Author: rupertcolley

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Winston Churchill and the First World War

Winston Churchill rather enjoyed war. In July 1914, as Britain prepared for the oncoming catrastrophe, Churchill, at the time the First Lord of the Admiralty, wrote to his wife, ‘I am interested, geared up and happy. Is it not horrible to be built like that?’ And in 1916, in a letter to David Lloyd George’s daughter, Churchill admitted: ‘I think a curse should rest on me — because I love this war. I know it’s smashing and shattering the lives of thousands every moment, and yet, I can’t help it, I enjoy every second of it’.

Churchill had been appointed to the Admiralty in October 1911, and had continued the policy established by his predecessor of keeping Britain ahead of the Germans and strengthening the navy by expanding the number of Dreadnoughts, the most powerful battleship of the time.

But despite these preparations, Britain suffered a number of setbacks during the first months of the First World War – on 22 September 1914, the German navy sunk a number of British ships at Dogger Bank (sixty miles off the east coast of England in the North Sea), killing 1,459 sailors; and on 16 December, German ships penetrated close enough to British shores to attack Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby causing 137 fatalities. Churchill, in his role at the Admiralty, took the brunt of the blame and the public’s anger.

Antwerp

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The Mau Mau Uprising – a brief history

Half a century on, Kenyans tortured by the British colonial authorities during the Mau Mau Uprising received from the UK government payouts totalling £20m. The High Court had previously rejected the government’s claim that too much time had passed for there to be a fair trial. But what was the Mau Mau Uprising? 

After the Second World War, Britain had begun the difficult and lengthy process of decolonisation. In African countries that were entirely black in population, such as Ghana, the process was relatively straightforward. Where it was more difficult were the nations that had sizeable population of white settlers. Rhodesia being an example of this latter category, as was Kenya.

The Crown Colony

Kenya’s official association with Britain had started in 1895, when the country became British East Africa. The British government encouraged the settlement of Kenya’s fertile highlands by Europeans, utilising the labour of the very peoples they had dispossessed, such as the traditional tribes of the Kikuyu. In 1920, British East Africa became an official crown colony of the British Empire, renamed the Colony of Kenya. The white settlers were given preference in all spheres of politics, administration and society, and Africans were barred from political involvement until 1944 when a small number were appointed (not elected) onto the legislature.

Resentment of white expansion and settlement deepened. During the late 1940s, the Kikuyu established a secret society bound by oaths whose aim was the eventual expulsion of the white settlers by means of force. The society was known as the Mau Mau.

Uprising

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The ‘Jews Out’ Board Game – a brief history

The Wiener Library in London has on display a macabre board game intended to be a bit of fun for your average family living in 1930s Nazi Germany. It is called Juden Raus! ‘Jews Out!’ – with an exclamation mark.

The object of the Jews Out board game is to force the Jews beyond the medieval walls and out of the city. The first player to rid the city of six Jews wins the game.

The game comes with a dice, a 50×60 cm board, and a number of figurines. The board has thirteen circles representing various Jewish-owned shops and businesses. Each player adopts one of six red figurines with a pointy hat and a belt around its waist, representing the German police force, and the idea is to land on the Jewish business and eject the Jew. The Jew is represented on 32 hat-shaped counters, the same shape as the hats Jews were compelled to wear during the Middle Ages. Each Jew is depicted with a vile, contorted face.

The rules explain that the Jews Out board game is an ‘extraordinarily amusing and up-to-date family game’. On the board are written three bits of text: Display skill in the dice game, so that you collect many Jews! / When you succeed in driving out 6 Jews, you will be winner beyond all question! And at the bottom right, a ‘typical’ Jewish family on the move accompanied by the text, Off to Palestine! Continue reading →

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Hitler the Artist

As works of art they are pleasant enough to the eye but, being almost instantly forgettable, don’t linger too long in the memory. Painted almost a century ago in Vienna, they were probably sold to a middle-class family or a local business where, hung on a wall, they were promptly ignored for years to come. But whenever one of these paintings comes up for auction, they usually fetch in the region of about £2,000 each. The price tag reflects not the works’ artistic value but the notoriety of the man who painted them – for they were created by a young Adolf Hitler.

