Seven Days to the River Rhine

In 2005 the newly-elected conservative government in Poland released previously classified Cold War documents which, in their own words, would help to draw a line under the country's Communist past and educate the Polish public about the former regime. One particular set of documents immediately stood out and captured the world's attention. They detail a secret Soviet war game exercise entitled "Seven Days to the River Rhine". Originally created in 1979. This plan explored the events and possible outcomes of a limited nuclear exchange and armed conflict in Europe. The documents and their accompanying maps make for rather chilling viewing.

The premise of SDTTRR predicted that NATO would be the first to make an aggressive move. It involved a NATO invasion of East Germany along with a series of accompanying tactical nuclear strikes along the valley of the River Vistula in Poland that would prevent Soviet reinforcements arriving from the east. With their options limited, the Soviets would respond by launching their own nuclear strikes against targets in Denmark, West Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium to disrupt the NATO command structure before initiating their own invasion of West Germany, stopping at the River Rhine so as not to overstretch their supplies. The whole operation was planned to last a week, hence the name.

Interestingly, Britain and France would not be targeted with nuclear weapons. This was probably in order to reduce the liklihood of retaliatory strikes against the Soviet Union from those countries, both of which possesed their own independent nuclear arsenals. Nonetheless the loss of life resulting from such an operation, despite its limited geographical scope and timescale, would have been incredibly high. It is estimated that over two million Polish civilians would have been killed in the initial NATO strike whilst the Soviet response would kill countless more in Brussels, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Munich, Frankfurt and other Western European cities.

Despite the fact that it was never carried out. Seven Days to the River Rhine serves not only as an example of a scary what-might-have been scenario but also as an example of the mentality that prevailed among the Soviet leadership at the time. It is a classic case of Warsaw Pact military thinking, a "defensive exercise" in which the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc allies defend themselves by attacking into NATO territory. Although this plan involved halting at the Rhine, I would certainly expect the Warsaw Pact forces to have pushed all the way to the Atlantic in the name of defence if they could have done (i.e. were it not for the threat of a British/French nuclear strike or an all-out confrontation with the United States).

The major problem with the idea of SDTTRR, however, is that it disregards the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). In my mind it just seems impossible that there could be a limited direct confrontation between east and west without it escalating into an all-out nuclear war, something which, for obvious reasons, neither side was willing to risk. With that in mind, I believe we can be doubly thankful that SDTTRR never got further than the drawing-board. Things hardly ever go according to plan...

When Friendship Turns Sour: The Murder of Thomas Becket

On a dark December night in 1170 a group of knights, acting on what they perceived as the orders of King Henry II, made their way to Canterbury Cathedral. The four men, Reginald FitzUrse, Hugh de Morville, William de Tracy, and Richard le Breton were on their way to confront Archbishop Thomas Becket, who had come to be a thorn in the King's side with his dogged defence of the rights of the church and constant excommunications of its opponents. History has Henry quoted as saying something along the lines of "Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?". Whatever it was that he really said, the knights interpreted it as a royal command and set out for the mother church of England to exact their master's will on the troublesome cleric.

Upon their arrival at Canterbury the four knights left their weapons beneath a sycamore tree outside the cathedral, concealed their mail armour beneath cloaks and entered the church in peace. They announced that the Archbishop of Canterbury was to accompany them to Winchester where he must explain his actions to the King and be treated accordingly. Becket refused them and instead headed off to join the monks at evening vespers, leaving the knights to consider more drastic action. They left to retrieve their weapons before charging back into the cathedral, catching up with Becket at an entrance to the monks' cloister, close to the crypt.

The accounts of the monks present at the time paint the subsequent scene in vivid and gruesome detail. The knights leapt at the Archbishop, raining multiple sword blows upon him. Becket fell to his knees and offered his soul to the almighty before the final fatal blow which sliced off the crown of his head, spreading blood and brains over the cathedral floor. A clerk who had entered with the assassins placed his foot on the dead man's neck before calling out, "Let us away, knights; this fellow will arise no more."

"For the name of Jesus and the protection of the Church, I am ready to embrace death."

(the final words of Archbishop Thomas Becket according to the account of eyewitness Edward Grim, who was himself wounded in the attack)

Following Becket's death, the Christian community throughout Europe immediately began venerating him as a religious martyr and within three years of the murder he was canonised as a saint by Pope Alexander III. Becket was buried in a tomb at the cathedral, which quickly became one of the most popular pilgrimage sights in England and remained so until both the tomb and Becket's remains were destroyed by the order of Henry VIII in the 16th century. After the murder the four knights fled north to Knaresborough Castle but, despite the men being excommunicated by Pope Alexander, the King did not have them arrested. They eventually headed to Rome to seek forgiveness and were ordered to serve as knights in the Holy Land for a period of 14 years.

It all began eight years earlier...

So what had gone so badly wrong in the relationship between King and Archbishop? The two men had at one time been great friends and Becket had done very well out of being in Henry's favour. Becket was appointed Lord Chancellor in 1155 on the advice of the previous Archbishop of Canterbury, Theobald of Bec, making him in essence Henry's right-hand-man and closest confidante at the royal court. As Lord Chancellor, Becket was only too willing to enforce the Medieval land-tax system on all English landowners, including the church. This made Becket many enemies within the church but the King did not mind at all. Henry desired to exert absolute royal authority over both church and state in England and sought various ways to limit the church's independence. When Archbishop Theobald died in 1162, Henry jumped at the chance to appoint his loyal man Becket to the See of Canterbury and ensure that the man at the top of the church in England was one that would do his bidding. It was a decision that the King would come to regret.

Almost overnight Becket became a changed man after his enthronement as Archbishop of Canterbury, going from loyal servant of the King to champion defender of church rights. He resigned as Lord Chancellor and immediately consolidated the church's land revenues under his control, starting a series of legal disputes between the crown and the church. Henry was attempting to manipulate the other bishops to turn against Becket as early as 1163 and, the following year, attempted to force his former friend to sign off on the Constitutions of Clarendon, several legislative articles issued by Henry that would greatly limit the legal powers of the church and papal authority in England. Becket agreed in principle but refused to sign the documents, prompting Henry to put him on trial for contempt of royal authority. Becket was convicted of the charges but he then stormed out of the trial and fled the country.

Becket spent two years in France under the protection of King Louis VII but was forced to leave the Cistercian Abbey at Pontigny after Henry made threats against the English branch of the Cistercian monastic order. Pope Alexander initially favoured a more diplomatic solution to the disagreements between Henry and Becket while the fugitive Archbishop preferred that Rome utilise the prerogatives of the church to make Henry back down. It was this threat of a possible excommunication against Henry that allowed Becket to return to England in early 1170 to resume his role as Archbishop.

As Becket continued to cast his opponents out of the church, the excommunicated Bishops immediately left England and fled to the King who was suffering from illness in his ancestral lands in Normandy. It was upon hearing the news of Becket's most recent actions that Henry said the unknown yet immortal words that unintentionally sealed his former friend's fate and the King's knights set off on their way to Canterbury...

An Inevitable Conclusion?

To all intents and purposes one must accept that Thomas Becket's actions were going to get him killed in the end. Going up against a man determined to exert his control over the church in an age where few people thought twice about the use of violence as a means to an end was a bad idea if you wanted to stay out of the firing line. Despite this you have to admire the man for standing up for what he believed in, even if what he believed took a rather sudden change of direction. One thing we do know, though. It would not be the last time that King and church would come into conflict in England.

The Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich

The story behind the death of one of Nazi Germany's rising stars is, believe it or not, one of tragedy. This is not because of what happened to Reinhard Heydrich himself (unless you happen to be his wife or Hitler) but because of the events that took place afterwards. The regime's reaction to the Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia's assassination by British-backed Czech resistance fighters shows the Nazi way of thinking at its most twisted. The death of one man would, as it turned out, would result in the deaths of many many more.

The tale of events began on September 27th 1941 when German tanks and troops were smashing their way towards the gates of Moscow and Hitler's empire was at the peak of its powers. On that date the Nazi security chief Reinhard Heydrich was appointed to Prague as Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, replacing Baron Konstantin von Neurath whom Hitler believed was encouraging the Czechs to resist the occupation by being soft on them.

"We will Germanize the Czech vermin...... making this Czech garbage into Germans must gave way to methods based on racist thought."

