e2history

Full country name: Republic of Lithuania
National Land Area: 65,200 sq km
Population: Circa 3.70 million

Parliamentary Democracy
President: Valdas Adamkus
Capitol: Vilnius

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is $30.8 billion
GDP per capita is $8,400 US
4.5% Economic Growth
5.1% Inflation
Russia, Germany, Belarus, Latvia, Ukraine, Poland, Denmark, Italy, Finland are the major trading partners
Is currently a member of the EU

Overview

Lithuania is a land with a very long and very rich history. Differing wildly from most of the rest of Europe in some areas, like language, it was quite unique in European history, being the last pagan nation of any real size in Europe. Establishing a massive power base throughout the Middle Ages, it unified with Poland in the 16th century to create the most powerful nation in Eastern Europe.

Though the unified Poland was destined to fall to its immensely powerful neighbors in the late 18th century, Lithuania would not exist again until the modern ages. Reduced to a backwater region time and time again, the Lithuanian people have shown a surprising strength in overcoming adversity and in creating for themselves a new future and a new national identity from the ashes of the Soviet Union.

Geography

Modern Lithuania’s borders very little resemble those of its political height, or even those that could be considered Lithuanian by the inhabitant’s heritage. Growing fast during the Middle ages, the nation cut its own lifetime short by unifying with Poland and eventually becoming the less dominant half. And though the unified nation would be called the Poland-Lithuania Commonwealth Republic for a while, it eventually would be just Poland and the name Lithuania would completely disappear from the map.

The current borders are effectively the ancient homeland of the Lithuanians, the place from where they first spread. Established after World War I, the country quickly placed itself under the Soviet Union's sway in World War II and again ceased to exist, except in the form of a Soviet republic. It was only with the fall of the USSR that we have the ancient land of Lithuania again alive within the world.

At present Lithuania occupies 65,300 square km, with land boundaries stretching 747 km and a coastline of 99 km. From east to west one can travel 373 km and from north to south one can travel 276 km. Nearly ¾ of the territory of Lithuania consists of plains and lowlands with some hilly terrain in the northeast and west. Lakes cover some 4% of Lithuania’s area, with forests covering another 27.6% of its area. Lithuania also has 722 distinct rivers, the largest of which is the Nemunas, which flows from Belarus into Lithuania and is nearly 475 km long within the Lithuanian borders.

The average temperature in the area is 17.2 degrees Celsius in July and 4.6 degrees Celsius in January.

Lithuania's neighboring nations are Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east, Poland and the Russian Federation to the south. Among the number of national parks in Lithuania, the largest is the Aukestaitija National Park, established in 1974 and located in the northeastern area of the country.

Lithuania’s People

In 1996, Lithuania’s population of 3,709,000 was made up of 81.3% Lithuanians, 8.4% Russians, 7.0% Polish, 1.5% Byelorussians, 1.0% Ukrainians, .1% Jewish and .7% of other nationalities. Lithuania has a rather large non-urban population for a developed nation, with 33% of the population living in rural areas.

Five cities have populations over 100,000 people; Vilnius with 575,000, Kaunus with 415,300, Klaipeida with 202,800, Siauliai with 147,200 and Panevezys with 123,100. With the declining birthrate in Europe during the last few decades, the population of Lithuania has been no exception to the changes in population statistics. 21.9% of its population is under 14, 61% is between 15 and 59 and 17.12% is over 60 years of age. Lithuania is also very much non-densely populated, with only 56.9 people per square km.

Lithuania's Lithuanian population makes up about 75% of the world’s Lithuanian population. Among it are four main ethnic groups, the Aukstaiciai in the northeast, the Zemaiciai in the west, the Dzukai in the southeast and the Suvalkejciai in the south.

The people of Lithuania are in large part a reserved peoples and tillers of the land. Though they lived near the sea, they never became traders or sailors, preferring to make their lives from the earth. The four major ethnic groups in Lithuania have maintained their distinct cultures over time and are still recognizable to this day. The fact that the Lithuanians were the last “Pagan” people in Europe has led to a different outlook and a different feel in Lithuania to this day, most noticeably a more emotional element in religious customs.

Culture

Understanding some of the culture in Lithuania is massively important in viewing the country today. The fact is that Lithuania has, while becoming a European nation in full retained a very large part of its uniqueness and its rich difference from those around it (with the exception of Latvia and partially Estonia who are still somewhat like Lithuania). Without this strong understanding of their own culture it is most likely that Lithuania never would have been able to be reborn in modern times, especially after so long either subjugated or willingly part of a greater nation.

Culture itself, not just Lithuanian culture, was in a way frowned upon during the Soviet period in Lithuania. Not only was it unofficially against party lines, but it retained a group uniqueness separate from the state and, most importantly, separate from the “brotherhood of man”. Through art, literature and, most importantly, song and folklore, the Lithuanian culture would survive under the Soviet Union, though the culture would not flower again until 1988 when the Soviet government had begun to crumble and the Lithuanians had begun to exert some personal control over their land.

Among some of the mainstays of Lithuanian culture and tradition are the folk stories that have been saved from ruin during the occupations. Both written folklore and tribal art has been hidden away and protected by the intellectual establishments of Lithuania. Today those examples of the Lithuanian past and heritage can be found at the Institute of Lithuanian Language and Folklore, where a massive collection of written history, songs, and tales are held alongside various other artifacts of the rich history of Lithuania. Among those things held here are more than 600,000 songs, the most extensive part of the collection, including many examples of the highly unique form of singing known as the sutartine.

Modern Lithuania seems to hold the same regard for singing as its ancient counterpart did. Choir groups exist throughout the nation and are vastly popular. Among some of the most notable are the Salutaris, Juana Muzika, Brevis and the Kaunus State Choir, among many others. The national song festival takes place in Vilnius every five years. First begun in 1924, when nearly a hundred choral groups and thousands of singers, as well as some dancers, gathered in Kaunus, it has remained alive for the past 80 years and now with Lithuanian independence is a massive celebration. The festival itself lasts three days and currently attracts singers in the tens of thousands, musicians and dancers.

Religion

Historically Christianity is said to have arrived in Lithuania when Jogaila converted to Christianity and united the Polish and Lithuanian thrones. Throughout much of the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania religious tolerance would prevail. Not only was the Jewish religion and population actively accepted, but there was a sizeable Moslem population as well. Calvinism and Protestantism arrived in the 16th century, but never spread very well within the population. At current the majority of Calvinists live in the southwest area of the country while the Protestant population is mostly focused in the north. The Lithuanian religious organizations weathered both Russian occupations fairly well, though both times the Calvinists were the hardest hit of them all.

The Lithuanian Language

The language of Lithuania is Lithuanian. It is quite possibly the oldest, most archaic language still used in Europe today. The Lithuanian language is of especial interest to linguists and historians because of the fact that the language is thought to be the most closely related to the Indo-European languages of Europe’s original settlers. The only language closely related to Lithuanian is that of the Latvians and though the Prussian language was of a close similarity, it was erased by that group’s assimilation into the Germanic peoples.

Beginning in the 16th century AD, the Lithuanian language began a slow development into a written language. The written form was developed based on the Latin alphabet, but due to the extreme difference between the Lithuanian language and most every other European language of the time, it was a massive and time consuming enterprise. The written language was only finally completed shortly after the beginning of the 20th century.

