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AH Cooperative Lists Thread

List of States with Nuclear Weapons

1. United Kingdom - the first nation to develop them and the first nation to use them, after Operation Mincemeat lured Axis forces to Sardinia in 1943 and into the unwitting blast radius of "Bulldog". Italy's surrender was a direct result, though Germany called the Allies bluff ("Doberman" was indeed still in production) and an invasion of the Belgian coast was still necessary.

2. Iberian People's Republic - the first power to get nuclear weapons as a result of the Cold War arms race, Iberians had the urgency of obtaining nukes drilled into them due to their proximity to Sardinia and the casualties, radioactive debris, and refugees suffering from radiation poisoning that washed up on the Balearics after the attack. The consequences of a nuclear attack on the Peninsular did not trouble many after the horrors of the Civil War and the Pyrenees Campaign against the Germans: if nuclear weapons could prevent any more of that, then most Iberians were content.

3. Union of Sovereign States - first gained when it was still the communist USSR, the British said this was DEFINITELY from their spies in the IPR and DEFINITELY NOT spies in Britain. (The Cambridge Four scandal revealed otherwise.) Once a major nuclear power, the arsenal is now outdated as the Union's confederated politics and power blocks have delayed every upgrade in the past 25 years.

4. French Third Republic - or, as it is more commonly known, Algeria. Mainland France (obtaining the technology from the UK) officially denuclearised following the Treaty of Bilbao. However, its disowned child has clung onto theirs with a death-grip, needing them to prevent outside forces toppling their Pied-Noir dominated regime. Recent satellite photos indicate that a third bomb is being worked on, which follows from Governor Guérin-Sérac's bellicose and defiant stance.

5. United Arab Republic - another exception to the rule that nuclear weapons cannot be the only guarantee of a state's continued existence, yet perhaps the only one that has to guarantee against so many threats. Acquiring WMDs in the 1970s, its sole purpose was to provide a stalemate scenario in order to hold on to territorial gains made against Israel and to avoid a repetition of the UK's nuclear blackmail during the Suez Crisis. Since then however, they have uncut the methods with which the Arabs have perused every goal of there Foreign Policy, whether proxy war with Algeria in Libya, claims on the Nile against Sudan and, more important in recent years, the support of the Baathist regime in Iraq as it combats the Wahhabist insurgents backed by the Saudis during the Civil War there. The consequences of the latter has led for international calls for intervention against the Republic to remove its nuclear capacity for good.

6. Taiwan (People's Republic of China) - famously pulled a Cambridge Four on the USSR itself, ensuring it could develop its own "independent deterrent" in case, as happened, it ever lost its patron. It was the last country to do an open-air bomb test, to discourage the mainland from invading as the USSR became the USS in the 80s. It has a highly integrated defence network and national service to ensure any invasion of the predominant communist nation will go badly wrong even if you can stop one of their eight missiles landing on you.

7. Republic of Turkey - Hemmed in from the north by the former USSR and the Arab Republic to the south the Turkish Republic developed a sizable nuclear deterrent to secure its sovereignty. However as the decades have progressed it has used its nuclear leverage more and more on its surrounding states, such as gaining concessions from Greece for a joint authority arrangement in Cyprus and increasing its influence in the old Ottoman dominated territories of Southern Europe. This has led to increasing tensions with other European states and the worry is that Turkey will push its luck too far one of these days.

8. Democratic Commonwealth of Japan-After Japan was ground into a fine paste after the Second World War and having witnessed the power of a Nuclear Bomb themselves during the Invasion of Hokkaido it was decided that they should invest in one themselves. Partially funded and developed by Britain who preferred the Left Wing countries in Asia to be in nuclear stalemate though with a emphasis towards giving Japan a slight edge (this was due to Japan having become similar to Labour lead Britain). The Commonwealth has invested heavily into modernising there nuclear stockpile, relying on quality over quantity and is mostly about making sure they turn Taiwan, USS or the Chinese mainland into a chaotic nuclear hellhole if it calls for it.

9. Chile - the only one of the "N9" with no actual security reasons, as the Chilean nuclear missile system is entirely a vanity project. In a continent(s) with Argentina, the USA, and Chile as the three power players, Chile needed a new bit of gloss after their cybersyn program was surpassed by Buenos Aires. Being the only American nuclear power helped win the president his last election. The fact the United States is now thinking of restarting their nuclear program is unfortunate...


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THE TOP 7 MOST CONTROVERSIAL FILM ADAPTATIONS



1) Pride and Prejudice (1961, dir. Carl Rice)


Other than a handful of liberation films specifically about fighting ONLY GERMANS, British filmmakers had not touched on the occupation. Even the 'Free Cinema' movement, at the height of the 'people's kingdom' era, didn't touch on it, before Rice (who had been Reisz before needing to go into hiding and lost his parents to Nazi slaughter) didn't just touch, he rewrote a literary classic to be set during it. Here, Wickham is a quisling and social climber doing quite well out of the occupation; the much-mocked absence of the Napoleonic Wars in subtext becomes text, as the bulk of the cast manage to not mention the war or the swastikas; and Tom Courtenay's Darcy is gradually revealed to be in a resistance agent in the "Round Table".


The film was an international triumph, even in anti-socialist nations, but sparked furious debate (and a few fights) in Britain: being reminded not everyone had been a patriotic democratic socialist and many had profited for years made for some very awkward times for many people, who'd hoped to bury their feelings. The next film Rice did, he was credited as Reisz once more.



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THE TOP 7 MOST CONTROVERSIAL FILM ADAPTATIONS



1) Pride and Prejudice (1961, dir. Carl Rice)


Other than a handful of liberation films specifically about fighting ONLY GERMANS, British filmmakers had not touched on the occupation. Even the 'Free Cinema' movement, at the height of the 'people's kingdom' era, didn't touch on it, before Rice (who had been Reisz before needing to go into hiding and lost his parents to Nazi slaughter) didn't just touch, he rewrote a literary classic to be set during it. Here, Wickham is a quisling and social climber doing quite well out of the occupation; the much-mocked absence of the Napoleonic Wars in subtext becomes text, as the bulk of the cast manage to not mention the war or the swastikas; and Tom Courtenay's Darcy is gradually revealed to be in a resistance agent in the "Round Table".


The film was an international triumph, even in anti-socialist nations, but sparked furious debate (and a few fights) in Britain: being reminded not everyone had been a patriotic democratic socialist and many had profited for years made for some very awkward times for many people, who'd hoped to bury their feelings. The next film Rice did, he was credited as Reisz once more.



2) An Inspector Calls as 'When the Comrade Came' (1999, dir. Mel Gibson)

The law of Hollywood meant that it was only a matter of time before it started raiding the sacred literary texts Britain's socialist freedom fighters in order to turn a quick buck, and in Gibson's case to make a jumbled political point about the collapsing Soviet Empire. To many, the fact that Gibson flaunted that 'When the Comrade Came' was 'loosely based off J.B. Priestly's An Inspector Calls is the be and end all of the comparison between the two, such an enormous departure from the original material his film was.

Set in the contemporary Soviet Union as oppose to Edwardian England, Inspector Goole - the original play's lead and moral authority - is now Comrade Karl (a literal KGB agent as opposed to Priestly's mysterious phantom) sent to investigate the Boguslavsky family for their involvment in the death of Ida Schmidt, whom they have all been secretly involved with in one form or another without any member of the family being aware of the involvement. However, while in the original Goole ties the family encounters with loosely, and as indictments of the selfish, patriarchal values they espouse in their own way, Comrade Karl exposes them all as enemy's of the state who have deliberately acted in the murder of Ida - which is obviously innocent - effectively martyring the Boguslavsky family at Ida's expense as victims of the State. The movie's climax is yet another bastardisation of the original source material where Alexander Boguslavsky (formerly Arthur Birling) in a KGB intergoation chamber, thoroughly tortured, defiantly delivers the climactic monologue: the Soviet Union cannot continue as has done, that Communism cannot continue, only to end with the threat if it does not end itself, it shall end "in blood and anguish and fire for all mankind" - what was originally an illusion to WW1 the threat of holy, nuclear war with the United States.

Naturally a smash hit in America, British audiences were less enthusiastic - some actively protesting that the work of one the nation's favourite liberation heroes was so badly mistreated. As for the Soviet Union, it was never released there and has yet to be in the former constituent states, however it has repeatedly been joked that if it had then Communism could have had another 10 years if only to spite Gibson.

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THE TOP 7 MOST CONTROVERSIAL FILM ADAPTATIONS



1) Pride and Prejudice (1961, dir. Carl Rice)


Other than a handful of liberation films specifically about fighting ONLY GERMANS, British filmmakers had not touched on the occupation. Even the 'Free Cinema' movement, at the height of the 'people's kingdom' era, didn't touch on it, before Rice (who had been Reisz before needing to go into hiding and lost his parents to Nazi slaughter) didn't just touch, he rewrote a literary classic to be set during it. Here, Wickham is a quisling and social climber doing quite well out of the occupation; the much-mocked absence of the Napoleonic Wars in subtext becomes text, as the bulk of the cast manage to not mention the war or the swastikas; and Tom Courtenay's Darcy is gradually revealed to be in a resistance agent in the "Round Table".


The film was an international triumph, even in anti-socialist nations, but sparked furious debate (and a few fights) in Britain: being reminded not everyone had been a patriotic democratic socialist and many had profited for years made for some very awkward times for many people, who'd hoped to bury their feelings. The next film Rice did, he was credited as Reisz once more.



2) An Inspector Calls as 'When the Comrade Came' (1999, dir. Mel Gibson)

The law of Hollywood meant that it was only a matter of time before it started raiding the sacred literary texts Britain's socialist freedom fighters in order to turn a quick buck, and in Gibson's case to make a jumbled political point about the collapsing Soviet Empire. To many, the fact that Gibson flaunted that 'When the Comrade Came' was 'loosely based off J.B. Priestly's An Inspector Calls is the be and end all of the comparison between the two, such an enormous departure from the original material his film was.

Set in the contemporary Soviet Union as oppose to Edwardian England, Inspector Goole - the original play's lead and moral authority - is now Comrade Karl (a literal KGB agent as opposed to Priestly's mysterious phantom) sent to investigate the Boguslavsky family for their involvment in the death of Ida Schmidt, whom they have all been secretly involved with in one form or another without any member of the family being aware of the involvement. However, while in the original Goole ties the family encounters with loosely, and as indictments of the selfish, patriarchal values they espouse in their own way, Comrade Karl exposes them all as enemy's of the state who have deliberately acted in the murder of Ida - which is obviously innocent - effectively martyring the Boguslavsky family at Ida's expense as victims of the State. The movie's climax is yet another bastardisation of the original source material where Alexander Boguslavsky (formerly Arthur Birling) in a KGB intergoation chamber, thoroughly tortured, defiantly delivers the climactic monologue: the Soviet Union cannot continue as has done, that Communism cannot continue, only to end with the threat if it does not end itself, it shall end "in blood and anguish and fire for all mankind" - what was originally an illusion to WW1 the threat of holy, nuclear war with the United States.

Naturally a smash hit in America, British audiences were less enthusiastic - some actively protesting that the work of one the nation's favourite liberation heroes was so badly mistreated. As for the Soviet Union, it was never released there and has yet to be in the former constituent states, however it has repeatedly been joked that if it had then Communism could have had another 10 years if only to spite Gibson.

