Reflection on Last Train to Paradise by Les Standiford

               This book is about the construction of Henry Flagler’s railroad from Miami to Key West and its destruction in the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane, which had the highest wind speeds ever recorded. The best chapters in this book are the first and last, which describe the storm through the eyes of its victims and survivors in gruesome detail. I had no idea a hurricane could do what this one did, and the author quotes that if this hurricane hit Miami like Andrew did in 1992, there would have been one hundred times the damage. The book is written with a lot of drama, so I appreciated the author taking what could have been mundane and spicing it up.

               Henry Flagler earned his money with Standard Oil, where he was second in total shares only to J.D. Rockefeller. At the end of his life, he was inspired by the opportunities present in Florida, visiting Saint Augustine and building his first of many hotels there. Eventually, he dotted the entire East Coast of Florida with hotels and connected them all with his Florida East Coast Railway company. He became the most influential man in the state to the extent that when he wanted to divorce his wife due to her “incurable insanity” (it seems like she was very mentally ill), the state of Florida changed its divorce laws to help him out. People joked that postage for Florida with the abbreviation “Fla.” Was actually short for “Flagler”.

               His railroad was incredibly difficult to build, especially as it reached the Homestead area near Lake Surprise, where “you could swing a pint can about on the end of a string and come up with a quart of mosquitos.” It would end up costing him greatly, and he was reputed to have said that “I would have been a rich man if it hadn’t been for Florida.” By 1905, Flagler had spent $30 million in Florida, with $12 million on hotel building and the other 18 on his railroad. The extension to Key West would end up costing $27 million. The major challenge was the long stretches (the largest being seven miles long) of ocean to traverse with heightened rail lines. It would be done as follows: first they would plant pilings deep into the ocean bed. Then they would build a sort of wooden structure around the long pilings. With this square in place, they would seal the bottom and suction the water out. Workers would jump in and start to secure the rest by filling it with cement and reinforced steel. When finished, there would be a large, square or rectangular pillar sticking out of the water ready for the train line to go over it. The deeper the water, the higher the line had to be above the water for storm surges. Each foot of depth meant another foot of height above water.

               A hurricane in 1909 taught the bridge-builders many lessons. It swept away many miles of track because they had blocked off tidal flows. When the hurricane came through, the water returning back to where it was brought huge structures crashing down because they had dumped lots of waste in concentrated areas, creating huge, collapsing, unreinforced dykes. The railroad was largely destroyed in the 1935 Labor Day hurricane, with a death toll of 400-600 people. It lasted from January 1912 to September 1935. The descriptions from the ground of what it was like are terrifying and a strong reminder of the power of nature. It essentially wiped the middle keys clear of life and property and everything had to be rebuilt from scratch. If the same storm hit Miami it would cause the same damage in property a hundred times over.

               Something I didn’t realize was that in the turn of the century, Key West was Florida’s busiest city. It had the most people in Florida in 1890 and its port was the 13^th busiest in the nation. However, instead of encouraging growth in Key West, it seems to some that the railroad actually helped reduce the population. It gave a lot of people access to Miami for just $2.50 and they often didn’t come back, especially after the Great Depression. Between 1920 and 1930, Key West lost more than seven thousand residents.

                In sum, this is a decent book and a pretty quick read at just over 200 pages. I enjoyed learning about the history of the railroad but the best parts were really the history of other places in Florida and the amazing descriptions of the natural beauty that abounds in the area.

Miscellaneous Facts:

• The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 was the deadliest in history, claiming 8,000 lives with winds of 150-miles-per-hour.

Reflection on The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power by Daniel Yergin

               This is a book about the history of oil: how they got it, what they did with it, and how much money they sold it for. It was gifted to me by one of my best friends and it was a very good recommendation. It’s thick at nearly 800 pages, but it does an excellent job of explaining the oil politics, which are basically all politics, of the later 19^th and 20^th centuries.

               The book begins with the first independent drillers discovering useful oil for kerosene, a home heating product, but the first section is quickly dominated, much like the oil markets of the day, by Standard Oil. John D. Rockefeller and Henry Flagler are the big names and they were the ones who consolidated about 90% of the American industry into their hands. They used rebates (special freight costs given to high-use clients) and drawbacks (kickbacks from railroads to the oil companies to get their freight) to beat their competitors. They also built trusts, which were basically secret combinations of companies that would drive their rivals out of business. At one point, they were able to drive prices down to forty-eight cents a barrel, making oil cheaper than water in the Oil Regions. Standard’s typical way of operating was to enter a region and politely offer to purchase oil companies there. That often worked on many companies when Rockefeller showed them his profits. Then, if it didn’t work, he would “give them a good sweating” and cut regional prices to operate at a loss subsidized by his other regions. Out of this era four “oil giants” emerged. They were Standard Oil in the USA, the Rothschilds in Asia and Western Europe, the Nobels (of Nobel prize fame) in Central Asia, and various Russian producers. However, in 1909, Standard oil was dissolved by the government to form Standard Oil of New Jersey (Exxon), Standard Oil of New York (Mobil), Standard Oil California (Chevron), Standard Oil of Ohio (later an arm of BP), and others.

               World War One was sort of the baptism in blood and fire that oil needed to become the world’s most important commodity. Up until then, the most valuable product gotten from the crude was kerosene, used for heating lamps in wintry areas. Gasoline, however, formerly a waste product with little value, became crucial when its use was discovered in powering combustion engines. In WWI these uses were finally taken advantage of. Beginning the war, the UK had just 827 motor cars and 15 motor cycles. By the end they had “56,000 trucks, 23,000 motorcars, and 34,000 motorcycles and motor bicycles.” The United States become very rich selling oil to the combatants. The USA satisfied 80% of allied oil needs during the war, increasing output from 266 million barrels per year to 335 million barrels between 1914 and 1917. The USA was also using plenty of that oil itself. “By 1929, 78 percent of the world’s autos were in America. “In that year, there were five people for each motor vehicle in the United States, compared to 30 people per vehicle in England and 33 in France, 10 per vehicle in Germany, 702 in Japan, and 6,130 people per vehicle in the Soviet Union. The technology continued to develop and inventions like synthetic gasoline made the industry more efficient while the seismograph and airplanes made the drilling process more targeted.

