Word: napoleon
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...least of the unknowns are the imponderables of strategy and tactics. Wars are fought by human beings as well as by machines, and, as Napoleon suggested, an army of lions that is led by a lamb can be beaten by an army of lambs under the leadership of a lion. Failure of leadership lost the World War for Germany at the outset when a timid High Command failed to keep the strength of its right wing up to the plan of Alfred von Schlieffen on the famed swing through Belgium. Conversely, the Japanese capitalized on brilliant chance-taking when they...
...continuity of tradition has not been broken since the 1870s, the French are probably weak on new tactics. They are scholars in warfare. It is typical that able Chief of Staff Gamelin, even-tempered Parisian who studied under Foch at the Staff College, is so close a student of Napoleon's campaigns that he is supposed to remember "every order as they were given, day by day, during the Empire" (the words are attributed to Foch). But Gamelin is considerable of a realist and it is quite possible that in the next war, he would profit by the mistakes...
...hero of Juárez, who does not appear in it, is James Monroe, fifth President of the U. S. and promulgator of the doctrine that the U. S. wants no foreigners in its back yard. Juárez begins when that doctrine is challenged by cocky little Napoleon III (Claude Rains), who thinks he can set up a Mexican Empire while the U. S. has its hands full with the Civil War. Napoleon's instrument is a foppish but well-intentioned Habsburg archduke, Maximilian (Brian Aherne). Through an engineered plebiscite, Maximilian and his wife Carlota (Bette Davis...
...played with stolid nobility by Paul Muni in a dusty Prince Albert and stovepipe hat, is unmoved by Maximilian's liberal protestations, his break with his selfish landowner backers, his sincere offer to make the President his Secretary of State. And when the U. S. finally frightens Napoleon into abandoning the puppet emperor to his fate, Juárez makes a choice between principle and pity, sends Maximilian before a firing squad...
...packed with jokes, plays on words; it contains nonsensical diagrams, ridiculous footnotes, obscure allusions. Sometimes it seems to be retelling, in a chattering, stammering, incoherent way, the legends of Tristan and Isolde, of Wellington and Napoleon, Cain and Abel. Sometimes it seems to be a description, written with torrential eloquence, of the flow of a river...