3) Burmese Days (1984, Dir. J.G.Ballard)

A member of the 'Transgression School' of Filmmakers (a reaction to the 'British Realist School' of Film), Writer, Director and Artist J.G.Ballard had spent much of the 60s and 70s get around censors and government bodies through using Science Fiction as a way to deal with the Occupation and it's aftermath as well as discussing Britain's 'Forgotten War' in the Far East. However by the 80s he had started turning towards historical dramas inspired by his own experiences as a young man in the Shanghai International Community. One of these would be an adaptation of 'Hero of the Revolution' George Orwell's 1934 book 'Burmese Days', a book that wasn't particularly popular due to it's discussion of Britain's Empire.

Detailing the life and times of John Flory, an administrator in a British Imperial Outpost in Burma during the 1930s it follows a series of corruption, petty rivalries and racism as an all white club is forced to accepted a non-white member. A number of aspects made the film controversial, in particular pointing out (through subtle writing and through the characters of Ellis and Lieutenant Verrall) that Britain's Imperial system and treatment of natives was no better than what the Nazi's had committed during the occupation. The film was lambasted by British critics for destroying the myth that Britain had been a just actor during the Second World War, incapable of any doubt. The film also gained controversy for the discussion of the 'perverse sexual nature' displayed in John Flory (including a number cut aways to Flory's sexual thoughts) which weren't in the book.

Despite the critical attacks, protests and also a highest film rating for a British film possible (R-18) the film would end up being a commercial success and influence numerous British filmmakers (Danny Boyle, Zadie Smith and Dan Abnett to name a few) and would ensure the continued viability of J.G.Ballard's career up until his death.


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THE TOP 7 MOST CONTROVERSIAL FILM ADAPTATIONS



1) Pride and Prejudice (1961, dir. Carl Rice)


Other than a handful of liberation films specifically about fighting ONLY GERMANS, British filmmakers had not touched on the occupation. Even the 'Free Cinema' movement, at the height of the 'people's kingdom' era, didn't touch on it, before Rice (who had been Reisz before needing to go into hiding and lost his parents to Nazi slaughter) didn't just touch, he rewrote a literary classic to be set during it. Here, Wickham is a quisling and social climber doing quite well out of the occupation; the much-mocked absence of the Napoleonic Wars in subtext becomes text, as the bulk of the cast manage to not mention the war or the swastikas; and Tom Courtenay's Darcy is gradually revealed to be in a resistance agent in the "Round Table".


The film was an international triumph, even in anti-socialist nations, but sparked furious debate (and a few fights) in Britain: being reminded not everyone had been a patriotic democratic socialist and many had profited for years made for some very awkward times for many people, who'd hoped to bury their feelings. The next film Rice did, he was credited as Reisz once more.



2) An Inspector Calls as 'When the Comrade Came' (1999, dir. Mel Gibson)

The law of Hollywood meant that it was only a matter of time before it started raiding the sacred literary texts Britain's socialist freedom fighters in order to turn a quick buck, and in Gibson's case to make a jumbled political point about the collapsing Soviet Empire. To many, the fact that Gibson flaunted that 'When the Comrade Came' was 'loosely based off J.B. Priestly's An Inspector Calls is the be and end all of the comparison between the two, such an enormous departure from the original material his film was.

Set in the contemporary Soviet Union as oppose to Edwardian England, Inspector Goole - the original play's lead and moral authority - is now Comrade Karl (a literal KGB agent as opposed to Priestly's mysterious phantom) sent to investigate the Boguslavsky family for their involvment in the death of Ida Schmidt, whom they have all been secretly involved with in one form or another without any member of the family being aware of the involvement. However, while in the original Goole ties the family encounters with loosely, and as indictments of the selfish, patriarchal values they espouse in their own way, Comrade Karl exposes them all as enemy's of the state who have deliberately acted in the murder of Ida - which is obviously innocent - effectively martyring the Boguslavsky family at Ida's expense as victims of the State. The movie's climax is yet another bastardisation of the original source material where Alexander Boguslavsky (formerly Arthur Birling) in a KGB intergoation chamber, thoroughly tortured, defiantly delivers the climactic monologue: the Soviet Union cannot continue as has done, that Communism cannot continue, only to end with the threat if it does not end itself, it shall end "in blood and anguish and fire for all mankind" - what was originally an illusion to WW1 the threat of holy, nuclear war with the United States.

Naturally a smash hit in America, British audiences were less enthusiastic - some actively protesting that the work of one the nation's favourite liberation heroes was so badly mistreated. As for the Soviet Union, it was never released there and has yet to be in the former constituent states, however it has repeatedly been joked that if it had then Communism could have had another 10 years if only to spite Gibson.

3) Burmese Days (1984, Dir. J.G.Ballard)

A member of the 'Transgression School' of Filmmakers (a reaction to the 'British Realist School' of Film), Writer, Director and Artist J.G.Ballard had spent much of the 60s and 70s get around censors and government bodies through using Science Fiction as a way to deal with the Occupation and it's aftermath as well as discussing Britain's 'Forgotten War' in the Far East. However by the 80s he had started turning towards historical dramas inspired by his own experiences as a young man in the Shanghai International Community. One of these would be an adaptation of 'Hero of the Revolution' George Orwell's 1934 book 'Burmese Days', a book that wasn't particularly popular due to it's discussion of Britain's Empire.

Detailing the life and times of John Flory, an administrator in a British Imperial Outpost in Burma during the 1930s it follows a series of corruption, petty rivalries and racism as an all white club is forced to accepted a non-white member. A number of aspects made the film controversial, in particular pointing out (through subtle writing and through the characters of Ellis and Lieutenant Verrall) that Britain's Imperial system and treatment of natives was no better than what the Nazi's had committed during the occupation. The film was lambasted by British critics for destroying the myth that Britain had been a just actor during the Second World War, incapable of any doubt. The film also gained controversy for the discussion of the 'perverse sexual nature' displayed in John Flory (including a number cut aways to Flory's sexual thoughts) which weren't in the book.

Despite the critical attacks, protests and also a highest film rating for a British film possible (R-18) the film would end up being a commercial success and influence numerous British filmmakers (Danny Boyle, Zadie Smith and Dan Abnett to name a few) and would ensure the continued viability of J.G.Ballard's career up until his death.


4) The Adventures of the Shield (1954, dir. Spencer Gordon Bennet)

As any comic fan tells you, Archie's Shield predates Kirby & Simon's Fighting American by a year. Unlike the scrappy working-class operative, the Shield is an FBI man and so was easy to shift from fighting Nazis to fighting the Commies. A quick change of origin to dastardly communists blowing his scientist father up instead of dastardly Germans and this B-movie was ready for the big time. It is notoriously bad, full of wooden dialogue, wooden sets, wooden acting, and plot holes in that wood so vast you could sail the USS Yorktown. The only bright spot is George Reeves's easily charismatic Shield and Paul Robeson's henchman Comrade Jefferson, but they're drowned out (and it's clear Robeson hates it). Nobody thinks much of it.

What makes it worse as time goes on, however, is that the communists are manipulating civil-rights activists - a view that was looking inaccurate to the general public when the film was out, after the brutal Bus Riot in Montgomery when a black teenager arguing against giving up his seat led to a night of beatings. (The embarrassment was so bad, Archie gave the Shield a new black sidekick asap; he was also embarrassing, unfortunately)

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THE TOP 7 MOST CONTROVERSIAL FILM ADAPTATIONS



1) Pride and Prejudice (1961, dir. Carl Rice)


Other than a handful of liberation films specifically about fighting ONLY GERMANS, British filmmakers had not touched on the occupation. Even the 'Free Cinema' movement, at the height of the 'people's kingdom' era, didn't touch on it, before Rice (who had been Reisz before needing to go into hiding and lost his parents to Nazi slaughter) didn't just touch, he rewrote a literary classic to be set during it. Here, Wickham is a quisling and social climber doing quite well out of the occupation; the much-mocked absence of the Napoleonic Wars in subtext becomes text, as the bulk of the cast manage to not mention the war or the swastikas; and Tom Courtenay's Darcy is gradually revealed to be in a resistance agent in the "Round Table".


The film was an international triumph, even in anti-socialist nations, but sparked furious debate (and a few fights) in Britain: being reminded not everyone had been a patriotic democratic socialist and many had profited for years made for some very awkward times for many people, who'd hoped to bury their feelings. The next film Rice did, he was credited as Reisz once more.



2) An Inspector Calls as 'When the Comrade Came' (1999, dir. Mel Gibson)

The law of Hollywood meant that it was only a matter of time before it started raiding the sacred literary texts Britain's socialist freedom fighters in order to turn a quick buck, and in Gibson's case to make a jumbled political point about the collapsing Soviet Empire. To many, the fact that Gibson flaunted that 'When the Comrade Came' was 'loosely based off J.B. Priestly's An Inspector Calls is the be and end all of the comparison between the two, such an enormous departure from the original material his film was.

Set in the contemporary Soviet Union as oppose to Edwardian England, Inspector Goole - the original play's lead and moral authority - is now Comrade Karl (a literal KGB agent as opposed to Priestly's mysterious phantom) sent to investigate the Boguslavsky family for their involvment in the death of Ida Schmidt, whom they have all been secretly involved with in one form or another without any member of the family being aware of the involvement. However, while in the original Goole ties the family encounters with loosely, and as indictments of the selfish, patriarchal values they espouse in their own way, Comrade Karl exposes them all as enemy's of the state who have deliberately acted in the murder of Ida - which is obviously innocent - effectively martyring the Boguslavsky family at Ida's expense as victims of the State. The movie's climax is yet another bastardisation of the original source material where Alexander Boguslavsky (formerly Arthur Birling) in a KGB intergoation chamber, thoroughly tortured, defiantly delivers the climactic monologue: the Soviet Union cannot continue as has done, that Communism cannot continue, only to end with the threat if it does not end itself, it shall end "in blood and anguish and fire for all mankind" - what was originally an illusion to WW1 the threat of holy, nuclear war with the United States.

Naturally a smash hit in America, British audiences were less enthusiastic - some actively protesting that the work of one the nation's favourite liberation heroes was so badly mistreated. As for the Soviet Union, it was never released there and has yet to be in the former constituent states, however it has repeatedly been joked that if it had then Communism could have had another 10 years if only to spite Gibson.

3) Burmese Days (1984, Dir. J.G.Ballard)

A member of the 'Transgression School' of Filmmakers (a reaction to the 'British Realist School' of Film), Writer, Director and Artist J.G.Ballard had spent much of the 60s and 70s get around censors and government bodies through using Science Fiction as a way to deal with the Occupation and it's aftermath as well as discussing Britain's 'Forgotten War' in the Far East. However by the 80s he had started turning towards historical dramas inspired by his own experiences as a young man in the Shanghai International Community. One of these would be an adaptation of 'Hero of the Revolution' George Orwell's 1934 book 'Burmese Days', a book that wasn't particularly popular due to it's discussion of Britain's Empire.

Detailing the life and times of John Flory, an administrator in a British Imperial Outpost in Burma during the 1930s it follows a series of corruption, petty rivalries and racism as an all white club is forced to accepted a non-white member. A number of aspects made the film controversial, in particular pointing out (through subtle writing and through the characters of Ellis and Lieutenant Verrall) that Britain's Imperial system and treatment of natives was no better than what the Nazi's had committed during the occupation. The film was lambasted by British critics for destroying the myth that Britain had been a just actor during the Second World War, incapable of any doubt. The film also gained controversy for the discussion of the 'perverse sexual nature' displayed in John Flory (including a number cut aways to Flory's sexual thoughts) which weren't in the book.

