World War II: Aftermath Facts

The cost of World War II is uncalculable in human or financial terms. estimates indicate that about 55 million people died in Europe during the World War II; of these, about 8 millions were German. Death was not for soldiers  – civilians died in their millions too, and came from many different  directions through these cruel years. In the opening stages of the war, as the German armies invaded Poland, Adolf Hitler wasted little time in organizing the killing of large numbers of non-combatants.
He wanted to minimize the potential for trouble making amongst the Polish people, and so he tasked Himmler with eliminating the political and cultural elite. Since the job was effectively wholesale murder, it was given to the SS rather then a regular army. Several units of 400 to 600 men were assembled – these were not fighting forces, but death squads. Called Einsatzgruppen, their role was to go in after the invading armies had passed  and arrest and murder certain categories of civilians. These included government officials, aristocrats, priests, and business people.

 

Jews in Lodz train station

How many prisoners were freed by the storming of the Bastille?

Actually, only seven. In France, 14th July, Bastille Day, is a national holiday and a glorious national symbol, equivalent to 4th July in the United States of America. From the rousing paintings of the scene, you might think hundreds of proud revolutionaries flooded into streets waving tricolours. In fact, only just over half a dozen people were being held at the time of the siege.The Bastille was stormed on 14th July 1789. Shortly afterwards ghoulish engravings of prisoners languishing in chains next to skeletons went on sale in the streets of Paris, forming the popular impression of the conditions there ever since.

Storming of Bastille fortress 

Robert Curthose invasion of England in 1101

Robert, Duke of Normandy, nicknamed Curthose for the shortness of his legs and hence his leggings, was the oldest, nicest and least effective of William the Conqueror’s three sons. Brave, generous, good-natured and trusting, he was easily outmatched in statecraft, ruthlessness and cunning by his younger brothers – William Rufus and Henry.
Their father had no confidence in Robert as a ruler and arranged for Rufus to succeed him on the throne of England. Then, when Rufus died in 1100, Henry was on the scene. He seized the royal treasury instantly and had himself crowned within three days.

Robert was on his way back from crusade. Insisting that the crown was rightfully his, he won support from prominent figures in Normandy and England, including Ranulf Flambard, Bishop of Durham and a favourite of Rufus. Henry had incarcerated the bishop in the Tower of London, but in February 1101 he got his guards drunk, shinned down a rope and got away to Normandy. Duke Robert gathered an army, with which he crossed the Channel to Portsmouth in July. Henry meanwhile had expected him at Pevensey where he had assembled his English troops, whom he personally instructed in the art of resisting Norman cavalry.

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Manchester Martyrs

In September 1867, Colonel Thomas Kelly and Captain Timothy Deasy were arrested in the centre of Manchester on suspicion of terrorism. News of their arrest was immediately sent to Mr. Disraeli, the Prime Minister, as Colonel Kelly was the most prominent Fenian of them all, having only recently been confirmed as Chief Executive of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and as such was considered quite a capture. A few days later the both prisoners were conveyed from the Court House in Manchester to the County Jail on Hyde Road, West Gorton. They were handcuffed and locked in two separate compartments inside the Police van, there was a posse of 12 policemen to escort them.

Place to Visit: Eastnor Castle, UK

Eastnor was built by the 2^nd Baron (Lord) Somers, later 1^st Earl, between 1810 and 1824. The combination of inherited wealth, his judicious marriage to the daughter of the eminent and rich Worcestershire historian, Rev. Treadway Russell Nash, and his great ambition prompted the 1^st earl to commission a castle to impress his contemporaries and raise his family into the higher ranks of the ruling class. Then, as now, the size and splendour of a country house evidenced the standing and fortune of any family.

 

His architect, the young Robert Smirke, who was later well known for his design for the British Museum, proposed a Norman Revival style. From a distance, Eastnor tried to create the impression of an Edward Ist-style medieval fortress guarding the Welsh Borders. It was a symbolic a defiant assertion of power by an aristocrat in a period of fear and uncertainty following the French Revolution and during the Napoleonic Wars.

Thomas Müntzer and Peasants' War

Peasant-plebeian movement in Reformation strongest was expressed in the Anabaptist movement and the Peasants' War in Germany 1524-1525. Peasants and urban population (plebs) could not accept Lutheranism and princely Reformation. There were a new sects in the Reformation movement. Anabaptists (re-baptized because they required re-baptism in the mature years of life) were particularly disseminated in the plebeian classes. Some revolutionary Anabaptists preached the abolition of private property and common property.

Among these Anabaptists in Zwickau came preacher Thomas Müntzer and committed to them a strong influence. Spoke out strongly against Luther - "fat skin from Wittenberg," as he called it - as Luther put faith in the defense of private property and wealth. Müntzer was against the nobility, against feudalism, against class society and the authorities and called for the armed struggle against the utilization of people. Nobles and priests must leave the castles and palaces, begin to live in ordinary houses and live like all other people.