Arch

Arch (pronounced ahrch)

(1) In architecture, a curved masonry construction for spanning an opening, consisting of a number of wedge-like stones, bricks, or the like, set with the narrower side toward the opening in such a way that forces on the arch are transmitted as vertical or oblique stresses on either side of the opening.

(2) In architecture, an upwardly curved construction, as of steel or timber functioning in the manner of a masonry arch.

(3) A doorway, gateway etc, having a curved head; an archway or the curved head of an opening, as a doorway.

(4) Any overhead curvature resembling an arch.

(5) Something bowed or curved; any bowlike part.

(6) In anatomy, any of various parts or structures of the body having a curved or arch-like outline, such as the transverse portion of the aorta (arch of the aorta) or the raised bony vault formed by the tarsal and metatarsal bones (arch of the foot),

(7) In cobbling, a device inserted in or built into shoes for supporting the arch of the foot.

(8) A dam construction having the form of a barrel vault running vertically with its convex face toward the impounded water.

(9) In glassmaking, a chamber or opening in a glassmaking furnace.

(10) Cunning, crafty or sly.

(11) Playfully roguish or mischievous.

(12) A preeminent person, a chief (largely obsolete except for technical use in ecclesiastical or other hierarchies, (Archdeacon, Archbishop, Archangel, Archduke, monarch, matriarch etc).

(13) One of the basic patterns of the human fingerprint, formed by several curved ridges one above the other.

1250-1300: From the Middle English arch, from the Old English arce, ærce & erce, from the Old French arche, from the Vulgar Latin arca, feminine variant of Latin arcus (arc, a bow), from the Classical Latin atchi, from the Ancient Greek arkhi (to rule).  From the Latin, other European languages similarly borrowed including the Old Norse erki, the Dutch aarts, the Middle Low German erse, the Middle High German & German erz and the Gothic ark.  Archangel was universally borrowed unchanged from the Greek.  Arch was added to many words borrowed from Latin and Greek in the Old English period; it subsequently became a productive form added to nouns of any origin, which thus denote individuals or institutions directing or having authority over others of their class (archbishop; archdiocese; archpriest, archdeacon). More recently, arch, has developed the senses “principal” (archenemy; archrival) or “prototypical” and thus exemplary or extreme (archconservative); nouns so formed are almost always pejorative (archvillain).

Some variations of the arch.

The original meaning, used in architecture of building, bridges and other structures, was by the early fifteenth century applied to eyebrows and anything having this form.  The sense of "chief, principal" used first in the twelfth century as archangel became extended to so many derogatory uses that by mid-seventeenth century, it acquired a meaning of "roguish, mischievous" although over time that softened, by the nineteenth century generally understood to mean something like "saucy".  The verb arch emerged in the early fourteenth century in the sense of "to form an arch" (which had be implied in the earlier arched) and within a hundred years there was the transitive sense "furnish with an arch".  Arch is a noun, verb & adjective, arched is an adjective, arching is a verb, noun & adjective and archly is an adverb; the noun plural is arches.

The Court of Arches

Church of St Mary-le-Bow (bow the archaic name for arch), London, a Church of England parish church in the City of London.

Churches have existed on the site since 1080, the present building designed by Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723) and built over a decade, finally completed in 1680.  The tower has for centuries been noted for its bells which are the source of the legend of Dick Whittington calling him in 1392 back to London where he would sit as lord mayor.  In London tradition, to be thought a true Cockney, one had to be born within earshot of the bells so the demographics of that race were interrupted for two decades, the damage inflicted in 1941 by the Luftwaffe so severe it would not be until 1961 the bells again rang.

A record from the Court of Arches Act books, first session of Trinity Term, 22 May 1665 (Arches A 4, f.115v).

The Court of Arches is the provincial court for Canterbury.  Having both appellate and original jurisdiction, it is presided over by the Dean of the Arches, who is styled "The Right Honourable and Right Worshipful the Official Principal and Dean of the Arches".  The dean must be a barrister of ten years' High Court standing or the holder or former holder of high judicial office, the appointment made jointly by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York.  Although it has sat in other places, the court’s permanent seat is the Church of St Mary-le-Bow, the arches of which lend the court its name.  Technically, the proper jurisdiction of the court is limited to the thirteen parishes belonging to the archbishop in London but, as the office of Dean is united with that of Principal Official, the dean receives and determines appeals from the sentences of all lesser ecclesiastical courts within the province.  Many original suits are also heard, where lesser courts waive jurisdiction by letters of request.  The original jurisdiction formerly exercised by a separate provincial court, known as the Court of Audience, was long ago abolished.

Lindsay Lohan under a colonnaded arch, Miami, Florida, 2013.

The official principal of the Arches court is now the only ecclesiastical judge empowered to pass a sentence of deprivation against a clerk in holy orders.  The appeals from the decisions of the Arches court were once made directly to the sovereign but are now heard by the judicial committee of the Privy Council except on matters of doctrine, ritual or ceremony, which go to the Court for Ecclesiastical Causes Reserved.  Charmingly, the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction Act 1532, dating from the reign of Henry VIII (1491–1547; King of England 1509-1547) remains one of the statutes empowering the court’s original jurisdiction though since the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857, it no longer hears appeals from the consistory courts of the bishops in all testamentary and matrimonial causes.

Convocation

Convocation (pronounced kon-vuh-key-shuhn)

(1) The act of convoking.

(2) The state of being convoked.

(3) A group of people gathered in answer to a summons; an assembly.

(4) In the Church of England, either of the synods of the provinces of Canterbury or York.

(5) In the Protestant Episcopal Church, an assembly of the clergy and part of the laity of a diocese.

(6) The area represented at such an assembly.

(7) A formal assembly at a college or university, especially for a graduation ceremony.

(8) In universities, a term used generally to describe the group (of the institution’s graduates and others) entitled to elect governing bodies such as their senate.

(9) In Indian institutions of learning, a degree-awarding ceremony.

(10) The collective noun for eagles.

(11) In historic Freemasonry, a meeting of companions of a Holy Royal Arch chapter of the Supreme Order of the Holy Royal Arch.

1350–1400: From the Middle English convocacio(u)n (assembly of persons) from the Middle French convocation from the Latin convocātiōn (stem of convocātiō).  Old French picked up convocation directly from the Latin convocationem (nominative convocatio), noun of action from past participle stem of convocare (to call together), the construct being com (together) + vocare (to call).  Vocare was derived from vox (voice).  The form exists in many modern European languages; as well as the English and French convocation, there’s convocació in Catalan, convocazione in Italian, convocação in Portuguese and convocación in Spanish.  Convocation and convoker are nouns and convoked & convoking are verbs; the common noun plural is convocations.

