Chicago Boyz Archive

History Friday: Hauptsturmführer Michael Wittman

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On this day seventy years ago, Michael Wittman was killed. Wittman was a war hero, and media hero in Nazi Germany, a “tank ace” with 138 confirmed kills.

As Wikipedia tells us:

Wittmann is most famous for his ambush of elements of the British 7th Armoured Division, during the Battle of Villers-Bocage on 13 June 1944. While in command of a single Panzerkampfwagen VI Tiger he destroyed up to 14 tanks and 15 personnel carriers along with 2 anti-tank guns within the space of 15 minutes.

Some photos of the aftermath of this one-tank rampage can be found here. There is a video about this action here. Notably, the British narrators of this video treat Wittman’s feat with a sort of hushed awe.

Wittman was a dashing looking chap, as well:

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Quote of the Day, or, A Challenge to the Millennial Generation

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They stand now on the threshold of public life. They are in the leash, but in a moment they will be slipped. What will be their fate? Will they maintain in august assemblies and high places the great truths which, in study and in solitude, they have embraced? Or will their courage exhaust itself in the struggle, their enthusiasm evaporate before hollow-hearted ridicule, their generous impulses yield with a vulgar catastrophe to the tawdry temptations of a low ambition? Will their skilled intelligence subside into being the adroit tool of a corrupt party? Will Vanity confound their fortunes, or Jealousy wither their sympathies? Or will they remain brave, single, and true; refuse to bow before shadows and worship phrases; sensible of the greatness of their position, recognise the greatness of their duties; denounce to a perplexed and disheartened world the frigid theories of a generalising age that have destroyed the individuality of man, and restore the happiness of their country by believing in their own energies, and daring to be great?

Conigsby, or The New Generation (1844) by Benjamin Disraeli.

Will they? Will they believe in their own energies? Will they dare to be great? Will they restore the happiness of their country? Will they denounce the frigid theories that have destroyed the individuality of man?

Incidentally the book is great.


Quote of the Day

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[W]e are swimming, or drowning, in a rhetoric of national, social and individual failure. Producers of this rhetoric … are so filled with narcissistic self-doubts as to depict America’s many adversities and frustrations as impending apocalypses or Auschwitzian holocausts. … No responsible historian advocates insensitivity to America’s historical warts, present difficulties and conceivable future problems … . Attention must obviously be paid to a nation’s dynamics of decline if this is what afflicts us. But attention does not require accepting an assumption that America’s reverses or unfulfilled goals are equivalent to total failures or disasters, or that America if not uniquely blessed, is uniquely cursed for allegedly singular sins.

Harold M. Hyman, American Singularity: The 1787 Northwest Ordinance, The 1862 Homestead And Morrill Acts, and the 1944 G.I. Bill (1986), referencing Christopher Lasch, The Minimal Self: Psychic Survival in Troubled Times (1984).

Remember

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Remember:

It’s not R v. D. It is Reformers v. The Combine.

That said, most of the time R > D.

So think tactically.

Don’t make an imaginary best the enemy of a tangible good.

Don’t make an imaginary better the cause of a tangible harm.

Don’t personalize or hold grudges: We don’t just want to change people, we want people to change. Welcome it when it happens.

But remember:

The long game is make the GOP the reform party.