A small, tiny, don’t bother mentioning it nitpick: Under Horthy some 550,000 Jews were murdered, using a conservative estimate. Eichmann himself, who led the effort with a tiny staff, was stunned at the ferocity and diligence of the Hungarian police forces.
Lucky he was an anti-fascist conservative authoritarian. Who knows what bad things could’ve happened otherwise.
I seem to recall that there was a Russian Naval Base that was instrumental in getting Lenin installed. Then later not liking the way things were going tried to overthrow Him.
Everything turned out OK with that one, though. I know–I saw the movie.
Hey, second Eisenstein post this week!
(my bolding)This does not characterize the situation with Japan prior to their defeat. Actually none of it does.
The bakufu administration prior to the Meiji Restoration was feudal, and the groups which worked to overthrow the bakufu were samurai, from which the IJA was created. The Meiji Constitution institutionalized the role of the military in the government. Japan did not have a meaningful navy at this period.
The IJN spend several decades unsuccessfully playing catchup to the army in prestige, and never shared the same level of influence in neither the actual government or the oligarchy behind the throne. It was the militarists in the army who superseded the Taisho democracy of the 1920s with the growing militarism in the 30s which directly lead to the decision to attack the US in 1941.
Japan was never in danger of an external enemy until it attacked the United States.
By the end of the war, the IJN was pretty almost completely decimated and would not have contributed much to the defense of the homeland. Had the US been forced to fight the army on their soil, the number of casualties was expected in the hundreds of thousands.
Interestingly, the final prime minister in the waning days of the war was Admiral Kentaro Suzuki, brought on board to help the surrender faction overcome the “fight to the last man, woman, child and cat” faction based in the army.
Cat?
I suppose that if the seat of government were on the water, it would be vulnerable to a coup by the navy. Somehow they always seem to put it on land, though, where the army can get at it.