The Holy Royal Arch

A Masonic faction, within Freemasonry the Holy Royal Arch is described as a degree.  The origins of Royal Arch Masonry and the Holy Royal Arch are murky and it’s known only that it dates back to the mid eighteenth century although fragments of Royal Arch rituals exist in Masonic literature from the 1720s.  The first historically verified appearance of was in 1743 when a “Royal Arch” was carried in a Dublin by “two excellent Masons”.  The appearance of the arch provoked controversy and attracted the disapprobation of Dr Dassigny in his critique “A serious and impartial enquiry into the cause of the present decay of Free-masonry in the Kingdom of Ireland” (1744).

Royal Arch Masonry was the subject of a long factional battle within Freemasonry and by 1751 the factions had coalesced into two, the older body paradoxically known as the Moderns, the newer the Antients (an even then archaic spelling of ancient).  Their disputes became increasingly circular and by 1813, Antients and Moderns agreed on an act of union and formed the United Grand Lodge of England.  The compromise became possible by the creation of a protocol under which the union would recognise the Royal Arch (to placate the Antients) but create it as a separate order (to appease the Moderns).

The recognition can be seen as a pyrrhic victory for the Antients.  By 1817, the faction had faded away and, although never formerly dissolved, the membership was soon absorbed into what had previously been the grand chapter of the Moderns with all forming as a group when members attend a grand chapter convocation.  The Secret Society of the Les Clefs d’Or has never denied being a faction of the Freemasons.

Proscenium

Proscenium (pronounced proh-see-nee-uhm or pruh-see-nee-uhm)

(1) In a modern theatre, the stage area between the curtain and the orchestra or the arch that separates a stage from the auditorium together with the area immediately in front of the arch (also called the proscenium arch).

(2) In the theatre of antiquity, the stage area immediately in front of the scene building (probably a medieval misunderstanding).

(3) In the theatre of antiquity, the row of columns at the front the scene building, at first directly behind the circular orchestra but later upon a stage.

1608: From the Latin proscēnium and proscaenium (in front of the scenery) from the Ancient Greek προσκήνιον (proskḗnion), (entrance to a tent, porch, stage) which, in late Classical Greek had come to mean “stent; boothtage curtain”.  The construct in Greek was πρό (pró-) (before) + σκηνή (skēnḗ) (scene; building) + --ion (the neuter noun suffix).  The noun plural is proscenia, the relative rarity of the base word meaning prosceniums is seen less frequently still but both are acceptable.  The standard abbreviation in the industry and among architects is pros.  For purists, the alternative spelling is proscænium and other European forms include the French proscénium and the Italian proscenio, other languages borrowing these spellings.

The occasionally cited literal translation of the Greek "the space in front of the scenery" appears to be another of the medieval-era errors created by either a mistranslation or a misunderstanding.  The modern sense of "space between the curtain and the orchestra" is attested from 1807 although it had been used figurative to suggest “foreground or front” since the 1640s.

Architectural variations

Emerson Colonial Theatre, Boston, Massachusetts.

Although the term is not always applied correctly, technically, a proscenium stage must have an architectural frame (known to architects as the “proscenium arch” although these are not always in the shape of an arch).  Their stages tend to be deep (the scale of the arch usually dictating the extent) and to aid visibility, are sometimes raked, the surface rising in a gentle slope away from the audience.  Especially in more recent constructions, the front of the stage can extend beyond the proscenium into the auditorium; this called an apron or forestage.  Theatres with proscenium stages are known as “proscenium arch theatres” and often include an orchestra pit and a fly tower with one or more catwalks to facilitate the movement of scenery and the lighting apparatus.

Thrust stage, Shakespeare Festival Theatre, Stratford, Ontario.

There are other architectural designs for theatres.  The thrust stage projects (ie “thrusts”) the performance into the auditorium with the audience sitting on three sides in what’s called the “U” shape.  In diagrams and conceptual sketches, the thrust stage area is often represented as a square but they’ve been built in rectangles, as semi-circles, half-polygons, multi-pointed stars and a variety of other geometric shapes.  Architects can tailor a thrust stage to suit the dimensions of the available space but the usual rationale is to create an intimacy between actors and audience.

In the round: Circle in the Square Theatre, New York City.

The term theatre-in-the-round can be misleading because the arrangement of the performance areas, while central, is rarely executed as an actual circle, the reference instead being to the audience being seated “all around”.  Built typically in a square or polygonal formation, except in some one-act performances, the actors enter through aisles or vomitories between the seating and directors have them move as necessitated by the need to relate to an audience viewing from anywhere in the 360^o sweep, the scenery minimal and positioned avoid obstructions.  Because theatre-in-the-round inherently deconstructs the inherently two-dimensional nature of the classical stage, it was long a favorite of the avant-garde (there was a time when such a thing could be said to exist).  The arena theatre is theatre-in-the-round writ large, big auditoria with a central stage and like the sports stadia they resemble, typically rectangular and often a multi-purpose venue.  There’s a fine distinction between arena theatres and hippodromes which more recall circuses with a central circular (or oval) performance space surrounded by concentric tiered seating with deep pits or low screens often separating audience and performers.

Winter Talent Show stage, Mean Girls (2004).

The black-box (or studio or ad hoc) theatre is a flexible performance space.  At its most basic it can be a single empty room, painted black, the floor of the stage the same level as the first audience row from which there’s no separation.  To maximize the flexibility, some black-box theatres have no permanent fixtures and allow for the temporary setup of seating to suit the dynamics of the piece and the spaces have even been configured with no seating for an audience, the positional choices made by patrons influencing the performance.  The platform stage is the simplest setup, often not permanent and suited to multi-purpose venues.  Flexible thus but the lack of structure does tend to preclude more elaborate productions with the stage a raised and usually rectangular platform at one end of a room; the platform may be level or raked according to the size and shape of the space.  The will audience sit in rows and such is the simplicity that platform stages are often used without curtains, the industry term being “open stage or “end stage”, the latter perhaps unfortunate but then actors are used to “break a leg” and “died on stage”.

Open Air Theatre Festival, Paris.

