Republicans Are Losing the Electoral College

Will the GOP be able to compete in the Electoral College?

Conventional political wisdom holds that incumbent Presidents are hard to beat. But this year, Mitt Romney and the Republican Party thought they had a good chance. In their view, President Obama’s first term had been a failure: he was presiding over a stagnant economy, high unemployment, and a looming fiscal crisis. The President seemed vulnerable, and indeed, pre-election polls showed a dead heat. But to the chagrin of the American Right, instead of a victory their candidate was roundly defeated – at least in Electoral terms. What many thought would be an election decided in the wee hours of Wednesday morning (or even later), was over by the time the polls closed on the West Coast. In the end, Obama won a second term by a lopsided Electoral Count of 332 to 206, not much less than his landslide four years ago.

In these days after the election, the Republican Party and American Right probably feel like the Democrats and American Left felt eight years ago after George W. Bush won a second term. Confused about losing an election they thought they could win. They are left wondering what went wrong and what do they have to do to stand a better chance in 2016? But from this writer’s perspective, Republicans face a far stiffer challenge today than Democrats did in 2004.

This is not a political blog, and I’m not going to write in any detail about what Republicans should do to win on the national stage, but (looking from the Center) some things appear obvious. It would seem vital to attract a larger share of the Latino vote. This is a large and growing cohort of the electorate and the Republicans can’t afford to get less than 30 percent of their vote like they did this year. A more coherent and less xenophobic stance on immigration would likely go a long way. America, as is often said, is a country of immigrants. This is true and people across the globe have always wanted to come to this country. Immigration is a complex issue, and a blanket open door is almost certainly not the right answer, but neither is a closed door, and Republicans will have to embrace a more welcoming and workable position. Moderating their positions on social issues would be good as well. Abortion may be abhorrent to many on the Right, but an immediate prohibition will never happen, and stridently preaching for one doesn’t help with the larger mass of voters, especially women voters. Neither does, say, stigmatizing homosexuals, or the poor, or painting the government (and by extension government employees) as a parasite feeding on the productive private sector. And Republicans have to do better in articulating their message. If President Obama was vulnerable in this election, especially on economic issues, this argument, as presented by the GOP, clearly didn’t win over the voters. Mid-term elections are supposed to be a referendum on the incumbent, but much of the national discourse in the months leading up to October seemed to be focused not on the President’s first four years, but on the Democratic message that Mitt Romney was an out-of-touch elitist. Republicans clearly lost the rhetorical battle.Romney and his Party didn't do what they needed to do: convince Americans why they were the better choice to lead and not the President and his Party.

All of these are important, but none directly address the largest problem for Republicans, their increasing narrow path to an Electoral majority.

A Growing Electoral Reality
The President won about 50.6% of the national vote to Romney’s 47.9%. This is hardly a landslide, actually down noticeably from 2008, but the 332 to 206 Electoral count, as noted above, was lopsided by any measure. This just continues a trend that’s been evident for a generation. The last Republican Electoral landslide occurred in 1988, when Vice President George H. W. Bush defeated Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis. The Electoral count in that year was 426 to 111, the popular vote 53.4% to 45.7%. Bush 41 (41^st President) had been the eight-year Vice President under a very popular President in Ronald Reagan, the last Republican who was truly able to attract Democratic voters. And Dukakis ran a poor campaign. Since then, these have been the Presidential election results:

Happy Birthday, U.S. Constitution

by Conroy

In just a few days, September 17 to be exact, the U.S. Constitution turns 225-years-old¹. It was on that date in 1787 that the Constitutional Convention adopted the document and passed it along to each of the then thirteen states for ratification. Within a year the Constitution became the law of the land. It was, at the time, a remarkable, original product, and it remains, two-and-a-quarter centuries later, one of man’s great documents.