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Early Lithuanian History

The time of the first migration of the Lithuanian peoples into the eastern Baltic region that would become their home is in doubt. The times commonly believed vary widely from 2500 BC to the first century AD. The first mention of the Lithuanian people comes via the Quedlinburg Chronicles in 1009 AD. Here was the first time that the Christian leaders of east Europe had turned their eyes towards the pagan kingdoms in the northeast.

The first attempted conquests were by the Polish and Prussian kings of the area. Though little to nothing would be achieved against the Lithuanians, by these groups, their actions did succeed in forging the first bonds among the Lithuanian tribes in the area. Over the next few centuries, the tribes of the area maintained their independence with little effort, the Christian kingdoms’ forays being of little or no effect.

The first true test for the Lithuanian people would come in the 13th century, when a German religious military order by the name of the Teutonic Knights where invited into the area. Poland tired of not being able to push the Lithuanians back, invited these warrior monks under the guise of the (a true reason or not) of converting the Lithuanians to Christianity. Though the Teutonic Knights would have great success in the northern lands of Latvia, they would have a far harder time against the Lithuanians.

Though the Lithuanians were proving a tougher foes than the Latvians had been, the Teutonic Knights were steadily pushing eastward. The pressure would cause the unification of Lithuania under one Duke Mindaugas, who would embrace the political aspects of Christianity and be crowned King by the Pope in 1253. Thus did Mindaugas become the first and only king of Lithuania, as well as establishing the nation of Lithuania. Finally in 1260 AD, the Lithuanians would hand the Teutonic Knights their first defeat in the ongoing wars. Ironically, this defeat was also against Mindaugas who, after converting, had sided with the Teutonic Knights against a now restless pagan Lithuanian population.

The Gediminaiciai Dynasty

The beginning of the Gediminaiciai Dynasty is marked by the ascent of Grand Duke Gediminas (Gedimin). Prince Gediminas would hold back their perennial enemies on one front and manage to take the Byelorussian lands to the east, take some small parts of the Ukraine to the south east and establish the city of Vilnius. His son Algirdas added lands stretching from the Ukraine to the Black Sea. The third in the line would have the greatest impact though. Known to history as Wladyslaw II Jogaila, he would achieve this name after converting to Christianity and marrying Jadwiga, of the Polish line. He would officially become Wladyslaw II when he was crowned king of a united Poland and Lithuania in 1386.

This unification would not last long though. Within two years, in 1390, Wladyslaw’s cousin, Witold, revolted against the new kingdom. After some few struggles Witold was recognized as the vice regent of Lithuania and in 1401 became leader of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which was now only nominally under control of the Gediminaiciai Dynasty. Together though the two did defeat the Teutonic Knights in 1410 at the Battle of Grunwald (Tannenberg), and while the knights lasted much longer after that, it would be the end of their dominance in the area. Witold himself continued to excel even after the decisive battle and annexed many areas of present day Belarus, Russia and Ukraine.

By 1447, under King Casimir IV, the son of Jogaila, Lithuania and Poland were considered permanently allied. With the accession of Alexander I in 1501 the countries were unified under one ruler. Finally in 1569 the two countries agreed to a common legislature and a common, elected king, and became the Commonwealth Republic under the agreement, the Union of Lublin. The King of Poland now officially also held the title Grand Duke of Lithuania, putting the two separate titles within one entity, permanently.

The new commonwealth, though holding a single king and a joint legislature, called the Seimas, would in other ways retain the two independent halves. The currency, treasury, laws and the army of Lithuania retained an independent form from that of Poland. The new idea of an elected king was the first such occurrence of that institution in Europe, and in 1573 Henry Valois would become the first to rise to the throne through this new institution. By the 16th century, the security of the realm led to a great leap in the cultural development of Lithuania. It was during this time that widespread literature began to appear in the area and also that the Three Statutes of Lithuania were codified. These statues were vast rulings on state law would have a long lasting impact, the third still being used well into the 19th century.

The middle of the seventeenth century would see a vastly different mood and situation in Lithuania. A surging Russia was beginning to push westward and the far less vibrant Poland-Lithuania was unable to stop them as it once could have. The nation was embroiled in wars with Russia from 1654 to 1667 which would greatly reduce its strength. In 1655 Russian forces actually occupied Vilnius (the first time this had happened). The occupation of the city would result in the short lived Treaty of Kedainiai, with Sweden, and a small scale attempt by Lithuania to separate itself from the dying Poland.

But Lithuania remained a part of Poland till the bitter end. In the 18th century Poland would completely absorb the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, ending even those areas in which it had retained control from the onset of the Commonwealth and Lithuania effectively dissapeared from the map. Ny this time though, and even for a long period before, the Lithuanian nation would not have found it possible to exist separately from Poland. Though Poland was weak, Lithuania was weak with it. As well, much of the disputed land of Poland's greatest foe, Russia, lay in what would be called the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

Following Russian successes against, the then great power, Sweden, Russia would band together with Germany and Austria for the Partitions of Poland. In 1772, 1793 and 1795 Lithuania and Poland were divided again and again, fed into the maws of their massively powerful rivals. By 1795 Lithuania was gone, not to appear again for 123 years.

Lithuania: Under the Czars

In the beginning of Russian occupation Lithuania held an honored status. Not only was Vilnius the third largest Russian city, but it was cultivated into a city of learning and of wealth. In 1803 the university in Vilnius was given the name of the Imperial University. The Lithuanians’ status was to suffer an abrupt change with the arrival of Napoleon. Still smarting from their humiliating absorption into Russia, the Lithuanians treated Napoleon and his army as liberators. With Napoleon’s retreat from Russia; only disaster could follow.

Czar Nicholas I was determined to keep such an event from happening again. His policy was to increase the speed of the “russification” of the Lithuanian lands and to weaken its ability to revolt against the Czar or cause other problems. As a result, the area was turned into effectively a backwards Russian hinterland. Revolts by the Lithuanians in 1831 and 1863 would only cause more problems. The University in Vilnius, as well as other colleges in Lithuania, was closed down and the Christian religion was actively denied and replaced, by decree of the state, with the Orthodox Church. Lithuanians as well were denied the rights the purchase land, and erect crosses or churches. As well Lithuania was isolated from the Western European kingdoms and the nobles and peasants alike of the land were among the first in Russia to experience the tradition of deportation to Siberia. 1864 brought the banning of the Lithuanian language and its Latin based alphabet, which were replaced with the Grazdanka (Lithuanian in Cyrillic).

The end of the 19th century would bring a rebirth of Lithuanian culture known as the spring of nations. With the help of the knygnesiai, or book-bearers, education was brought back into Lithuania. Books printed in Prussia, and in the Lithuanian written language, were illegally transported into Lithuanian lands and disseminated among the people. A period of self-education would arise from these books and the Lithuanian people regained their stolen knowledge remarkably quickly. In 1883 one Dr. Jonas Boscanavicius would organize the first Lithuanian periodical, which was also disseminated illegally.

