James Fell - On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

SH!T WENT DOWN

Copyright 2020 by James Fell

All Rights Reserved.

Cover Design

Stephani Finks

Interior Layout

Bibliofic Designs

www.biblioficdesigns.com

BFW Publishing

Calgary, Alberta, Canada

ISBN (Hardcover): 978-1-989351-75-8

ISBN (Trade Paperback): 978-1-7775742-0-8

ISBN (Ebook): 978-1-7775742-1-5

Dedication

For my two dads,

a couple of cool motherfuckers.

Authors Note

I cant believe I have to say this, but Nazis are bad.

Bad before World War II. Bad during. Still bad now.

The worst kind of bad.

There are no very fine people among them.

If you disagree, you wont like this book. Also, fuck you.

Still here? Cool.

The idea for this book arrived on a bike ride on April 17, 2020 and launched on Facebook the following day. In the first month, the daily shit went down column had a million views. By fall it averaged almost five million views a month. Being published on Facebook, which is owned by a white man who doesnt appear to like it when anyone uses his platform to speak ill of white men, I had to be careful regarding poking fun at the frequent fuckery of such a demographic, lest I spend a month in Facebook jail. This led to some creative euphemisms for pasty-skinned penis possessors, of which I am one. And because Im easily amused, Ive largely left these in for the book.

And finally, a warning: it is possible youll be vexed by how I have exposed some historical figures as having been less than perfect. To that end, Ill quote from the entry for December 10:

Everyone is flawed. Some arent just flawed, theyre evil. We should not praise people as heroes, because we will always find reason to be disappointed, crushed, or aghast. However, we can praise heroic acts. Admire the deeds you deem worthy rather than the person behind them. Alternatively, feel free to say fuck them and cancel them from your life. No one is owed your admiration. No one.

P.S. Youll notice no shortage of Trump hate in this book. Thats because it was written in the final year of the reign of Orange Julius Seize Her.

Fuck that guy.

January

January 1, 1945

A ccording to all those movies I watched, World War II featured the Nazis as the bad guys and Americans as the good guys. And the Nazis were way fucking bad, but sometimes the good guys do bad things too. In this case, the bad guys did a bad thing first, so the good guys doing bad things was totally justified, right? Right?

There is WAY too much sympathy for fucking Nazis these days. Anything more than zero sympathy is too much sympathy. Because fuck Nazis in every hole. But a German soldier wasnt necessarily a Nazi. They were soldiers, often conscripted, fighting for their country because a maniac forced them to. Dont get me wrong. Plenty of regular German soldiers were murderous assholes too.

And they fucking started it.

And they started the prisoner murdering, too. On December 17, 1944, 84 American POWs were assembled in a field in Belgium near the city of Malmedy and machine-gunned to death by their German captors. But it wasnt regular German Army soldiers who murdered them; it was Waffen-SS . Thats the military branch of the Nazi partyAKA fucking Nazis who all deserved to fucking die. And American soldiers were damn reluctant to take Nazi prisoners. They had to be strictly ordered not to just up and waste them. This wasnt commanded out of any great humanitarian desire, but because their superior officers wanted to question these murderous cockwaffles, and you cant get answers out of a guy who has lots of high-velocity holes punched through him.

When the Americans learned of the Malmedy massacre, they were rightfully pissed, and one unit declared they would not be taking German prisoners in reprisal. This is referred to as no quarter, which the 1907 Hague Convention declared against the laws of war. But there is something worse than no quarter, and thats what the Waffen-SS shitlickers did to the Americans: taking prisoners and then deciding You know what? Lets just waste these fuckers. Thats a whole nother level of assholery.

And so, the Americans did it right back.

On January 1, 1945, American troops that were part of the 11 th Armored Division near the village of Chenogne in Belgium murdered approximately 80 German POWs. If theyd been SS, meaning fucking Nazis, then that was a different kettle of go fornicate yourself in Hell you Nazi pieces of shit. But these were regular German Army soldiers who had surrendered and been taken prisoner. It was definitely against the rules.

After the war, General Dwight Eisenhower, who was Supreme Allied Commander, ordered an investigation, but the 11 th Armored was uncooperative, and no one was ever punished for the massacre.

January 2, 1492

L otta crazy shit happened in Spain in 1492. The crown financed Columbus raping a continent, they kicked out the Jews, and they also finally kicked out the Muslims. Regarding that last one, I say finally because they had been fighting them since the Muslims invaded over seven centuries earlier. It was a reconquering of their own territory. Thats why it was called the Reconquista.

Close to a quarter of the worlds population is Muslim, to varying degrees. How did it spread so far? Welp, it wasnt exactly through peaceful explanation of the revelations of the prophet. In many cases, it was by the sword: convert, or die. Beginning early in the seventh century, the creation of the religion of Islam involved a series of wars of conquest to spread the glorious word. Islamic law forbids forced conversion, and often attaining new adherents was more indirect: conquer their lands and enforce Islamic laws that make life a lot less shitty if you decide to embrace Islam. It was polytheists Muslims really had no tolerance for, because ONE GOD! But since Jews and Christians are monotheists (mostly), you could remain so if you were willing to pay extra taxes for the privilege.

A mere century after it had begun, Islam spread across North Africa and crossed the Straits of Gibraltar to invade the Iberian Peninsula in 711. At the time, the region that would come to be known as Spain and Portugal was a divided Visigoth kingdom that could not mount a unified defense against Muslim invaders, and over the next 15 years the invaders conquered most of the peninsula, with the exception of the northwest corner. And it was from that corner the Reconquista launched.

And wow was it a long fucking process. Over 700 motherfucking years of fighting to take back the territory, which of course involved forceable conversion of Muslims (and Jews) to Christianity. On January 2, 1492, the Emirate of Granada in the southeast of Spain, the final Muslim stronghold on the peninsula, surrendered to the Christian forces.

The interesting thing is that during the Islamic occupation of Spain, the invaders had been pretty tolerant of other religions, and many Christians and Jews and Muslims lived side by side, mostly in peace. But as the reconquest moved south, the tolerance for anything not Christian was paltry, and this included Jews. A few months after the surrender at Granada, there was a decree that any Jews remaining in the country had to convert to Christianity or get the fuck out.

They say no one expects the Spanish Inquisition, but they kinda telegraphed that shit.

January 3, 1868

T he end of the shogunate in Japan deserved a better telling than Tom Cruise as white savior for a lost cause in The Last Samurai. Watching that movie, I kind of wanted them to lose. And lose they did, because they brought knives to a gunfight. They were really big and very sharp knives, but the guys fighting for the Meiji Empire had rapid-firing rifles, and some putz with a few weeks training can kill the shit out of almost any dude who spent his life studying the blade, so long as he keeps his distance.