18th-Century Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 37

[cahn]

More diaries of our favorite 18th-century Prussian diary-keeper have been unearthed and have been synopsized!

January 18th: Blessed be thou to me! Under your light, my Prince Heinrich was born!

Comments

Three Musketeers

[cahn]

Hee! Though, uh, that's one of the nicer things I've heard of James II :P

So as you all know it takes me forever to get to books, but I did say I should read the Three Musketeers one of these days, and apparently this week is it? I'm about a quarter of the way through, and it is great fun. I'd forgotten how hilarious Dumas is :D (But also, awwwww Anne of Austria and Louis XIII :( )

Mostly, though, I would like to ask if there's a reasonably readable bio of Cardinal Richelieu? As promised (and as I knew he would be from selenak's previous recaps), he is definitely the most interesting person in the book, despite only having showed up for one scene so far. (I apologize if there was one recced before that I missed -- I feel like I've asked this before, but I have no recollection of what the answer was!)

Re: Three Musketeers

[selenak]

There’s a lot of fun in Dumas which usually gets lost in the movies; in the case of the Musketeers the Richard Lester movies are the honorable exception. (Mind you, Lester’s 1960s humor also has a lot of slapstick in it which is slightly different, but his two part movie(s) is still for my money the best and most Dumasian screen version we have of that story. Faye Dunaway, Milady, Michael York, D’Artagnan, Oliver Reed, Athos, Christopher Lee, Rochefort, and cast against type and actually amazingly good in it, Charlton Heston as Richelieu.)

Alas all the Richelieu books I read back in the day were in German, except for one which in French, and even if they were in English, I can’t say one impressed me much in terms of narrative readability. They were usually dense and did the job of informing me, but they weren’t exactly entertainingly written, more’s the pity.

Mildred, you asked me about the most ruthless and worst French King: like you, I don’t have detailed knowledge of all of them, but of those I know about, I would differentiate between “worst” and “most ruthless”. Louis XI “The Spider King” would be my nomination for “most ruthless” as well, but his tactics worked for him and France, he got what he wanted out of them, and got the better of England and the HRE both for the most part, no mean feat if both are at your borders and at times allied with each other. (He certainly outdid Napoleon in that department.) Now he was undoubtedly a terrible person, but “worst king” - no. At least not if you define “worst” as “worst for France”, in which case, hm, sorry, Louis XV, you’re at least getting into the close competition with your debts and creating/speeding along much of what your grandson would die for, along with Philip VI for starting the 100 years war, Charles VI “the Mad”, though one could argue genuine mental illness which isn’t his fault should take him out of the competition, and Catherine de’ Medici’s two boys on the throne, Charles IX and Henri III both (any of Catherine’s daughers would have been SO MUCH MORE COMPETENT at ruling than any of her sons, alas). Either sucked at the job.

Most ruthless?

[mildred_of_midgard]

Yeah, I had much the same thoughts as you, especially re Charles VI. At some point, if you think you're a frog made of glass, some personal responsibility for your kingdom going to hell in a handbasket isn't on your shoulders.

But speaking of ruthless monarchs! I have to share this quote from Franz Szabo. He's a twenty-first century historian who wrote a history of the Seven Years' War, which Blanning relies on for the demythologizing-Fritz aspects of his own book. Szabo's book been on my radar for a while now, including the many, many reviews on Amazon by readers that say, in sum, "Look, I'm all for demythologizing Fritz, but Szabo hates him so much that he can't stay on topic, and it ends up being more an anti-Fritz diatribe than a book about the Seven Years' War."

Well, this week I read the Kindle sample (I'm probably going to end up reading the book on Perlego, because of the cost), and check out this passage from page 1:

Goebbels did all he could to reinforce the parallels between the two [Fritz and Hitler] in Hitler's mind, even if he privately confessed to his diary that the Führer was unfortunately simply not 'Fritzish' enough. In his view Hitler was too soft and lacked the utter and complete ruthlessness of Frederick.

I see we're off to a strong start with the theme of the book!

(I'm also planning to read Füssel's take on the Seven Years' War soon, maybe next, but first I want to finish Beuys' Sophie Charlotte bio. Slowly following in selenak's footsteps, with a 2-3 year lag. ;))

Re: Most ruthless?