The phrase open air theatre refers more to the performance than the physical setting.  It means simply something performed not under a roof (although sometimes parts of the stage or audience seating will be covered).  The attraction for a director is that stages so exposed can make use of natural light as it changes with the hour sunsets and stars especially offering dramatic possibilities; rain can be a problem.  Open air theatres are also an example of site-specific theatre (of which street theatre is probably best-known), a term with quite a bit of overlap with other descriptors although it’s applied usually to theatre is performed in a non-traditional environments such as a pubs, old prisons or warehouse, often reflecting the history of the place.  Promenade theatre (sometimes called peripatetic theatre) involves either the actors or the audience moving from place to place as the performance dictates.  Interactive theatre is rarely performed (at least by intent); it involves the actors interacting with the audience and is supposed to be substantially un-scripted but, like reality television, some of what’s presented as interactive theatre has been essentially fake.

Borrowed from antiquity, the proscenium arch theatre was for centuries a part of what defined the classical tradition of Western dramatic art but in the twentieth century playwrights and directors came to argue that modern audiences were longing for more intimate experiences although there’s scant evidence this view was the product of demand rather than supply.  That said, the novelty of immersive, site-specific performances gained much popularity and modern production techniques stimulated a revival of interest in older forms like theatre-in-the-round.

There were playwrights and directors however (some at whatever age self-styled enfants terribles), who preferred austerity, decrying the proscenium arch as a theatre based on a lavish illusion for which we either no longer had the taste or needed to have it beaten out of us.  It was thought to embody petit bourgeois social and cultural behaviors which normalized not only the style and content of theatre but also the rules of how theatre was to be watched: sitting quietly while well dressed, deferentially laughing or applauding at the right moments.  A interesting observation also was that the proscenium arch created a passive experience little different from television, a critique taken up more recently by those who thought long performances, typically with no more than one intermission (now dismissed as anyway existing only to serve wine and cheese) unsuitable for audiences with short attention spans and accustomed to interactivity.

Quite how true any of that was except in the minds of those who thought social realist theatre should be compulsory re-education for all is a mystery but the binge generation seems able easily to sustain their attention for epic-length sessions of the most lavishly illusionary stuff which can fit on a screen so there’s that.  The criticisms of the proscenium arch were more a condemnation of those who were thought its devoted adherents than any indication the form was unsuitable for anything but the most traditional delivery of drama.  Neither threatening other platforms nor rendered redundant by them, the style of theatre Plato metaphorically called “the cave” will continue, as it long has, peacefully to co-exist.

Gestapo

Gestapo (pronounced guh-stah-poh or guh-shtah-poh (German))

(1) A branch of German police under the Nazi regime (1933-1945) comprising various sections.

(2) A critical descriptor of any organ (usually) of a state which to some degree resembles Nazi Gestapo, especially in the brutal suppression of opposition (often initial lower-case).

(3) By extension, any oppressive force, group or tactic.

1933: An abbreviated form of the German Geheime Staatspolizei (the construct being Ge(heime) Sta(ats)po(lizei)); literally “secret state police”.  Gestapo is a proper noun.

A typically German abbreviation

It’s an urban myth that Hugo Boss designed the uniforms of the Gestapo.  The field officers of force didn't wear uniforms and in that sense operated in the manner of police detectives while some administrative (district) staff wore much the same garb as their SS equivalents.  When operating in occupied territories under wartime conditions, Gestapo wore the same field grey as the SS with a few detail differences in the insignia.  Hugo Boss was one of a number of companies contracted to produce the uniforms of the SS (Schutzstaffel (literally "protection squadron" but translated variously as "protection squad", "security section" etc)).  The SS began (under different names) in 1923 as a party organization with fewer than a dozen members and was the Führer's personal bodyguard.  The SS name was adopted in 1925 and during the Third Reich evolved into a vast economic, industrial and military apparatus more than two million strong to the point where some historians (and contemporaries) regarded it as a kind of "state within a state".  Of the SS, that's a more accurate description than of many of the apparatuses of the party and state but it was a feature of the Nazi period (not well-understood until after the war) that the internal dynamic was one of a permanent state of institutional struggle for dominance, reflecting Hitler's world view.  Post-war analysis by economists revealed the extent to which this system created structural inefficiencies.

The meme-makers found Hugo Boss's corporate history hard to resist.

The investigative & operational arms of Gestapo comprised the Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo; Security Police) and the Kriminalpolizei (Kripo; Criminal Police), the final structural shape achieved in 1936 when Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945; Reichsführer SS 1929-1945) was granted control of all police forces in Germany, this having the general effect of formalizing the all forces branches of the Himmler’ apparatus.  It was a reward for Himmler’s role in the Nacht der langen Messer (Night of the Long Knives), also called Unternehmen Kolbri (Operation Hummingbird), the bloody purge between 30 June-2 July 1934, when the regime carried out a number of extrajudicial executions, ostensibly to crush what was referred to as "the Röhm Putsch".  The administrative change was notable for marking the point at which control and enforcement of internal security passed from the state to the party, something reinforced in 1943 when Himmler was appointed Interior Minister.

The Gestapo was in 1946 declared a “criminal organization” by the international Military Tribunal (IMT) conducting the first Nuremberg Trial (1945-1946) and although the idea of an organization being criminal seemed novel to many, there were precedents.  Under the Raj, the British India Act (1836) provided that if a man was proved to be a member of the Thuggee (the Thugs, a group of professional robbers and murderers who strangled their victims), regardless of whether his conduct disclosed any actual offence, he might receive a life sentence with hard labor and in laws were passed in the US declaring the KKK (Ku Klux Klan) criminal, a model used in 1919 by the state of California to outlaw “criminal syndication”.  Under Soviet law, someone could even be deemed a member of some organization, even if they didn’t actually belong to it, something of a Stalinist companion the crime of “unspecified offences”.  Germany too had “a bit of previous” in the approach, the Weimar Republic (1918-1933) making it a crime to belong to any “anti-government secret organization”, in 1923 gazetting the Communist Party, the National Socialist Party (the Nazis) and the German People’s Freedom Party among the proscribed.

