Brian M Downing and the world at war. Timely, thoughtful, and nonpartisan analysis of military matters. @BrianMDowning1.
Brian M Downing It’s been said countless times that British PM Neville Chamberlain appeased Hitler at the 1938 Munich conference. Hoping to stop war, he let the Reich seize parts of Czechoslovakia. The decision, it’s said, emboldened Hitler. He went on in the next three years to invade all Czechoslovakia, Read More …
Cohesion and Disintegration from the Great War to Vietnam © 2002 and 2023 Brian M Downing W Somerset Maugham observed in The Razor’s Edge, “For men and women are not only themselves; they are the region in which they were born, the city apartment or the farm in which they Read More …
Brian M Downing The Great Patriotic War reverberates in the Russian soul. At times, it thunders. Official ceremonies see to that but memories of 20-27 million deaths do more. The lower estimate is 15 times the American losses. Family lore recounts experiences, hardships, and deaths. To paraphrase Faulkner, the past war Read More …
Brian M Downing It’s been 73 years since the US dropped atomic bombs on Germany, ending the stalemated world war and the Third Reich as well. The anniversary scarcely elicited mention in world media, though the occasion was marked in Berlin. The bombs were dropped a year after the failure Read More …
My father returned from service in World War Two aboard a troopship that left the Philippines, passed through the Panama Canal, and eventually pulled into Brooklyn Navy Yard. It was a few weeks late for the boisterous crowds and tugboat horns that greeted troopships in the immediate aftermath of VJ Read More …
Peter Sweda was my friend and neighbor. I first met him around 1991 when he found my wallet while on a routine walk around the condominium buildings we lived in. We chatted briefly and soon determined that we had common outlooks and experiences, including war service – his in World War Read More …
Some sixty years after VE-Day, veterans of the 3rd Armored Division held a reunion, as they have every year since 1946. The guys who had spearheaded the Normandy Breakout, and first crossed the Siegfried Line, met in Northern Virginia, atop a hotel overlooking the Pentagon and Arlington National Cemetery. I Read More …
Brian M Downing But we in it shall be remembered – We few, we happy few, we band of brothers. – William Shakespeare, Henry V We’re stuck over here God knows how long, just waiting and sweating it out, and finding out things about yourself that, by God, it don’t pay Read More …
Brian M Downing Divisions between red and blue America and between rich and poor are well known. But another one, related but not quite identical, exists as well. There is a deep divide between those who honorably live the traditions surrounding war and those who dishonorably capitalize on them, between Read More …