               In 1928, the first truly worldwide collusion occurred as a response to massive Russian production. The “As-Is” agreement between oil companies allocated quotas of markets to different oil companies, allowing companies to not have to worry about price competition from other adherents. These agreement between private companies was a predecessor to the agreement made decades later between oil-producing countries to control the market—OPEC. This transition would continue starting in Mexico in 1938, as the balance of power started to shift from oil companies to oil-producing countries. It was then that Mexico nationalized its oil industry and the United States government accepted it (despite protestations from the British) for a small fee paid to the companies. In the future more and more countries would nationalize or threaten nationalization as a means to get a bigger cut of the oil profits.

               In World War Two, oil was even more critical than in the First World War. In 1941, during the German invasion of Russia, Hitler considered oil so important that he had his troops head for Baku, Azerbaijan, a major oil region, instead of Moscow. The end of the same year, the Japanese attacked the USA at Pearl Harbor because the USA had cut off oil supplies to Japan, which was entirely dependent on imports. Their reaction was to punch the US in the nose to slow us down at Pearl Harbor while they headed south to Indonesia, where the Shell oil company had major assets drilling in those reserves. Then, through 1943, German U-boats (submarines) became one of the most deadly naval forces of the war, sinking 108 ships in March 1943 alone. They were aided by (milk-cows), submarines that carried oil for refueling, extending the range of the U-boats significantly. Finally, in 1943 the Allies broke their codes and introduced long-range aircraft, turning the tide in Spring and Summer of 1943 and clearing the way for an Allied invasion of Europe, which would be known as Operation Overlord in June 1944. When they did invade Europe, American divisions would use 100 times more horsepower in WWII than in WWI.

               After the war, big changes came in the European oil supply. While in 1946, 77 percent of European oil came from the United States, it was expected that by 1951, 80 percent would come from the Middle East, where discoveries were being made in Iran, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. Even the United States started importing large amounts of oil from the Middle East to fuel massive and massively growing demand in the domestic market. The Middle East would be the major oil supplier of the Western world until more supplies were found in the North Sea, Texas, and Alaska. But until then, the shift kept on going from oil companies to oil countries. Venezuela managed to achieve a 50-50 deal, which became the gold standard in how an oil company should split its profits with its host country. Iran would also cut a better deal. Meanwhile in the United States, companies faced two types of government action, often at the same time. On the one hand, they would be pressured to cooperate to form strategic reserves in case of war, yet on the other, they would be subjected to populist, “anti-trust” lawsuits by the Justice Department.

               From World War Two until the 1970s, the United States increased oil production from 5.5 to 9.5 million barrels a day, but America’s share of global production slipped from 64 to 22 percent. This was because the Middle East had increased production 1,500 percent, from 1.1 million barrels a day to 18.2 million barrels a day. After the 6-Day War, the Arab states tried to place an oil embargo on the West but it failed. However, they would be successful after the October War, triggering massive shortages in the United States in 1973-4 and again in 1979-80. During these shocks, the Europeans, much more dependent on MidEast oil, were generally much more willing to negotiate than the Americans. These shocks devastated Western countries. For example, US Gross Domestic Product SHRANK 6 percent between 1973 and 1975, while unemployment reached 9 percent. Thankfully for the USA, more supplies were found in Alaska and Mexico later on, but those shocks would be enough to topple governments.

               The book continues into the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, but the same themes abound (though the OPEC alliance declines with time). There are a lot of names to remember, but I tried to focus more on bigger themes, but anyone who likes to read about swashbuckling capitalists will enjoy this. In sum, the world became utterly dependent on oil in the 20^th century and on the countries that had it. This weakened everyone else. Europe faced serious problems as a result of its dependence and so did the United States to a lesser extent. To me, the book shows the importance of having diverse energy sources that free you from independence on any one source. No powerful country can depend on any other for its energy because energy is everything.

              

Miscellaneous Facts:

• Standard Oil was named from the “Standard” quality of its oil. At the time, people couldn’t be sure of the quality of what they got and many thousands died or were burned in explosions.
• Jews were the largest single group of inhabitants in Baghdad at the end of WWI.
• The modern “jerry can” as we know it is an invention of World War 2. Americans found the standard ten-gallon can too heavy and often chose to use salvaged five-gallon German “blitz cans” to refill cars and tanks. However, the Americans opted to add a spout to the can instead of using a funnel (which allowed dirt and mud to enter the engine) creating the red, spouted “jerry can” that we use today, named for the “Jerries” (Germans) who used it.
• In 1956, when the UK and France invaded the Suez Canal Zone with an Israeli invasion as a pretext, it was viewed by many at the time as a way of stopping a proto-Hitler. French and UK leaders saw in Gamel Abdel Nasser a populist demagogue who could do what Hitler did and they were determined not to appease him. It seems ridiculous now, but PM Anthony Eden staked his career on it and lost, primarily thanks to American opposition from President Eisenhower. At that moment the Cold War was especially “hot” as the USSR invaded Hungary.

Reflection on Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow

               George Washington was a guy who lived for honor and service and whose extreme ambition fought with his extreme modesty. He spent tons of time improving himself (reminiscent of Ben Franklin), yet never attained a college education. He felt an inferiority to Europeans and the well-read, and always felt that he had to have the latest in European fashions. He was deeply ashamed of his inability to read Latin or Greek, like Jefferson and other founders could. He was an exacting leader and punished his insubordinates harshly and it seems like he spent most of his life feeling that he was above most other people, with a very “patrician” feel. He treated his enlisted soldiers strictly while he enjoyed the presence of officers who were of the upper-class sort. He was also a flirt and loved the company of women, growing very close to two that he wasn’t married to (but there’s no evidence that he ever strayed from his wife). Having read this book, when I think of Washington I think of someone who took great pains to fix the flaws he saw in himself and had little patience for those flaws in others.