So how did the future dictator start off as an artist?

‘Artist? No, never as long as I live’

Hitler fared poorly at school. One teacher in Hitler’s Austrian hometown of Linz later described the schoolboy as ‘argumentative, autocratic, self-opinionated, and bad-tempered and unable to submit to school discipline.’ Art was the one subject Hitler enjoyed but when, as an 11-year-old, he approached his father and declared his ambition to become an artist, Hitler Snr took it badly. ‘Artist? No, never as long as I live.’

All his working life, Alois Hitler had been an employee of the Austrian customs service, a man who worked hard at a humdrum career and fully expected his son to follow in his footsteps. Problem was, Hitler Jr had no intention of ‘sitting in an office, deprived of my liberty, ceasing to be master of my own time.’ Continue reading →

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Kliment Voroshilov: Defender of Leningrad – a brief biography

During the 900-day siege of Leningrad, the man initially charged with the city’s defence was one of Stalin’s old favourites, Kliment Voroshilov, born 4 February 1881. Rupert Colley summarises his efforts.

During the Second World War, the city of Leningrad (modern-day St Petersburg) was in the midst of a devastating 900-day blockade that lasted from September 1941 until January 1944. The German army had laid siege to the city, bombarded it and cut off all supplies in its attempt to ‘wipe it off the map’, as Hitler had ordered.

The men in charge of the defence of Leningrad were Andrey Zhdanov and 60-year-old Kliment Voroshilov, one of Stalin’s old favourites. During the Russian Civil War, Voroshilov, working closely with Stalin, had gained a reputation for his fierce defence of Tsaritsyn (renamed Stalingrad in 1925).

Utterly reliable 

But Voroshilov’s military experience was stuck in the 1920s and ill-suited to the demands of the Second World War. His command of Soviet forces in the ‘Winter War’ against Finland (1939-1940) was disastrous. But Stalin realised that under the pressure of a siege, the people of Leningrad would question the regime and his leadership in particular. He needed a man of utter political reliability to instil in Leningrad the right political thinking. And Kliment Voroshilov was that man.

Voroshilov and Zhdanov were loyal supporters of the party and devoted to Stalin but, like everyone else, they feared him. Their fear of Stalin overrode all other considerations and directed strategy and policy. When, in July 1941, a convoy of trains carrying vital foodstuff was heading towards Leningrad, the two men, afraid that accepting the consignment might appear to the boss as defeatist, turned the convoy away, stating that the city lacked ‘sufficient warehouse space’. Their political self-preservation was more important than the welfare of their city.

Will there be an end to these losses?

Voroshilov was certainly brave and liked to rush around the front line brandishing his revolver under heavy German shelling but, despite his many years’ experience, he was unable to form any strategy that could stop or even reverse the German assault. Continue reading →

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The Montgomery Bus Boycott – a brief history

On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks, a 42-year-old African American seamstress, seated in a segregated bus, refused to give up her seat to a white man. It sparked the 13-month Montgomery Bus Boycott and resulted in an early and significant victory for the Civil Rights movement. It brought to national attention a 26-year-old recently appointed Baptist reverend by the name of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Three years earlier, in 1952, the US Supreme Court declared that segregation on interstate railways was unconstitutional, and, two years later, also outlawed segregation on interstate buses. However, the practice was not barred on state-run bus services and persisted in many southern states.

Whites Only

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Sergei Kirov – a brief biography

One bullet that killed a million people. As the assassination of John F Kennedy is to the US, so the assassination, 29 years earlier, of Sergei Kirov, Stalin’s number two, was to the Soviet Union. Everyone in the Soviet Union remembered where they were when they heard of the assassination of Kirov. Millions would die as a direct consequence of that single bullet as Stalin sought to unmask the perpetrators.

Sergei Kirov, a dashing forty-seven-year-old and the rising star of the Bolshevik party, was killed on 1 December 1934 in a corridor outside his offices of the Smolny Institute in Leningrad. His assassin, 30-year-old Leonid Nikolaev, had acted alone. Kirov’s death threw the nation into a state of shock. Joseph Stalin, who rarely left the Kremlin, made an exception and caught the overnight train to Leningrad specifically to interview Nikolaev. Upon arriving in the city, Stalin was greeted by the local secret police chief and slapped the man across the face. On 29 December, Leonid Nikolaev was executed, soon followed by his wife (spuriously suspected of having had an affair with Kirov, thereby providing the motive), and his 85-year-old mother.

