The Exploration Era-Part 1 Columbus

I will start a new series which I will run Parallel to my Civil War series.

The Exploration Era started when Christopher Columbus (1451-1506). Sailed across the Atlantic ocean to try to find a quicker way to get to India in 1492. He had always been fascinated by the sea and sailing. He had gone to sea at ten years old. We do not know much about his early life. He made a theory that he could go westward by sea and reach India faster than the Portuguese who had to sail all the way around Africa. Most people of that day believed (even though science said otherwise) that the earth was flat and at the end of the earth were great monsters that would devour all ships that came there. But after much persistence he persuaded Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain to give him ships to sail and find this quicker route to India. They gave him three ships, the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. They set sail on Aug. 3, 1492 from Palos, Spain, and on October 11, 1492, they spotted the Caribbean islands off southeastern North America. Now Columbus thought that these islands were just offshore from India. But with further exploring they realized that they were not near India. They visited the modern day islands of San Salvador, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic.

On the return voyage the Santa Maria, was wrecked so Columbus arrived back at Spain on March 15, 1493.

On Sept. 25, 1493, Columbus set sail with 17 ships and 1,200 to 1,500 men to find gold and capture Indians as slaves in the Indies(Which is what Columbus called them). Columbus established a fort in Hispaniola(which now encompasses Haiti and the Dominican Republic) and sailed around Hispaniola and along the length of southern Cuba. He spotted and named the island of Dominica on November 3, 1493.

Later on a third expedition (May 30, 1498-October 1500), Columbus sailed farther south, to Trinidad and Venezuela (including the mouth of the Orinoco River). Columbus was the first European to set foot on the mainland of America, since the Viking Leif Ericcson. Also when he returned to the fort on Hispaniola it had been attacked and destroyed.

When Columbus retired he had been striped of his great title by people who wanted his glory. He died a poor man.

But he had one of the largest impacts in history. God used him to start a nation over 250 years after his death.

The Civil War Part 3 - The battle of the Ironclads

The ironclads that fought in the Hampton roads were the first iron battleships. The Virginia or the Merrimack was built to break the blockade which by the way is unconstitutional because in the constitution it says that no blockade can be issued unless at war with a foreign power. But since the south was part of the U.S. and not a foreign power it was not constitutional to issue the blockade.
On March 8th The Virginia came into Hampton roads and sank the Cumberland which was a 22 gun sloop. Then the Virginia turned the Congress a 44 gun ship into an inferno. The captain of the Virginia decided he would leave because one it was getting dark two the steam frigate Minnesota had come to join the fight but had run aground so they thought they could come back tomorrow and finish off the Minnesota the next day. But when they Virginia sailed in the next morning they found that a small iron raft with a turret with two large guns sticking out of it standing between them and the Minnesota. It had been built when the Union found out that the Confederacy was building an iron ship. It had been clear that the Union Navy would need and iron ship to do battle with the one the Confederates were building. The design that President Lincoln choose was for the Monitor. It had been designed by a Swedish inventor named John Ericsson. He had designed it several years earlier, but people had laughed and said it would sink.
John Ericsson had to hurry to get the job done. He had to invent most of the pieces himself. In fact the elevator that was used to hoist the shot up into the turret was the beginning of the modern elevator. So the Virginia opened up on the Monitor but the cannonballs just bounced off the turret in a flurry of sparks. Then the Monitor's turret turned and fired heavy shot at point blank range but it did'nt go through it only slightly damaged the iron plates.
For several hours the two ships cricled each other firing shot after shot into each other. The Virginia tried to ram but they had lost most of it when ramming another ship so it did little dammage. But near the end of the battle one of the gunners aimed at the small box in the front that served as a pilot house. And that was also were the captain was standing. He fired a shell their and blinded the captain of the Monitor. But so much dammage had been taken on both sides that they both retreated. But by the end of that year both ships had sunk. The Virginia had gone back to Norfolk but Major General Benjerman Huger abandoned the city on May 9th without consulting the Navy so now the Virginia was trapped so the captain decided to blow her up, and that is what he did.
Now the Monitor sank in a storm out in the Atlantic while being transported to a new location.
But this had been the first battle between iron ships. Soon other countries began to build their own iron ships and soon the wooden ships would be outdated and old. This was one of the greatest battle in the world. It changed naval warfare forever.

If you have any Questions please comment below.

The Civil War part 2 - First Blood

The first battle of the Civil War was the first battle of Manassas, on July 21rst 1861. The Union General was Gen. Irvin McDowell. The General's for the Confederate side was: Joseph E. Johnston and Brig. Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard. This was the first major battle of the war. Nearly 70,000 troops were involved in this battle(US 28,450; CS 32,230). It On July 16, 1861, the untested Union army under Brig. Gen. Irvin McDowell marched from Washington against the Confederate army, which was drawn up behind Bull Run.
On the 21st, McDowell crossed at Sudley Ford and attacked the Confederate left flank on Matthews Hill. Fighting raged throughout the day as Confederate forces were driven back to Henry Hill. Late in the afternoon, Confederate reinforcements (one brigade arriving by train from the Shenandoah Valley) extended and broke the Union right flank. The Federal retreat rapidly became into a rout. Although victorious, Confederate forces were too disorganized to pursue. . Thomas J. Jackson earned the name: “Stonewall.” By July 22, the shattered Union army reached the safety of Washington. This battle convinced the Lincoln administration that the war would be a long and costly affair. McDowell was relieved of command of the Union army and replaced by Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, who set about reorganizing and training the troops.