               George was thrust into huge responsibility by the time he was 21 years old due to the deaths of his father and older brother, which left him grieving, but also the inheritor of a large estate. The pattern would repeat itself several times thanks to the short lifespans in 18^th century Virginia, with his stepchildren and his brother’s family. His brother’s death on the eve of the French and Indian War would put GW in a position to, as a wealthy landowner and practiced surveyor, lead a force into the frontier. In the one engagement he faced, he lost miserably, though in reporting it back to his superiors he made it seem like a tie. He had faced danger bravely though and bullets had pierced his hat. For his bravery he earned some acclaim in Virginia and gained a reputation in what was still a small state. He would go out again in the war and lose his only other battle as well, but he ended up building a powerful aura as a young, brave commander. In Virginia he was beloved, but the Royal Army and Navy rejected him and treated him poorly being a “colonial.” He would harbor resentment over that for years to come.

Washington the Plantation Owner

               As a plantation owner, Washington seems to have been moderately successful with his crops but always in danger with his financed. He was scientific, experimenting with different crops and soils as well as inventing a new way of threshing wheat (which I got to see demonstrated at Mount Vernon last year). He owned over a hundred slaves at one point, yet he was constantly on the verge of financial collapse. He spent what money he got on improvements for his mansion and farm as well as generous gifts to relatives for education (perhaps because of his own lack of education) but that often left him with little left over, especially in the years between being General and President, when he hosted visitors constantly. Basically, he was land rich and cash poor. Part of the reason that many Virginia planters were fomenting revolution was that half of all the debt owed by the colonies to England was from tidewater Virginia, aka the coastal region.

               How did Washington treat his slaves? Like Franklin, Washington grew in opposition to slavery over the years. He was unlike Jefferson then, who began as an idealist and later found it more practical to advocate for slavery’s tolerance. Washington rarely said the word “slavery” and acknowledged its immorality and his shame, though he was obviously not so ashamed that he would free his slaves. It didn’t help that he and most other planters were in tremendous debt and abolishing slavery would be financial ruin (for them). Washington’s assistant Tobias Lear claimed a more “enlightened” slavery occurred on Mount Vernon: “The negroes are not treated as blacks in general are in this country. They are clothed and fed as well as any laboring people whatever and they are not subject to the lash of a domineering overseer—but they are still slaves.” I should not that Lear was incorrect- Washington did have his overseers whip the slaves.

               In the midst of the Revolutionary War, Washington sent back an order to Mount Vernon not to separate slave families, indicating his developing attitude, also stating that he was anxious to “get clear” of the slaves, though he would not do so in his lifetime. This was part of what looks like a larger trend among slaveowners as in the wake of the Revolution everyone felt a little more enlightened. For example, James Madison wrote to Jefferson that Lafayette’s support of abolition “does him a real honor, as it is proof of his humanity.” But talk was cheap. Madison never freed his slaves, not even upon his death. Lafayette one the other hand was not just talk. In French Guiana he bought a large sugar plantation with seventy slaves and freed them all, paying wages to those who could work, schooling the children, and banning the sale of human beings. He instructed his agent in the area to keep buying more lands and freeing more slaves. Lafayette was the real deal. There is no evidence that GW wanted to educate his slaves, but his steward and cousin, Lund Washington and Lund’s wife, Elizabeth, taught slaves to read the bible.

               It feels like Washington was delusional as to the condition of his slaves. He was perplexed by the fact that when he timed their work they worked so much faster when a master was watching, as if they would enjoy working for free. He also worked them hard reclaiming swamps during freezing winters. Like most racists, he also had his “good ones.” His loyal slave Billy Lee (who had the rare privilege of a last name) was his attendant for decades and he even insisted on being brought to New York as a butler to the new president. He was always treated well, but his treatment only serves to put in starker contrast the maltreatment of the many other slaves. As president he would continue to privately oppose slavery to some but to support it to others. He fantasized that it would go away on its own.

               In a rare example of Washington being duplicitous, he attempted to keep his slaves enslaved when in Philadelphia as president through some clever means. Pennsylvania had a law that required all slaves living in the state for over six months to become free. Washington couldn’t afford to let this happen since his slaves technically belonged to the Custis estate of his grandchildren, which he would have to reimburse for escaped slaves. To prevent this from occurring, he found excuses to bring slaves back to the South every six months without them realizing what was going on. When slaves did escape, as did over 40 of his slaves during his life, he tried to have them captured and some were. Others managed to get away and Washington always had trouble wondering why, if he had treated them so well, that they wanted to escape. One example was the enslaved man Hercules, who left behind a six-year-old daughter at Mount Vernon. When asked if she was upset at her father for leaving her, she replied, “Oh! Sir, I am very glad, because he is free now.” For a really poignant story and a good example of an enslaved person’s yearning to be free, I’d recommend looking into the story of Ona Judge, a successful escapee from Mount Vernon. In short, the Washingtons were delusional when it came to their slaves and there is not one person who wishes to be enslaved if they can avoid it. Most runaways did not escape to a much better quality of life economically or socially in the North, but they did escape bondage, which was a tremendous personal weight to be lifted.

               Interestingly, the book makes several references to the economic backwardness of slavery. Slaves generally worked at a lower pace than people who earned money. Up to and sometimes more than half of slaves did not work at all on a plantation because of being too old, too young, or too sick. Overseers were expensive and often stole from the masters. The problem was that once you had many slaves, it was hard to not have them, as they became a form of currency in the South and, accustomed to free labor, plantation masters were unable to switch to paid labor without a downgrade in their lifestyle, which was apparently the worst fate imaginable. IT should be noted however, that Washington, in freeing his slaves upon his death, was the only Southern founding father to do so. However, he decreed, specifically, that they would be free after Martha’s death, giving them an incentive to kill her. Someone attempted just that, trying to burn Mount Vernon to the ground one day, prompting her to free all those that she legally could.

