Tea at Trianon: At the End of the Postwar World

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, October 28, 2025

At the End of the Postwar World

From Victor Davis Hanson at Freedom Frequency:

When fighting in Europe ends with the Nazi surrender on May 9, the continent is left in shambles, impoverished, and immediately threatened with both internal and external communist takeovers. Some 70 million to 85 million lives have been lost in this war. Perhaps 35 million died in Europe, on the Eastern Front, and in the Mediterranean. The traditional European economic powerhouse of Germany is flattened, occupied, and divided, with 30 percent of its territory under the control of the Soviet Union.
Many of the borders in Eastern Europe and the Balkans are radically altered, and these vast territorial changes will lead to some 20 million refugees. Perhaps up to 2 million displaced persons will have died of starvation, disease, or exposure by 1950. The vast majority of them are Germans expelled from Silesia, Prussia, and Pomerania to make way for the restoration of Poland. A quarter-million Jews who survived the Holocaust are homeless.
When the war ends, more than half of some 500 Soviet rifle divisions are occupying both Eastern Europe and East Germany—even as a broke Britain and a tired America are planning to collectively demobilize more than 3 million expeditionary troops eager to leave for home as quickly as possible.
The economies and infrastructure of the losing Axis-associated powers of Germany, Italy, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Slovakia are ruined. Their political systems are near-nonexistent. Neutrals like Spain, Portugal, Sweden, and Switzerland are still in the economic doldrums. The lands of formerly German-occupied Europe—especially the Netherlands and France—have seen their economies absorbed by Nazi mercantilism and are busy hunting down former internal collaborators.
Yet the ascendant Soviet Union is even more impoverished. Its western territories are ravaged. And it has suffered 26 million civilian and military deaths. (Read more.)