MetaFilter posts tagged with france and war

Operation Overlord

zarq — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 13:21:02 -0800

PhotosNormandie is a collaborative collection of more than 3,000 royalty-free photos from World War II's Battle of Normandy and its aftermath. (Photos date from June 6 to late August 1944). The main link goes to the photostream. You can also peruse sets, which include 2700+ images from the US and Canadian National Archives.

So...........here we go again?

adamvasco — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 09:15:11 -0800

Jihad in the Sahara. It is no suprrise that Mali is the latest Muslim country to experience western Intervention. This has resulted in escalation. The north of Mali is as alien to the average soldier from southern Mali as the Alaskan tundra is to a citizen of Massachusetts or Manchester. This is the land where the local Tuareg or Arab in his souped-up turbo 4x4 is king. A map of the various conflicts. In October a der Spiegel journalist spent 2 weeks in the north of the country and in November CS Monitor asked Will Mali be Africa's Afghanistan?

"Crossroads possess a certain dangerous potency."

the man of twists and turns — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 03:23:45 -0800

How Things Fell Apart, By Chinua Achebe - 'In an excerpt from his long-awaited memoir, the inventor of the post-colonial African novel in English discusses his origins as a writer and the seeds of revolt against the British Empire.'

I can say that my whole artistic career was probably sparked by this tension between the Christian religion of my parents, which we followed in our home, and the retreating, older religion of my ancestors, which fortunately for me was still active outside my home. I still had access to a number of relatives who had not converted to Christianity and were called heathens by the new converts. When my parents were not watching I would often sneak off in the evenings to visit some of these relatives.

There Was A Country: 'A Personal History Of Biafra' is Chinua Achebe's newest book and memoir, covering from his childhood through the Nigerian Civil War / Biafran War. Achebe wrote in The Guardian: The genocidal Biafran war still haunts Nigeria

Almost 30 years before Rwanda, before Darfur, more than 2 million people – mothers, children, babies, civilians – lost their lives as a result of the blatantly callous and unnecessary policies enacted by the leaders of the federal government of Nigeria. As a writer I believe that it is fundamentally important, indeed essential to our humanity, to ask the hard questions, in order to better understand ourselves and our neighbours. Where there is justification for further investigation, justice should be served.

One of the most anticipated books of the year, it has been reviewed in The Washington Post, The London Review Of Books, The Boston Globe, The New Republic, The Christian Science Monitor, Counterpunch, and The Financial Times. Ike Anya, author of People Don't Get Depressed In Nigeria (previously), writes a review for African Arguments. It has also been reviewed positively and negatively by Vanguard Nigeria, reviewed in Modern Ghana, in Africa Is A Country, and Vibe Ghana. The New Inquiry covers the some of the differences between Western and African reviews (without reading the book): There Will Be a Memoir: Chinua Achebe and Biafra

I bring all this up because if you read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie or Ike Anya or Chika Unigwe or Noo Saro-Wiwa or Uzodinma Iweala—all Nigerians reviewing the book in prominent American or British newspapers, for what it’s worth—you will find almost none of the personalities, dirty laundry, and petty score-settling. Why is that? Is it that Americans and Britons can’t be bothered to learn about that stuff, so it got edited out or was never written?

The Millions, in The Defeated Write History: Chinua Achebe’s There Was a Country addresses the question: 'But why the long delay? Why did it take Achebe so long to write such a book?'

In a collection of his essays, Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays, 1965-1987, Achebe writes of his distance from the traditional Igbo religions, being the son of Christian converts, and how that distance helped him gain a deep understanding of them. What he writes appears to also justify the decades he’s taken to tackle the Biafran cause. “The distance becomes not a separation but a bringing together like the necessary backward step which a judicious viewer may take in order to see a canvas steadily and fully.”

"A continuous slaughter which could be of no avail either to the French or the Russians."