Remarkably (commented upon even at the time), the Orpo (Ordnungspolizei (Order Police, the “policemen” in the usual sense of the word)) and the Kripo weren’t included in the indictment on the basis they remain “civilian organizations”.  In the trial, the defense raised a number of technical points about the state of German law operative at the time the events being judged transpired and the court accepted some of these but anyway on 30 September 1946 ruled the Gestapo a criminal organization, thus implicating all members (excluding only some clerical & ancillary staff and those who had ceased to be employed prior to 1 December 1939.  In legal theory, this meant all operational SiPo staff active after 1 December 1939 could individually have been indicted in accordance with the available evidence and the expectation was that at least those most senior or accused of the more serious crimes would have faced trial.  However, there was no follow-up “Gestapo” trial, “punishment” limited to those Gestapo staff held in Allied internment camps, almost all of who were released after three years.  Although the Allied Control Commission (ACC) which administered occupied Germany allowed local courts to conduct trials, the number of Gestapo officers tried was comparatively low and even when convicted, the period spent in detention prior to trial was deducted from their sentence, a convention not extended to the seven sent to Spandau Prison after the main trial.  Only in first the Russian Zone (and later as the German Democratic Republic (GDR)) were many Gestapo officers charged and sentenced, almost all released after 1957.

For the majority, like many Germans they were subject to the “denazification” process, the prize of which was to gain a “Certificate of Exoneration”, a piece of paper which appealed to the famously sardonic Berlin sense of humor, soon dubbed the Persilschein (Percil Certificate), an allusion to the popular washing detergent which promised to make clothes “whiter than white”.  Most Gestapo staff received a Persilschein and many either resumed their employment in the new German state and ultimately were credited for pension purposes with their service during the Nazi years.

Politicians often reference the Nazis when attaching their opponents and "Gestapo" is a popular slur. 

Even before World War II (1939-1945) began, the word "Gestapo" had entered the English language as a synecdoche for “police state tactics” and it was in this sense Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) on 4 June 1945 used the word in a broadcast for the UK general election, warning a Labour government (“the socialists” as he called them) would inevitably create such an apparatus to enforce the myriad of regulations and controls they were proposing:

“….there can be no doubt that socialism is inseparably interwoven with totalitarianism and the abject worship of the state. …liberty, in all its forms is challenged by the fundamental conceptions of socialism. …there is to be one state to which all are to be obedient in every act of their lives. This state is to be the arch-employer, the arch-planner, the arch-administrator and ruler, and the arch-caucus boss.

A socialist state once thoroughly completed in all its details and aspects… could not afford opposition.  Socialism is, in its essence, an attack upon the right of the ordinary man or woman to breathe freely without having a harsh, clumsy tyrannical hand clapped across their mouths and nostrils.

But I will go farther.  I declare to you, from the bottom of my heart that no socialist system can be established without a political police.  Many of those who are advocating socialism or voting socialist today will be horrified at this idea. That is because they are short-sighted, that is because they do not see where their theories are leading them.

No socialist government conducting the entire life and industry of the country could afford to allow free, sharp, or violently-worded expressions of public discontent.  They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanely directed in the first instance.  And this would nip opinion in the bud; it would stop criticism as it reared its head, and it would gather all the power to the supreme party and the party leaders, rising like stately pinnacles above their vast bureaucracies of civil servants, no longer servants and no longer civil.  And where would the ordinary simple folk — the common people, as they like to call them in America — where would they be, once this mighty organism had got them in its grip?”

Essex man: Clement Attlee at home, mowing the lawn, Stanmore, Essex 19 April 1945.

It was a controversial statement and even many of Churchill’s Conservative Party colleagues distanced themselves from the sentiments.  The man being accused of planning this police state was Clement Attlee (1883–1967; UK prime-minister 1945-1951) who had served as Churchill’s deputy in the National Government (1940-1945) and was one of history’s more improbable figures to be painted an incipient totalitarian.  The electorate wasn’t persuaded and in the 1945 election Labour won a huge majority of seats in what is described as a “landslide” although the numbers are distorted by the UK’s “first-past-the-post” system; Labour gathered well under half the votes cast but that pattern has subsequently been typical of UK elections and in 1951 the Conservatives actually returned to office despite Labour out-polling them.  Attlee had responded to Churchill’s speech the next day:

“The Prime Minister made much play last night with the rights of the individual and the dangers of people being ordered about by officials.  I entirely agree that people should have the greatest freedom compatible with the freedom of others.  There was a time when employers were free to work little children for sixteen hours a day.  I remember when employers were free to employ sweated women workers on finishing trousers at a penny halfpenny a pair.  There was a time when people were free to neglect sanitation so that thousands died of preventable diseases.  For years every attempt to remedy these crying evils was blocked by the same plea of freedom for the individual.  It was in fact freedom for the rich and slavery for the poor.  Make no mistake, it has only been through the power of the state, given to it by Parliament, that the general public has been protected against the greed of ruthless profit-makers and property owners. The Conservative Party remains as always a class party.  In twenty-three years in the House of Commons, I cannot recall more than half a dozen from the ranks of the wage earners.  It represents today, as in the past, the forces of property and privilege.  The Labour Party is, in fact, the one party which most nearly reflects in its representation and composition all the main streams which flow into the great river of our national life.”

Defiant

Defiant (pronounced dih-fahy-uhnt)

Characterized by defiance or a willingness to defy; boldly resistant or challenging.

1830s: From the French défiant, from the Old French, present participle of the verb défier (to challenge, defy, provoke), the construct thus def(y) + “i” + -ant.  Defy dates from the mid thirteenth century and was from the Middle English defien, from the Old French desfier, from the Vulgar Latin disfidare (renounce one's faith), the construct being dis- (away) + fidus (faithful).  The construct in French was thus des- (in the sense of negation) + fier (to trust), (from the Vulgar Latin fīdāre, from the Classical Latin fīdere (fidelity),  In the fourteenth century, the meaning shifted from “be disloyal” to “challenge”.  The suffix –ant was from the Middle English –ant & -aunt, partly from the Old French -ant, from Latin -āns; and partly (in adjectival derivations) a continuation of the use of the Middle English -ant, a variant of -and, -end, from the Old English -ende ( the present participle ending).  Extensively used in the sciences (especially medicine and pathology), the agent noun was derived from verb.  It was used to create adjectives (1) corresponding to a noun in -ance, having the sense of "exhibiting (the condition or process described by the noun)" and (2) derived from a verb, having the senses of: (2a) "doing (the verbal action)", and/or (2b) "prone/tending to do (the verbal action)".  In English, many of the words to which –ant was appended were not coined in English but borrowed from the Old French, Middle French or Modern French.  The negative adjectival forms are non-defiant & undefiant although there is a kind of middle ground described by quasi-defiant, semi-defiant & half-defiant, the latter three sometimes used in military conflicts where, for whatever reason, it’s been necessary (or at least desirable) for a force to offer a “token resistance” prior to an inevitable defeat.  The adjective over-defiant refers to a resistance or recalcitrance, the extent or duration of which is not justified by the circumstances; in such cases the comparative is “more defiant” and the superlative “most defiant”.  Defiant is a noun & adjective, defiantness is a noun and defiantly is an adverb; the noun plural is defiants.

