Unexpected Endings - Battles for Berlin, Constantinople, etc.

History has two categories of Last Stands. First kind are represented by Thermopylae and the Alamo. The second is exemplified by the Battle for Berlin and the Fall of Constantinople. What chiefly distinguishes the former is that they pre-figure eventual victory. They are the night before the dawn; and so are glorious. . . . . But in the second category of last acts, the sun never rises. The loss of Nazi Germany and Constantinople are final. That doesn’t mean they are uninteresting.

Wretchard writes about the shock in Berlin when the city fell in WWII, and the shock among the population of Constantinople during its fall. Well worth your time and contemplation. The comment thread is fascinating. Only a couple of conspiracy theorists, many remarkable insights. Of course, there's always the possibility that a couple of nuts got on a roll in the comment thread after I read through it. Skip those.

Wretchard describes scenes from the movie Downfall, concerning people in and around Hitler's bunker as the Russians invaded the city. Then he comments,

The characters in Hitler’s bunker are the archeypes; and every tale of downfall has their kind again and again. , , ,

But the true fascination of stories of the End is the realization that great empires — and great ships — are mortal; that and the realization that its most privileged members are often the last to see it. They remain blind to the end, toasting each other, offering one another meaningless Golden Party Badges. Madmen in a madhouse. Those who trusted in the walls of Constantinople, the professionalism of the German Army; or the subdivision of the unsinkable RMS Titanic were according to their own lights the best informed, the most knowledgeable and the most worthy of their societies. Indeed, that is what trapped them. Their lives were so bound up in the paradigms of their system that they could not see it as failing.

Samples of the conversation in the comments:

1. Bob Murphy:
It gives me great pleasure to imagine the end scenes of the presidency of Barry Obama at the close of his first and only term with the tragic death-of-empire mindset of his far left minions as power slips from their grasp and their mental projections collapse.
Clinton’s people stole the cutlery. I wonder what Barry’s people will do, given their intense hatred of the real America.

2. Wretchard:
I wouldn’t wish too hard for any kind of real demise. That has a way of being tough on everyone, but especially on the most helpless. But I think it’s important to remember that defeat, like bankruptcy, exists. It isn’t something that “can’t happen here”. Those who spend out a legacy with the same profligacy with which wastrel runs through a family fortune have to remember they are the custodians, not the beneficiaries of the past.

Of course a real wastrel never sees it until the last coin goes down the slot. But the power of democratic politics lies precisely in the existence of mechanisms which enable realizations, then warnings and finally changes to take place. What democracy is supposed to innoculate against is fantasy, through the franchise of the common man. Charles Krauthammer wrote that “decline is a choice”. . . . .

3. Salt Lick:
But the true fascination of stories of the End is the realization that great empires — and great ships — are mortal; that and the realization that its most privileged members are often the last to see it.

In a different kind of movie, the privileged don’t see it because it never affects them.

Everyday, in this small university town I live in, I run into retired and current faculty who will never experience the creeping economic and social disintegration enabled by their anti-American, Leftist politics. Their pensions and university privileges continue until they die. Those still working will never be laid off. Yet despite their working-class rhetoric, I know from experience that they won’t raise a finger to save a staff job.

Some days I feel like I live among the Nazis who escaped to South America. They’ll die happy in big houses on the nearby mountainside whether America declines or recovers. Grants and taxes collected from the rest of the state will safeguard the idyllic quality of the surrounding community. Life’s not fair.

Read the whole thing.