Big Bang ...

Yesterday a stretch of the A3 (Autobahn A3, not the UK one), was closed to traffic in both directions near Frankfurt-am-Main. The reason was the six metre (18 feet) wide and four metre (12 feet) deep hole in the southbound carriageway, the result of the detonation of a WW2 500kg (1,100 lb) bomb that was exposed during routine repairs.

Attempts to defuse it were stopped when it was discovered that the chemical fuse was so badly corroded it could not be done with any hope of safety. So the decision was taken to detonate the bomb and hope for the best. Traffic on the A3 was stopped overnight, the bomb prepared by the Bundeswehr Bomb disposal team and the area evacuated for a considerable distance. Then the thing was triggered. Reports say the nearby town of Offenbach felt the blast, flights had to be stopped at Frankfurt Airport as it was on the approach path and there has generally been a bit of a stir.

Now the dust has settled, from the blast, not the ramifications, the Autobahn is being repaired. The northbound carriageway has reopened, but the southbound one will not open until the repairs are completed. That is expected to be at the weekend. But now it begs a major question. THis is just one of the bombs found this week. Another, in Marburg, also had to be destroyed by detonating it, and it is well known there are hundreds more of these unexploded weapons buried, some of them in densely populated areas, in Germany.

The stretch of the Autobahn beneath which this particular bomb has lain since around 1944, is one the Monk has travelled more than once. So have millions of motorists over the years, and repairs to the carriageways regularly uncover these things. Recently, a widening of the A3 autobahn saw several workers killed and injured when a mechanical digger hit a similar bomb and it detonated. The Head of Bomb Disposal admitted on television and radio that a large part of the problem is the chemical detonators, used by the British in the 1,000lb bombs, frequently failed, is difficult to remove even when it is undamaged, but impossible when they are corroded. And that is what is now happening. The damned things are corroding quietly and can trigger a detonation without warning. He states that he knows of 40 'spontaneous detonations' occuring since he took office.

A part of the problem is that in the post war clear-up, a lot of these bombs were simply buried, some of them under concrete, many lie under roads, railways and car parks. More are under buildings and even new housing estates built since the 1970s on 'greenfield' sites are turning up unexploded bombs that missed targets by a wide margin. Scarcely a week goes by without someone digging one up, and though they are sometimes lucky, and the bomb can be defused and removed, often, as in Marburg and on the A3 at Offenbach, they can't be.

The reactions of people here to them 'turning up' is interesting. There is a sort of collective shrug, and well oiled preparations go into play in preparation for yet another big bang. I expect it is a result of knowing the danger and dealing with it. Many of my elderly neighbours actually lived through the events that made Germany the most heavily bombed country in history, and they are quite relaxed about it. The general feeling is 'Thank God it was found before ...'

It does make one grateful for the fact that, living well outside any of the target zones, we have no known ordnance beneath our feet!  

The Final Dominoes Fall ...

Today, one hundred years ago, Britain and France declared war on the Central Powers, Germany and Austria-Hungary, the French striking into Alsace, and the British moving the BEF to France. Reading the newspaper accounts of the time, the expectation was that the Fleet would steam across the North Sea, destroy the German High Seas Fleet in a 'second Trafalgar' at sea, or in their anchorage at Wilhelmshaven. The BEF was going to put the Germans in their place in Europe and the whole thing would be all over in a matter of months.

There would be no 'second Trafalgar', nor a 'Glorious First of June' at sea. In fact the Royal Navy suffered several disastrous losses in the early days of the war. The old cruisers, HMS Aboukir, Cressy and Hogue were torpedoed by U-9 in an almost comical series of blunders by the commanding officers, taking with them hundreds of Reservists. At the Battle of Coronel, Admiral Cradock's squadron was destroyed by Admiral von Spee's East Asiatic Squadron, and the raiders, SMS Königsberg, operating out of the Rufiji River in East Africa, and the SMS Emden in the East Indies, played havoic with Empire shipping. Jutland is best described as a 'draw', and the idea that the High Seas Fleet never again played a decisive part in the war is a myth. Their actions in the Baltic continued unhindered and would eventually play a large part in creating the Bolshevik Revolution and the Russian collapse.