Westringia F. — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 07:56:59 -0800

Today is the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Borodino, in which Napoleon's armies met Russian troops 75 miles east of Moscow on 7 September 1812. The huge battle, involving quarter of a million troops, was the strongest stand the Imperial Russian Army made against Napoleon's forces, and it resulted in heavy casualties on both sides. Although the Russian army withdrew, the French tactical victory in the Battle of Borodino was a Pyrrhic one, and Napoleon ultimately left Russia in defeat. The battle was reenacted at Borodino last weekend, as is done annually. A cultural symbol of Russian national courage, the Battle of Borodino has been famously commemorated in Russian literature, music, art, and poetry. ------ History ------ Napoleon had invaded Russia three months earlier on 16 June 1812, causing Tsar Alexander I to declare a Patriotic War and prepare to face the French. The commander of the Russian forces was, controversially, a Scotsman: Field Marshall Michael Barclay. Barclay had advocated a scorched-earth strategy, burning the countryside and drawing the French further into Russia with successive retreats; this, coupled with his non-Russian heritage, aroused suspicions that he was reluctant to defend Russia and devastated troop morale. On 29 August, Barclay appointed the 67-year-old Prince Mikhail Kutuzov as the chief commander. Kutuzov found himself in a tight spot: strategically the Russians needed to retreat, but the change of command did little to rescue troop morale, and advocating a retreat would make Kutuzov look no better than Barclay. Realizing that only fighting a battle would save morale, Kutuzov decided to make a stand against Napoleon. On 3 September, the Russian army established a defensive line in the best available position: the field at Borodino. Earthwork redoubts and fleches were built in the area surrounding the new Smolensk Highway along which Napoleon's troops were expected to enter Moscow. French and Russian cavalry met on 5 September, fighting a battle which cost 10,000 lives and ended with the French capture of the Shevardino Redoubt. The Russians withdrew to the east. The left flank of the Russian defense had collapsed. On 7 September 1812, the bloodiest single day of fighting during the war took place at Borodino. Some 250,000 troops fought a battle that left at least 70,000 dead. The French won the battle when Kutuzov finally retreated; he had only 20,000 men ready to continue fighting. But the French army, too, was in a weakened state; Napoleon later stated, "of all my fifty battles, the most terrible was the one I fought at Moscow [Borodino]." The French General Baron Lejeune recounted the day of the battle in his memoirs. Out of position at the end of the battle (and contrary to Barclay's advice), Kutuzov's troops were in no condition to fight the next day. The best strategic option was to retreat and draw Napoleon's troops farther from their supply lines -- that is, toward Moscow. There was no way the Imperial Russian Army could defend the city, and so it was abandoned... and burned. Napoleon's troops entered and occupied Moscow without resistance, but had insufficient resources. For five weeks they remained there as Alexander I refused to surrender or negotiate a peace. Crippled by the Battle of Borodino, lacking reserve troops, cut off from their supply lines, and unable to forage in the scorched surroundings, the French faltered and were ultimately forced to withdraw from Russia in defeat. You can find additional historical information on this website, at the State Borodino War and History Museum and Reserve website (in Russian; there is an English version, but it's much more limited -- google translate may be a better option), and in this very detailed page captured on archive.org. ------ Literature: Tolstoy's War and Peace ------ The Napoleonic wars, and the villainization of Napoleon, figures prominently in Russian literature. Geoffrey Hosking, a well-known historian and scholar of Russian literature, argues in Russia: People and Empire, 1552-1917 that this played a significant role in literary "nation building." The most comprehensive and direct treatment of the conflict with the French is, of course, Tolstoy's War and Peace. Part novel, part essay, and part ethnography, War and Peace looks at the Napoleonic wars from the perspective of five aristocratic families, and blurs the line between history and fiction. The Battle of Borodino is a central event in the text; this virtual Battle of Borodino, although a little outdated (and, sadly, with broken movie clips), lets you follow Tolstoy's account of the battle in the context of its military history. In War and Peace, Tolstoy uses the interesting device of switching between French and Russian, as can be seen in