Book Review: Valkyrie

Valkyrie, The Story of the Plot to Kill Hitler, by its Last Member is a fascinating book, though not primarily for reading about the Valkyrie plot itself. Other books have been written specifically about the plot, and I would imagine that from some of them you could find far more details about the plot itself. This book, a narrative of Philipp von Boeselager's wartime experiences as he told them to Florence Fehrenbach (herself the granddaughter of another of the Valkyrie conspirators) a year before his von Boeselager's death in 2008, is in many ways too close and personal a story to give the reader the most detailed possible understanding of the plot as a whole. So long as the reader understands this, Valkyrie is a fascinating window on the experiences of an honorable young man caught up in the Third Reich.

The son of an old Catholic family of minor nobility with a tradition of military service, Philipp credits his resistance to Nazi ideology in part to his school headmaster, Fr. Rodewyck, who had served as a German officer in the Great War before going into the Jesuits, and whom von Boeselager credits with having taught his young charges a German patriotism which was rooted in Christianity.

Philipp's nearest older brother Georg (there were nine von Boeselager children, of which Philipp was the fifth) went into the cavalry, and when it came time for Philipp to do the same in 1936, he followed his brother, in part on the advice of a relative who advised him that if he followed his first desire and entered the diplomatic service he would have to become a Nazi. Sheltered in the closed society of cavalry officer training, von Boeselager says he barely heard of Pius XI's Mit brennender Sorge and never read it, and although he and his fellow cadets where shocked at the newspaper accounts of Kristallnacht, they remained for some under the illusion that it was something "the authorities" would surely punish.

As the above demonstrates, Philipp and George were not at all political. Indeed, in many ways their reactions to the coming of war seem startlingly naive from our vantage point. Both young men are heavily focused on hunting and riding, with George in particular going going out hunting for a couple hours at dawn most mornings throughout the war. Something I found surprising reading the book was the extent of the use of cavalry in the Wehrmacht in World War II. I had known that despite their mechanized self (and public) image the German army in fact used horses much more heavily than the Allies for transport. I had not realized, however, that German cavalry were deployed in thousands both as reconnaissance and as mobile skirmishers, first on the Western Front against France, and then on the Eastern Front against the Soviet Union. As the Eastern Front bogs down in rain and mud in 1941, the cavalry troops are some of the only ones able to cover large amounts of ground quickly.

At times one finds those small moments of quiet and humanity which remind us that the soldiers on both sides of a war are much alike, especially in wanting to live to see their families again. As the French surrender is nearing in 1940, Philipp is ordered to take a village occupied by French troops. Having heard rumors that France and Germany are about to announce a cease fire, Philipp goes forward and under a while flat and talks to the French commander, who knows nothing about a cease fire but says he has been ordered to hold the village until 7:00 PM and then retreat. Philipp agrees not to move his unit forward until the French has left, in order to avoid bloodshed -- going to far as to threaten to shoot the commander of another unit who comes up and wants to attack the village before the French leave.

The Lieutenant colonel exploded with anger. But seeing the pistol pointed at him, and seeing that I looked as though I was actually prepared to shoot him, he yielded. The French battalion was saved. Everything went as planned, without a drop of blood being shed. Few people knew what had happened, and we tried to keep it quiet. But we were unable to keep the news from circulating among the staffs. The story became almost a legend -- in some versions, I actually fired. Fortunately, as the anecdote spread and became distorted, the names of the two people involved were forgotten. In any case, until the end of the war Doege and I took care to avoid each other. (p. 34)

In 1941-1942 Philipp, now serving on the Eastern Front, already found himself turning against the Nazi regime, and had become acquinted with Achim Oster and Henning von Tresckow, the officer who would be the initiator of the assassination plan which came to its tragic end in June, 1944. However, Philipp marks his decisive turning point as coming in the summer of 1942 when, having been sounded and assigned to staff duties, he is given a report by an SS officer whose unit is operating in army territory. (The SS and the regular army did not get along well, and the activities of the SS were generally restricted to areas to the rear of the army, while their actions were supposed to be limited within army territory.) Mixed in with reports of actions against groups of armed partisans, von Boeselager finds the terse but sinister entry, "Special treatment for five Gypsies." He took his concerns to Field Marshal Kluge, for whom he was serving as an aide.

I was present at the discussion between Bach-Zelewski and Kluge. They talked first about the guerrillas: how to limit their range, how to eliminate them from the countryside, and especially how to secure the vital connections with Germany. A discreet reminder on my part, once the technical presentation was complete, caused Kluge rather abruptly to ask the SS officer, "Oh, by the way, I was about to forget: What do you mean in your report by 'special treatment'? You apparently gave 'special treatment' t five Gypsies."

"Those? We shot them!"

"What do you mean, shot them?! Following a trial before a military tribunal?"

"No, of course not! All the Jews and Gypsies we pick up are liquidated -- shot!"

The marshal and I were both taken aback. I felt the kind of internal dislocation and devastation that leads to panic. Obviously, we sensed that something was wrong. Kluge could not have been unaware that crimes, major crimes, had been committed in areas under his authority. Still, we had attributed them to the uncontrolled excesses of the SS. But here was Bach-Zelewski stating a doctrine of extermination as though it were perfectly natural. What we had taken for terrible blunders were, in reality, part of a coherent, premeditated plan.
...
Kluge was not a man to temporize. He immediately called General Franz Halder of the Army General Staff. Leaving aside pointless humanitarian and legal arguments, Kluge tried to prove the inanity of this enterprise, which stiffened resistance instead of breaking it. The only positive result of his energetic complains was that we no longer heard about Bach-Zelewski. Perhaps he simply stopped reporting his barbaric acts.

