Allied Leadership doubts on their eventual victory in World War Two

Question Answered on Quora

Did the Allied leadership, especially in England and America, ever actually doubt their eventual victory in World War Two?

I believe that there was a time from May 1940 (Fall of France) to June 1941 (Operation Barbarossa) where there was considerable doubt in Britain in particular as to whether they could hold out against the Reich. 

During this period the US had not formally entered the war and the Soviets were actually supplying Germany with resources. The Italians went on the offense in the Mediterranean and Greece, Japan was having success in the East and morale was low in the UK following the very poor showing of the BEF forces in France and before that Norway. 

British success at the Battle of Britain, the oratory of Churchill and better showings in North Africa, the Mediterranean and Abyssinia went someway to allay this fear. However these were very dark days

What is Classic Liberalism?

Classic Liberalism (really just Liberalism…modern liberalism is essentially progressivism) is a political philosophy that emerged during the Age of Reason in 17th century England. At its core it is centered on the notion of liberty.

 The philosophy emphasizes the necessary exchange of ideas, free speech, openness to debates, free markets, private ownership of property and the rule of law. Classic Liberals value a democracy or republic built on a foundation of scientific rationalism, empiricism and healthy skepticism. Individual rights sit at the cornerstone of classic liberalism.

Western History 30: Who were some of the great Ancient Greek Mathematicians?

While the Greeks borrowed heavily from the Mathematics rich cultures of Egypt and Babylonia their own contributions as outlined in the table below are significant.

Table 7 Greek Mathematicians

Name of Mathematician	Key Contribution
Apollonius of Perga	Geometer – Famed for work on conic sections – ellipse, parabola, hyperbola
Archimedes of Syracuse	One of the greatest minds of antiquity. Areas of mathematical concern include – area of a circle, anticipation of calculus, surface area and volume of a sphere, approximation of pi and the area under a parabola.
Diophantus of Alexandria	Father of Algebra. Work centred on Algebraic Equations.
Eratosthenes	Besides inventing the discipline of geography he was the first person to make use of Geometry to determine the circumference and diameter of the Earth. Was also involved in developing a method to identify prime numbers.
Euclid of Alexandria	Father of Geometry. Author of the Great work – The Elements – which deduces the Principles of Geometry from several axiomatic principles.
Hipparchus of Nicacea	Cofounder of Trigonometry. Discovered the Precession of the Equinoxes, developed trigonometric tables and solved several problems in spherical trigonometry.
Pythagoras of Samos	Although he is best known for his famous hypotenuse squared formula (that every student at one time or another has been forced to come to terms with) he did not derive this expression himself but merely popularized its usage (the Babylonians beat him to the punch). Pythagoras did however elucidate some of the mathematics that make the mathematics of music harmonics possible.
Thales of Milletus	Besides being the Father of Western Philosophy, Thales was a renowned Geometer who showed amongst other proofs that the diameter of a circle subtends a triangle with a right angle at the circumference (arguably the oldest proof in Geometry).

Western History 29: What was the contribution of the Athenian trio?

Perhaps no single group of philosophers have influenced Western Thought more than Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. In fact one could argue that the foundation of our education system rides on the bedrock of this trio of Athenian intellects.

Socrates, who words are primarily portrayed in external sources (such as Plato’s dialogue), stressed the importance of ethics in philosophy, questioning arguments to elucidate their strength and challenging one’s assumptions.

Plato, like his mentor Socrates focused on several themes that included justice, friendship and piety. His work on government outlined in the Republic serves as the bedrock for any study of political philosophy and his outlining of the ideal is still central to most thought.

In Aristotle we witness a methodical breakdown of academics into its component parts, a formalization of logic (through syllogisms) and a greater focus on relativism in both the abstract and the here and now.

Western History 28: How did philosophy develop in Ancient Greece?

The Milesian thinker and mathematician Thales is considered to be one of the fathers of the Western Philosophical tradition. While many of his contemporaries were running around blaming natural events on the ongoing strife of the gods Thales believed that such phenomena could be BEST understood by rationally unraveling the structure of matter that he believed was centred around water as the originating principle. In doing so Thales helped take explanation beyond the scope of the supernatural and so galvanized the earliest school of philosophy named after the Ionian City in which he resided (Miletus).