The situation started to brighten in the beginning of the 20th century. In 1904 the Lithuanian authorities managed to persuade the Russian authorities to lift the ban on publishing of Lithuanian publications and to allow the establishment or re-establishment of institutes of higher education. In 1905 the Grand Assembly of Vilnius or Didvsis Vilniaus Seimas, codified their independent rights and sent representatives to the new Russian Duma, in which to defend those rights.

World War I and II and a Short Independence

The Lithuanian areas of Russia would be occupied by Germany from 1914 to 1918, during World War I. On the 23rd of March, 1918 the Kaiser of Germany recognized the independence of Lithuania. Lithuania’s independence was not a guarantee until the capitulation of Germany occurred in November, 1918 though. Sweden would be the first nation to accept the independence of Lithuania on December 12, 1918 and most of the rest of the world would follow suit between 1920 and 1922. Lithuania was admitted to the League of Nations in 1921 and technically had achieved a rank on par with the rest of the world’s free people. But from 1918 onward to 1923 the country was forced to fight for its independence against the Bolsheviks, the Polish and even remnants of German and Czarist armies. Vilnius was occupied by Poland, who would hold it for the next 20 years and Kaunus was to become the provisional capitol.

Politically the country had its first assembly, the Seimas, in session in May 1920, and by August 1922 had proclaimed itself a democratic republic. During those two years the Seimas would introduce a currency, the Litas, develop laws that helped the economy and fostered land reforms and generally lead the Lithuanian people into a new age. New laws and other actions would reduce nobles and the rich merchant's estates and return some land to the peasants. As well, in 1923 Lithuania regained control of its ancient seaport Klaipeida and finally had access to the outside world. This was to be a short lived stability though as conservative and liberal factions could not agree in the long run.

Though there had been great leaps made in Lithuania, politically the country was still a tinderbox. By December 17 1926, a coup d’etat was engineered by one Antanas Smetona, with the help of the army brass, the Nationalist Party and the Christian Democratic Party. The liberals and leftists were expelled from the Seimas and Smetona was then elected president, with Augustinas Voldemaras as his premier. His reign would last until the end of Lithuanian independence.

The rise of the Nazi party in Germany, as well as the disagreements with Germany over the Lithuanian possession of Memel (long a Prussian possession, but lost after World War I) forced the Lithuanians into closer relations with the Soviet Union. The Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, signed August 23rd, 1939, between Germany and Russia had put Lithuania in the German sphere of influence, but following Lithuania’s refusal to join the German invasion of Poland, they were moved to the Russia sphere in a second pact signed September 27th, 1939.

With the fall of Poland, Vilnius was reclaimed and repatriated to Lithuania. The city now became the site of Russian military bases and the event ushered in the first age of Soviet control, which formally began June 15, 1940. Shortly thereafter a new pro-Soviet government was installed into power in Lithuania. Dissidents to the new single party system where rounded up and jailed, while the party actively campaigned for Lithuania’s inclusion into the Soviet Union. On July 14 and 15, 1940 a parliamentary election was held in which Lithuania decided to join the Soviet Union. On August 3rd, the request was accepted in Russia and Lithuania had ceased to exist again.

The German invasion of Russia, on June 22, 1941, caused massive anti-Soviet rebellions across Lithuania. Unable to cope with both the Germans and the rebellions, the Soviet soldiers withdrew from the area and the German armies easily seized the area. With the pillaging of the areas resources and people by the Germans a massive resistance movement would be created. More than 200,000 Lithuanians would be killed in the fighting and Nazi crackdowns that the situation created.

Lithuania Under the Soviets

By 1944, the Soviet army had retaken Lithuania and the area was re-established as a Soviet Republic. In accordance with the Yalta and Potsdam Agreements the entirety of Lithuania was now considered a Russia land. Even before the Soviets had retaken control of the country, a large part of the population, including much of the educated Lithuanians, fled the country. Already Lithuania was being stripped of its heritage, culture and population, and the Soviets hadn’t even started to have their way yet. What would follow would be almost ten years of partisan fighting and massive loses to Lithuania.

Over the next ten years and even while still fighting the Germans, the Soviet government deported around 130,000 to 350,000 Lithuanians to Siberia for holding anti-communist beliefs or for resisting Soviet rule. Churches were formally shut down in 1949 and the priests of the country were in most cases deported, as well it was made illegal to posses any religious icons. Further deportations and increased immigration into Vilnius, of Russians and Polish, would settle the people of the area into relative calm. By 1956, the area was recognized as a Soviet Republic by the world, expect for the United States. All said the land that was Lithuania had lost a massive amount of everything in a very short time. Not only was the economy shattered, or the education system, gone. Not only where religious beliefs made illegal, but all told Lithuania had been stripped of more than 30% of its population. Again Lithuania was reduced to a backwoods hinterland by the Russian government.

The Soviet occupation would work on developing the nation over the next fifty years. They focused on the collectivization of farms, nationalizing industry and generally developing the infrastructure of Lithuania. Unfortunately for the Lithuanians, the new economy was hugely dependent upon the rest of the Soviet Union for raw materials, consisting mostly of refineries and assembly operations. The whole economy was geared towards production and took no regard for Lithuanian needs or resources. One great boon for Lithuania was established in the early 1980s, when one of the largest nuclear power stations in Europe was established near Ignalina and went into operation

Independence Regained

With the massive changes to and instability of the USSR in the 1980s, Lithuanian nationalism resurged. The beginning of perestroika, in spring 1985, by Mikhail Gorbachev would further weaken the bonds of the Soviet Union. Some of the Lithuanian intelligentsia would take advantage of the situation to establish the Sajudis, a democratic movement for reform, on June 3rd, 1985. The movement for Lithuanian independence began to gather steam when some members of Sajudis were elected in the Congress of People’s Deputies, the highest legislative level of the Soviet Union. Furthermore, the new movements in Lithuania linked up with those in Estonia and Latvia to establish common guidelines for independence.

Independence was first declared in March 1990, but the area was forcibly, via economic, political and military force, retained by the USSR. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in August of 1991, the area was given its independence. Along with the other two Baltic states of Estonia and Latvia, Lithuanian was formally recognized by the Soviet Union on September 6. All three of the nations would be included in the United Nations later in the same month.

Communist sentiments would achieve a rebirth in Lithuania shortly after its independence. Though the Sajudis coalition, or the Lithuanian Movement for Reconstruction, won the first parliamentary elections in February 1990, it would decline in power rapidly; due primarily to infighting and to a depressed economy caused by the severing of trade ties with former USSR republics. In February 1992 the Democratic Labor Party or DLP (the former Communist party) won a majority of the seats in the Seimas. Algirdas Brazauskas was elected president with 60% of the vote. Its own popularity would decline though as the economic problems remained unsolved.

The last half of 1992 through 1994 though would be better years for Lithuania. On August 31, 1992 the last Russian troops left Lithuania, making it the first Baltic state to be completely free of Russian military presence. In February 1994 Lithuania joined the Partnership for Peace program, which was a NATO initiative to invite new, primarily former Eastern Bloc, nations into NATO. In December of that year, Lithuanian military forces took part in joint training exercises in Poland, becoming the first, former Soviet republic to take part in NATO exercises.