Despite the critical attacks, protests and also a highest film rating for a British film possible (R-18) the film would end up being a commercial success and influence numerous British filmmakers (Danny Boyle, Zadie Smith and Dan Abnett to name a few) and would ensure the continued viability of J.G.Ballard's career up until his death.


4) The Adventures of the Shield (1954, dir. Spencer Gordon Bennet)

As any comic fan tells you, Archie's Shield predates Kirby & Simon's Fighting American by a year. Unlike the scrappy working-class operative, the Shield is an FBI man and so was easy to shift from fighting Nazis to fighting the Commies. A quick change of origin to dastardly communists blowing his scientist father up instead of dastardly Germans and this B-movie was ready for the big time. It is notoriously bad, full of wooden dialogue, wooden sets, wooden acting, and plot holes in that wood so vast you could sail the USS Yorktown. The only bright spot is George Reeves's easily charismatic Shield and Paul Robeson's henchman Comrade Jefferson, but they're drowned out (and it's clear Robeson hates it). Nobody thinks much of it.

What makes it worse as time goes on, however, is that the communists are manipulating civil-rights activists - a view that was looking inaccurate to the general public when the film was out, after the brutal Bus Riot in Montgomery when a black teenager arguing against giving up his seat led to a night of beatings. (The embarrassment was so bad, Archie gave the Shield a new black sidekick asap; he was also embarrassing, unfortunately)

5) Breeders (1986 Dir. Tim Kincaid)

Normally a woman in peril, rape/revenge B-Movie would pass quietly in the night, maybe get a snooty thumbs down review from Siskel and Ebert but that would be it. The continuing notoriety of Breeders lies in the firestorm of controversy that erupted in wake of its release.

T.E.D Klein's Children of the Kingdom was a short story exploring the secret history of mankind and how that history comes violently back to haunt the present in 1970s New York when a proto-human race erupts from the sewers in an orgy of rape and violence. It's a grim story but not particularly exploitative with much of the violence happening out of frame. However a copy ended up in the hands of exploitation director Tim Kincaid, having recently wrapped up filming on Bad Girls Dormitory he was looking for another quickie to get into theaters. With Childrens NYC setting and women in peril subplot he decided to take the bare bones of the plot, stripping out the Lovecraftian subtext and make a creature feature, ripping off the recently released C.H.U.D. in the process by making the creatures mutants from the city sewers.

Normally that would be that, except for the fact that Kincaid disliked the description of the creatures as lithe, pale wormlike beings, feeling they wouldn't be threatening enough on film. Instead he reimagined them as hulking black humanoid creatures with dark eyes but keeping the evocative distended gaping mouths. However due to misreading the text (specifically the final few paragraphs) he thought all the creatures had red lips and his special effects team (such as it was) designed the makeup and costumes on this description.

So in 1986 a movie was premiered in New York that featured hulking black mutants with red lips kidnapping and assaulting a primarily white female cast, unsurprisingly all hell broke loose. The movie was picketed by Malcolm X and his Association of Black Americans who decried it as " a disgraceful example of white America continuing to be terrified of big black bucks menacing their women", op-eds denounced Tim Kincaid for making an openly racist feature and TED Klein sued for misuse of his intellectual property.

For his part Kincaid maintains that he didn't mean for their to be any racist connotation in the design, and insisted that the plot was lifted wholesale from the source material. Klein vehemently denied any racist sentiment in his work but that didn't stop protesters from specifically targeting him and claiming his short story was a white supremacist credo against miscegenation.

None of this hurt Breeders at the box office, in fact it was a moderate hit. However there were multiple instances of violence at screenings with a significant amount of interacial gang violence arising. One notable encounter led to a full scale riot on 42nd Street.

Breeders is a nasty little film, chauvinist and undoubtedly racist (either by design or default) and if not for the controversy around it would be justly forgotten. However it had a very successful run on home video and is widely shared on YouVision after being recently dropped by a number of streaming sites. It's frequently shared by Alt-Right and White Nationalists as "the movie Liberals don't want you to see".


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EDIT: It wasn't until after doing this I went back and read up on Klein's original story and realised my memory was playing tricks and his original creatures are pale, small and wormlike! So I feel like I'm doing the man a disservice and making him seem as if he's got a rather nasty agenda that's not there in the original text, so I'm putting all the heat for this on Kincaid. Doesn't stop Klein getting tarred with the same brush in this TL unfortunately.
 
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THE TOP 7 MOST CONTROVERSIAL FILM ADAPTATIONS



1) Pride and Prejudice (1961, dir. Carl Rice)


Other than a handful of liberation films specifically about fighting ONLY GERMANS, British filmmakers had not touched on the occupation. Even the 'Free Cinema' movement, at the height of the 'people's kingdom' era, didn't touch on it, before Rice (who had been Reisz before needing to go into hiding and lost his parents to Nazi slaughter) didn't just touch, he rewrote a literary classic to be set during it. Here, Wickham is a quisling and social climber doing quite well out of the occupation; the much-mocked absence of the Napoleonic Wars in subtext becomes text, as the bulk of the cast manage to not mention the war or the swastikas; and Tom Courtenay's Darcy is gradually revealed to be in a resistance agent in the "Round Table".


The film was an international triumph, even in anti-socialist nations, but sparked furious debate (and a few fights) in Britain: being reminded not everyone had been a patriotic democratic socialist and many had profited for years made for some very awkward times for many people, who'd hoped to bury their feelings. The next film Rice did, he was credited as Reisz once more.



2) An Inspector Calls as 'When the Comrade Came' (1999, dir. Mel Gibson)

The law of Hollywood meant that it was only a matter of time before it started raiding the sacred literary texts Britain's socialist freedom fighters in order to turn a quick buck, and in Gibson's case to make a jumbled political point about the collapsing Soviet Empire. To many, the fact that Gibson flaunted that 'When the Comrade Came' was 'loosely based off J.B. Priestly's An Inspector Calls is the be and end all of the comparison between the two, such an enormous departure from the original material his film was.

Set in the contemporary Soviet Union as oppose to Edwardian England, Inspector Goole - the original play's lead and moral authority - is now Comrade Karl (a literal KGB agent as opposed to Priestly's mysterious phantom) sent to investigate the Boguslavsky family for their involvment in the death of Ida Schmidt, whom they have all been secretly involved with in one form or another without any member of the family being aware of the involvement. However, while in the original Goole ties the family encounters with loosely, and as indictments of the selfish, patriarchal values they espouse in their own way, Comrade Karl exposes them all as enemy's of the state who have deliberately acted in the murder of Ida - which is obviously innocent - effectively martyring the Boguslavsky family at Ida's expense as victims of the State. The movie's climax is yet another bastardisation of the original source material where Alexander Boguslavsky (formerly Arthur Birling) in a KGB intergoation chamber, thoroughly tortured, defiantly delivers the climactic monologue: the Soviet Union cannot continue as has done, that Communism cannot continue, only to end with the threat if it does not end itself, it shall end "in blood and anguish and fire for all mankind" - what was originally an illusion to WW1 the threat of holy, nuclear war with the United States.

Naturally a smash hit in America, British audiences were less enthusiastic - some actively protesting that the work of one the nation's favourite liberation heroes was so badly mistreated. As for the Soviet Union, it was never released there and has yet to be in the former constituent states, however it has repeatedly been joked that if it had then Communism could have had another 10 years if only to spite Gibson.

3) Burmese Days (1984, Dir. J.G.Ballard)

A member of the 'Transgression School' of Filmmakers (a reaction to the 'British Realist School' of Film), Writer, Director and Artist J.G.Ballard had spent much of the 60s and 70s get around censors and government bodies through using Science Fiction as a way to deal with the Occupation and it's aftermath as well as discussing Britain's 'Forgotten War' in the Far East. However by the 80s he had started turning towards historical dramas inspired by his own experiences as a young man in the Shanghai International Community. One of these would be an adaptation of 'Hero of the Revolution' George Orwell's 1934 book 'Burmese Days', a book that wasn't particularly popular due to it's discussion of Britain's Empire.

Detailing the life and times of John Flory, an administrator in a British Imperial Outpost in Burma during the 1930s it follows a series of corruption, petty rivalries and racism as an all white club is forced to accepted a non-white member. A number of aspects made the film controversial, in particular pointing out (through subtle writing and through the characters of Ellis and Lieutenant Verrall) that Britain's Imperial system and treatment of natives was no better than what the Nazi's had committed during the occupation. The film was lambasted by British critics for destroying the myth that Britain had been a just actor during the Second World War, incapable of any doubt. The film also gained controversy for the discussion of the 'perverse sexual nature' displayed in John Flory (including a number cut aways to Flory's sexual thoughts) which weren't in the book.

Despite the critical attacks, protests and also a highest film rating for a British film possible (R-18) the film would end up being a commercial success and influence numerous British filmmakers (Danny Boyle, Zadie Smith and Dan Abnett to name a few) and would ensure the continued viability of J.G.Ballard's career up until his death.


4) The Adventures of the Shield (1954, dir. Spencer Gordon Bennet)

As any comic fan tells you, Archie's Shield predates Kirby & Simon's Fighting American by a year. Unlike the scrappy working-class operative, the Shield is an FBI man and so was easy to shift from fighting Nazis to fighting the Commies. A quick change of origin to dastardly communists blowing his scientist father up instead of dastardly Germans and this B-movie was ready for the big time. It is notoriously bad, full of wooden dialogue, wooden sets, wooden acting, and plot holes in that wood so vast you could sail the USS Yorktown. The only bright spot is George Reeves's easily charismatic Shield and Paul Robeson's henchman Comrade Jefferson, but they're drowned out (and it's clear Robeson hates it). Nobody thinks much of it.

What makes it worse as time goes on, however, is that the communists are manipulating civil-rights activists - a view that was looking inaccurate to the general public when the film was out, after the brutal Bus Riot in Montgomery when a black teenager arguing against giving up his seat led to a night of beatings. (The embarrassment was so bad, Archie gave the Shield a new black sidekick asap; he was also embarrassing, unfortunately)

5) Breeders (1986 Dir. Tim Kincaid)

Normally a woman in peril, rape/revenge B-Movie would pass quietly in the night, maybe get a snooty thumbs down review from Siskel and Ebert but that would be it. The continuing notoriety of Breeders lies in the firestorm of controversy that erupted in wake of its release.

T.E.D Klein's Children of the Kingdom was a short story exploring the secret history of mankind and how that history comes violently back to haunt the present in 1970s New York when a proto-human race erupts from the sewers in an orgy of rape and violence. It's a grim story but not particularly exploitative with much of the violence happening out of frame. However a copy ended up in the hands of exploitation director Tim Kincaid, having recently wrapped up filming on Bad Girls Dormitory he was looking for another quickie to get into theaters. With Childrens NYC setting and women in peril subplot he decided to take the bare bones of the plot, stripping out the Lovecraftian subtext and make a creature feature, ripping off the recently released C.H.U.D. in the process by making the creatures mutants from the city sewers.

Normally that would be that, except for the fact that Kincaid disliked the description of the creatures as lithe, pale wormlike beings, feeling they wouldn't be threatening enough on film. Instead he reimagined them as hulking black humanoid creatures with dark eyes but keeping the evocative distended gaping mouths. However due to misreading the text (specifically the final few paragraphs) he thought all the creatures had red lips and his special effects team (such as it was) designed the makeup and costumes on this description.

So in 1986 a movie was premiered in New York that featured hulking black mutants with red lips kidnapping and assaulting a primarily white female cast, unsurprisingly all hell broke loose. The movie was picketed by Malcolm X and his Association of Black Americans who decried it as " a disgraceful example of white America continuing to be terrified of big black bucks menacing their women", op-eds denounced Tim Kincaid for making an openly racist feature and TED Klein sued for misuse of his intellectual property.

