The Legacy of War

This is one reason why Europeans understand war differently than Americans:

An Allied bomb left over from World War II has exploded in Germany, killing three military engineers who were trying to defuse it. The blast occurred in the central city of Goettingen on Tuesday after construction workers building a sports stadium discovered it in a densely populated area.

Bomb disposal experts were called to the scene to defuse the 500 kilogramme device, which police said was likely to be British. But it exploded before they could neutralise the device. Another six members of the bomb disposal team were injured in the blast, but all were expected to survive.

The legacy of war remains written into the landscape of Europe in a way that’s not really understandable to Americans. This legacy doesn’t provide a full explanation for why Americans and Europeans tend to view military adventurism differently, but there’s no doubt that it’s a factor.

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Thus Because We Make it Thus

To be a bit more sympathetic than Yglesias, I think that Krugman's argument on Poland might most profitably be put into this form:

A Poland with sensible institutions wouldn't have suffered from the dilemma of being stuck between Russia and Prussia; rather, Russia and Germany might have been at the mercy of Poland.

It was by no means necessary that the dominant state of north central Europe would be Prussia, or later a Prussia-centric Germany. Similarly, there's no reason that the continent-spanning Russian Empire had to stop at the borders of Prussia, rather than a few hundred miles farther east. A Poland with more sensible institutions could have played an active role in structuring its institutions, rather than falling victim to circumstance.

That said, I haven't the faintest real grasp of Polish history, can't explain why Poland settled on the institutions it had, and can't confirm that they had the impact that they're reputed to have. Thus, this observation concerns only the structure of the argument, rather than its historical substance. Finally, I have no idea why people never mention the role of the Habsburg Empire in dissolving Poland; it would be better to say "stuck between Germany, Russia, and Austria."

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It's All in How You Sell It

The obvious move here is, as I suggested last year, to recast Arminius as proto-AIDS activist. Suddenly, Germany has the world's most progressive and forward-thinking national hero. I don't see a downside.

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Romans Where There Should Be No Romans

This is a very interesting find:

Archaeologists have found more than 600 relics from a huge battle between a Roman army and Barbarians in the third century, long after historians believed Rome had given up control of northern Germany. Some of the artifacts are so well preserved that the scientists can already retrace some of the battle lines.

"We have to write our history books new, because what we thought was that the activities of the Romans ended at nine or 10 (years) after Christ," said Lutz Stratmann, science minister for the German state of Lower Saxony. "Now we know that it must be 200 or 250 after that."

For weeks, archeologist Petra Loenne and her team have been searching this area with metal detectors, pulling hundreds of ancient Roman weapons out of the ground. They paint a picture of a highly organized, technologically superior Roman army beset by Germanic tribes in a forest about 80 km (50 miles) south of the modern city of Hanover.

The site is about 90 miles east southeast of the location of the Battle of Teutoberg Forest, where Arminius supposedly kicked the Romans out of Germany in 9 AD. Finds thus far include coins with the visage of the Emperor Commodus, who reigned between 177 and 192. Yes, that Commodus. It's unclear what a Roman army was doing that far from the Rhine at such a late date; permanent Roman fortifications were about 150 miles to the west.

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