Defiance in politics: use with caution

The commonly used synonyms include rebellious, direful, truculent, insolent, rebellious, recalcitrant, refractory, contumacious & insubordinate but in diplomacy, such words must be chosen with care because what is one context may be a compliment, in another it may be a slight.  This was in 1993 discovered by Paul Keating (b 1944; Prime Minister of Australia 1991-1996) who labelled Dr Mahathir bin Mohamad (b 1925; prime minister of Malaysia 1981-2003 & 2018-2020) one of the “recalcitrant” when the latter declined to attend a summit meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC).  For historic reasons, Dr Mahathir was sensitive to the memories of the imperialist oppressors telling colonized people what to do and interpreted Mr Keating’s phrase as a suggestion he should be more obedient (the most commonly used antonym of defiant, the others including obedient & submissive).  Things could quickly have been resolved (Dr Mahathir of the “forgive but not forget” school of IR (international relations)) but, unfortunately, Mr Keating was brought up in the gut-wrenching “never apologize” tradition of the right-wing of the New South Wales (NSW) Labor Party so what could have been handled as a clumsy linguistic gaffe was allowed to drag on.

Circa 1933 Chinese propaganda poster featuring a portrait of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (Chiang Chung-cheng).  Set in an oval frame below flags alongside stylized Chinese lettering, the generalissimo is depicted wearing his ceremonial full-dress uniform with decorations.

The admission an opponent is being “defiant” must also sometimes be left unsaid.  Ever since Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975; leader of the Republic of China (mainland) 1928-1949 & the renegade province of Taiwan 1949-1975) in 1949 fled mainland China, settling on and assuming control of the island of Taiwan, the status of the place has been contested, most dramatically in the incidents which flare up occasionally in the in the straits between the island and the mainland, remembered as the First (1954–1955), Second (1958) and Third (1995-1996) Taiwan Strait Crises which, although sometimes in retrospect treated as sabre rattling or what Hun Sen (b 1952; prime minister (in one form or another) 1985-2023) might have called “the boys letting off steam”, were at the time serious incidents, each with the potential to escalate into something worse.  Strategically, the first two crises were interesting studies in Cold War politics, the two sides at one stage exchanging information about when and where their shelling would be aimed, permitting troops to be withdrawn from the relevant areas on the day.  Better to facilitate administrative arrangements, each side’s shelling took place on alternate days, satisfying honor on both sides.  The other landmark incident was China’s seat at the United Nations (UN), held by the Republic of China (ROC) (Taiwan) between 1945-1971 and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) (the mainland) since.

Jiefang Taiwan, xiaomie Jiangzei canyu (Liberate Taiwan, and wipe out the remnants of the bandit Chiang) by Yang Keyang (楊可楊) and Zhao Yannian (趙延年). 

A 1954 PRC propaganda poster printed as part of anti-Taiwan campaign during first Taiwan Strait Crisis (1954-1955), Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek depicted as a scarecrow erected on Taiwan by the US government and military. Note the color of the generalissimo’s cracked and disfigured head (tied to a pole) and the similarity to the color of the American also shown.  The artists have included some of the accoutrements often associated with Chiang’s uniforms: white gloves, boots and a ceremonial sword.  The relationship between Chiang and the leaders of PRC who defeated his army, Chairman Mao (Mao Zedong. 1893–1976; paramount leader of PRC 1949-1976) and Zhou Enlai (1898–1976; PRC premier 1949-1976) was interesting.  Even after decades of defiance in his renegade province, Mao and Zhou still referred to him, apparently genuinely, as “our friend”, an expression which surprised both Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) and Henry Kissinger (b 1923; US national security advisor 1969-1973 & secretary of state 1973-1977) who met the chairman and premier during their historic mission to Peking in 1972.

A toast: Comrade Chairman Mao Zedong (left) and  Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (right), celebrating the Japanese surrender, Chongqing, China, September 1945.  After this visit, they would never meet again.

Most people, apparently even within the PRC, casually refer to the place as “Taiwan” but state and non-governmental entities, anxious not to upset Beijing, use a variety of terms including “Chinese Taipei” (the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA, the International Federation of Association Football) & its continental confederations (AFC, CAF, CONCACAF, CONMEBOL, OFC and UEFA)), “Taiwan District” (the World Bank) and “Taiwan Province of China” (the International Monetary Fund (IMF)).  Taiwan’s government uses an almost declarative “Republic of China” which is the name adopted for China after the fall of the Qing dynasty and used between 1912-1949 and even “Chinese Taipai” isn’t without controversy, “Taipei” being the Taiwanese spelling whereas Beijing prefers “Taibei,” the spelling used in the mainland’s Pinyin system.  There have been variations on those themes and there’s also the mysterious “Formosa”, use of which persisted in the English-speaking world well into the twentieth century, despite the Republic of Formosa existing on the island of Taiwan for only a few months in 1895.  The origin of the name Formosa lies in the island in 1542 being named Ilha Formosa (beautiful island) by Portuguese sailors who had noticed it didn’t appear on their charts.  From there, most admiralties in Europe and the English-speaking world updated their charts, use of Formosa not fading until the 1970s.

All that history is well-known, if sometimes subject to differing interpretations but some mystery surrounds the term “renegade province”, used in recent years with such frequency that a general perception seems to have formed that it’s Beijing’s official (or at least preferred) description of the recalcitrant island.  That it’s certainly not but in both the popular-press and specialist journals, the phrase “renegade province” is habitually used to describe Beijing’s views of Taiwan.  Given that Beijing actually calls Taiwan the “Taiwan Province” (sometimes styled as “Taiwan District” but there seems no substantive difference in meaning) and has explicitly maintained it reserves the right to reclaim the territory (by use of military invasion if need be), it’s certainly not unreasonable to assume that does reflect the politburo's view but within the PRC, “renegade province” is so rare (in Chinese or English) as to be effectively non-existent, the reason said to be that rather than a renegade, the island is thought of as a province pretending to be independent; delusional rather than defiant.  Researchers have looked into the matter when the phrase “renegade province” was first used in English when describing Taiwan.  There may be older or more obscure material which isn’t indexed or hasn’t been digitized but of that which can be searched, the first reference appears to be in a US literary journal from 1973 (which, it later transpired, received secret funding from the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)).  It took a while to catch on but, appearing first in the New York Times in 1982, became a favorite during the administration of Ronald Reagan (1911-2004; US president 1981-1989) and has been part of the standard language of commentary since.  Diplomats, aware of Beijing's views on the matter, tend to avoid the phrase, maintaining the “delusional rather than defiant” line.