This incident changed my view of the war. I was disgusted and afraid. I had already had occasion to wonder about the meaning of this conflict, its strategic pertinence, and the Fuhrer's tactics. Through friends in my division's reserve battalion who had been sent t Stargard shortly after the invasion of Poland, I had heard rumors about the crimes committed byt eh SS in the conquered areas. We were surprised not so much by the rumors -- there were so many young men without morals in the SS units -- as by the perpetrators' complete impunity. We told ourselves that this could not go on for long; we considered these atrocities, which were probably but never proven, to be isolated events.

Henceforth, I had the proof of the abomination before my eyes.... (p79-81)

von Boeselager confided his new disgust with the regime to Tresckow, who proved to have turned to the resistance as a result of hearing about a much larger SS atrocity. Tresckow was now the center of one of several groups of mid and high ranking German officers who were disillusioned with the war, disgusted with the Nazis, and seeking some way to end the Fuhrer's life and the war. Philipp and George both found themselves in this circle, many of whom were from an aristocratic background and also practicing Christians.

It is difficult to describe a man's faith without descending into hagiographical platitudes. Henning von Tresckow was inhabited by an ardent piety that he was not afraid to express. For Christmas 1942, the general command of the Wehrmacht had forbidden any celebration. Nazi officers had been assigned to see to the observance of this injunction. Thus, it was more surprising when Tresckow came silently forward among his men, flanked by Georg Schulze-Buttger and Hans-Ulrich von Oertzen. The operations officer read the Christmas gospel just as he would have done amid his own family. I had informed Kluge of what Tresckow was going to do; thus the marshal had come to the junior officers' mess solely to provide cover for his subordinate. It was a true Christian Christmas, to the joy of the overwhelming majority. (p. 97)

In the spring of 1943 Tresckow's group, now including both Georg and Philipp von Boeselager made three attempts on Hitler's life, but all three were either called off at the last minute, or failed. A plan for several officers to shoot the Fuhrer at close range as he toured the mess hall was canceled because Himmler, originally traveling with Hitler, left, and the conspirators feared a civil war if Hitler was killed but Himmler survived. On another occasion, a crate full of explosives (prepared by Philipp) was smuggled into the cargo hold of Hitler's airplane, but failed to detonate at altitude.

In the fall of 1943, Georg and Philipp were both wounded, and spent much of the winter in and out of hospital. Conditions on the Eastern Front were deteriorating, and by the time the actual assassination attempt (with Stauffenberg's valise full of explosives which injured but did not kill Hitler) is made, the military situation is on the point of collapse. George and Philipp's cavalry units are sent rushing towards Berlin to help provide military backing to the coup planned to follow the assassination, and then have to turn and rush back towards the front lines (luckily masked by the chaos of the Russian advance) when word comes that Hitler was not killed in the attempt.

In the glum silence punctuated by the clip-clop of the horses' hooves, I had plenty of time for reflection. I was obsessed by one question; was it still really necessary to carry out this assassination? Stauffenberg had asked the same question of Tresckow a few days before the attempt. Why should one risk one's life, and especially that of dozens of other people, when the military situation suggested that in a few months the dictatorship would be over? Tresckow responded forthrightly, as usual: "The assassination has to take place, whatever the cost. Even if it doesn't succeed, we have to try. Now it is no longer the object of the assassination that matters, but rather to show the whole world, and history, that the German resistance movement dared to gamble everything, even at the risk of its own life. All the rest, in the end, is merely secondary." (p. 159-160)

A great many of the conspirators did pay with their lives for that place in history. Stauffenberg was executed by firing squad. A number of other conspirators were hanged. Tresckow and Field Marshal Kluge both took their own lives before the SS could do it for them. Georg was killed in action. The most unusual and fascinating fate of the one of the conspirators is as follows:

On August 17th, 1944, Fabian von Schlabrendorff was arrested. Tortured at length by the Gestapo, he did not give us away.... Under torture, his legal training came out. He raised procedural issues, and during a hearing he objected to the illegality of the treatment meted out to prisoners. Two of his ribs had been broken in interrogation; he created turmoil in the courtroom by displaying his injury. The prosecution was taken aback, and the trail had to be suspended. Then Schlabrendorff had a real stroke of luck: the courthouse was bombed, and his judicial dossier was lost in the ruins, along with the presiding judge, the infamous Roland Freisler, who had been carrying it. Asked afterward why he had been arrested and then interned, he replied that he was accused of "illegally slaughtering cattle." He was put in a concentration camp and then transferred, along with General Franz Halder and former French prime minister Leon Blum, to South Tyrol. After being freed by American troops, he returned to civilian life and resumed his work as a jurist; in 1967 he was appointed to the German constitutional court. He died in 1980. (p. 170-171)

However, somehow, word of Philipp's involvement in the plot never got out. He made it his business for the rest of the war to keep his cavalrymen out of action as much as possible and bring them home alive.

As a first person narrative, Valkyrie provides a unique glimpse into the experiences of a group of men who tried to follow the dictates of their honor and their faith in one of the most chaotic and horrific periods in the last century. It's a fairly quick read, and definitely a worthwhile one for those with an interest in the period.

Interview with Alphonse Creator Matthew Lickona

I posted a while back about the publication of Alphonse, a graphic novel written by Matthew Lickona and drawn by Chris Gugliotti. I've since had a chance to read Alphonse, Issue One and enjoyed it. It's an off-beat and dark story, but a very evocative one. Alphonse's mother is a serious druggie -- long in denial about the fact she is pregnant. When she shows up at a women's health clinic, 34 weeks pregnant, she insists that she can't go through with the pregnancy, and a doctor agrees to provide an abortion and hysterectomy. However, Alphonse is not your ordinary, helpless child of 34 weeks gestation. He is, through fate or the harsh mix of chemicals his mother's habits have exposed him to, aware of her thoughts and his danger, and also unusually coordinated for his size and age.