Washington the General

               Washington’s greatest strengths as a general were in his leadership ability between battles. He lost the majority of battles he fought but his skill was in keeping the army together between them. As in any asymmetrical struggle, the smaller force needed to avoid decisive battles and prolong the effort so that the larger force would decide it wasn’t worthwhile. Washington realized this at the Battle of Monmouth. He was successful at things like inoculating his troops against Smallpox and convincing them to stay on and sign longer enlistment contracts when the old ones expired. In one of his greatest victories, not a single shot was fired; to free the city of Boston he secretly moved artillery captured earlier from the British onto Dorchester Heights for the British to see in the morning. When they saw it, they know their position was impossible and the British fled the city. Unfortunately, this success was followed by a bloody defeat in Brooklyn that lead to a retreat after losing 300 men dead and another thousand prisoners. Yet, in another example of his genius in between battles, he executed a flawless retreat of nine thousand men in the night, losing not one.

               Shortly after the retreat from Brooklyn to Manhattan across the East River, the British and Hessian forces attacked at Kip’s bay (the mid-thirties on the East Side) and Washington, discovering a highly disorderly retreat, broke down in face of it all and froze into a catatonic state until his aides rescued him from British forces closing in just 80 yards away. Other times though, his resolve showed. For example, “For two hours in blazing heat, British and Continentals exchanged cannon fire. As in previous battles, Washington experienced narrow escapes. While he was deep in conversation with one officer, a cannonball exploded at his horse’s feet, flinging dirt in his face; Washington kept talking as if nothing had happened.”

              

Washington the President

               When he became president, GW’s number one priority was strengthening the federal government, putting him in the camp of the Federalists. The Federalist party would quickly emerge and he would ideologically agree with them (more and more so with time), but he never declared for a party, hoping to remain above the petty political arguments. He mainly appointed Federalists and refused to appoint anyone who was overtly hostile to the Constitution. Unconcerned that it was a breach of the separation of powers, congressional leader and main author of the Constitution James Madison serves as one of Washington’s closest confidants and a speech writer. He would continue to do so even as he allied less and less with Washington, Hamilton, and the Federalist and more so with Jefferson and the anti-federalists, who were converging into the Democratic-Republican Party. The relationship was strange as Madison would write Washington’s address to Congress, Congress’s response to Washington, and then Washington’s response to Congress’s response.

               As President, Washington became more and more self-identified with the North. He observed in Massachusetts that “There is a great equality in the people of this state. Few or no opulent men and no poor—great similitude in their buildings… The farms… are small, not averaging more than 100 acres.” As part of his new alignment with Northerners, he came to support Alexander Hamilton more and more, being critical when Hamilton launched the idea of having a permanent, well-funded debt, which terrified Southerners and many conservatives in the new Congress. Hamilton also succeeded in pushing through new taxes to fund a larger federal government. With this crucial bank bill that essentially created US monetary policy with the National Bank (later destroyed by Andrew Jackson and recreated later as the Federal Reserve) Washington argued against Madison that the Constitution granted powers beyond just those explicitly mentioned, setting the stage for the increase of federal powers over the next several hundred years. Years after the bank bill debate, Washington told his friend and colleague Edmund Randolph that is the Union would break up in North and South that he would choose the North.

               Jefferson and Madison would not let Washington go the Federalist way so easy and Jefferson especially had many heated conversations with Washington attempting to bring him back to his side. Eventually, the two created the National Gazette, a newspaper dedicated to haraguing the Commander-In-Chief and claiming that he was monarchical. Both of them ended things on bad terms with Washington and were not on speaking terms with him at the end of his life. Martha Washington especially reviled Jefferson until her death. Many saw the sectional lines that would later tear the country apart in the Civil War and by the end of Washington’s second term as President, anti-Federalists had coalesced into the Democratic-Republican Party, later the Democratic Party that would secede during the Civil War. Many worried that Jeffersonians would tear apart the Union, and indeed they would as the Democratic Party in 1860, despite all the concessions they received in the Constitution.

               Washington is, to me, one of the three greatest American presidents. His achievements, listed by Chernow, are the following: “He had restored American credit and assumed state debt; created a bank, a mint, a coast guard, a customs service, and a diplomatic corps; introduced the first accounting, tax, and budgetary procedures; maintained peace at home and abroad; inaugurated a navy, bolstered the army, and shored up coastal defenses and infrastructure; proved that the country could regulate commerce and negotiate binding treaties; protected frontier settlers, subdued Indian uprisings, and established law and order amid rebellion, scrupulously adhering all the while to the letter of the Constitution. During his successful presidency, exports had soared, shipping had boomed, and state taxes had declined dramatically. Washington had also opened the Mississippi to commerce, negotiated treaties with the Barbary states, and forced the British to evacuate their northwestern forts. Most of all he had shown a disbelieving world that republican government could prosper without being spineless or disorderly or reverting to authoritarian rule.”

Washington the Man

               Washington’s philosophy on success, which was much like Ben Franklin’s, though he wouldn’t have known it, was to remain quiet. He would feign indifference and sound people out to see if they were sympathetic and like-minded. He would learn as much as possible about other’s thoughts before revealing his own, giving him a conversational and persuasive advantage. Thomas Jefferson observed of Washington and Franklin that, “I never heard either of them speak ten minutes at a time, nor to any but the main point… they laid their shoulders to the great points, knowing that the little ones would follow of themselves.” When he was angry, he would do the same, letting his silence speak for him, to leave his victim in a “torment of uncertainty.”

               GW always seemed to have problems with his mother, who was cold and distant. Chernow tells us that she was basically selfish and always wanted him home, working for her, and though he was a dutiful son, he could never satisfy her wants and she never gave him the affection that mothers usually give their sons. Washington’s greatest military triumph would come at the end of the year though, when on Christmas 1776 his forces crossed the Delaware River and attacked the Hessians at Trenton, defeating them and earning praise from Frederick the Great of Prussia, saying, “The achievements of Washington and his little band of compatriots between the 25^th of December and the 4^th of January… were the most brilliant of any recorded in the annals of military achievements.”