Here’s the famous Preamble, whose language (misspellings and all) embodies what I term the pragmatic idealism of early America:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish the Constitution for the United States of America.” (sic)

That’s it, a brief 52 words, just one sentence, that announces the broad vision of American government.  At the time of its writing, these sentiments were the hopes for a new nation. And in an 18^th century world of monarchies, rigid social hierarchies, and limited freedoms, it was revolutionary. Looking back from the present it reads like a promise largely fulfilled. And on this anniversary it’s worth thinking a little more about this cornerstone of American government and society.

A Short History of How the Constitution Came to Be
The Constitution was a desperately needed solution to a growing crisis. After the hard fight for independence was won, the United States was not really a country. Rather, it was a loosely bound confederation of thirteen separate states. The central government, as much as there was one, operated under the weak Articles of Confederation.

A quick refresher. The American colonies fought a long war of independence from Britain starting in 1775. A year later, after the Continental Congress formally declared American independence, the Revolution’s leaders realized that in order to prosecute the war effectively a national government of some sort was needed. The Articles of Confederation became the framework of this government. This initial “constitution” was meant as a wartime measure to bind the thirteen rebelling colonies together and create a government to act as an agent for advocating the American cause and soliciting international support. And considering that the U.S. won the war, and to a large extent that outcome was a result of maintaining an army in the field and recruiting the French (and Spanish) into the war on America’s side, the Articles worked. But it was ad hoc, and once the United States became a nation, utterly inadequate.

The Articles created a Congress, but it had difficulty raising money as it couldn’t tax and relied on financial contributions from each state. It could print money, but that soon became worthless. America was on the verge of defaulting on the huge debts incurred during the war. There was no President or Executive Branch. The government couldn’t exercise a coherent foreign policy, with each state pursuing its own goals vis-à-vis Great Britain and other nations. The country had virtually no military and was unable to protect itself against raiding pirates or even the British soldiers still occupying frontier forts. Shay’s Rebellion in Massachusetts revealed the inherent impotence of American government, national and state alike. Commercial rule and legal rights were haphazard. Just a few years after becoming a nation, the United States was headed toward dissolution.

The nation’s leaders, the famed Founding Fathers, recognized the growing crisis and convened the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia during the warm summer of 1787. The Convention, one of the most important events in early American history, was led by George Washington² and included such leading lights as Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison. In total, 55 men from twelve states³ took the next four months to outline the shape of a new national government.⁴

Making a Constitution

A depiction of the Constitutional Convention

What the Convention ultimately approved is known to every American schoolchild, an Executive Branch headed by a President with broad powers, a bicameral legislature divided into a House of Representatives (seats based on population) and Senate (two per state), and a separate judiciary and Supreme Court. That’s the basic structure, but what I appreciate most about the Constitution is how it’s written to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”

The men who wrote the Constitution were products of the Age of Reason, but they were also intelligent and savvy, and realistic about the nature of man. They understood that governmental powers, if unchecked, accrete and corrupt. The recent war had been fought against just that (as they believed⁵). And so the Constitution is based on the ideas of the consent of the governed (representative democracy), divided powers (separate Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches with checks and balances on the powers of each), and civil liberties (most obviously embodied in the Bill of Rights).

And the Convention recognized the need for amendments, for the Constitution to evolve as events warranted. One of the key agreements that greatly aided ratification was that the ten amendments of the Bill of Rights would be added to the Constitution almost immediately. The Constitution was sent to the states for ratification, two-thirds needed to approve for it to become law (meaning nine states needed to ratify it). Delaware⁶, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey ratified it by the end of the year. Georgia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, and South Carolina followed in the first five months of 1788, and when New Hampshire approved in June the Constitution became official. Virginia and New York approved that summer and stubborn holdouts North Carolina and Rhode Island, recognizing the futility of continued obstruction, followed in 1789 and 1790, respectively.