For his part Kincaid maintains that he didn't mean for their to be any racist connotation in the design, and insisted that the plot was lifted wholesale from the source material. Klein vehemently denied any racist sentiment in his work but that didn't stop protesters from specifically targeting him and claiming his short story was a white supremacist credo against miscegenation.

None of this hurt Breeders at the box office, in fact it was a moderate hit. However there were multiple instances of violence at screenings with a significant amount of interacial gang violence arising. One notable encounter led to a full scale riot on 42nd Street.

Breeders is a nasty little film, chauvinist and undoubtedly racist (either by design or default) and if not for the controversy around it would be justly forgotten. However it had a very successful run on home video and is widely shared on YouVision after being recently dropped by a number of streaming sites. It's frequently shared by Alt-Right and White Nationalists as "the movie Liberals don't want you to see".


6) Lawrence of Arabia (2018 Dir. Sam Mendes)

Bizarrely, not as controversial as it could have been in retrospect or as much as an earlier adaptation of T.E. Lawrence's 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom' might have been. The real controversy of the film began with its marketing campaign, the presentation of the title character on various posters and promotional material at the centre with the various Arab co-stars surrounding him in praise, managed to offend various Christian sects in the US and Britain for the presentation of Lawrence as a neo-Christ figure. This then led to various eyebrow raising as the general audience held their breath or groaned at another 'white saviour' figure which mass audiences had outgrown by the 2010s.

Nevertheless, as the release date approached the marketing shifted to salvage what remained and was broadly successful following the initial London premier, however the balloon real went up after comments by lead actor Laurence Fox about the films inclusion of so many extras as soldiers of the British Indian Army as being "forced diversity" and "changing history". Suddenly, the summer blockbuster was at the centre of a storm of controversy it hadn't asked for, the decision to ostracise Fox from promoting the film split the press and the acting community.

Contrary to the rule that no publicity is bad publicity, the film began to suffer despite an initial spike that broke the projections for the weekend release, number took a sudden nose dive as the war in the press began to escalate. The wider Fox family began to get involved, namely Edward Fox from a column in the Telegraph, who was consequently attacked en mass for his association with more vocally Right-wing elements of British politics and a conservative think-tank known for various quack schemes on immigration and tax reform. Finally, the whole episode hit rock bottom when an accusation of "backdoor fascism" in the Guardian was answered with both Edward and Laurence Fox suing them for libel. The fact that the case is still in the courts long after Lawrence of Arabia left rotation in cinemas should be the last worthwhile word on the matter.

7)
 
THE TOP 7 MOST CONTROVERSIAL FILM ADAPTATIONS



1) Pride and Prejudice (1961, dir. Carl Rice)


Other than a handful of liberation films specifically about fighting ONLY GERMANS, British filmmakers had not touched on the occupation. Even the 'Free Cinema' movement, at the height of the 'people's kingdom' era, didn't touch on it, before Rice (who had been Reisz before needing to go into hiding and lost his parents to Nazi slaughter) didn't just touch, he rewrote a literary classic to be set during it. Here, Wickham is a quisling and social climber doing quite well out of the occupation; the much-mocked absence of the Napoleonic Wars in subtext becomes text, as the bulk of the cast manage to not mention the war or the swastikas; and Tom Courtenay's Darcy is gradually revealed to be in a resistance agent in the "Round Table".


The film was an international triumph, even in anti-socialist nations, but sparked furious debate (and a few fights) in Britain: being reminded not everyone had been a patriotic democratic socialist and many had profited for years made for some very awkward times for many people, who'd hoped to bury their feelings. The next film Rice did, he was credited as Reisz once more.



2) An Inspector Calls as 'When the Comrade Came' (1999, dir. Mel Gibson)

The law of Hollywood meant that it was only a matter of time before it started raiding the sacred literary texts Britain's socialist freedom fighters in order to turn a quick buck, and in Gibson's case to make a jumbled political point about the collapsing Soviet Empire. To many, the fact that Gibson flaunted that 'When the Comrade Came' was 'loosely based off J.B. Priestly's An Inspector Calls is the be and end all of the comparison between the two, such an enormous departure from the original material his film was.

Set in the contemporary Soviet Union as oppose to Edwardian England, Inspector Goole - the original play's lead and moral authority - is now Comrade Karl (a literal KGB agent as opposed to Priestly's mysterious phantom) sent to investigate the Boguslavsky family for their involvment in the death of Ida Schmidt, whom they have all been secretly involved with in one form or another without any member of the family being aware of the involvement. However, while in the original Goole ties the family encounters with loosely, and as indictments of the selfish, patriarchal values they espouse in their own way, Comrade Karl exposes them all as enemy's of the state who have deliberately acted in the murder of Ida - which is obviously innocent - effectively martyring the Boguslavsky family at Ida's expense as victims of the State. The movie's climax is yet another bastardisation of the original source material where Alexander Boguslavsky (formerly Arthur Birling) in a KGB intergoation chamber, thoroughly tortured, defiantly delivers the climactic monologue: the Soviet Union cannot continue as has done, that Communism cannot continue, only to end with the threat if it does not end itself, it shall end "in blood and anguish and fire for all mankind" - what was originally an illusion to WW1 the threat of holy, nuclear war with the United States.

Naturally a smash hit in America, British audiences were less enthusiastic - some actively protesting that the work of one the nation's favourite liberation heroes was so badly mistreated. As for the Soviet Union, it was never released there and has yet to be in the former constituent states, however it has repeatedly been joked that if it had then Communism could have had another 10 years if only to spite Gibson.

3) Burmese Days (1984, Dir. J.G.Ballard)

A member of the 'Transgression School' of Filmmakers (a reaction to the 'British Realist School' of Film), Writer, Director and Artist J.G.Ballard had spent much of the 60s and 70s get around censors and government bodies through using Science Fiction as a way to deal with the Occupation and it's aftermath as well as discussing Britain's 'Forgotten War' in the Far East. However by the 80s he had started turning towards historical dramas inspired by his own experiences as a young man in the Shanghai International Community. One of these would be an adaptation of 'Hero of the Revolution' George Orwell's 1934 book 'Burmese Days', a book that wasn't particularly popular due to it's discussion of Britain's Empire.

Detailing the life and times of John Flory, an administrator in a British Imperial Outpost in Burma during the 1930s it follows a series of corruption, petty rivalries and racism as an all white club is forced to accepted a non-white member. A number of aspects made the film controversial, in particular pointing out (through subtle writing and through the characters of Ellis and Lieutenant Verrall) that Britain's Imperial system and treatment of natives was no better than what the Nazi's had committed during the occupation. The film was lambasted by British critics for destroying the myth that Britain had been a just actor during the Second World War, incapable of any doubt. The film also gained controversy for the discussion of the 'perverse sexual nature' displayed in John Flory (including a number cut aways to Flory's sexual thoughts) which weren't in the book.

Despite the critical attacks, protests and also a highest film rating for a British film possible (R-18) the film would end up being a commercial success and influence numerous British filmmakers (Danny Boyle, Zadie Smith and Dan Abnett to name a few) and would ensure the continued viability of J.G.Ballard's career up until his death.


4) The Adventures of the Shield (1954, dir. Spencer Gordon Bennet)

As any comic fan tells you, Archie's Shield predates Kirby & Simon's Fighting American by a year. Unlike the scrappy working-class operative, the Shield is an FBI man and so was easy to shift from fighting Nazis to fighting the Commies. A quick change of origin to dastardly communists blowing his scientist father up instead of dastardly Germans and this B-movie was ready for the big time. It is notoriously bad, full of wooden dialogue, wooden sets, wooden acting, and plot holes in that wood so vast you could sail the USS Yorktown. The only bright spot is George Reeves's easily charismatic Shield and Paul Robeson's henchman Comrade Jefferson, but they're drowned out (and it's clear Robeson hates it). Nobody thinks much of it.

What makes it worse as time goes on, however, is that the communists are manipulating civil-rights activists - a view that was looking inaccurate to the general public when the film was out, after the brutal Bus Riot in Montgomery when a black teenager arguing against giving up his seat led to a night of beatings. (The embarrassment was so bad, Archie gave the Shield a new black sidekick asap; he was also embarrassing, unfortunately)

5) Breeders (1986 Dir. Tim Kincaid)

Normally a woman in peril, rape/revenge B-Movie would pass quietly in the night, maybe get a snooty thumbs down review from Siskel and Ebert but that would be it. The continuing notoriety of Breeders lies in the firestorm of controversy that erupted in wake of its release.

T.E.D Klein's Children of the Kingdom was a short story exploring the secret history of mankind and how that history comes violently back to haunt the present in 1970s New York when a proto-human race erupts from the sewers in an orgy of rape and violence. It's a grim story but not particularly exploitative with much of the violence happening out of frame. However a copy ended up in the hands of exploitation director Tim Kincaid, having recently wrapped up filming on Bad Girls Dormitory he was looking for another quickie to get into theaters. With Childrens NYC setting and women in peril subplot he decided to take the bare bones of the plot, stripping out the Lovecraftian subtext and make a creature feature, ripping off the recently released C.H.U.D. in the process by making the creatures mutants from the city sewers.

Normally that would be that, except for the fact that Kincaid disliked the description of the creatures as lithe, pale wormlike beings, feeling they wouldn't be threatening enough on film. Instead he reimagined them as hulking black humanoid creatures with dark eyes but keeping the evocative distended gaping mouths. However due to misreading the text (specifically the final few paragraphs) he thought all the creatures had red lips and his special effects team (such as it was) designed the makeup and costumes on this description.

So in 1986 a movie was premiered in New York that featured hulking black mutants with red lips kidnapping and assaulting a primarily white female cast, unsurprisingly all hell broke loose. The movie was picketed by Malcolm X and his Association of Black Americans who decried it as " a disgraceful example of white America continuing to be terrified of big black bucks menacing their women", op-eds denounced Tim Kincaid for making an openly racist feature and TED Klein sued for misuse of his intellectual property.

For his part Kincaid maintains that he didn't mean for their to be any racist connotation in the design, and insisted that the plot was lifted wholesale from the source material. Klein vehemently denied any racist sentiment in his work but that didn't stop protesters from specifically targeting him and claiming his short story was a white supremacist credo against miscegenation.

None of this hurt Breeders at the box office, in fact it was a moderate hit. However there were multiple instances of violence at screenings with a significant amount of interacial gang violence arising. One notable encounter led to a full scale riot on 42nd Street.

Breeders is a nasty little film, chauvinist and undoubtedly racist (either by design or default) and if not for the controversy around it would be justly forgotten. However it had a very successful run on home video and is widely shared on YouVision after being recently dropped by a number of streaming sites. It's frequently shared by Alt-Right and White Nationalists as "the movie Liberals don't want you to see".


6) Lawrence of Arabia (2018 Dir. Sam Mendes)

Bizarrely, not as controversial as it could have been in retrospect or as much as an earlier adaptation of T.E. Lawrence's 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom' might have been. The real controversy of the film began with its marketing campaign, the presentation of the title character on various posters and promotional material at the centre with the various Arab co-stars surrounding him in praise, managed to offend various Christian sects in the US and Britain for the presentation of Lawrence as a neo-Christ figure. This then led to various eyebrow raising as the general audience held their breath or groaned at another 'white saviour' figure which mass audiences had outgrown by the 2010s.