               George married Martha Washington not out of a passionate love, but out of a more appropriateness of the match. Most observers said that they were less heated lovers and more best friends. They loved each other, and it didn’t hurt that they both came from upper class Virginia society. In letters to young relatives, George advocated entering into a match based on practical factors such as personality, character, temperament, and money. With Martha he inherited lots of money, slaves, and two stepchildren that he treated as his own.

               Washington was not ultra-creative, but he used his judgment well. The author writes that, “He was at his best when reacting to the opinions of others. Once he made up his mind it was difficult to dislodge him from his opinion…” He would always solicit different opinions from his advisors and was very open to conflicting ideas while he was yet undecided. GW was a man of honor and a strict moral code. In fact, even after Benedict Arnold’s treason, Washington refused to open a letter he had in his possession that Arnold had written to his wife, Peggy. Right on the border of idiotic and honorable, the letter gave her instructions to reach him, which Washington never saw thanks to his sense of honor not to open a letter between a married couple that he’d sworn not to.

               While he seemed like he was always calm, cool, and collected, GW had very strong emotions under the surface. In notes in the margins of a polemic written against him and the Federalists by James Monroe, Washington wrote, “self-importance appears here,” and “insanity in the extreme!” Also during his last days as he said farewell to the presidency and thought more about mortality, he cried openly and was often unable to speak at many events.

               Washington never complained in what must have been an agonizing death. He was sick with some kind of bacterial throat infection that clogged his throat and was slowly suffocating him. As he struggled to breathe, he was at his own urging, drained of blood, with the doctors draining fully half of his blood before his death. To the end he was concerned with others and was attuned to others’ moods. Noticing a slave had been standing for hours on end, he urged him to sit. He is said to have “expired without a struggle or a sigh!”

Conclusion

               I came away from this book with the impression of Washington as a deeply flawed (especially on slavery) but well-meaning man. He knew he was wrong on that issue but he delayed and delayed emancipating his slaves, showing his great shame and yet a weakness as well. He was practically deified after his death and we are just now coming to a more historically correct understanding of the man. I would look to him as flawed in his business dealings, his tolerance of slavery, and his patrician attitude towards people he considered his social inferiors but he is exemplary in his sense of duty, his tenacity, his ability to think of others first, and most of all, his willingness to give up the enormous powers given to him as both General and President, often against the urgings of his advisors. A man like him comes around once in a generation.

Miscellaneous facts:

• ·        George’s older brother Lawrence fought with a Virginia regiment in the Royal Navy in the War of Jenkin’s Ear, a dispute between England and Spain. In that war, he went to battle in Cartagena. Though the English lost, he was so impressed with the Admiral, that he named his farmstead after him, Mount Vernon.
• ·        In the 1920’s, J.P. Morgan, who owned some of Washington’s letters, destroyed them, claiming that they were “smutty.” Washington may not have stood out for his humor but he was known to enjoy “hearty, masculine jokes.”
• ·        Slave masters in the 18^th century didn’t romanticize slavery or find “divine sanction” for it like those of the 19^th century up until the Civil War. It seems that it was that later generation of slave owners that tried to label it a positive thing and that it was God’s will.
• ·        GW had correspondence with Phillis Wheatley, a 22-year-old slave in Boston who became famous for her poetry. His ideals became more and more egalitarian with the war and a good example is that he invited her to visit him in his headquarters.
• ·        As general, Washington commanded five thousand black soldiers in the Continental Army, making it the most integrated American fighting force before the Vietnam War.
• ·        Good quote from the English poet Edward Young, quoted in a letter from Abigail Adams: “Affliction is the good man’s shining time.”
• ·        The term “biting the bullet” comes from the fact that men in the Continental Army would bite lead bullets to help them endure floggings from their officers.
• ·        This is weird, but I made some connections. The book mentions that Washington, always a clever spymaster, had planned to kidnap King George III’s son, who was in New York. While this never came to pass, the operation commander was Matthias Ogden, whose brother, Aaron Ogden would be the famous Ogden of Gibbons v Ogden, the Supreme Court case that held that Congress had the power to regulate interstate commerce. The Gibbons of that case had as an assistant a young Cornelius Vanderbilt, who would go on to be THE Vanderbilt. Connections are crazy.
• ·        Before George Washington, there were hardly any mules in the country. He bred horses and donkeys to create 57 of the first mules in the USA and is today known in some circles as “The Father of the American Mule.”
• ·        Washington did NOT have wooden teeth. He did, however, have teeth problems all his life and eventually lost every single one, using dentures made of ivory that gradually stained and fractured, giving the appearance of wood.
• ·        Here’s a funny story about Washington being painted by five painters at once:
•       “Gilbert Stuart, who was then painting his iconographic images of Washington, happened to stroll by as Washington sat in thrall to the busy swarm of painting Peales: “I looked in to see how the old gentleman was getting on with the picture, and, to my astonishment, I found the general surrounded by the whole family.” As Stuart walked away, he ran into Martha. “Madam,” said Stuart, “the general’s in a perilous situation.” “How sir?” “He is beset, madam—no less than five upon him at once; one aims at his eye—another at his nose—another is busy with his hair—the mouth is attacked by a fourth; and the fifth has him by the button. In short, madam, there are five painters at him, and you who know how much he has suffered when only attended by one, can judge of the horrors of his situation.’”

Reflection on War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence by Ronan Farrow

               War on Peace reads like an extended article and is really closer to journalism than the history books I usually read. It was a really engaging book because of the way that it is novelistic in its descriptions of people and events. Farrow gives you a lot of scene-building so that you get a picture of the characters and understand them really well.