A few other battles had occurred before this but this was the first field battle of the Civil War.

If you have any Questions please comment below.

The Civil War part 1 - Secession

The civil war cost 620,000 war deaths, these do not include the many more thousands of civilians that were killed in the war. This was the bloodiest war up until that point in history. Many say that it was fought over slavery while others the taxation of the south, or even to save the "Union".
In this post I will talk about these three reasons and I will talk about the myth that secession is "Treason".

First I will talk about how that slavery was not the main cause of the civil war. First if Lincoln wanted to free the slaves why not do it peacefully as most of the countries did. England for example freed their slaves by paying the owners forty percent of what each slave was worth. If Lincoln had taken the amount of money that the Union spent on the war they could have freed each slave (using England's technique) and given him forty acres and a mule!
"Well what about the emancipation proclamation?" some might ask.
The emancipation proclamation was Lincolns last card as one Englishman put it. The union had lost many a battle by 1863 and Lincolns administration was gambling that their would be a massive slave insurrection, but it did have its whiplash back. As many Northerners were horrified, mobs took to the streets, 200,000 Federal soldiers deserted, another 120,000 evaded conscription, and another 90,000 men fled to Canada. Lincolns real agenda was to "Save the Union" or to centralize the power to the government and to make them sovereign and he said so in a letter to the New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley he said:

My Paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the union without freeing any slave I would do it: and if it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the union.

This letter is interesting because like a true politician Lincoln said one thing in his inaugural speech then another now that he is in power. In fact he said that he had no power to free slaves in his inaugural speech now he talks as if he could even if he thought about it.

The taxation of the south was probably the main reason for the civil war. Huge tariff's were being levied against the south. Because the south was so trade dependant, the northern businesses profited greatly from it. Many southern representatives railed against it. Calling for them to bring it down as most of the other foreign countries were.
On the eve of the firing on fort Sumter a new Tariff was about to be levied it would plunder the South without completely destroying it.

The third reason people give for the reason of the civil war is that we needed to save the "Union" so that the U.S. would not break up into smaller countries and therefore we would not be the great nation that we are to day. My answer is this. To the founding fathers secession was a fundamental principle of political philosophy. In fact the Declaration of Independence was a secession document.
Thomas Jefferson the main author of the Declaration of Independence said in his first inaugural address in 1801 said this: "If there be any among us who would wish to to dissolve this union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of safety with which error of opinion mat be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it." And when his words where put to the test when a group of New England Federalists states attempted to secede from the union, Jefferson maintained it saying "If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation... to a continuance in Union...I have no hesitation in saying 'let us separate'."
Lincolns declaration that secession would destroy the union of states and lead to "anarchy" was a lie. If they had been allowed to go in peace it would have the effect the founding fathers wanted it to have. The tariff's would go down and it would have stopped the slide to a centralized state and in the end the south would have probably favored a union with the north and 620,000 young men would have not lost their lives. As James Madison said in 1787 that "a little rebellion now and then is a good thing and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical... a medicine necessary for the sound heath of government."
Based on this evidence and much more I think that the south was in the right when they seceded. A bloody war may have been averted if Lincoln had not been a great centralizer of power and a dictator upon which I will talk about in further posts.

Remember if you have any questions just leave a comment and I will answer it.

The end of the war

The end of the war came 1945 it had taken opn the pacific side over 3 million Japanese civilians lives and 2 atomic bombs had to go off before it ended it ended on the European side with the taking of Berlin.

With peace came many change Germany was split up. Europe was changed forever by this war, it was one of the most costly wars ever fought.


And Thus World War 2 came to an end.

D-day

After Stalingrad, Russia began to push the Germans back into Ukraine. The Germans burned and destroyed evey thing in sight. Then while Russia was pushing Germany back the British and Americans began to land troops on D-day. The German defenses were very strong and hefty. The Allies lost many troops and here is how it happened.

The allies had been preparing for this day for a long time. So on the morning of June 6, 1944 thousands of allied troops landed on Normandy's beaches. Hundreds of our American men were killed as they stepped off the boats and were slaughtered by German soldiers with machine guns and artillery. Movies like Saving Private Ryan portray this bloody scene with an R rating (I have never seen the movie myself, but that is what I heard). Fierce fighting soon took place at places like St. Lo.

D-day was one of the bloodiest battles in they war.

If you have a question just leave a comment and I'll answer personaly.

