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Mark R. Stoneman

Historian, editor, and translator for hire (German to English). Longtime resident of Washington, DC, now in Conway, NH, as a caregiver (he/him).

  Past & Present

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    Joe Stieb has posted some good history recommendations to help counter Hegseth’s bizarre scrubbing of Department of Defense webpages of race, gender, sexuality, and other content verboten by Trump. https://archive.ph/zLEcs

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    Cover of latest Stern magazine shows Trump and Putin bowing to each other over the corps of Ukraine. German text is discussed in main post.

    The title of this cover from a prominent German news weekly borrows from a famous Ronald Reagan quote: “Axis of Evil” (Die Achse der Bösen). Only this time a Republican president is casting the United States on the side of evil. The remaining text points to the “danger of war in Europe” and asks “what Trump’s betrayal of Ukraine means for us."1 The cover also mentions a statement by Joschka Fischer in an interview: “Germany needs conscription again."2

    POSTSCRIPT: See comments for connection to 1939

    1. “Us” could refer to Germany, given the magazine, but note the European flag that the two bowing men are standing on—with the corpse of Ukraine laid out face down between them. If the corpse is hyperbole, the betrayal and its geopolitical consequences are very real, ↩︎

    2. Fischer was a politician in the Greens who served as Germany’s popular foreign minister and vice chancellor from 1998 to 2005. ↩︎

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    Conscription, Industrial Mobilization, and the Russo-Ukrainian War

    Russia’s war against Ukraine has been marked by an effort to avoid universal (manhood) conscription. It is the regime’s war, so to speak (a “special military operation”), not a people’s war.

    On the other side, Ukraine uses conscription because it is indeed a national or people’s war for them. It is a fight for their very survival. Russia is even treating each and every Ukrainian as a “legitimate” target. But even Ukraine has avoided calling up younger men. It seems they lack the political consensus to do so.

    I thought about this again when Vance made his historically ignorant accusation in the White House that Ukraine’s military manpower situation was so bad that they had to force men into the army. It’s as if Vance had never heard of the draft in the United States. Or he doesn’t know that “conscription” means “draft” in modern U.S. military history. Regardless, conscription is what countries do when they believe the national stakes are extremely high. If Vance had read any histories of war over the past couple centuries, he would know this.

    One notable exception to conscription in national or total wars: Britain tried to fight the First World War with only volunteers, and they succeeded up to a point. By 1916, however, they had to institute conscription as well (“Military Service”). Little wonder. That war in particular had a ravenous appetite for men.

    I’ve been thinking about the issue of conscription for another reason. Western leaders have spent the first three years of the Russo-Ukrainian War trying to prevent average citizens from feeling any pain. They’ve avoided spending the money necessary to mobilize our defense industries sufficiently to support a Ukrainian victory and form a credible deterrent to Russia (and China).

    This avoidance points to one or all of the following developments in democracies and authoritarian kleptocracies alike:

    1. The relationship between nation states and their peoples has changed substantially. Are people less patriotic? Maybe they are less willing to follow their leaders’s calls to war?
    2. Do nation states care more about consent than they used to? Or have they grown more timid? Perhaps they are acting on an everyday awareness of popular opinion gleaned from social media, for example.
    3. Are contemporary leaders more likely to follow popular opinion than lead it? Even Putin and Trump are hardly leading, unless one thinks gaslighting their nations and the world counts.

    I have no answer here. It just feels like the post–Cold War era of increasingly volunteer armies and neoliberal economic policies is being challenged by the demands of Mars and his acolytes, even if few have come to accept the consequences of this shift.

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    Knock-Out Blow to the Russian Bear: Postcard from 1904–05

    Man in a red Japanese outfit talking to the Russian Bear in green army trousers and brown army boots as he sits on the ground and holds his head. Stars over his head indicate the hits he took. There is ocean behind them and then the sun, indicating the far east. On the horizon, four warships have been blown into the sky.

    “Your size and weight don’t count in my style of wrestling.”