(Reinhard Heydrich)

Heydrich considered the Czech lands to be essentially German and had no patience at all either with the Czech resistance or Czech culture in general. As soon as he arrived his men began terrorizing the population and going after the partisans and black-marketeers with gusto. By March 1942 virtually all local resistance to German rule had been either destroyed or paralysed as Heydrich's administration made the threat of disproportionately severe reprisals to any anti-German activity abundantly clear. Incentives such as extra food or money were given to ensure that the output of vital war industries within his jurisdiction remained high. Despite the period of peacefulness brought about by the suppression of violent resistance, basic problems such as inflation and food shortages remained and there remained a noticeable undertone of discontent. Heydrich had little concern for the Czechs, however, and remained firm in his belief that Bohemia and Moravia would one day be Germanized. He planned to deport two thirds of the Czech population to the east after the war for extermination, presumably keeping the rest to work as cheap labour of the Germans.

Heydrich's protectorate was essentially a military dictatorship and one which he had supreme confidence in at that. He was driven around Prague in an open-topped car to demonstrate that he was not afraid of the Czechs and that he had unquestioned faith in his occupation forces. It was a practice that left the Protector vulnerable and one which had certainly not gone unnoticed.

The Plot

The exiled Czechoslovakian government based in the United Kingdom were already coming up with plans, in conjunction with the British Special Operations Executive (SOE), to get rid of Heydrich. The British were only too happy to get involved as the assassination of a high-ranking Nazi leader would show the world that the regime was not invulnerable. The government-in-exile were under pressure by the British to stoke up resistance back home and believed this would provide the inspiration that the Czech people needed. Heydrich's tyrannical methods of government ensured that he was chosen as the target for the operation, codenamed "Anthropoid". On the night of December 28th 1941 two Czech resistance operatives, Jan Kubis and Josef Gabcik, were dropped into their homeland with orders to assassinate Heydrich.

Upon landing the two men made their way to Prague and made contact with the underground resistance. After considering several methods for carrying out their mission, they opted to lie low until a more favourable set of circumstances emerged. That opportunity finally came in May 1942 when they became aware of the route that Heydrich's staff car took through the city on his daily commute from his suburban residence to Prague Castle. This route involved a tight hairpin bend in the city's Liben district which the car would have to slow down in order to negotiate. Gabcik and Kubis arrived at the tram stop near the corner on the morning of May 27th and waited for their target to pass through.

At around 10:30am Reinhard Heydrich's open-topped staff car approached the tram stop. Gabcik stepped forward and drew his sten gun in full view of Heydrich and his driver but the weapon jammed, sending Gabcik scuttling for cover as the car came to a stop and Heydrich rose to his feet, drawing his own weapon. Kubis then threw a modified anti-tank grenade at the car which blew bits of upholstery and shrapnel everywhere, some of which lodged in Heydrich's body. The wounded Protector leaped from the damaged car and tried to chase Gabcik whilst his driver went after Kubis, who was able to escape despite having also been injured in the explosion. Heydrich collapsed to the floor with shock and ordered his returning driver to chase Gabcik who shot and wounded the driver with his revolver before fleeing the scene. Both assassins returned to their safehouse convinced that the attack had failed.

Heydrich was taken to hospital and treated by SS doctors for a broken rib, collapsed lung, torn diaphragm and ruptured spleen. The surgery went uneventfully and he seemed to be recovering. Then, after a visit from his superior Heinrich Himmler on June 2nd, Heydrich's condition suddenly deteriorated and he slipped into a coma. He died on June 4th, probably from blood poisoning as a result of upholstery fibres from the car entering his body. His body was taken on an immense procession through the streets of Prague before being taken to Berlin for his full Nazi-choreographed funeral ceremony and burial in the Invalidenfriedhof military cemetary.

Reprisal: The Massacre of Lidice

As I have already mentioned, it is the subsequent events that give the assassination of Heydrich a greater sense of tragedy that the assassination itself deserves. As you would expect, news of the assassination enraged Hitler and he was determined to make the Czechs pay. This would go much further than simply finding the perpetrators but this was little comfort to Gabcik and Kubis who, after being betrayed by the resistance, made their final stand alongside a few others against a mob of over 700 SS men in a Prague church. The besieged men never stood a chance but the deaths of the assassins would only be the beginning. The Nazis went after any community with even the remotest ties to either the resistance or any kind of anti-German feeling. One community in particular was singled out by the Germans for the ultimate retribution; the villagers of Lidice, just a few miles to the west of Prague, were about to made an example of. The events of June 10th 1942 gave the whole world an insight into the true ugliness of human nature. German SS and police units surrounded Lidice and dragged the residents from their homes. 173 men were taken to a local farmstead and shot on the spot in groups of five or ten. Nineteen more men who were away working down a mine at the time of the main slaughter were murdered later in Prague.

The victims of Lidice

The 184 women of Lidice were separated from their children and sent to the concentration camps where most died either from starvation, disease, exhaustion or murder. The 105 children largely shared the same fate although seven were chosen at random to be taken to German families Germanization. The remainder of the children who had not died of neglect were sent to the extermination camps on the orders of Adolf Eichmann. All but seventeen of them would die. 340 people died altogether as a result of the German reprisal (192 men, sixty women and eighty-eight children). The village itself was burned down and bulldozed, eliminating all traces of its former existence. Even the bodies in the village cemetery were dug up and destroyed. Nazi propaganda openly and proudly announced the destruction of Lidice, unlike most other reprisals around Europe which were kept quiet. As a result the Allied media picked up on it quickly, sending a shockwave of disbelief and anger around the world. It also provided an early hint that something rather more sinister than mere persecution was going on inside the borders of the Reich.

In all it is estimated that around 1300 people overall in the Czech lands were killed by the Germans as a direct result of Heydrich's assassination, including the people of Lidice, partisans, relatives of partisans or anyone else the Germans didn't like the look of. Lidice has since been rebuilt but the events that took place there remain in the memory for the few fortunate enough to survive. In light of what happened one has to ask if whether or not the assassination of Heydrich was worth it. The Germans were determined for it not to have been and wanted to show the British and exiled Czechs that they had only made things worse. In the context of the war, however, removing such a powerful figure probably was the right thing to do. A lot of people died as a result of the assassination yet, with his plans for the Czechs in mind, we can only wonder how many more would have died had he lived.

The Wannsee Conference: Planning Genocide

To the assembled Nazi officials who shuffled through the snowy weather and into the suburban lakeside villa at 56-58 Am Grossen Wannsee on January 20th 1942, this was just one unremarkable meeting among many in their busy work schedules. Some were leading figures in the Nazi Party, some were SS men and some were bureaucrats representing the various government ministries. To many historians since, however, this was one of the most significant political conferences in modern history for it was at the Wannsee Conference, they say, that the Nazi regime decided upon "The Final Solution to the Jewish Question", the extermination of the Jewish race in Europe.

For an event which has been given so much historical significance it have certainly not have seemed all that special at the time. The conference had been called by SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) and Deputy Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia (the present-day Czech Republic) in order to inform representatives of the various government departments and security agencies which had roles in the state's Jewish policy that he had been appointed by Hitler as the chief executor of the aforementioned Final Solution. As well as Heydrich, the conference attendees included:

• Dr Josef Bühler (General Government (Nazi puppet state in occupied Poland))
• Dr Roland Freisler (Justice Ministry)
• SS-Gruppenführer Otto Hoffman (SS)
• SS-Oberführer Dr Gerhard Klopfer (Nazi Party Chancellery)
• Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger (Reich Chancellery)
• SS-Sturmbannführer Dr Rodolf Lange (Police (Baltic States), SS, SD, RSHA) 
• Dr Georg Leibbrandt (Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories)
• Martin Luther (Foreign Ministry)
• Gauleiter Dr Alfred Mayer (Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories)
• SS-Gruppenführer Heinrich Müller (SS, Gestapo, RSHA)
• Erich Neumann (Office of the Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan)
• SS-Oberfuhrer Dr Karl Schöngarth (Police (General Government), SS, SD, RSHA)
• Dr Wilhelm Stuckart (Interior Ministry)
• SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann (SS, Gestapo, RSHA)

In preparation for the conference Adolf Eichmann (see my previous blog Adolf Eichmann: A Nation's Vengeance) had drafted two lists regarding the Jewish population of Europe. List A compiled the Jewish populations of Germany and her occupied territories. List B showed those in countries either allied with Germany, at war with her or neutral. Eichmann's survey totalled Europe's Jewish population at 11 million.

