The centennial of the Sykes-Picot Agreement has flooded the better-informed parts of the Internet with everything from the depressingly familiar (blaming the treaty for all the Middle East’s problems) to the refreshingly critical. There seems to be more and more of the latter, which is heartening.

Sykes-Picot was after all not the only plan to partition the Ottoman Empire after World War I, as Middle East expert Adam Garfinkle writes in The American Interest. And blaming it, or any Western design, for imposing “artificial borders” on the region is a dangerous proposition. Taken to its logical conclusion, the idea that only borders that perfectly encompass certain ethnic groups are legitimate invites more conflict, not less.

The Middle East is not the only part of the world that can attest to that. Here are five examples where drawing lines on the map caused even bigger problems.

The World of Tomorrow: 1939 New York World’s Fair

Diesel

Nick OttensFebruary 1, 2016April 20, 2020

From the official 1939 New York World’s Fair pamphlet:

The eyes of the Fair are on the future — not in the sense of peering toward the unknown nor attempting to foretell the events of tomorrow and the shape of things to come, but in the sense of presenting a new and clearer view of today in preparation for tomorrow; a view of the forces and ideas that prevail as well as the machines.

Munich Under Nazi Rule: Color Photos

Diesel

Nick OttensJanuary 25, 2016February 26, 2018

These pictures were made by Hugo Jaeger, Adolf Hitler’s personal photographer. He sold them to America’s Life magazine in 1965, but some weren’t published until 2009. Continue reading “Munich Under Nazi Rule: Color Photos”

Albert Speer’s Nazi Party Rally Grounds

Diesel

Nick OttensJanuary 7, 2016March 14, 2018

The Nazi Party Rally Grounds in Nuremberg, Bavaria were Albert Speer’s first assignment as Adolf Hitler’s chief architect. The grounds he designed — and which featured prominently in Leni Riefenstahl’s propaganda masterpiece, Triumph of the Will — were based on ancient Doric architecture, magnified to an enormous scale and capable of holding over 240,000 spectators. Continue reading “Albert Speer’s Nazi Party Rally Grounds”

Atlantropa: The German Plan to Dam the Mediterranean

Diesel

Nick OttensSeptember 18, 2015September 13, 2020

Discerning viewers of Amazon’s alternate-history drama The Man in the High Castle (our review here) may have taken notice when one of the characters made a passing reference to a German plan to drain the Mediterranean.

It sounds like just the sort of thing a megalomanic Third Reich would do, but they actually didn’t. The Nazis weren’t interested in the plan — but it was real.

Airships in War: Not So Successful in the Real World

Steam

Nick OttensJanuary 18, 2014August 30, 2019

The golden age of the airship began around the turn of the last century, when the first Luftschiff Zeppelin — named after the German Count von Zeppelin who pioneered the construction of rigid airships — was launched.

The possibility that airships might be used in war was quickly recognized. George Griffith’s The Angel of the Revolution (1893, our review here) has airship bombing Russia’s major cities. H.G. Wells’ The War in the Air (1908) describes the obliteration of entire fleets by aerial attack.

Airships: True Liners of the Skies

Diesel

Nick OttensNovember 16, 2013September 1, 2019

Although airships are popular in steampunk, their heydays came during the era that is more typically associated with dieselpunk. They shared the skies with that other novelty, the aeroplane. The two coexist elegantly in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004).

Planes represent adventure and perhaps a tad of recklessness. Airships exhale confidence and grandeur. They represent an era that was characterized by progress and great confidence in it.

Adversity and the Human Spirit

Diesel

Larry AmyettNovember 10, 2013June 30, 2021

Referred to as Armistice Day, Remembrance Day, or Veteran’s Day, November 11 has a special meaning for dieselpunks. The “diesel era” (1920s-40s) arose out a meaningless war (World War I), saw one of the epic wars of history (World War II) and died a slow death in another meaningless war (Korean War). One could say that dieselpunk is born in blood, lives in blood and dies in blood.

Nazis in Antarctica

Diesel

Nick OttensJanuary 3, 2013June 30, 2021

Soon after the war in Europe ended, rumors began to circulate that part of Germany’s military and scientific establishment had fled the fatherland before Soviet troops could conquer Berlin. Stories of missing U-boats and forbidden aviation technologies fueled wild theories of Nazi redoubts and the imminent resurrection of the Third Reich. A huge United States Navy operation in the Antarctic in 1946 seemed only to confirm the worst of fears — that the Nazis’ reign of terror had been able to survive underground near the South Pole.

The German National Redoubt That Wasn’t

Diesel

Nick OttensAugust 21, 2012September 16, 2020

As the war in Europe drew to a close, the Western Allies convinced themselves that the fall of Berlin would not be the end of it. The Nazis, they believed, would hunker down in the Austrian and Bavarian Alps and continue the war from a formidable Alpenfestung in the mountains.

History

Lines on a Map: Five Examples Worse Than Sykes-Picot