In the first issue we see his escape from the abortion clinic, and his rescue by a pro-life protester who takes him home and begins to nurse him through the withdrawal which removal from his mother's chemical habits causes. A man of action despite standing under twenty inches tall, Alphonse seems poised to bring about changes in the intersecting lives of a number of characters.

Alphonse is not a political cartoon or simple message book. It is a gritty fantasy told in a macabrely inventive visual style -- using a fantastic situation to explore a topic which is often considered radioactive in our society. Abortion is a topic which many seek to pigeonhole quietly by declaring a "tragedy". Alphonse seeks to be the Macbeth to this tragedy -- bloody, bold and resolute.

Author Matthew Lickona agreed to answer a set of questions for me in order to provide you with this interview.

Q: How did the idea for Alphonse come to you, and what can you tell us about where the story is going?

A: My inspiration for Alphonse actually came from another comic character: Gary Cangemi’s Umbert the Unborn. I think I first encountered him in The National Catholic Register. Cangemi had created Umbert to manifest the personhood of the fetus, and to that end, he had endowed the little guy with reason, will, and a pretty thorough understanding of the outside world. In particular, Umbert knew about legalized abortion.

Umbert was (and remains) a cheerful fellow. But he got me to thinking: what if it were true? What if there really was a sentient fetus, suspended upside down in the dark, barely able to move, completely dependent on its mother for sustenance and care, and constantly aware of the fact that, at any moment, it could be killed? That if Mom made the fateful choice, there was nothing - not even the law - standing between it and violent death? Month after month in the dark, wondering when the axe might fall. What would that experience be like? What would it do to a person? >Alphonse was born out of that question.

Where is the story going? Well, by the end of issue one, Alphonse has survived the attempt on his life, and the fallout from his escaping the abortion clinic is just beginning to ensue. Issue two is largely about that fallout, and the ways that the various characters deal with it. We get a little more insight into the cause and nature of Alphonse's character and condition, and the wheels are set in motion that will eventually bring about the climax in issue five.

Q: Did the comic book genre seem to come naturally from the subject matter? I've got to admit, I'm not normally a comic book reader (nor a comic strip reader since Calvin & Hobbes and The Far Side left the funny pages) but as I read the first issue of Alphonse I couldn't really picture it as just prose.

A: Yes. Comic books land on the storytelling continuum somewhere between prose and movies, and I think that in Alphonse's case, that's a good thing.

I mean, you could make a movie out of the story, but it would have to be animated - I think a CGI preemie scurrying around the screen amid live actors would be just too darned creepy. It would overwhelm the story, and just freaking people out is not my goal. Animation provides a level of abstraction from reality that would render Alphonse a little more tolerable, I think.

But comic books, which abstract the images from motion, provide an even further remove, and my hope is that such abstraction serves to dampen the horror to the point where the story can come through clearly.

As for prose, I suppose I could have written things out, but it would have been a lot harder to keep from getting too heavy-handed. (I'm sure some people think the comic is heavy-handed as it is.) Take, for example, the montage on page four. I think that by the time I finished describing Mom's doodle of the monster sperm attacking the fleeing egg, the nightmare image of the abortion machine, the ominous and demanding abortion protestors, and the way they serve to chain Mom to this baby that terrifies her, the reader's eyes would be glazing over, and the hope for an engaged conversation between author and reader would be lost. In comic form, the whole thing can be taken in pretty quickly - Alphonse's connection to his mother's drug-fueled dreams is established, and we can move along without belaboring the point.

HOWEVER, these reasons are, to some extent, justifications after the fact. The truth is, my older brother collected comics when he was a teenager, and I read every issue he bought, many of them more than once. I found some of the stories - Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli's BATMAN: YEAR ONE, for example - deeply affecting and memorable, and that may be part of the reason why I never placed comics among the things of childhood that one ought to put away. Suffice it to say that when Alphonse first came to me, he came to me as an illustration. Maybe that's because he was inspired by Umbert. Maybe it's because I have been privy to so much back-and-forth about the use of graphic images in the abortion debate. Or maybe it's just because I like comics.

Q: Given the subject matter, I'm curious whether your illustrator is someone with a Catholic or pro-life background. What did he think of the project when you introduced it to him?

A: You know, I'm hesitant to speak for my artist on this one. But I will say that he wasn't interested in doing a piece of propaganda - which was good, because I wasn't, either. I'm pretty sure he signed on because he read the script and thought it was a good story.

Q: Any particular illustration stylistic influences? Two things really struck me, though they may be totally my own thinking: The cover looks like a horror-show version of the cover of Angel in the Waters (which I read to my kids a bunch of times when we were expecting our youngest) and Alphonse's hat, overalls and scalpel look in some of the pictures you've posted reminds me Boondocks.

A: Angel in the Waters - ha! That's awesome, in a sort of scary way. I actually approached Ben Hatke, who illustrated Angel in the Waters, about this project way back before I found Chris (needless to say, it didn't work out). But no - Hatke's book was not a source. Chris sent me a lineup of six cover possibilities, and we went with this one for a number of reasons, some of them having to do with the starkness of the image, and the way it presented Alphonse as an isolated figure (even as he is connected to Mom via the umbilical cord). Ultimately, I think it came down to drama and simplicity.

