The Three Cousins of WW1: Part 4 - The Tsar

In Khodynka Fields in Moscow an estimated half a million people gathered in 1896. It was four days after the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II, who would prove to be not only the last of the Romanov ruling family that had been in power since 1613, but the last of the tsars. The crowning of a monarch would be the place to be, seeing as you're bound to get some overflow from the richest guy around throwing a party. On this, Nicholas didn't disappoint. There was a promise of beer and pretzels for all comers of the party, and considering how wild people go for free food nowadays, it's got to be full lunacy for Russian peasants circa the start of the 20th century. That sounds all well and good. Give the people what they want. But here's the kicker; a rumour spread (who knows if there was any truth behind it) that Nicholas was committing the worst mistake a host of a party could make.

They were running out of beer.

Nicholas and his wife on their wedding day.
This picture demonstrates their deep, passionate
mutual acceptance of their marriage.

It's a recipe for disaster when you have that many people in a tightly packed space all trying to reach one spot, and it's only turning up the heat when the desired item in question is of limited quantity. In spite of the police's best efforts to hold back the mob, a stampede broke out in the field. 1,389 people were trampled to death, making Nicholas' reign begin in a dreadfully bloody, tragic fashion. The following is an excerpt from his journal, writing on the incident.

"Until now, everything was going, thank God, like clockwork, but today there was a great mishap. The crowd staying overnight at Khodynka, awaiting the start of the distribution of lunch and mugs pushed against buildings and there was a terrible crush, and awful to say trampled around 1300 people! ...I had to make a speech, and then another for the assembled marshals of the nobility. After going around the table, we left for the Kremlin. Dinner at Mama's at 8. Went to the ball at Montebello's. It was very nicely arranged, but the heat was unbearable. After dinner, left at 2."

This was the world of Russia. On one hand there was incredible, stunning decadence. On the other, 120,000,000 peasants, dirt poor, unable to speak out for rightful fear of punishment and unable to write on their troubles because most weren't even literate. Those at the top saw the other end of the spectrum as an infinite supply of expendable resources to fund every wish. Those at the bottom were meant to prop those above them up on their shoulders. That was the way it was, the way it always has been and the way the Romanovs meant to keep it. Nicholas wholeheartedly meant to keep it that way.

It's not too tough to understand how that came to be. As a child, he didn't so much set foot in a store, meaning he had a shocking knowledge gap when it came to monetary value. This is especially odd considering how the vast, vast majority of the inhabitants of the country he was to inherit were going through tremendous economic hardships. That, again, is strangely understandable; Nicholas was sheltered to such a degree that he would only be subjected to seeing other royalty, servants, and military men. This was something that would plague the future tsar for the rest of his life - a total lack of knowledge (and thus, compassion) for the world that was crumbling around him. There were bits and pieces that must have given him some hint, of course. After all, his grandfather was killed in a terrorist bombing and bled to death right in front of him at a very young age. However, that was somehow not a wake up call that perhaps there was more a growing discontent.

Tsar Nicholas and King George.
Nicholas is the bearded, short-haired
white guy with the big moustache.

Upon taking the reins after his father's passing, he kept the standard for Russia at the time, which is to say a strict authoritarian mentality. This was an interesting choice. Nicholas, similar to George, didn't really so much want to run the country. He was incredibly nervous, and had every single right to be. Growing up as Russian royalty, he had never truly had to make a decision of any great consequence, but now he was at the top of the heap and responsible for over a hundred million souls. To compensate, he bogged himself down with trivialities to appear busy while doing nothing of any real significance (we've all been there, Nicky). For example, he was inexplicably the only one that had the authority to officially change someone's name. In a country of, again, over a hundred million. Meanwhile, while he's working through piles of useless, mind-numbing bureaucratic work, the country was veritably burning around him. 

Russia's unrest eventually culminated into riots and rebellions, some peaceful, others not. Instead of facing the problem head on, Nicholas retreated and doubled-down on his policies. He would limit freedom of the press and did his best to repress the government. Dissenters were dealt with bruatally, often in the form of assassinations. Groups could be subjected to wholesale slaughter. The most egregious example of this came from his treatment of a peaceful, unarmed protest led by a priest. They came with a list of grievances for the tsar, approaching his Winter Palace in 1905. Imperial soldiers fired on the crowd, resulting in around a thousand casualties, and would prove to be the spark that would ignite the Russian Revolution.

All the while, Nicholas was mostly walling himself off literally and metaphorically. He would often retreat to Tsarskoe Selo, his home away from home in St. Petersburg (more like palace away from palace). There, he was somehow oblivious to just how bad things were getting around him. That is, until it all came crashing down. Eventually forced to abdicate after the incredible losses his army took in World War I, he went into exile. Denied entry into Britain, revolutionaries eventually tracked him down and murdered not only Nicholas but his entire family. It was said that so many jewels adorned the dresses of his daughters that they survived the first wave of bullets from the firing squad. They were subsequently bayoneted.

Tsarskoe Selo, the tsar's retreat. It wasn't bad. A bit of a cozy fixer-upper.

But I can't end it there. While I've been scathing in this blog post, Nicholas had his moments where he didn't seem all bad. He was undeniably a doting husband and a real family man (the story also goes that he died trying to protect his kid). He seemed genuinely concerned with keeping his family intact. (This includes his extended family. Keep in mind Wilhelm was his cousin. Even as the war was about to begin, he would still sign his letters to him with things like "Your affectionate, Nicky".) 

Perhaps this was what led to his canonization. No, I'm not kidding. In 2000 the Romanov family was delivered into sainthood by the Russian Orthodox Church, naming him Saint Nicholas the Passion-Bearer. The same man who brought on Bloody Sunday; who allowed pogroms, the vicious mob attacks against Jews; whose reign was so terrible and bloody that it led to a revolution that only served to cause the deaths of countless more.

I guess baffling love of royalty extends beyond the borders of Britain and Canada. 

The Three Cousins of WW1: Part 3 - The King

"The sun never sets on the British Empire" isn't just boasting (and even in 2018, although just barely, still rings true). At its peak the British Empire covered almost 24% of the globe. Considering England is less than 1/5th the size of Alberta (the United Kingdom is still only about a third) it's

Queen Victoria possessed an ability
to say "I am utterly disappointed in you"
expressed entirely in her scowl.

really an incredible, seemingly impossible feat. Of course, a leader must be named for this quarter of the world. George Frederick Ernest Albert, King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India was that man. As a child, Queen Victoria once described him as "very small and not very pretty." I do not believe that was included in his title.

George was born into a time when the British sat firmly on the throne of the world, even notably above the rest of the European kingdoms. Rich, powerful, and owning a massive chunk of the Earth, who could say they weren't? At the helm of the imperial ship, their leadership was changing towards more of a democratic style. The queen, while technically in her figurehead status, was still of tremendous importance in foreign affairs, especially when royalty was concerned (so, almost always, I assume). The British played right into the stereotypes we imagine by still being so concerned with appearances and tradition that if the queen said something it was bound to get done. This is the world George inherited, just prior to the war; one where his powers are strong, but the guidelines and borders on can and cannot are confusing and muddled.

Fortunately for him, he was never really that interested in inheriting it. High society held little appeal to him and he dreaded going out and doing the whole British song and dance, which was every bit as

King George. As a boy.
Boy George.

formal and completely devoid of enjoyment as one would expect from British royalty. He much prefered stamp collecting and shooting in his free time, not quite shirking his duties as a royal but certainly not being that interested in them. (His two cousins, Wilhelm and Nicholas, were also obsessed with shooting. Wilhelm recorded all his wildlife kills, and by the time 1897 came around he had bagged 33,967. Add "Scourge of Mother Nature" to Wilhelm's many titles, I guess.)

George's distaste for society even stretched into his relationships. His marriage in particular was about as strange as they come. They would hardly speak, not seemingly out of hatred for each other but awkwardness, opting instead to send letters that would be expressing his love for her. Sort of like a far too intimate pen-pal relationship. Of the rest of his family he was cold and demanding, not acting much better to his children than his wife. His epileptic, possibly autistic child who died at the age of thirteen he openly resented, saying after his death that he was "more of an animal than anything else."

But being a jerk and a hermit (a stamp collecting, gun toting loner sounds like a description of a shooter in the modern day, really) doesn't prevent you from inheriting the throne. His father, Edward, was clearly not long for the world when he took the throne around the turn of the century. Somehow, his habits of gorging at mealtime and smoking like a chimney caught up to him. Doctors warned of his coming demise but the only change he was willing to make was to only have two cigars before breakfast.

King George's hair was drawn by
only the finest of Sharpies.

Rather predictably, Edward died in 1910, leaving the poorly educated, frequently nervous, often self-pitying George to take over. Quite quickly the British parliamentary powers, elected or not, realized that George might not have been the brightest bulb. He would demand things to happen and his requests were often ignored or put aside. In the events leading up to the war, he would often have to spearhead negotiations with the frequently volatile and threatening Wilhelm but his talks would most often amount to nothing.

Here's the kicker. It was George's distaste for leadership that ultimately saved the monarchy. During and after the war, he didn't seem to mind all that much when others took over for him, solidifying the monarchy as the figurehead position it is today. I'll go more into detail on how this happened soon, but here's just a taste for how he reacted when Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated. Visibly upset, he complained to his son (the living one he didn't refer to as an animal) that he would miss a weekend of sailing.

Monarchies... Incredible. But let's go celebrate another royal wedding.

The Three Cousins of WWI: Part 2 - The Kaiser

I was going to begin this by saying that the road to World War I was paved by three leaders - a king, a tsar, and a kaiser. While it's arguably true, I can't write that in good conscience. The world was going through a number of changes, and like the progression from a child to an adult, the process was fraught with confusion, violence, and a strange, paradoxical concoction of overconfidence and low self-esteem coming from the leadership. (Or brain, if you wish to continue the metaphor. Further, they also both contain an awkward moustache component.) There's a part of me that thinks the Great War was due to take place almost inevitably, and while it was largely the work of incompetent leadership, if it didn't happen under them it would have happened a decade or two later.

The Kaiser had a brief bout as a wax figurine.

European countries in the early 1900s were the powers of the world, unquestionably. They were also vying for the same territory, were devoted imperialists, and all involved in a high-stakes game of one-upmanship where the way to keep up with the Joneses was to take over another country. The fact that they were also led by people with no right to lead beyond heredity was the icing on the cake. Learning how they came to rule, as well as the decisions they made, is a baffling and shocking ordeal. 

We'll start with Germany, specifically in Prussia. Things didn't quite pan out for them.

Prussia was a strange place, back before the 1900s. Much of it was still locked in the feudal system with the poor slaving away on farms right next door to high-culture elites. Splitting it further was that half of it was crawling towards Russia and the other half was digging in their heels and pulling towards Britain. Queen Victoria wanted the latter half to grow larger, so she does what any good, diplomatic country does in a situation such as this. She sends her seventeen-year-old daughter (also named Victoria) to marry a prince, and hope everything works out all peachy-keen. Somehow, and this was what I said about baffling decisions, that made sense back then. Take two large, powerful countries and put the diplomatic relations in the hands of a teenager.

Her first order of business (and as it was for women back then, pretty close to her only order of business) was to have a bunch of kids and guide them towards Britain. One such child was born with a permanently withered arm due to a birth defect. Fredrich Wilhelm Viktor Albert, the future Kaiser, Wilhelm II. His early life subjected him to bizarre medical treatments in an attempt to cure his arm, such as having him rest it on a dead rabbit (it didn't make it worse, so partial credit) and having to be hooked up to a full body-length machine to try to fix a tilt he had from overcompensating for the arm. Further, his tumultuous birth briefly cut the oxygen to his brain, which may have actually caused some degree of brain damage, which would explain a heck of a lot of the stuff he did later.

Wilhelm would often rest
one arm on his sword to make
it appear normal. If only he had
a more positive body image. This
is why we need Dove's Campaign
for Real Beauty, folks.

With his mother breathing down his neck, Wilhelm still had a strange relationship with not only England but Russia as well. Most often he would cozy up to the latter as their militaristic style appealed to him. This was of course contrary to his mother's wishes, but almost everyone was against poor Victoria. Being far too British for the Prussians, she was unpopular and had little going for her in the way of public opinion, shifting Wilhelm to the Russian side. However, that would rarely last for long. The majority of his life was going back and forth between love and hate of the British, often disrespecting them but clearly reaching for their approval, like a child acting out to get his parents to notice him. Whenever one insulted his pride he would switch to the other, basing national diplomacy on real or imagined slights.

Even then, it was pride that was his greatest curse, and one that was used by both Britain and Russia to get him on their side. A prime example is when he didn't acknowledge his uncle while on a vacation and started an international fuss. The British press and a few of the family members took offense, which bothered Wilhelm (swing to Russia). They got him back by promising him an admiral's uniform and title (swing to Britain). His uniform was a strange source of pride, and taking the "honour" to the nth degree, he would wear it frequently and ensure that it - and he - looked immaculate.

Kaiser Wilhelm in his later, surprisingly
dapper years. This picture was taken just days
before donning a white suit and becoming
 Colonel Sanders.

There are countless stories like this one, but I chose it in particular because it's what happens after that so exemplifies Wilhelm's narcissism. The uniform was obviously a formality, but he nevertheless took it oddly seriously. He suddenly became a self-described expert in the field, and would send messages to the British admiralty suggesting changes which only served to cause a few laughs down in England.

It was that pompous, bombastic style of his that would get him in trouble in the media world, as well. Unable to keep his trap shut, he would often run his mouth at the wrong times, giving strange press releases that would say far too much or speak terribly out of turn. The British and occasionally the German press would roast him for it, and the other leaders would have to roll their eyes and hope he would only be speaking like that just for show. But his paranoia really would get the better of him. Anyone signing a treaty around him would cause him to think it was a sign of a coming war. If he gets wind of an alliance somewhere, it's a betrayal to Germany.

It wasn't so bad when he was just a prince. Things can get glossed over, words forgotten, and so forth. But when his grandfather died and his father was in the later stages of throat cancer, he was set to take the throne. Germany was about to get the full leadership of the mad Kaiser. This was the person set to take over one of the most powerful countries in the world; a narcissistic warmonger, quick to change his mind and so easily won over by praise. Maybe people knew it was a bad idea, but with the ways of hereditary monarchies, there's not a heck of a lot you can do.

When things started going south in the war, the Kaiser was eventually first pushed out of discussions and then fully pushed out of office. Left to rot in disgrace and exile, he was sent to the Dutch town of Amerongen where he would remain for the rest of his life. Right down to the end of his miserable life, he would complain of his mistreatment (he died still having the equivalent of $60,000,000 in today's currency) and remorselessly throw the blame around to anyone who would listen.

The Three Cousins of WWI: Part 1 - Royally Screwed

A while ago, everyone was railing against the 1%-ers (a complaint that seems forgotten after all the nothing that was changed). Now, you hear universities talk about the powers of "privilege". Seemingly forever, every politician in North America grandstands about the declining middle class and the increasing gap between rich and poor. Equality for race and gender is a constant, ongoing national conversation (there are a lot of hashtags, so that must mean something).

Occupy Wall Street protesters pictured before they forgot
about it a few months later. Fight the power, "Musician Teacher."

Somehow, in spite of all of this, Canada's obsession with Britain's royal family still remains strong. The latest story is about Meghan Markle and Prince Harry moving out of the palace. The palace, a thing that exists in this day and age. The idea of royalty runs contrary to everything modern western thought claims to believe in, yet here we are, collectively revelling in baby photos. Maybe it's the Disney movies that allow the real-life princes and princesses to get a free pass. The public view may only change if in Frozen 2 there's a subplot about ludicrous amounts of public funds being dedicated to the princess' ice palace (assuming those are things that exist in Frozen). The prevailing argument to keep the royals in existence (and thus on the taxpayer dollar) is they bring in a wealth of tourist cash, but that irks me just the same. Why would we want to pay more money to see rich people whose claim to fame is that they were born to other rich people? Unless of course they have a goofy snowman companion, but again, I think that's just Frozen. 

Reading on pre-World War era royalty reminded me of a peculiar feeling from about a year ago. While writing a series on Canada in the Great War, there was one thing that bothered me; the first war, especially with the quick onset of the blockbuster sequel that followed, made it feel... futile. I couldn't quite shake it. The war was based on fighting on the whims of royalty and having countless scores of the lower class die for it like pieces on a game board. But to what end? World War II was far more of a "good vs. evil" vibe, and it's easier to feel more at ease with the sacrifices; they fought and died for the triumph over Nazis. You can't ask for much more. However, I just couldn't pinpoint what benefit came from the first.

Kaiser Wilhelm's incredible moustache:
Maybe German royalty is born with it.
Maybe it's Maybelline.

Now, after reading into it a little more, I see the purpose of World War I much more clearly. It ended the total rule of royalty. Going into the war, Germany was led by a kaiser; Russia, a czar; Austria-Hungary,  an emperor; and England a king. Of those, the only one left standing at the head of power was England's king, and his power had diminished so greatly that the only reason he stuck around was due to the fact that he didn't try to hold on to leadership that strongly. Simply put, it wasn't worth toppling him. Had he tried to stay and make all the decisions, he would have been ousted too.

The fact that the youngest member of the
royal family (pictured: left) is admittedly
a pretty adorable baby doesn't change
my mind that his title should be abolished.

So at the end of World War I, millions die and with their last breath bring down the leaders that sent them out to the trenches in the first place. The irony is it wasn't the royal families killing the civilians that caused the change, but rather the brutality in which the civilians were forced to kill each other. Had Nicholas not sent his soldiers into the meat grinder with more soldiers than guns and uniforms, had Wilhelm not let his pride be placed above the whole plight of Germany, and had George only been a better diplomat then perhaps the hereditary rule of monarchs and emperors would have lasted longer. We all have the soldiers of World War I to thank for exposing the sheer idiocy and near-inconceivable selfishness of the heads of the monarchies and empires so we could put an end to them forever.

This series will be about how the road to war was paved by three rulers; all cousins, all powerful, and all spoiled rich-kid types born with a diamond-encrusted silver spoon. George, the reluctant king of England, more suited to relaxing in villas than ruling a country; Wilhelm, the kaiser of Germany, whose petulance and ego brought the world to war; and Nicholas, a man so arrogant he thought he could run a country as large and divided as Russia by himself, oblivious to the hurricane swirling around him. Read the rest and you'll see why I wish that the latest royal family child, "His Royal Highness Prince Louis of Cambridge" (a boy who has not yet reached his first birthday) would just be called "Lou".

Notes on the Crusades and Thoughts on Middle-Ages History

I've long thought the most interesting time in history is from the ancient Greeks and Romans, all the sword, shield and sandals warfare. Mostly I think that comes from the influence it has on male-directed pop culture: 300, Spartacus, The Lord of the Rings and other such testosterone-fueled cinematic joy-rides. That and video games of course, seeing as the variety of weapons and armour of the era mixed with close-quarters combat makes for good gaming (Warcraft, Diablo, For Honour, Mortal Combat, Soul Calibur, the list goes on for pages but you probably don't care). But as you read into it more you realize that the history of it rarely matches up with your hopes. I assume girls feel the same way when they discover not all princes are super hunky.

During the Second Crusade the knights would
dress their horses in cute costumes on Halloween. 

So what I'm saying is my thoughts have changed, and mostly it's because there are two main inherent problems. History pre-1700s is where you really hit the skids in terms of number of sources, which means you increasingly rely on either archaeological evidence or piecing together records. More often than not that leads to dry reading, and lends itself to a laundry-list style of events. Person A attacked City B, which angered Person B into attacking City A, so Person B allied with Person C. It leaves out some of the emotional impact of historical "characters", for lack of a better term. I just couldn't find myself having any vested interest in Isaac Dukas Comnenus of Cyprus the way I could, say, Winston Churchill. There's just not enough depth without a large amount of source material, and that goes beyond just people. While reading about the crusades, massive events were occurring but it's difficult to engage in them when the author either has to a) tell the story rather soullessly or b) make some hopeful leaps in guesswork on emotions of people at play, which is always a bit of a cheat.

The second problem is time. The crusades stretched across two hundred years. When taking that much time into account, it's hard to make any one battle seem of any great significance. The large-scale events are moreso movements that are gradually taking place, like shifts in ideology or politics, rather than hinging on any one single occurrence. Even the death of a king seems insignificant when he's one of thirty you just read about. Because of this I decided to axe the crusades as a full-fledged series, but rather have it as a few snippets of interesting stuff I picked up along the way.

I know what you're thinking. How will you ever recover? Well, I just don't know. Anyway, what's below is better than nothing.

First, a Brief Summary:

Muslims in the Middle East and Christians in Europe were fighting for the Holy Land (essentially, modern day Israel and Palestine) that was important to both sides' religions. They couldn't come to terms for how to split it up or share it, so they fought relentlessly for two hundred years vying for control. The crusades were massive migrations of soldiers from Europe intending to put it back into Christian hands.

What's all the fussin' and the fightin' really about?
How many wars are about anything other than material or status gain? The World Wars are a strong mix of both, the Cold War and all the proxy wars around it are essentially fights over "who's at the top of the heap and how to stay there," and even the War on Terror - while having a strong religious focus - still finds most of its root causes around economics (we're looking at you, oil). It's tough to name one in modern history, and that's what's difficult to grasp about the crusades. They're coming out of the Middle Ages, a time before the Renaissance era and the rise of humanism, where religion is the one and only.

Pictured here is one of the sieges. They appear to be raiding
three men in a tub, spawning the popular
"Rub-a-dub-dub" nursery rhyme.

What's interesting is that it sounds a little fishy. They were essentially helping to expand the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire partly to its former glory, and its main city of Constantinople also just happened to be incredibly rich. Of course, this means that a fair amount of money was changing hands. One has got to think that money is playing a pretty significant role, but, surprisingly, it just doesn't seem that way.

The main people leading the charge - the nobility of many European nations - had little need for additional funds. In fact, they would often have to raise money just to go. Crusading was incredibly expensive, having to purchase gear, transportation, food, and any other thing that comes with travel and war. So in addition to the standard risks of war, they also risked their wallets. Of course, the peasantry (the bulk of the army) had little money to lose, seeing as it's tough to misplace something you never had. Their reasoning was simply different; if they couldn't give money to the church, they would give it blood. But for both, at the core, the war was for the church and only the church.

Christians vs. Muslims. Is that all?

Here's what surprised me most while learning about the crusades. If either side got their crap together they would have won it no contest. For both the east and the west, Muslim and Christian, they bickered within their ranks so terribly that rarely could they get a full, cohesive fighting force, even going so far as to go to war with each other. Disagreements about territory, who would keep what, and even how and when to attack would cause disputes seemingly every time. I might be reaching, but it seems that so many of them were on too much of an ego trip from being hoity-toity nobility they couldn't find a way to compromise.

Often, it seemed more a contest of which army would slip and fall on their sword before reaching the enemy first. The Christians were plagued by petty squabbling, often on things as simple as scouting, meaning one army would separate from the rest believing a different route was superior only to find themselves surrounded and destroyed. Other times armies would refuse to fight - or even fight each other - over disputes of who would rule a city after it had been sacked. It sounds not at all that different from a kid picking up their soccer ball and going home because he didn't like the rules.

On the other end, the Muslims were facing many of the same problems. A consistent lack of cohesion and infighting prevented them from effectively mounting a solid defense. Honestly, considering it was two hundred years of off-and-on war, the biggest enemy seemed to be political backstabbing and trust issues. If only they could have had an office party to go play laser tag. Real team-building exercises.

Crusaders looked super-cool like in the movies, right? And they were all pious and chivalrous and had the jaw-lines of Superman?

Two members of the "Conehead" branch
of the Knights Templar.

Sort of.

There are a few things that ring true. The classic crusader look with the red cross on the white background on a metal-encased dude with a sword? That was real. However, it was also specific. Those were the Knights Templar, a particular caste of crusaders. The name itself sparks images of brave knights saving princesses, or some weird Da Vinci Code-esque movie where it turns out they were hiding a ton of gold. (Oof. I looked it up. That was more spot-on than I intended it to be.) But it's slightly different than that; most of the crusader orders (The Knights Templar, Teutonic Knights, etc.) are all originally charitable organizations or hospitals. In fact, the Knights Templar stem from a similar crusader group called the Hospitallers, the name meaning exactly what it sounds. The prevailing image of a Templar shouldn't necessarily be a buff dude in an armour bringing down some holy justice, but rather someone dishing out some 800-year-old form of Asprin.

----------

The information from this blog came from A Concise History of the Crusades by Thomas Madden.

Klondike: Part 2 - Cashing In or Checking Out

The gold rush created what seems to me one of the most unique places in history. It was a place that was synonymous with riches, yet of the 100,000 that set out for it only a few hundred really made it big; the nature of the adventure, a hunt into the wilderness in a mad search for gold, brought out some of the strangest, most interesting misfits and weirdos you'd find; towns would spring up and die so quickly simply on word of mouth you can make a strong argument for just calling the people nomadic; and lastly, there's the strange paradox of so much money flowing through it and darn near everyone living in squalor. It makes for some great stories.

Sam Steele. HBO's Dudley Do-Right.

To start, one has to understand the geography. Think about the show Ice Road Truckers for a moment. The whole concept is how difficult it is to bring supplies to these isolated arctic cities because of how treacherous the roads are and how brutal the weather is. Now picture how it it would be without roads or heated vehicles. What's isolated now was mostly uncharted territory, maps were sketchy and the people that promised they knew how to get there were sketchier still. The main way to the show was through the Chilkoot Pass, a forbidding mountain range with brutal winds, tons of snow and the appearance of a wall of ice. If you were poor, as most were that travelled north, you would have to lug as many of your possessions as you could up the mountain, drop them off, go back down, and repeat the process until you had everything. At the top, they would have to carry on a great deal further. The natives made a pretty decent business in charging travelers $1 a pound to carry up their gear. Impromptu businesses sprang up from the necessity of packing heavy, where merchants along the trail would sell basic items that one might not have accounted for or simply offering their services in carrying goods. Eventually, the need grew so large that a tram system was installed to carry goods from the bottom to the top - all for a fee, of course.

Once you're there, it's no easy pickings either. Since that was the manner of getting supplies to the towns, food was exceedingly scarce. Eggs were sold at the hefty price of a dollar each (after searching up inflation rates, that comes to just shy of $30 an egg today, slightly more than organic food markets). For perspective, a suit could be purchased for about $4 at the time. Of course, money was flowing in so quickly there that many could afford the high prices without a second thought, but those that hadn't found the right patch of ground yet were often left to starve. Famine was rampant, and would stay that way in the American cities. The Canadian ones, however, changed mostly due to the indomitable will of the appropriately named Sam Steele, a RCMP officer who would turn back those that did not have enough supplies to survive the trip - a requirement of a year of rations in order to be allowed to pass.

Steele was also instrumental in stopping crime, one of a set of major issues in the isolated northern cities. Because of him and the rest of the mounties, the Canadian cities were much safer and law abiding than the more wild American ones (as expected). In the beginning, before the law arrived, much of everything was done by committees set up to settle disputes, mostly arranged by members of the community choosing their most reliable. This was a necessity as the Klondike tended to attract those that were destitute, last-chancers that were often of ill-repute. They also had absolutely hysterical names to coincide with their past deeds, like Jimmy the Pirate, Salt Water Jack, and Pete the Pig (was the lattermost just a fat dude?). In essence, it was a town full of those eccentrics that by their very presence were established as crazy enough to travel up there in the first place. You know they've all got to have a screw loose already. And boy, things can go south if you don't have someone to police them.

Soapy's beard was thick enough that the gold dust
lost in it could pay ten men's wages for a month.

In Skagaway, an American city in the southern point of Alaska that connects to the uppermost parts of B.C. and the southernmost parts of the Yukon, there was no Sam Steele. Instead, there was a legendary head of a team of cheats and grifters that went by "Soapy" Smith. Masquerading as a friendly go-to man of the town, he had a seemingly limitless arsenal of misfits and weirdos that would cheat the newcomers to the town out of their money before they even started. His schemes ranged from straight up robbery to rigged games of chance, and with a carefully planned system that didn't link any of the lower-level members of his operation to him he managed to appear to be an upstanding citizen. With no true police force to hold him back, his outfit grew and grew, pulling in beautifully named miscreants like Yank Fewclothes and Kid Jimmy Fresh. Even Soapy wasn't immune to the dangers of Skagaway, however, and the town eventually banded up together, called him out on his misdeeds, and shot him dead in the streets while his gang members were eventually rounded up.

Of course, people wouldn't brave these dangers if there wasn't something at the end of the tunnel. The pull of money and gold was so strong because there was, after all, a tremendous wealth of it buried beneath them waiting to be taken. In the early years, prior to the ships coming back full of gold to alert the public, a man would find a lot and stake his claim. Limited to a certain amount of territory they were free to mine on that land as much as they wished. Claims were largely luck based, and were a gamble in and of itself. For example, one man sold his claim thinking it was near worthless for $800. While that sounds like no small amount of money, which at the time it certainly was not, it was later valued at a million. At El Dorado, one of the many gold rush towns based on a stream connected to Bonanza, each claim could yield a million or more. Disputes over inches could be worth hundreds, and it wasn't until an incorruptible official that lived off a small government salary (who could so easily have made millions himself had he felt the need) measured the properties down to the inch. A ten foot gap was often worth ten to twenty thousand dollars. 

"I'll trade an ounce of my old-timey gold dust for some of
those old-timey cans of beans!"
"Sir, you don't have to call them that."

Once the gold was mined, the newly rich would find they would run into a problem. It's a similar one to the elementary student who believes his Pokemon collection is worth thousands; if you have something that's worth a lot but no one's willing to buy it, it isn't worth anything at all. Gold was so plentiful one could make a living simply by sweeping the sawdust and dirt from the miners in bars at the end of a night as enough of the dust would have fallen off them. But where could you spend it? When or where in history could you find millionaires living in such wretched conditions? Money can't buy what isn't there. That's probably why so many of them spent darn near everything they had on liquor, women or gambling, three exceptionally prominent vices in gold rush territory. 

In the end, it was only a few that managed to bring their riches back. After three years the rush was over, save for a few hangers-on. The Klondike leaves behind a legacy of incredible riches, terrible tragedy and the stories of a vast number of weirdos that climbed the Chilkoot Pass.

--------------

The information for this blog came from Pierre Berton's Klondike: The Last Great Gold Rush, 1896-1899. Well worth a read.

Klondike: Part 1 - A Brief Foray into the Cold and Inhospitable

There are two major thought processes going through my head when I write. Get down the information accurately is one. The other is to not look like an idiot. 

This first installment of the blog is essentially the start-to-finish story, leaving the challenges, economics and cast of incredible characters to later posts. That's

Climbing a mountain with all your worldly possessions in the bitter
cold with only a vague promise of riches. Back in the old days,
that was called a "can't-miss".

all well and good, but it left me with a difficult task of titling the blog. "Klondike: Part 1 - The Whole Story"? That didn't really make sense. As a result I changed it to the title you see currently, and cognizant of the importance I put on the number two of my thought processes I wanted to make sure I used the word "foray" properly. I feel like I lucked out because I thought it meant just to wander into someplace (that's why I double-check these things). Instead... "a sudden attack or incursion into enemy territory, especially to obtain something; a raid."

Lucky me. That's perfect.

That's what the Klondike was. The entire rush was an expedition of mayhem that had the same wildness as a haphazard smash-and-grab robbery. The "enemy territory" is really the unforgiving geography itself. We're talking incredible cold, no true roads to get there, and a lack of supplies upon arrival. True north strong and brutal. Lastly, let's not forget that a "raid" is no prolonged venture. The entire run of the Klondike gold rush lasted only three years, an miniscule length of time considering its incredible significance. What's funny is how many people went out to hunt for gold in those three years considering it wasn't any great secret - except for maybe just how much gold there was. After all, the Russians knew about it for half a century.

Some of the adventurers really planned ahead. The guy
at the bottom right is already carrying up his casket.

In 1834 the Ruskies discovered the large amounts of gold in and around the Yukon and Alaska, but back then it wasn't all that important. The real money was to be made in the exceedingly lucrative fur trade, and gold just wasn't worth the trouble. As you know, the territory ain't Russian anymore since they sold off Alaska 30 years later. People started trickling into the Yukon and Alaska to mine for gold but with nowhere near the same significance. Reports of great sums of gold were being sent back but to mostly deaf ears; proof was a little trickier back then and word of mouth didn't really spread like it could have. 

What changed all of that was in August of 1896 when the first land claim on Bonanza Creek, a tributary of the Klondike, was made. An incredible fortune of gold was found there, and the proof was the prize they returned with. The newly rich brought back their gold on two treasure ships, which came into port in Seattle and proved once and for all that this was indeed the great new get-rich-quick scheme. 

It's difficult to express just how crazy people went for this. Everyone wanted a piece, and the news spread around North America like wildfire. Just look at the actions of the mayor of Seattle during this period. He heard the news while visiting San Francisco and was so enamored with the idea of going north to fortune, he didn't even bother to return to Seattle - he sent his resignation letter from there. From just ten days of the arrival of the treasure boats, already 1,500 had set off for the north. The fervor was not just limited to North America, either. A worldwide phenomenon, one million people laid plans. Of course, just the same way two people that haven't seen each other in a while say "oh yeah, let's definitely hang out," only 10% of those actually did. But still - 100,000 moving on a wing and a prayer is stunning. 

A heart-breaking picture of the fallen horses, of which there were thousands,
along the trail to the Klondike. It's also the topic of a rather
jarring Yosemite Sam-based Bugs Bunny episode.

The sudden burst of people is partly due to the press. It was billed as this easy route to guaranteed fame and fortune, a little jaunt over to a place you need a winter jacket, a touch of elbow grease (that good ol' fashion gumption) and you'll be swimming in gold. Instead, the boats setting out were manned by unscrupulous people that crammed it so full of men, women, children and animals that the sea-bound voyages were uncomfortable, repulsive trips. Land routes were no better, arguably worse. Starvation and death were common travellers on the road, and those that gave everything to go only to find out they had no chance of making it would carve warnings into the trees. Many would take their own lives, poor, destitute, and hopeless. Hundreds and hundreds of dead horses littered the trails, as with difficult mass migrations animals rarely escape the death toll. But still they kept coming, back home flooding the news with stories of success, exacerbated by the fact that yes, indeed, a few did find incredible riches. 

It's quite the story. Let me sum it up for those of you that just look at the pictures and check the last few lines.

A man claims there's a vast fortune hidden far away. A varied group of people go for a hunt of the treasure only to be hamstrung by a number of setbacks. Most lose everything in the process.

Do you know what I just told you? Two things, both the same. One is, as I said, a summary for the Klondike Gold Rush. The second? The plot to It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. 

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: Part 7 - Final Mission

A 1,200 plane, 5,000 ship, 160,000 troop assault (the troop total would be well over ten times that by the end of three months) was the 1944 plan to step onto the shore and battle the Germans on the mainland. Operation Overlord. The greatest difficulty would be to break the initial line of defense and manage to hold it, because otherwise the Allies wouldn't be able to reinforce their troops. German machine gun fire, tanks, and troops darn near everywhere would be doing their best to stop the advance. The faster they could get their men out there once they determined the invasion points for the Allies the easier it would be to take out the force before they got a solid foothold. Both sides were in a battle against time; the Nazis needed to race to the right points on the beach and knock the Allies back before they could secure a base, and the Allies needed to set up quickly to lock down the beach to receive reinforcements. 

A picture of the D-Day landings. It's in black and white,
so you know it isn't a Call of Duty screenshot.

In comes the Ministry. 

In the months prior they had been damaging railways and roads to stop the Nazis from reaching the beachheads. The prevention of movement was always of the utmost importance, as when you're as small a force as they were (about 300 men landed in France from the Ministry) they weren't going to be taking out any part of the army of real significance. They were simply a harassment force.

One of the most effective delay tactics was used against an incredibly effective tank division called Das Reich. Equipped with 1,400 tanks and 15,000 soldiers, the division was led by General Heinz Lammerding, a proven German success story. Cutting his teeth at the eastern front (the scariest front!) he earned two iron crosses. If he was to make it to the beach he would cause a tremendous amount of trouble for the Allied invasion force. His tanks were set to arrive at the beach from their setting off point in only 72 hours. 

Thinking fast, a member of the Ministry came up with a brilliant plan to slow the tank advance. The tanks weren't actually the ones travelling along the roads. Their treads rip roads to pieces, and by the time the back of the line would be pressing forward the roads would be in far too rough of shape to effectively move across. Instead, they were riding atop tank transporters, large trucks used to be softer on the roads but still move the tanks at a good clip. The plan for the sabotage was to sneak into the German camp and plant carborundum, a material that is hard and abrasive enough to scratch any crystal except for diamond, into the pipes of the transporters. In what must have been an exceedingly nervy bit of vandalism, the men managed to take out enough of the transporters to halt the entire force. In turn, they were put on an entirely different route that would take much, much longer.

The modern-day ruins of one of the places Das Reich
mowed through. Sheesh. Looks like Detroit.

But that wasn't all. Along the new tarmac path they had to take, the Ministry would set up well in advance and knock down a few trees to hinder their path. That doesn't initially sound like much, but they would have to bring a vehicle to the front to move the trees that often took as long as four hours to reach it. Shortly down the line they did it again, except this time they had another surprise in store. They set up tank mines, blowing up the tree-removing vehicle and making the road all but impassable. Eventually they got another vehicle to do the job, but not after a great deal of effort and, more importantly, a great deal of time. The group would do the same plan a few more times, causing further delays due to the Germans having to check for mines upon reaching the fallen trees. 

Remember that 72 hour estimated arrival time? All the delays pushed it back to seventeen days. By then the beachhead was secured, and the arrival of General Lammerding's tanks had missed their point of optimal effectiveness. 

Loading a tank onto one of the transporters, a scene
where many "tanks for the help" puns were made.

Once that was done and the Allies were on the march forward, there was little for the Ministry to do. They were a harassment force for an army that was powerful and secured, and when that army was on the run and dwindling they lost their place in the war. In essence, their job was already done by the time the Allies were moving to clean up the last of the Nazi regime. Their role in getting them there, however, was incredible. All in all, they made 1.5 million sticky bombs; one million puffball explosives, two million anti-aircraft frag bombs, and a plethora of booby traps and specialist explosives. It's an amazing total considering the Ministry's annual budget was only £40,000 and consisted of only 250 people at headquarters. 

This blog series covers only some of the most interesting stories. I left out some important ones, like the men taking out factories and leading special assaults. I also didn't get a chance to discuss how the American version of the camp, created in Canada to avoid reprisals as America had not yet officially entered the war at the time, laid the groundwork for the CIA. The book I've read for this (mentioned at the bottom) likely didn't discuss every single mission they went on either. That's not to mention all the individual inventions the top of the heap made along the way (Jeffries' submarine bomb had a piece that was critically important in the creation of the first nuke, as well). It's really an incredible amount of work that was put out by such a small team.

That's the thing about World War II. You hear about the big battles, the massive clashes of machines and men, the colossal invasion forces... but within all of those there are these individual stories that are fascinating. My dad mentioned to me how this should be made into a T.V. series, and after all they've done that would be a fitting tribute. It plays so well for it: exciting, individual missions; a cast of eccentric characters; Gubbins hired many female staff, making it so it wouldn't just be a male cast which people would undoubtedly whine about; and all of this with the backdrop of real differences made in World War II. 

Heck, it's got to be better than Young Sheldon. 

---------------------

The information from this blog was taken from Giles Milton's book Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: The Mavericks who Plotted Hitler's Defeat. It's an incredible book, and reads much better than what I've done here. I can't recommend it enough. 

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: Part 6 - No Nuke for You

What can you say has significantly changed modern world history that wouldn't be a massive overstatement? I mean really changed it, drastically, the kind that shapes how the future will be. Cars, for sure. The internet, absolutely. Guns, definitely. Television, can't imagine a world without lunchtime Price is Right in my childhood years. It's a small, prestigious club, and undoubtedly World War II brought a new one into membership; nuclear weapons. They're the cause of peace between the great powers ever since, as well as the greatest risk for man's self-destruction. Naturally, the first country to make them has undeniable mega-power, essentially providing them an I-Win button. And darn it if the Nazis weren't close to getting it first.

Looking back on it, it seems like a positive
the Nazis didn't get their hands on one of these.

Germany's push to nuclear weapons was centred in Norway at the Norsk Hydro plant. Here, they had the very important job of creating heavy water (think water post-Christmas dinner), a critical component for making nukes, because science says so. Of course, the plant would be a bit of a fortress itself due to how critical the production facility would be. Three massive, sheer cliffs lined the sides, leaving only one main entrance; a bridge under constant, vigilant surveillance; lights everywhere, making a raid at nighttime no better; two hundred soldiers were garrisoned nearby to provide protection for the scientists. The British had tried to drop men in before simply for recon, but a crash landing made them easy targets and every member of the force was killed, some tortured first. Any frontal assault was out of the question save for bringing a small army. It was a monumental task, but one of the utmost importance.

Gubbins and co. got together a team of Norwegian supermen to do the deed. (It was usually better to get people from the country they were going to, as they felt a closer connection, knew the language, and so on.) Once again, the initial drop went poorly. Being Norway, they were plunged into terribly cold, brutal weather conditions and had to work their way to finding first each other and then shelter. Back home it was assumed that the men were dead, surely killed by the elements long before they even got to the Germans, but they managed to find their way to a cabin and laid low for four days until the storm passed.

A picture of Norsk Hydro heavy water. It looks like water.
It smells like water. It might even be just water. But darn
it, scientists say there's a difference and that's really
bloody important for some reason.

They managed to eventually find their way to Norsk Hydro a little worse for wear. Their plan was simple: there was one clear path to the plant that was heavily guarded and well lit, so they came up with the idea of not taking that path. They decided instead to scale the cliffs, all the way down and all the way back up the other side (remember, these are Norwegian supermen), and sneak into the building. This way they wouldn't alert the garrison that, in all their two hundred men, decided it wasn't a good idea to place a couple of guys on the other side to watch the cliffs. Managing to sneak in, they set off a few explosions on key pieces of equipment that were just small enough to take out some important machinery but not large enough to cause any real commotion. They were halfway up the return side of the gorge before the sirens began to go off. In spite of being armed to the nines, they didn't fire a single shot. It was a brilliantly thought out, precisely executed plan that with hindsight now might have been a completely world-changing moment. Any jokes that were passed around about the effectiveness of the new ministry were pretty well silenced by this point. After all, who is to say how the nuclear weapons program would have went had they not taken out a key component?

I'm low on pictures for the blog this week,
so here's one of Churchill looking
kind of goofy in a helmet. When in doubt,
throw in a Churchill picture.

Of course, back home you would think they'd be all smiles and sunshine at this successful run, but in reality it was much to the contrary the contrary. They were gearing up for another major movement seeing as the Nazis were losing the war at this point and the Allies were about to storm the mainland. Yes, they were still seeing successes left and right (Jeffries had just invented a new torpedo-like bomb that the Americans had used to take out over thirty German submarines, causing Churchill to give him the appropriate name of CD - Chief of Destruction) but they still had plenty more to go. They were soon to drop three-hundred men into France to "stir up resistance, harass enemy movements and tie down as many German divisions as possible." Their initial work was focussed on delaying transportation of weapons and other goods to the beaches of Operation Overlord - the invasion of Normandy. That meant blowing up bridges, taking out train-tracks, and other such delays. The work they did was more effective than what the air forces had done in two months, and cost a fraction of it in terms of manpower and finances.

Nevertheless, troops and goods were still going to get there. What can a few men do to delay a whole Nazi war machine? 

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: Part 5 - Assassination

What are the rules of warfare you can't break?

Shooting or otherwise eliminating prisoners. That's something that's frowned upon but... I believe relatively new in the grand scheme of things? Last hundred years or so? Heck, I might be entirely wrong about that. Chemical weapons are banned, we all know that, but again that's last century as well. Bombing hospitals sounds awful, but not sure if it's war-crime-y or not. Really, there are few I know that are set in stone, but I'm sure the Geneva Convention stuff lays it out pretty clearly.

Reinhard Heydrich: Reich Protector,
Holocaust architect, and world record
holder for smallest amount of hair
ever to be parted.

The reason I'm asking is there's a grey area in much of what the Ministry was doing. Much of it (darn near all of it) was decidedly un-British, fueling the fires for all the people that hoped the Ministry would burn to the ground to save the English reputation. One such area was the idea of political assassinations. Is that something that's low on the war-respectability metre, if there was one? Sneaking in and obliterating a main target and sleeking away in the night? The Ministry fell on the side believing it was all part of the game, once more causing a raucous in the more traditional military as they scoffed at the idea. Assassinations were very much on the table. The blowback would be so strong they simply didn't tell M16 what they were doing as it was not going to be received well. Again, the Ungentlemanly would enter the world of the underhanded, backroom machinations that end in bloodshed with little support from the government or military.

As for the target, it couldn't have happened to a worse person. Reinhard Heydrich. The Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia. He spent some of his time Germanizing the Aryan people there, and the rest of it killing those that weren't. His actions were so astoundingly cruel that Hitler - Hitler! - referred to him as the man with the iron heart. Fortunately for the Ministry he was also perhaps a little cocky. They discovered he went by car to Prague on a regular basis, doing so unescorted save for a driver to demonstrate his lack of fear. What the Allies saw was a lack of preparedness.

The plan was to take two Czechoslovakian men and ambush his vehicle once it was in an empty enough stretch of road. The training was extensive, as well as the planning. They were to be parachuted in with their weapons, befriend the locals, and keep a close enough watch over Heydrich to learn his schedule. To assault the car, they had a new grenade created specifically for it. A tank grenade would have been too heavy, and a regular infantry grenade likely wouldn't have gotten the job done. The people back at Churchill's Toy Shop made them a new one - light enough to throw and heavy enough to do the damage; yet another marvel of engineering that came out of such a small group.

Heydrich, right, seen partying wildly
at a Nazi shindig.

Eventually it was time for the plan to be set in motion, which on the British end was rather simple. They just had to throw the guys out of a plane and let them parachute in. There wasn't much they could do - let alone hear if they survived - as most of these plans went radio silent until they heard back from them again once they escaped. That, or, quite possibly, never hear from them again. Once they were dropped they were on their own, and unfortunately, this time the drop wasn't great. They landed in the wrong spot and one was injured upon landing. Fortunately, they managed to run into some locals who took them in and hid them while they planned. They eventually received a tip that Heydrich was to be leaving for Prague at a specific date and time. It was then they decided they would strike.