As defined in the Constitution, a President (Washington) was elected⁷, an embryonic Executive Branch was formed, a formal Congress took office, and a federal judiciary established. Government hasn’t grown into Hobbes’ Leviathan, but it has flourished since the experimental beginnings (into a needed social bulwark or bloated inefficiency, or something in between, depending on your own particular political views).

The Constitution was amended with the Bill of Rights in 1789, which guaranteed the civil liberties that so many wanted clearly defined. Since then 17 additional amendments (27 total) have been ratified, though the twenty-first amendment repealed the eighteenth (Prohibition). There hasn’t been a new amendment since 1992 (and that one about Congressional salaries seems rather picayune when compared to the Bill of Rights or abolition of slavery). Before that the last amendment was in 1971 (voting age of 18). The total number of amendments isn’t likely to grow anytime soon, there aren’t any floating around that appear to have the broad support needed for ratification.⁸
 

Geographic Oddities: The Exclave

by Conroy

The Kentucky Bend

The Mississippi River flows in a meandering path across its wide, flat floodplain; appearing on the map like a slack garden hose, twisting and turning and practically looping back upon itself for the whole of its long and broad lower course below St. Louis. One the most notable bends occurs not too far south of where the Ohio River enters the main channel, and the south flow abruptly reverses and the river turns north and bends omega-like [1] in a counter-clockwise semicircle before returning to its southern course. In this location the river practically surrounds a little spread of land called the Kentucky Bend. What’s notable about this barely populated patch of fallow cotton fields is that is lies totally disconnected from the rest of the Bluegrass State. From here, a look across the Mississippi in any direction (east, north, and west) is of Missouri, and the only land access is from the south through Tennessee. The Kentucky Bend is an example of one of those geo-political oddities: the exclave [2].

There are examples of exclaves all over the world, and they tend to exist in locations where geography, history, and politics have combined to leave a portion of a state or nation where you wouldn’t expect it to be. The stories behind these exclaves are often interesting, and common sense may suggest that they not exist. Why isn’t the Kentucky Bend part of Tennessee, or even Missouri [3]?

First, what am I calling an exclave?  Definitions vary, but to me exclaves are geographic areas of one state or country that are physically separated from the bulk of their home state/country, requiring transit through (or over) another state/country, unless the separated place can be accessed via the open sea. If you can’t drive or walk or ride or fly or sail there without going through another place, it's an exclave. By this definition, Alaska isn’t an exclave of the United States. Sure it’s physically separated from the rest of the country, but planes and ships can transit between the “lower 48” and Alaska without going through Canadian territory. In the same vein, Hawaii, or any other island distant from the mainland, isn’t an exclave. 

Consider a few prominent examples (of dozens) of true exclaves from around the globe:

Straight Lines
A ninth-grade biology or Earth sciences student could tell you that nature doesn’t use straight lines; however, mankind loves them. Just compare man’s architecture to nature’s landscapes. As a consequence, our un-straight Earth, where even the flat horizon of a dead calm sea creates a circle, is divided into political units by straight lines drawn on flat maps. When this happens sometimes you end up with unexpected results. The U.S./Canadian border provides a great illustration of this point.

Point Roberts, Washington

Today it might seem strange that the rather tranquil boundary between the United States and Canada – the longest “unguarded” border in the world – was a place of longstanding and bitter dispute during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A new and growing America vied with Britain for control of the Great Lakes, St. Lawrence River, and the vast interior west of the North American continent. These disputes were settled, peacefully for the most part, resulting in what is today the longest international land border in the world [4]. All of the disputes and agreements, treaties and tribunals decided matters on a macro scale, which produced no less than seven exclaves along the border:

• Point Roberts, Washington on the Strait of Georgia and connected by land only to British Columbia.
• Elm Point and Northwest Angle, Minnesota in the Northwest Angle of Minnesota but connected by land only to Manitoba.
• Province Point and Alburg, Vermont on Lake Champlain but connected by land only to Quebec.
• Saint Regis, Quebec on the St. Lawrence River but connected by land only to New York.
• Campobello Island, New Brunswick which is only connected to land, via a bridge, to Maine.