Nevertheless, as the release date approached the marketing shifted to salvage what remained and was broadly successful following the initial London premier, however the balloon real went up after comments by lead actor Laurence Fox about the films inclusion of so many extras as soldiers of the British Indian Army as being "forced diversity" and "changing history". Suddenly, the summer blockbuster was at the centre of a storm of controversy it hadn't asked for, the decision to ostracise Fox from promoting the film split the press and the acting community.

Contrary to the rule that no publicity is bad publicity, the film began to suffer despite an initial spike that broke the projections for the weekend release, number took a sudden nose dive as the war in the press began to escalate. The wider Fox family began to get involved, namely Edward Fox from a column in the Telegraph, who was consequently attacked en mass for his association with more vocally Right-wing elements of British politics and a conservative think-tank known for various quack schemes on immigration and tax reform. Finally, the whole episode hit rock bottom when an accusation of "backdoor fascism" in the Guardian was answered with both Edward and Laurence Fox suing them for libel. The fact that the case is still in the courts long after Lawrence of Arabia left rotation in cinemas should be the last worthwhile word on the matter.

7) The Creation of the Universe (2009, dir. Nicolas Cage)

The Bible is not exactly one book. So why did Nicolas Cage think he could make it into one movie? Hot off a string of success in both awards and the box office, Cage convinced United Artists to bankroll his grandiose epic based on a script he had been working on for nearly a decade. However, what started as a telling of the life of Jesus of Nazareth exploded into a multi-million dollar boondoggle that took years to produce and had a running time of nearly three hours, and that was after studio enforced cuts.

Already the subject matter was sure to draw fierce criticism, but Cage's decision to intersperse the historical narrative with disconnected stories drawn from both the Old and New Testament disrupted the cohesion of the film. When the promotional campaign started, Christian groups across the United States protested the "sacrilegious" depiction of Jesus and planned to boycott the film. However, their efforts backfired as it only drew more attention to the film and gave it record breaking opening weekend numbers at the box office.

Reaction was extremely polarized among both critics and audiences. Some hailed Cage as a visionary who dared to challenge the foundations of western culture. Others saw nothing but chaos. Cage's decision to depict the virgin birth as a lie invented by an adulterous woman drew furor even from moderate groups. Audiences were befuddled by the decision to include other classical stories such as the titular creation of the universe, the fall of Adam and Eve from Heaven, and the Exodus, as well as scenes depicting the writing of the books of the New Testament in early Christianity. And nothing was more confusing than the fact the Cage portrayed a character in each separate segment, while also insinuating that all the characters were one person.

Despite the divided reactions, more and more people went to see it. The public could hardly believe what they were hearing and reading. They simply had to find out for themselves. Although the film ultimately grossed hundreds of millions of dollars, it failed to break even due to its exorbitantly high production costs. Nicolas Cage vanished from public view, tired of the relentless criticism he faced in the media. To this day, you can go online or to any film class and find some teenager who thinks Cage was the greatest iconoclast in cinema history and that people simply weren't ready for it. But most will probably recall the documentary of the film's production, The Deconstruction of the Universe, and agree with its thesis that the film was a catastrophe driven by one man's incompetence in the pursuit of his dream.
 
10 of History's Worst War Time Leaders


1) Thomas Jefferson (President of the USA, War of 1804) [1]

2)

3)

4)

5)

6)

7)

8)

9)

10)


[1] Historians are still divided on whether or not Jefferson wanted war or not. But nevertheless, having gotten his war he proceeded to make a bungle of it. From the start of the war of 1804, the President had an obsession with exploiting the front from New England to Canada, and the capture of Quebec, to the ruination of other fronts. Generally caught off guard, the bulk of the fledgling US navy was in the Mediterranean fighting the Barbary Pirates, only to be cut off, corned and destroyed one ship at a time by the British. The immediate forcing of the United States on the defensive at sea was sign of things to come which Jefferson refused to see.

No longer afraid to use the Alien and Sedition Acts for a war against Britain, Jefferson forced many protests and anti-war opposition to go quiet and launched initial American advance into Canada only for it blunted short of the Saint Lawrence River. Repeated attempt to return the offensive spurned by Jefferson failed and the Americans gradually fell back as far Fort Ticonderoga, only to then be outflanked in the Northwest Territories and Sir John Moore's Chesapeake campaign. Pleas to France for help fell on deaf ears, as Napoleon rolled up the map of Europe, and the British continued to press in on all fronts. Although captured at the Burning of Washington, and Presidency falling to George Clinton, Jefferson continued to be the man Congress blamed for the poor war effort and Clinton's refusal to engaging in negotiations until the Federalist won the 1808 election.

Still accused of tunnel vision on Quebec, failure to prepare and failure to compromise, Jefferson remains the one that Americans blame their loss in the War of 1804 on, simultaneously running the fruits of his own Presidency and in a way the American Revolution as the price of peace became the bulk of the Louisiana purchase, and the vast chunk of New England that became New Ireland and the Northwest Territories to Tecumseh's Confederacy all of which killed major western expansion before it could happen. Though the American Republic would survive, its potential for greatness was squandered by its most promising founders, which is probably why Jefferson is now credited as one of the Declaration of Independence's many co-authors.
 
10 of History's Worst War Time Leaders


1) Thomas Jefferson (President of the USA, War of 1804) [1]

2) Charles X (King of France, Franco-Haitian War/"Haitian Accident") [2]

3)

4)

5)

6)

7)

8)

9)

10)


[1] Historians are still divided on whether or not Jefferson wanted war or not. But nevertheless, having gotten his war he proceeded to make a bungle of it. From the start of the war of 1804, the President had an obsession with exploiting the front from New England to Canada, and the capture of Quebec, to the ruination of other fronts. Generally caught off guard, the bulk of the fledgling US navy was in the Mediterranean fighting the Barbary Pirates, only to be cut off, corned and destroyed one ship at a time by the British. The immediate forcing of the United States on the defensive at sea was sign of things to come which Jefferson refused to see.

No longer afraid to use the Alien and Sedition Acts for a war against Britain, Jefferson forced many protests and anti-war opposition to go quiet and launched initial American advance into Canada only for it blunted short of the Saint Lawrence River. Repeated attempt to return the offensive spurned by Jefferson failed and the Americans gradually fell back as far Fort Ticonderoga, only to then be outflanked in the Northwest Territories and Sir John Moore's Chesapeake campaign. Pleas to France for help fell on deaf ears, as Napoleon rolled up the map of Europe, and the British continued to press in on all fronts. Although captured at the Burning of Washington, and Presidency falling to George Clinton, Jefferson continued to be the man Congress blamed for the poor war effort and Clinton's refusal to engaging in negotiations until the Federalist won the 1808 election.

Still accused of tunnel vision on Quebec, failure to prepare and failure to compromise, Jefferson remains the one that Americans blame their loss in the War of 1804 on, simultaneously running the fruits of his own Presidency and in a way the American Revolution as the price of peace became the bulk of the Louisiana purchase, and the vast chunk of New England that became New Ireland and the Northwest Territories to Tecumseh's Confederacy all of which killed major western expansion before it could happen. Though the American Republic would survive, its potential for greatness was squandered by its most promising founders, which is probably why Jefferson is now credited as one of the Declaration of Independence's many co-authors.


[2] Haiti had been a long term pain in the arse for France since the abolition of slavery, ever since Napoleon decided to use it as a source of "Black Jacobin" soldiers rather than as a plantation - this worked fine while the Royal Navy was distracted by the War of 1804, and then resupply was cut off. An attempted return to plantation farming during the Bourbon restoration was not catching on and Britain & America were both unhappy with Haiti allegedly provoking slave revolts, so one of Charles X's first acts in 1824 decided to send soldiers to assist Prime Minister Dessalines.

Charles X though little of either Haiti or Dessalines, and mistakenly thought limited French power would be enough and that Dessalines, who did want to install plantations, would accept help. Instead, the Prime Minister took very unkindly to being made "a slave for a distant master after all the blood we have lost"; the Haitian republicans suspected the monarchy would betray 'Napoleon's vision' all along and the Haitian monarchists rallied to the memory of the deceased 'Good King Louis'; and a substantial chunk of white population saw this as a threat to their holdings. The first invasion was bloodily routed. Charles X refused to accept the loss and committed a massive force...

...ensuring simply that he was overthrown (in part by the aging Black Jacobin expats and their children) as he was now weak at home. French soldiers and marines were pointlessly lost only for the new Regency to declare the war over, and a status quo returned now "Mad Charles" was gone. French prestige was shattered and money & blood spilled to achieve a continuing status quo, the ultimate embarrassment (and in the long-term, this damaged both French imperial ideals and led to Haiti's increasing autonomy & independence)
 
10 of History's Worst War Time Leaders


1) Thomas Jefferson (President of the USA, War of 1804) [1]

2) Charles X (King of France, Franco-Haitian War/"Haitian Accident") [2]

3) JOINT AWARD: Frederick William III (King of Prussia, War of the Spring) Jules de Polignac (Regency Council of France, War of the Spring), William I, (King of the Netherlands, War of the Spring)

4)

5)

6)

7)

8)

9)

10)


[1] Historians are still divided on whether or not Jefferson wanted war or not. But nevertheless, having gotten his war he proceeded to make a bungle of it. From the start of the war of 1804, the President had an obsession with exploiting the front from New England to Canada, and the capture of Quebec, to the ruination of other fronts. Generally caught off guard, the bulk of the fledgling US navy was in the Mediterranean fighting the Barbary Pirates, only to be cut off, corned and destroyed one ship at a time by the British. The immediate forcing of the United States on the defensive at sea was sign of things to come which Jefferson refused to see.

No longer afraid to use the Alien and Sedition Acts for a war against Britain, Jefferson forced many protests and anti-war opposition to go quiet and launched initial American advance into Canada only for it blunted short of the Saint Lawrence River. Repeated attempt to return the offensive spurned by Jefferson failed and the Americans gradually fell back as far Fort Ticonderoga, only to then be outflanked in the Northwest Territories and Sir John Moore's Chesapeake campaign. Pleas to France for help fell on deaf ears, as Napoleon rolled up the map of Europe, and the British continued to press in on all fronts. Although captured at the Burning of Washington, and Presidency falling to George Clinton, Jefferson continued to be the man Congress blamed for the poor war effort and Clinton's refusal to engaging in negotiations until the Federalist won the 1808 election.

Still accused of tunnel vision on Quebec, failure to prepare and failure to compromise, Jefferson remains the one that Americans blame their loss in the War of 1804 on, simultaneously running the fruits of his own Presidency and in a way the American Revolution as the price of peace became the bulk of the Louisiana purchase, and the vast chunk of New England that became New Ireland and the Northwest Territories to Tecumseh's Confederacy all of which killed major western expansion before it could happen. Though the American Republic would survive, its potential for greatness was squandered by its most promising founders, which is probably why Jefferson is now credited as one of the Declaration of Independence's many co-authors.


[2] Haiti had been a long term pain in the arse for France since the abolition of slavery, ever since Napoleon decided to use it as a source of "Black Jacobin" soldiers rather than as a plantation - this worked fine while the Royal Navy was distracted by the War of 1804, and then resupply was cut off. An attempted return to plantation farming during the Bourbon restoration was not catching on and Britain & America were both unhappy with Haiti allegedly provoking slave revolts, so one of Charles X's first acts in 1824 decided to send soldiers to assist Prime Minister Dessalines.

Charles X though little of either Haiti or Dessalines, and mistakenly thought limited French power would be enough and that Dessalines, who did want to install plantations, would accept help. Instead, the Prime Minister took very unkindly to being made "a slave for a distant master after all the blood we have lost"; the Haitian republicans suspected the monarchy would betray 'Napoleon's vision' all along and the Haitian monarchists rallied to the memory of the deceased 'Good King Louis'; and a substantial chunk of white population saw this as a threat to their holdings. The first invasion was bloodily routed. Charles X refused to accept the loss and committed a massive force...

