mais de dois milhões de obuses caíram sobre a cidadela, matando 20 mil franceses, literalmente engolidos pela terra em convulsão. Povoados, bosques, aldeias foram aplainados pelo fogo da artilharia.
A ideia do príncipe herdeiro Guilherme era, simplesmente, usar os canhões para abrir um rombo nas defesas e lançar, por ele, sua infantaria em carga. O plano foi aceito por Falkenhayn mas, com receio de que Verdun fosse tomada muito rapidamente - eliminando a possibilidade de uma batalha prolongada capaz de destruir as forças francesas - as reservas que deveriam estar disponíveis para o V Exército, no caso de sucesso no rompimento, foram seguras pelo Comando.
Aplicando seu planejamento à risca, com um ótimo sistema de observação - e, apesar do bombardeio sistemático - os alemães verificaram que muitas posições francesas permaneciam guarnecidas. Renovou-se, portanto, a carga de artilharia, desta vez com o auxílio de morteiros, buscando os pontos que permaneciam como ameaça. Cautelosas, patrulhas de combate varreram, então, à frente, em busca de lacunas nas defesas, e encontraram o inimigo aturdido e desorganizado. Comunicado, o Comando agiu.
A investida foi devastadora, embora não definitiva. Um impressionante bombardeio de área prenunciou o deslocamento de 140 mil alemães, contra-atacados por incursões francesas audaciosas, mas pouco efetivas.
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A fortaleza de Douaumont foi uma das primeiras a cair, tomada em total surpresa: a grande maioria dos 63 homens da guarnição, num daqueles momentos surreais da guerra, assistia a uma palestra quando chegou uma patrulha de dez alemães. A plateia foi trancada na sala por um sargento do 24º Regimento de Brandenburgo que penetrara no forte, aparentemente sem ser incomodado. Somente um dos canhões chegou a dar combate, mas logo silenciou. Foi um desastre humilhante para os franceses, já que abriu um importante espaço de penetração para o exército inimigo.
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O início da primavera trouxe muita lama, transformando a região em um colossal atoleiro, enquanto os franceses lançavam tudo que tinham contra os alemães, tentando segurá-los. A situação continuava desesperadora, mas pelo menos uma relativa equivalência numérica foi obtida em artilharia e aviação, enquanto os fortes que ainda restavam eram rearmados, às pressas, com o que havia disponível.
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Em março e abril, Falkenhayn deu ímpeto a duas outras ofensivas, dando vazão a avanços e recuos visando os flancos, entre colinas bombardeadas incessantemente por ambas as artilharias. As trincheiras foram soterradas e os buracos abertos pelos obuses passaram a servir de abrigo aos combatentes. Faziam-lhes companhia, nesses espaços, restos de corpos semienterrados na lama.
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Se o objetivo germânico, de sangrar as tropas francesas até seu limite, estava sendo um sucesso, os alemães também mergulhavam no mesmo destino. Não havia dúvidas de que, se o ritmo da carnificina continuasse, logo não haveria mais quaisquer reservas, e a operação toda se tornaria um desastre total.
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[Falkenhayn] buscou promover um assalto decisivo às defesas e tomar, de uma vez por todas, Verdun. No início de junho, avançou sobre Thiaumont, Vaux e Souville, sob o fogo de sua artilharia, equipada com obuses carregados com gás fosgênio (dicloreto de carbonila).
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Nos sanguinários embates que se seguiram, Fort Vaux destacou-se pela resistência. A fortaleza foi martelada incessantemente, até que o avanço conquistou a área superior. Nos túneis que ocupavam os subterrâneos, a luta se estendeu até o início de junho, num mortal jogo de gato e rato no qual os combates aconteciam, frequentemente, corpo-a-corpo. Enfraquecidos, os franceses foram, mais uma vez, derrotados.
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Pétain solicitou a Joffre para abandonar o setor, o que lhe foi negado. Para os franceses, Verdun se tornara o que Ypres fora para os britânicos, e a retirada estava fora de questão. Restava-lhe resistir, o que foi feito usando todos os meios disponíveis e, em desespero, a artilharia, principalmente nos arredores de Souville. A paisagem tornou-se lunar.