Proceedings

The conference itself was brief in duration, lasting only around 90 minutes. Heydric began by announcing that over 500,000 German and Austrian Jews had already emigrated but that further emigration had now been prohibited by the authorities. He proposed a new plan for evacuating Jews to the Eastern occupied territories as a provisional solution for dealing with them. Holocaust deniers seize upon this as proof that the Wannsee Conference was called to arrange for the evactuation rather than the murder of Jews. Heydrich's own words, however, speak for themselves:

"Under proper guidance, in the course of the final solution the Jews are to be allocated for appropriate labor in the East. Able-bodied Jews, separated according to sex, will be taken in large work columns to these areas for work on roads, in the course of which action doubtless a large portion will be eliminated by natural causes. The possible final remnant will, since it will undoubtedly consist of the most resistant portion, have to be treated accordingly, because it is the product of natural selection and would, if released, act as the seed of a new Jewish revival"

(Reinhard Heydrich, taken from the Wannsee Conference minutes).

Heydrich's intentions are rather clear: work most of the Jews to death and exterminate those that are strong enough to survive for it is they who the Nazis perceive as the most dangerous kind. Nobody sat round the conference table could have misunderstood his words. As the number of doctorate-holders attending shows, these were certainly not Nazis of the unintelligent kind.

From the Nazi point-of-view the plan to evacuate Jews was one of practical as well as ideological necessity. Germany would be given priority over the rest of Europe in order to make former Jewish homes available both for Germans made homeless by Allied bombing and for labourers being brought in from the occupied territories. Heydrich made reference to the infamous "transit ghettos" being set up in occupied Poland where Jews would be sent before continuing their journeys east. The ambiguous status of mixed-race Jews and Jews who were married to non-Jews (and their children) were also clarified, leaving all kinds of people with even the most strenuous connections to Judaism (such as having one Jewish grandparent) vulnerable to persecution.

The Jewish situation in other countries was also explored by Heydrich. He explained that the deportations of Jews in Hungary and Romania were either too slow or were being deliberately resisted by local authorities and that German intervention in their Jewish policies would have to happen in order to speed them up. This was especially true in Hungary's case as the country's regent, Admiral Miklos Horthy was actively resisting German efforts to deport Jews and would continue to do so until 1944 when he was deposed by the Germans and Eichmann took charge of the situation. Over 500,000 Hungarian Jews would go on to be sent to the death camps by the SS man who would not be brought to account until his capture and trial by the Israelis in the early 1960s.

Heydrich spoke for an hour before taking 30 minutes of questions and statements from the others. Luther urged caution in Scandinavia where hostility to the Jews was not particularly high whilst Hoffmann and Stuckart Neumann argued against the deportation of Jews working in vital war industries where replacements were scarce. Heydrich granted this concession as he was keen not to offend Neumann's boss, Hermann Goering. The discussion of other complex issues was put off until a later meeting.

The final statement of the Wannsee Conference was a rather opportunistic and sinister request from State Secretary Bühler of the General Government:

"the General Government would welcome it if the final solution of this problem could be begun in the General Government, since on the one hand transportation does not play such a large role here nor would problems of labor supply hamper this action. Jews must be removed from the territory of the General Government as quickly as possible, since it is especially here that the Jew as an epidemic carrier represents an extreme danger and on the other hand he is causing permanent chaos in the economic structure of the country through continued black market dealings."

With that the conference came to an end. After a brief drink and some off-the-record chatter the attendees dispersed and went back to their various tasks whilst Heydrich boarded his plane and headed back to Prague to continue in his role as protector of the Czech lands. Six months later he was assassinated by British-trained Czech partisans. The rest of the attendees would go on to meet met their various fates, with few surviving long after the war. In 1947 a surviving copy of the minutes of the Wannsee Conference, taken down by Eichmann, were discovered amongst Martin Luther's papers by the American prosecutor Robert Kempner. With the attendees either dead, missing or keeping their mouths shut about it, it was the discovery of this document that truly brought the events of that snowy January day in the unassuming Berlin suburb to light.

Historical Importance

As I have already mentioned, the Wannsee Conference is given massive amounts of historical significance as the moment when Heydrich announced the extermination of the Jews. The truth, as the conference minutes show, is not that straightforward at all. The Nazis had already been executing Jews for some time. For example, Eichmann's List A shows that the Baltic state of Estonia was "Judenfrei" (free of Jews) because the 1000 or so Jews who remained there after the German occupation had already been eliminated (or at least deported elsewhere). Heydrich had already confided to Eichmann in the Autumn of 1941 that the Jews were to be exterminated and several death camps were already in operation at the time of the conference, with more in preparation.

The most interesting thing that we notice about the conference minutes is that there is little to no direct mention of killing the Jews. It seems that planning and organising the evacuation of Jewish populations to the camps was the primary subject of the proceedings. The responsibility for exterminating the Jews lay exclusively with Hitler and, to lesser extent, with members of his inner circle such as Himmler and the people at the conference would certainly have been aware of this. It was not the job of Heydrich or lower-level officials to make fundamental decisions about Jewish policy. If anything Heydrich only called the meeting to pass down the plans of his superiors to the people and departments who would help him make it happen. It is also interesting that the conference did not include any kind of detailed planning with regards to the logistics of deporting Jews, a fact made clear by the decision not to invite anyone from the Transport Ministry or the railways to attend.

Another interesting historical perspective on the event is that Heydrich called the conference in order to both impose his own authority over the implementation of Jewish policy upon the various departments. This could well be the reason why Heydrich's speech dominated proceedings and so little time was given to discussing the practicalities of it all. Very little if anything of what Heydrich said would have been a surprise to those present. It would also have been important for Heydrich to gain the consent of both the Foreign Ministry and the Four Year Plan Office, who would have expressed diplomatic and economic concerns about the extermination of Jews. From that you can point the finger of responsibility for the events at Wannsee squarely at Heydrich. It was not necessarily an ego trip on his part but it could definitely be seen as an effort or enforce the control of his RSHA and secure the co-operation of the other ministries and agencies involved.

King in a Foreign Land

Today King Carl XVI Gustav of Sweden serves as the embodiment of his nation. It is he who represents Sweden on the world stage and set an example to his people as to what it means to be a through-and-through decent Swede. But a closer inspection reveals that not everything is quite what it seems.

Carl XVI Gustaf's surname is the first and most obvious clue that there is something not entirely Swedish about him and his clan. The House of Bernadotte suggests something a bit more continental than snowy pine forests and meatballs. Most people would dismiss this as mere consequence of political matchmaking and family lines dying out, the same sort of things that brought a German royal family to Britain in 1714. In this case, however the story is rather more intriguing because the current Swedish King's family line dates back to a man who wasn't only not Swedish. He wasn't even royal.

The story goes back to the beginning of the 19th century when the Napoleonic Wars were raging and the vertically-challenged Emperor of France held sway over much of Europe. In 1810 Marshal of France Jean Bernadotte was on his way to Rome to take up the position of Governor. Despite its modest beginnings, the 47-year-old career soldier's life had already been remarkable, carving out an impressive military reputation on the back of both the French Revolution and the subsequent rise of Napoleon. Prior to 1810 he had fought several battles with the French army in the German states, fighting the Austrians and Prussians. He had also successfully defended the French-controlled Netherlands against a small British expedition.

The appointment to Rome was a typical example of Napoleon giving cushy jobs in French client states to friends and family in order to ensure their loyalty to him. He had already installed his own brothers on the thrones of Spain and Westphalia and the appointment of Marshal Bernadotte, who had already been made the Sovereign Prince of Porte Corvo by Napoleon in 1806, as Governor of Rome seemed to be just another example of the Emperor's generosity. Then events took an unexpected turn...

The King of Sweden, Charles XIII was ageing and childless. with the House of Oldenburg seemingly on its last legs the Swedish elites scouted around for a new ruler. The need to please Napoleon would be a major factor in any decision whilst relations with nearby Russia remained uneasy so a King with a knowledge of soldiering and warfare was also deemed necessary. Bernadotte had already caught their attention due to his kind treatment of Swedish prisoners during a recent war with Denmark and thus was a very well-liked figure in Sweden. As the discussion continued, a Swedish nobleman, Baron Karl Otto Morner took it upon his own initiative to offer the throne to Bernadotte who received the news whilst on his journey to Rome. Bernadotte immediately turned back and took the news of Morner's offer to Napoleon himself. The Emperor thought the whole idea to be rather absurd but did neither support nor oppose it, leaving the Marshal to make his own choice.

Bernadotte replied back to Morner with the pledge that he would become King of Sweden if elected. The Swedish government placed Morner under arrest for going behind their backs but nonetheless the movement to elect Bernadotte quickly gathered momentum and on August 21st 1810 he was duly selected as Crown Prince and commander of the Swedish armed forces. Bernadotte renounced his Porte Corvo title and headed at once to Stockholm, arriving on November 2nd to be received by the government and formally adopted by the old King Charles XIII as his successor, taking the name Charles John and converting from Roman Catholicism to Sweden's Lutheranism.