In addition Thales was well versed in deductive reasoning and goes down in history as the first person ever to be identified with a mathematical principle (Thales’ theorem of the diameter of a circle subtending a right angle triangle).

Now Thales was not the only philosopher to emerge from this school. Following closely in his wake, and continuing with the notion of the structure of matter were :

• Anaxgoras – Felt that material was ordered by the cosmic mind and that there was an infinite number of primary substances
• Anaximander – argued for an endless, unlimited mass not restricted by age
• Diogenes of Apollonia – Rationalized that air was the primary substance
• Empedocles – Favoured the four element makeup of matter – the four elements were water, earth, air and fire – Also spoke of forces within matter

·         Heraclitus – Believed that all of matter is made up of fire and that change is real – he also argued that everything is in a state of flux ("No man can cross the same river twice, because neither the man nor the river are the same.")

·         Hippo – extended basic matter concepts into the biological realm – thought to be one of the earliest atheists.

·         Parmenides – Philosopher from Italian Greek colony of Elea who argued that reality is one, existence is timeless and change is impossible. Antithesis of Heraclitus.

Worldohistory Going Forward

My intention is that Worldohistory will become my principal blog. I plan to shut down Worldoreason but will migrate some material over to Worldohistory as is necessary.

Posts in Worldohistory will be of three types

a. General writing on various historically relevant topics (includes Quizzes)
b. The Western World in 300 Events (An Ongoing chronicle of key facets that shaped Western Civilization)
c. Reflections on topics not necessarily related to history - includes writing on Deism, Skepticism and Judaism.

The Western History 27: How did Democracy develop in Athens?

The common wisdom is that the liberal western democracy has its roots in the democratic structure of Ancient Greece and to some extent that is true. Athens was easily Greece’s most influential city, even if its prowess as evident in the Peloponnesian War did not always translate to military success. Yet the democracy of the Athenian’s was on a level far removed from that what we see today in the west and had origins which were less than glorious.

Like most ancient cities Athens was ruled by a king who was the head of the land-owning aristocrats (Eupatridae). A council of government called the Areopagus was charged with the day-to-day running of the city that expanded as Athens came to dominate the region of Attica in a process known as synoikismos. However unrest caused by disparities in income undermined the status quo and the Areopagus, through its go-to-guy Draco (whose name provides the root for the draconian adjective) drafted stringent codified laws to curtail these unwelcome developments. Predictably they failed and the Areopagus was forced to carry out an ‘about face’ with the appointment of the reformer, Solon (whose bas-relief can be found in the US House of Representatives).

Solon (aka the Lawgiver)  is credited with laying the foundations for the Athenian model of democracy. He reduced the economic power of the aristocracy, lessened restrictions on trade and commerce and restructured Athenian society into four groupings. Wealth and military service were to guide such division but what was most important is that the poorest of all these classes, the Thetai, were given political rights for the first time.

True power still resided with the Areopagus and initially class unrest was not curtailed. However the system would continue under the tyrant (a name given to somebody who takes power by force) Peisistratus (Solon’s cousin).

The true hero though of Athenian democracy was Cleisthenes, who further weakened the power of the aristocracy and introduced a system of ostracism (whereby citizens deemed to be a threat to the democracy could by a vote of 6,000 citizens be exiled from the city for ten years).

Cleisthenes filled positions in his government using a random selection process known as sortition (setting up the Council of 500). He also transformed the four traditional tribes system of order into a system of ten tribes based on area of residency. These new structures were known as demes.

Despite the successes Athenian Democracy was a far cry from the democracy we have today (although it was revolutionary in its break from the political structures of its time). Only free, male citizens above the age of 18 could vote with the exclusive citizenship criteria greatly restricting the electorate base. Consequently at the height of its power it is believed that only 10-20% of the population of 310,000 has any say whatsoever in the running of the Athenian polis. Nevertheless it was an important start that would pave the way for later reforms and therefore should be judged favourably as a valuable milestone in the development of the western political structure.