A glance at the map shows that these places would more logically be part of the nations that they are physically attached to. But politics and history means that will never come to pass.

Straight lines similarly separate most U.S. states and Canadian provinces, creating exclaves in both countries. A few of note:

• Knott’s Island, North Carolina which is actually connected by land to Virginia.
• Eastern Shore of Virginia which is separated from the rest of the state by the lower Chesapeake Bay and connected by land to Maryland. However, its exclave status was largely eliminated when the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel was completed in 1964, which now connects the eastern shore across the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay to Virginia Beach.
• Lost Peninsula of Michigan, which is actually connected by land only to Ohio.
• Cold Lake, Alberta where a spit of land near the town is actually connected by land only to Saskatchewan.

The March of History

Colorful West Berlin

There is more than orderly (if arbitrary) lines that create exclaves, unexpected historical developments are often a cause. Take Berlin after World War II. The city like the rest of Germany was partitioned between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union. Eventually the western controlled areas, West Berlin, emerged as a capitalist, democratic exclave surrounded by East Germany (and East Berlin). The vulnerability of this exclave was revealed when the Soviet Union, in one of the first overt acts of the Cold War, closed the land link between the city and West Germany in 1948. The city was then supported by a massive American-British airlift that lasted nine months until the Soviets reopened the ground links to the city. Later, West Berlin became a focal point for Germans fleeing the communist East. The exclave vanished in a good way when the two German nations reunified in 1990.

The Inferno of World War II

by Conroy

“War is prodigiously wasteful, because much of the effort made by rival combatants proves futile, and the price is paid in lives.”

“Among citizens of modern democracies to whom serious hardship and collective peril are unknown, the tribulations that hundreds of millions endured between 1939 and 1945 are almost beyond comprehension.”

“An average of 27,000 perished each day between September 1939 and August 1945 as a consequence of the global conflict.”

- Max Hastings, Inferno: The World at War,   1939-1945

It seems that seventy years after the events of World War II – the greatest calamity in human history – historians have gained a better understanding of the facts and effects of the conflict than anyone, be they leaders, generals, soldiers, civilians, or victims, had during the war or in the immediate post war period. Max Hastings is one of these historians and his many works on World War II stand out among the best histories of the conflict. To this list can be added his latest work, Inferno:The World at War, 1939-1945, an ambitious single-volume overview of the war.

Readers of this blog may remember an earlier post where I praised Hastings’ previous two books, Armageddon and Retribution, which respectively covered the final year of the war in Europe and the Pacific. As with those works, Hastings focus in Inferno is not on the Allied and Axis leadership, notable generals, or even the broad goals and war strategy. Instead, he provides a “bottom-up” approach that conveys the experience of war, what it was like to be a rifleman in battle, a civilian under aerial bombardment, or victim of pillage and rape (a ubiquitous civilian experience in many theaters of the war), to provide a few examples.

As Hastings notes it is impossible to present a blow-by-blow account of World War II, an immensely large and far-reaching subject, in 800-odd pages. In fact, a work ten times as long would be insufficient. Instead, he set out to provide an impression of events as they unfolded starting with the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 and ending with the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay six years later. He has succeeded. The quotations provided at the top of this post give a sense of the massive horror of the war, and indeed for a modern reader it’s very difficult to understand how such a large proportion of the world’s people could have endured under the stress of war for so long. No book can fully capture this reality, but Inferno does it as well as any. And it does this through largely new or never before used first-hand accounts, diaries, letters, etc. These sources add a gratifying freshness to the book.