Lithuania would continue to advance in the mid 1990s. With the passing of a controversial law in January 1995, the Seimas made Lithuanian the official language. The law was controversial mostly because of the large amount of people of Russian and Polish descent who lived in Lithuania. Lithuania would sign a mutual friendship treaty with Belarus in February and a free trade agreement with Ukraine in the same month. In May the nation became an associate member of the European Union.

On the Lithuanian political front though things were not near as stable. The DLP made a poor showing in the local elections held in March as opposition parties gained power in many city and district councils. In June President Brazauskas would accuse the opposition of replacing government officials without due process. December 1995 would bring a major banking scandal to the forefront. The Innovation Bank and the Litimpeks Bank were both shut down by the government after the discovery of widespread embezzlement. The Prime Minister, Adolfas Slezevicius, was ousted by Parliament in February 1996, after it was discovered he had withdrawn his personal savings form Innovation Bank two days before it was closed. President Brazauskas would fill the position with Mindaugas Stankevicius in a temporary capacity until the June elections.

A general election in November 1996 saw the replacement of the DLP with a conservative coalition between the Homeland Union and the Lithuanian Christian Democratic Party. The chairman of the Homeland Union, Gediminas Vagnorius was named prime minister. When President Brazauskas decided not to pursue re-election, an open election led to the narrow margin victory of Valdas Adamkus, a Lithuanian American ecologist. Adamkus, though nominally associated with the Lithuanian Center Party, had formally ran as an independent with the platform of restructuring and rebuilding Lithuania’s economy on a western model. Though his government focused on economic reform and expansion, an economic downturn in Russia in 1998 led to increased recession in Lithuania by 1999.

But things were getting difficult again, as the president actively criticized Prime Minister Vagnorius and the government for their lack of a stand against corruption in business. Indeed, the President would call for Vagnorius’ resignation and in May replaced him with the mayor of Vilnius, Rolandas Paksas. Paksas himself would resign in October of the same year when he was linked with a corrupt privatization sell-off of a Lithuanian petroleum refinery. The next successor as Prime Minister, Andrius Kubilius actually managed to reduce the nation’s deficit and the economy began to make a modest recovery by 2000.

In October 2000, the legislative elections saw the Homeland Union coalition ousted from the government. The new Liberal Union (LU), the New Union (the Social Liberals) and a few other small parties would form a new coalition to run the government. Their nominal leader was the former Prime Minister Paksas and he would become Prime Minister for a second term. The coalition collapsed in 2001 though and Paksas was forced to resign. His replacement was the former president, Brasauskas, who now headed two joint parties under the name Lithuanian Social Democratic Party.

Though President Adamkus who; was chief architect in getting Lithuania into the European Union, headed the government that brought economic expansion and low unemployment and headed into the end of his term with unprecedented approval ratings, he was to lose the January 2003 election. Instead it was Paksas, with the backing of the new Liberal Democratic Party, who would win the election via an aggressive populist campaign platform.

Paksas would serve for little more than a year. In April 2004 he was impeached and voted out of office on grounds that he had; exchanged Lithuanian citizenship for financial rewards, leaked classified information, and meddled in privatization deals. The majority of these charges revolved around his partnership with one Yuri Borisov, a massively rich Russian businessman with rumored links to organized crime, who had helped finance Paksas’ election campaign. Though Paksas denied any wrongdoing he was replaced with interim president Arturas Paulauskas, who would serve the two months before the new election. The former president Adamkus would win the presidential election and was sworn into office on July 12, 2004, becoming the President of the Republic of Lithuania for a second term.

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Leaders of Lithuania

Grand Duchy of Lithuania:

Grand Dukes or kunigaikðtis:

1. Mindaugas (1238-1263)
2. Treniota (1263-1264)
3. Vaiðvilkas (1264-1267)
4. Svarnas (1267-1269)
5. Traidenis (1269-1281)
6. Daumantas (1281-1285)
7. Butigeidis (1285-1291)
8. Butvydas (1291-1295)
9. Vytenis (1295-1316)
10. Gediminas (1316-1341)
11. Jaunutis (1341-1345)
12. Algirdas (1345-1377)
13. Jogaila (1377-1381, 1382-1392)
14. Kæstutis (1381-1382)
15. Vytautas the Great (1392-1430)
16. Svitrigaila (1430-1432)
17. Zygimantas Kæstutaitis (1432-1440)
18. Kazimieras (1440-1492)
19. Aleksandras (1492-1506)

Republic of Lithuania (1918 – 1940)

Presidents:

1. Antanas Smetona (1918-1920)
2. Aleksandras Stulginskis (1920-1926)
3. Kazys Grinius (1926)
4. Jonas Staugaitis (1926)
5. Aleksandras Stulginskis (1926)
6. Antanas Smetona (1926-1940)
7. Antanas Merkys (1940)
8. Justas Paleckis (1940)

Lithuanian SSR

First Secretaries of the Communist Party of Lithuanian SSR:

1. Antanas Snieèkus (1940-1972)
2. Petras Griðkevièius (1972-1987)
3. Ringaudas Bronislavas Songaila (1987-1988)
4. Algirdas Brazauskas (1988-1990)

Modern Republic of Lithuania

Presidents:

1. Vytautas Landsbergis(1990-1992) (Actually was “Chairman of the Supreme Council”)
2. Algirdas Brazauskas (1992-1998)
3. Valdas Adamkus (1998-2003)
4. Rolandas Paksas (February 26, 2003-April 6, 2004 (Removed from Office))
5. Artûras Paulauskas (Interim President)
6. Valdas Adamkus (elected on June 27, 2004)

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Sources

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/destinations/europe/lithuania/index.htm
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/President_of_Lithuania
http://www2.omnitel.net/ramunas/Lietuva/lt_history.shtml
http://neris.mii.lt/homepage/history/history3.html
http://www.randburg.com/li/general/index.html

Aztlán; The place of the seven legendary caves.

Aztlán is the legendary origin of the Mexica, later known as the Aztecs, as well as nearly all other civilizations that migrated South to the Valley of Mexico. In Mexican mythology, the Mexica people emerged from the seven caves carrying their wives into the world and thus were created. The land was harsh, filled with the beasts of nature, and the Mexica soon had to migrate to survive.

The location of Aztlán is not known. Most theories speculate that it must be located northeast of Mexico City, but its exact location cannot be pinpointed. It is commonly believed that Aztlán is located between 60 and 170 miles northeast of Mexico City.

The real difficulty in pinpointing the location of Aztlán is that more than one tribe of people have called it their home, and those tribes did not all likely come from the same place. As it is, Aztlán is almost more of an ideal than a physical place. It is the Spanish El Dorado, or the Jerusalem that may one day be rebuilt when the world's history comes full circle. Tenochtitlan was meant to be a sort of "New Aztlán"

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In 1111 the Mexica people left Aztlán, poor and dejected. They were lead by religious leaders called Teomamas, or "Bearers of God." They would not arrive at their destination and settle permanently until 1345. The Mexican God, Huitzilopochtli, was an idol borne by the four teomamas. The idol's laws were passed down by the priests, and it dictated their course and the events of their journey. Seven clans, called calpulli, of Mexica existed at their outset from Aztlán. During longer stops in ther migration, they constructed temples, and courts to play tlachtli, from both wood and stone at differing times. They also went about the business of abandoning their elderly, who were a burden on them in such a vast overland trek on foot. The Mexica were stricken by drought and famine throughout their migration to what is now Mecixo City. They persisted nonetheless, as the promises of grandeur and utopia from their god Huitzilopochtli were a motivating force and were doled out quite liberally.