               The book focuses on the last 15-20 years or so of American foreign policy and covers the changes in the Department of State during that period. Mainly, he addresses a change from “talk first, shoot later” to the opposite. Especially in the Trump administration, the diplomatic corps has been weakened, and with it, American power and influence. The main characters are the author and the diplomats he meets in the Foreign Service as well as the higher-ups he interviewed to write the book. The book is kind of unfocused, so this post will be as well.

               In an interview with Kissinger, the former National Security Counsel (I think) states that often it is more tempting for the President to seek the advice of the NSC because they’re in the same building, while the Secretary of State is several blocks away. Kissinger responds to the major theme of the book, the decline of the State Department, by stating that new institutions have arisen in its place, though the author points out that the new institutions (the military, mainly) are not doing the “thoughtful, holistic foreign policy analysis” that State once provided. Kissinger also touched on the American failure in Vietnam. He contrasted the application of containment principles in Europe and in Asia. In Europe, the societies being protected from Communism had existed for hundreds of years and were more or less stable. In Vietnam on the other hand, the state was new and weaker. European societies had just come off of a several-hundred-year hot streak where they competed and strengthened armies and states. Vietnam hadn’t had that experience.

               The book also covers the situation of American relations with Pakistan in depth, the relationship being dominated by the US supply of funds in exchange for cooperation in the War in Afghanistan. The relationship began when Iran, the US’s former big Central Asian ally, overthrew the Shah and stopped being a US ally. The US settled on Pakistan and the relationship began with Pakistan helping the US help the Afghans to throw the Soviets out of Afghanistan. However, this resulted in 40 years of strengthening the Pakistani army at the expense of the civilian state. The too-strong army overthrew civilian governments and also funded terrorist groups that attached India. The major problem that Farrow says the relationship has is that America uses Pakistan purely tactically but doesn’t let them in on strategic planning. That means that Pakistan knows short-term needs, like that the USA needs to use drones in this sector this month, but it doesn’t know what the end goal in Afghanistan is. The US probably doesn’t know either. What’s crazy to me is how much money a lot of State officials wanted to pump into Afghanistan, a blatantly corrupt country that in my opinion has problems that far outweigh its value. Pakistan funds terrorism and is and Islamic fundamentalist nuclear state that constantly harasses India, the largest free democracy in the world. Even after all our aid to Pakistan, the people hate America and we have to send all our aid through NGOs that won’t show our flag.

               I’d recommend this book to anybody interested in foreign policy or anyone joining the Foreign Service. It’s a short read at about 300 pages and not dry at all. I agree with the author that the United States needs to rebuild its diplomatic forces because those investments save a lot of money. I also agree that we need to dedicate ourselves more strongly to human rights, recognizing that there are certain situations where once you insert yourself, atrocities will be committed. Part of committing to human rights is understanding that you cannot be the world policeman. Once you are in a war, your country will kill men, women, and children. That is what war is. That’s why it’s so bad. The idea of looking out for human rights in a war is a total oxymoron. Don’t go to war unless someone else attacks you first and continues to pose a threat to you. If you conquer, you will kill, enslave, and torture. It’s unavoidable and it’s what’s happened in Afghanistan.

Reflection on The Holocaust: The Human Tragedy by Martin Gilbert

Warning: This is a very good book, but it has tons of anecdotes that are extremely disturbing. I’ll quote some here so just be ready. Overall, I would say that this is a hugely important book because of the detail it goes into in exposing the crimes committed. However, it is nearly 1,000 pages long and is absolutely brutal to read.

Where does our information about the Holocaust come from?

               The reason we have proof that the Holocaust occurred, targeted the Jewish people, and succeeded in robbing and killing six million of them (and 2.5 million Russian prisoners of war) is thanks to witness accounts (German, Jewish, Pole, Ukrainian, American, Russian, and more), documents preserved by the Germans, documents that were hidden by Jews such as time capsules, diaries, and journals, forensic evidence of where bodies were buried and burned in pits, and physical evidence such as the actual trains, ghettos, and camps. I would like to read more about holocaust denial, but this book makes it clear how insane it is to deny the historical existence of the Holocaust. It provides names, dates, sources, and all sorts of material that corroborate stories, often told from the Nazi point of view as well.

The story            

               The Nazis gained true power in 1932, when they won a large number of seats in the German legislature, the Reichstag. Hitler refused to join a coalition unless he was made Chancellor and no government was formed. Three months later, the Nazis lost seats in another election, and they were outnumbered by Socialists and Communists, who would not unite. Instead, the right (Nazis) and center united and Hitler became Chancellor.

               By 1933, small but significant numbers of Jews began to leave Germany, with over 5,000 going to British Palestine and a further thirty thousand going to Western Europe and the USA. In Palestine, it coincided with riots in which Arabs attacked public buildings in Nablus, Jaffa, and Jerusalem, as Jews had been steadily growing as a portion of the population for several decades. There was a strong connection to the rioting, as Nazis were broadcasting anti-Semitic propaganda to the Arab world. With the Arabs incensed against Jews, Britain restricted Jewish immigration, likely costing thousands if not far more lives in the Holocaust. But at least Britain accepted more than ten thousand Jewish children into the United Kingdom, whereas the United States admitted only 500. A major tragedy of the Holocaust is that it stemmed from not only a German desire to rid themselves of Jews, but that no other country would take them.

               In Germany, Jews were robbed, lynched, and otherwise wronged with impunity throughout the Nazi years, leading to hundreds of Jewish deaths. These times would end up looking like a golden age by 1944. For example, many know about Kristallnacht, the night when Nazis and German people broke into and looted Jewish stores and homes (“Kristallnacht” for all the broken glass). However, most probably don’t know that the Jews, not the German criminals, were then fined for the damage, and every Jew had 20% of his/her property confiscated.

