2024

VDH UltraThe End of Everything. History Becomes Now? Part Four: The End of the Byzantines, 1453

Victor Davis Hanson Despite bouts of destructive bubonic plague, the pillaging of the city by fellow Christians from Western Europe during the aborted Fourth Crusade (1204), and a tidal wave of Turkish invasions that finally under the Ottoman Sultanate had surrounded Constantinople, the eternal city of 1453 and its vestigial outlands still held out. Under […]

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Victor Davis Hanson Show

War Gaming Operation Downfall: What If We Invaded Japan? And other listener questions

In this special episode of the Victor Davis Hanson Show, Victor and host Jack Fowler delve into listener questions. The episode kicks off with an in-depth discussion on Operation Downfall, the planned invasion of Japan during World War II, and the alternatives considered, including the use of atomic bombs. Victor provides a detailed analysis of

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The Destructive Generation—Proving America’s Weakest Link

Victor Davis Hanson American Greatness Governor Ronald Reagan, in his 1967 inaugural address, famously remarked, “Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction.” Reagan today might have expanded on his theme by declaring that civilization itself is both fragile and can lost by a generation that recklessly spends

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VDH UltraThe End of Everything. History Becomes Now? Part Three: The Deletion of Carthage, 146 BC

Victor Davis Hanson Carthage had fought and lost two Punic wars against Rome (264 BC–201 BC). After the end of the Hannibalic War (201), the city lost almost all its empire, many of its North African alliances, and was forced to pay Rome huge fines. Yet a mere half-century later, by 149 BC, Carthage was

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Our Revolutionary Times

Victor Davis Hanson American Greatness Sometimes unexpected but dramatic events tear off the thin veneer of respectability and convention. What follows is the exposure and repudiation of long-existing but previously covered-up pathologies. Events like the destruction of the southern border over the last three years, the October 7 massacre and ensuing Gaza war, the campus

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VDH UltraThe End of Everything. History Becomes Now? Part Two: Target Thebes, 335 BC

Victor Davis Hanson As the power of the fifth-century Athenian and fourth-century Spartan empires declined, and after the stunning defeat of Sparta at the battle of Leuctra (371 BC), the most ancient of the Greek city-states Thebes proved re-ascendant. And for more than a decade under the twin leadership of Epaminondas and Pelopidas, it dominated

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VDH UltraThe End of Everything. History Becomes Now? Part One: Why Are Civilizations Erased?

Victor Davis Hanson I wrote The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation out of curiosity as to why on rare conditions wars don’t just end in the capitulation of the defeated, the occupation or annexation of its homelands, or the victors’ demands to pay reparations or fines.* Rather, they sometimes cease only with

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