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Mas Falkenhayn também se via em apuros. Começou a se dar conta da armadilha em que se metera, e metera seus homens. Não havia mais como retroceder, e não possuía forças suficientes para um golpe final.
Em 1º de Julho, com a abertura da planejada Batalha do Somme, as coisas começaram a complicar para os alemães. Tropas tiveram que ser deslocadas para cobrir contra-ataques, e o ímpeto alemão arrefeceu, salvando Verdun da derrota.
Na frente oriental, o General Alexei Brusilov comandou um ataque aos austríacos, desestruturando suas defesas e obrigando os alemães a voltarem seus esforços para impedir o desmantelamento da frente. Falkenhayn viu-se obrigado a deslocar três divisões, interrompendo o processo já penoso de manter terreno e enterrando, definitivamente, os planos de conquista da área. Pela falha em concluir a tomada do objetivo, ele foi substituído pelo Marechal Paul von Hindenburg.
Fracionada em duas frentes, as forças alemãs perderam a força concentrada necessária para decidir a batalha. Em outubro, pregando a teoria de Foch, sobre o poder da artilharia, os franceses iniciaram uma série de contra-ataques no perímetro de Verdun. Com intenso uso de bombardeio, a infantaria francesa conseguiu fincar pé no terreno. Os Fortes de Douaumont e Vaux foram retomados em outubro e novembro; em dezembro, os germânicos estavam sendo empurrados às suas linhas originais. Logo, estavam na defensiva, lutando para sustentar suas posições. Sua moral nunca mais voltou a ser a mesma.
Batalha de atrito sem igual, Verdun passou a representar a vontade de defesa do solo pátrio, acima de quaisquer sacrifícios. Do ponto de vista humano, foi a mais longa e sangrenta batalha da História.
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A batalha foi cruel ao extremo, de certa forma despropositada em seus objetivos, uma mostra do que comandos inflexíveis podem provocar a um exército, e sem verdadeiros vencedores. Contudo, não foi somente uma chacina. Como parte de um todo bastante complexo, Verdun serviu para que as táticas de combate fossem exploradas e melhoradas, principalmente no que diz respeito ao uso da artilharia como apoio imprescindível ao avanço da infantaria, o que seria, posteriormente, estendido ao uso primitivo da aviação. A flexibilidade tática tornar-se-ia uma necessidade, com as percepções derivadas dos sangrentos (e muitas vezes inúteis) combates, e ficou absolutamente claro que a principal qualidade desejável ao soldado era a resistência, sob condições que seriam, sob outras circunstâncias, intoleráveis ao ser humano.
Fonte:
http://www.nucleomilitarblog.com/2014/03/batalha-de-verdun.html (PDF)
Mais:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x19p9kv
http://gottmituns.net/2013/03/18/german-veterans-of-verdun-video-interviews
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj3n02CQJiU
Trechos de H.G.J. Moseley: The Life And Letters Of An English Physicist (1974), de J.L. Heilbron.
In 1912, encouraged by a travel grant of £15,000, the British Association for the Advancement of Science agreed to hold its meeting for 1914 in Australia. After several changes of mind Harry [Moseley] decided that he was far enough ahead of that "horde of hungry Germans," his competitors, to spare the time to attend, and on June 12, 1914, he and Amabel, who went to see the scenery and some Australian cousins, sailed from Liverpool.
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[...] reading a paper at Sydney on "High Frequency Spectra" and in participating at Melbourne in an unusually well-attended session on the structure of the atom.
Rutherford opened the discussion by emphasizing the important corroboration of the nuclear model supplied by α scattering and van den Broek's hypothesis, securely anchored by Moseley's formulae.
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The quick mobilization of the Australians and their strong feeling for the mother country intensified Moseley's own sense of duty, and the unquestioning patriotism instilled by the public schools. He left the commonwealth - whose sons he would meet soon enough again - on August 29, on the first ship he could get after delivering his paper at Sydney.
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Moseley had then been on active military service for precisely three months. He had begun to train on his return voyage, "reading up a smattering from War Office manuals, and practicing flag wagging, Morse and semaphore while crossing the Pacific".
