THE GUNS OF AUGUST is a masterful tome by Barbara Tuchman, exploring how civilized Europeans,  in 1914, blundered into World War I. The key moment in that disastrous descent into vast destruction, was when German Kaiser Wilhelm II gave the Austro-Hungarian Empire, carte blanche to attack Serbia. Joe Biden has just given President Zelensky of Ukraine, permission to use American weapons on, not just Ukrainian soil to defend Ukraine, but  use in attacking Russian forces, on Russian soil. French President Macron has strongly suggested that NATO should send its soldiers, to fight Russian forces on Ukrainian soil. The German government has given notice that it intends to increase the readiness of 900,000 reservists, in case of an European War. The Guns of June, 2024. The Russians have a history of beginning wars with spectacular failures ;then they engage in a war of attrition, grinding out victory over military geniuses, such as Charles XII of Sweden, Napoleon I of France an...

  This Blogger respects Russians; as Frederick the Great stated :” It takes two bullets to take a Russian soldier out; one to kill him and one to  stop him.” This Blogger   likes Russians; even though once, in Moscow, during the Soviet era, his incredibly attractive tour guide, aka KGB agent, told him and his brother   that they were in danger of being hit, fatally, by a Soviet car crossing a Moscow street. T his Blogger’s brother told her that he had ridden in a Soviet Car, the LADA; and that he could damn well survive any hit by that piece of junk. She laughed. That night, this Blogger’s brother slept in his room, under his bed, drunk. This Blogger admires the way Russians do business; when Soviet diplomats were kidnapped in Lebanon, the KGB paid the ransoms immediately, without complaint. Shortly thereafter, Beirut was flooded with Soviet agents and Soviet bribes; the kidnappers were identified. They were abducted, tortured and  castrated; their d...

  In 1758, the Great Captain, Frederick the Great of Prussia, made the following statement about the Russian soldier. “It takes two bullets to get a Russian soldier off the battlefield; one to kill him and one to stop him, in that order ………Frederick the Great of Prussia, August, 1758.   Three hundred years later, an Ukrainian combat soldier made the following statement on the 2-22-2023 edition of PBS NEWSHOUR. ·          “Senior SGT. Olexander (through translator): They are sending their soldiers as cannon fodder. We target their equipment and their soldiers, but they keep coming and coming and keep dying and dying and even then keep coming and coming ….PBS “ In many ways, History is self-explanatory.