With the powers of government and policy-making at his disposal, the newly-named Crown Prince Charles John became both very powerful and very popular in his new adopted homeland. He made the acquisition of neighbouring Norway (which was in union with Denmark at the time) his primary goal, achieving this in 1814 after a short war and a great deal of diplomatic wrangling, after which both Norway and Sweden were ruled separately but united under the same Swedish King. Charles John finally succeeded Charles XIII as King of Sweden and Norway following the latter's death in 1818. From then on he was known as Charles XIV John of Sweden and Karl III Johann of Norway.

Before he became King, however, Charles John made the surprise move of turning against his old master Napoleon, signing Sweden into the coalition of countries that were fighting against the Emperor who was now on the back foot after his disastrous invasion of Russia. Charles John and the Swedish army played a crucial role at the decisive Battle of the Nations in 1813, where a numerically superior coalition force overwhelmed the French and marked the beginning of the end for Napoleon's glorious French Empire. After defeating his former leader and securing Norway, King Charles XVI John of the House of Bernadotte returned to Sweden a hero to his people.

After the Napoleonic Wars the new King settled down into what would be a rather quiet subsequent reign in which Sweden remained stable and his new dynasty was never truly threatened. He never learned to speak Swedish or Norwegian but this was not a huge problem as French was a common language at the royal court. His conservative views became more unpopular as the years went by but the Swedes were nonetheless proud of their King who had a strong European reputation to rely on in times of trouble. The King died in March 1844, barely a year after his Silver Jubilee. Although Norway has since broken away and now has a monarchy of its own, the descendants of Marshal Jean Bernadotte continue to rule in Stockholm to this day.

Reconstructing the British Parliament: A Metaphorical and Literal Proposition

The unreformed House of Commons in session.

By the early 19th century the state of the United Kingdom Parliament very much reflected the state of the buildings it occupied: aged, jerry-built, rotting, cluttered, disorganised, full of vermin and largely unfit for purpose. As the winds of change swept through British society as a result of the ongoing Industrial Revolution, it became clear that something had to be done about this most undemocratic of institutions.

New Digs Required?

There were a number of problems in existence at Westminster at this time, most of which had been apparent for a good long while. The make-do-and-mend nature of the place was a primary concern. The Palace of Westminster that stands today, a single huge building built solely for the purpose of parliamentary business, could hardly be more different than the one it replaced. In the early 19th century Westminster was still quintessentially the Medieval palace that the Tudors had abandoned 300 years previously in favour of Whitehall just up the road. The two houses of parliament along with the various royal law courts subsequently commandeered the site and over the centuries drastically altered the various buildings to suit their own needs, as well as constructing many new ones of a questionable standard.

The various works gradually destroyed the Medieval character of the old palace which had its roots in the 11th century when William II began work on Westminster Hall in 1097, the most significant structure of the old palace which still stands today. The hall was extensively remodelled by Richard II in the 1390s, including the installation of the spectacular and ornate oak hammerbeam roof. Other parts of the palace were not so fortunate in escaping subsequent tinkering. In the 1540s the House of Commons moved into St. Stephen's Chapel, which had become free as a result of Edward VI's abolition of the Canonical order of St. Stephen. The chapel was originally built in the 13th century in an attempt by Henry III to outshine the Sainte-Chapelle at the royal palace in Paris. In its days as the royal chapel the building's interior was a riot of colourful guilt and decoration but once the MPs moved in the furnishings and wall decorations were gradually ripped out or concealed behind layers of oak panels. As the picture at the beginning of this article shows, the old St. Stephen's Chapel had become a rather bland and modest-looking place by the 19th Century.

Towards the end of the 18th Century there were murmurings among the political elite that old Westminster was no longer fit to support the expanding role of Parliament. They complained that the buildings were rat-infested, falling down or a fire risk whilst the poor ventilation in the candle-lit rooms made the air almost unbreathable. The cramped interior of St. Stephen's Chapel had been further cannibalised in order to install extra seating and an upstairs gallery to accommodate the new members brought to Westminster by the Acts of Union with Scotland (1707) and Ireland (1800). The expansion of the peerage under the Hanoverian monarchs meant that in 1801 the House of Lords had to relocate altogether, moving from the old Queen's Chamber (under which Guy Fawkes had planted his gunpowder 200 years before) into the larger White Chamber, which had formerly been the home of the Court of Requests.

Despite the complaints and speculation about a possible move elsewhere, the historical significance of the current site kept Parliament at Westminster. Further new additions were built to provide committee rooms and offices for the Commons as well as library facilities for both houses. In the 1820s the architect Sir John Soane tore down the entire southern end of the palace complex in order to construct a new royal gallery and processional route to the Lords for the monarch to use during the State Opening of Parliament. By the end of the decade the former Medieval royal palace had become a barely habitable warren of different buildings exhibiting a curious mish-mash of contrasting architectural styles ranging from the original Gothic to the more contemporary styles of the time such as palladian and neo-classical.

Misrepresentation and Corruption in the Commons

If the Palace of Westminster itself was a very dodgy place in the early 19th century then the things that went on inside were positively mind-boggling, especially when you look at it in comparison with the intensely scrutinised democracy that we have today. The political system itself had the biggest problems of all and it was those problems that spurred on the push to reform it.

The major issue was that the system had remained largely unchanged for hundreds of years. At the time there were two distinct kinds of parliamentary constituency: county and borough. There had been no new law concerning the individual's right to vote in county seats since Henry VI's statutes in the early 1430s which stipulated that men owning land worth forty shillings or more had the right to vote. This massively restricted the electoral franchise and even by the 19th century there was still only around 200,000 eligable voters in English county constituencies. These few voters were spread around unevenly with Yorkshire having more than 20,000 voters whilst the smallest counties such as Anglesey had barely 1000. Those who had property in multiple constituencies were able to vote multiple times.

The situation in the borough constituencies was immensely complicated and the rules of the franchise often varied from borough to borough. The nature of these seats ranged widely from cities to tiny hamlets and all of them elected two members each to the Commons. Misrepresentation was rife in the borough constituencies because many had been enfranchised hundreds of years earlier without much consideration for their long-term prospects and the boundaries had not since been changed to reflect the population movements and urban migrations that were a key characteristic of the Industrial Revolution. Because of this there existed the grossly illogical situation where large and growing industrial cities like Manchester had no representatation in Parliament at all whilst places with virtually no population such as Old Sarum, a former town in Wiltshire that had been largely abandoned since the Middle Ages, were returning two MPs each.

The abandoned hill fort at Old Sarum.

This led to the other major issue that was plaguing the British parliament in the 18th and early 19th centuries, corruption. The fact that these underpopulated borough seats continued to exist made it easy for the right people to exploit them and get their people elected to the Commons, giving rise to the phenomenon known as the "rotten borough" or "pocket borough". If one of these constituencies with a small enough electorate (which in some cases could be in single figures) fell under the influence of a local wealthy landowner then that patron would be easily able to either bribe or intimidate the few voters into choosing the patron's candidate who would then watch out for the patron's interests in Parliament. Many noblemen were able to exploit multiple rotten boroughs and thus wield immense influence in the House of Commons. In 1821 the writer Sydney Smith proclaimed that:

"The country belongs to the Duke of Rutland, Lord Lonsdale, the Duke of Newcastle, and about twenty other holders of boroughs. They are our masters!"

So what was going on by that stage was effectively the country being governed by an exclusive cartel of landowners and noblemen who ensured the election of MPs who represented anything but the interests of the voters. The situation was undemocratic and  very much unfair, and people were starting to take notice.

The Fight for Reform

There had already been significant attempts at parliamentary reform during the second half of the 18th century. These had been initially put forward by the progressive Whig party under Prime Minister William Pitt the Elder (a one-time MP for Old Sarum of all places) in the 1760s but failed to garner much attention. His son, William Pitt the Younger tried again in the 1780s but his reforms were defeated in the Commons twice. The issue of reform fell dormant after the French Revolution of 1789 as people became unfavourable to making substantial political changes such as those that were underway across the Channel.  Token reforms were made once the distraction of the Napoleonic Wars had passed, such as the Catholic Relief Act of 1829 which lifted many of the political restrictions on Catholics, meaning they could now sit in the British Parliament. The easing of these rules had become necessary in the wake of the 1800 Act of Union with Ireland.