That is always the danger of propaganda replacing reality. Far from being 'all over by Christmas' and a nice tidy demonstration of the superiority of British forces, it turned into a rout within days in France and it was only the professionalism of the British 'Tommies' that checked the French retreat once the German onslaught was unleashed. That check condemned the Germans to a slow and agonising war of attrition, and everyone else to a slow bleeding away of their young men, and a serious drain on economies that the pro-war parties cannot have foreseen.

The 'Great War' swept away the 'old' European systems and borders, re-alligning territories and moving vast numbers of people - or marooning them in 'new' host countries where they were treated as 'foreigners'. It would, in the draconian 'reparations' demanded by the French among others, sow the seeds for a second global conflict and the rise of Nazism and Fascisim - and, ironically, in attempting to destroy the German economy - it brought on the Great Depression.

We can only speculate on what the world would be like today had Britain refrained from rushing into war and cooler heads prevailed elsewhere.

Germany Opens Fire on Russia

As the German ultimatum to Russia expired, the SMS Augsburg set sail from Königsburg to carry out her orders. On this day she opened fire on the Russian garrison town and the Naval Base of Liepaja (Libau in German) in what is today Latvia, but was then a province of the Tsarist Empire. In a very brief engagement demonstrating some remarkably accurate gunnery (something we, in Britain, should perhaps have taken more note of) she destroyed batteries, munitions dumps and ships in the harbour, steaming away from the scene unscathed and leaving the city on fire.

It was a taste of things to come on this front, Liepaja being just the first city to get a taste of modern war. Many others on this front and in the west would soon be given the same treatment from both sides of the conflict. There was no distinction to be drawn then between 'civilian' and 'military' targets - everyone was an enemy.

In the West, the Royal Navy was already at its 'War Stations' thanks to Winston Churchill. Parliament had sent its Ultimatum to Germany, as had France. Belgium had cast its lot with France and Britain, and the Dutch, Danish, Norwegians, Swedes and Swiss declared their neutrality. Austria-Hungary, already engaged with the Serbs and the Russians, was not doing well, and Italy, with their eyes on Austria's Aegean territories was hesitating.

The storm in the west was about to break.

The First Shots of the Great War

One hundred years ago today, the Russian forces completed their mobilisation, and the first of Germany's Reserves mustered to join their Regiments. The Ultimata had begun to be circulated, and Germany itself was divided over the prospect of the conflict. We are often told of the 'patriotic fervour' and the 'rush to join' by the official history taught in most schools, but reading the 'Zeitungs' of the period a slightly different story emerges. Yes, there were those who saw the war as an opportunity, but they were far from being the only voices on the streets and in the corridors of power. The whole thing was still, even at this point, on a knife edge.

We are told of the mass demonstrations that greeted the Kaiser's supposed statement that henceforth he 'recognised no Patries, only the German people', but it transpires that this is a myth built around the real events. There were demonstrations of a patriotic nature in Berlin and other major cities, but the Kaiser's actual words have been paraphrased, presumably by newspaper editors. His actual words were much longer and a bit more guarded. What the papers (and subsequent historians) were a little less entusiastic about reporting was the mass demonstrations in many more cities and towns against joining the war. Even in the Reichstag - the Kaiserreich Parliament - and in the various Landestags, voices were raised in heated debate both for and against the coming conflict. There was, at this point, no united will to go to war.

Now enter 'hubris' and the fear of invasion. At some point Russian forces fired on German villages and troops in East Prussia. Coupled with this came the intelligence that the French were sending troops into Belgium to reinforce the Belgians (though this appears to have been a misleading report) and planned to occupy Luxemburg, a German affiliated independent Duchy. These events became the game changers, though there were still dissenting voices, the majority swung behind the demand to defend German territory and the die were caste.