    This was the last in a series of six postcards that marked the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05).1 I chose it because its caption speaks to Russia’s current war against Ukraine. The Russian Bear’s smaller opponent says, “Your size and weight don’t count in my style of wrestling.” Unlike today, Japan, not Russia, began this war with a surprise attack. Still, observers assumed the Russian Bear would prevail. It did not, and the Tsar faced revolution at home. The bigger the beast, the harder the fall.

    The war in Ukraine is different, but there, too, Russia is running up against the limits of its strength. It is facing economic collapse and worse. Rather strangely, the new-old U.S. president wants to throw his weight behind the corrupt old Russian Bear. Doing so will cost more Ukrainian lives and the United States its reputation and influence. But Ukraine will come up with new ways to stop Russia. Meanwhile, the political cartoonists will continue to do their thing, if not on postcards.

    1. Written in ink partly over the English caption are some words in French I can’t quite make out. Source: The Newberry Library, John I. Monroe collection of artist-signed postcards, https://collections.newberry.org/asset-management/2KXJ8ZS64D8UI. ↩︎

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    “U.S. military removes words ‘history,’ ‘respect,’ ‘dignity’ from digital presence as part of DEI review” by Gabriella Alcorta-Solorio, Texas Public Radio, February 28, 2025, www.tpr.org…. #NotTheOnion #MoscovianCandidate #FuckTrump

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    Italian fascist propaganda poster depicting Churchill and Roosevelt, both holding pistols, over a city in ruins and dead children, with a pirate flag in the background. A caption at the bottom reads 'Su loro ricade la colpa!'(On them rests the blame!)

    This Italian fascist poster prefigures the disgusting rhetoric of Putin and Trump: “On them rests the blame!” by Gino Boccasile, ca. 1942–45.

    Via David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University, https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4bp0064p.

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    📽️ A well reviewed historical drama is streaming on Paramount+ in the United States: “Suffragette,” dir. Sarah Gavron (UK, 2015). The struggle it dramatizes was about getting the vote in order to shape the laws and policies that affected women in uniquely cruel ways.

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    'The Iron Curtain' (1948 Spy Film)

    📽️ Tonight I watched “The Iron Curtain,” dir. William A. Wellman (Twentieth Century–Fox, 1948). The film was based on Igor Gouzenko’s memoir of his time working as a military cypher expert in the Soviet embassy in Ottawa, “I Was Inside Stalin’s Spy Ring,” Hearst’s International–Cosmopolitan (February–May 1947).

    The excerpt below from a news item in a trade journal uses the term “appeasement” to describe attempts to block the film’s release. And it recalls accusations “of war-mongering because of alleged anti-Nazi films” before the U.S. entry into World War Two. Disinformation campaigns by hostile governments are nothing new, it seems.

    MPAA Pins Red Label on “Curtain” Protest

    Reaffirming his continued resistance to any attempts to dictate what appears or does not appear on the screen, Eric A. Johnston, MPAA [Motion Picture Association of America] president, has rejected the protest of the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship against release of 20th-Fox’s forthcoming “The Iron Curtain.” At the same time Johnston questioned the motives of the National Council and coneluded that “the purpose of your organization is to create in this country an atmosphere of appeasement and acceptance of Russia’s policy of aggression and expansion."…

    Johnston pointed out … that the issue of free speech in relation to the screen was challenged seven years ago before a Senate committee, when the producers were accused of war-mongering because of alleged anti-Nazi films. “Producers then insisted upon and maintained their constitutional right to make films on any subject, free from dictation,” Johnston reminded. “Their position was vindicated. They stand on that right today, and I back them up."…

    Source: The Film Daily February 3, 1948, p. 5.

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    The federal government is now using force to suppress knowledge of the history of violence against Black people. Remembering the past is too painful for these weak tyrants, so they tyrannize the brave who would teach or learn it.

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    It’s hard to look at the coming constitutional crisis and not think of Prussia’s constitutional crisis of 1858–64. But instead of Bismarck, we’ve got Boris and Natasha role-playing leaders.