The race to reform the political system itself really began after 1830. The ruling Tories under the Duke of Wellington, despite just having won a Commons majority were weak and Wellington was soon forced out and replaced by the Whig Charles, Earl Grey who put electoral reform at the forefront of his agenda. The first Reform Act, which pledged the abolition of more then sixty rotten boroughs and the redistribution of many others. The bill struggled in Parliament, however, so the Whigs waited until after the 1831 election, in which they one a landslide majority. A second bill finally passed easily through the Commons, only to be then thrown out by the overwhelmingly conservative House of Lords, at which point all hell broke loose.

The rejection of the Reform Act in the Lords resulted in mass outbreaks of violence all over the country. From Derby to Bristol to Nottingham the homes of anti-reform aristocrats and clerics came under attack. Earl Grey knew that reform was now a necessity  and could not afford to be rebuffed by the House of Lords again. He came up with a plan to advise King William IV to create pro-reform peers en-masse in order to swamp the Tory majority in the Lords and ensure that the reforms got through. William balked at the idea and rejected it outright, causing the resignation of Earl Grey and the recall of Wellington. Despite promises of moderate reform the Iron Duke was unable to gain support to form a government and the King was forced to perform an embarassing about-face and reappoint Earl Grey.

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey

William was now in a position where he had to agree to the creation of new Whig peers. He agreed to do so in principle but then went behind Earl Grey's back and informed the Tory peers of what was about to happen. Rather than risk losing their in-built majority in the Lords they chose to back down, allowing the King to save face. The Tories abstained from the vote and the Reform Act of 1832 was able to pass through the House of Lords. On June 7th William gave the Royal Assent, signing the bill into law and setting a course for addressing the monumental injustices and unfairness that had dogged the electoral system for so long.

Burning Down the House 

The introduction of the reformed House of Commons did much to alleviate the corruption which had been rife in British politics but the problem of the old palace still remained and still the politicians dithered over what to do about it. The events of October 16th 1834, however, forced the issue in the most spectacular fashion possible.

The story of the demise of the old palace is both farcical and heroic yet it provides a somewhat fitting end to the story of the crumbling old Medieval pile and its unwelcome additions. It all started, ironically, with a decision to declutter. Richard Whibley, the Clerk of Works, was given the responsibility of getting rid of a great pile of notched wooden tally sticks, a long-abolished method of proof-of-payment used by the Exchequer in days past. Whibley decided to burn them but feared that doing so outside on an open bonfire would annoy the neighbours so he instead left them with the two workmen who stoked the coal furnaces that heated the House of Lords chamber. Witnesses recall the two men throwing great handfulls of tally sticks onto the fires despite Whibley explicitly telling them not to overgorge the furnaces. The work went on all day and the men clocked off late in the afternoon, their task completed.

At around the same time the palace housekeeper, Mrs. Wright was showing round a small party of visitors when they noticed that the House of Lords chamber was full of smoke. The visitors voiced concern about the amount of heat rising up through the stone floor. Unbeknownst to them the overheated brick heating flues had already ignited the wooden joists that held up the floor. Amazingly, Mrs. Wright did not pursue the strange occurrence any further than a passing complaint and locked up the chamber at 5pm. Within an hour it was ablaze.

Volunteer firefighters inside Westminster Hall during the 1834 fire.

The ensuing conflagration was the biggest seen in London since the Great Fire of 1666 and crowds flocked to Westminster to see it. The flames spread to the House of Commons and the venerable old St. Stephen's Chapel suffered its final desecration as it burned down to a shell. As the two houses burned sections of the crowed cheered at the destruction of what they saw as the symbols of the hated political establishment while the politicians themselves: Peel, Melbourne, Althorp, Palmerston and the rest all stood aghast and seemingly helpless to stop the spread of the fire. Brave volunteers climbed the walls of Westminster Hall and threw bucket after bucket of water onto Richard II's roof, now only feet from the flames, to ensure that it wouldn't catch. Westminster Hall was saved but that was the only piece of good news. By the time the fire was brought under control much of the old palace lay in ruins.

A New Beginning

In the aftermath of the destruction of the old palace the decision on where to go from there was agreed upon quickly. Despite William IV offering a near-complete Buckingham Palace (a home which he didn't particularly like) to the politicians they remained steadfastly resolute that Parliament must stay put, so they put up a competition for a new building on the old site, with the rule that the theme must be either Gothic or Elizabethan so as to embody traditional conservative values; the Classical style was dismissed for its association with revolutionary and republican schools of thought.

The commission for the winning design went to Charles Barry whilst Augustus Welby Pugin was brought in to create the elaborate Gothic decorations and furnishings. The foundation stone for the new Palace of Westminster went down in 1840 and work on the new chambers proceeded fairly quickly. The Lords was ready for use by 1847 and the Commons by 1852 with the rest of the building building finally being completed around 1870. British democracy still had a long way to go but the British Parliament, purged of corruption and brought up to date in a rapidly changing country, at last had a place it could truly call home.

Adolf Eichmann: A Nation's Vengeance

For fifteen years SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer Adolf Eichmann remained the most high-profile member of the former Nazi regime to both survive the Second World War and evade capture by the victorious Allies. Then in 1960 it was a young nation, one which didn't even exist until after the war, that decided to take matters into its own hands and bring the fugitive to account for his crimes.

During the war Eichmann had been a key figure in the Holocaust. His organisational skills caught the eye of his superior, Reinhard Heydrich and earned him the task of planning and facilitating the deportations of Eastern European Jews to the death camps as part of the Nazis' "Final Solution to the Jewish Question". This job mande Eichmann responsible for the deaths of more than 400,000 Jews in Hungary alone. He continued the deportations even after his bosses had called a halt the the extermination of Jews in favour of attempting to hide the evidence of what they had done from the advancing allied armies. He fled from Hungary in early 1945 as Soviet forces bore down on him, lying low in Austria until the end of the war. He was soon apprehended by American forces but his captors failed to see through the false identity of "Otto Eckmann" that he had given.

In 1946 Eichmann escaped from US custody and laid low in Germany for four years, acquiring an Argentine landing permit in the process. In 1950 he moved on to Italy, where Nazi-sympathisers within the Catholic Church were secretly organising escape routes out of Europe for on-the-run Axis personnel. Using the false name of Riccardo Klement, Eichmann was able to obtain both an Argentine visa and a humanitarian passport from the International Red Cross. On July 14th 1950, Adolf Eichmann boarded a ship bound for Buenos Aires, his family close behind.

For the next ten years the Eichmanns lived in Argentina, with Adolf working a variety of jobs ranging from rabbit farmer to factory foreman. The whereabouts of the elusive "Riccardo Klement" had hot gone entirely unnoticed, however. Evidence has since come to light which shows the CIA had at least a vague idea as to Eichmann's false name and that he was living in Argentina. The Americans chose not to divulge this information to anyone else or act upon it themselves as they were concerned about what Eichmann might have to say about the Germans with shady pasts who were now working for them. If the Americans were not willing to act, however, there was another country which was most certainly not prepared to sit back and do nothing.

Israel got its own leads as to Eichmann's location in 1954. The Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad had made it its mission to hunt down the Nazis and war criminals that remained at large, as did many other independently-operating Jewish vigilantes. Through their network of surveillance and information from contacts on the ground they were able to confirm that Riccardo Klement was indeed the ex-Nazi Adolf Eichmann. The most solid leads came from Lothar Hermann, a German of Jewish descent who had fled to Argentina to escape Nazi persecution. By chance his family had become acquainted with the Eichmann family and his daughter had become involved with Eichmann's son, Klaus who boasted openly about his father's former life as a Nazi and role in the Holocaust (Eichmann, for reasons unknown, had not changed the names of his wife or children). Using this information, Mossad were able to pinpoint Eichmann's exact location, track his everyday movements and formulate a plan for his capture.

By May 11th 1960, after years of meticulous factfinding and planning, the Mossad agents were ready to make their move. They abducted Eichmann outside his Buenos Aires home as he arrived back from work, knocking him out and bundling him into a car. Within ten days the heavily sedated former Nazi was on a flight to Isreal. The Israeli government initially denied involvement in Eichmann's capture, crediting it instead to Jewish volunteer Nazi-hunters. This did not prevent an international storm from erupting over the legality of the arrest; Argentina complained to the United Nations that the action had violated her national sovereignty whilst the sizeable far-right community in Argentina reacted with outrage and violent protest actions. The dispute between the two countries rumbled on until August when Argentina agreed to withdraw the complaint, restoring the traditionally friendly relations between herself and Isreal.