In 1163 the Mexica people settled near a large tree just before the New Fire celebration which marked the "New Years" of their calendar, occuring after each fifty-two year calender cycle. The tree split and it was taken as an omen from their god. They had an inquisition of sorts; only the most virtuous were to continue, and the weak and vile must be split from the tribe just as their tree had split. Almost immediately following this, there was another split. According to legend Huizilopochtli's sister (not mentioned until this point) was working sorcery and witchcraft and coercing the Mexica people. It was ordered that she and her followers be left behind in the night.

The Mexica celebrated two more new fires and unsuccessfully established two cities before Tenochtetlan was founded in 1345. The migration was not of a unified body of people. Various tribes of Mexica split and recombined along the way. The prevailing attitude was one of trying to recapture or refound Aztlán, which was remembered as a city surrounded by water and ripe with fish, birds, reptiles and all the conditions that fostered prosperous life. Tenochtitlan would be founded upon a lake in an attempt to mimic these conditions and reestablish Aztlán.

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Bentley, Jerry H and Herbert F Ziegler. Traditions & Encounters. New York: McGraw Hill. 2003.<.small>

Davies, Nigel. The Aztecs. London: Folio. 2002.

 

In the Jesuit Relations, French missionaries were able to witness (and be victims of) Iroquois torture. Torture was nothing new to the French missionaries when they came to New France in the early 17th century. Nor was torture a new idea for the Iroquois when the missionaries arrived in Iroquois towns and villages. But in the European sense, torture was a means to extract information or confessions from prisoners; in the Iroquois culture, torture seemed to be a way to strip the prisoners of their former lives so that they may be integrated into Iroquois society or killed for their spiritual power. Indeed, the entire ceremony surrounding the capturing, pre-torture festivities, the torture, and the post-torture all have deep cultural reasoning; to replace the dead, or, at least, to ease the grieving of the mourners. But more importantly, almost the entirety of Iroquois culture in the early 17th century can be reflected in their torture rituals.

Capture and Pre-Torture

Historical stereotypes of the Iroquois depict them as a war-loving peoples. This is not entirely the case. Before the heavy influence of and Iroquois dependence on European trade, warfare was almost exclusively for the purpose of ‘replacing’ the recently deceased with captured enemies.¹ In Iroquois war, taking captives was essential. Killing off an enemy or even suffering a few casualties “would subvert the purpose of warfare as a means of replacing the dead with captives.”² As mentioned earlier, torture procedures began long before the actual torture. Captives were usually of non-Iroquois nations and villages, and usually those who were on bad relations with the Iroquois because of the lack of trade or political disagreements.³ After initial capture, the captives were abused during the journey back to the Iroquois village; there are conflicting reports⁴ as to the exact treatment of the captives, but both reports state that the hands, legs, feet, and especially fingers of the prisoners were greatly abused and mutilated. The captives were frequently forced to sing, as they were showered with gifts of food and beads and treated as guests of honor or esteemed clansmen and kindred. While being able to perceive the reasoning behind the capture of the prisoner , the French missionaries were not able to see the deeper meaning of the Iroquois kindness. The Iroquois religious, political, and social structures were all based on gift giving. To gain power and influence over a person or a group of people, one would have to give numerous material gifts away, usually beads, furs, or food. Therefore, by giving the captive material gifts, the Iroquois were demonstrating to him that they had absolute power over him;⁵ the power of life or death. “From the victim’s perspective, torture was at once a reminder of his captors’ dominance, a test of perseverance, (reflected in songs and in taunts hurled at the torturers), and an altered state of consciousness similar to a vision quest or a dream that provided contact with sources of spiritual power and paved the way for a new life.”⁶
In the second account in the Jesuit Relations, however, a slightly different story is told. This time, the captive is a French missionary. Like other captives, he is abused on the journey, but when he arrives at the village, he is not treated nicely at all.⁷ This is probably because the French and other Europeans, who had by that time (1653) began to trade directly with some Iroquois clans, did not have a sense of the same gift-giving culture as the Iroquois, and therefore did not exchange gifts often, if at all. This mistake of the Europeans probably led to the practice of not giving gifts to Europeans prior to torture, or maybe, and equally possible, torture practices varied greatly in between Iroquois towns and villages.

Torture

The actual torture process was equally filled with cultural meaning, if not more so. The captives were ‘given’ to a family in mourning over the death of a person of kin, and this family chose whether to adopt or kill the captive. Relations contains stories of both end results. But either way, the captive had to endure hours of torture. Those Iroquois that conducted the torture were seemingly the entire town, but more specifically, it was the young men and the grieving women that tortured the captive. The grieving women, who held a great deal of political power in the Iroquois' matrilineal society, could initially request the ‘mourning-war’⁸ could also ask for a specific harm to be done to the captive; as illustrated by an elderly woman offering beads in exchange for one of Father Joseph Poncet’s fingers. His finger was removed by a child; possibly of the woman’s lineage, for young men within the grieving lineage were expected to retrieve captives in the first place.⁹ Young men did most of the actual torturing, it seems. In the first part of Relations, after a headman or chief tells them to “cease tormenting the captive, saying that it was important for him to see the light of day.”¹⁰ Seeing the light of day would have been important for the Iroquois, who worshiped the sun as a god. But the headmen or chiefs could want either (or both) of two things from this. Either they want the captive to live, to be adopted into the society, or they want to present him to their god, as an offering of sorts. Compared to the previous torture, they did stop, but to the eyes of the witnessing missionaries, they did not. The Iroquois continued to burn the captive’s feet, legs, and occasionally other body parts, but not to the degree as they had previously witnessed. During this time, they were calling the captive “uncle” in what the missionaries presumed to be mocking fashion.¹¹ While it’s possible and probable they were mocking him in some fashion, the “uncle” was probably not part of this. In Iroquois longhouses, the father usually did not live with the children, and so the Uncle of the children filled the role of the father that Europeans were accustomed to; “Uncle” was a sign of respect, and if the captive was to be integrated into the Iroquois society, as was the intention and purpose of the torturing, he would probably be of an esteemed social rank because in this case, he was given to a chief or headsman.¹²

Adoption and Post-Torture

After the torturing of the captive was finished, by his premature death or otherwise, the family he was given to got to ultimately decide his fate; to kill or keep. If the captives were killed, they were cooked and eaten by the Iroquois village, thus they absorbed the captive’s spiritual power.¹³ If the captive were to be kept alive, his wounds were treated, and he became a member of Iroquois society as a member of the recently deceased; “I became aware that I was given in return for a dead man... causing the dead to become alive again in my person, according to their custom.”¹⁴ In the European sense, these adoptees were slaves, but in the Iroquois sense, they were members of their society with little to no political or social power; an infant. These adoptees could live dormantly as ‘lower class’ citizens or they could, using adopted Iroquois culture and techniques, rise through the political, social, or spiritual ranks to wield great power and influence over other Iroquois.¹⁵

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Through torture, Iroquois reflected their complex culture to their victims. The need or desire to keep the captives alive resulted in heroism for the Iroquois warriors. The gift giving ceremonies reflected the social and political system of the Iroquois. The decisions of the grieving women to keep the captives alive or to kill them off reflected women's power within the society. The torturers’ taunts perversely reflected social life in the longhouses. If the captive died his spiritual power was absorbed, reflecting the Iroquois religion in a simplistic manner. And if the captive was adopted into an Iroquois family, he would be learning the culture from the ground up with the basis of what he learned through the torture; eventually revealing to him why he was taken captive in the first place: To replace a member of the recently deceased.

