Instead of the orderly pattern of chapter/blogpost/chapter/blogpost I'd intended, I'm once again in a middle, this time of 'Chapter Three: Blitzkriegs in the West.' There's much to catch up on in the way of Finland and Norway, and then on to Belgium and France, but I just wanted to check in and let off some steam:
BLARGH FRANCE WHY YOU NO DO ANYTHING USEFUL UUUUUUUGH
Alright. Back to normal adult speech patterns. But truly, I've been hearing jokes all my life about France's military pansy-ism, and never really knew why they were funny. I'd learned about the 1789 Revolution, which as far as I can remember wasn't overly joke-worthy, but not much past it. Now I understand! In regards to Poland, Finland, Norway and Belgium they were fairly useless, or at best, bungled. You'd think when it came time to defend their own country, they'd step it up, throw in all the energy they'd been saving by not helping anyone else, and use their brains. Not a bit. I just wanted to go back in time and give their Commander in Chief a good smack upside the head. On the one hand, it's sort of karmic after watching them twiddle their thumbs during invasions of neighborly countries, but the people don't deserve it. Nor do the regular soldiers. But the few at the top... even the French people were like "HEY GUYS, you wanna like, I dunno, DEFEND US? AT ALL? Please?" Epic fail. To be fair, it's just that they messed it up so badly at the start that they couldn't recover, but they did try harder ... when it was too late and Britain was already like "Later, dudes." Then Paris fell and that's about as far as I've gotten in the book. It's fascinating reading. I will do another post about the stuff between Poland and France (chronologically speaking.) This just couldn't wait. It's frustrating enough to read; I can't even begin to imagine how hard it would've been to live through, as a French peasant, for instance, watching it all unfold.
In regards to the actual process of studying, *why haven't I been taking notes?* Because I'm an idiot, that's why. I wish I'd been writing down big names, dates, and places as a quick reference guide, instead of flipping back to the page where I think that information is and usually not finding it. There's just so many people to remember. Lots of titles and relationships to keep straight. I feel like I'm also bad at reading numbers, specifically, comprehending dates and quantities. Maybe they're what my mind drops the fastest in order to keep up my reading pace, or something, so I never remember what numbers I've just read in the previous paragraph. It's fairly frustrating. In addition to a reference list, a glossary would be useful to keep, for unfamiliar military words & phrases, especially. I can start with these things now, but the last 70 pages ... ah, I might have to retrieve the big names and dates. Drat. Oh well. Trial and error, that's life. And it's still fun, even when I give myself homework.
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