Adolf Eichmann in the dock during his trial in Israel

On April 11th 1961, exactly eleven months after his capture, the trial of Adolf Eichmann began in Jerusalem. He stood accused of 15 criminal charges including crimes against humanity, crimes against the Jewish people and membership of an outlawed organisation. The issue of the legality of Eichmann's capture was deliberately avoided in light of Argentina having dropped her challenge to it. Instead the prosecution put forward the damning evidence of Eichmann's role in the extermination of Jews during the way. Their trump card came in the form of an American judge who, as a United States Naval Officer in 1945, had conducted interviews the Nuremberg trail defendants. This witness testified that Hermann Göring had told him that Eichmann was responsible for deciding in what order and what countries that the Jews were to be killed.

Eichmann's defence team had little to work with. Like many of the Nuremburg defendants who had stood trial fifteen years earlier, Eichmann told the court that he was only following orders, vainly attempting to shift the responsibility onto his former superiors. The defence witnesses were all former Nazis and, naturally, did not wish to travel to Isreal in order to give evidence. Instead the defence witnesses sent court depositions, none of which did Eichmann's cause many favours. Instead of backing up the defence that he was only following orders, the witnesses instead testified that Eichmann did what he did either because he was power-mad or because his judgement was clouded by his fantical devotion to Hitler and Nazism. As the world watched with grim fascination, Eichmann, sitting behind his protective screen of bulletproof glass, must have known that his time was running out.

The Eichmann trial ended on August 14th but it was not until December 11th that the three judges announced the verdict. Guilty on all counts. On December 15th the death sentence was imposed. To this day it remains the only time that a death sentence has been handed down by an Israeli civilian court. Eichmann appealed desparately against the decision, maintaining his "following orders" defence and challenging the legality of both the trial and the verdict. The Israelis were unmoved and on May 29th 1962, the appeal for clemency was dismissed for the final time. Two days later Adolf Eichmann finally had his appointment with the hangman's noose. His body was then cremated and the ashes scattered in international waters, denying him a final resting place that could potentially become a shrine for neo-Nazis. The Jewish people had finally got their revenge.

The Death of Stalin: Natural Causes for Suspicion

On March 1st 1953 Joseph Stalin, absolute ruler of the Soviet Union for almost 30 years, invited his four closest underlings from the politburo to his dacha at Kunzevo for an evening of drinking and banter. The 74-year old seemed his usual self, old and careworn but still very much a man to be afraid of. His craggy face and white hair did little to offset the intense eyes that struck fear into the hearts of anyone who deared to get on the wrong side of the iron dictator. The party went on long into the night before breaking up in the small hours. The cronies shuffled off to their own accomodation and Stalin retired to his private quarters for a reclusive cocktail of sleep and brooding.

Nearly twenty-four hours passed before anyone dared to point out that Stalin had not emerged from his rooms. At first the bodyguards were unsure of what to do. Whether or not to disturb the great man could literally be a matter of life and death. It was not until the early morning of March 3rd that the soldiers decided that something was wrong and that they should do the unthinkable and enter Stalin's inner sanctum without his invitation. They went inside and found him comatose in a puddle of urine on his bedroom floor. The four followers quickly rushed back to the dacha to be at their stricken leader's side, overseeing his medical treatment whilst making plans in their minds for what might happen in the immediate future. Stalin slipped in and out of consciousness before finally, on March 4th, breathing his last. The most feared and tyrannnical ruler of the 20th Century, a man who made Adolf Hitler look like a saint in comparison, was no more.

Despite his advanced years, the sudden nature of Stalin's death has often been said to have involved some degree of foul play. This stems from the fact that so many people in the Soviet Union stood to benefit from the ending of his murderous reign. For some it would mean gaining political power, to others it would simply mean staying alive. It was almost impossible to stay on the right side of Stalin and even his most loyal followers would often find themselves staring down a gun barrel merely for being suspected of being up to no good. Even his own son Yakov was not good enough for him. When Yakov shot himself out of despair at his fathers poor treatment of him but survived, Stalin is reported to have quipped that his son "can't even shoot straight". The final humiliation of Stalin Jr. came after Yakov had been captured by the Germans whilst serving in the Red Army during World War II. The Nazis made an offer to return him in exchange for Friedrich Paulus, the German Field Marshal captured at Stalingrad. Stalin flatly declined the offer with the words "I will not trade a Marshal for a Lieutenant", refusing so see his son as being in any way more important to him than all the other soldiers in German captivity. Yakov was so distraught when he heard the news of his abandonment that he flung himself into the electric fence at Sachsenhausen concentration camp and was burned to death.

So what is the truth behind the man of steel's undignified demise? Was it natural causes? Old age perhaps or maybe a stroke or a brain haemorrhage? Alternatively we could suspect that he was murdered. Perhaps an ambitious flunkie had slipped something into his vodka at the party to accelerate his end. To understand the intrigue the best place to start is with the four politburo members closest to Stalin's heart who attended his final boys' night in. They were:

Lavrentiy Beria: Interior Minister and head of the various State Security Services and secret police organisations, including the infamous NKVD (forerunner of the KGB).

Nikolai Bulganin: Minister of Defence.

Georgy Malenkov: Up-and-coming member of the Communist Party Secretariat and Stalin's preferred choice of successor.

Nikita Khrushchev: Head of the powerful Moscow city and regional party committees.

If you had to pick a potential culprit from this shady bunch then you would have to point the finger of blame squarely at Beria. Beria was perhaps the only person in the entire world that Stalin truly feared. As head of the secret service and secret police, it was Beria who effectively upheld the authority of Stalin's regime and was in control of a power base with the potential to rival that of Stalin himself. Beria also had reason to be afraid of Stalin because of this. He was concerned that Stalin may attempt yet another of his purges in order to deprive him of his power. To avoid this Beria would have had to act first. Beria himself even claimed to have poisoned Stalin, with Foreign Minister Molotov quoting him in his memoirs as saying "I took him out."

Despite Beria's own claim that he was the one responsible for killing Stalin one needs to take into account the sort of person that the spy chief was. From that one can deduce that he may have only claimed responsibilty in order to cement himself as leader and carve out a reputation as the man who toppled Stalin. Beria had a thinly disguised contempt for Stalin and, unlike Khrushchev, Bulganin and Malenkov, was not upset when the dictator slipped into his short final ilness. As Stalin lay dying Beria would shock the others by berating and criticising him openly, only to revert straight back into being a toadying sycophant whenever the old man regained consciousness, feigning affection and kissing his ailing master's hand. When Stalin finally died, Beria left the others behind and headed straight back to Moscow, putting into motion his plan for power.

Unfortunately for Beria his strategy did not go nearly as well as he would have liked. His spiteful resentment of Stalin and undisguised relief at the dictators death had made his three colleagues realise that he was potentially even more dangerous than first thought and his immediate grab for power made it clear that he had to be stopped. Beria's major disadvantage was that he did not succeed Stalin to any of the major Communist Party leadership offices whereas Malenkov, as per Stalin's wish, immediately became leader of both the party and the government, with Khrushchev and Bulganin soon to follow in taking up their own top jobs. By June Beria had been arrested and publically denounced as a traitor. By the end of the year he had been secretly tried and executed.

In the end it was Khrushchev who was ultimately victorious in the complex squabble to replace Stalin. Within a few years he had outmanouvuered Malenkov and the rest of the competition to become undisputed leader of the Soviet Union, a post he held intil 1964. Unlike during the days of Stalin, however, Khrushchev's opponents mostly escaped with their lives. Khrushchev would go on to denounce the Stalin era and implement a program of "de-Stalinisation", addressing the more tyrannical aspects of his predecessor's reign. State terrorism for political gain, the favoured tactics of Beria's secret police, was formally ended and Stalin's hostile foreign policy towards the western powers was toned down in favour of what would go on to be called "peaceful co-existence".

Considering Khrushchev's wholesale denouncement of Stalin we should also ask if he, or indeed Malenkov or Bulganin, had a part to play in his death. The one thing that we know for sure is that the men did not send for medical help until a day after he was discovered on his bedroom floor. What reason would there be for not requesting help immediately? The fact there was a delay certainly suggests foul play. If the more moderate politburo members did not have a direct hand in Stalin's death then they may well have helped him along, ensuring that his barbaric regime could be brought to an end before the time came for them to inevitably fall foul of his raging paranoia, the same eventuality that Beria wished to avoid.