As for the overalls and hat image - that was just my first rendering of Alphonse, for better or for worse. I don't think Chris ever saw it. I get what you're saying about Boondocks, but it wasn't a direct inspiration. I first fell in love with Chris's work because some of the stuff on his website reminded me of Bill Sienkiewicz, one of my very favorite comic book artists - though Chris's style is obviously very much his own. I gave Chris descriptions and characteristics, and he took it from there.

Q: What's the reaction to the book been? Has it been covered at all by secular comics sites?

A: Reaction has been varied, and it's come mostly from other Catholics. Some have understood the project right off and thought it worthwhile, others have expressed concern that the central premise will prove too radioactive, that it will prevent the story from getting through. Some, I think, have simply found it puzzling. Plenty of folks have simply kept silent, and I won't venture to guess at why.

I am just now beginning the push to secular comics sites. The comics market is extremely crowded, and I think for a project like this - self published, and dealing with a difficult subject - to attract any notice, it's going to have to have something of an established fanbase. Most of the media people I know are involved with the Catholic press, so I've started there in my effort to build support and find an audience. Also, it seemed to me that a story like this might be dear to the Catholic heart - particularly if that Catholic heart was fond of the grotesque scenarios found in Flannery O'Connor. I don't want to preach to the choir here - I don't want to preach, period - but I thought maybe the choir would find it worth singing about.

Q: Though I don't want to overplay the evangelization aspect of this (who was it who said, "If you want to send a message, use Western Union"?) but what do you want people to come away from Alphonse with -- but as a Catholic and as an author more generally?

A: My fondest hope is that this is a story that will linger in the reader's mind after he or she has finished it and walked away.

I could say that I'd like it to give readers an enlarged sense of the world, but that's awfully hifalutin.

I could say that I'd like it to give readers on both sides a better sense of the opposition - and if the characters are actually characters, as opposed to cardboard cutouts; if the story really is a story, as opposed to propaganda, then it's certainly possible it will have that effect. But that's more of a byproduct. It's not why I'm doing this.

So I'll stick with the lingering.

Q: This is partly a charitably funded project. How is it going so far and what do you still need to make Alphonse happen?

A: Well, issue one was funded mostly by donations from friends, family, and a couple of surprising sources, so that much has been a success. Issue two is, as of now, about $1300 away from being funded. Overall, I need about $17,000 to finish the project. The story really works best if you can take it in from start to finish all at once, so I keep hoping for a rich patron to come along and help me turn it into a single graphic novel. But barring that, I'll keep begging and scraping to get the issues out one at a time. I'm not picky. With any luck, the issues will start to catch on, and I can use the proceeds to help fund what remains.



As of now, 39 backers have pledged $3,283 towards the $4,600 cost of getting Alphonse Issue Two produced. There is just over a week left to the fund drive. To contribute and track progress visit the Kickstarter page for Alphonse here. You can purchase copies of Alphonse for $2.99/ea plus shipping from IndyPlanet.

Book Review: Empires of Trust (Part II)

[Empires of Trust, review Part I]

Review of: Empires of Trust: How Rome Built--and America Is Building--a New World

My apologies for taking so long to get back with a second part to this review. In the first installment, I covered the history of Rome's early expansion, and how its commitment to establishing a safe horizon of allies, and defending those allies against any aggression, led the city of Rome to effectively rule all of Italy. From southern Italy, Rome was drawn into Sicily, which in turn made it a threat to Carthage and drew those two superpowers of the third century BC into a series of wars that would end with the total destruction of Carthage as a world power.

With the power of Carthage effectively neutralized after the end of the Second Punic War in 201 BC, Rome immediately became an attractive ally for states throughout the world which sought a superpower ally. That same year, ambassadors from Pergamum and Rhodes arrived in Rome seeking aide against two of the major Hellenistic kings who had recently made an alliance, Philip V of Macedon and Antiochus III of the Seleucid Empire (based in modern Syria). Since the time of Alexander the Great (125 years before) the Eastern Mediterranean had been dominated by several large and incredibly wealthy Hellenistic kingdoms. The more ancient Greek city states were in the main still free, but were no match for the military power of the Hellenistic kingdoms ruled by Macedonian dynasties if they should exert themselves to conquer them.

The Romans admired Greek learning and culture, and also admired their ideals of freedom. However, it was next to impossible to argue that the Macedonians and Seleucids presented any danger at all to Rome, and there was controversy in the Roman senate as to whether agreeing to help the Greeks would be legal, given the requirements in Roman Law that only defensive wars be fought. The case for a "defensive" war against the Hellenistic kingdoms was pretty tenuous, but those who idealized the freedom of ancient city states such as Athens won out, and Rome's legions landed in Greece where they handily defeated Philip in 200-197, driving Macedonian forces out of Greece.

Having expelled him from Greece, the Romans left Philip in power in Macedonia, and in 196 issued a proclamation at the Isthmian Games declaring all the Greek city states (including those that had fought with Macedon against Rome) to be politically independent and free of any tributary obligations to Rome. The Roman historian Livy recounts what Greeks were saying of this:

There is but one nation which at its own cost, through its own exertions, and at its own risk has gone to war on behalf of the liberty of others. It renders this service not to those across its frontiers, or to the peoples of neighboring states, or to those who dwell on the same mainland, but it actually crosses the seas in order that nowhere in the wide world may injustice and tyranny exist, but that right and equity and law may be everywhere supreme.
Livy 33.33 (page 131)

Doubtless the Romans felt the warm glow of a visibly grateful world and patted themselves on the backs a bit, as when Americans read about the throngs turning out to cheer President Wilson when he attended the peace conference after the Great War. Like the Americans after the Great War, Rome pulled all its soldiers out of Greece. However, the peace was even less lasting. Four years later in 192, The Aetolian League of Greek city states allied itself with King Antiocus III and set about attacking other Greek city states in Asia Minor. Rome sent legions back to Greece and across into Asia Minor, where it defeated the Aetolian League and the Seleucid Empire in the Seleucid War of 192-188 BC. At the end, however, Rome declared all Greek city states in Asia Minor free, and once again withdrew all its troops back to Italy.