Ambassadors began packing, diplomatic telegrams flew back and forth, and deadlines for avoiding conflict began to pass. Luxemburg was occupied without a shot fired. Indeed, one gets the impression the Luxembourgois preferred German occupation to a French one, and the armoured cruiser SMS Augsburg was despatched to Königsburg with secret orders to be executed if the Russians did not respond to the Ultimatum resulting from their having fired on Germany.

The Great War was now inevitable.

The Slide to War ...

Today marks the one hundredth anniversary of the Austrian declaration of War against Serbia, the moment the world began an inexorable slide into the mud, blood and slaughter that engulfed the world. The initial Austrian attack into Serbia went disastrously wrong, in part thanks to the fact the head of their Military Intelligence was actually working for the Russians and passing all the military plans to his Russian paymasters - who forwarded them to the Serbs.

The Austrians had several problems. Their troops were poorly trained and led, the artillery largely antiquated and their troops ran into problems with the weather as well. On the Serbian side there was, initially, a problem of discipline, and they were out numbered. Both sides ran into difficulties, but the Austrians faced the bigger problems and their initial attack soon ran into trouble.

Unfortunately, the dominoes were already starting to tumble, turning what should have been, and remained, a 'local' squabble, into a global conflict. One can only wonder what the world would have looked like had Russia, Germany, Britain and France stayed out of it. One thing is certain - the death toll would not have been numbered in millions.

A Day to Remember

Today marks the 70th anniversary of the attempt in 1944, by a group of Wehrmacht officers, to kill Hitler and bring an end to his horrific regime. They failed, and suffered horrifically at the hands of the Gestapo psychopaths as a result. Their children were taken into children's homes, their names changed and then brainwashed into denying their own families. Nor were they alone. The Gestapo used the attempt as an excuse to round up and kill hundreds of 'suspects', sympathisers, political opponents and other 'agitators'.

It is fascinating to see that today is marked by memorial services across Germany praising those who made the attempt, and suffered and died for it. As I type the entire Bundestag is gathered at Bendler-Block in Berlin where Colonel Claus Philipp Maria Schenk, Graf von Stauffenberg, and his co-conspirators was killed. They are being remembered for their brave attempt to bring a swift and complete end to the suffering of their nation and people at the hands of the Nazis. Ultimately over 20,000 Germans of all walks of life would die or be condemned to Concentration Camps, among them Erwin Rommel and several other high ranking officers.

The memorial in the Bendler-Block.

One can only speculate on how things would have gone had they succeeded, or if the senior Wehrmacht commanders (who, like Rommel, were implicated and suffered for it) had acted swiftly and decisively instead of hesitating. I suspect that at the very least thousands of lives would have been spared, thousands of women would not have been raped and murdered, and we might even have seen more of Hitler's henchmen and supporters apprehended and punished for their crimes.

I suspect that, like me, most of those from outside Germany know only a tiny fraction of this attempt to depose the monster, and have even less idea how many Germans died as a result of its failure. Stauffenberg himself died by firing squad, but others died suspended from a meat hook, others were shot, gassed or hung. Col. von Stauffenberg's brother, Berthold, was strangled with a garrotte, revived and 'killed' again and again, all of it filmed for Hitler's viewing pleasure.

Perhaps we should all take time out to remember those within Germany who gave their lives and risked everything to work against the Nazis. Their story is all too often ignored.

The Shots that Triggered Catastrophe

Say Sarajevo today and most first think of the famous concert there or the Bosnian and Serbian conflict as the former Yugoslavia broke up. Many would not associate it immediately with the start of the First World War. Today marks one hundred years since an assassins bullets on the streets of Sarajevo started the tumbling of the dominoes as the world slid toward what would become the slaughter of Europe’s young men in France, Belgium, Poland, Romania, Hungary, East Prussia, Lithuania, Latvia, Gallipoli, East and West Africa and the Far East.