Picture of defiance: Official State Portrait of Vladimir Putin (2002), oil on canvas by Igor Babailov (b 1965).

The idea of a territory being a “renegade province” can be of great political, psychological (and ultimately military) significance.  The core justification used by Mr Putin (Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin; b 1952; president or prime minister of Russia since 1999) when explaining why his “special military operation” against Ukraine in 2022 was not an “invasion” or “war of aggression” (he probably concedes it may be a “state of armed conflict”) was that he denied Ukraine was a sovereign, independent state and that Volodymyr Zelenskyy (b 1978, president of Ukraine since 2019) was not a legitimate president.  In other words, Ukraine is merely a region of the modern Russia in something of the way it was once one of the 15 constituent SSRs (Soviet Socialist Republic) of the Soviet Union.  Although the Kremlin doesn’t use the phrase, in Mr Putin’s world view, Ukraine is a renegade province and he likely believes that applies also to the Baltic States (Latvia, Lithuania & Estonia) and possibly other former SSRs.  Lake many, the CCP is watching events in Ukraine with great interest and, as recent “exercises” seem to suggest the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) have sufficiently honed their techniques to execute either a blockade (which would be an “act of war”) or a “quarantine” (which would not), the attention of Western analysts is now focused on the hardly secret training being undertaken to perfect what’s needed for the triphibious operations demanded by a full-scale invasion.  The US think-tanks which think much about this possibility have suggested “some time” in 2027 as the likely point at which the military high command would assure the CCP’s central committee such a thing is possible.  What will happen will then depend upon (1) the state of things in the PRC and (2) the CCP’s assessment of how the long-term “strategic ambiguity” of Washington would manifest were an attempt made to finish the “unfinished business” of 1949.

Lindsay Lohan, who has lived a life of defiance.

The objectification of women’s body parts has of course been a theme in Western culture since at least Antiquity but rarely can as much attention been devoted to a single fingernail as the one photographed on Lindsay Lohan’s hand in July 2010 (during her “troubled starlet” phase).  The text printed on the fingernail was sufficiently explicit not to need a academic deconstruction of its alleged meaning, given image was taken when she sitting in court listening to a judge sentence her for one of her many transgressions; the consensus was the text was there to send a “defiant message” the internet’s collective conclusion (which wasn’t restricted to entertainment and celebrity sites) presumably reinforced by the nail being on the middle finger.  Ms Lohan admitted to fining this perplexing, tweeting on X (then known as Twitter) it was merely a manicure and had “…nothing to do w/court, it's an airbrush design from a stencil.”  So, rather than digital defiance, it was fashion.  Attributing a motif of defiance to Ms Lohan wasn’t unusual during “troubled starlet” phase, one site assessing a chronological montage of her famous mug shots before concluding with each successive shot, “Lindsay's face becomes more defiant — a young woman hardening herself against a world that had turned her into a punch-line”.

The Bolton-Paul Defiant (1939-1943)

The Parthian shot was a military tactic, used by mounted cavalry and made famous by the Parthians, an ancient people of the Persian lands (the modern-day Islamic Republic of Iran since 1979).  While in real or feigned retreat on horseback, the Parthian archers would, in full gallop, turn their bodies backward to shoot at the pursuing enemy.  This demanded both fine equestrian skills (a soldier’ hands occupied by his bows & arrows) and great confidence in one's mount, something gained only by time spent between man & beast.  To make the achievement more admirable still, the Parthians used neither stirrups nor spurs, relying solely on pressure from their legs to guide and control their galloping mounts and, with varying degrees of success, the tactic was adopted by many mounted military formations of the era including the Scythians, Huns, Turks, Magyars, and Mongols.  The Parthian Empire existed between 247 BC–224 AD.  The Royal Air Force (RAF) tried a variation of the Parthian shot with Bolton-Paul Defiant, a single-engined fighter and Battle of Britain contemporary of the better remembered Spitfire and Hurricane.  Uniquely, the Defiant had no forward-firing armaments, all its firepower being concentrated in four .303 machine guns in a turret behind the pilot.  The theory behind the design dates from the 1930s when the latest multi-engined monoplane bombers were much faster than contemporary single-engined biplane fighters then in service. The RAF considered its new generation of heavily-armed bombers would be able to penetrate enemy airspace and defend themselves without a fighter escort and this of course implied enemy bombers would similarly be able to penetrate British airspace with some degree of impunity.

Bolton-Paul Defiant.

By 1935, the concept of a turret-armed fighter emerged.  The RAF anticipated having to defend the British Isles against massed formations of unescorted enemy bombers and, in theory, turret-armed fighters would be able approach formations from below or from the side and coordinate their fire.  In design terms, it was a return to what often was done early in the World War I, though that had been technologically deterministic, it being then quite an engineering challenge to produce reliable and safe (in the sense of not damaging the craft's own propeller) forward-firing guns.  Deployed not as intended, but as a fighter used against escorted bombers, the Defiant enjoyed considerable early success, essentially because at attack-range, it appeared to be a Hurricane and the German fighter pilots were of course tempted attack from above and behind, the classic hunter's tactic.  They were course met by the the Defiant's formidable battery.  However, the Luftwaffe learned quickly, unlike the RAF which for too long persisted with their pre-war formations which were neat and precise but also excellent targets.  Soon the vulnerability of the Defiant resulted in losses so heavy its deployment was unsustainable and it was withdrawn from front-line combat.  It did though subsequently proved a useful stop-gap as a night-fighter and provided the RAF with an effective means of combating night bombing until aircraft designed for the purpose entered service.