...ensuring simply that he was overthrown (in part by the aging Black Jacobin expats and their children) as he was now weak at home. French soldiers and marines were pointlessly lost only for the new Regency to declare the war over, and a status quo returned now "Mad Charles" was gone. French prestige was shattered and money & blood spilled to achieve a continuing status quo, the ultimate embarrassment (and in the long-term, this damaged both French imperial ideals and led to Haiti's increasing autonomy & independence)

[3] Some small states retain their independence because no one wanted to conquer them; some because they were not worth the political capital of conquest; some because they were useful as buffers and tax havens.

Luxembourg is independent because it's too embarrassing to annex, after what happened at its birth.

The post-Vienna order of Europe had become increasingly wobbly in the 1820s, but to a casual viewer the restored monarchies were well in place. Spain had been saved for the Bourbons and the Poles put down; Greece wrested from the Ottomans, and the dragoons sent into crowds across Britain.

That order would have survived any one of the great powers having a domestic crisis, and indeed already had. It would not survive two of them suffering one at once.

By 1829, France had spent five years in the absurd situation of being ruled by a Regency without a King; first the council was preserving the throne until a Bourbon came of age, then until the child of the late Duke of Orleans could be brought to Paris. The remaining Bonapartists played both sides against each other, hoping that in time the throne might be offered to the Emperor's son. Finally, in 1829 the Chair of the Council of Ministers passed to the ultralegitimist Jules de Polignac, who decided that the key to securing the throne for his candidate was a short victorious war. He thought it would be in Algeria- and then Belgium revolted.

In Prussia, Frederick William I had become increasingly worried about the assertive middle class, and surrounded himself with ultraconservatives. He had no desire to be shackled by a constitution, but a worrying budget deficit made the government seem weak and unable to rule. The solution seemed to be that old proof of Prussian glory: a short victorious war. He thought it would be against the Danes, but then Belgium revolted.

William I of the Netherlands wanted to recapture the glory of the golden age of the Dutch- and to do that he needed to ensure that he kept every last inch of land in Europe. And then Belgium revolted.

And there was Luxembourg- German speaking Luxembourg, Luxembourg within the natural frontiers of France, Luxembourg that rightfully belonged to Amsterdam.

Three so-called great powers sent their armies to the Rhine in the spring of 1830, and three so-called great powers broke. The Prussians and the Dutch beat the French, then the French and Belgians beat the Dutch, then the Dutch and the French and the Belgians beat the Prussians, and then the British landed at Antwerp.

In the resulting settlement, the Dutch lost half their state, and William lost all three of his thrones. Frederick William kept his crown, but gained a hated constitution.

And in Paris, the Regency Council turned out to have been keeping a seat warm for His Excellency The President of France Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette.

The War of the Spring is still taught as an example of how wars must never be fought without clear objectives and operational plans.
 
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10 of History's Worst War Time Leaders


1) Thomas Jefferson (President of the USA, War of 1804) [1]

2) Charles X (King of France, Franco-Haitian War/"Haitian Accident") [2]

3) JOINT AWARD: Frederick William III (King of Prussia, War of the Spring) Jules de Polignac (Regency Council of France, War of the Spring), William I, (King of the Netherlands, War of the Spring)

4) Frederick VI (King of Denmark, The Danish-Prussian War)

5)

6)

7)

8)

9)

10)


[1] Historians are still divided on whether or not Jefferson wanted war or not. But nevertheless, having gotten his war he proceeded to make a bungle of it. From the start of the war of 1804, the President had an obsession with exploiting the front from New England to Canada, and the capture of Quebec, to the ruination of other fronts. Generally caught off guard, the bulk of the fledgling US navy was in the Mediterranean fighting the Barbary Pirates, only to be cut off, corned and destroyed one ship at a time by the British. The immediate forcing of the United States on the defensive at sea was sign of things to come which Jefferson refused to see.

No longer afraid to use the Alien and Sedition Acts for a war against Britain, Jefferson forced many protests and anti-war opposition to go quiet and launched initial American advance into Canada only for it blunted short of the Saint Lawrence River. Repeated attempt to return the offensive spurned by Jefferson failed and the Americans gradually fell back as far Fort Ticonderoga, only to then be outflanked in the Northwest Territories and Sir John Moore's Chesapeake campaign. Pleas to France for help fell on deaf ears, as Napoleon rolled up the map of Europe, and the British continued to press in on all fronts. Although captured at the Burning of Washington, and Presidency falling to George Clinton, Jefferson continued to be the man Congress blamed for the poor war effort and Clinton's refusal to engaging in negotiations until the Federalist won the 1808 election.

Still accused of tunnel vision on Quebec, failure to prepare and failure to compromise, Jefferson remains the one that Americans blame their loss in the War of 1804 on, simultaneously running the fruits of his own Presidency and in a way the American Revolution as the price of peace became the bulk of the Louisiana purchase, and the vast chunk of New England that became New Ireland and the Northwest Territories to Tecumseh's Confederacy all of which killed major western expansion before it could happen. Though the American Republic would survive, its potential for greatness was squandered by its most promising founders, which is probably why Jefferson is now credited as one of the Declaration of Independence's many co-authors.


[2] Haiti had been a long term pain in the arse for France since the abolition of slavery, ever since Napoleon decided to use it as a source of "Black Jacobin" soldiers rather than as a plantation - this worked fine while the Royal Navy was distracted by the War of 1804, and then resupply was cut off. An attempted return to plantation farming during the Bourbon restoration was not catching on and Britain & America were both unhappy with Haiti allegedly provoking slave revolts, so one of Charles X's first acts in 1824 decided to send soldiers to assist Prime Minister Dessalines.

Charles X though little of either Haiti or Dessalines, and mistakenly thought limited French power would be enough and that Dessalines, who did want to install plantations, would accept help. Instead, the Prime Minister took very unkindly to being made "a slave for a distant master after all the blood we have lost"; the Haitian republicans suspected the monarchy would betray 'Napoleon's vision' all along and the Haitian monarchists rallied to the memory of the deceased 'Good King Louis'; and a substantial chunk of white population saw this as a threat to their holdings. The first invasion was bloodily routed. Charles X refused to accept the loss and committed a massive force...

...ensuring simply that he was overthrown (in part by the aging Black Jacobin expats and their children) as he was now weak at home. French soldiers and marines were pointlessly lost only for the new Regency to declare the war over, and a status quo returned now "Mad Charles" was gone. French prestige was shattered and money & blood spilled to achieve a continuing status quo, the ultimate embarrassment (and in the long-term, this damaged both French imperial ideals and led to Haiti's increasing autonomy & independence)

[3] Some small states retain their independence because no one wanted to conquer them; some because they were not worth the political capital of conquest; some because they were useful as buffers and tax havens.

Luxembourg is independent because it's too embarrassing to annex, after what happened at its birth.

The post-Vienna order of Europe had become increasingly wobbly in the 1820s, but to a casual viewer the restored monarchies were well in place. Spain had been saved for the Bourbons and the Poles put down; Greece wrested from the Ottomans, and the dragoons sent into crowds across Britain.

That order would have survived any one of the great powers having a domestic crisis, and indeed already had. It would not survive two of them suffering one at once.

By 1829, France had spent five years in the absurd situation of being ruled by a Regency without a King; first the council was preserving the throne until a Bourbon came of age, then until the child of the late Duke of Orleans could be brought to Paris. The remaining Bonapartists played both sides against each other, hoping that in time the throne might be offered to the Emperor's son. Finally, in 1829 the Chair of the Council of Ministers passed to the ultralegitimist Jules de Polignac, who decided that the key to securing the throne for his candidate was a short victorious war. He thought it would be in Algeria- and then Belgium revolted.

In Prussia, Frederick William I had become increasingly worried about the assertive middle class, and surrounded himself with ultraconservatives. He had no desire to be shackled by a constitution, but a worrying budget deficit made the government seem weak and unable to rule. The solution seemed to be that old proof of Prussian glory: a short victorious war. He thought it would be against the Danes, but then Belgium revolted.

William I of the Netherlands wanted to recapture the glory of the golden age of the Dutch- and to do that he needed to ensure that he kept every last inch of land in Europe. And then Belgium revolted.

And there was Luxembourg- German speaking Luxembourg, Luxembourg within the natural frontiers of France, Luxembourg that rightfully belonged to Amsterdam.

Three so-called great powers sent their armies to the Rhine in the spring of 1830, and three so-called great powers broke. The Prussians and the Dutch beat the French, then the French and Belgians beat the Dutch, then the Dutch and the French and the Belgians beat the Prussians, and then the British landed at Antwerp.

In the resulting settlement, the Dutch lost half their state, and William lost all three of his thrones. Frederick William kept his crown, but gained a hated constitution.

And in Paris, the Regency Council turned out to have been keeping a seat warm for His Excellency The President of France Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette.

The War of the Spring is still taught as an example of how wars must never be fought without clear objectives and operational plans.

4). 1833, Fredrick VI of Denmark seeing that the Prussian's had gotten a bloody nose from the War of Spring though it would be good time to kick it whilst it was down as Frederick William I was having to balancing the people and the Junkers and dealing with war debt. A short quick campaign would ensure that Denmark wouldn't be dealing with Prussian expansion into Denmark for decades to come was the thinking of the Danish higher ups, the Danish would become a dominant power in the Baltics as a result was the continuation of that.

But what was meant to be short decisive war ended up taking three year slog as the Danish had vastly underestimated how defeated the Prussians were. Frederick William I was able to present himself as a defender of Prussian democracy and that combined Nationalistic rhetoric would revitalise a gloomy Prussia, this combined with a Prussian plan that abused a rapid but well fortified series of trenches and forts created near the border which the Danish would bleed themselves on for two years before the Prussians pushed forward into Denmark and captured Copenhagen. Not helping Denmark was Fredrick's constant middle managing of various Generals and pursuing ineffective plans would help causing Denmark's immense defeat. When Denmark signed the Treaty of Copenhagen in 1836 it was a humiliation for what seemed like an easy war and would lead to the Danish Revolution in 1839 in the aftermath of Fredrick's death as people let there anger and humiliation over a stupid war be felt.
 
10 of History's Worst War Time Leaders


1) Thomas Jefferson (President of the USA, War of 1804) [1]

2) Charles X (King of France, Franco-Haitian War/"Haitian Accident") [2]

3) JOINT AWARD: Frederick William III (King of Prussia, War of the Spring) Jules de Polignac (Regency Council of France, War of the Spring), William I, (King of the Netherlands, War of the Spring) [3]

4) Frederick VI (King of Denmark, The Danish-Prussian War) [4]

5) Porfirio Diaz (President of Mexico, the First Great American War, the Slave Revolt, and Raids of '86) [5]

6)

7)

8)

9)

10)


[1] Historians are still divided on whether or not Jefferson wanted war or not. But nevertheless, having gotten his war he proceeded to make a bungle of it. From the start of the war of 1804, the President had an obsession with exploiting the front from New England to Canada, and the capture of Quebec, to the ruination of other fronts. Generally caught off guard, the bulk of the fledgling US navy was in the Mediterranean fighting the Barbary Pirates, only to be cut off, corned and destroyed one ship at a time by the British. The immediate forcing of the United States on the defensive at sea was sign of things to come which Jefferson refused to see.