the Russian text. Initially, this is symbolic of aristocratic pretentiousness, since in the early 19th century the French language was considered to be more refined than Russian. As the book progresses and the previously-revered French become the enemy, the use of French diminishes (in fact, the aristocratic characters seek out Russian tutors); its gradual elimination may be seen as symbolic of Russia reasserting its national culture against foreign pressures. Sadly, many English translations (particularly older ones, such as the uncredited translation of War and Peace [English] on Project Gutenberg) translate both the Russian and the French, literally losing Tolstoy's device in translation. More modern translations, such as that by Pevear and Volokhonsky (who are also well known for their faithful translations of Dostoyevsky), retain the French in keeping with Tolstoy's style. Naturally, a book of such an epic scale needed to be turned into a fittingly epic movie, and as the 150th anniversary of the war approached, the Soviets decided to do exactly that -- including massive depictions of the battles. The Soviet film adaptation was an enormous undertaking that took six years to produce and officially cost over 8,000,000 rubles -- over $9M in 1967 dollars. The film, which has a complete running time of just over seven hours (all four parts combined), was recognized universally as a cinematic achievement; it won awards world-wide, including the Golden Globe and Academy awards in the United States for best foreign language film. It is generally considered a faithful adaptation, although there remains some disagreement amongst scholars about the degree to which it was manipulated to reflect Soviet themes. ------ Music: Tchaikovsy's 1812 Overture ------ The battle is also famously commemorated in in Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture [score], which musically depicts the French invasion of Russia (symbolized at the beginning with the Slavic Orthodox Troparion [hymn] of the Holy Cross), the unrelenting advance of Napoleon's army (symbolized by the repetitive use of the opening fragment of La Marseillaise), the resistance of the Russian people (depicted by a folk melody) and, ultimately, defeat by Russian canons which famously fire 16 shots in the Overture while the victorious motif of God Save the Tsar -- the Russian national anthem in Tchaikovsky's time -- becomes prominent. Despite the fact that the Overture tells a very clear story of a battle that had nothing to do with the United States, Arthur Fiedler and Boston Pops started a tradition that causes most Americans to associate it with July 4th. If you crave listening to it right now -- and picking out all the fragments Tchaikovsky incorporated -- here's Telarc's famous recording of Erich Kunzel conducting the Cincinnati Pops (albeit with the live canons compressed into YouTube's dynamic range). ------ Art: Prokudin-Gorsky's photographs and Roubaud's Panorama ------ A century after the battle, the photographer Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky had pioneered a color photography technique using multiple RGB-filtered exposures of black and white film that would then be composited. With the patronage of Tsar Nicholas II, Prokudin-Gorsky set about documenting the Russian Empire at the turn of the 20th century. In 1911/1912 Prokudin-Gorsky photographed the Borodino battle field and redoubts. The centenary was also marked by the exhibition of the Russian (of French descent!) painter Franz Roubaud's epic Battle of Borodino Panorama. It, along with several other panoramic depictions of battles, had been commissioned by Tsar Nicholas II; the Battle of Borodino Panorama was unveiled on 29 August 1912. World War I and the Russian Civil War ensured that the exhibition didn't last long. If the colors in the image above look a little strange, it's due to the fact that the painting was nearly destroyed and restored several times. A history of the painting published in Pravda describes how it was folded and stored in inhospitable environments for forty years until Stalin decided to restore it, but after Stalin's death it was once more stored improperly. In anticipation of the 150th anniversary of the battle, Khrushchev had it restored again in 1961... only to have a fire break out in the room where it was displayed in 1967. In the 1990s it was restored yet again, and can be seen at the Battle of Borodino Panorama Museum, which stands on the site in Fili where Kutuzov made the decision to sacrifice Moscow. ------ Poetry: Lermontov's Borodino ------ Lastly, the Romantic poet Mikhail Lermontov wrote a long poem entitled Borodino that was published in 1837 on the 25th anniversary of the battle. The famous poem is one that school children learn. You can hear it recited in this video with Russian subtitles or read an English translation.