The Trump class "battleships"

In a surprise announcement, the Pentagon announced the impending construction of a “new battleship class” the first of the line (USS Defiant) to be the US Navy’s “largest surface combatant built since World War II [1939-1945]”.  The initial plans call for a pair to be launched with a long-term goal of as many as two dozen with construction to begin in 2030.  Intriguingly, Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021 and since 2025) revealed that while the Department of Defense’s (it’s also now the Department of War) naval architects would “lead the design”, he personally would be involved “…because I’m a very aesthetic person.”  That may sound a strange imperative when designing something as starkly functional as a warship but in navies everywhere there’s a long tradition of “the beautiful ship” and the design language still in use, although much modified, is recognizably what it was more than a century earlier.  The Secretary of the Navy certainly stayed on-message, announcing the USS Defiant would be “…the largest, deadliest and most versatile and best-looking warship anywhere on the world’s oceans”, adding that components for the project would “be made in every state.”  It won't however be the widest because quirk of ship design in the US Navy is that warships tend to be limited to a beam (width) of around 33 metres (108 feet) because that’s the limit for vessels able to pass through the Panama Canal.

Depiction of Trump class USS Defiant issued by the US Navy, December, 2025.

By comparison with the existing surface fleet the 35,000 ton Defiant will be impressively large although, by historic standards, the largest (non-carrier) surface combatants now in service are of modest dimensions and displacement.  The largest now afloat are the 15,000-ton Zumwalt class destroyers (which really seem to be cruisers) while the 10,000 ton Ticonderoga class cruisers (which really are destroyers) are more numerous.  So, even the Defiant will seem small compared with the twentieth century Dreadnoughts (which became a generic term for “biggest battleship”), the US Iowa class displacing 60,000 ton at their heaviest while the Japanese Yamato-class weighted-in at 72,000.  Even those behemoths would have been dwarfed by the most ambitious of the H-Class ships in Plan-Z which were on German drawing boards early in World War II.  Before reality bit hard, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) left physics to the engineers and wasn't too bothered by economics.  After being disappointed the proposals the successors to the Bismarck-class ships would have their main armament increased only from eight 15-inch (380 mm) to eight 16 inch cannons, he ordered OKM (Oberkommando der Marine; the Naval High Command) to design bigger ships.  That directive emerged as the ambitious Plan Z which would have demanded so much steel, essentially nothing else in the Reich could have been built.  Although not one vessel in Plan Z ever left the slipway (the facilities even to lay down the keels non-existent), such a fleet would have been impressive, the largest (the H-44) fitted with eight 20-inch (508 mm) cannons.  Even more to the Führer’s liking was the concept of the H-45, equipped with eight 31.5 inch (800 mm) Gustav siege guns.  However, although he never lost faith in the key to success on the battlefield being bigger and bigger tanks, the experience of surface warfare at sea convinced Hitler the days of the big ships were over and he would even try to persuade the navy to retire all their capital ships and devote more resources to the submarines which, as late as 1945, he hoped might still prolong the war.  Had he imposed such priorities in 1937-1938 so the Kriegsmarine (German Navy) could have entered World War II with the ability permanently to have 100 submarines engaged in high-seas raiding rather than barely a dozen, the early course of the war might radically have been different.  Germany indeed entered the war without a single aircraft carrier (the only one laid down never completed), such was the confidence the need to confront the Royal Navy either would never happen or was years away.

The US Navy in 1940 began construction of six Iowa class battleships but only four were ever launched because it had become clear the age of the aircraft carrier and submarine had arrived and the last battleship launched was the Royal Navy’s HMS Vanguard which entered service in 1946.  Although the admirals remained fond of the fine cut of her silhouette on the horizon, to the Treasury (an institution in the austere, post-war years rapidly asserting its authority over the Admiralty) the thing was a white elephant, something acknowledged even by the romantic, battleship-loving Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) who, when in November, 1953 planning a trip to Bermuda for a summit meeting with Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969; US POTUS 1953-1961), opted to fly because “it costs Stg£30,000 if we go by Vanguard, and only £3,000 by air.”  In 1959, Vanguard was sold for scrap and broken up the next year while the last of the Iowa class ships were decommissioned in 1992 after having spent many years of their life in a non-active reserve.  Defiant is of course a most Churchillian word and after World War I (1914-1918, he was asked by a French municipality to devise the wording for its war memorial.  He proposed:

IN WAR: RESOLUTION

IN DEFEAT: DEFIANCE

IN VICTORY: MAGNANIMITY

IN PEACE: GOODWILL

At the time, old Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929; French prime minister 1906-1909 & 1917-1920) wasn’t feeling much magnanimity towards the Germans and nor was he much in the mood to extend any goodwill so Churchill’s suggestion was rejected.  

Depiction of Trump class USS Defiant issued by the US Navy, December, 2025.

The conventional wisdom therefore was the days of the big warships were done and the Soviet Navy’s curious decision in the 1980s to lay down five (four of which were launched) Kirov class battlecruisers seemed to confirm the view.  Although the Kremlin called the ships тяжёлый атомный ракетный крейсер (heavy nuclear-powered guided missile cruisers), admiralties in the West, still nostalgic lot, choose to revive the old name “battlecruiser”.  The battlecruiser (essentially a battleship with less armor) was a brainchild of the naval theorists of the early twentieth century but while the concept was sound (and in practice may have proved so if the theory had been followed at sea) but in service was a disappointment and none were commissioned after 1920 until the Soviets revived the idea.  As recently as 2018, NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) sources were sceptical any of the Russian ships would ever return to service but in 2025 the Admiral Nakhimov (ex-Kalinin) emerged from a long and expensive re-fit & modernization to serve as the world’s biggest warship.  Although fast and heavily armed, concern remains about her vulnerability to missiles and torpedoes.

Depiction of Trump class USS Defiant issued by the US Navy, December, 2025.

The US Navy seems confident about the protection afforded by the Trump class’s systems, claiming “the battleship [the Pentagon’s term] will be capable of operating independently, as part of a Carrier Strike Group, or commanding its own Surface Action Group depending on the mission and threat environment.”  In other words, unlike an aircraft carrier, the security of the vessel does not depend on a flotilla of destroyers and other smaller escort vessels.  The first of the Trump class is projected to cost between US$10-15 billion although, on the basis of experience, few will be surprised if this number “blows out”.  The Trump class will be the flagships for the Navy’s “Golden Fleet” initiative (an old naval term dating from days of the Spanish colonial Empire and nothing to do with Mr Trump’s fondness for the metal).  In an age in which small, cheap, UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles, usually referred to as drones) have revolutionized warfare (on land and at sea), the return of the big ships is as interesting as it was unexpected and analysts are already writing their assessments of the prospects of success.

