“A purely defensive war only ever ends one way”

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I recently read The Shortest History of Germany: From Julius Caesar to Angela Merkel―A Retelling for Our Times, by James Hawes, who is a lecturer at the University of Oxford (though not, I think on history but rather on creative writing, even though he earned a doctorate in German literature [with a focus on Friedrich Nietzsche] from University College, London).  I thoroughly enjoyed it, and not only because it is very well and brightly written.  In an odd way, the book reminds me a bit of Graham Fuller’s A World Without Islam, which reads nothing like it and which is, of course, about a quite distinct subject and at least slightly academic.  Why?  Because, like A World Without Islam, The Shortest History of Germany makes a case for the persisting importance of ancient geographical divisions notwithstanding the ideological and personnel changes that have occurred over the past many centuries.  You’ll have to read the book yourself if you want to get it’s full flavor, but I’ll offer one spoiler:  He isn’t a big fan of the Prussians.  Nor of their ancestors nor their progeny.  And that’s putting it very mildly.  Hawes is very forthrightly opinionated, which is rarer than one might think in history books, but that surely makes The Shortest History of Germany entertaining.

Here are a couple of passages that I marked early on in my reading:

The first one reminded of Mormon 2:1-2, which I’ve sometimes heard derided by critics of the Book of Mormon because they find the idea of an army headed by a teenager ridiculously improbable:  “And it came to pass in that same year there began to be a war again between the Nephites and the Lamanites. And notwithstanding I being young, was large in stature; therefore the people of Nephi appointed me that I should be their leader, or the leader of their armies.  Therefore it came to pass that in my sixteenth year I did go forth at the head of an army of the Nephites, against the Lamanites.”

“Some of the tribes, under the leadership of Battarius, a boy twelve years old, promised an alliance; these received gifts of money.” (quoted from Cassius Dio, Roman History, LXXII)

And then there was this one:

From now on, Rome was purely on the defensive, and a purely defensive war only ever ends one way.

Hawes is speaking here about the late third century after Christ.  But this is the same point that I often make about the need for what I often call “positive apologetics” as well as “negative apologetics.”  Advocates of the faith need to do more than merely defend against criticisms and attacks.  They also need to develop and present affirmative reasons for belief.

And here’s a third one, from the last portion of the book.  In a way, it encapsulates the basic thesis of The Shortest History of Germany.  In it, Dr. Hawes is referring to the Elbe River:

For that river, as ever, is the great fault line in German history.  Things are different east of it, as they have been for a thousand years.

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We spent yesterday in Lisbon, the capital of Portugal.  We took a hop-on hop-off bus around the city and then visited the summer palace of the former Portuguese royal family in Queluz, as well as that palace’s gardens, and then strolled through the Belem Palace Gardens, back in Lisbon itself.  We’ve never been to Portugal before, so this was both fun and interesting to us.  Like Rome and Constantinople or Istanbul, Lisbon is built on seven hills, and the views from various parts of the city can be striking.  Unfortunately, the city is marred by lots and lots of spray-painted graffiti, some of it located so high up and in seemingly inaccessible places that even I had to admire the daring of the “artists” who had created it.  One of the most remarkable features of many of the city’s buildings is their use of colorful tiles.

We had hoped to catch a glimpse of the Lisbon Portugal Temple, which is still relatively new and which is located not far from the water.  In fact, I thought that our boat had docked fairly near it, until I realized that I was looking at the wrong bridge in the overhead photographs of the temple.  It was actually located just a bit further than our ship went, near the Vasco da Gama Bridge rather than the Ponte 25 de Abril.  Oh well.  Next time.

Today, we visited Porto — or, as outsiders (including Spaniards!) generally call it, Oporto.  We drove on a bus tour through much of the city, rode in a 94-year-old electric tram car through some of the rest, and strolled in the old Ribeira district (Praça da Ribeira) along the Rio Douro.  We had lunch there, too, and, at a shop called Prometeu Artesanato, at Rua de São João 19, we bought a couple of beautiful tiles and a small clay figure of the Holy Family that we both really liked.  We’re not particularly enthusiastic shoppers, but these caught our eyes.  There was a full nativity set in the shop’s window that we absolutely loved, but the price was nearly $3500.  That’s too much even for my budget as a Latter-day Saint apologist who is paid in a massive combination of gold bars, cut and uncut diamonds, and untraceable cryptocurrencies.

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I couldn’t agree more strongly than I do with this article in the Deseret News:

“Perspective: Latter-day Saints need to tell their own stories: We’ve barely scratched the surface of the narrative potential in our history, doctrine, culture and lore”

That’s why I committed myself to the Interpreter Foundation’s film project on the Witnesses to the Book of Mormon — including the theatrical movie Witnesses, the docudrama Undaunted: Witnesses of the Book of Mormon, and the short-video “reels” that we’re posting each week.  And that’s why I’m committed to our next project, Six Days in August.  Candidly, I hope that you’ll join with us, too.  At a very minimum, I hope that you’ll view what we’ve put out and what we’re now putting out.  And I hope that you’ll share it with others.

These film projects represent one of the ways in which some of us have teamed up together to do positive apologetics.  As James Hawes observes, “a purely defensive war only ever ends one way.”

Posted from the Atlantic Ocean, en route from Porto, Portugal, to La Coruña, Spain