On March 15th in military history....in 44 B.C. and 1939

On this day in military history....in 44 B.C. Gaius Julius Caesar, dictator of Rome, is stabbed to death by Marcus Junius Brutus during the Ides of March. Although many people admire Caesar for his military prowess, the fact of the matter is that after defeating Pompey the Great and the Roman Senate during the Roman Civil War, he installed himself as the Roman emperor. Caesar had overthrown a representative-form of government (a democracy more-or-less) and had installed himself as a dictator (like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Saddam Hussein, etc). He was assassinated by Brutus and his co-conspirators who were hoping to restore the Roman Republic. Looking at his death thru the lens of today makes what the conspirators did seem much more along the lines of our own American revolution. Unfortunately, the Roman republic never returned since Caesar's death ignited a new round of civil wars and the ultimate winner was Caesar's grand-nephew, Octavian, who would later change his name to Augustus and become the first Roman emperor.

On this day in military history....in 1939. Germany occupies the rest of Czechoslovakia. Since Hitler had already been "given" the Sudentenland by the other European powers if he "played nice" at the Munich conference in 1938, he decided to just take the rest of Czechoslovakia without asking. After Slovakia declared its independence on 14 March, Czechoslovakia "allowed" German troops to pass thru its borders after Hitler threatened to bomb Prague. I'm sure Neville Chamberlain was very happy to know that "peace in our time" really meant "peace until Hitler decides otherwise."