By this point, Rome was clearly the hegemonic power in a monopolar world. The major Hellenistic kingdoms of Macedonia, Asia Minor and Egypt were no match for it, Carthage and been decisively defeated, and powers on the edge of the Mediterranean world such as the Parthian Empire were not a significant threat. However, up till this point Rome directly controlled very little territory outside of Italy. It was engaged in frequent wars to protect various allies, but did not rule them directly.

This situation did not last. One of the freedoms which the Greek city states had traditionally treasured was the freedom to wage small scale wars against one another on the slightest pretext. And as Rome repeatedly stepped in and used its overwhelming military superiority to demand that hostilities be broken off, the Greeks came increasingly to resent Roman power, even if it was wielded from afar and in the cause of peace. This caused many of the Greeks to support Perseus of Macedon (Philip's son) in 171 BC when he moved to invade Greece. Polybius (a Greek who wrote one of the best works on the history and political organization of the Roman Republic) writes that the simple novelty and excitement of seeing a power with the apparent ability to mount a military challenge to Rome that the Greeks supported Perseus without thinking of the consequences that would follow should he actually succeed in conquering Greece. (Polybius 30.29, Empires of Trust, Page 145) Some may, Madden certainly does, see parallels to the American and European elites (people with no interest in living under an extreme Islamic regime themselves) who gleefully speculated that Taliban or Iraqi forces would stymie the American military in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Rome defeated Perseus, and once again declared the Greek city states free, though it took the precaution of helping pro-Roman political parties to power in key city states first. In 150-148, Macedon sought to take over Greece again, and the Romans reconquered Macedon and simply stayed. The Greeks continued to fight among themselves, with the Achaean League attacking Sparta against Roman demands for peace. A group of Roman senators sent to Corinth to negotiate the issue in 147 were beset by rioters who pelted them with rocks and excrement -- with the senators barely escaping with their lives. At last Rome had enough, not only did it take over Greece and make it a directly ruled province, but it sacked Corinth and leveled it. After fifty years, Rome had decided to be a conquering power and rule foreign dominions directly. Within the next 200 years, most of the known world would come under its direct control -- sometimes as a result of local kings leaving their dominions to Rome in their wills, in other cases when the Romans tired of local unrest and decided to administer areas directly. The empire of trust model was not wholly abandoned, Rome seldom openly conquered new territories (with the exception of "uncivilized" areas such as Gaul and Britain), but after 150 BC it quickly lost its hesitance to exert direct rule over territories outside of Italy.

Although similar events were taking place throughout the Mediterranean world in the second century BC, the events in Greece and Asia Minor are particularly interesting because they highlight to key elements of Roman power:

1) Rome tried repeatedly over a fifty year period to turn the conflict-loving Greeks into peaceful but self-ruling allies.

2) In the end, when no other solution would bring peace, Rome seized direct control.

However, as long as it could, Rome maintained peace through its allies, and stepping in only when regional wars broke out.

Madden points to several interesting similarities between the history of Rome in this era, and that of the US in the 20th century.

- The relationship between Rome and the Hellenistic world has some similarities to that between the US and Western Europe in the 20th century. Twice the US was drawn into massive wars that began in Europe, ending the wars, but leaving both allies and vanquished as independent states. However, after the failure of post-Great War isolationism, the US remained in Europe after World War II (though scrupulously leaving all European countries politically independent) and encouraged a situation in which all Western European militaries atrophied, while the US provided manpower to keep the peace.

- Like Rome after the Second Punic War, the US has not fought a truly defensive war in sixty years, however it has repeatedly fought regional wars to protect its allies and remove regimes causing regional instability. If the US is to continue to fill a similar role in the modern world to that of Rome after 200 BC, we should expect to see this continue. (For Catholics, this poses important questions about the nature of just war, reviving a situation which has not been seen since the flourishing of the supra-national empires such as the Holy Roman Empire, and in some ways not since Rome itself.)

- Rome did, overall, have the effect of bringing peace to those parts of the world which came thoroughly into its sphere of influence. Similarly, those parts of the world which have come fully into the US sphere has stabilized, while wars continue to be found at the periphery of the US sphere. This leaves one to ask: Is hegemonic power in fact the greatest force for peace? Is it in fact the sphere of the hegemonic power which has the effect that was hoped for from international organizations such as the UN?

- The above points will mostly be appreciated by American conservatives, with the exception of those "paleo-cons" who endorse a modern isolationism, but Madden makes another point which may be less congenial to many conservatives in regards to international organizations. The operation of an empire of trust, such as Rome in the 2nd century BC or the US in the 21st century, relies upon the existence of independent leagues of allies and unaligned nations for legitimacy. After all, while exerting power which is in many ways imperial, neither empire saw/sees itself as acting as an empire, but rather as a strong state with allies. In this regard, international organizations, whether of close allies such as NATO or more open ones such as the UN, serve as a legitimating force. At a pragmatic level, the UN is headquartered in US territory and its missions seldom succeed without being made up primarily of US troops, but the fact that the UN is independent enough to provide a forum for other nations to denounce the US both serves as a legitimizing force and as a forum for nations to blow off steam against the US harmlessly. Much though some may see room for the US to act alone to right international wrongs if necessary, according to Madden's analysis it would violate the very paradigm which has allowed the US to become an empire for trust for it to act without the consent and assistance of a number of allies in any given situation. The US may not actually need those allies in a practical sense, but for the US to be what it is, to be a hegemonic empire of trust and thus a force for peace in order in the wider world, it must remain reluctant to enter any conflict without a number of regional allies.