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1. Richter refers to this practice as a “mourning-war” repeatedly within his book, The Ordeal of the Longhouse.
2. Richter, Longhouse, pg. 38.
3. Richter, Longhouse, pg. 49, 41. The Iroquois used a peace of mind type deal. It may not be physical peace, but mental peace.
4. Jesuit Relations, pg. 26; Longhouse, pg 66; Relations reports that the captive wore highly prized beaver skins and Wampum bead jewelry; while Longhouse reports that the captive was stripped of all clothing and outward signs of their former life.
5. Richter, Longhouse, pg. 30-49.
6. Richter, Longhouse, pg. 69. The 'altered state of conciousness' was seen as a pivital part of the captive's spirituality.
7. Relations, pg. 46-57. The Frenchman recieved scarcely any food and was stripped of what little worldly goods he had.
8. Richter, Longhouse, pg. 33.
9. Relations, pg. 52, 53; Longhouse, pg. 33.
10. Relations, pg. 39
11. Relations, pg. 41
12. Richter, Longhouse, pg. 41; Relations pg. 25-27
13. Richter, Longhouse, pg. 36
14. Richter, Longhouse, pg. 69; Relations, pg. 56
15. Richter, Longhouse, pg. 70-71; Richter presents evidence of adopted captives becoming war chiefs, escaping Canadian captivity to warn their previous captors, and even becoming a headman of the Onondaga.

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Richter, Daniel K. The Ordeal of the Longhouse. University of North Carolina Press; 1992.
Thwaites, Reuben, ed. The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents. Cleveland. The Burrows Brothers Company, 1798.

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The Actual Torture

The actual torturing process went something like this (combined from both the Relations and Longhouse sources. And pre-European contact):

1. The grieving family/lineage/woman would request a raid on a 'raid' for captives for the torturing process.
   • Usually the Iroquois men that participated in the raid were from the grieving family's lineage.
   • If larger raids were needed, then the family/lineage/woman prepared a feast for the village. Any man that ate from the feast volunteered himself for the raid.
   • If multiple towns would be arranged, the political leaders from each village met in the traditional manner and decided the proportion of the prisoners that would go to each town.


2. The raiding party would attack a group/village of non-Iroquois people, whether the Iroquois were at peace with those peoples or not.


3. The Iroquois would escort their captives as quickly and as far away as possible. Once the Iroquois considered themselves safe from being captured themselves, they stripped their captives. Occasionally they would mutilate the fingers and hands of the prisoner, beat them with clubs, or mildly slash them with knives.

Women and children were usually, but not always, excluded from the events here on out until the adoption phase. And frequently, very, very frequently, the captive is asked to sing.

4. Once returned or delivered to the Iroquois village, the prisoner was forced to go through a ganlet at the speed of the village's discretion.


5. The captives are thrown a grand feast and given many gifts to show that the village has power over him.


6. After the feast, the captive is forced to sing and dance their way around a longhouse while those Iroquois who were nearby burn or whip the captive.


7. After song and dance, the captives were tied down, and then tortured more. Red hot hatchets were pressed against the body, embers and coals were rubbed onto the skin, cuts, wounds, etc.


8. If the captive were to be put to death, a hatchet to the neck would do the job. But right before his last breath, he was scalped, and then hot sand from the fires was poured onto the exposed skull.


9. If the captive was to live, the wounds were treated and s/he then became a member of the family that adopted them as an Iroquois.

The term "Battle of the Atlantic" could be considered something of a misnomer. After all, it fits most peoples' idea of a military campaign instead: it was a years-long conflict, spanning millions of square kilometers. However, the technologies and intent of the entire conflict in the Atlantic Ocean made what would normally be a campaign become, for all practical purposes, a single battle of incredible length and breadth. For five long years the North Atlantic was a single, tremendous battlefield where ships and boats from Allies and Axis fought in one of the most hostile environments on earth.

Outbreak

During the First World War, Germany had of course made great use of unrestricted submarine warfare, wreaking havoc among Allied shipping. Submarine warfare had nearly knocked the United Kingdom, which was nowhere near self-sufficiency and extremely dependent on resupply by sea. In the event of a second world war, the Germans reasoned, the main strategy would be to enact a submarine blockade of the island and wait things out on the Continent for London to be starved into submission.

There was, however, the matter of the tremendous disparity between the Royal Navy and the Kriegsmarine on the surface. The German navy was far and away not up to the task of taking on the British in a fleet action like the Battle of Jutland from the previous war. Karl Dönitz, commander of the German U-boat service in the months leading up to the war, sought to find a way to redress this balance. The British outnumbered the Kriegsmarine 5:1 in battleships and battlecruisers, roughly eight to one in cruisers both heavy and light, and nine to one in destroyers; obviously, a surface action was out of the question. The answer was to take the upcoming sea battle below the surface by using a large submarine corps. Dönitz and others, expecting the war to begin sometime in 1942 instead of 1939, had hoped for a fleet of some 250 U-boats and a number of major surface combatants with which to create an impenetrable blockade. However, Adolf Hitler had his own way instead, and Germany went to war in September 1939 with a pitiful surface fleet and fewer than fifty submarines. As some needed to be kept at home for training, and some were going to be in dock for refueling and repairs, only seven to ten boats could be at sea at any given time.

First Engagements

The Germans did not initially intend on engaging in unrestricted submarine warfare, where any ship in the combat area, not just military ships of the belligerent countries, was subject to sinking without warning. However, they ended up thrusting it upon themselves when Oberleutnant Fritz-Julius Lemp of U-30 mistook the British ocean liner SS Athenia for a warship and sent her to the bottom. One of the first blows in the war was therefore the first blow of what would become the Battle of the Atlantic.

The first few months of war were a confused melee, with German and British ships, aircraft, boats, and minefields springing up or being sent just about everywhere. Almost immediately the English Channel was blocked off twice: a British minelaying effort forced U-boats to enter the North Atlantic by sailing around Scotland, while German minefields in the Channel and the Thames approaches cut southeastern England off from shipping, sinking almost three dozen ships in a couple of weeks. Unfortunately, the Channel quickly became moot: Norway and France both fell to the Germans in June 1940. The results were twofold: first, Germany had an uninterrupted line of potential ports and airbases running from its own bases to the Barents Sea, letting its ships enter the North Atlantic by passing over Scotland. In case that wasn't bad enough, the surrender of France gave Germany access to French ports on the Bay of Biscay. So, in addition to a massively increased submarine-building program, Hitler's navy now had access to several major Atlantic ports, many of which were out of range of many Allied aircraft. Losses to Allied shipping were significant by this point; they were about to get obscene.

