Frederick the Great discussion post 9
Jan. 13th, 2020 09:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahn...I leave you guys alone for one weekend and it's time for a new Fritz post, lol!
I'm gonna reply to the previous post comments but I guess new letter-reading, etc. should go in this one :)
Frederick the Great links
I'm gonna reply to the previous post comments but I guess new letter-reading, etc. should go in this one :)
Frederick the Great links
Re: Happy Birthday, Heinrich!
Date: 2020-01-25 05:21 am (UTC)etc.
Wooooow. The shade, it is thick! (Man, I love Heinrich for it, though. He is my problematic fave.)
All the same, the speech puts a remarkable emphasis on the cost and the sacrifices of war (in terms of what was usual in that era), and the inscriptions for the individual honored people often empasize their integrity and refusal to engage in plunder and oppression of the defeated. Layers again: the obelisk is both a "Fuck you, Fritz!" monument and a way to commemorate people he thought deserved to be honored and an expression of his own idea of military ethics.
That's really cool. <3 And thanks for the context on him not being a pacifist.
Re: Happy Birthday, Heinrich!
Date: 2020-01-26 04:06 am (UTC)That's not even shade, that's fact!
Somebody on the internet put together an impressive pilot project on "best generals of all time", and I saw that Mollwitz was listed as a Fritz victory, and I was like, "Look."
Did even *Fritz* take credit for winning that battle? I'm not saying he didn't shortchange Schwerin, or gloss over leaving the field in his memoirs, but at any point did he ever try to say he won it?