               The Holocaust ramped up with Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Until that point, 30,000 Jews had been murdered in 21 months, but during the worst years of the Holocaust, the Nazis would hit that number every few days. Within just five weeks of the German invasion, they had killed more Jews than in the previous eight years of Nazi rule thanks to “a remote region, the cover of an advancing army, vast distances, local collaborators, and an intensified will to destroy.” The SS leaders did so with tremendous amounts of help from local Eastern European gentiles. They formed the Einsatzgruppen, mobile death squads that rounded up and slaughtered Jews all over the German-occupied territories as far as the Caucasus Mountains. A major theme in the book is how the men who committed these slaughters were able to do so, and often it was thanks to alcohol. Most people cannot commit these atrocities, but the Nazis would get each other and their collaborators drunk and with some group pressuring, they were able to kill. After killing one person and then a dozen more, each murder is easier.

               Why could Jews not resist and fight back against the Nazis? They did. However, they were confronting a truly difficult situation. The Jews were largely unarmed, unable to communicate between ghettos due to Nazi interference, unable to comprehend that such horrific crimes could be committed, and found very little support from outside forces, who were either collaborating with the Nazis or under tremendous pressure themselves from the Third Reich. All of these combined to create hell. No one could have believed that men would smash babies’ heads against walls, pipe car fumes into trucks full of people, and bury and burn men, women, and children alive. They also rarely heard that this was happening because Nazis cut off all communication. Therefore, people believed the Nazis when they said they were sending people to work, especially the Western European Jews, who were especially targeted with deceptions. They even believed the Nazis when they saw the smokestacks, really burning human flesh, and believed they were bakeries. Sometimes, on slow days, the SS would pull people out of the cattle cars filled with living, dead, and dying, acting as if it was all some mistake, apologizing, and leading them to the gas chambers that they lied and said were showers. Lilli Kopecky, a Slovakian survivor of Auschwitz, recalled that “This is the greatest strength of the whole crime, its unbelievability.” With all this in mind, it makes sense that an unarmed people would not resist, yet many did.

               Often, resistance would be an escape from the ghetto. Realizing that their ghettos would be liquidated, many Jews created a diversion, like a fire, and all ran at once. Usually a minority would reach the forest and survive for some time longer, and a smaller minority of them would survive the war. There were also individual acts of resistance and heroism. A male nurse, Z. Stein, refused to leave his sick patients and he was killed with them. In Nieswicz, Jewish girls Rakhil Kagan and Liya Dukor stole and reassembled machine gun parts and taught the young men how to use them. When the Nazis came for the Jews of the ghetto, the head of the Jewish Council announced, “No! There will be no selection! If some are to live, then all must; if not, we shall defend ourselves!” The Jews opened fire and leapt at the Nazis with knives and bottles. The Jews set fire to their houses and small groups burst forth in escape.

               There were also non-violent acts of resistance, such as the preserving of diaries and memories of what was happening, to give evidence for others to condemn the Nazis. In the Warsaw ghetto a group called the Ringelblum circle buried archives that they kept of all the deaths, tortures, robberies, and crimes committed by the Nazis in the ghetto, and while they did not survive, the milk cans containing their evidence did, and that record of the destruction of the Polish Jewry is crucial to our history of the Holocaust. Below is an excerpt of just some of the acts of resistance in just one region:

In the Volhynia, August 1942 saw the massacre of more than sixty thousand Jews. It also saw the escape of tens of thousands to the woods. At Kostopol, on August 24, a Jew, Gedalia Braier, called upon his fellow Jews to run. All seven hundred ran. But less than ten survived the war. At Rokitno, where sixteen hundred Jews were assembled on August 26, surrounded by armed Ukrainians, a Jewish woman called out, ‘Jews! We are done for! Run! Save yourselves!’ and more than seven hundred managed to reach the woods. At Sarny, where fourteen thousand Volhynian Jews were assembled on August 28, two Jews, one a carpenter with his axe, the other, Josef Gendelman, a tinsmith with his tin-cutters, broke through the fence surrounding the ghetto and led a mass escape. Three thousand Jews reached the gap in the fence, and sought to push their way through it. But the Ukrainians were armed with machine guns, and two and a half thousand Jews were shot down at the fence. Five hundred escaped, but many of these were killed on their way to the woods, and only a hundred survived the war and its two more years of privation, manhunts, and frequent local hostility.

On August 25, when a group of Jews was taken from the town of Zofjowka, under guard, to dig burial pits, one of their number, Moshe-Yossel Schwartz, realising what was intended, urged his fellow Jews to attack their guards. They did so, using their spades to crush the heads of one of the German policemen and two of the Ukrainians. They then fled. But on the way to the woods, Schwartz was shot and killed.

Elsewhere in the Volhynia, individual Jews sought to challenge the German power. In Szumsk, two young women attacked the chief of the police, ‘choking him and biting him until they were shot to death’. In Turzysk, a young man, Berish Segal, stole a gun, hit a German policeman in the face with it, but was shot by other policemen.

The Jews who reached the Volhynian woods and formed small partisan bands did so six months before the arrival of Soviet partisans from White Russia. When the Soviet partisans came, Jews helped them, and were protected by them. But in the interval, the death toll was high. Of a group of a hundred Jewish partisans and escaped Soviet prisoners-of-war near Radziwillow, only one, the platoon commander, Yechiel Prochownik, survived. Another of the Jewish partisan leaders, Moshe Gildenmann, began his anti-German activities with ten men and a single knife. A year later, in the marshes north of Zhitomir, Gildenmann’s group was to guide to safety a Russian division surrounded by the Germans.      

Life was not much easier in a partisan group. The Jews were generally unarmed or very lightly armed and other partisan groups or escaped Soviet prisoners of war would rob them, assault them, and rape the women. Zipora Koren who survived in the forests “tells of how Russian partisans bound an old woman, tied her to a tree, and tortured her, because she refused to reveal the hiding place of her daughter whom they schemed to rape.” On the other hand, the Polish underground organization, Home Army, gave 22 rifles to the Jews in anticipation of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. These stories of resistance show the remarkable will of the human spirit to survive, and if not to survive, to take vengeance on their oppressor. They also reflect the conflicting currents of human nature that occurred on a small level among individual gentiles who chose to rescue/help or denounce Jews- the two conflicting currents of human nature.

