How To Start A War

18/02/2025

This is 16-year-old revolutionary terrorist, Fanya Kaplan, shortly after her arrest in 1906. The bomb she helped make to assassinate a Tsarist official blew up by accident in her hotel room, temporarily blinding her. Given what had happened right before the bomb went off, it’s impossible to imagine what thoughts are behind the face in this photograph. You’re going to get to know Fanya a lot.

30/01/2025

My favorite part about this photo of French machine workers posing with Russian revolutionary, Alexander Shliapnikov (2nd from top left), is how confident and at ease these big burly union dudes look with him. They probably worked 5 12 hour shifts a week. They must have really liked him.

10/11/2024

03/09/2024

Women led the Russian Revolution in February 1917. The initial overthrow of the Tsar in early 1917 was triggered by a demonstration of thousands of women on International Women’s Day, protesting food shortages and horrifying working conditions.

A week later, a 300 year old dynasty falls.

Happy Labor Day

25/08/2024

Herschel was 17 when he shot and kiIIed a German diplomat after he heard out that his Polish-Jewish family had been arrested by the Gestapo from their German home, put on a train to Poland, and left stranded at the border in the November cold along with 12,000 others to starve to death.

He did not know it at the time, but Goebbels would use this incident to execute Kristallnacht – the regime’s first state-sponsored pogrom of violence and death against the Jewish people.

25/07/2024

Power ascending – Chamberlain and Churchill in 1935, back when Chamberlain was only the “Treasury Secretary” equivalent and Churchill was only a Member of Parliament.

Both men would go on to play pivotal roles in Germany’s rise and fall in WWII.

12/07/2024

The Warlords. The Teutonic Titans. The Kaiser’s Marshalls. There were a lot of names for the duo that led the German Armed Forces during The Great War.

Generalfeldmarschall Paul von Hindenburg (left) and General der Infanterie Erich Ludendorff (right) represented Imperial Germany’s finest examples grand strategy and ruthless ex*****on in the armed forces during WWI.

Later in their lives, both would play a part in HitIer’s rise to power. Ludendorff first - backing the young radical during in 1923, joining the Beer Hall Putsch as they attempted to overthrow the Bavarian government.

Hindenburg later - appointing the HitIer as Chancellor in 1933 out of fear and underestimation.

Neither men would live to see the true consequences of their actions.

Side note - Ludendorff also had the benefit of being portrayed by the far more dashing Danny Huston in Wonder Woman.

04/07/2024

🇺🇸 Americans rallied together to boycott German goods after HitIer came to power in 1933 and his doctrine of hate and authoritarianism became clear to the rest of the world.

Americans are still capable of standing up for what is right, but it doesn’t happen on auto-pilot. It is all of our responsibilities to be the better version of “us” that we want to see, every single day.

You in? 💪

01/07/2024

Austrians in Vienna leading an anti-German protest against the impending annexation of Austria by Germany. The people stood for what is right. Their leaders did not.

10/06/2024

The Reichstag Fire. The vast legislative building, a national monument, akin to the U.S. Capitol in Washington or Parliament in London, was set on fire suspiciously before a brutal consolidation of power, and began the transformation of HitIer from Chancellor to Tyrant.

Following the fire, the constitution was suspended, rights to assemble and protest revoked, rights to trial gone. Political parties became illegal. Thousands of arrests were made, many were shot where they stood, in front of their families or up against a wall.

The fire was started by the N-zis, but blamed on the C-mmunists, the second largest political party in Germany at the time and the last major threat to HitIer’s power.

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