Sommaire pour No. 83 de All About History

WALTER ULBRICHT GERMAN 1893-1973 As the Secretary of the SED (the Socialist Unity Party), Ulbricht was the head of the German Democratic Republic. Frustrated with the hundreds of citizens who were fleeing daily to the West from the GDR through Berlin, he discussed closing the city’s Western borders with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. Despite this, Ulbricht famously denied that a wall was going to be built in Berlin at a press conference on 15 June 1961, just two months before construction began. After 21 years in power, the failure of his economic policies sparked Ulbricht’s downfall and he was forced to retire as leader of the SED in 1971. HARALD JÄGER GERMAN 1943-PRESENT Jäger was the lieutenant-colonel who was in charge of the checkpoint at Bornholmer Straße in East Berlin.…

PAVING THE WAY Known for its satirical nature, the ‘Fraternal Kiss’ has since been parodied on numerous occasions in recent years, notably with a Lithuanian mural depicting Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, as well as one in Bristol in the UK featuring Trump and Boris Johnson. THE TITLE Although the mural is commonly known as the ‘Fraternal Kiss’, its real name is ‘My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love’, which is written in Russian along the top and the bottom of the image. PERFECT CANVAS In a 2014 interview with the Calvert Journal, Vrubel explained that he wanted to reproduce the kiss on the Wall because in the painting “there’s total love, while the Berlin Wall separates two worlds – it was a perfect fit.” ARTIST OF THE…

Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry was a member of a famous American naval family. His father, Christopher Perry, of Rhode Island, had served aboard privateers during the American War of Independence and Perry himself had joined the Navy as a 15-year-old midshipman in 1809. His older brother, Oliver Hazard Perry, won glory for his 1813 victory over a British squadron at the Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812. After the war’s end in 1815, Perry found himself engaged in hostilities with Algiers and suppressing pirates in the Caribbean. During the Mexican-American War (1845-1848), Perry had commanded the American flotilla that had bombarded Vera Cruz, assisting in its capture by American troops. Perry earned the reputation of being a stern disciplinarian, but also that of an officer who was…

The Thief-Taker General In Georgian London few men were more respected than Jonathan Wild, Thief-Taker General. Wild seemed to have a particular gift for finding stolen goods and returning them to their wealthy owners in return for rich rewards. In fact, Wild was the mastermind behind the robberies and when he handed over the so-called burglars to face punishment, they were usually his enemies. Wild was the most powerful godfather in the city but when his double life was discovered, he went to the gallows. His hanging was so popular that tickets were issued to witness the spectacle. Robert Knox Scottish physician Robert Knox was noted for his anatomical expertise. He was also the man for whom Burke and Hare obtained bodies by murderous means when the supply of fresh…

What was happening in the build-up to the Glorious Revolution in 1688? The Glorious Revolution was mostly the result of James II coming to power in 1685. The problem with James was that he was a Roman Catholic king in a country that had deep Protestant prejudices and a considerable amount of suspicion to any sorts of Popish prince. All of this came to a head in the summer of 1688 when his wife gave birth to a male heir. Up until the summer of 1688 when his son was born, the heir to the throne had been his daughter, Mary, who was married to William, Prince of Orange, the stadtholder in the Netherlands who was a Protestant champion in Europe and an opponent of Louis XIV. The birth of…

Chronicling the greatest achievements and advances in medical science from our earliest civilisations to the present day, the History Of Medicine is a comprehensive guide for anyone wanting to know more about how humanity has diagnosed and treated illness and injury through the ages. From Hippocrates and the creation of the Hippocratic Oath to Alexander Fleming and the discovery of penicillin, the third edition of this book covers some major advancements without which the modern world as we know would likely look very different indeed. Buy the All About History Book of the History Of Medicine in shops or online at myfavouritemagazines.com Price: £12.99…

Author Paul Strathern Publisher Hodder & Stoughton Price £16.99 Released Out now Rise And Fall: A History Of The World In Ten Empires takes us on a journey through some of the most famous empires to have ever existed, such as the Akkadian Empire and the Ottoman Empire, right up to the modern ‘empires’ of the 20th-century superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States. Charting the course of 5,000 years of global history and breaking it down into ten digestible chapters is no easy feat, but Paul Strathern manages to do so successfully. It is interesting to discover how these empires operated and what they achieved, but it is arguably more fascinating to learn about their eventual collapse and how this was often triggered by problems that lay within…

Helen Castor Interview We spoke with the esteemed author about her research into the life of Joan of Arc and what she learned, as the new Folio edition of her celebrated book launches Roman Legacy Kate Marsh takes a look at the Roman inventions and innovations that we still enjoy to this day to see what the Romans are still doing for us so many years later The Real Mr Hyde Catherine Curzon brings us a horror story from history as we uncover the life of Major Thomas Weir, an inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous villain…