When the nationalist fanatic Gavrilo Princip pulled the trigger, killing the Archduke Franz-Ferdinand and his wife, Sophia in Sarajevo, he started the process that brought down the Hapsburg, Hohenzollern and Romanov dynasties, redrew the borders of Europe and sentenced millions to death, starvation and hardship. He set the scene for the fall of fragile democracies that followed the 1919 peace, and led to the disappearance of both several more Royal Houses and of democracy itself in many more lands. News papers whipped up patriotic sentiment to a frenzy in almost every country as the tensions grew and spread, and one has to wonder what drove some to want to bring about a war.

Once the dominoes began to fall, the rush toward a global conflict gathered momentum. At play were issues of nationalism, national pride, revenge, territorial ambitions and in at least one case, a desire to prevent Germany becoming the dominant European power. Some countries involved really had no direct interest in the confrontation between Serbia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire other than the chance to gain territory. Italy had it’s eyes on the Tirol and the territory around Trieste and the Dalmatian coast. Serbia cherished ambitions for Bosnia, Croatia and Albania, Romania had it’s eyes on Transylvania, France on Alsace and the Russians on East Prussia.

Great Britain had several reasons for wanting a war, none of them ‘territorial’ but driven by the fear that a powerful Germany dominating Europe would threaten British manufacturing (already in trouble and already losing its edge to the more innovative Germans) and its High Seas Fleet could eventually threaten British superiority at sea. The British cabinet was split, between those who did not want to get involved in a ‘European squabble’, and those like Winston Churchill and the Earl of Salisbury who demanded it. Their reasoning was that it would check German expansionism (part of the long running anti-German propaganda campaign in the British Press) and, privately, that it would resolve and divert growing problems of unemployment and labour unrest in the declining industrial heartlands.

France, still smarting from her defeat in 1870, wanted revenge and the opportunity to seize territory ‘lost’ to Germany (some argue they had their eyes on pushing all the way back to the Napoleonic borders along the Rhine) and the Russians wanted to secure the ice free harbour at Königsberg (now Kalinnengrad). It must be said here that the Kaiser, perhaps realising at the last moment, that Germany had everything to lose and almost nothing to gain, made strenuous attempts to call a halt - frustrated in the end by Tsar Nicholas II's casual order to 'mobilise' his army against Austria. The rest, as they say, is history.

So Princip’s bullets launched a domino tumble that would sweep away millions of lives in a war which, in reality, had no ‘winners’ unless one considers the late entering United States as a ‘winner’. It would launch the eventual Bolshevik Revolution in Russia which swept aside, not the Tsar, but the fledgling democracy the Tsar had finally been forced to allow, and condemn millions to the horrors of the Russian civil war and the Leninist and Stalinist terrors that followed. Those gunshots at Sarajevo also set history on the course that would lead to the rise of National Socialism and the horrors of the holocaust and the Second World War and ultimately the Cold War and the world we see crumbling around us at present.

It has been a remarkable century, one shaped by war, by failed ideologies, by fanatics of every description. Let us hope that the future can be secured against such horrors and against such lunatics.

The Outer Edge is on sale ...

My new Harry Heron adventure is now on sale through Amazon, Barnes and Noble and your local bookstore if you prefer to order through them. It is published as both an e-book and as a paperback for those like me who prefer to hold a physical book in their hands. The publisher, Janet Angelo of Indiego Publishing has done a superb job of the production.

Click on the links below to find the book on Amazon, Nook or KOBO. I will supply links to other vendors as soon as I can.

Kindle:           Nook:            Kobo:

Apple and Google Play are still processing the files. I will keep checking on them.

A Century of Change ...

This year we will mark the start of an event that changed the world in ways we are still coming to terms with. The question being raised by many taking a fresh look at the events of 1914, is could it have been avoided? If it had not happened, what sort of world would we now inhabit?