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Harry had decided to commission himself in the Royal Engineers. The Engineers preferred engineers, and declined. That of course did not discourage Harry at all. "[I am] trying to pull private strings," he wrote Margery on October 10, "but unfortunately find them working rather rustily at present, since nobody seems to know which is the right string to pull." [...] on October 17, Harry arrived at Aldershot.
After a month's "strenuous and interesting" training, in which he learned to signal by semaphore and ride without stirrups, Harry was transferred to an "incredibly gloomy" camp at Bulford on the Salisbury Plain. There he lived in the mud with "splendid fellows, very keen and well-educated," who were learning to set up military communications systems. He did not find the work altogether "amusing," however, and for a few weeks after Christmas he labored as hard to leave the Engineers as he had to enter them. The cause of his infidelity was his first airplane flight, which he made on a day miraculously free from rain. He immediately decided to transfer to the Royal Flying Corps. He then encountered an object even he could not budge: the inefficiency and indifference of the military bureaucracy. It took ten days for his application to proceed through the Engineers, the War Office and the "flying hierarchy to the people really concerned, who have written back through the same channel to enquire my weight. No doubt [he complained to Amabel] more enquiries will follow through the same chain concerning my eyesight and my moral character etc. each at an interval of ten days. If only the channel could be short circuited..."
In the middle of February Harry's company was attached to the 13th Infantry Division at Woking. He himself became responsible for the communications of one of the division's brigades, the 38th, "quite an interesting little job," he wrote Rutherford, since "I and my 26 men will be quite on our own as soon as we get to the Front."
At the beginning of April, when the 38th was enjoying springtime maneuvers in the Surrey countryside, General Sir Ian Hamilton was assembling an army in the eastern Mediterranean for an invasion of the peninsula of Gallipoli.
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On June 7 the government agreed to Hamilton's request for more units and ordered three divisions of the New Army, including the 13th, to the East. Harry, who had inferred from the delay in shipping his brigade that it was reserved for the Mediterranean, had his suspicions confirmed by orders to draw sunhats and tropical kits. [...] prepared, and armed with a .32 caliber revolver and an air cushion, he set sail from Avonmouth on June 15, 1915.
It soon became excessively hot. Alexandria, which he reached by June 27, was "full of heat flies native troops and Australians"; it reminded him of his mortality, and there he composed his will, leaving his entire estate to the Royal Society of London. [...] "We moved yesterday [13 July 15] to a place where the road is worse than the flies. Sand in boots clothes mouth eyes hair. Sand in the food and the water and the air." There were also bullets and dysentery. Harry undertook to protect his flock from both, from the first by inculcating "prudence by example," from the second by Spartan diets and great doses of chlorodyne supplied by Amabel for the purpose. He lost three men to dysentery and one to the Turks.
After three weeks at Helles the 38th proceeded to the harbor of Murdos, on the island of Lemnos, a staging area about seventy miles from Anzac. There Harry spent a few pleasant days swimming in the Mediterranean and hiking in the parched and barren hills, which he found to be "thick with worked flints." With fresh eggs and fruit collected from a nearby village and amenities like Bovril and silk pyjamas commanded from Amabel, he made himself almost comfortable.
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The 38th managed to hold the Farm and part of the hill for the 8th and 9th of August, but it never reached Chanuk Bair.
Early on the morning of the 10th the enemy counterattacked. Machine guns raked Farm Hill from the high ground to the right while 30,000 Turks poured over Chanuk Bair. They annihilated the 6/Loyal North Lancashire Regiment, a battalion from the 38th which had replaced the exhausted New Zealanders on Rhododendron Hill. [...] "So desperate a battle cannot be described. The Turks came on again and again, fighting magnificently, calling upon the name of God. Our men stood to it, and maintained, by many a deed of daring, the old traditions of their race. There was no flinching. They died in the ranks where they stood." Brigadier-General Baldwin and his brigade-major fell in the front line. So did the brigade signal officer, second lieutenant Moseley*, the most promising of all the English physicists of his generation.
