Gideon Writes

For decades historians wondered why Hitler turned on the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, (Operation Barbarossa) when he was at the zenith of his military conquests, and his goons dominated Europe.  Hitler was thoroughly evil, for certain, but he was a political genius nonetheless. Why make such a dumb move, and open the door for his ruin?

From a variety of emerging sources the picture makes more sense now.  Adolf Hitler, so profoundly immoral,  so purely cruel, and so inherently selfish, was incapable of comprehending Churchill thought process.  No sooner had Hitler established his dominance over France, Belgium, and Holland (following his conquest of Norway, Denmark, Poland, and Czechoslovakia) than he extended an olive branch, and a proposal for an honorable peace to England.  Hitler would leave Great Britain to remain free and in trade, the empire will thrive and bloom, and all he asked in return was that England would acknowledge Germany’s hold on Europe. Who would not readily embrace such an honorable pact with the force that has just proved itself as the mightiest in the world?

But Churchill rebuffed the Fuehrer, with no shade of hesitation.  Hitler was sure that the people of England will overthrow this ‘swine Churchill’ and sue for peace. He courted them in his Reichstag speeches. To no avail.

Finally it dawned on him, or so he thought. England and the Soviets are in cahoots.  They wait for the lion share of the German army to be bogged down in a difficult sea landing, and right then the Soviets will march against Hitler from the East.  That is what Hitler would do, and that is what Hitler concluded, Churchill and Stalin are doing.  There was simply no other explanation. The oratory about freedom against slavery, democracy against fascism, light versus dark, were just that — oratory. After all Hitler new a thing of two about oratory. It made no sense for British soldiers to die in order to liberate Holland, or for British cities to lay in ruin, vying to help Poland.

Enjoying what he believed was his brilliant mind that has uncovered the conspiracy against him, Hitler presently devised a solution. Since England would be shelled in her island, and pose no real threat, why not preempt the Russian bear, and meet surprise by an earlier surprise.

Defeating the Soviets will offer a relief to Japan, which then will become a greater threat to the US.  This will diminish any chances (which Hitler assessed as small anyway) for the US to meddle in the European conflict.

It all made perfect sense, and that’s the way it was.

Learning the lessons of World War I, the Belgians have spotted the junction of the Meuse River and the Albert Canal as the weak spot vis-a-vis another German invasion, and have built there the most impregnable fortification in Europe, Fort Eben Emael. The engineering and construction that went into the fort superseded anything the French built on the Maginot Line. Fort Eben Emael was designed to hold out indefinitely against the most massive assault by the Germans. Its fortifications, its massive guns, and dug in storage and reserve, were manned by some 1200 well trained troops.  Military mavens across Europe agreed that Fort Eben Emael is the strongest fortress on the continent.

Alas, in early May 1939, the celebrated fort surrendered after only 30 hours of battle.  What happened?  The Germans had the imagination to dream up a method of attack that the defenders failed to take into account. The Belgians failed in the imagination race.  Using an accurate replica of the fort the Germans meticulously trained a handful of special forces to use quiet gliders to land on the top of the fort, then drop explosives, and gas bombs into the gun barrels, and turret openings. The defenders were quickly paralyzed by the ensuing mayhem, and despite valiant sporadic resistance they never regained their footing, and by noon the next day the Belgians surrendered, opening the gates for the German Panzer divisions to rush westward, entrap the large British expedition force, and doom Europe into a five years nightmare.

Lesson: if your adversary wins the imagination race, he wins the war.  Material count, weapon superiority are no match to a superior imagination.

Watching out the window, at no inspiring sight, dragging his foot — every step a fight. Holding his head — pounding since six,  coughing his bread, puking his mix — no done, no dark, no curtains, no stark: the past, comes alive, better now, then the first time around. Remembering what was is sweeter than when the memory was being made. Tons of goodies to bring up, relive, revive. I am not dead, the past keeps me alive!