Perhaps both theories are correct in that Beria poisoned Stalin in order to usurp his power and create his own tyrannical police state, with others deliberatly leaving it too late to help the stricken leader in order not only to get rid of him but also to provide the grounds necessary to remove Beria and the threat that he posed. If such a battle of cunning did take place over Stalin's death then it was the more moderate contenders who succeeded and were subsequently able to implement reform and bring and end to most of Stalin's sadistic practices. On the other hand, had Beria's claim for power been successful, history might have taken a very very different course.

Edward IV: A Question of Legitimacy

"Tell them, when that my mother went with child
Of that insatiate Edward, noble York
My princely father then had wars in France
And, by true computation of the time,
Found that the issue was not his begot"

(Richard III (William Shakespeare) Act 3 Scene 5)

The debate about whether of not King Edward IV was illegitimate is hardly a new one. A few years back the issue was the focus of a British TV documentary, Britain's Real Monarch in which evidence was presented that seemed to confirm that the Yorkist King was born to someone other than Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York. In fact it has been suggested that Edward's real father was a humble archer from the Rouen garrison named Blaybourne rather than the blue-blooded patriarch of the House of York. Today it seems like little more than old skeletons in the closet but in the grand scheme of things it is actually rather significant. If Edward the IV was indeed illegitimate that not only invalidated his own right to occupy the throne of England but also the right of every monarch since.

The story begins in France during the final years of the Hundred Year's War as England sought to retain her remaining French territories. Richard Duke of York and his wife Cecily Neville were at the town of Rouen in Normandy, which Richard used a base to launch his military campaigns. Edward was born on April 28th 1442 which placed the time of his conception somewhere in the early Summer of 1441. This is where things get interesting...

The archives of Rouen Cathedral from the Summer of 1441 show that the clergy were offering their prayers for the safety of the Duke of York who was away on campaign at Pontoise, several days march from Rouen where Cecily had remained behind. This means that during those key weeks when Edward must have been conceived, his supposed father simply was not around to do the deed. If Edward was conceived before Richard went off on campaign then that would put the length of Cecily's pregnancy at an impossible eleven months. We can also assume that Edward was not born prematurely as there is no mention of it. The risks associated with sickly or premature babies with a claim to the throne meant that chroniclers always recorded them in writing. No such document relating to Edward has been discovered, suggesting that the pregnancy went to full term thus placing the time of his conception right in the middle of the period where Richard was out of town.

The rumours began almost immediately. The circumstances surrounding Edward's christening is also cited as evidence that Richard and Cecily did not have much to celebrate. The ceremony was a private and secretive affair conducted in a side chapel of the cathedral. Contrast this with the christening of Edward's younger brother for which the cathedral itself was used for the celebrated and very public occasion. As Edward grew up it was pointed out that he hardly resembled Richard or anyone else in the family for that matter. Edward's square jaw and round face, so prominent in portraits of him, starkly contrasted with the thin face of the man who was supposed to be his father. Edward also grew to an incredible (for the time) 6 feet 4 inches tall, far taller than most of the other Yorks.

In 1461 Edward dislodged the House of Lancaster from the throne and became King. Even then the rumours about his paternity continued to dog him although, with the Wars of the Roses still going on, many of them were likely exaggerated or dreamed up for propaganda purposes. The issue of Edward's legitimacy did not spill to the surface until after Edward died in 1483.

Edward's son was only 12 when he acceded to the thrown as Edward V. The elder Edward had named his brother, Richard Duke of Gloucester as protector until the younger came of age. Richard wasted no time in putting in his own claim for power, arresting the young King and confining him to the Tower of London with his brother. What happened to them is another mystery entirely.

With Edward IV's heirs out of the way. Richard had Parliament declare them illegitimate, citing the questions surrounding Edward's paternity as one of the causes for doing so (the other being the nature of Edward's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville). This opened the way for Richard to proclaim himself as King Richard III. Richard's death at the Battle of Bosworth Field two years later and the rise of Henry Tudor to the throne brought about the situation that has left a question mark over the legitimacy of very monarch from then up until this very day.

With his own claim to the throne tenuous at best (see my previous post on the subject of Henry's claim), Henry Tudor sought ways to legitimize himself in the eyes of a sceptical nation. To achieve this he married Elizabeth of York, ensuring that his descendants could claim strong royal ancestry through the York bloodline. At the time the move was considered a genius example of political matchmaking that would unite the Houses of York and Lancaster, end the Wars of the Roses and bring peaceful stable government to England. In light of what we know now (and what many may or may not have known then), however, there was one rather big problem with this arrangement.

Elizabeth of York was the daughter of Edward IV.

If the evidence is to be believed and Edward was indeed the lovechild of an archer then that would mean Elizabeth was not of the royal bloodline. Her marriage to Henry would have done nothing to legitimize the Tudor dynasty, meaning it had no right to occupy the throne. If that is the case then this illegitimacy has been subsequently passed down to the Stuarts, the Hanoverians and the Windsors. The entire institution of the British monarchy since the mid-15th century would have been based on a lie...

The Dubious Claim of Henry VII

It is common knowledge amongst the historical community that the claim which brought Henry Tudor to the throne of England was a very dodgy one. As the sole surviving Lancastrian claimant to the throne by 1483 Henry was the final throw of the dice for anyone who opposed the ruling House of York. Needless to say the gamble paid off and Henry's return to England from exile in 1485 culminated in his famous victory at the Battle of Bosworth Field, the death of the Yorkist King Richard III and the ushering in of a new era. Henry became King of England despite the fact that by typical standards he should never have been able to.

So just how much of a stretch was Henry VII's right to rule? He was certainly of royal blood, of that there is no question, but his link to the Royal Family was far from orthodox and fraught with legal issues which, under normal circumstances, would have prevented him from getting within 50 miles of the throne.

The basis of Henry's claim was that he was a great-great-grandson of John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster. Gaunt was a the third son of King Edward III and founder of the Lancastrian royal line which, under Gaunt's son, Henry Bolingbroke, deposed Richard II in 1399, bringing the senior Plantagentet line of King's to an end. Bolingbroke became King Henry IV and the Lancastrians occupied the throne until their overthrow by the Yorkist branch of the family in 1461. The deposed Lancastrian King Henry VI attempted to sieze back the throne in 1470 but was ultimately unsuccessful. Both Henry and his heir, Edward of Westminster were killed, extinguishing the senior Lancastrian line.

Unlike Henry Bolingbroke and his descendants, however, Henry Tudor's connection with the House of Lancaster was legally invalid. This was because John of Gaunt fathered four children with his mistress-turned-third wife, Katherine Swynford before they were married. These children were given the surname Beaufort as a nod to the Beaufort lordship which their father controlled in the Champagne region of France. Although Gaunt's nephew Richard II had made the kind gesture of legitimizing the Beaufort children, Henry IV made it clear that they and their descendants were barred from inheriting the throne.

This, in theory, should have destroyed the claim of Henry Tudor as he is descended from John Beaufort, the eldest illegitimate child that Gaunt and Katherine had together. The line then descended from John down to his granddaughter, Lady Margaret Beaufort who married Edmund Tudor in November 1455. With the Wars of the Roses raging in England, Henry Tudor was born in January 1457. His father, a Lancastrian supporter, had already died after being arrested and imprisoned by the Yorkist faction. As well has his maternal claim to the throne, the newborn Henry inherited strong Lancastrian credentials from his father. Edmund's father, Sir Owen Tudor, had fought alongside Henry V at Agincourt whilst his mother was the fabled warrior King's widow, Catherine of Valois.

The fact that Henry's already weak royal claim was through his mother made him an even less likely candidate but the fact was that for the House of Lancaster there was simply no other option. By the 1480s not only had main Lancaster line been killed off but the other Beaufort descendants had also been removed. Henry himself was living in exile in Brittany as the sole remaining male Lancastrian claimant, waiting for his moment to return home and topple the Yorkists from the throne. For the young Henry's supporters, 1485 was not a time to get picky about the legal ins and outs of their man's right to be King. He was descended from John of Gaunt and that would do just fine.

Nonetheless Henry was aware of the tenuous nature of his claim to the throne and took steps after becoming King to legitimize himself in the face of his critics. The masterstroke came when he married the Yorkist princess, Elizabeth of York. The marriage reunited the warring York and Lancaster branches and ensured that Henry's descendants had a strong claim to the throne through the York line, setting secure foundations for the upstart Tudor dynasty that would rule England for over a century.

Scotland's Last Stand: The Battle of Culloden

On a windswept Highland moor four miles to the east of Inverness came the decisive blow that brought an end to the final attempt to restore the Catholic House of Stuart to the thrones of Scotland and England. That blow came on April 16th 1746 when a British government force commanded by William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland fell upon the tired and disorganised Jacobite army of rebellion. The confrontation on Culloden Moor was both quick and brutal. Within an hour it was all over. After a failed Highland charge against the government army, the Jacobite army was routed and driven from the field.

