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William Hitchcock Profile picture
William Hitchcock
@WillHitchUVA
Historian of Politics, Diplomacy, War. NYT best-selling author. Now writing “FDR AND THE DICTATORS: Fascism, Democracy and the Road to War.” Directs @GAGE_UVA.
Oct 29, 2020 • 16 tweets • 4 min read
Speaking of Fascists, 98 years ago today (10/29/1922), Mussolini took power in Rome.

How did Americans react?

Outrage? Shock? Collapse of democracy?

Nope. White Americans really liked Mussolini. A lot. Though Mussolini later created a myth of a popular uprising, Fascism came to power with the support and connivance of elites/ aristocracy. His blackshirts did stage a march on Rome, but this was mostly theatre. He was appointed by the King as prime minister on October 29, 1922.
Oct 3, 2020 • 15 tweets • 3 min read
Eisenhower had a serious heart attack in 1955. How did doctors and White House staff handle it? Better than Trump's people. But not flawlessly either. History thread! Sept 1955: Ike is in Denver, on vacation and staying at home of mother-in-law. He’d been there over a month, playing golf every day at Cherry Hills Country Club, putting in a couple hours of work each day at nearby Lowry Airforce Base. He did a lot of fishing in Fraser, CO.
Jul 28, 2020 • 15 tweets • 6 min read
75 years ago this week, as history’s most calamitous war wound down, the British people undertook one of the most remarkable acts in the history of democracy.

As we face our own global crisis, what can we learn from this story? Americans love Winston Churchill. His pugnacious style, his wartime leadership, his early and steadfast opposition to fascism, all earned him a venerated place in history.

American presidents like Churchill. His bust has been in the White House since 1965, often in the Oval.
Jul 5, 2020 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
On a positive note: I’m immensely grateful for the journalists of two great newspapers, @washingtonpost and @nytimes — who receive a lot of snarky criticism on this site but who are really among the heroes of this dismal hour. In *today’s papers* alone we can read: This astounding piece by @GregJaffe washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/…
Jun 13, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Trump today: "It is not the duty of U.S. troops to solve ancient conflicts in far away lands that many people have never even heard of. We are not the policeman of the world."

In June 1940, exactly 80 years ago, the French and Germans were engaged in an "ancient conflict." 1/5 Image The Nazis were days away from seizing Paris. How did President Roosevelt respond?

In a graduation speech at Univ of Virginia on June 10 '40, FDR denounced the kind of isolationism Trump invokes today. FDR also announced a new policy of aid to those fighting the fascists. 2/5 Image
Jun 6, 2020 • 16 tweets • 6 min read
D-Day, June 6 1944. A few photos here of the Normandy beaches and the story behind this day.

76 years ago today, British, Canadian and American teenagers seized these heights and opened the way to liberation on Western Europe. We owe them. Image By June 1944, Germany was losing the war—but it was far from defeated. The Soviet Red Army was about to punch into Belarus; US and British forces were pushing up the Italian peninsula. But no allied forces were yet on German soil. German soldiers still loafed in Parisian cafes. Image
May 6, 2020 • 12 tweets • 5 min read
May 8, 2020 marks 75 years since the surrender of Nazi Germany to allied forces. A date to celebrate, for sure. But it is also a complicated moment.

What did VE (Victory in Europe) Day mean? And what did it NOT mean? (A thread of 12) For US soldiers, V-E Day meant an end to fighting in Europe. Since D-Day, June 6, 1944 over 183,000 US soldiers had been killed in action in Europe. That is roughly 546 dead American soldiers every day between D-Day and V-E Day.
Apr 7, 2020 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
What just happened in the Trump-Crozier-Modly affair?

Historians have seen this before. In authoritarian regimes, bureaucracies do not exist to function efficiently. They exist to serve the desires of the Leader.

But what if the leader is a capricious sociopath? 1/7 In order to succeed as a bureaucrat in such a regime, you must always strive to please the leader. In the absence of coherent plans and a policy process, you have to guess:

How can I please the leader, while also enhancing my own power in the hierarchy? 2/7
Dec 18, 2019 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
A nugget from the archives about the collapse of democracy:

William C. Bullitt was a difficult, vain, brilliant man who served as US Ambassador to USSR and then from 1936-'40 as ambassador to France. He saw France engulfed by the Nazis in June 1940.

US inaction enraged him. Image Returning home to Philadelphia, he gave a searing speech at the American Philosophical Society on August 18, 1940.

"I have seen the French republic destroyed." How did this proud democracy die so quickly? he asked.
Jun 4, 2019 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Just wrapped a fascinating, moving and exasperating week in Israel and Palestine. Engaged with officials, scholars, writers, jurists, military who graciously talked, candidly.

Some observations (maybe banal to people better informed that I am). The two state solution is dead, or at least in a coma.
Mar 6, 2019 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
Marc Short, @UVA @Miller_Center Senior Fellow and V-P Mike Pence chief of staff, authored a homophobic essay about AIDS in 1992, while he was a student at Washington and Lee, reports Daily Beast. thedailybeast.com/pences-incomin…

A close reading of Short's piece follows. 1/ Marc Short has distanced himself from his homophobic essay. But it bears careful study as a demonstration of what young white conservatives said publicly about AIDS and gay people then, and how they weaponized AIDS in political discourse. 2/
Nov 10, 2018 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
A century of mourning.

Roses grace the headstones of fallen soldiers in British/Commonwealth cemeteries, so that once a day the shadow of a rose will pass across the names of the honored dead. Here rests Private P. Wood, aged 18, killed at Ypres in 1916. (Essex Farm Cem.) Image Roses and headstones in solemn order at Tyne Cot Cemetery, near Ypres. Final resting place of 11,965 British and Commonwealth soldiers. Image
Jul 5, 2018 • 8 tweets • 1 min read
En route to Helsinki, will @realDonaldTrump read George Kennan (1946)? Inside USA, Soviets seek: “to disrupt national self confidence, to hamstring measures of national defense, to increase social and industrial unrest, to stimulate all forms of disunity.” 1. “All persons with grievances, whether economic or racial, will be urged to seek redress not in mediation and compromise, but in defiant violent struggle for destruction of other elements of society.” 2.