[* shot in the head by a Turkish sniper while in the act of telephoning a military order (Wikipedia)]
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Moseley's death was widely reported. Belligerents on both sides paused to observe his passing. After recovering themselves the British scientists used his death as a strong stick for bullying (as Harry would have said) the War Office: "The loss of this young man on the battlefield," said Rutherford, "(is) a striking example of the misuse of scientific talent." "To use such a man as a subaltern [is] economically equivalent to using the Lusitania to carry a pound of butter from Ramsgate to Margate." It came out that the Royal Society had sought his return; that papers had gone forward, but too late. These facts, together with references to Harry's "immortal discovery" lifted from a lecture by Oliver Lodge, who had himself lost a son in the war, were retailed in the daily press under captions like "Sacrifice of a Genius" and "Too Valuable To Die." There is little doubt that Harry's death helped Rutherford and his colleagues convince the public that scientific brains, being a national and even a military asset, should be conserved in time of war.
Had the War Office a clear conception of the military value of physicists, it would have asked Harry (as it did Rutherford and Bragg) to develop a weapon against submarines or (as it did Tizard) to improve the performance of bombers. He would have refused both. Well meaning and influential friends did in fact arrange for him to work on aircraft design; he replied that, since the operation was run entirely by civilians, nothing would have pleased him better, had he happened to be physically unfit. As it was, nothing could keep him from the front. He and the 5,000 other Old Etonians who rushed to the colors with him thought it their duty to be under fire. As Harry's old school fellow Charles Lister put it when declining a safe job as an interpreter: "The date of my birth determines that I should take active service." He too pulled strings to enter a combat division and died in the Mediterranean.
Harry received several posthumous honors, most notably a gold medal, the premio Matteucci, from the Società Italiana delle Scienze. Commemorative plaques were put up in Manchester and at Eton, where a verse by Eggar records Harry's first exposure to X radiation. At Summer Fields one of the four competitive "leagues" into which the school is divided proudly took the name Moseley. A certain Professor Hamer, of the University of Pittsburgh, proposed that element 43, of whose imminent discovery he had heard inklings, be called "Moseleyum," "a name," he said, "better and more international in character like true science itself than a latinized name of the discoverer's own kingdom or republic." His suggestion was ignored, except by the editors of Nature, who observed that it would be a fitting tribute, despite its want of precedent and euphony. Today, after "Lawrencium," "Mendelevium," and "Nobelium," there can be no reservation on either count; and we may hope eventually to see "Moseleyum" attached to a deserving element beyond uranium.
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As Harry had foreseen, his work, X-ray spectroscopy, contributed importantly to the decisive solution to the problem of atomic structure. Most directly, Moseley's law secured the cardinal result of the English School of atom builders, namely the identification of the rank of an element in the periodic table (Z) with the number of electrons (n) in its constituent atoms. [...] By the war's end most physicists had altogether forgotten the reservations of Hicks, Lindemann and Nicholson; and Moseley's law, recognized (to use the words of de Broglie) as "one of the greatest advances yet made in natural philosophy," was widely taken as proof of the doctrine of atomic number, and as the best available evidence for the equality of n and Z.
Moseley's legacy also contributed to several key improvements in the quantum theory of the atom.
Mais:
http://prospect.rsc.org/blogs/cw/2013/08/12/henry-moseley-single-most-costly-death-war
http://neuroquantology.com/data-cms/articles/20191023125647pm158.pdf
Trechos de The Diary Of Vaslav Nijinsky.
This Diary is Nijinsky's message to mankind. His expressed desire to have it published during his lifetime was fulfilled when it first appeared in 1936. [...]
The Diary was written during 1918-19 in St. Moritz where we had retired to await the end of the war. Isolated from the world, from all possibilities of exercising his art, my husband tried to reach the masses through other artistic mediums. He took up drawing and music, created choreographies, and finally wrote his Diary.
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Millions of years have gone by since the creation of man. Men think that God is where technical inventions are most advanced. God was already there when there was no mechanism. Steel is a necessary thing, but it is also a terrible thing. An aeroplane is a terrible thing. I flew in an aeroplane and cried in it. I do not know why, but I felt that aeroplanes destroy birds. All birds fly away at the sight of an aeroplane. An aeroplane is a useful thing but it must not be exaggerated. It is a thing coming from God and therefore I like it, but it must not be used for the purposes of war. An aeroplane should express goodwill. I like aeroplanes and will therefore fly in them where there are no birds. I love birds. I do not want to frighten them. A well-known flyer was flying in Switzerland and flew into an eagle.