Next in Part III: Rome and Palestine, an empire of trust confronts terrorism.

Book Review: Empires of Trust (Part I)

It may seem like overkill to write a multi-part book review, but historian Thomas F. Madden's new Empires of Trust: How Rome Built--and America Is Building--a New World explores a thesis I've been interested in for some time, which has significant implications for our country's foreign policy and the wider question of what our country is and what its place in the world ought to be.

The US has been often accused, of late, of being an empire. Madden effectively accepts that this is the case, but argues that this is not necessarily a bad thing at all. Among his first projects is to lay out three different types of empire: empires of conquest, empires of commerce, and empires of trust.

An empire of conquest is one spread by military power, in which the conquering power rules over and extracts tribute from the conquered. Classic examples would include the empires of the Assyrians, Persians, Mongols, Turks, Alexander's Hellenistic empire, Napoleon's empire and to an extent the Third Reich, Imperial Japan and Soviet Union. Empires of conquest are spread by war, and conquered territory is ruled either by local puppet rulers or by a transplanted military elite from the conquering power.

An empire of commerce is interested only in securing enough of a political foothold in its dominions to carry on trade, and is less concerned over political control or tribute. Examples would include the British and Dutch empires; in the ancient world the Pheonicians and Athenians; and later, medieval Venice. Empires of commerce are typified by a network of far-flung colonies directly controlled by the home country, at locations which are strategic for exploiting natural resources or trading with regional powers. They are less focused on conquering large swathes of territority than with controlling enough of a foothold (and enforcing enough stability in the surrounding area) to carry on their commerce.

The book, however, is primarily concerned with a third type of empire, the empire of trust, of which Madden gives only two examples: Rome and the United States. The term "empire of trust" itself requires some unpacking. Madden explains:

By that I mean that they were not only trusted by friends and foes alike with a responsible use of power, but that their empire itself came about as a direct result of that trust. Many people have an image of the Romans as lords of a brutal Empire of Conquest, built by marching legions crushing all opposition to them. That is wrong. As numerous scholarly histories of Roman expansion have made clear, the image of the Romans as brutal conquerors does not reflect the actual dynamics at work at all. The simple fact is that the Romans acquired their empire slowly and with great reluctance. As the Roman historian Ernst Badian once remarked, conquest is history's norm and requires no explanation. "What does call for an explanation, when it appears in history, is that relatively high level of sophistication that rejects opportunities for the expansion of power." It was actually that rejection that made the Romans seem trustworthy to others, that formed the basis of their Empire of Trust. The Romans did not want an empire, which is precisely why they got one.
Empires of Trust, (page 5) [emphasis in original]

"Trust" and "empire" are not two words usually heard together, and Madden's interpretation runs contrary to most popular perceptions of the Roman Empire, so most of the first few chapters are spend on a review of Roman culture and history, and how Rome became a world power. In this project, Madden relies heavily on Roman primary sources: Livy, Polybius, Dio Cassius, Appian, Cicero, Josephus, Tacitus, etc.

Among the cultural values identified as leading to Rome's empire of trust are listed its strong (indeed, literally religious) emphasis on the household as the essential social building block, an ideal of small farmer citizen-statesman, a strong emphasis on martial skill and duty, a suspicion of kingship and absolute rule, and a basic isolationism combined with a fierce desire to secure the horizon in order to keep the homeland safe from invasion -- something which became a near obsession for Rome after the Gauls sacked it in 390BC, and their care resulted in Rome not being entered by a foreign army again for 800 years, until 410AD.

In the wake of the Gaulic invasion of 390BC, Rome was the greatest military power in central Italy (the Etruscans, who a century or two before had dominated over Rome, never really recovered from the attack). However, the Rome of 390BC was little more than a large-is city state. In an effort to provide security against future attacks, the Romans formed tight alliances with the city states surrounding them. There was much strife between neighboring city states in the wake of the Gaulic invasion, and as Rome established or re-established treaties with the surrounding city states in Latium (central Italy), it defended it's allies in a series of local wars. The end result was a Latin League of city states, tied together by all their individual treaties with Rome, and thus prevented from falling into war with each other since Rome would protect any ally that was attacked.

This Latin League fielded a strong enough joint military force that it repelled subsequent Gaulic attacks, but Rome's obvious power over the confederation (although it was theoretically composed of equal states) resulted in a rebellion/civil war in 340BC. Rome won this war with the Latin League, but rather than anexing the conquered cities it re-accepted them as allies with independant local government, though in the process Rome developed a sliding scale of alliances which bound different allies to Rome with varying levels of political unity.

The closest Latin towns would receive Roman citizenship, with full voting rights and the right to run for Roman offices. Although they maintained local state governments, the big decisions for the region were made in Rome. Others, particularly non-Latin allies, were given citizenship without voting rights. They, too, supported the common military and allowed Rome to deal with matters of warfare and foreign affairs, but they retained more local autonomy. The lowest rung were "equal allies" who were not citizens, but could do business with Romans, although not with others without Rome's approval.
(page 75)

With the rebellion of the Latin League behind it, Rome resumed it's policy of forming alliances at the frontiers, and then defending those new allies in any wars. With Rome's military prowess established, city states on the edge of its sphere of influence began to seek out Rome as an ally, thus drawing Rome into more quarrels. In 343BC, Capua formed an alliance with Rome in order to get aid against the Samnite hill peoples. In 327BC, the Greek city (Greeks had established colonies throughout southern Italy and Sicily in the centuries prior) of Neapolis (modern Naples) was in a state of civil war. One faction brought in a Samnite garrison to support them, the other sought an alliance with Rome, which the Senate granted, expelling the Samnite garrison and adding Neapolis to the growing list of Roman allies.