Q. IN YOUR EXTENSIVE INTERVIEWS WITH RESIDENTS OF WEST AND EAST BERLIN - SOLDIERS, OFFICIALS AND OTHERS - WERE THERE ANY RECURRING THEMES OF THEIR RECOLLECTIONS OF THIS PERIOD? A. There was, naturally, a heavy dose of nostalgia. From those serving, or living, in West Berlin through the Cold War years they loved the city, the unique atmosphere it had as an ‘international oasis’ where young West Germans could flee to in order to escape conscription. I suppose the fact that it was surrounded by the imminent threat of invasion by the forces of the Warsaw Pact held an element of thrill-seeking to many, too. Every military personnel serviceman and woman (from Britain, France and the USA) I interviewed told me it was the best posting they ever had. Similarly,…

“THE QUESTION FOR HER CONTEMPORARIES WAS NOT WHETHER JOAN HEARD VOICES, BUT WHETHER THOSE VOICES CAME FROM HEAVEN OR HELL” Joan of Arc had three counts against her: she was young, she was a peasant, and she was a woman. How did she convince anyone that God had sent her to save France? In 1429, France was ready for a champion, or perhaps a miracle. Since France’s unexpected defeat by England at the battle of Agincourt 14 years before, the Valois dynasty’s claim to the French throne, and indeed the dynasty’s control of France itself, had been badly compromised. The English army and its Burgundian allies occupied much of northern France. The Dauphin Charles, who remained uncrowned although his father, King Charles VI, had died seven years previously, had taken…

Even though we have a great deal of material written about Joan of Arc by her contemporaries, we don’t know much about what she looked like. She cropped her hair like a boy’s. It may have been dark. (The evidence for this is a single strand of hair caught in the sealing wax of one of her letters.) She wore men’s clothing. But we can be pretty sure that she didn’t look like the only contemporary ‘portrait’ of her that survives. It was drawn by a man who never saw her, a clerk named Clément de Fauquembergue, who worked for the Parlement of Paris. Clèment doodled an image of the Maid of Orléans in the margins of his report on the relief of the siege of Orléans, written two days…

“The notorious Wizard of West Bow, practitioner of devilish arts, summoner of demons and notorious fornicator” As the 16th century ticked over into the 17th, the world was a place of suspicion and fear. The Age of Enlightenment had yet to dawn and just like the rest of the British Isles, Scotland was a place where the good feared God and cowered at the unseen wickedness that dwelt in the shadows, hoping to tempt the weak or greedy. It was a place where magic might just be real and witch trials convinced some people that witchcraft lurked in the most unexpected places, its practitioners scheming to snare even decent souls and drag them into the grip of evil and all the way down to hell itself. In the first half…

Author Dan Jones Publisher Head of Zeus Price £25 Released Out now Fresh from the success of his bestselling 2017 book The Templars, author and broadcaster Dan Jones returns with an ambitious account of the medieval Crusades, which saw Christian kings, knights and pilgrims alike take the cross – often at the beckoning of an eager papacy – to wage war against the Islamic rulers of the Holy Land. These conflicts, the after-effects of which still ripple across the globe today, caused the deaths, wounding and displacement of an incalculable number of people as rulers, warriors and members of religious orders sieged and sacked cities and toppled regimes across the space of hundreds of years, in an ever-changing context of alliances and enmities. “An impressively varied cast features in Crusaders…

An intriguing cast of Jewish actors, academics and artists who enriched London’s cultural landscape during the 1930s are brought together in this exploration of life in the capital for creatives who fled their homes in Germany, Austria and Hungary in fear amidst the Nazis’ growing persecution of Jewish people and political opponents. Focusing on the year 1934, the book examines how this, sometimes interlinking, group of people attempted to make London their new home and navigated its cultural spaces in the hopes of sustaining careers that had been left behind along with family and friends. The individuals included in The Exiles – most of whom were Jewish – are likely little known among the British public today yet as the author and scholar Daria Santini demonstrates, they all left their…

Author Rory Muir Publisher Yale Price £19.99 Released Out now Gentlemen Of Uncertain Fortune: How Younger Sons Made Their Way In Jane Austen’s England is an in-depth examination of an area that has been somewhat neglected. Though readers are well aware of life for the sort of young ladies who populated Jane Austen’s books, similar attention has rarely been paid to the men of the household. Rory Muir’s book corrects that omission and examines exactly what choices were available to the younger brothers – the spares who came behind the heir. In his analysis of the professions that were available to these younger brothers, Muir draws on some fascinating stories such as Sydney Smith, who entered the clergy because his father refused to fund his ambitions to become a barrister.…