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One must not kill tsars, emperors, and kings. I like tsars and the aristocrats, but their deeds are not always good deeds.
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War has not stopped through the thinking of men. I know how one could stop war. Wilson wants to stop war but men do not understand him. He wants tolerance in politics, therefore he does not like war. He did not want war. Lloyd George is a simple man, but he has a great brain. But his brain destroys feeling and therefore he has no wisdom in politics. Lloyd George is a difficult man.
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The murderer goes to death; those who start war are murderers because they kill millions of innocent people. I am a man in a million. I am not alone, because I feel more than a million others.
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I lived at my mother-in-law's during the war. Once I wanted to walk into a restaurant but an inner force kept me back. I stopped suddenly before a small restaurant frequented by working people. I wanted to enter but I did not like to as I was not a workman.
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I liked Paris cocottes when I was with Diaghilev. He thought me stupid, but I used to run to them. I ran about Paris looking for cheap cocottes, but I was afraid people would notice my actions. I know that those women have no disease as they are under special police supervision.
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I want Wilson to succeed in his undertakings, because they are near the truth. I feel the near death of Wilson. I was afraid for Clemenceau, too, because Clemenceau is a good man. His policy is stupid and therefore his life hangs on a hair. Men feel his mistakes. He is not aware of this and therefore his life is in danger. I love Clemenceau, because he is a child. I know children who do awful things, without wanting to. Lloyd George does not know that he will be found out, and therefore holds his head very high. I want to lower his head. I like him, but I must write the truth. I know that if he reads these notes, he will understand me. I know that Clemenceau is honest; he is the policy of France. He is a hard-working man, but he was mistaken when he sent France to her death. He is a man who seeks goodness, a child with a tremendous brain.
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Paderewski became a politician but he is a pianist. I like pianists who play with feeling. Music with feeling is Godlike. I do not like pure technique without feeling.
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During the World War every man was a criminal. The governments shielded the criminals, because the crimes of the governments were executed by them. God does not shield a government which wages war. He does not want war and has therefore sent horrors on mankind.
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I am neither Russian nor Pole. I am a man. I am not a foreigner or a cosmopolitan. I love the Russian soil. I will build a dam in Russia. I understand Gogol loved Russia. So do I. Russia feels more than any other country. She is the mother of all countries, and loves everyone. Russia is not a problem of politics. I know that many people in Russia will understand me. Russia is not Bolshevik. Russia is my mother. I love my mother. My mother lives in Russia. She is Polish, but she eats Russian bread and Schzi [sour cabbage soup]. I want love for my Russia although I know her shortcomings. She has destroyed the plan of war. The war would have ended earlier if she had not let in the Maximalists. The Russian people are like children. One must love them and govern them well.
If everyone will listen to me, there will be no more war.
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I have devoted a great deal of time during the war to dancing and have made great progress. I want to show the public how successfully I studied [...].
I am very fond of French artists and I wish I could dance for them. I know that a lot of French artists were killed in the war - many fathers died, leaving their children and wives without bread. I know too that the government is unable to provide for them all, therefore I would like to dance for the poor French artists. I want to dance for the Polish and other artists, too, when I go to the other countries.
The Poles love France because France gave them their Soul - so did the Poles: they died for France on the battlefields. The war has united the two nations. France knows the heroic deeds of the Poles.
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I understood that men urge horses and people on, till they fall down like stones, exhausted. I decided, like the horse, that they could beat us with a whip as much as they liked, but we would still do what we feel, because we want to live. The horse walked and so did I. In the sleigh a fat man was sitting with his wife, who was bored. So was the driver. Everyone was bored. I was not, because I was not thinking, I was feeling. I walked and walked, I came to the village of St. Moritz and stopped outside the telegraph office. I did not read the war bulletins.
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I am writing in small handwriting because paper is expensive - this is the trick of the shops. They take advantage of the war. They are afraid that it will end soon. The shops say that the war has forced them to increase their prices.