Pick up any history of the Roman Republic and there is one phrase that you will find over and over again: "They appealed to Rome for aid." Those six words explain the central dynamic by which the Romans expanded. A people would get into trouble. They would appeal to Rome for aid. The Romans would agree, gaining a new ally, but also a new war into the bargain.
(page 78)

In 285-275BC, Rome's alliance with the small city of Thurii in southern Italy drew them into conflict with the major Greek city of Tarentum, further south in the boot of Italy, when the Tarentines assaulted and sacked Thurii. The Tarentines employed the famous Greek general Pyrrhus, who landed with a professional army of 25,000 men and twenty war elephants. Pyrrhus won several incredibly costly victories (giving us the phrase "Pyrrhic victory") but was eventually beaten and driven from Italy by Rome and her Latin allies. This show of force soon brought all of southern Italy into alliance with Rome, but that in turn made Sicily Rome's next doorstep, and drew Rome into the ongoing war between the north African kingdom of Carthage and the Greeks inhabiting Sicily.

It should start to become obvious the sorts of similarities which Madden sees to the experiences of the United States in the 20th and 21st centuries. Take, for instance, one recent series of events. In 1990, Iraq invades Kuwait, a minor American ally (but one with a major natural resource) who in turn applied to the US for assistance, along with neighbors such as Saudi Arabia. The US leads a large coalition (which in fact consisted mainly of US troops) in liberating Kuwait, and in return is given garrisons in both Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Iraq continues to flout the treaty that ended the war, and the American presence in the region is used as a pretext for terrorist attacks against the US by Al Qaeda, which is under the protection of the Taliban government of Afghanistan. The US invades both Afghanistan and Iraq (again with the help of a number of allies, though their numerical contribution is small) and attempts to turn them into independent allied governments. However, this in turn increases tensions with/in the neighboring countries of Iran and Pakistan, with the danger that the US and Iran may be drawn into a war, or that the US-ally government of Pakistan will be overthrown by an anti-US faction, resulting in war there.

As with the Romans, territory is not being conquered and then ruled by the empire of trust itself, but once a major power gains a reputation for being willing to go to war to protect allies while leaving them essentially independent, there comes to be a draw on the power which pulls its security horizon out further and further until it either meets its match or -- as in the case of the US by 1990AD and of Rome by 150BC -- becomes the world's sole superpower. In this process, what eventually creates the "pull" which drives expansion of the empire is the trust that it will defend its allies against all external threats while allowing them to retain their autonomy in all things other than hurting the empire or other allies. This, combined with a track record for turning former enemies into allies, provided every reason to work with Rome, and few reasons to fight against it.

Clearly the Romans did believe that defeated enemies should be treated with respect and dignity. More than that, as we shall see, the Romans, like Americans, were famous for making friends out of enemies, rebuilding and restoring them after militarily defeating them. As the Roman statesman Cicero once noted, "By defending our allies our people have gained the whole world." [De re publica, 3.25] Empires of Trust,(page 11)

[Two more installments of this review to come.]

Book Review: The Death of a Pope

Out today from Ignatius Press is The Death of a Pope, a new novel by Piers Paul Read, a mainstream novelist (his survival novel Alive about a rugby team whose plane crashes in the Andes topped the New York Times bestseller list when it came out 25 years ago, and was later made into a film) who has also written both fiction and nonfiction on Catholic themes. He wrote a popular history of the templars a few years back, and On the Third Day, a thriller about the discovery in modern Israel of a crucified skeleton that some allege to be proof that Christ did not rise from the dead.

I had not read any of Read's previous books, but when Ignatius emailed me and offered me a review copy, the premise of the novel sounded interesting and I could not resist the lure of a free book. However, I did not initially expect much of it, my idea of modern "Catholic thrillers" having been formed by the likes of Pierced By A Sword, whose prose style treads that delicate line between incompetent and downright laughable.

However, I need not have feared. Read's prose is deft and indeed literary, though the modern device of using present tense narrative to convey immediacy is not necessarily my cup of tea. Those inclined to literary snobbery will not find themselves holding their noses as they read this novel by any stretch. The less pretentious reader will enjoy the fast-paced plot, which whisks him from a terrorist trial in London, to the refugee camps of Uganda, the chemistry labs of Cairo and at last to the 2005 papal conclave.

Juan Uriarte is an former Jesuit, who left the priesthood 20 years before in order to join the FMLN guerrilla army and fight the El Salvadoran government. Now he works for Misericordia International, a Catholic charitable organization which among its other work is helping to provide medical aide to refugees in Sudan and Uganda. We first meet him, however, in a British court, where he stands accused of having contacted members of the Basque ETA and the IRA with an eye to purchasing sarin nerve gas. The Crown alleges that he was doing this with an eye towards some terrorist attack. Uriarte claims that he never intended to use it against other humans, but rather against the horses and camels of the Sudanese militias who are slaughtering the refugees his organization is trying to help.