Hastings also manages to provide some new insights that have been revealed through decades of studying World War II. There are no sacred cows in Hastings’ telling of the war and he expertly separates fact from myth and legend. This is useful and appropriate. Wars gather their own momentum and this was especially true for World War II. History (with a capital H) has largely identified the correct decisions from the terrible blunders, the necessary sacrifices from the useless wastes, the effective leaders from the incompetent, and the victims and criminals. But Hastings goes one step further, correctly assigning evil to those to which it belonged and separating it from the terrible logic of war, where horrible things happen to many people by all sides. There no moral equivocation with Hastings, only clarity.

I recommend this work highly, it presents the war as well as any single-volume history is likely to. Hastings book is both concise and comprehensive, but to better present Hastings’ mastery of the subject, I’ve provided a series of quotations and passages below that demonstrate two aspects of the book: the actual experience of the war – the bottom-up view, and the many blunders made by the Germany – the broad evolution of the War.

For me, the only real counter-factual worth pondering about World War II is this: Could Germany have won the war? That’s an important question mostly because such an outcome would have been catastrophic for most of Europe’s population and would have set subsequent history in a radically different direction (and thinking from a modern perspective, a very loathsome and bizarre direction). There is much debate about this issue, the forces arrayed against the Axis were enormously powerful, but surely the many and massive mistakes made by Germany (and Japan) contributed substantially to the Axis defeat.

Dwindling Ranks

by Conroy

American ground crew like GMGF Jim

Just this past week America marked the 70^th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor; seventy years, a lifetime ago. This weekend my girlfriend’s maternal grandfather, Jim (hereafter referred to as GMGF Jim), will celebrate his 92^nd birthday. These two occasions, the first a date of great historical significance, are separated by only a handful of days, and connected by the passing years.

The attack on Pearl Harbor plunged the United States into World War II. Americans responded by throwing themselves into the war effort, including millions of servicemen destined for all parts of the globe, in what would be the most impressive display of military force in history [1]. One of those men was a young GMGF Jim, in his early 20s, who enlisted in the U.S. Army, and was assigned to the new United States Army Air Force (USAAF), the predecessor of the modern USAF. When I met GMGF Jim in the middle of last year I was curious to hear more about his service, having learned only snippets from my girlfriend. Unfortunately, his advancing age has robbed him of most of his hearing, which means that conversations with him proceed in bursts of short shouted questions, often repeated, and followed by equally short shouted replies. All of this leads to a rather halting dialogue frequently waylaid by misunderstandings, incomplete details, and the basic ineffectiveness that disjointed rhythm has on communication. I would relate it to a phone call where there’s a long delay and you constantly have false starts, long pauses, and overlapping talking. It just doesn’t work well.

Two Experiences
I tell you this as a preface to what I’ve gathered of GMGF Jim’s war service; I think I have the broad elements correct, but the details may be iffy. He set sail from wherever basic training was, maybe his home of Baltimore, destined for Panama City, Florida. But due to some sort of mix-up, the ship instead went 1,500 miles too far south, to Panama…the country…in Central America. I know what you’re thinking: That can’t be right? Which was pretty much my reaction, but I pressed the point with GMGF Jim a couple of times and received that same answer (all I could do was shake my head and say “okay”). So, once in Panama, the local American military commanders had to do something with a ship full of recruits. Fortunately, there was a rather important strategic asset in the area, the Panama Canal. The Canal needed guarding and part of that duty fell to the USAAF. After a short stay on land, GMGF Jim and his fellow shipmates were sent through the Canal and sailed southwest to the Galapagos Islands [2]. There the USAAF established abase at Baltra Island. Planes from this base patrolled for enemy submarines and protected Allied (and neutral) shipping on the western approaches to the Canal. GMGF Jim spent the rest of the war as a member of the ground crew servicing planes.