The Happy Time

For awhile after the battlelines were set in Europe, the Germans and Allies stumbled into a position which was quite advantageous for the German fleets. The Allies were still shaking down the convoy system, and were often running single ships across the Atlantic without any escort whatsoever. When they did run, Allied convoys were strained because of the need for warships in other fronts, and convoys of forty or fifty ships would occaisionally run with little more than a single armed trawler or corvette as escort. (This escort policy led to the quick end of the Children's Overseas Reception Board program after the torpedoing of the Volendam and the sinking of the City of Benares, but that's another story.) To make things just that little bit worse, asdic systems on Allied ships could only detect submerged U-boats. The Germans solved this problem by attacking from the surface at night, where surprise could be maximized against blacked-out ships using useless sonar. On top of this, the introduction of wolfpack tactics meant that convoys of forty or fifty ships would routinely come under attack by not just one but dozens of U-boats.

This whole era became known as the Glückliche Zeit, or the Happy Time, to German submariners, as they racked up appalling scores. On average, during this time every German U-boat which put to sea sunk eight merchantmen, and many U-boat captains such as Otto Kretschmer and Günther Prien became "aces" celebrated through the Axis nations with dozens of sinkings. It wasn't until the beginning of 1941, with improved air cover near shore, the Lend-Lease Program between Britain and the United States, and increasing use of dedicated naval escorts such as the Flower-class corvettes began to make things dangerous enough for the U-boats that kills began to level off. However, it would only be a temporary respite. After a brief comeback through the spring and early summer of 1941, the German fleet regained the initiative in an unexpected manner.

More Trouble for the Allies

One would expect the entry of the Soviet Union and the United States - albeit against their will - into the war to have been a disaster for the German fleet. After all, two great industrial powerhouses would be pouring supplies into the conflict. Although that would eventually be the case, the entry of the two great powers into the war reminded the U-boat captains just what the term "target-rich environment" really meant, plunging them headlong into a second Happy Time.

In the east, Operation Barbarossa led not only to German forces rolling over the Soviets; it led to a desperate need by the Soviets for supplies of every kind to try and halt the invasion. Overland routes through Europe were of course foolish, and the land route through Iran required getting shipping there in the first place, which required navigating either the Mediterranean Sea, which was crawling with U-boats and Italy's naval forces, or taking the long and treacherous route around the Cape of Good Hope, which of course carried its own risk. The only other option, short of leaving the Soviets to their own devices, was the most direct sea route possible, from Great Britain or Iceland to the Soviet ports of Murmansk and Arkhangelsk. This route, which was known as the Murmansk Run, was probably the single most dangerous route seamen or pilots could possibly take part in. The fact that the weather in the Norwegian Sea and Barents Sea was legendarily bad notwithstanding, making the Murmansk run involved spending day after day within easy reach of German shore-based aircraft, surface raiders from pocket battleships on down, and of course the ubiquitous U-boat. Allied forces had little to protect themselves aside from luck, what weapons ships could carry, and the occaisional aircraft from CAM ships, which catapaulted their single fighter into the air to defend against bombers or submarines and would then ditch in the ocean, possibly to await pickup. Life expectancy in the frigid waters of the Barents Sea was less than two minutes.

The Murmansk run saw several of the largest convoy battles of the war, where large flotillas of Allied freighters and escorts would engage in combat with multiple converging wolfpacks in addition to surface and air threats. For a year and a half the German forces had by far the upper hand. Convoys would often arrive with less than a third of their original tonnage remaining. One convoy, "PQ-17" from Iceland to Murmansk, lost twenty-four ships out of roughly forty attached to it. With those sunken ships went 210 aircraft, 430 tanks - enough to equip three to five armoured divisions to full strength - 3,350 other vehicles, one hundred thousand tons of general cargo, and 153 sailors. In their haste to make it back to the relative safety of Britain, the returning "QP" convoys would often blunder into pack ice, additional raids, or their own forces' minefields to take even further losses. The runs past Norway kept the Soviet Union supplied, but at grievous cost in ships, men, and equipment which the Allies could not maintain.

Halfway around the world, the United States was recieving a rude awakening to the coming of the war on their Atlantic coast, even as they began preparing for the relentless drive through the Pacific Ocean. American ships had been trading fire halfheartedly with German submarines since May 1941, and wholeheartedly since the end of October, when the USS Reuben James was sunk by U-562. By midyear the British and Americans had divided the Atlantic into strategic zones of east and west, with the British having control over everything east of the Azores while the United States directed its own naval operations, as well as nominally managing those of Canada, which by 1942 was engaging in the lion's share of escort duties. However, the United States Navy was hesitant to change operating procedures when the war broke out, and actively refused to form convoys with escorts, or black out port cities at night, for several months after their declaration of war on Germany. German submarines, which flocked to the American coastline to find targets with the assistance of "milch cow" tanker submarines, found large, unescorted ships, lit up and silhouetted by large cities.

American and Allied shipping in the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean Sea and the eastern seaboard were devestated, and further north German submarines pressed the Canadian navy and merchant marine harder by initiating the Battle of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. In 1942, the appalling count of 1,664 merchant ships were sunk in the North Atlantic alone, 1,160 of those at the hands of submarines, for a total of 7,790,000 tonnes of shipping and uncountable mountains of supplies. At the height of this period, U-boats were operating in the Atlantic and the Norwegian Sea in packs of up to forty boats equipped with longer ranges and better weapons and able to attack with relative impunity.

The Tide Turns

In the end, as is often the rule in modern war, it was the man with the screwdriver or welding mask, and not the man with the lanyard or bomber controls, which settled the outcome of the Battle of the Atlantic. By mid-1943 Allied military production was finally beginning to overtake that of Germany. With the Germans being driven back on the Eastern Front, the Soviet Union had breathing room, and it was the Germans' turn to worry about supply. The famous American Liberty ship program was in full swing, kicking out seemingly infinite numbers of the freighters in unbelievably short amounts of time (the record was five days!). At the worst points of the battle, one ship of 10,000 tons displacement was being sunk every ten hours for period of just over a month; by late 1943, however, the Allies were building ships faster than the Germans could sink them. They were also sinking U-boats faster than the Germans could build them.

The Battle of the Atlantic was as much a war of technology as anything else; fortunes in the conflict shifted back and forth according to who was ahead in reseach, intelligence, and cryptography. Before 1943, the Germans were winning, often devestatingly so, with several convoy routes being practical death sentences. By the latter half of the war, however, the Allies were gaining the edge in every way. Convoys in the late war were lavishly protected relative to the waddling target conventions which made up the first years. Beginning in mid to late 1942, escort carriers began to ply the major sea lanes, providing air cover in the "black pits" of the central Atlantic, previously out of range of any air cover. Ships were now equipped with better sonar, as well as radar accurate enough to see a periscope at a range of nine kilometers or more. Escorting ships carried more and more deadly weapons, such as the "Hedgehog" and "Squid" ASW mortar systems and improved depth charges, and were covered by flocks of ASW aircraft making use of new weapons such as the "Mk. 24 Mine," which was actually the first homing torpedo deployed in war. Codebreaking featured more and more prominently as well, as Allied intelligence officers took advantage of captured Enigma machines and years of gathered information to repeatedly break Germany's encrypted communications. The Germans repeatedly broke Allied channels as well, but by the time that became routine, the Allies could afford to absorb losses.