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Georgy Zhukov – a brief biography

Georgy Zhukov achieved fame as perhaps the most successful Soviet military commander of the Second World War. In the post-war Victory Parade in Moscow’s Red Square, Zhukov stole the show, inspecting the troops mounted on a white stallion. 

Adored by the public and respected by international opinion, Zhukov’s position was always going to be vulnerable given Stalin’s innate jealousy. Sure enough, in 1946, Zhukov, heavily criticised for being ‘politically unreliable’, was dismissed and dispatched to a position of diminished responsibility in Odessa.

Known for his uncompromising discipline, Georgy Zhukov placed strategic objectives far above the safety of the men he put into battle. Yet, despite his toughness, he could be rendered a wreck by a single harsh word from Soviet dictator, Joseph Stalin. During the early days of the war, he was once reduced to tears by an angry Stalin and had to take the handkerchief offered by Vyacheslav Molotov.

Born 1 December 1896, Zhukov first saw action during the First World War, where, renowned for his bravery, he was twice decorated. He then fought with the Red Army against the Whites during the Russian Civil War of 1917-23 and quickly rose through the ranks. Stalin’s great 1930s purge of the military was for Zhukov ‘the most difficult emotional experience of my life’. Like many others, he kept a small packed suitcase near his front door should the NKVD come for him. But, unlike many of his contemporaries, he survived and indeed benefited by being able to step into the shoes of men purged, ‘dead men’s shoes’.

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The Zong Massacre – a brief history

On 29 November 1781, Captain Luke Collingwood of the British ship, Zong, ordered one-third of his cargo to be thrown overboard. That cargo was human – 133 African slaves bound for Jamaica. His motive – to collect the insurance. The case was brought to court – not for murder, but against the insurers who refused to pay up. This is the cruel story of the Zong Massacre.

The slave ship, Zong

On 6 September 1781, the Zong, a slave ship, left the island of São Tomé, off the west coast of Africa, bound for Jamaica. The ship was cruelly overcrowded, carrying 442 Africans, destined to become slaves, accompanied by 17 crew. The human cargo was manacled and packed so tightly that they had no room to move. But for the captain, Luke Collingwood, the more Africans he could squeeze in, the greater the margin of profit for both the ship’s owners and himself.

For Collingwood, previously a ship’s surgeon, this was his first and last assignment as captain. Planning to retire, he hoped for a generous bounty to help him in his retirement. The greater the number of fit slaves he delivered to Jamaica, the greater his share.

Captain Collingwood’s decision

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Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya – a brief biography

On 29 November 1941, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, aged 18, was executed by German occupiers.

The Germans had invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 and by late November had surrounded and laid siege to Leningrad and were bearing down on Moscow. The Soviet authorities were recruiting volunteers to break through the German lines and operate as partisan fighters in German-occupied areas. Their task, generally, was to cause as much disruption to the German advance. It was a dangerous assignment but one which 18-year-old Zoya readily volunteered for.

Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was born 13 September 1923 in the district of Tambov, about 300 miles southeast of Moscow. She was well-cultured and devoured the works of Tolstoy, Dickens, Shakespeare, Goethe and Pushkin and loved the music of Tchaikovsky and Beethoven, and was a member of the Soviet youth Komsomol organisation. (Pictured below is Zoya’s Komsomol membership card).

Partisan

Having been accepted as a partisan, despite her tender age, Zoya was given the name ‘Tanya’. Handed a revolver and trained how to use it, she was assigned to a small group of partisans and given instructions. Their first task was to lay mines on the Volokolamsk highway, just behind German lines, about 80 miles west of Moscow. Excited and nervous, Zoya declared, ‘If we fall, let’s fall like heroes’. Another task involved laying spikes in the road but the more dangerous jobs were reserved for the young men. Zoya pleaded her case, stating, ‘Difficulties ought to be shared equally.’ Her commander, a man who went by the name of Boris, acquiesced.

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