Given the general danger of being in the military during World War II, I consider getting stationed in Darwin’s quiet balmy islands to have been a pretty plum assignment. Not bad considering it was a mistake. But it was work and it was far from home. Most of war is extended boredom and I’m sure GMGF Jim had moments of the tropical doldrums. Still, it’s an interesting story, and raises a few questions: He really ended up in Panama instead of Florida? The vast American military-logistic system was capable of misplacing an entire ship? There were on-site ad hoc solutions that ended up lasting the entire war? Whatever happened in Panama City when his ship didn’t arrive? What about the men originally slotted for Baltra Island, where they there as well? It all strikes me as a semi-comical combination of Catch-22 and Guard of Honor [3]. It’s also something I was never likely to learn without hearing it from the mouth of the man who lived it.

My maternal grandfather, Jack, also served in World War II as an artilleryman in Europe. He died fifteen years ago at the age of 79. In the last six years of his life his mind was decimated by Alzheimer’s, but even late in his life, long after most of his recent memories were lost, he was still able to tell me of his time in Europe. His service was more typical of what we think of as the American experience, war in Europe, fighting Germans through France, etc., though I gathered from him that he didn’t have any close calls on the battlefield.

Visiting History: The Battleship North Carolina

by Conroy

USS North Carolina

My dad and I, ever the enthusiasts of the historically interesting, were driving from Baltimore to Wilmington, North Carolina, on a quick sojourn to see the USS North Carolina [1], a World War II era battleship. It was early March, and our destination was more than a little motivated by my desire to take a short trip somewhere south (we were only just emerging from an unusually cold Maryland winter). Visiting the ship would allow us to interact with an actual historical artifact, not a battlefield or a monument, but a real object, something that had been "there," something we could see, and touch, and walk through.

In late afternoon, and after nine hours on the road, we arrived in Wilmington, which is located in the far southeast [2] of the state, along the Cape Fear River and just a few miles from the Atlantic Ocean. The city's population has nearly doubled in the last two decades, but even by a generous assessment it remains mid-size. On first view it makes little impression, there's no distinctive skyline -- in fact no skyline -- on the approach to town. There's little sense that you've actually arrived anywhere, just the flat coastal greenery broken up by the standard low-rise, low-density development characteristic of American suburbia. However, we found our way by twists and turns to the center of the city, which included a quaint downtown with an abundance of antebellum architecture situated on the east bank of the river. And from that vantage point we spied the impressive silhouette of the North Carolina, cozily berthed in a narrow cove on the river's west bank. It was getting late, the ship was dark against the fading sun, but at least we knew where we were going the next day.

Central Wilmington

Wilmington is an interesting location for the ship, now a National Historic Landmark. As North Carolina's only real seaport, it makes sense for the ship to be docked there, but Wilmington is a provincial city, out of the way -- you have to want to go to Wilmington to end up there. In a way that's a fitting place for the North Carolina, a fair analogue to the role it played in history.



 ---

USS North Carolina
The next day, Saturday, was exquisite. The sun was what meteorologists like to term, brilliant; the sky a clear cerulean. The air held the first hints of vernal warmth. In late morning, we crossed the river just downstream of the ship, but we didn't get a good view until we pulled into the parking lot. We were among the first there. Looking from up close, it's hard not to be impressed with the North Carolina. Our first perspective was of the ship's profile. The hull sweeps in a majestic arc, parallel to the water at the stern and rising to its exaggerated wave-splitting bow. The busy but balanced superstructure rises from the center of the hull and is guarded closely by three massive gun turrets, two fore and one aft of the superstructure. The ship is painted with a fresh dazzle scheme of alternating gunmetal gray and bluish white, which was meant as a form of camouflage...though I doubt the North Carolina could be missed. The ship is more than two football fields long and its radar tower rises to 200 feet above the waterline. Large enough that you have to turn your head to see it all even from a hundred paces away.