The ex-priest manages to escape conviction because the jury does not consider it beyond a reasonable doubt that he had terrorist intent, and so begins an increasingly fast paced search for the truth about Uriarte's intentions, as the Polish-English Mi5 agent who originally brought him in and a female reporter who finds herself attracted to Uriarte's passion for those suffering in the world both seek to understand what is really going on. Along the way we meet the reporter's uncle, a traditionalist English priest with friends in Rome; and a papabile Dutch cardinal whose one great fear is that his brief and unsuccessful pass at a fellow seminarian will be revealed to a media already ravening after the clergy abuse scandals that had rocked the US and Europe.

This is clearly an insider view of Catholicism, not the sort of outsider sensationalism so often found in movies and thrillers. Read's characters have the strengths and weaknesses of their types. Though I'd certainly take Read as being more on the traditional (or at least orthodox) side of the spectrum, his traditional Catholics are not saints, nor his progressive Catholics devils.

One of the things I found both interesting and realistic about the book is that while the thriller plot itself is brought to a close, and disaster averted, none of the characters actually have a fully accurate understanding of what's going on. They successfully uncover and thwart the plot despite some basic misunderstandings in their theories.

The Death of a Pope is an enjoyable and fast-paced read. If you're looking for a fun summer read, with a Catholic backdrop, you could do far worse. For my own part, I think I'll be looking up a few of Read's other novels.

Historical Delusion

I just finished reading Norman Cantor's Alexander the Great: Journey to the End of the Earth. It's a short biography of Alexander (under 200 pages) which is hardly intended to compete with the massive volumes by Green, Fox and others written over the last sixty years. It is, however, written in the erudite yet playful and accessible style which made Cantor's textbooks on Ancient and Medieval history some of the most downright enjoyable college level textbooks I ever encountered. (His classic The Medieval World has apparently been replaced by The Civilization of the Middle Ages which I haven't read, but I remember the former fondly and would certainly give the latter a try.)

The book on Alexander was apparently the last that Cantor wrote before he died and was published posthumously. Unfortunately, it is marred by one glaring mistake in the first couple pages: it refers to the wars between the classical Greeks and the Persian Empire as the "Peloponnesian War", when the Peloponnesian war was in fact the war between the Athenians and Spartans several decades later. One could wish that his estate had treated the draft to a proofread by another academic rather than simply sending it off to be printed.

Besides this one lapse, which put me off on rather the wrong foot with the book, it's an enjoyable and accessible read. I'd certainly recommend it for an interested high school student, or any interested adult with little background and little time but wanting to get a feel for Alexander and Hellenistic civilization.

In my momentary loss of faith after reading the first few pages, however, I went and looked up the Amazon reviews of the book. These were rather mixed. Many faulted it for not being a long and scholarly biography -- which strikes me as unsurprising given the book's diminutive size. One, however, was very much a hoot. The reader loved the book, but in great part because he thought it underlined how much greater a leader Alexander the Great was than George Bush:

Alexander, like Achilles, Caesar, King Arthur, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, embodies the spirit of the times and the people of their eras. Alexander and Achilles were heroic; Caesar and Arthur were innovators; Lincoln and Churchill gave words to enhance the decency of great nations.

Lincoln, to cite an example, did not invent democracy in America. However, when he defined democracy as government "of the people, by the people, for the people", he greatly sharpened and enhanced already existing attitudes. Alexander did the same in his time; he did not invent war, but he set an ideal seldom matched and thus established the warrior ideal for much of the Mediterannean. King Arthur does the same with his round table; Churchill gives credit to the British people for stopping Hitler.

Now, consider George Bush with his Texas swagger and flight suit while strutting across the deck of an aircraft carrier to announce "Mission Accomplished" as if he were a warrior. Alexander, in contrast to the coddled and well-protected life of Bush, survived numerous serious wounds acquired while leading his troops from the front. Whether it's Bush or Clinton or Reagan, there's a vast difference between Alexander and the perspiration and spin of today's leaders. As Canton aptly shows, it's why "the Great" title is retired.

Intended or not, there are numerous subtle parallels between ancient and modern events in the Near and Middle Easts. Alexander was successful because he responded immediately and brilliantly to local events rather than try to rule from afar; instead of being an ideologue, he worshiped every God he met along the route of his conquests.

Because he was handicapped by "faulty intelligence," when he reached Afghanistan and India he realized it was time to listen to his troops, then "cut and run". Why? To quote Cantor, "One of the old soldiers, a man named Coenis . . . . gave the speech of his life, ending with these words: 'Sir, if there is one thing above all others a successful man should know, it is when to stop'. Instead of trying to stay the course, Cantor says "Alexander sulked for two days but then tried to find a way to make this defeat appear to be a victory."

Cantor offers an intriguing psychological assessment of Alexander; not only was he "the supreme exemplar of that old pagan world" but he also knew how to sulk and then accept the will of his troops. Perhaps that is why there are no modern Alexanders; today we tend to look at his heroism, courage, strength and vision but overlook his ability to sulk.

Now, past question, Alexander was a leader of far greater stature and import to the history of civilization that President Bush. Don't question that for a moment. But that hardly means one would want to live in Alexander's empire or want modern politicians to emulate him. Alexander was, as Cantor amply shows, a man of great abilities, but also a more than borderline psychopath by any modern standard. Even Napoleon, another great leader in whose historical or geographic proximity I have no desire to be, would have been a far preferable leader to actually live under than Alexander.

Indeed, one of the things that interested me very much in Cantor's final chapter was his discussion of how Alexander was a quintessentially pagan figure -- and how the myth of Alexander was modified in the medieval period in order to adapt him to Christian heroic models. Which, in turn, makes me rather curious to dig up some time Fox's Pagans and Christians, which Cantor cites with approval.