At last, the wolf packs could be directly challenged and beaten by Allied navies. In April-May 1943, a week-long running battle between thirty U-boats and the heavily-escorted convoy ONS-5 resulted in nineteen submarines sunk or crippled. Although the U-boats sunk twelve merchant ships, it would be their last costly action. Dönitz, horrified at mounting losses, called an end to the U-boat campaign, pulling most of his boats out of the North Atlantic. A little over a year later, the liberation of France after Operation Overlord lost Germany its Atlantic ports. Aside from scattered, ineffectual raiding, the Battle of the Atlantic was over by August 1944, although the ONS-5 battle's end on May 5, 1943 is considered to be a better candidate for the campaign's finish.

Conclusion

The U-boat campaign was one of the largest naval battles in history, possibly second only to the huge actions of the Pacific Theatre. All told, German attacks were responsible for the loss of roughly five thousand Allied ships, including some two hundred warships, of some 22,000,000 tons' total displacement between September 3, 1939 and May 5, 1943. These ships took somewhere between thirty and forty thousand crewmen to the bottom with them. However, losses were light compared to the Germans'. Of the roughly 1,160 submarines built by Germany over the course of the war, approximately eight hundred were sunk, scuttled, or damaged to the point of total loss. 40,600 personnel served aboard the U-boats; perhaps one in five lived to see the end of the war. We tend to see history through hindsight which gives an air of inevitability to things: "Of course the Germans were doomed!" However, it is not always so clear-cut. Almost until the final major battles, the U-boat arm inflicted tremendous losses on Allied fleets, and came very close to cutting off supplies to Britain altogether in the early years. Winston Churchill would later admit that, of all the weapons Germany used in the war, the U-boat was the only one he truly feared. The cordon never fully closed, however, and one hundred eighty million tons of supplies got through the submarine line to Great Britain alone throughout the war.

Legacies of the Battle of the Atlantic continue to the present day, mainly in terms of defining just who "fought" in it and who was simply unlucky enough to be shot at in it. Merchant mariners from all the Allied countries have fought, often for decades, to have their service recognized as just that - service - to recieve the recognition of their status as veterans. It is difficult to see how they could be viewed as anything but military service; the convoys' crews served in what one could consider perpetual combat conditions, waiting for the explosion of a torpedo striking their ship or their neighbour's, defending their ships using what meagre weapons were at their disposal, and, if the worst happened, wondering whether it would be simpler to just dive into the Atlantic and end it all rather than linger for days or weeks on lifeboats. The crews of those waddling, often defenseless freighters did at least as much to win the war as their escorts and the men at the front they helped supply. It is one of history's tragedies that they have only recently begun to be formally honoured for their actions and sacrifices.

The Celtic Bards

The precise nature of the bard in Celtic Europe is difficult to ascertain, partly due to the diverse nature of Celtic society. The bardic traditions of Ireland differed greatly at times from those of Wales, which again differed from the traditions of the European mainland. It also doesn’t help that as keepers of an oral tradition, most of the bards’ history went unrecorded.

In the eyes of the Gauls, the bards were a branch of a threefold order of the learned, along with the druids, and the vates. The former were the priests and scholars of the Gauls, while the latter were held to have the power of prophecy. The primary responsibility of the Gaulish bard was the composition of poems to praise their patrons and the heroes of the people. Not everything they composed was pleasant, however - the satire of the bard was much feared in Celtic culture.

The bards of Ireland may have originally held the same role and powers of those of the Gauls, but in time they were replaced as praise-poets by the filidh, the Irish counterparts to the Gaulish vates. The term bard came to refer more to mere entertainers - storytellers and minor poets, with the title of Ollave, or master poet reserved for those who had completed formal training. It should be noted, however, that even the lower status Irish bards were often on a level with the bards of other cultures in terms of knowledge.

In Wales, the fate of the bards, (bardds) went another way. Their status as learned poets increased over time, and they served as praise-poets and lorekeepers until the rise of Christianity in the region, at which point most were reduced to mere court poets, with most of their creative freedoms severely limited.


The Powers of the Bards

The praise of the bard was considered to be more than just good P.R. for their patrons - it was believed that their words held power to not only highlight the patron’s finer qualities, but to strengthen them and bring new qualities into existence. In the thirteenth century, the Welsh poet Phylip Brydydd was quoted as telling his patron “I made fame for thee.”

If the praise poems of the bards were believed to have beneficial effects that went beyond the reputation of the patron, their satires were feared for much the same reason. The satires of the bards were held to cause not only bad luck to their subject, but also physical harm, illness, or even death.

Historically speaking, this belief in the ability of the bards to help or hinder with their words led to a freedom of speech unheard of in most other cultures of the time, or any time. The satires of a rival’s bard could be countered by the praise of one’s own, but any noble who attempted to place restrictions on the bards would quickly find himself the target of an entire class of well spoken satirists. Even if one didn’t believe in the magical effects of such things, the effect this onslaught of scorn would have on the noble’s reputation could not be easily ignored. The idea of bardic freedom lasted long after belief in the bard’s supernatural powers faded. Even after the bards of Ireland were reduced in status to entertainers, their freedom remained. This is most evident in the poem Fúbún Fúibh, a sixteenth century invective against the ruling class of Ireland, by a bard that was furious at their decision to acknowledge English dominance.


Offshoots of the Bardic Tradition

Throughout the various cultures and bardic traditions many offshoots of the bard arose, each with their own unique place in their society. This includes the aforementioned Filidh and Ollave of the Irish, but can also include the Brehons, the Geilte, and the Pencerdd, among others.

The Brehon, or Breitheamhain, were legislative bards of Ireland. Part of their bardic training was to memorize the laws of the region, which they recited as needed in a monotonous chant. The Brehon lasted to the end of the seventeenth century, their teachings adapted to suit the English after the coming of Saint Patrick. The book of Brehon Law records its own origins: :--"And when the men of Erin heard--all the power of Patrick since his arrival in Erin--they bowed themselves down in obedience to the will of God and Patrick. It was then that all the professors of the sciences (Druids) in Erin were assembled, and each of them exhibited his art before Patrick, in the presence of every chief in Erin.--What did not clash with the Word of God in the written law, and in the New Testament, and with the consciences of the believers, was confirmed in the laws of the Brehons by Patrick, and by the ecclesiastics and the chieftains of Erin."

The Geilte were a peculiarity in terms of the poets of Ireland. It was not unknown for warriors to be overwhelmed by what they experienced in battle, driven mad by the things they witnessed. Those former warriors who retreated to the wild places and lived as hermits were known as Geilte. These warrior poets, while rarely seen due to their reclusive nature, are distinct enough to be separated from the other types of bard.

The Pencerdd were offshoots of the bardic traditions in the Christian courts of medieval Wales. Where their predecessors were linked closely to Druidic worship, the Pencerdd were equally tied to the Christian faith. For every song they sang in praise of their King, they sang another in praise of God.