Renault

This is the Friends of History Debating Society. I am Gaias John Bachelors and I welcome Germanicus Mark of Layhouse. We are in Londonium 91 AD. It is springtime. We have our cup of wine. We're enjoying ourselves watching the Thames.

We're in no way at risk. We're surrounded by retired centurions, beefy friendly men with their wives and families.

The Londonium doesn't need a wall at this point. The enemy, the tribes have been defeated. The enemy of the Roman Empire is far away against the Emperor's Demission. The dations will trouble the Roman Empire for a few more years until in the second century AD they too are conquered.

However, Germanicus and I enjoy speculating, philosophizing about history. And these last days we've gotten a lesson in how history works. Now and again, in a fevered moment, somebody reveals secrets. And those secrets always seem to be a mark in the trail towards either tragedy or mystery.

Right now the secrets are vague. We're told and all we have is what we're told. We're told that someone got access to classified documents speaking to Ukraine. All matter of Ukraine. It involves five eyes. That's the five nations that work together for intelligence gathering in names Canada in particular. It involves South Korea. It certainly involves Ukrainian government in Kiev.

And it is impossible to judge whether these secrets are valid or as Kiev says forged impossible. There is a great deal of stirring in Washington according to the headlines in the New York Times and the Washington Post. The FBI has been told find out who did this. There's also a suggestion that some of these documents or perhaps all of them are said to be photographs.

We're placed on a public server and so whoever found them maybe stumbled upon them. Here are stories that are going to go on for years. And that's the point. Germanicus, I come to you because you and I have been enjoying ourselves remembering times when secrets are revealed. And everyone then goes, what does that mean? What do we do with the secrets of the enemy?

You're going to start, I believe, in the mid 19th century in the American Civil War. Good even to Germanicus.

Good evening, guys. The leaking of secrets, especially on the eve of a great battle or of a fateful campaign as was Lee's 1862 invasion of Maryland are calamitous earth shaking, maybe shattering events.

And so what happened on the, say around noon on 13 September 1862 is the 27th Indiana volunteers found three cigars all wrapped up and inside were general Lee's orders for the invasion of Maryland where the subordinate commander should go like Napoleon.

He would split up the axis of advance among his core commanders and upon receiving this, you know, sound dipettus gift, McClellan, the commander of the Union armies and the Army of the atomic exclaimed with glee. Now I know what to do.

Here is a paper with which if I cannot whip Bobby Lee, I will be going willing to go home. In other words, I'll throw it over if I don't make the most of this. And of course he didn't make the most of it. And why because he was set upon by higher ups like the overall commander of the war effort William Hallock and he said, maybe this is a deception.

And then Lee was able to move into the battle without his opponent who had full forewarning had properly disposed and ranged his forces. So what we know of the battle of antitamist, it was a bloody as day in American history.

And that it was essentially in decisive, but it was a moment when things could have turned. Now the second incident was it's called the Mechelen incident in which during the phony war as we all recall or the Citts Creek as as Joan propaganda put it right after the war.

Completion of all vice, the German operation against Poland.

Germany, of course, turned to the West. It was expectation that there'd be a huge battle again, just like World War One.

Let me set the scene Germanicus in September of 1939. Germany using the ski excuse of being attacked invaded Poland and crushed and overran the Polish armies bombed Warsaw.

And a few weeks later, the Soviets came in from the east and they partitioned Poland.

Between that event, September of 1940 and the spring of 1940 very little happened on the front. It was clear who the adversary was Hitler and Stalin were working together. They had a non-aggression path.

The British were by themselves with the French, the Belgians were going to participate and they build up a sizable army in the north of Europe.

And the Germans were preparing for an offensive, although there were doubts whether the war would continue. There was talk of can't we settle this?

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