Pearl Harbor

Pearl Harbor was a Japanese attack on one of our naval bases in Hawaii. No one on our side even knew the attack was coming. One eyewitness account said: "It was early Sunday morning and I heard the sound of engines I ran out and saw Airplanes with red dots and I thought must be a drill, but then the one of their planes dropped a bomb and I knew that this was real". The Japanese sank many ships, the sailors had little time to react and the Japanese struck quickly. Their plan was this, the first wave would fly in and knock out as many ships as they could.The second wave targeted the air fields and planes. The third wave targeted the dry docks and ship yards. The first wave did their job efficiently, the second the same, but the third didn't even hit. This mistake proved to be a very fatal mistake. Admiral Yamamato decided that they had done their job. The mistake was that with the dry docks still intact the could rebuild almost every thing they had lost. The americans had lost many ships but they fought on till the wars end.

They sunk many battleships, like the Oklahoma, Arizona, and Virginia. These are only three out of the seven battleships that were sunk. Three battleships were rebuilt in the dry docks.

The Resistance

With almost all of Europe captured, Hitler ordered that all newspapers, radio brodcasts and mant other public doucumants to be taken over. With the newspapers and broadcasts, they controlled what people heard. With this type of persecution, many underground groups were formed. To help these forbidden groups, England smuggled weapons, poison, radios, and typewriters (which all of these were outlawed highly) in to them.

Many weaons like the ones pictured above were smuggled in by airdrop using a single engine Lysander(below). These planes would drop tons of guns and radios to help those underground.

The resistance went on untill the end of the war.

Remember if you have any questions just leave a comment and I will answer it in my next blog.

Ifyou want to learn more abou the secret weapons click here.

The Holocaust

This part of the war is very sobering. This time in history is known to be the most scariest and bloodiest time in all of history. When the Germans conquered most of Europe, the Gestapo or the German secret police started rounding up Jews, Slavs, and many other races that Hitler believed were inferior. He only thought that the Aryan race were fit for life. In Hitler's eyes human life was cheap. However, we are told in Genesis 1:27 "So God made man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." This verse tells us that God created us equally in his image. Hitler himself said that god sent him to deliver and glorify the Aryan race.

When the Gestapo rounded Jews up, they were put in boxcars so tightly put together that no one could sit. The ride was a three day trip. When the Jews got off they were then separated in two groups. One had all the able bodied men, and the other had all the seniors, women, and children. The able bodied men were then sent to labor camps. The seniors, women, and children were then sent to a low building that looked like a bathhouse and lullabies were played on loud speakers to calm the people down. They were then put in large rooms with shower heads on the ceiling. The last thing those Jews heard was the sound of hissing gas. Hitler murdered over 5 million Jews and over 6 million other races including Slavs, Kurds, and Arabic's. When U.S. troops saw these camps, they were horrified! It was hard to understand and believe the carnage.

These camps were heavily guarded with electrical and barbed fences plus lookout towers. There was virtually no escape and almost all of the uprisings were put down.

Remember if you have any questions just leave a comment and I will answer it in my next blog.

And if you want to know more click here.

The siege of Lenningrad

The winter was hard for the 3 million citizens of Leningrad in 1941, the German armies had surrounded the city. Their next step was to invade the city, but the people of Leningrad had been preparing for the attack. They would go out a little ways to dig tank traps and trenches. Also surrounding the city there was barbed wire with machine gun nests weaved in at a regular intervals. But that was only the outer perimeter, inside the city there were houses that were actually pillboxes and on top of that the whole city was mined.

Then in September 1941 General Von Leebs Panzer's cut the railroad that connected Leningrad to Moscow now their only way of communicating was crossing Lake Lagoda. Now there was a problem with this route because the Luftwaffe patrolled this route regularly.

So trapped in their doomed city the people were forced to take extreme measures, people ate everything they could get their hands onto. They ate wallpaper, make-up and even leather belts. The only way to get food into the city was to travel across the ice on Lake Lagoda. Soon steady convoys came across the lake with trucks that were full of food. The truck drivers were considered as heroes. The Germans tried to break the convoy by bombing it, but nature just filled the craters right back up. The siege would continue until January of 1944.

If you have a question just leave a comment and I'll answer you personally.

Kharkov

Kharkov was a German attack on the town of Kharkov were Russian soldiers were stationed. The German commander Hausser ordered the 2nd SS Panzer corps (a tank division) to charge Kharkov. Then the Leibstrandarte division or the the Adolf Hitler division and other SS Waffen troops were sent in to attack this industrial city. One German described how slow the fighting was saying "Street after street house after house". Even thought the fighting seemed slow from the soldiers perspective, the Germans captured half the city in less than a day. Then on march 15th the SS Waffen defeated the last pocket of resistance.

If you have a question just leave a comment and I'll answer you personally.

WW2-the early air war p1

The early air war was controlled by the Germans. The Germans used this advantage and wiped out the Polish air force very easily. Their main ground attack plane was the Junkers Ju87 Stuka (shown on the top right). Their main fighter was the Bf109G (bottom right). These two planes were the back bone of the Luftwaffe.

Here is a list of the main early German aircraft:

• Bf110


• Fw190


• Do.17

The air would be a constant battle even till the end of the war.

If you have a question just leave a comment and I'll answer you personally.