               I would say there are three themes told through statistical data and individual stories in the book, covering the failure of Jews to escape Europe in time, the gentile reaction to Jewish persecution (and their own oppression at Nazi hands), and the culture of the Jewish people in Europe that was lost. The failure of Jews to escape from Europe was due to the physical Jewish presence like Synagogues and holy sites that made Jews want to stay, family and social linkages that made leaving hard, the feeling that they could “weather the storm,” as had been done in the past, and the absence of places to go to. Almost no country would take the Jews in, even in the late 1930’s, when conferences were being held on the Jewish situation in Germany and Jews were attempting to illegally enter the United States and British Palestine. The book goes in depth into the gentile reactions to persecution. It covers stories that are incredibly heart warming and others that are incredibly chilling, as gentiles make the decision to hide and protect Jews or to denounce and kill them. So much of it seems like luck, and the largest sector of the population did very little on any side, hence siding with the oppressor. It seems like the next largest group is those who denounced, and the smallest is those who protected the Jews. It was especially disturbing to read about the pogroms in Poland after the war, when more Jews were slaughtered, and the rapes carried out by Russian soldiers against the Jewish women that they “rescued.” Third, the book addresses the massive amount of culture that was lost in the Holocaust. The Jewish language, Yiddish was nearly wiped off the map, as well as all the Jewish architecture and physical evidence of our society. The book points out that life was very different for “Aryan” Poles. Most of them never even had to leave their homes. Jews could not even return to their homes for fear of murder by their Polish neighbors, and even if they could there was no single community where there were enough Jews to start the Jewish community over. In addition, all the Jewish buildings, homes and synagogues, were burned to the ground while gentile buildings were left standing.

               Many more Jews died after liberation. They continued to be murdered without any punishment and many continued to starve at astounding rates due to the logistical difficulties of delivering food to them and the medical difficulties of bringing an adult back from 70 pounds to full health. Jews were regularly eating dirty table scraps and boiled eggs with the shell still on as we were desperate for any sustenance. Each Jew had at one point thought they were the last Jew on Earth and the urge to build a community of Jews was strong. This brought Jews together in the two places outside of Europe that would hold them, the United States and the Jewish homeland, Israel. These places were settled by Jews out of necessity, because no other place on Earth would take Jews in, even after the war. Jews have thrived over the last 70 years and new generations have triumphed and gotten the best vengeance by living well.

Miscellaneous Facts:

·        “One small Jewish community in Japan, that of Kobe, gave the Japanese authorities a guarantee that refugees would not become a financial burden on Japan. Following this guarantee, refugees who landed at the port of Tsuruga from Vladivostok were admitted to Japan without question, welcomed at Tsuruga by members of the Jewish community, and brought to Kobe by train. In this way, ‘many hundreds’ were housed and cared for, a German Jewish refugee, Kurt Marcus, later recalled. But the task of financing the refugees was beyond the resources of the Kobe Jewish community; they therefore sought, and received, help from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. Recalling his nine years as a refugee in Japan, Marcus added: ‘At no time did I experience even the slightest hint of anti-Semitism.’”

·        On January 30, 1942, Hitler announced his plan that had been secret- “the complete annihilation of the Jews.”

·        Mussolini did not deport any Jews to the Nazis and the first Jews from Italy were only deported to Germany and its occupied territories when Mussolini fell in the autumn of 1943 and the Germans took over.

·        In Bulgaria, farmers threatened to lie down on the railway tracks to prevent passage of deportation trains and it is said that the ethnically German king himself intervened. The Bulgarian Jews were released, and it shows that European states could have refused the Nazis, as was happening by March 1943 in Finland, Italy, and Hungary. Slovakia and Vichy France, however, complied with the demands, as did the Quisling government in Norway. These countries also put their police forces to work rounding up Jews for the Nazis, being collaborators in the crime.

·        A good story:

o   “Among those deported from Cracow were Moses and Helen Hiller, whose two-year-old son had been given refuge by Josef Jachowicz and his wife in nearby Dabrowa. Neither parent survived. When Shachne cried out for his father and mother, as he often did, Jachowicz and his wife feared that neighbours would betray them to the Gestapo. Mrs Jachowicz became very attached to the little boy, loved his bright inquiring eyes, took great pride in her ‘son’, and took him regularly to church. Soon, he knew by heart all the Sunday hymns.

o   A devout Catholic, Mrs Jachowicz decided to have Shachne Hiller baptised, and went to see a young parish priest, Karol Wojtyla, who had a reputation for wisdom and trustworthiness. Revealing the secret of the boy’s identity, Mrs Jachowicz told the priest of her wish that Shachne should become a ‘true Christian’ and devout Catholic like herself.

o   Wojtyla listened intently to the woman’s story. When she had finished, he asked: ‘And what was the parents’ wish, when they entrusted their only child to you and to your husband?’ Mrs Jachowicz then told him that Helen Hiller’s last request had been that the child should be told of his Jewish origins, and ‘returned to his people’ if his parents died. Hearing this, Wojtyla replied that he would not perform the baptismal ceremony. It would be unfair, he explained, to baptise Shachne while there was still hope that, once the war was over, his relatives might take him.

o   Shachne Hiller not only survived the war, but was eventually united with his relatives in the United States. Karol Wojtyla was later to become Pope, as John Paul II.”

·        Another good story:

o   “The Jews who were made to dismantle the camp realized that once their work was done they too would be killed. But within the camp, they were always outnumbered by the armed guards. On September 2, however, a group of thirteen Jews killed their Ukrainian SS guard with a crowbar while working just outside the camp wire. The leader, an eighteen-year-old Polish Jew, Seweryn Klajnman from Falenica, put on the dead guard’s uniform, took his rifle, and ‘marched off’ his fellow prisoners as if to a new work detail further off, cursing and bellowing at them as they went, as befitted an SS guard. Guided by one of their number, Shlomo Mokka, a carter and horse-trader from Wegrow who knew the area well, they escaped their pursuers and evaded capture.”