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They are ringing and ringing. I do not know who is calling as I do not like speaking on the telephone. [...] I am writing, crying, and thinking of my wife, who went out thinking that I am a barbarian of Russian origin. She heard these words in Hungary, when Russia was at war with Hungary. I was interned there. I lived there and composed the Theory of the Dance. I danced very little because I was sad, sad because I thought that my wife did not love me. I got engaged in Rio de Janeiro; I married suddenly in South America.
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It is over a year and a half since I have been able to communicate with her [wife]. She might think that I danced lately in England. Probably she will be frightened lest I be harmed on account of the revolution, as they might think I belong to the revolutionaries. [...] She knows I dislike forcefulness. She knows that even when I was a boy I disliked to fight with my classmates.
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Clemenceau will suffer, but I hope he will see through the whole company of diplomats and will be able to protect France. I love France and wish her well. I can see through the whole clique which has started the war. Clemenceau is a rich man and is not in need of anything, and so I feel that he has not been "bought." The Lloyd Georgians buy people, not only with money but with promises. Clemenceau thought that it would be good for France to get Alsace-Lorraine; this question can only be settled peacefully. Clemenceau understood Wilson and has consented to his plan. The French like the Alsatians and many families are weeping; they feel that it is unjust that they should not belong to French territory. The French do not like the Germans - I know how one can develop dislike for German people and I know who taught France to say Boche. One must not quarrel! German children are crying for their fathers too.
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Man's intelligence dies with his body, as it is limited. People say that intelligence has created everything; the aeroplanes, Zeppelins.
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My mother and sister escaped from Moscow to get away from the Maximalists. They were tired of the Civil War, and escaped together with Kotchetovsky, my brother-in-law, and their daughter Ira, leaving all their belongings behind.
Mais:
http://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxwrrqPyqsnIUTNtMGI5MkJwM28 (subtitles)
VISÃO HISTÓRIA
26 de Fevereiro de 2009
I Guerra Mundial - Portugal nas trincheiras
Quando passam 90 anos sobre o Tratado de Versalhes, que traçou as fronteiras e definiu as relações internacionais depois da Primeira Guerra Mundial, este quarto número da VISÃO História é dedicado àquele que terá sido o mais dramaticamente absurdo de todos os conflitos bélicos, com especial incidência na participação que Portugal teve nele.
Com efeito, as rivalidades entre as grandes potências de 1914 prendiam-se exclusivamente com o choque dos interesses económicos (onde a componente colonial desempenhava um importante papel), nada tendo que ver com diferenças ideológicas insanáveis semelhantes às que oporiam mais tarde as democracias e as ditaduras, o capitalismo e o comunismo ou o liberalismo e o fundamentalismo. Em 1914, ano terminal da Belle Époque e do poderio europeu sobre o planeta, havia apenas a vontade de um bloco de países afirmar a sua supremacia sobre outro bloco de sistema sociopolítico semelhante, e vice-versa.
Portugal, onde a jovem República triunfara menos de quatro anos antes sobre uma monarquia quase oito vezes secular, não era obviamente uma potência com ambições de domínio mundial, mas nem por isso deixava de desempenhar papel de relevo no acesso às riquezas africanas. O receio de ficar excluído do banquete dos vencedores, a cuja sobremesa seriam partilhadas as colónias, impulsionava para a guerra, ao lado da "velha aliada" Inglaterra, este nosso país já então claramente periférico. O desejo de afirmação internacional do novo regime republicano, aliado a interesses político-partidários do momento, faria o resto.
A nossa participação na hecatombe mundial seria uma vitória de Pirro: as colónias foram mantidas, mas à custa de 7 mil mortos (carne para canhão maioritariamente analfabeta que desconhecia a razão por que lutava) e de uma crise económico-financeira de amplitude sem precedentes, que haveria de abrir a porta a uma ditadura de 48 anos.
Permaneceu, por isso, durante muitas décadas, na memória colectiva portuguesa, a lembrança simultaneamente doce e amarga da Grande Guerra - assim chamada antes da eclosão da Segunda Guerra Mundial, e ainda depois disso, por hábito de duas décadas. Raras eram as famílias que não tinham sido directamente visitadas pela morte, num País onde pululavam os monumentos e as avenidas e praças dedicadas aos "Combatentes da Grande Guerra" e onde passou a ser venerado o "Soldado Desconhecido" sepultado no Mosteiro da Batalha. A participação portuguesa no conflito era diariamente lembrada em todo o tipo de situações pelo menos ate à década de 50, antes de Salazar ter enviado tropas para Angola "rapidamente e em força", inaugurando a segunda aventura guerreira portuguesa do século XX - esta, em contraste com a anterior, isolada e fora de época.