Growing up in an English speaking environment, the son of an ex-serviceman, and grandson of other ex-servicemen, I grew up with the 'British' version that it was all caused by the Kaiser. That it was his ambitions, his desire to rule the world, and his desire for conquest that caused it all. As ever, the truth is a lot more complex, and a whole lot more convoluted than that. Sure this is what the British and Empire press pushed in a frenzy of patriotic fervour, but we must also remember that certain strong elements of that same Press had been whipping up anti-German sentiments since around 1890 when the Kaisers first began building an oceanic navy to defend their interests in Africa and the Far East. It spurred a naval building arms race that more or less made a war against Germany inevitable.

Recently published letters and memoirs of the British Prime Minister reveal that the Cabinet was split, and that the small government majority in Parliament meant that he couldn't afford to lose a single seat. So the 'War Party' within the Cabinet were able to hold him to ransom. What is seldom taught in the lesson I have encountered on this period, is the fact that the Kaiser, perhaps seeing the danger more clearly than those who thought a war would be quick, dashing and commercially advantageous, desperately telegraphed all the potential protagonists urging restraint. He undertook to refrain from military support of Austria if everyone else stayed out of the squabble - which Austria unwisely tried to settle by attacking Serbia. Unfortunately, the Tsar ignored the offer and mobilised his army.

I have often wondered why the Germans, with a war on the Eastern border, attacked France in the West, invading through Belgium and Luxembourg (the latter was actually an independent Grand Duchy of the Kaiser's Empire) which gave the British 'War Party' the excuse they needed. I have now learned that the attack was triggered by the French mobilising and threatening an invasion of Germany's southern states. As the Germans knew the French cherished ambitions of 'avenging' the humiliation of the Franco-Prussian War of 1871, they couldn't afford to leave that unchallenged. Interestingly, and despite latter Britsih and French historians putting it about that the Germans had been amassing weaponry and preparing for the war for ages, Germany was actually very unprepared. There was sufficient ammunition available for only a six week conflict, and it took an almost superhuman effort on the part of their industries to meet the demand once that was expended. Even their navy had so little ammunition available at the outset that a single engagement could have depleted their stopcks disastrously.

As ever, when you take a look at the history from both sides there is a lot of information revealed that makes obvious that there were a number of 'eminence grise' in the background on all sides. Britain did not need to get involved, but there were powerful voices within government, and in commerce and industry that wanted a war. Why? Some for altruistic reasons, believing it would strengthen the Empire to stamp firmly on the 'upstarts' in Europe who dared to challenge the British hegemony, others who were losing trade to German industries and hoped a war would give them an advantage, and there was the anger at the fact that, in Africa, Germany had prevented the creation of a continuous British presence "from the Cape to Cairo" with their colonies in South West Africa and Tanganika.

There were those in France who wanted to bring down the power of Germany, and restore French dominance on the Continent, and others, who, like their British counterparts, wanted German industry  and trade restricted. And then there was Russia. The last despot in Europe, the last real Emperor responsible to no one. Unfortunately, also a man given to whims of the moment who failed to see the danger of the beast he unleashed.

We have always been taught, by the history written by the 'winners' that the whole conflict was caused by 'German ambitions' and 'German aggression', but, as I said in opening, this isn't the whole truth. The 'War Parties' on all sides expected a quick and mobile war, the slogan 'all over by Christmas' was popular, but sadly ill-informed and based more on propaganmda than reality. And like most propaganda, it led to tragedy on a massive scale. In June we will mark the assassination that triggered the whole sorry mess - and launched a century of war that has all but destroyed the world and the society the men who marched across Europe in 1914 thought they were fighting to preserve.

The only victors, as ever, seem to have been those 'dark figures' in the background who saw profit in a conflict, and who are still present, at least in spirit, in our world today. It is something we should reflect on deeply.