No longer afraid to use the Alien and Sedition Acts for a war against Britain, Jefferson forced many protests and anti-war opposition to go quiet and launched initial American advance into Canada only for it blunted short of the Saint Lawrence River. Repeated attempt to return the offensive spurned by Jefferson failed and the Americans gradually fell back as far Fort Ticonderoga, only to then be outflanked in the Northwest Territories and Sir John Moore's Chesapeake campaign. Pleas to France for help fell on deaf ears, as Napoleon rolled up the map of Europe, and the British continued to press in on all fronts. Although captured at the Burning of Washington, and Presidency falling to George Clinton, Jefferson continued to be the man Congress blamed for the poor war effort and Clinton's refusal to engaging in negotiations until the Federalist won the 1808 election.

Still accused of tunnel vision on Quebec, failure to prepare and failure to compromise, Jefferson remains the one that Americans blame their loss in the War of 1804 on, simultaneously running the fruits of his own Presidency and in a way the American Revolution as the price of peace became the bulk of the Louisiana purchase, and the vast chunk of New England that became New Ireland and the Northwest Territories to Tecumseh's Confederacy all of which killed major western expansion before it could happen. Though the American Republic would survive, its potential for greatness was squandered by its most promising founders, which is probably why Jefferson is now credited as one of the Declaration of Independence's many co-authors.


[2] Haiti had been a long term pain in the arse for France since the abolition of slavery, ever since Napoleon decided to use it as a source of "Black Jacobin" soldiers rather than as a plantation - this worked fine while the Royal Navy was distracted by the War of 1804, and then resupply was cut off. An attempted return to plantation farming during the Bourbon restoration was not catching on and Britain & America were both unhappy with Haiti allegedly provoking slave revolts, so one of Charles X's first acts in 1824 decided to send soldiers to assist Prime Minister Dessalines.

Charles X though little of either Haiti or Dessalines, and mistakenly thought limited French power would be enough and that Dessalines, who did want to install plantations, would accept help. Instead, the Prime Minister took very unkindly to being made "a slave for a distant master after all the blood we have lost"; the Haitian republicans suspected the monarchy would betray 'Napoleon's vision' all along and the Haitian monarchists rallied to the memory of the deceased 'Good King Louis'; and a substantial chunk of white population saw this as a threat to their holdings. The first invasion was bloodily routed. Charles X refused to accept the loss and committed a massive force...

...ensuring simply that he was overthrown (in part by the aging Black Jacobin expats and their children) as he was now weak at home. French soldiers and marines were pointlessly lost only for the new Regency to declare the war over, and a status quo returned now "Mad Charles" was gone. French prestige was shattered and money & blood spilled to achieve a continuing status quo, the ultimate embarrassment (and in the long-term, this damaged both French imperial ideals and led to Haiti's increasing autonomy & independence)

[3] Some small states retain their independence because no one wanted to conquer them; some because they were not worth the political capital of conquest; some because they were useful as buffers and tax havens.

Luxembourg is independent because it's too embarrassing to annex, after what happened at its birth.

The post-Vienna order of Europe had become increasingly wobbly in the 1820s, but to a casual viewer the restored monarchies were well in place. Spain had been saved for the Bourbons and the Poles put down; Greece wrested from the Ottomans, and the dragoons sent into crowds across Britain.

That order would have survived any one of the great powers having a domestic crisis, and indeed already had. It would not survive two of them suffering one at once.

By 1829, France had spent five years in the absurd situation of being ruled by a Regency without a King; first the council was preserving the throne until a Bourbon came of age, then until the child of the late Duke of Orleans could be brought to Paris. The remaining Bonapartists played both sides against each other, hoping that in time the throne might be offered to the Emperor's son. Finally, in 1829 the Chair of the Council of Ministers passed to the ultralegitimist Jules de Polignac, who decided that the key to securing the throne for his candidate was a short victorious war. He thought it would be in Algeria- and then Belgium revolted.

In Prussia, Frederick William I had become increasingly worried about the assertive middle class, and surrounded himself with ultraconservatives. He had no desire to be shackled by a constitution, but a worrying budget deficit made the government seem weak and unable to rule. The solution seemed to be that old proof of Prussian glory: a short victorious war. He thought it would be against the Danes, but then Belgium revolted.

William I of the Netherlands wanted to recapture the glory of the golden age of the Dutch- and to do that he needed to ensure that he kept every last inch of land in Europe. And then Belgium revolted.

And there was Luxembourg- German speaking Luxembourg, Luxembourg within the natural frontiers of France, Luxembourg that rightfully belonged to Amsterdam.

Three so-called great powers sent their armies to the Rhine in the spring of 1830, and three so-called great powers broke. The Prussians and the Dutch beat the French, then the French and Belgians beat the Dutch, then the Dutch and the French and the Belgians beat the Prussians, and then the British landed at Antwerp.

In the resulting settlement, the Dutch lost half their state, and William lost all three of his thrones. Frederick William kept his crown, but gained a hated constitution.

And in Paris, the Regency Council turned out to have been keeping a seat warm for His Excellency The President of France Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette.

The War of the Spring is still taught as an example of how wars must never be fought without clear objectives and operational plans.

4). 1833, Fredrick VI of Denmark seeing that the Prussian's had gotten a bloody nose from the War of Spring though it would be good time to kick it whilst it was down as Frederick William I was having to balancing the people and the Junkers and dealing with war debt. A short quick campaign would ensure that Denmark wouldn't be dealing with Prussian expansion into Denmark for decades to come was the thinking of the Danish higher ups, the Danish would become a dominant power in the Baltics as a result was the continuation of that.

But what was meant to be short decisive war ended up taking three year slog as the Danish had vastly underestimated how defeated the Prussians were. Frederick William I was able to present himself as a defender of Prussian democracy and that combined Nationalistic rhetoric would revitalise a gloomy Prussia, this combined with a Prussian plan that abused a rapid but well fortified series of trenches and forts created near the border which the Danish would bleed themselves on for two years before the Prussians pushed forward into Denmark and captured Copenhagen. Not helping Denmark was Fredrick's constant middle managing of various Generals and pursuing ineffective plans would help causing Denmark's immense defeat. When Denmark signed the Treaty of Copenhagen in 1836 it was a humiliation for what seemed like an easy war and would lead to the Danish Revolution in 1839 in the aftermath of Fredrick's death as people let there anger and humiliation over a stupid war be felt.


5) While Europe had the Scramble for Africa, the Americas had the Long Game between the US and Mexico for dominance (the name from recurring metaphors in both countries and Canada, depicting it as a sports match between two teams achieving a draw). Various small wars and trading deals were made throughout the 19th century but President Diaz, as part of his ongoing plans to reform the country as a modern empire, wanted to score a final knockout blow. He was going to finally pacify the restive Tejas province and sweep up into the southern states, justifying it as an anti-slavery war. The Kingdom of Haiti, as it was then, was greatly interested in assisting with landings on Florida. How could this fail?

It failed because: a) Even in 1882, it was impossible to mobilise the army & navy forces large enough and catch your neighbour by surprise, and Diaz greatly underestimated how far troops could advance b) Diaz was aware the United States was fractuous but naively thought this lack of unity would stop southern states fighting to the death against, horrors, non-whites c) Diaz was a former military officer and thus assumed he knew better than all his generals. Mexican ground troops were bogged down in trench warfare inside the US. The Haitians made a strike on Florida and US-dominated Cuba, noticed this war was a pig, and swiftly proposed a treaty partitioning Cuba that cut out Mexico. When Diaz realised in 1884 that he needed to get out, it was too late: the United States wanted a pound of flesh and Tejas was finally swallowed up by the Union.

That still wouldn't put him on this list if he hadn't seen the Slave Revolt kick off in the weakened US and think 'here's a chance at round two' - when he didn't have an army and navy in good enough shape. A few minor army victories led to the US Navy, who had reformed for just such a mission, launching bombardment raids down Mexico's coast. That was it for Diaz. It was also it for the Long Game, with neither Mexico nor the United States as powerful as they had been - new American and Carribean nations, such as Haiti, filled the gap.
 
10 of History's Worst War Time Leaders


1) Thomas Jefferson (President of the USA, War of 1804) [1]

2) Charles X (King of France, Franco-Haitian War/"Haitian Accident") [2]

3) JOINT AWARD: Frederick William III (King of Prussia, War of the Spring) Jules de Polignac (Regency Council of France, War of the Spring), William I, (King of the Netherlands, War of the Spring) [3]

4) Frederick VI (King of Denmark, The Danish-Prussian War) [4]

5) Porfirio Diaz (President of Mexico, the First Great American War, the Slave Revolt, and Raids of '86) [5]

6) George Bingham, 3rd Earl of Lucan (Governor-General of the Western Provinces, Great Indian Wars/Lucan's March) [6]

7)

8)

9)

10)


[1] Historians are still divided on whether or not Jefferson wanted war or not. But nevertheless, having gotten his war he proceeded to make a bungle of it. From the start of the war of 1804, the President had an obsession with exploiting the front from New England to Canada, and the capture of Quebec, to the ruination of other fronts. Generally caught off guard, the bulk of the fledgling US navy was in the Mediterranean fighting the Barbary Pirates, only to be cut off, corned and destroyed one ship at a time by the British. The immediate forcing of the United States on the defensive at sea was sign of things to come which Jefferson refused to see.

No longer afraid to use the Alien and Sedition Acts for a war against Britain, Jefferson forced many protests and anti-war opposition to go quiet and launched initial American advance into Canada only for it blunted short of the Saint Lawrence River. Repeated attempt to return the offensive spurned by Jefferson failed and the Americans gradually fell back as far Fort Ticonderoga, only to then be outflanked in the Northwest Territories and Sir John Moore's Chesapeake campaign. Pleas to France for help fell on deaf ears, as Napoleon rolled up the map of Europe, and the British continued to press in on all fronts. Although captured at the Burning of Washington, and Presidency falling to George Clinton, Jefferson continued to be the man Congress blamed for the poor war effort and Clinton's refusal to engaging in negotiations until the Federalist won the 1808 election.

Still accused of tunnel vision on Quebec, failure to prepare and failure to compromise, Jefferson remains the one that Americans blame their loss in the War of 1804 on, simultaneously running the fruits of his own Presidency and in a way the American Revolution as the price of peace became the bulk of the Louisiana purchase, and the vast chunk of New England that became New Ireland and the Northwest Territories to Tecumseh's Confederacy all of which killed major western expansion before it could happen. Though the American Republic would survive, its potential for greatness was squandered by its most promising founders, which is probably why Jefferson is now credited as one of the Declaration of Independence's many co-authors.


[2] Haiti had been a long term pain in the arse for France since the abolition of slavery, ever since Napoleon decided to use it as a source of "Black Jacobin" soldiers rather than as a plantation - this worked fine while the Royal Navy was distracted by the War of 1804, and then resupply was cut off. An attempted return to plantation farming during the Bourbon restoration was not catching on and Britain & America were both unhappy with Haiti allegedly provoking slave revolts, so one of Charles X's first acts in 1824 decided to send soldiers to assist Prime Minister Dessalines.

Charles X though little of either Haiti or Dessalines, and mistakenly thought limited French power would be enough and that Dessalines, who did want to install plantations, would accept help. Instead, the Prime Minister took very unkindly to being made "a slave for a distant master after all the blood we have lost"; the Haitian republicans suspected the monarchy would betray 'Napoleon's vision' all along and the Haitian monarchists rallied to the memory of the deceased 'Good King Louis'; and a substantial chunk of white population saw this as a threat to their holdings. The first invasion was bloodily routed. Charles X refused to accept the loss and committed a massive force...

