Thursday, October 4, 2018

Why Was General Earl Van Dorn Murdered?

 

In some ways, historians are like anyone else: they hate to make mistakes. But if you write enough, sooner or later, you will make a mistake—I assure you. I certainly have, but I have been more fortunate than most. Sometimes, mistakes benefit you. What I suppose are my two most significant errors to date came more than two decades apart, and both had overall positive results.

In the late 1980s, I wrote a book entitled Hitler’s Legions. In it, I accepted as fact a U.S. Army intelligence report which stated Generalleutnant Josef Folttmann was killed near Belfort Gap in November 1944. (I was just starting out as a historian in those days and the report was written by the same intelligence officers who gave us the Battle of the Bulge three weeks later, but I did not take that into consideration.) Shortly after Legions was published, Friedrich-Theodor von Stauffenberg wrote to me, corrected me, and informed me that Hans Oschmann was the general who was killed in the battle in question. When I asked him if he was sure, Stauffenberg sent me a copy of a book General Folttmann wrote in 1957—13 years after I killed him off. It listed Oschmann as killed on the date I cited.

4 comments:

  1. Van Dorn lived again in Walker Percy's The Thanatos Syndrome.

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  2. It's been said, that all works of fiction have a tread of truth running through them. To read Author's preface of "The Sky is Falling" A. Weingarten, it become apparent truth is hidden in plane(pun) site. If that's not enough, see how long it takes to find the book, using common search engines. Or even trying to source a copy (took me over a month). The most compelling information to me, was quotes from the first hand witnesses, including military officers. NPR and PBS have done a total whitewash of the historical event. After all, we can't have the public knowing what really happens in reality when a plane actually hits a skyscraper.
    The kinematic equation shows mathematically, that size is a detriment to penetration when it comes to ballistics: Ke=1/2Mass(Velocity sQuared)

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    Replies
    1. The most compelling information to me, was quotes from the first hand witnesses, including military officers.

      Yes and the slave narratives are good.

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