Category Archives: World War Two

Educating Ginny

Posted on February 13, 2013 by

We’ve home-schooled our kids through 8th grade. That has had its ups and downs. At one point, just after the twins were born, I decided to have a look at the history of World War Two, the greatest of all … Continue reading →

Posted in Education, World War Two | 66 Comments

IJA

Posted on June 20, 2012 by

Everyone has heard of famous last stands, such as Thermopylae, the Alamo,  or the French Foreign Legion at Camerone.   They are memorable partly because they are rare – generally, soldiers surrender when all is lost, assuming that their enemies give … Continue reading →

Posted in World War Two | 138 Comments

Wizard War

Posted on June 10, 2012 by

Partly because it has some interesting examples of thick and thin problems, but mostly because it’s so damn much fun, I’m going to talk about The Wizard War, by R. V. Jones. Reginald Jones (Ph.D. Oxford, 1934)was one of the … Continue reading →

Posted in World War Two | 13 Comments

Enigma

Posted on March 15, 2012 by

The Western Allies, in World War II,  ran the most successful intelligence effort in history.  They did well against the Japanese, frequently making partial decrypts of JN-25, the main fleet code, along with lots of useful traffic analysis, etc.   … Continue reading →

Posted in World War Two | 60 Comments

Gauge Transformation

Posted on February 23, 2012 by

As a reader pointed out, you don’t need to to have a flypaper memory to be a physicist.  There you can go a long way with a few basic facts and a long chain of mathematical reasoning.  You can see … Continue reading →

Posted in World War Two | 53 Comments

War in the East

Posted on February 2, 2012 by

The books generally say that biological warfare is ineffective, but then they would say that, wouldn’t they? There is reason to think it has worked, and it may have made a difference. Once upon a time,  it was spring 1942, … Continue reading →

Posted in World War Two | 48 Comments