This short battle is significant not only for being the last pitched battle fought on British soil but also because it marked the end of a series of attempts by the exiled Stuarts to recapture the kingdom from the House of Hanover. The pretender Charles Edward Stuart, known to history as Bonnie Prince Charlie, scuttled off back to exile in France, never to return. The Hanoverian victory not only reasserted their hold over the throne but also spelt an end to what little Scottish autnomy remained after the 1707 Act of Union. Culloden marked the final hurrah of the old Scottish clan system, which was subsequently persecuted into near-extinction by the British government which stepped up its efforts to integrate Scotland further into the united realm of Great Britain.

What a difference six months makes. To the ragtag mob of Jacobite rebels who took to the field at Culloden the events of November 1745 must have seemed like a lifetime ago. That month it was they who had launched an invasion south into England, capturing Carlisle and Manchester with practically no opposition and making it as far as Derby before hear'say about approaching British armies convinced Charles Stuart and his commanders to retreat back into the Scottish Highlands.

By that stage the Stuart pretender had already been in Britain for six months, biding his time in Scotland before making his move. Charles seemed like an unlikely candidate to lead a rebellion of gruff Scottish clansmen. Having spent all his life in France he was of distinctly continental character and could barely speak any English, let alone Gaelic. Nonetheless his surname and status was enough to win him the support of a number of Highland clans who joined him and his French-backed force.

Following the aborted invasion of England the Jacobite army retreated north, wearing out the boots and forcing the population of Dumfries to hand over their own. North of Glasgow Charles' army began losing men as it was hassled by British forces all the way up to Inverness. Once there Charles decided that the exhausted remains of his army should fight a defencive action against Cumberland's approaching troops. The final battle was looming...

Operation Unthinkable... Too Damn Right!

History often has a habit of throwing up surprises or interesting little nuggets of information. My stumbling upon the story of Operation Unthinkable certainly counts to me me as one of those moments. Unthinkable was a plan cooked up by Winston Churchill at the end of World War II in Europe which involved Britain and the United States turning on their wartime ally, the Soviet Union for the sake of ensuring the western allies' intentions for the restoration of democracy in Poland were realised (lets not forget that Poland was the reason Britain went to war with Germany in the first place). Churchill described the purpose of the plan as being:

"...to impose upon Russia the will of the United States and the British Empire. Even though 'the will' of these two countries may be defined as no more than a square deal for Poland, that does not necessarily limit the military commitment".

So, with the corpse of Nazi Germany still warm, the British Prime Minister was planning to start yet another, even bigger conflict. Now I've never been one to question Churchill's better judgement even though there were instances, such as the Gallipoli fiasco of 1915-16 were it let him down. However it does not take a genius of strategy to realise that Operation Unthinkable was aptly named. Even with American support it would have been near imossible to remove the enormous Soviet military presence in Europe by force. The British chiefs of staff recognised this and rejected Churchill's plan on the grounds that it was simply too hazardous.

With hindsight we can be glad that Operation Unthinkable never got off the drawing board even though there may have been a degree of good thinking behind the idea. Maybe Churchill forsaw the upcoming Cold War and hoped to nip it in the bud before it got started. He was greatly concerned about the security of Britain and Western Europe in the wake of the drawdown of US forces for the anticipated invasion of Japan and undoubtedly wanted to ensure that the Soviet threat was checked, especially considering that the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin was being increasingly unreliable with regards to keeping his promises. Either way I feel we can be glad it didn't happen. Going to war with Stalin then would have been and unnecessary gamble and, as well as being just as bloody and total as the war against Germany if not more so, would almost certainly have left the western allies in a worse-off position that when they started.

The War of 1812




The Burning of Washington

 

When someone mentions the War of 1812 to anyone with a passing interest in military history, chances are that the first thing which springs to mind is the Emperor Napoleon's disastrous invasion of Russia, a move which destroyed his army and broke his empire.

But at least Napoleon had an army to start with, which is more than can be said for the young United States of America, which made the ill-advised decision to go to war with the full might of the British Empire that same year. It was this conflict, rather than Napoleon's catastrophic campaign, that has become known as the War of 1812.

The War of 1812 is a conflict which the American people are quite happy to leave to history and not dig up quite so often. It does not carry the great stigma of defeat like that attached to their Vietnam legacy yet on the other hand it also lacks the feel-good Hollywood storyline of the War of Independence or the good-guy-crusade mentality that the Americans took into the two world wars. Although they didn't lose the 1812 war they hardly won it either. They were forced to suffer the humiliation of Washington DC being occupied and then burned by their enemies. The hostilities went on for three years and was ultimately resolved by the Treaty of Ghent in 1815, with neither side benefitting from the bloodshed. The fact that the Americans held on to claim a draw against a vastly superior opponent is something of a victory in itself. The big question is why this new nation, less than forty years old and with the War of Independence still fresh in the memory, felt the need to take up arms against its old master one again.

The Americans had a number of grievances with Britain in the years leading up to the War of 1812. British trade restrictions meant that the United States was not able to trade freely with France, with whom Britain was at war. The Americans resented what they saw as an open violation of international law by the British which prevented them from conducting trade with whoever they saw fit. They were also aware that the British were assisting the Native American tribes in their efforts to contain the United States' westward expansion. Britain was wary of American expansion into the Northwest Territory (present day Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin) and saw the Native peoples as a valuable buffer protecting the British colonies in Canada, providing them with arms and encouraging them to attack American settlers.

Probably the biggest issue that the United States had with Britain in the lead-up to hostilities was the British Royal Navy's impressment of American merchant sailors into its service. Many members of the American Merchant Marine were British-born Royal Navy veterans who had deserted and joined the Americans for better pay and conditions, becoming United States citizens in the process. The British failed to recognise the rights of these new citizens and actively sought to recover deserters or any sailor born British. Inevitably, however, some American-born sailers ended up being impressed into the British navy as well, further heightening tensions between the two countries.

All these factors culminated in President James Madison's declaration of war against the British Empire, which he signed into law on June 18th 1812 following its passage through Congress. Two days earlier the new British Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool, had just issued a repeal the trade restrictions but the Americans were unware of this as it took three weeks for the news to travel across the Atlantic.

President Madison's decision to go to war was a brave one considering what he was going up against. Perhaps he was banking on the majority of British forces remaining tied up in Spain and Portugal fighting the French. With Britain fully committed to the war in Europe they were not ready to face the United States' declaration of hostilities. The American forces, however, were even weaker and largly dependant on the state militias. An American invasion of Canada was thwarted and by 1814 the British were ready to exact revenge for their humiliating defeat in the Wars of Independence.

In August 1814 a British Army Expedition landed practically unnopposed on the shores of Virginia at Chesapeake Bay and headed north towards Washington DC. In a brief showdown at the Battle of Bladensburg the American militiamen were routed and the road to the American capital was left open. President Madison fled and the British advanced guard arrived in Washington on August 24th, the only time that the American capital has been occupied by a foreign army. They burned the city's public and government buildings, including the Capitol, the White House, the treasury buildings and the Library of Congress. The British Commander, Admiral George Cockburn, even saw to it that the offices of the National Intelligencer, a Washington newspaper, were torn down as punishment for several derogatory pieces written about him.

American morale hit a low point following the humiliation of Washington but they quickly rallied and began to develop the capabilities needed to fight the British on equal terms. American privateers were disrupting British sea trade whilst the American land forces grew in strength. The defeat of Napoleon in 1814 freed up experienced British troops for the North American campaign but this was unable to prevent the conflict descending into stalemate. The Treaty of Ghent was negotiated to end the war and it was signed on Christmas Eve 1814, taking another two months to reach the United States for ratification. With the Napoleonic Wars at an end the practic of impressment was stopped by the British, bringing to an end another of the American grievances which had brought the war about and opening up a new era of peaceful relations between the two countries.

Legacy

The fact that the War of 1812 goes largely unremembered amongst Americans (or the British for that matter) most likely stems from the fact that the whole thing turned out to be a draw with nobody really winning or losing too much out of it. The British regained some of the pride lost during the War of Independence while the Americans had their problems with the British addressed. Perhaps in these days of the "Special Relationship" it is not a good idea to draw unnecessary attention to the fact that the two best freinds once came to blows outside the romantic realms of the struggle for independence. As a war neither won nor lost it naturally became a war to forget.