Hoje, a Primeira Guerra Mundial está praticamente esquecida entre nós, ao ponto de muitos jovens a confundirem com a Segunda ou, quando não é esse o caso, desconhecerem que Portugal participou nela.
Foi essa lacuna que pretendemos colmatar, em parceria com o Museu da Presidência da República, que está a organizar uma exposição sobre o tema.
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Todos os textos são ilustrados com muitas fotos da época, assinadas nomeadamente pelo grande fotógrafo Joshua Benoliel (1873-1932), pioneiro da reportagem fotográfica em Portugal e considerado por muitos o maior fotor-repórter português do século XX, e por Arnaldo Garcez (1885-1964), o único fotógrafo autorizado a acompanhar os soldados portugueses na frente de combate do Norte de França. Alguns destes documentos iconográficos são praticamente inéditos, já que não eram publicados há muitas décadas.
Fonte:
http://visao.sapo.pt/i-guerra-mundial-portugal-nas-trincheiras=f497266
Mais:
https://www.publico.pt/noticia/o-duro-fado-de-portugal-na-guerra-do-mundo
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrWPsj6fVbeVv993EJvO4-0ROhHLGaeGb
http://www.portugal1914.org
Trechos de The Fall Of The Ottomans (2015), de Eugene Rogan.
Spring brought a new wave of optimism to the Ottoman Empire in 1914. Victory in the Second Balkan War and the recovery of Edirne and Eastern Thrace had done wonders for national confidence. After years of wartime austerity, the Ottoman economy was the first beneficiary of peace. Demobilized soldiers returned to the workforce. Farmers predicted record harvests. A building boom was reported in towns across the Turkish and Arab provinces. Trade resumed with renewed vigour once the sea lanes were cleared of warships and mines. With the expansion of foreign trade came novel inventions of the modern age that, within the year, would be converted from civilian to military use.
The advent of the automobile shattered the tranquillity of Istanbul's streets. Until 1908, cars had been banned from the Ottoman Empire. When they were finally permitted after the Young Turk Revolution, the pioneers of Ottoman motoring encountered many obstacles. By and large, the streets of the empire were unpaved. Garages to service and fuel cars were few and far between. And there was no highway code, with chauffeurs disagreeing over such basic issues as the side of the road on which they should drive. Not surprisingly, very few cars had been sold in the Ottoman Empire since 1908. By the end of 1913, when there were already 1 million cars on the road in the United States, American consular officials estimated there were no more than 500 automobiles in the Ottoman Empire as a whole - with 250 of those in Istanbul. In a remote provincial town like Baghdad, you could literally count the number of cars on one hand. Yet by mid-1914, the imperial capital was beginning to experience its first traffic jams as "limousines, touring cars, motor trucks, gasoline driven delivery wagons and hospital ambulances" jostled for space.
The airplane also made its first appearance in the Ottoman Empire in the Young Turk era. [...]
The first Turkish pilots were sent to Europe for training in 1911. By 1914, Turkish aviators were beginning to claim the skies above the Ottoman Empire. In February, Lieutenant Fethi Bey, accompanied by one of Enver Pasha's aides, Sadik Bey, attempted to fly from Istanbul across Anatolia and Syria to Egypt. Their plane, a Blériot design named the Muavenet-i Milliye (National Assistance) covered one twenty-five-mile leg, from Tarsus to Adana, in twenty minutes, at a speed in excess of sixty miles per hour. Crowds on the ground clapped as the plane flew overhead. They managed to reach Damascus safely, but their plane experienced engine problems on the flight to Jerusalem and crashed to the east of the Sea of Galilee, killing both pilots. Fethi Bey and Sadik Bey were laid to rest next to Saladdin's tomb in the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus, Turkey's first airmen to die in military service. A second air mission ended in a similar result before two pilots, Salim Bey and Kemal Bey, finally managed to complete the journey from Istanbul to Egypt in May 1914.