Honneur et Fidélité, Legio Patria Nostra

Slap*Happy — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 21:33:42 -0800

The Légion Étrangère is a French special forces unit comprised mostly of foreign nationals who wish to fight for France, and the promise of a French citizenship. They are today considered an elite unit, on par with or superior to the British SAS or Russian Spetsnaz, and have in their long history served in campaigns as far-flung as Mexico and Vietnam, but are most famous for their image as colonial shock-troops in North Africa and the Middle East. Legionnaire fought Legionnaire in the Second World War during the Syria-Lebanon Campaign, as the Vichy's 6e Régiment Étrangère d'Infanterie lined up against the Allied 13e Demi-Brigade de Légion Étrangère in a critical, yet unsung battle for North Africa. Their first campaign was in Algeria - will their latest be in Libya?

A G.I.'s WWII Memoir

zarq — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 11:16:33 -0800

Robert F. Gallagher served in the United States Army's 815th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion (Third Army) in the European Theater during WWII. He has posted his memoir online: "Scratch One Messerschmitt," told from numerous photos he took during the war and the detailed notes he made shortly afterwards. From "Side Effects of the Story" "In the year 2007, I was approached by DWNY Productions, Inc. who was working on a movie called "Revolutionary Road" starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, two of the leading movie stars of the day. The studio was interested in using pictures from my story taken in Paris during my trip to Nice, France in 1945 - see Chapter 27, Rest and Relaxation. We arranged a financial agreement and although I sold them ten pictures they used only one. In it, they transposed my face with that of Leonardo DiCaprio."

Lest we forget

unliteral — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 15:13:23 -0800

"A pious, peaceful man, York had fought his country's enemy only after great deliberation and had to be convinced that war was sometimes necessary."¹ On this day let us remember Sergeant York.
¹ Celluloid Soldiers: The Warner Bros. Campaign Against Nazism By Michael E. Birdwell.

Normandy: Then and Now

Ufez Jones — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 19:41:43 -0800

Normandy: Then and Now Photographs of Normandy in 1944 meticulously juxtaposed with how the area looks today by French historian Patrick Elie.

Les Parisiens sous l’Occupation

homunculus — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 11:11:03 -0800

Paris under the Occupation, in color. L'exposition Zucca divise le public

All is forgiven, tout est oublie.

psmealey — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 11:28:47 -0800

Sarko l'Americain addresses US Congress. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has told the US Congress it can count on France's support against terrorism in Afghanistan and Iran's nuclear plan. [Full Text here PDF]. Here also, is a recent take on Franco-American relations From the French and Indian Wars, to the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Louisiana Purchase, World War I, World War II, the Vietnam War<>, the Cold War and through de Gaulle, Giscard-d'Estaing, Mitterrand, Chirac and Freedom Fries, there has never been a dull moment in this long and complicated relationship between two of the world's great powers.

Bonaparte and Bush on Deck

homunculus — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 20:20:27 -0800

Lessons from Past Western Incursions in the Middle East. A speech by Juan Cole at the New America Foundation in which he discusses his new book, Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East, and the relevance and lessons of Napoleon's expedition in Egypt to the current American occupation of Iraq. A shorter version, covering many of the same points, is in this article: Pitching the Imperial Republic.

Think We Can (French) Kiss and Make Up?

twsf — Thu, 11 Sep 2003 09:27:52 -0800

Think We Can (French) Kiss and Make Up? Two years ago it was "I'll always love and support you". It only took a little while, though, before the arguments began. But there are always counselors to help you work on the relationship. There is even talk of reconciliation. And anyway, this love-hate relationship has been going on for almost three centuries.

Chinese sold Iraq 'dual-use' chemical

Postroad — Sat, 15 Mar 2003 09:23:16 -0800

Chinese sold Iraq 'dual-use' chemical And France helped broker the deal. Now do we boycott not only French bread and wine but all Chinese food too?

Should this country

bunnyfire — Sat, 22 Dec 2001 12:51:32 -0800

Should this country be our next target in the war on terrorism? hmmmmm...

luser — Wed, 20 Jun 2001 03:23:18 -0800

Mass grave of 24 World War I dead discovered in France. There's no way history is boring. Especially to a Belgian or French farmer.