[selenak]

Good grief, Szabo, did no one tell you about Godwin’s law? I notice he doesn’t mention - or does he? - that Goebbels’ opinion in this competition of ruthlessness was temporary and also triggered by jealousy, because he wanted to get rid of his rival Göring and thought that AW = Göring, and Hitler should just get on with the casheering already. (Poor AW. Not enough that his life went the way it did, he also gets compared to Hermann G.) (The 1940s propaganda movie Der Grosse König directed by Veit Harlan, the last one of the “Fridericus” movies to star Otto Gebühr, which was ordered by Goebbels, also had deliberate Göring = AW subtext, though he coyly told the press not to hammer down on the Fritz = Hitler comparison (since the audience was supposed to get that anyway).

But yeah. Sounds like I didn’t miss anything when skipping this book. Füssel also does some demythologizing, but even handedly (i.e. with all the war participants), and he doesn’t have beef with either Fritz or MT . As I recall he particularly excelled at the “early World War” context, i.e. showing how the European 7 Years War Theatre and the overseas Brits vs French duking it out in the colonies, American and Indian both, were influencing each other. At at the propaganda war with the pamphlets, which Prussia was really best at UNTIL the publication of the “Why we should stop the subsidies already and let Fritz and MT do their inner German war thing: Britain First!” Pamphlet by Isaac Something or the other. Nobody, at any point, gets compared to bloody Hitler.

Re: Most ruthless?

[mildred_of_midgard]

Ha! I was hoping you would have more context, and you delivered. (I did not feel particularly inspired to go do any detective work on Goebbels' diary.)

I notice he doesn’t mention - or does he? - that Goebbels’ opinion in this competition of ruthlessness was temporary and also triggered by jealousy

No, of course not, at least not in the sample. As far as I can tell, the book goes like this:

Page 1: Fritz is worse than Hitler.
Pages 2-end: The rest is details.

There's a reason I haven't read this yet and don't plan to pay full price even if I do. (Whereas I bought Füssel a while back on your recommendation, just need time to read it.)

Poor AW. Not enough that his life went the way it did, he also gets compared to Hermann G.

Poor AW!

Re: Most ruthless?

[selenak]

I did not feel particularly inspired to go do any detective work on Goebbels' diary.

I don't blame you. I never read it completely, either, but I am familiar with excerpts from the seminars on propaganda I attended and from them getting quoted in other history works. BTW, aside from everything else, let's not forget Goebbels thought he was writing for eternity and that in future days when scholars devoutly studied the story of the glorious Third Reich, they would of course regard his diaries as gospel, and him as the most competent, the smartest, the most faithful paladin while everyone else sucked by comparison. You won't find descriptions of things like his two years long affair with Lida Baarova in there. (Let alone the countless other affairs, for he exploited his position as de facto film boss of Germany to the full.) So whatever Goebbels says is already filtered through this agenda, not a direct hotline to what he actually thought at the time.

To return to the original point of comparison, it never ceases to amaze me - and illustrate how much these monsters believed their own lies - that Goebbels told Hitler about Roosevelt's death by saying "The Czarina Elizabeth has died". Truman really, really, REALLY isn't Peter III style into you!

Re: Most ruthless?

[cahn]

To return to the original point of comparison, it never ceases to amaze me - and illustrate how much these monsters believed their own lies - that Goebbels told Hitler about Roosevelt's death by saying "The Czarina Elizabeth has died". Truman really, really, REALLY isn't Peter III style into you!

WOW.
I realize it isn't really funny, but I laughed anyway, in sheer disbelief! That's... something else.
(I am sure you've told me this before, but now I have the context to appreciate just how screwy that is...)

Re: Most ruthless?

[selenak]

If you want to practice your German, or employ some Google Translate, here are a few articles about Hitler and Goebbels assuming they finally got their very own Miracle of the House of Brandenburg (one even mentions Goebbels had been reading from Carlyle's Fritz biography to Hitler before that):

https://www.spiegel.de/politik/lateinisches-gift-a-84b90632-0002-0001-0000-000045137657

https://www.wis-potsdam.de/de/zentrum-militaergeschichte-und-sozialwissenschaften-bundeswehr-zmsbw/1762-2022-wunder-des-hauses

https://www.welt.de/geschichte/zweiter-weltkrieg/article139320884/Als-der-gefaehrlichste-Mann-des-Krieges-starb.html

Miracle of the House of Brandenburg (NOT)

[cahn]

Thanks! I guess I can kind of see... Roosevelt being sort of this figure that loomed large enough that when he died more-or-less out of the blue, it seemed like it was providence, or their own Miracle of the House of Brandenburg.