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The spread of mechanized transport fed the sense of optimism growing in the Ottoman Empire in the spring of 1914. With the negotiation of a $100 million public loan from France in May, the Ottoman government secured the means to invest in major public works projects that would bring electricity, public lighting, urban tramways, intercity railroads, and modern port facilities to all of the provinces of the empire. The announcement of the French loan fed widespread expectations of a commercial and industrial boom.
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The Ottoman government commissioned two state-of-the-art dreadnoughts from the British shipbuilders Vickers and Armstrong in August 1911, scheduled for delivery in July 1914. The orders were placed as part of a British naval mission to help modernize the Ottoman fleet.
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The outbreak of war in Europe provoked alarm across the Ottoman Empire - from the cabinet offices of the Sublime Porte through the towns and countryside of Anatolia and the Arab lands. The need for a defensive alliance to assure the territorial integrity of the empire became critical. The Young Turks knew from Cemal's reports that there was no prospect of such an agreement with France. His trust in Britain was likewise soon to be betrayed.
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Russia, then Britain and France recalled their ambassadors from Istanbul before declaring war on 2 November.
The Ottoman Empire was at war. All that remained was to raise the banner of jihad.
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On 1 August, the Ministry of War dispatched Enver Pasha's call to arms by telegraph across the empire. Village headmen and leaders of town quarters posted notices in public squares and on mosque doors. "Mobilization has been declared," the posters trumpeted. "All eligible men to arms!" All men, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, aged twenty-one to forty-five, were given five days to report to the nearest recruiting office. Local officials were told to encourage martial enthusiasm by "beating drums, showing joy and gladness and not despair and neglect".
No amount of drum beating or official displays of joy could overcome the foreboding among Arab villagers when mobilization was first announced. A Shiite Muslim cleric in the southern Lebanese village of Nabatiyya captured the public dismay in his diary on 3 August 1914:
"The people were deeply troubled and agitated by the news [of general mobilization]. They gathered in small groups in public spaces, astonished and bewildered, as if confronting the Day of Judgement. Some wanted to flee - but where could they go? Others wanted to escape, but there was no way out. Then we heard that war had broken out between Germany and Austria on one side, and the Allies on the other side. This only increased the fear and alarm of the outbreak of a murderous war that would devour the cultivated lands and the dry earth."
Similar reactions were recorded across the Ottoman Empire. Shops closed in Aleppo on 3 August in response to the mobilization orders. As one resident noted, "Great uneasiness prevails throughout this city." In the Black Sea port of Trabzon, the American consul recorded, "The decree of general mobilization came like a thunderbolt." Though anyone evading conscription faced the death penalty, many young men preferred to take their chances and go into hiding rather than face what they believed to be a more certain death fighting with the Ottoman army.
In the imperial capital Istanbul, the call to arms was announced in each quarter by the town crier, popularly known as "Bekçi Baba". In daytime, Bekçi Baba delivered water to urban neighbourhoods. At night, he served as watchman over the streets of the quarter. It was Bekçi Baba who sounded the alarm when fire broke out, and it was Bekçi Baba who summoned men for war.
Irfan Orga remembered how his father was called to war by Bekçi Baba. The mobilization that had started in the summer of 1914 accelerated after the Ottoman entry into the war, with ever-older men being called up. Orga went outside into the November cold with his father to hear the crier's announcement and watched as Bekçi Baba rounded the corner and stopped beneath the street lamp "to shout his shattering news": "Men born between 1880 and 1885 must report to the recruiting centre within the next forty-eight hours. Who fails to do so will be prosecuted."
One of the men of the household shouted out, "What does it mean, Bekçi Baba?"
"War! War! Don't you know your country is at war?" he roared.
The capital's recruitment centres, flooded with men of military age, were in a state of confusion. Harassed officials bellowed instructions to civilians, who were herded like cattle, hungry, hopeless, and apathetic. It could take days for conscripts to be processed for service.
Mais:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrWPsj6fVbeWKYLfYzoRX-W2LXeh1ES_g
"Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand." (Gospel of Matthew, 12:25)