The Only source for anything we wish, we desire, we want, we aspire — is the future, which also harbors every single danger, threat, or misfortune we dread, or are clueless about.  The future washes fast into our present, for an instant, and then to our past, where it accumulates folded, packed, for evermore. Yet, there is more future to be had, more risk more opportunity to heed. The future is looming ahead even if we don’t see it, and don’t mind. A settling thought, come to think about it.

To regard partial knowledge as if it were total knowledge is to conclude with finality, act with blindness, move with fanaticism — fall into the abyss and gloating about it all the way to the fatal crash.  Only the recognition of how much you don’t know will give you the tools to turn ignorance into knowledge, and do better in whatever you are doing.

On the other end of this stretch we find the folks whose ignorance has stalled their ride, spiralled their motion, circled their logic, and while they appear in motion, they are actually treading on the same spot. 

 Where are you?  Are you overconfident, quashing your ignorance, or are you frozen by your “maybes,” drowning in your ‘further studies’, hypnotized by the uncertainty ahead?  If you are  ignorance balanced — spend your best energy keeping it that way; if you are off your ignorance balance — first find which side do you incline towards, then spend you best energy undoing the bent. 

All other risks are mitigated if you are ignorance-balance, all other errors are minimized if you are ignorance healthy.  And to the extent that you find yourself off that balance point that is the extent where either risks or errors spring galore across your path.  For my personal take:  my ignorance is my religion.

If I had missed my ignorance I would miss my sense of wonder, mystery would vanish, hope will be moot — because nothing above the expected can possibly, can prospectively come to be.  If I had my ignorance taken I would live my life as if I were watching the same movie over and over again, because knowledge of the future will match knowledge of the past, and a sense of daring and forwardness would be non-existent.  If I had missed my ignorance then all the knowledge I now miss and so possess will have to substitute for all that excitement and fear, all that uncertainty, and the tears — and offer a fitting replacement to that loss.  And when that happens I will worship the religion of comprehension — not yet for me to claim.  In the now I do have my ignorance with me like a shadow, a decree, a given, a recognition, a truth.  My ignorance is my religion and I let it loose.

I never knew how to shriek off guilt without snuffing out my inner delicate vulnerable self.  I had to, to stand up to the waves of reality, the tyranny of the urgent, the ever-growing to-do list.  But whenever I cleared my mind from that paralyzing guilt I also eradicated the tiny flame that fed on the breeze within.  Untoward.  Could not take a vacation, go to loose and slight territory because guilt will come from all directions and ghost me out into a different universe.  I prayed for this malaise to go away, it only clawed itself deeper.  After so long I simply face it off.  Will report.

Observed patterns in a body of data are normally attributed to the data source, taken as reflective of its nature.  Such inference would be proper in the case where all the spewed data is acquired by its reader.  Alas If one allows for a less than perfect detection probability then it can be shown that all observed patterns may be due to a particular data acquisition dynamics.  In fact a perfectly random source of data can be read as a source of any desired data pattern by allowing for a matching data acquisition dynamics.  The only required assumption is that the likelihood to capture and detect a piece of data increases with the increased history of reading the same data.  By applying this ‘familiarity distinction’ over a hierarchy of data readers it figures that the incidental starting pattern taken from the random source will evolve into a durable pattern wrongly attributed to that source.  This result suggests that our science and grasp of reality is due to the happenstance history of data acquisition drawn from the inanimate processes of data absorption, through the evolved particularity of the same along the Darwinian evolutionary ladder.  It also suggests that any serious attempt to see beyond our narrow tunnel of vision will have to involve a roll-back of the steps that so narrowed our vision.

My prime notebook is lined up with 5mm squares, amenable to drawings and engineering annotations.  On its margins – I can’t help myself – I jot down matters that don’t fit the engineering type-cast.   Now lo and behold,  technology offers my loose pen a new outlet. Let’s see how it goes here.