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    📽️ Rewatching “Mrs. Miniver,” dir. William Wyler (UK, 1942) for the first time in maybe 20 years. In its day it was an effective propaganda film in the early months of the U.S. entry into the war. Now, for me, it’s an escape from a world in which the Nazis are in Washington, DC, itself.

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    A black man's left forearm and fist and a white man's left forearm and fist shown striking a big swaztika. The black man has a broken chain dangling from his wrist. The text reads, 'Bonds and justice will smash the Nazis. Not bondage!'

    Bonds and justice will smash the Nazis, not bondage!

    World War Two poster – The word "bonds" can work three ways here: the bonds or chains pictured here as broken, the bonds that unite us, and U.S. war bonds. The second of these offers the most powerful contrast to "bondage."

    Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Art and Artifacts Division, NYPL, image id psnypl_scf_065.

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    Inspiring Photo from 1971 for Our Troubled Times

    Black and white photo of men and women conference goers in a social situation of some kind, standing. The women described in the caption are in the foreground. They are the focal point.

    “Isabel Miller and Barbara Gittings hugging librarians” in 1971 at the American Library Association Conference in Dallas, Texas. (Miller is on the left. Gittings is on the right in the floral sleeveless dress.)

    Librarians can be central in the fight against bigotry and for equal rights, which might explain why some gay rights activists were there. (An important example: early professional Black librarians.)

    Photo by Kay Tobin, via the Barbara Gittings and Kay Tobin Lahusen Gay History Papers and Photographs Collection, NYPL Digital Collections, image ID 1606079. 🏳️‍🌈

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    Photo of Joy and Love, 1962

    Her head, one shoulder, and one hand is visible. Soap in hair and forehead. In a shower, the rest of her behind the plastic shower curtain. But all one sees are her radiant eyes and face, the big spontaneous smile or laugh. So much joy.

    So much joy in this photo, so much love: “Barbara Gittings in shower, circa 1962” by Kay Tobin. 🏳️‍🌈

    Via Barbara Gittings and Kay Tobin Lahusen Gay History Papers and Photographs collection, NYPL Digital Collections, image ID 1605708.

    Postscript

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    Old poster, silkscreen color print, showing two deer, a doe and a fawn, caught in the headlights of a large approaching car at night. The road is bounded by trees. The main text below the image reads, 'Don't Kill Our Wild Life' and below that, smaller, 'Department of the Interior, National Park Service'. At the bottom right in small text reads, 'Made by Works Progress Administration - Federal Art Project NYC'.

    Thinking of a member of Orange Oaf's cast of terrible characters…

    Don't Kill Our Wild Life – Department of the Interior, National Park Service – By Works Progress Administration – Federal Art Project NYC – [ca. 1936–40]

    Via Library of Congress.

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    “Air Force says recruits will again learn about Tuskegee Airmen” by Sig Christenson, San Antonio Express-News, January 26, 2025.

    The head of the service’s San Antonio-based training command said a video about the famed Black aviators would remain in the Air Force basic training curriculum. The course had been shut down in response to President Trump’s DEI ban.

    Apparently overly zealous interpretations of executive orders can be turned back in some cases. It’s a small win for military training and tradition building, but it also suggests that military professionals can get through, at least on something like this. Trump’s pardon of war criminals in his first term tell a different story, however.

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    blue cover page of Simple Sabotage stamped declassified and marked with catalog numbers
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    “Heeding Trump, Air Force won’t teach recruits about Tuskegee Airmen” by Sig Christenson, San Antonio Express News, January 24, 2025, expressnews.com….

    A video describing the exploits of the groundbreaking African American airmen, who flew combat sorties during World War II, has been removed from the instructional curriculum for new recruits at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, the hub of Air Force basic training.

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    U.S. Government Caricature of Nazi Propaganda

    This 1942 poster was designed to counter the effects of Nazi propaganda in the United States. It is fascinating in its own right, but parts of the text reveal startling similarities to Russian disinformation in our own time.

    Follow the link below this poster for a description and full transcription.

    Accessibility: Description and full transcription of poster.

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