Although the concept wasn’t new, it was late in the nineteenth century naval architects began to apply the word “class” systematically to group ships of the same design, the pioneers the Royal Navy but other powers soon adopted the practice.  It had long been the practice for warships to be constructed on the basis of substantially replicating existing designs and some truly were “identical” to the extent a series would now be called a “class” but before the terminology became (more or less) standardized, warships usually were described by their “Rate” or “Type” (first-rate ship of the line, corvette, frigate etc) but, in the usual military way, there was also much informal slang including phrases such as “the Majestic battleships” or “ships of the Iron Duke type”.  The crystallization of the “class” concept was really a result of technological determinism as the methods developed in factories which emerged during the industrial revolution spread to ship-building; steam power, hulls of iron & steel and the associated complex machinery made design & construction increasingly expensive, thus the need to amortize investment and reduce build times by ordering ships in batches with near-identical specifications.

Navies in the era were also becoming more bureaucratic (a process which never stopped and some believe is accelerating still) and Admiralties became much taken with precise accounting and doctrinal categorisation.  The pragmatic admirals however saw no need to reinvent the wheel, “class” already well-established in engineering and taxonomy, the choice thus an obvious administrative convenience.  The “new” nomenclature wasn’t heralded as a major change or innovations, the term just beginning to appear in the 1870s in Admiralty documents, construction programmes and parliamentary papers in which vessels were listed in groups including Devastation class ironclad turret ships (laid down 1869), Colossus class battleships (laid down 1879) and Admiral class battleships (1880s).  In recent history tests, warships prior to this era sometimes are referred to as “Ship-of-the-line class”, “Three decker class” etc but this use is retrospective.  The French Navy adopted the convention almost simultaneously (with the local spelling classe) with Imperial Germany’s Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) following in the 1890s with Klasse.  The US Navy was comparatively late to formalise the use and although “class” in this context does appear in documents in the 1890s, the standardization wasn’t complete until about 1912.

As a naming convention (“King George V class”, “Iowa class” etc), the rule is the name chosen is either (1) the first ship laid down, or (2) the lead ship commissioned.  According to Admiralty historians, this wasn’t something determined by a committee or the whim of an admiral (both long naval traditions) but was just so obviously practical.  It certainly wasn’t an original idea because the term “class” was by the late nineteenth century well established in industrial production, civil engineering, and military administration; if anything the tradition-bound admirals were late-adopters, sticking to their old classificatory habit long after it had outlived its usefulness.  With ships becoming bigger and more complex, what was needed was a system (which encompassed not only the ships but also components such as guns, torpedoes, engines etc) which grouped objects according to their defined technical specification rather than their vague “type” (which by then had become most elastic) or individual instances; naval architecture had entered the “age of interchangability”.

A docked Boomin' Beaver.

It’s good the US Navy is gaining (appropriately large) “Trump Class” warships (which the president doubtless will call “battleships” although they’re more in the “battlecruiser” tradition).  Within the fleet however there are on the register many smaller vessels and the most compact is the 19BB (Barrier Boat), a specialized class of miniature tugboat used deploy and maintain port security booms surrounding Navy ships and installations in port.  Over the last quarter century there have been a dozen-odd commissioned of which ten remain in active service.  Unlike many of the Pentagon’s good (and expensive) ideas, the Barrier Boats were a re-purposing of an existing design, their original purpose being in the logging industry where they were used to manoeuvre logs floating along inland waterways.  In that role the loggers dubbed them “log broncs” because the stubby little craft would “rear up like a rodeo bronco” when spun around by 180^o.  Sailors of course have their own slang and they (apparently affectionately) call the 19BBs the “Boomin’ Beaver”, the origin of that being uncertain but it may verge on the impolite.  It’s not known if President Trump is aware of the useful little BB19 but if brought to his attention, he may be tempted to order two of them renamed “USS Joe Biden” and “USS Crooked Hillary” although, unlike those reprobates, the Boomin’ Beavers have done much good work for the nation.

The Arc de Triomphe, Paris (left), Donald Trump with model of his proposed arch, the White House, October, 2025 (centre) and a model of the arch, photographed on the president's Oval Office desk (right).  Details about the arch remain sketchy but it's assumed (1) it will be "big" and (2) there will be some gold, somewhere.

As well as big ships (and the big Donald J Trump Ballroom already under construction where the White House’s East Wing once stood), Mr Trump is also promising a “big arch”.  A part of the president’s MDCBA (Make D.C. Beautiful Again) project, the structure (nicknamed the “Triumphal Arch” and in the style of the Arc de Triomphe which stands in the centre of the Place Charles de Gaulle (formerly the Place de l’Étoile), the western terminus of the avenue des Champs-Élysées) is scheduled to be completed in time to celebrate the nation’s 250^th anniversary on 4 July 2026.  Presumably, on that day, it will be revealed the official name is something like the “Donald J Trump Sestercentennial Arch” which will appear on the structure in large gold letters.  The arch is said to be “privately funded”, using money left over from what was donated to build the ballroom, a financing mechanism which has attracted some comment from those concerned about the “buying of influence”.

Adolf Hitler's (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) sketch of an arch (1926, left) and Hitler, Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) and others examining Speer's model of the arch, presented 20 April 1939 upon the occasion of the Führer’s 50^th birthday (right; note the pattern in carpet).

A model of Germania.  To give some indication of the scale, within the dome of the huge meeting hall (at top of image), St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome would have fitted several times over; its diameter of the dome would have been 250 metres (825 feet).

Commissioned to honor those who fought and died for France during the French Revolutionary (1792-1802) and Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815), construction of the Arc de Triomphe (officially the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile) absorbed 30-odd years between 1806-1836, as a piece of representational architecture the structure is thought perfectly proportioned for assessment by the human eye and perhaps for this reason it has been admired by many.  As early as 1926, Adolf Hitler sketched his vision of a grand arch for Berlin, while bitter experience taught him the big warships were a bad idea because of their vulnerability to air attack, he never lost his enthusiasm for megalomania in architecture and in Albert Speer he found the ideal architect.  Noting the dimensions in Hitler’s sketch, Speer responded with something in the spirit of their blueprint for Germania.  Hitler’s planned the rebuilding of Berlin to be complete by 1950, less than ten years after the expected victory in a war which would have made him the master of Europe from the French border to the Ural mountains (things didn’t work out well for him).  While the 50 metre (163 feet) tall Arc de Triomphe presented a monumental appearance and provided a majestic terminus for the Champs Elysees, Speer’s arch stood 117 meters (384 feet) in height but even though obviously substantial, it would have been entirely in scale with the rest of Germania, the whole place built in a way to inspire awe simply by virtue of sheer size.