One must pass through a visitor's center [3] (and gift shop) to board the ship. There's a gangway from the visitor's center to the stern-half port-side deck (the ship faces west). The cove where the North Carolina is moored looks like it was made to fit the ship (and it probably was dredged for this purpose). Indeed, the water is so still and likely has received so much sedimentation since the North Carolina was towed into position fifty years ago, that the massive hull probably rests on the bottom. My dad labeled it, "a mud hole," [4] and it does seem incongruously narrow and shallow and confining for the mass of the ship. The deck surface isn't steel, but teak [5], a wood durable enough to stand up to the corrosive effects of seawater and that doesn't get slippery when wet. It's a pleasant sandy brown color, which complements the gray and white of the rest of the ship. Once on board, everything looks even bigger than from the shore. It looks like what it was designed to be, an engine of war.

Visiting History: Antietam 1862

by Conroy

Burnside Bridge over Antietam Creek

This past weekend I went kayaking on the Potomac River with a couple of friends. We put into the river several miles north of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, at a location heavy with history. Just to the north of where we started, in the area around Sharpsburg, Maryland, is Antietam National Battlefield. In September 1862, this was the scene of the bloodiest day of the American Civil War, and likely, in all of American history. The armies of the North and South suffered nearly 23,000 casualties, including 3,700 men killed, in what became one of the major turning points, but also missed opportunities, of the Civil War.

As these facts suggest, Antietam is more than a name on a map or event obscured by the many years that have passed. As a student of American history, I think it's critical to be aware of an consider places like Antietam. The Civil War was both the most important and most horrible calamity to befall the American nation. As with all history, we must understand what went before and the lessons of those events. We must remember the men who fought and fell on that ground.

---

Background
As my friends and I floated down the Potomac, we passed the mouth of Antietam Creek. Had we paddled our kayaks up the stream (which in reality you can't do very far because of several sets of rapids) we would have passed under Burnside Bridge, one of the iconic landmarks of the battle and war. Living so close to this battlefield, I've toured the area before (from land); and a view of the landscape helps one understand just why the battle was so disjointed, confused, and tactically indecisive. A close view also helps one visualize the mass of men thrown together in battle. The entire battlefield is marked by monuments, large and small, of the various units that comprised the armies. These landmarks were commissioned and installed at a time when the Civil War was still a living memory and veterans were still alive to recount the events.

The End of World War II

by Conroy

As my readers will learn, I am something of an amateur World War II historian. It is my considered opinion, one that I share with more educated and experienced men, that the cataclysmic conflict was not only the overarching event of the last century, but perhaps the most significant calamity in human history. The world that existed before 1939 was irrevocably swept away and a new course established that has directly shaped the global community of the present.

Since the end of the War 65 years ago, it has been the subject of countless histories, biographies, novels, films, etc. Interest today is still keen. And in that vein, I want to praise the complementary works Armageddon and Retribution by British historian and journalist Max Hastings. These histories explore the final phase of the War in 1944-45 to defeat Germany and Japan, respectively. The books cover all aspects of the War's terminal period, which as the author powerfully evokes, was its bloodiest, most brutal phase. Hastings' writing is remarkably vivid and immediate, which is essential to the stories he tells. Hastings covers the war aims, political intricacies, and even broad military strategy clearly and succinctly, but doesn't linger over the grand individuals and larger strategic details that have been explored in so many other works. Instead, he focuses much of the narrative on the experiences of the common soldiers who had to fight the battles and the civilians whose lives were devastated. This approach yields two particularly effective histories, that go as far as any I've read of bringing the heartbreaking reality of the fighting to the modern reader.

The people of the United States, and to a lesser extent Great Britain, were spared the apocalyptic destruction that was faced by the people of Europe and Asia, and especially Germany and Japan. Armageddon and Retribution let Americans and Britons, or any modern reader that has the fortune to live in a (relatively) peaceful world, understand the plight of the civilians as the War tore to its ultimate conclusion.

Max Hastings

I will not burden the reader with a comprehensive list of the superlative passages or analysis contained in these works, but I've listed a few highlights below. I highly recommend these books to anyone interested in World War II, the realities of war, or the grim depths that humanity can sink to when the decency of society is abandoned.

Readers may be interested in: