The Freedom Line

Almost twenty years ago, I was able to visit the Netherlands, which was a lot of fun.  Like any fan of history, I made sure to visit the Anne Frank House, which is world-famous and on every tourist’s list, but was worth it, especially since her story had intrigued me since first learning about her when an exhibit came to the old Salt Palace in the 1980s.  Less well-known, or at least less well-known to me, is the Dutch Resistance Museum (Verzetsmuseum).  I wanted to visit it, too, and made time to go a little off the usual, well-worn touristy paths in Amsterdam to see this museum.  It was full of World War II artifacts and many stories of the Dutch Resistance efforts, big and small, that had fascinated me since first picking up a copy of the Winged Watchman as a kid.  What I remember most vividly from the museum is that the curators recognized that not everyone could be a hero, rescuing dozens or actively fighting the German occupiers.  Some people had to take more calculated risks and passing along a flyer was all that was in their power.  Those little thing often led to much bigger things, as little things tend to do.

The Freedom Line: The Brave Men and Women Who Rescued Allied Airmen from the Nazis during World War II by Peter Eisner (ISBN: 0-06-009663-2) is a book largely about big things undertaken by people in Belgium, France, and Spain to do what they simply considered their part in fighting the Nazi regime.  The book tells the story of the Freedom Line, a group of people that moved downed Allied airmen from occupied territory to Spain, where they could link up with American or British diplomats and be safely taken home.  The Freedom Line was not a huge operation, with no more than a couple dozen figures aided by scores of friends and confidants, but was fairly effective and managed to smuggle between 650 and 700 Allied soldiers out of harm’s way.  While there were a few routes that escapees used, the main one was the Comet Line, run mainly by Dédée de Jongh, her father, Jean-François Nothomb, Florentino Goikoetxea, Kattalin Aguirre, and Elvire de Greef.  These Belgians, Frenchmen, and Basques worked together to rescue Allies troops from the invaders.  It was dangerous work, and many of the resistance members running the Comet Line ended up in prison, concentration camps, or dead, either executed by Germans or perishing along the treacherous smuggling routes through the Pyrenees Mountains.  They had a network of safe houses between Belgium and Spain, but there was always the chance traitors would infiltrate the line, and one notorious traitor — Jacques Desoubrie — did so, resulting in the deaths of many Allied airmen and the death or imprisonment of many resistance members.  The main figures running the Freedom Line preferred to control their own destiny despite British intelligence’s efforts to exert some control over the operation.  British assistance was welcomed, but not necessarily with open arms.  The book mainly follows the journey of a crew of Americans, piloted by Bob Grimes, shot down over Belgium from that fateful day to their eventual freedom.  That approach provides insight into how the line operated and who the main players were.  Sometimes, details from other escapees’ stories are included to complete the picture or provide fun anecdotes like the American pilot passionately kissed on a train by a woman he barely knew only as his guide from one safe house to the other in order to avoid having to show any papers to Nazi soldiers on the train.

The book was interesting and told a lot of good stories, providing what I thought was a rather complete picture of the Freedom Line.  I did think the focus on Bob Grimes’ crew possibly limited the scope, but it added a narrative element that helped the book flow in a story-like manner (something the modern history reader seems to expect).  The author’s wife is Basque, so the Basque players in the story get some extra focus, but that probably adds to the story instead of detracting since much of the effort would have been impossible were it not for truly heroic efforts by people like Florentino, making the trip through the Pyrenees hundreds of times with airmen and smuggled intelligence.  After reading a few pages of the book, I was reminded that I had once read a book called Cruel Crossing: Escaping Hitler across the Pyrenees, which chronicled the same people and effort; however, I thought the Freedom Line was a little more interesting than Cruel Crossing because it was pure history and not the combination of history and travelogue my earlier reading was.  What was the most powerful thing about the book was the usual selfless dedication shown by the resistance members who risked their lives and the lives of those around them simply because it was the right thing to do.  Many noted that they were simply doing what anyone would or should do and never wanted or expected to be rewarded for their efforts.  It is an example of duty and courage that all can learn from.  The book is worth a read to be inspired and to learn about the underground efforts to defy the Nazis, some small, some large, all of which contributed to the Allied victory.

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A Man Called Intrepid

World War II history has always fascinated me, although that fascination started more because of cool drawings of bombers, fighters, and half-tracks that I saw in a Richard Scarry book, Hop Aboard!  Here We Go!  Later, I saw the models that a couple of my uncles built, only deepening my interest in this conflict that directly impacted me via my grandparents, who lived through and fought in the war.  I still think the vehicles are a pretty cool part of the war, but the history of the people and places has grown on me since my childhood.  Since the scope of the war is so broad, there are many stories to tell.

A Man Called Intrepid: The Incredible WWII Narrative of the Hero Whose Spy Network and Secret Diplomacy Changed the Course of History by William Stevenson (ISBN: 978-1-59921-170-1) is the story of Sir William Stephenson, whose code name was Intrepid, a Canadian who served as the head of British Security Coordination (BSC) during World War II, which coordinated most of the UK’s espionage efforts in the Atlantic Theater, particularly with the United States, including before the U.S. was officially involved in the war.  The book is long and full of all kinds of stories about things like Camp X, a training center in Canada for various clandestine operators (spies, saboteurs, guerillas, etc.), code breaking, honey pots, financial schemes, resistance efforts (including the Norwegian efforts described in more detail in the Winter Fortress), and even some more traditional spying.  Intrepid, in addition to being involved in intelligence activity, was also a diplomat.  His efforts were instrumental in securing U.S. and Canadian support for many of the efforts the UK was involved in.  He had access to the highest levels of government, including President Roosevelt.  He had to navigate inter-agency and inter-service battles, but did so largely successfully and got most of the support he needed from England’s allies, eventually leading, both directly and indirectly, to the Allied victory against the Germans.  Many historians figure that without the efforts of Intrepid, the war could have gone very differently, and the book lays out that case rather convincingly.  The book ends with an interesting discussion of how Intrepid would’ve preferred a more open society after the war even though clandestine activity helped the Allies secure victory.

I thought the book was very interesting and a good read.  It was published in 1976, so is slightly more academic in nature than modern mass-market history (a fact that I appreciate).  The intriguing information it contains hasn’t aged.  Some of the code breaking and diplomacy-related sections are a little dryer, but fit into a bigger picture of a man who was clearly talented and helped change the course of history.  The book doesn’t get into the philosophical or political implications of intelligence work until the very end.  Many of the stories in the book can be read about in their own books.  This doesn’t always have all the details, but it’s detailed enough in most instances to keep one’s attention and provide an informative read for those interested in the course of World War II.  It even has a couple dozen pages of pictures.

 

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The Coddling of the American Mind

Twenty to twenty-five years ago, my university experience presented me with a chance to learn about a variety of different subjects in both general education classes, electives, and my major classes.  I probably found the electives to be the most interesting.  In any case, some classes presented me with ideas that I disagreed with, usually from a political standpoint.  I don’t remember anyone on either side of an issue ever being bothered or offended that someone brought up a countering viewpoint or argument.  It actually seemed like it was expected.  It was also expected that people be able to back up their statements.  An introductory economics class was one that featured more intense discussion than most.  Some students were of a more socialist persuasion than the professor, and I found the discussions to be kind of interesting, as did others in the class.  Since then, it seems that most college students and many people have decided that, somehow, ideas and words are violence, and opposing viewpoints must not be argued and parlayed with facts and reason, but simply shouted down and suppressed.

The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt (ISBN: 978-0-7352-2489-6) takes a look at how American children and young adults are being set up by the education system and modern parenting for what the authors believe is a more difficult path through life, maybe even often including failure.  They believe that there are three “great untruths” being fed to young people in modern America: what doesn’t kill you makes you weaker, always trust your feelings, and life is a battle between good people and evil people.  They discuss what they term “safetyism,” meaning the idea that kids must be protected from every possible harm, both physical and psychological.  They note that there are many acceptable risks and that for someone to grow up mentally and physically strong, one must take risks.  Helicopter parenting and safetyism don’t allow for much, if any, risk-taking, thereby stunting development.  The authors reject the idea that feelings trump truth.  They believe that truth trumps feelings and that to arrive at the truth, one must be exposed to ideas that one might not necessarily agree with.  They’re not arguing for purposefully offending people, but have little patience of the concept of micro-aggressions, preferring to use cognitive techniques that tend to assume good intentions and a less adversarial view of the world.  That leads to their third point, in which they argue that the world is not good people against bad people.  There may be good and bad ideas, but that should be hashed out in a free exchange of ideas, and one should not assume that someone purveying what one believes to be a bad idea is a bad person.  After making their case, they suggest solutions to the problems.  Their solutions embrace free speech, personal responsibility in how one reacts to ideas one perceives as negative, and an education system and parenting milieu that encourages taking acceptable risks instead of avoiding all risk whatsoever. 

The book is an interesting one that lays out an idea that I found convincing, both in the description of the problem and in some of the suggested prescriptions.  The authors believe in limited social media for children (and adults, really), more chances for kids to be outside and exploring instead of inside behind a screen, and in letting them hash out minor differences without adult intervention.  In high school and college, the authors want students to exchange ideas and be exposed to various ideas.  They decry the fact that colleges in the U.S. are skewed strongly to the left among both the faculty and the student body.  They wonder how those individuals can ever expand their minds if they hear only things they agree with.  If the reader is a conservative, the book can present some cringy moments when the authors lay out their support for various liberal ideas, including some that most view as woke, but it only seems right that they present those views in a book that challenges ideas about how one thinks.

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Hide Your Children

In the 1980s in America, homeschooling was not popular.  For three of my elementary school years, I got to be homeschooled.  I thought it was great.  I got to learn at my pace, which was wonderful for subjects like math, science, and English.  I loved that I was usually done with my school day two to three hours earlier than the rest of the kids in the neighborhood.  At home, I only had to do actual schoolwork and none of the fluff or other, non-academic stuff.  I remember hearing from many people that kids who were homeschooled would not be socialized.  No one ever really defined that word, but between city sports leagues, church activities, and playing friends in the neighborhood, I had plenty of chances to be with other kids, not to mention the fact that the overwhelming majority of inappropriate things I learned I had learned at school.

Hide Your Children: Exposing the Marxists behind the Attack on America’s Kids by Liz Wheeler (ISBN: 978-1-68451-391-8) provides a look at how the education system has deteriorated further since the 1980s.  The book starts with an overview of just who the Marxists the subtitle is talking about and then gives specific examples of how attacks on the nuclear family, endless accusations of racism, critical theory, queer theory, and attacks on homeschool, a proxy for attacks on personal responsibility and liberty, fit into the Marxist program meant to destroy society.  Each chapter gives some history of where the modern Marxist threat originated and, using specific examples, how it became more mainstream than it ever should have.  The historic sections are followed by a discussion of how it is today and the threat that presents to America, a country built on the idea that it survives only if the people who inhabit it are a moral people.  The book ends with a chapter providing some suggestions on how to change the tide and fight back against the Marxist wave that has overpowered our educational system since it’s much easier to change the minds of the impressionable young than older people more set in their ways.  The author’s suggestions include fighting the culture war, working to ban critical theory from public institutions, homeschooling whenever possible, fighting for school choice, working against ESG and DEI, remembering that local politics have an outlandishly large impact on our lives, returning to religion, and protecting the innocence of our children.  Finally, there were some appendices with the Constitution and papal encyclicals that discussed the dangers of Communism.

Looking back on my time in school, I can see some of the early beginnings of what was discussed in the book.  I remember having lessons on self-esteem in fifth grade.  The discussions about just what constitutes a put-down are exactly the kind of thing that gets rolled into social-emotional learning in the mid-2020s.  Homeschooling was a great experience for me that taught a lot about personal responsibility and putting forth the effort to better one’s own life.  That was the ultimate message of the book, but it also presented a good picture of what some of the problems with the modern American education system and how much of what is taught is at odds with the liberty needed to be self-sufficient.  One interesting undercurrent of the book was Wheeler’s belief that while religion was key to containing Marxism, Catholicism was the preferred route.  The appendices included two very long papal encyclicals, both of which accurately described Communism as a problem, but were also inclined to support organized labor as a rather fuzzy concept of how to deal with poverty.  The descriptive portion of the book was its strongest and make it worth reading.  The prescriptive part was fine, with ideas that were good, but left me wanting more specifics (something that would improve many books about politics).  

 

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The Airmen and the Headhunters

World War II history, at least in my mind, tends to focus on the European theater.  Everyone talks about Hitler, the Nazis, the Germans, the Italians, the British, and the Russians.  For the U.S., though, World War II was a two-front war, and the Pacific theater was just as important and ultimately brought the war to a close for the U.S. with the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan.  Before those bombs were dropped, though, there were many events that unfolded, many of them full of heroism, daring, and brilliance, just as it was in Europe.  I also have a personal connection to the Pacific since that is where my maternal grandfather served in the U.S. Army during World War II.

The Airmen and the Headhunters: A True Story of Lost Soldiers, Heroic Tribesmen, and the Unlikeliest Rescue of World War II by Judith M. Heiman (ISBN: 978-0-15-101434-7) tells a fascinating story from the Pacific.  As the Allies tried to claw their way toward Japan, while a ground invasion was still a potential plan, territory in what is now Indonesia was of strategic importance to the belligerents.  Japan held what was then referred to as Borneo because of its oil reserves.  The Allies wanted to cut that off.  During a bombing mission against Japanese forces and industry in Borneo, a few U.S. planes were shot down.  The occupants of one met death, either in the wreck or at the hands of the Japanese.  Two other planes, though, had survivors who avoided capture.  While this was initially thanks mostly to good luck, later capture was avoided because of the efforts of the natives, some of whom were formerly formidable headhunting tribes.  The case of characters involved Malaysians, various highland jungle tribes, and the Americans.  Later, Australian forces joined made it to the jungle and helped the natives fight the Japanese and the Americans get home.  In the six months between the downed planes and the exfiltrations, though, the natives and the Malay helped the Americans avoid detection by the Japanese.  They provided the Americans with hiding places, food, and taught them some of their ways to help make survival in the jungle a little easier.  It wasn’t easy and involved sickness, insects, leeches, and injury, but the downed American soldiers eventually made it back home.  In fighting the Japanese and keeping them off the Americans’ trail, the natives brought back their age-old tradition of headhunting.  It might not have been exactly the same since it was revitalized out of necessity, but it served its purpose and aided in keeping the Japanese out of the interior jungles.

The book was really interesting.  I know almost nothing about Indonesia, Malaysia, and other island nations in Asia.  I had never heard about this particular bit of World War II history, but I am glad I did.  It was fascinating to read about the jungles, their many potential threats, and the native people who so willingly sacrificed for the well-being of the American soldiers, especially since they might have not been so excited about doing so given the sometimes harsh history of the Dutch in that part of the world.  Kind American missionaries who worked in the jungles mitigated some of the Dutch-induced problems, though, and even non-Christian natives respected the Western missionaries who had truly been good examples and good followers of Christ.  There was an element of adventure in the book and some excitement in the story as the Japanese came close to capturing the Americans a couple times.  Other than a quote from an old army song that included the F-word, the book was great and well worth reading for anyone interested in history.

 

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The Forgotten Founding Father

I don’t know that I can say that I’ve always been interested in languages, but ever since I served a mission in Russia for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and learned Russian, I’ve had an interest in languages.  I took German in junior and high school, but never made any real progress.  In high school, when they started teaching us about accusative and dative cases, my brain lost it.  I remember doing a homework assignment dealing with those and asking my native German-speaking grandmother and my German-speaking father for help and still just having brain cramps.  Learning Russian was also very difficult, but I was able to overcome my problem with cases, and it’s been fun to attempt to keep some of these language skills from earlier in my life up since then.  Learning foreign languages like German and Russian also helped me understand things like English grammar and the etymology of English words a little better.  As a really young kid, I remember a copy of the Merriam-Webster dictionary on our shelf and sometimes asking my mom why we never read “the big, red book.”

The Forgotten Founding Father: Noah Webster’s Obsession and the Creation of an American Culture by Joshua Kendall (ISBN: 978-0425-24545-3) tells about how that “big, red book” came to be thanks to another person who was very interested in words and language.  The book chronicles Webster’s life from boyhood to death, taking a very detailed look at the parts of his life that led to his creation of the famous dictionary, part of Webster’s desire to make America its own unique country.  Somewhat unusual for his day, Webster went to college even though he came from a farmer’s family.  He then pursued a career tied to literature.  He wrote extensively, including many essays, letters, and pamphlets in support of American independence and then in support of a federal republic.  While his writings are not as well known today as those of others like Hamilton, at the time, there were many leading Americans who believed Webster’s efforts were essential parts of swaying public opinion.  Webster initially made his name by publishing a speller, a book that helped schoolchildren learn to read and write.  This book provided him with a foundational income throughout his life.  He also worked as a lawyer, editor, and publisher.  What he realized he loved doing, though, was more similar to the speller: compiling, organizing, and ordering information.  This led to his interest in dictionaries.  He found flaws in extant dictionaries and decided to improve on them by publishing his own.  One motivation he had for this was that he believed a uniquely American language would help create and uphold a uniquely American culture, one that was needed to help the nascent nation maintain its distance from its former imperial overlords and move forward.  While his ideas on government changed over the course of his life, his belief in America did not.  The dictionary took much more time and money than he thought it would, but it was eventually published and created a new standard as well as codifying much of what was then a unique American language with new words expressing the new ideas embodied by the new nation.

Overall, I enjoyed reading the book and found it interesting and informational.  Reading of the American Founding and those who played integral roles in those events is always interesting.  I found some of the discussion of early American literature and the academic scene to be less intriguing, but understand that it helped set the stage for Webster’s work and may be a necessary part of telling his story.  It seemed the author wanted to diagnose Webster with some kind of mental disorder (OCD, autism, etc.), but never really came out and said it, just approached it tangentially.  That constant repetition of that theme was a little distracting.  The dictionary itself is only the last quarter of the book, so there’s a lot of other material to get through, but I thought the case for Webster’s role in America becoming its own entity, separate from Great Britain, was made convincingly.  Those interested in the Revolution and the Founding, not just nerdy linguistic things will find the book of interest.

 

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The Great Reset

[We w]ill at once walk out from a session, meeting, lecture, play,

or film as soon as [we hear] the speaker utter a lie, ideological

drivel, or shameless propaganda.

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

There was once a guy in a small southern Utah town who made the news all over the place because he put up a sign in his front yard that declared his property a UN-free zone.  Lots of people made fun of him, wondering what impact the UN could possibly have on a guy with a few acres of land in the sticks in southern Utah.  Given that the UN operates some programs that provide medical aid and food to those in need or preserve cultural heritage sights, albeit in a bureaucratic and inefficient way, alongside some of truly inefficient things they do in the general assembly, at the time, I had no real opinion either way, but always felt the guy probably understood things better than I did.  A decade or so later, with the international community firmly entrenched in the big-government control movement and its many tentacles creeping farther and farther into our everyday lives, it seems the guy who wanted to keep the UN (and other global elites) out of his back yard was on to something.

The Great Reset: Joe Biden and the Rise of 21st-century Fascism by Glenn Beck with Justin Haskins (ISBN:  978-1-63763-059-4) provides an overview of just what the Great Reset is.  Beck and Haskins view it as an attempt by elites on the global stage to take over and subsequently control people politically and economically.  They note that this is a plan that has been in the works for much longer than just since the coronavirus happened in 2020, although that served as a crisis that could be used to further many of the goals of those pushing for the Great Reset (Leftists around the world, not just Joe Biden as the title might lead one to believe).  Other things that have served as a way for Klaus Schwab, George Soros, and others to further their agenda include environmentalism and the rise of national debts and inflation, which many Leftists want to combat by employing something called “modern monetary theory,” which states that national debt doesn’t really matter, only inflation does, since governments have the ability print the money they need (taxation is used to control (read: punish) people or organizations, not necessarily to raise revenue).  Another economic tool of those pushing the Great Reset, which is a politically loaded term these days, although one that the book includes in direct quotations from the horses’ mouths, is environmental, social, governance (ESG), a system that the elite wants to use to evaluate business and individuals the way in essentially the same way credit scores are used, just without so much worry about credit and more worry about those more political factors.  The system was designed to counteract the Right’s call for business to self-regulate and not have the government involved.  With ESG involved, big investment firms can buy shares in a company and then demand that the company adhere to ESG standards, thereby causing, ostensibly, business to drive the ESG agenda and not government.  Beck and Haskins finish the book with some policy prescriptions, almost all of which are calls to action on a local level in most cases: support small businesses, be politically active on the local level, don’t live lies in our personal lives.

The book was an interesting read.  It was written a in 2022, but is especially relevant given the rise of ESG and organizations like the World Economic Forum (WEF), which push the Great Reset.  The history of the Great Reset, relevant quotations from those pushing it, not just spouting off about it (all extensively noted in endnotes), and solid explanations of just what these terms refer to and how they apply to the common man, make the book worth a read.  I am not a huge fan of the book’s subtitle, although I understand it given that many of the Great Reset players have ties to Biden.  Beck does note that the Great Reset is not necessarily a partisan issue as there are culprits normally associated with the American Right, too.  However, he focuses on those tied in some way to Joe Biden and the U.S. Democratic machine.  I think that section could’ve been a little better.  Some readers may not appreciate some of the humor in some of the sections.  I was kind of on the fence about some of it — it was all appropriate; I just usually appreciate a more serious tone, but I think regular Beck listeners will get it and appreciate it.  In the end, I thought the actions the authors suggested we take were all very solid.  They were all things that people can do.  I found the extensive quotations from Russian dissident Solzhenitsyn to be powerful, especially the one asking us to not live a lie.

 

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