The two men planned to lay in wait and attack upon the car's arrival. Unfortunately for them, the target went on a walk with his wife and kids, resulting in an hour long delay of which the assassins didn't anticipate nor understand, making them understandably jumpy. (As a side note, it's really weird when you hear one of these guys has a wife and kids and as a reader you're actively hoping the assassination goes off without a hitch.) Nerves pounding, the assassins finally saw their target. One decided he didn't fully trust the explosive and instead pulled out his gun. When the car was about to pass, he moved to the middle of the street and fired - but the gun didn't go off. It jammed, so much like an exciting plot twist in a movie. Enraged, Heydrich ordered his driver to go and shoot the would-be killer. The other assassin, more trusting of the grenade, tossed it at the vehicle but came up short, hitting the back tire. The explosion was massive, sending shrapnel everywhere, including into the other assassin. Somehow, the grenade didn't manage to kill anyone, ally or enemy. The driver recovered, got out of the vehicle and pulled the trigger on the injured man with the jammed gun - only to discover that his gun jammed as well! Bleeding and in great risk with no weapons to fire, the assassin grabbed a nearby bike and fled. A shooting war broke out with the driver and the remaining assassin, the former pulling out a new pistol. Expecting reinforcements from the Nazi regime due to all the, you know, explosions and gunfire, the last remaining Czech fled as well. 

Heydrich's car, post-bombing. As it turns out,
driving around in a Benz in a bad neighbourhood
would cause you some trouble even back then.

They were to discover later that the shrapnel from the explosion managed to slowly kill Reinhard Heydrich, making for a successful if messy assassination. Sadly, the story doesn't end on a positive note. The two Czechs were under mounting pressure and were eventually found out and killed in a two hour gunfight in a church. In typical Nazi fashion, possible sympathizing villages had their men shot and their women and children gassed. It was an important reminder that while the Ministry was certainly finding successes, there were dire consequences as well.

It was an important lesson to learn. The Ministry had plenty of work yet left to do, and, while I apologize for the rather click-bait style sentence, what would happen next could very well have changed the course of the war.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: Part 4 - Toppling the Tirpitz

The ministry was growing, and new recruits were coming in more frequently than ever. That meant someone had to train these new guys still green in the methods of silence, sneaking, stabbing, and sabotage. Gubbins met with two fellows that were to about to lead a brand new training camp in Scotland for the purposes of providing soldiers for the clandestine war effort. They were two portly men named Eric Sykes and William Fairbairn, both having just come from the rough-and-tumble Shanghai streets fighting against gangs and other tough customers. Both experts in gunplay, they also were trained in martial arts from the place known for martial arts. So, not only could they shoot well, but they were well prepared for those movie moments where two hard to kill people both find themselves unarmed in spite of coming with a personal arsenal and have to duke it out hand-to-hand instead. Excitingly.

If their background wasn't interesting enough, their mannerisms filled the gap. They both had cool nicknames they earned in Shanghai, like the "Shanghai Buster" (Shanghai Shuffler would be way better, and I feel that's a missed opportunity) and "The Deacon" due to one's church-like appearance. Sykes was known for ending every instruction about how to dispatch an enemy with saying "and then kick him in the testicles." They were deliberately brutal, having such training exercises as bringing them to slaughterhouses to stab recently killed animals to get a feel for it before they got to the real thing. It's a good thing they did - they would be putting themselves through much worse real quick.

The Tirpitz, escorted by a number of destroyers. If they
cross paths with your boat, you had better yield the Reich of way.

The highly trained, brutal force of men would be soon put to work against an important target. A gigantic Nazi battleship named the Tirpitz was causing plenty of havoc for the allied war effort in the Atlantic Ocean. Such a powerful ship was too strong to take head on without many casualties, and even then there's a good chance that it would be able to limp back to its captured French harbour of St. Nazaire where it stations and come back just as strong a short time later. Gubbins believed that the best route would be to attack the harbour itself, preventing it from ever being able to lick its wounds and retreat to anywhere other than Germany through waters that were heavily defended by the British.

The problem is the the path to the dock was well defended and not something that could be easily stormed and taken. It would require a fleet, and that was not something that the allied effort could provide, meaning the Tirpitz could run amok. However, there was one other option to reach the dock; a different channel was open once a year due to high tides that led straight to it and was practically unused. The plan was to run an old destroyer in there so packed full of explosives it would set the whole place ablaze, rendering the dock useless. 

The HMS Campbeltown, the boat destined to slam into the dock.
A boattering ram. 

The raid was composed of six hundred men using an old lend-lease boat from the United States as well as a number of transport ships intending to bring the soldiers back after the raid. Filling the whole destroyer with explosives, they timed the detonators on the ship to eight hours from when they left on what was called a pencil fuse. This in itself was risky; a pencil fuse is a detonator that relies on acid slowly and steadily dripping on a piano wire until it breaks through, setting off the explosive. It's super unreliable. A slight disruption or miscalculation could set it off very early or very late, resulting in the ship exploding well before it ever reaches the harbour or well after the Nazis discover it. It had to be timed just right or the results would be catastrophic.

Sneaking through the channel, the boat barely made its way through. The bottom scraped the ground and the men on board feared it just might not make it. One can only imagine the feeling on board; they have an unreliable trigger on a massive, boat-sized explosive, and the darn thing might just get stuck. Lucky for them, it pushed through and the old destroyer found its way into the open water, heading straight towards the dock. They flew a swastika to divert attention for as long as possible, which, as they learned quickly, was not all that long. The ship was quickly found out and the dock started bombarding the boat heavily, but not enough to fully bring it down. 

Oddly enough, this is how things look when they go right for the Ministry
of Ungentlemanly Warfare. I feel there's a "men don't ask for directions"
joke in here somewhere.

Amidst gunfire and explosions, some of which killing those steering the boat, the destroyer managed to reach the dock and slammed heavily into it. It firmly stuck into the caisson (a word I'll readily admit I had to look up, and I'll save you the time by telling you it's the water-proof chamber of a dock) but in order for it to flood properly they had to damage the water pumps inside. The soldiers aboard the boat stormed the dock, firing at the defenders and providing cover for a small team that went underground and searched out the water pumps. Once those were destroyed it was time for a rapid retreat, but the soldiers found the transports to be all but destroyed. The only way out was to run free from the dock and fight through the nearby town, eventually hoping to find their way out. Three quarters of the men were killed or captured, but while the men were being interrogated - and mocked for their foolishness by the Nazis that found them - the explosion went off, completely destroying the dock and obliterating those unfortunate souls that found themselves wandering around confused at the odd raiding tactic of the British troops.

All in all, the raid of St. Nazaire was brutal, swift and effective, wiping out a key dock and rendering the Tirpitz far, far less effective. It was a tipping point, fully bringing many previously skeptical people on board with the new ministry. A traditional assault would have cost countless more lives and have cost far more resources. But there was plenty of fight still in the Nazis, and Gubbins' boys weren't through yet.