Mark Pitcavage Profile picture
Mar 10 6 tweets 2 min read
If this is being done intentionally, it is most likely a defensive effort on the part of Ukrainians; most military flooding events are defensive in nature.

"Satellite images show flooding north of Kyiv in possible sign of ‘hydraulic warfare’"
washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/…
This was a tactic that was used extensively in World War II. The Germans, for example, blew up dams over the Roer River to cause flooding to interfere with the American invasion of Germany in 1944-45. Image
In Italy in 1943, the Germans flooded the Pontine Marshes south of Rome to slow the Allied advance there. The Germans also flooded parts of Normandy in anticipation of a possible Allied invasion and parts of the Netherlands to hinder the Canadian liberation of that country.
The largest, most desperate, and most damaging example of military flooding at that time was the decision in 1938 by the Chinese Nationalists to blow up dikes containing the Yellow River in its banks. They hoped to interfere with the Japanese invasion of China. But the results
were far more harmful to the Chinese than the Japanese. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese died and millions became homeless refugees. It wasn't until 1947 that the flooding was contained. Image
It is possible to use flooding as an offensive weapon, but it is much rarer. One example is the Allied flooding of Walcheren Island in the Netherlands, which helped them capture the island and open up a safe route to the strategic port of Antwerp.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inundatio…

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More from @egavactip

Mar 11
Ukrainian history is not an area of expertise of mine, but I do have areas of interest/expertise that involve Ukraine: World War II, partisan warfare, the Holocaust, & the Eastern Borderlands region of Europe. So I thought I'd share some of the books I have, for those interested. Image
I have many books on the Eastern Front in World War II and, obviously, the region of Ukraine figures in many of them. But they're not *about* Ukraine. So I won't include them. But I will mention one book, as it focuses on one of the most important battles that took place there.
This is David Stahel's book Kiev 1941: Hitler's Battle for Supremacy in the East. It is the second of a series of revisionist (I mean that in the scholarly sense) books on the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. It's interesting but it helps to already be familiar w/the battle. Image
Read 25 tweets
Mar 10
If you want to follow the militia trial in Michigan over the plot to kidnap its governor, here are some articles on the opening statements, etc.

Defense attorneys are variously claiming that it was "all talk" and no action, and that it was entrapment.
Of course, two people have already pleaded guilty.

This trial is the federal trial. This case is unusual in that some of the defendants were charged (only) federally and the others were charged (only) by the state of Michigan.
"Whitmer kidnap plotters wanted to help spark second Civil War, feds say"

detroitnews.com/story/news/loc…
Read 7 tweets
Mar 2
The other day, trying to answer a reporter's question, I came across someone I hadn't thought of in ages. Today, doing unrelated research in my old Idaho files, I came across my records of him.

Because he's one of the nastiest persons I've encountered, I thought I'd share.
I'm talking about white supremacist Keith Gilbert and his long, awful extremist career. In the 1960s he served time in California for receiving stolen explosives & for assault with a deadly weapon. He later claimed he had gotten dynamite so he could try to kill MLKjr.
By the 1980s he was a follower of Richard Butler's Aryan Nations, living in Post Falls, Idaho.He later formed his own tiny groups, such as the Social Nationalistic Aryan People's Party and the Restored Church of Jesus Christ Aryan Nations
Read 9 tweets
Feb 21
Today I thought I'd share another thread-profile on a historical American right-wing extremist. Up this time is Linda Thompson (1953-2009), a key pioneer in the militia movement and an unfortunately significant influence on Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.
Some extremists are active for decades, but Linda Thompson was different, suddenly rising from obscurity to become a national figure, then disappearing from the scene after only a few years. But her timing was unfortunately impeccable.
Thompson grew up in Georgia, served in the U.S. Army from 1974-1978 (allowing herself subsequently to call herself a "Vietnam-era veteran) as a clerk/stenographer, and graduated from law school in Indiana in 1988. She opened a law practice, first in Georgia, then Indiana.
Read 25 tweets
Feb 20
There's a conversation going on elsewhere about a long dissertation; I'm not linking to it because I don't like the post that started it. But I don't mind talking about long dissertations more generally, and even using mine as an example.
My own personal opinion is that many individual dissertations are actually too short, and some entire fields allow remarkably short dissertations, considering that dissertations are supposed to be a substantial contribution in original research.
Having said that, there is such a thing as dissertations that are too long. Arguably, my own dissertation was one such. It was 820 pages long (that's dissertation-formatted pages, double-spaced and with generous margins, but still).
Read 9 tweets
Feb 19
I was looking at some old-emails today and came across an interesting 1999 communication from a staff member of the John Birch Society that is kind of interesting, so I thought I would share it. The context of his e-mail is that in 1998 I had published a report on a certain type
of scam both aimed at & propagated by anti-gov't extremists. In that report, I discussed the problem of warnings by the gov't of a scam marketed to people distrustful of the gov't, and suggested that some fringe pubs, like the JBS's New American, might be approachable to warn.
In 1999, the then-research director for the JBS saw my comment and wrote me an e-mail about it, essentially gently pushing back at my suggestion--for interesting reasons. This e-mail I reproduce here. I have not included the name of the research director, who is still alive and
Read 6 tweets

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