...ensuring simply that he was overthrown (in part by the aging Black Jacobin expats and their children) as he was now weak at home. French soldiers and marines were pointlessly lost only for the new Regency to declare the war over, and a status quo returned now "Mad Charles" was gone. French prestige was shattered and money & blood spilled to achieve a continuing status quo, the ultimate embarrassment (and in the long-term, this damaged both French imperial ideals and led to Haiti's increasing autonomy & independence)

[3] Some small states retain their independence because no one wanted to conquer them; some because they were not worth the political capital of conquest; some because they were useful as buffers and tax havens.

Luxembourg is independent because it's too embarrassing to annex, after what happened at its birth.

The post-Vienna order of Europe had become increasingly wobbly in the 1820s, but to a casual viewer the restored monarchies were well in place. Spain had been saved for the Bourbons and the Poles put down; Greece wrested from the Ottomans, and the dragoons sent into crowds across Britain.

That order would have survived any one of the great powers having a domestic crisis, and indeed already had. It would not survive two of them suffering one at once.

By 1829, France had spent five years in the absurd situation of being ruled by a Regency without a King; first the council was preserving the throne until a Bourbon came of age, then until the child of the late Duke of Orleans could be brought to Paris. The remaining Bonapartists played both sides against each other, hoping that in time the throne might be offered to the Emperor's son. Finally, in 1829 the Chair of the Council of Ministers passed to the ultralegitimist Jules de Polignac, who decided that the key to securing the throne for his candidate was a short victorious war. He thought it would be in Algeria- and then Belgium revolted.

In Prussia, Frederick William I had become increasingly worried about the assertive middle class, and surrounded himself with ultraconservatives. He had no desire to be shackled by a constitution, but a worrying budget deficit made the government seem weak and unable to rule. The solution seemed to be that old proof of Prussian glory: a short victorious war. He thought it would be against the Danes, but then Belgium revolted.

William I of the Netherlands wanted to recapture the glory of the golden age of the Dutch- and to do that he needed to ensure that he kept every last inch of land in Europe. And then Belgium revolted.

And there was Luxembourg- German speaking Luxembourg, Luxembourg within the natural frontiers of France, Luxembourg that rightfully belonged to Amsterdam.

Three so-called great powers sent their armies to the Rhine in the spring of 1830, and three so-called great powers broke. The Prussians and the Dutch beat the French, then the French and Belgians beat the Dutch, then the Dutch and the French and the Belgians beat the Prussians, and then the British landed at Antwerp.

In the resulting settlement, the Dutch lost half their state, and William lost all three of his thrones. Frederick William kept his crown, but gained a hated constitution.

And in Paris, the Regency Council turned out to have been keeping a seat warm for His Excellency The President of France Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette.

The War of the Spring is still taught as an example of how wars must never be fought without clear objectives and operational plans.

4). 1833, Fredrick VI of Denmark seeing that the Prussian's had gotten a bloody nose from the War of Spring though it would be good time to kick it whilst it was down as Frederick William I was having to balancing the people and the Junkers and dealing with war debt. A short quick campaign would ensure that Denmark wouldn't be dealing with Prussian expansion into Denmark for decades to come was the thinking of the Danish higher ups, the Danish would become a dominant power in the Baltics as a result was the continuation of that.

But what was meant to be short decisive war ended up taking three year slog as the Danish had vastly underestimated how defeated the Prussians were. Frederick William I was able to present himself as a defender of Prussian democracy and that combined Nationalistic rhetoric would revitalise a gloomy Prussia, this combined with a Prussian plan that abused a rapid but well fortified series of trenches and forts created near the border which the Danish would bleed themselves on for two years before the Prussians pushed forward into Denmark and captured Copenhagen. Not helping Denmark was Fredrick's constant middle managing of various Generals and pursuing ineffective plans would help causing Denmark's immense defeat. When Denmark signed the Treaty of Copenhagen in 1836 it was a humiliation for what seemed like an easy war and would lead to the Danish Revolution in 1839 in the aftermath of Fredrick's death as people let there anger and humiliation over a stupid war be felt.


5) While Europe had the Scramble for Africa, the Americas had the Long Game between the US and Mexico for dominance (the name from recurring metaphors in both countries and Canada, depicting it as a sports match between two teams achieving a draw). Various small wars and trading deals were made throughout the 19th century but President Diaz, as part of his ongoing plans to reform the country as a modern empire, wanted to score a final knockout blow. He was going to finally pacify the restive Tejas province and sweep up into the southern states, justifying it as an anti-slavery war. The Kingdom of Haiti, as it was then, was greatly interested in assisting with landings on Florida. How could this fail?

It failed because: a) Even in 1882, it was impossible to mobilise the army & navy forces large enough and catch your neighbour by surprise, and Diaz greatly underestimated how far troops could advance b) Diaz was aware the United States was fractuous but naively thought this lack of unity would stop southern states fighting to the death against, horrors, non-whites c) Diaz was a former military officer and thus assumed he knew better than all his generals. Mexican ground troops were bogged down in trench warfare inside the US. The Haitians made a strike on Florida and US-dominated Cuba, noticed this war was a pig, and swiftly proposed a treaty partitioning Cuba that cut out Mexico. When Diaz realised in 1884 that he needed to get out, it was too late: the United States wanted a pound of flesh and Tejas was finally swallowed up by the Union.

That still wouldn't put him on this list if he hadn't seen the Slave Revolt kick off in the weakened US and think 'here's a chance at round two' - when he didn't have an army and navy in good enough shape. A few minor army victories led to the US Navy, who had reformed for just such a mission, launching bombardment raids down Mexico's coast. That was it for Diaz. It was also it for the Long Game, with neither Mexico nor the United States as powerful as they had been - new American and Carribean nations, such as Haiti, filled the gap.

[6]
There is perhaps no more famous or celebrated an act of the Canadian/Colombian frontier than Kitchener's stand at Little Bighorn, however the road to it was paved with blood and the follies of Lord Lucan.

The typical Flashman-esque high Victorian officer, George Bingham, 3rd Earl of Lucan, had been bounced around from one imperial posting to another before finally being booted to an out-of-the-way posting on the Canadian Frontier (an amalgamation of what is now the Provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Dakota and Montgomery). But there could not have been a more exciting time to be out on the Frontier as it finally opened up to settlement that had been promised since the end of the War of 1804 and the inter-colonial rivalry between Atlantic bound Canada and Pacific bound Colombia grew more intense over their competition to build the first Transcontinental Railway in North America. Lucan became involved in the whole sordid business when Ottawa's section of the line ran into deep trouble with the path it was cutting through tribal lands and was falling behind. Desperate to push the line forward and defend the vast gold deposits that the Royal Pacific Rail Company (subsidary of the Hudson Bay Company) had found near Sherwood, Dakota, Lucan was summoned to Ottawa to discuss and expedition to forcibly move the Plains Indians out of the Company's way: foolish and desperate for glory, Lucan agreed.

Except, Lucan returned to his command at Fort Gibraltar only to pause and work himself into a frenzy based on his own ambitions and mania. Suddenly, the call went out across North America about Lucan's grand plan to march on the Plains Indians and wipe them off the face of the earth, and it was answered from across the continent as restless Americans, German revolutionary exiles, Mexican nobility, cowboys, prospectors, homesteaders and bandits of all nationalities, even Chinese and Indian labour all abandoned their jobs and homes to answer Lucan's call: and the entirely false promises of land and gold in the newly cleansed territory.

After six months delay, on March 6th 1876, two regiments of redcoats and a regiment of hussars, plus the various militias of the Western territories, were bolstered by an extra 30,000 armed auxiliaries (and many other volunteers who despite lack of an ability to properly arm them, followed Lucan anyway). Caught up in his own arrogance and blatant racism, Lucan advanced casually into wilderness fully expecting to just roll up one village after another, what he did not expect despite intelligence to the contrary, was for a vast coalition of from all the Indian nations of the Plains to oppose him. Blackfoot, Arapahoe, Crow, Iowa, Sioux, Saulteaux, Cheyenne and even displaced Apache and Comanche assembled to wage a guerrilla war against Lucan that matched the resistance to Napoleon in Russia and Iberia with its skill, ferocity, bloodiness, and effectiveness.

Despite living off the land and a not wholly ineffective supply wagon, Lucan simply couldn't feed his army as one combined unit, yet Lucan refused to separate his army until he had fought one major engagement with the enemy, but they continued to deny him it. Only as the summer passed and winter began breathing down his neck, Lucan chanced an action between his Hussars and a Sioux village did he claim his victory and began to spread his army into separate forts, columns and camps across the Dakota and Montgomery territories - at the worst possible time. Effectively cut off from one another as the snows set in, each unit now had to fend for itself through the winter. Those that did not simply flee and abandon their positions, soon began to cannibalise (literally in some cases) each other, the enemy, even the settlers they were sent to defend and resorted to banditry. Notable incidents like an auxiliary regiment fighting a week long skirmish with a detachment of the South Wales Borders Regiment, and when a squadron of the 7th Cavalry flat burned the town of Sherwood to the ground after the locals refused to part with their food or gold.

Bashfully admitting he could no longer keep control of the Expedition, Lucan ordered a retreat of those few units he still had contact with. Over the remains of winter, the few units still cohesive or brave enough to march fell into Fort Gibraltar a sorry and ruinous lot. Shocked to find letters from Ottawa and London had arrived for him while on his campaign demanding exactly what the Earl was playing at, issuing cease and desist orders, and his dismissal and recall to London for an inquiry while a replacement and commission to see the damage that the Expedition had wrought on the Canadian expansion. Aghast, and with nothing to loose anymore, Lucan ignored the letters and reassembled his force and rearming them as best he could. With the first officers of the commission arriving, and the snows barely melted, Lucan sallied forth again. Now totally unafraid of the whitemen they had chased from the plains, the assembled tribes gave Lucan his battle and totally routed him, armed with the equipment left behind in the retreat they broke his column at a crossing on the Yellowstone River, capturing the colours of 7th Hussars and the 60th Regiment Foot and killing the man himself.

The final defeat of Lucan should have been the end of the Canadian Frontier: its epilogue, instead the actions of Lieutenant Kitchener and his small band of redcoats at Little Big Horn made it prologue. Certainly, it was set back a good while. The Royal Pacific Rail Company went flat bust as news of Lucans rout reached Ottawa and its main possession had been ripped back up again by marauders and the tribes, and Sherwood gold deposits plundered by deserters and independent prospectors, and thoroughly disappointed in the leadership of Ottawa and the mismanagement of the Hudson Bay Company both were rolled up as London took increasing control as the Disraeli Commission made its findings plain to see. Frontier settlement and the Transcontinental project was handed over to the Imperial American Rail Company of Portland, Oregon, Colombia, who gradually rebuilt the honour of British America with a soft(er) touch by fair(ish) deals with the tribal leaders, following the peace that Disraeli and Kitchener managed to negotiate with the Plains coalition. The Canadian Confederacy did eventually rehabilitate itself as a Dominion in 1900, 20 years after Colombia celebrated its status as the Empire's first Dominion as the last spike of the Railway was driven in at Rugby, Dakota - marking the border between Britain's Atlantic and Pacific colonies in North America.

Lucan's reputation has never been rehabilitated, nor is it likely to be. Facing every caricature imaginable to this day from blood thirsty white supremacist, aloof and snotty toff, the brash, incompetent 'donkey' leading his lions to slaughter. He has been cited by comedy bigwigs as the original inspiration behind Flashman, Flashheart, and Lord Melchett.

(May have gotten a little carried away with this one)
 
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