SOVIET ISSUE Given the direct influence of the Soviet Union on East Germany it should come as no surprise that the equipment of the Grenztruppen was largely of Russian design, although it was made in East Germany. The standard issue assault rifle, for instance, was a MPiKM based on, but distinct from the famous Kalashnikov of the USSR. STANDING ORDER The Wall was built to prevent migration to the Federal Republic of Germany, known as Republikflucht and to enforce this, troops had a standing shoot order called Schießbefehl, authorising the use of lethal force to stop people escaping to West Germany. At least 140 people were killed as a result and after the fall of the Wall, many Grenztruppen were convicted of manslaughter for their role in deaths at the…

1 THE ALLIED MUSEUM CLAYALLEE 135 Located in the centre of the former American sector of West Berlin, the Allied Museum tells the story of the Western powers in Berlin during the Cold War, from the defeat of Germany in 1945 to the final withdrawal of Allied troops in 1994. The museum, which includes the historic American Outpost Theater and the Nicholson Memorial Library, delves into the conflict between the Allies and the Soviet Union with its permanent exhibition ‘How Enemies Became Friends’, which is split into two parts. The first section explores the occupation of Berlin following the Allied victory in WWII as well as the Berlin Airlift of 1948 1949 while the second section examines the Cold War from 1951 onwards, which includes the military confrontations between the…

We know her as Joan of Arc. At least one of her contemporaries, the great theologian and scholar Jean Gerson, named her the Maid of Orléans. She called herself Jeanne la Pucelle, Joan the Maid. Proving that Joan was a virgin was an important part of the tests she submitted to at Chinon and Poitiers. An unsullied virgin was less apt to have been corrupted by the devil. The noblewomen of Chinon and later no less a personage than Yolande of Aragon, the queen of Sicily and the Dauphin’s mother-in-law, proclaimed her a maid. The theologians at Poitiers took that statement of purity one step further and called her the Maid. Joan, a peasant girl with no family name operating in a world where men were known by titles like…

What was it about Joan of Arc’s story that drew you into writing about her? I started thinking about Joan as a direct result of talking about my previous book, She-Wolves. ‘One of the biggest problems female rulers faced,’ I kept saying, ‘was that medieval women couldn’t lead armies on the battlefield – apart from Joan of Arc, and we all know what happened to her.’ Eventually I realised I didn’t know what happened to her. Or at least, I knew the outline of her story, as we all do – but I didn’t know exactly how and why she came to do the extraordinary things she did. Once I started investigating, I was fascinated. What would you say are the biggest misconceptions about her life? That she was ‘saintly’…

The Witchfinder General The villain of both the novel and film Witchfinder General was Matthew Hopkins, the English Civil War’s infamous witchfinder responsible for hundreds of executions. Though usually portrayed as an older man who met his death on the gallows, Hopkins was only in his late twenties when he died in his bed of pleurisy. Dracula Though Bram Stoker’s Dracula might have been fiction, the man who inspired it was very real. Vlad Tepes, aka Vlad the Impaler, was a mighty and brutal warlord in 15th century Wallachia. Tepes’ impaled enemies lined the roads to his fortress and he achieved notoriety for his vile cruelty. Long John Silver Whilst he provided Robert Louis Stephenson with the inspiration for Long John Silver, William Ernest Henley was certainly no pirate. In…

Author Alan Ogden Publisher Bloomsbury Academic Price £21.60 Released Out now James Bond is famous, and so is his creator Ian Fleming. However, it is the latter’s older brother who takes centre stage in this latest book by Alan Ogden. Peter Fleming was a noted writer and journalist, married to the actress Celia Johnson. Though while the wider details of Fleming’s life are explored, the primary focus of this account is his military career. From planning ‘stay behind’ guerrilla units in Sussex and Kent in the event an invasion, to running deception operations against Japan, Master Of Deception offers a comprehensive insight into the wartime exploits, labours and frustrations of this dedicated intelligence officer. Ogden situates Fleming’s personal career in its wider context, providing an interesting perspective on intelligence work…

Author Robert Kirchubel Price £45 Publisher Osprey From the opening shots of September 1939, to the Balkan campaign up until June 1941, each stage of Nazi Germany’s lightning offensives is beautifully detailed in this new title from historian Robert Kirchubel. With 98 highly detailed graphical maps, readers can follow the physical and strategic challenges faced by commanders on both sides. In the front of the tome, there is also a handy legend of unit symbols, for those less literate in military maps and abbreviations. “Considering that the time span within the book is so broad, there is something to interest any reader”…