But on the other hand, like you say... comparing Peter III! to Truman!

Re: Miracle of the House of Brandenburg (NOT)

[selenak]

One of the articles I mentioned says Hitler did expect one of the Allies to die and thus be his Miracle only he thought it would be Churchill. This at least isn't out of this world - with Churchill's smoking, hard drinking life style, he could have kicked the bucket at any point, whereas I don't think Roosevelt's actual state of health was known overseas, what with even reporters not taking pictures of him in his wheelchair -, and given Hitler had some British upper class fans (including the Duke of Windsor, and of course Unity Mitford), he may have deluded himself in the event of Churchill's death he'd get an appeasing government in Britain next, thus overlooking that the mood in the 1940s wasn't anything like it had been in 1938, and so even if Churchill HAD died, there wouldn't have been an equivalent of Peter III. coming to power next. As for Truman...

Re: Miracle of the House of Brandenburg (NOT)

[cahn]

Ah, yeah, I can see thinking that Churchill dying would be beneficial to them, but yes, I can't imagine it actually would have been!

Re: Most ruthless?

[mildred_of_midgard]

let's not forget

By which we mean, "Thank you for telling us, Selena, because we never learned this to forget it in the first place." :)

You probably know this already, but American education on WWII and the Holocaust is pretty sparse compared to the same in Europe. I have seen some significant culture clashes just based on "Is X emotionally charged for you, because the first thing that comes to mind for you when you see it is the Holocaust, or is the connection of X to the Holocaust something you've never heard of, or at best an obscure historical fact you might have learned once for an exam and then forgotten?"

Mind you, I've seen the same in reverse for the genocide of Native Americans!

it never ceases to amaze me - and illustrate how much these monsters believed their own lies - that Goebbels told Hitler about Roosevelt's death by saying "The Czarina Elizabeth has died".

Yep! That's the first sentence of Szabo's book:

On the evening of Friday 13 April 1945, Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels excitedly phoned General Theodor Busse, commander of the German 9th Army on the Eastern Front, and announced: 'The Czarina is dead!'

5 sentences later, you get the "not as ruthless as Fritz" comparison.

Truman really, really, REALLY isn't Peter III style into you!

I think we're all thankful Truman was the anti-Peter III!

Re: Most ruthless?

[cahn]

By which we mean, "Thank you for telling us, Selena, because we never learned this to forget it in the first place." :)

HAHA QUOTED FOR TRUTH

You probably know this already, but American education on WWII and the Holocaust is pretty sparse compared to the same in Europe.

Yes, for sure. Although I will say that my education on WWI was an order of magnitude worse than my education on WWII, because at least for the latter I got some pop WWII fictionalization and so on, but there was much less of that for WWI.

Re: Most ruthless?

[mildred_of_midgard]

Hitler should just get on with the casheering already

Incidentally, not that this excuses Fritz, but the more 18th century history I read, the more generals I see in different countries losing their heads because they were judged not to have engaged with the enemy aggressively enough. Occasionally the punishment gets downgraded to cashiering/exile/imprisonment/something non-fatal, but death sentences are surprisingly common.

When Fritz said "I would be justified in cutting off your head," he wasn't just channeling FW: he was speaking literally of the norms of his time.

But of course he was *also* channeling FW, conscripting involuntary therapists, rewriting history, scapegoating like crazy, etc. Which is what makes the Hohenzollern dysfunction so fascinating.

But seriously. Göring! I'm glad neither AW nor Heinrich was alive to see that.

Re: Three Musketeers

[cahn]

Oh gosh, I hadn't even thought about watching a movie of it, buuuut that cast looks amazing. (About halfway through the book now!)

Alas! -- well, maybe I'll go look for an entertaining English book, under mildred's principle that one has to start somewhere :)

Re: Three Musketeers

[mildred_of_midgard]

Alas, like Selena, I have only read about Richelieu in German (and only one dedicated bio in my case). And while Uwe Schultz writes serviceable bios that I can't complain about, I also don't go around enthusiastically reccing learning German in order to read him or paying for a Google translation.