Historic Replicas

Yesterday I wrote a little about the Louisiana Purchase.  For most people, this marks the beginning of the Wild West era.  Historians, however, use the term  “Old West” to refer to a different time and place.  The “Old West” describes the original spreading out from the Atlantic colonies in New England to the Alleghenies in Pennsylvania.  That happened in the Early American/colonial period between 1676 and 1763, and included western New England, New York State, and part of Ohio. These early pioneers were every bit as daring and courageous as their covered-wagon cousins a century later.  They had to work for it every step of the way; in fact, expanding one hundred miles from the coast took nearly one hundred years of fighting and chopping down trees!  When we think of colonial America, the picture in our heads looks pretty different from the Wild West.  The people in these times were actually pretty similar, though.  Pioneers throughout history have been searching for a better life.  The New England frontier was dangerous, but settlers on its edge were always the people least satisfied with life in more established areas.  Governors sold vast tracts of territory to eager settlers, and while New England had begun as a religious settlement with a strict moral code, its values began to change.  Settlers began to think about more than home, hearth, and heaven; in time, the men and women they most respected were the ones who took risks and got rich.  This overlooked period of American history did a lot to shape the Wild West spirit of adventure we all know and love.

Relive the World War II era with World War II memorabilia replicas. WWII replicas are great items to collect. These things are also ideal for decorating a room with a war motif look. WWII replicas can be used to decorate a restaurant and convert it into a mess hall type bistro.WWII replicas are made using exact specifications from the original items. A Nazi German helmet, for instance, is made from real 18 gauge steel with slugs repro liner, just like the original helmet. Similarly, the German Broomhandle Mouser Pistol replica would be hard to distinguish from the original. The only difference is that the sliding action cannot be disassembled.

…Ben was a born romantic, though, and wanted to be a sailor.  He was enrolled in school for two years, but Josiah, who had seventeen children, could not afford to keep him there any longer and brought him home to work in the shop at age ten- back when colonial costumes were real they hadn’t heard of child labor laws!  Amazingly, that was the end of Franklin’s formal education; from then on, he educated himself through reading and debates with friends.  At 12, Ben became an apprentice in his brother James’ printing shop, and developed a lifelong passion for the written word.  James had started a newspaper, and while Ben longed to express himself in print, he knew his brother would agree.  So Ben began writing letters in the persona of a middle-aged widow named Silence Dogood.  In time, he’d written a series of witty and widely read essays on colonial american life, ridiculing everything from drunken locals to the elitists at nearby Harvard.  James discovered the truth, though, and he was so angry Ben fled his apprenticeship to seek a new start in Philadelphia.

The colonial replicas on our site got me thinking about one of my favorite historical figures, Boston’s own Benjamin Franklin.  Of all the great thinkers and Patriots who helped bring about the birth of our nation, Benjamin Franklin may have been the most accomplished.  Scientist, inventor, musician, philosopher, and politician, Franklin was the embodiment of a renaissance man, and did much to shape American values.  He was born in Boston on January 17th, 1706 (living under British rule until he was 71!), the son of Josiah Franklin, a maker of candles and soap.  Josiah wanted Franklin to study theology and become a clergyman. 

The last chapter of this unknown battle..

… the lightly armed British 1^st Airborne Division was completely unprepared to fight against tanks. To make matters worse, only half of the German paratroopers were able to land the first day, and only half of those could advance on the bridge, while the rest had to defend the drop zones for the second wave.  When the reinforcements finally arrived, they were heavily delayed by the Panzer.   Finally, their radios failed completely, making it impossible for Allied bombers to attack the tanks from above.  Like the Alamo, the 1st Airborne would be immortalized as a classic underdog of military history.  Of 10,000 troops, only 740 arrived in Arnhem.  For four days, they used their WWII guns against overwhelming opposition, and while they were eventually overwhelmed and taken prisoner, their courage is legendary.

Things were looking good for the Allie Powers when Market Garden began. In Southern Holland, the 101st Airborne Division had captured four of five bridges (the German army blew up the fifth one at Son), and on the ground, the 30th Corps was on its way.  Within hours, however, the tide began to turn. While Nazi forces in Holland were fractured and disorganized, they were unexpectedly reinforced by over 65,000 troops from the retreating 15th Army, and by the arrival of the 2nd Panzer Corps, an elite tank force that proved to be the deciding factor of the battle.  Allied aerial reconnaissance had shown evidence of the tanks, but was dismissed by the high command.  Wilhelm Bittrich, the shrewd leader of the Panzer Corps, had ordered his troops to maintain strong defensive positions on the roads leading to Arnhem, and the lightly armed British 1st Airborne Division was completely unprepared to fight against tanks. 

Operation Market Garden began as scheduled on September 17th, 1944.  The airborne force consisted of the American 82nd and 101st airborne divisions and the British 1st airborne division, and was later supplemented by the Polish 1st Parachute Brigade.  Thousands of troops dropped into the sky over Holland and hurried towards their targets.  The Americans had to secure a series of bridges along highway 69, clearing the way for the British 30th Corps on the ground to proceed to the Dutch city of Arnhem on the Rhine River.  Arnhem was on the border with Germany and considered an ideal staging area for the final Allied advance into Germany.  The British paratroopers had the extremely dangerous task of eliminating the WWII German helmet troops in Arnhem and holding out against a siege, WWII guns blazing, until the ground forces could arrive.   The plan was risky; success depended on the ground forces’ ability to make their way swiftly through Holland and relieve the valiant airborne troops.  American Field Marshall Montgomery claimed he could reach Arnhem by land in two days, and British General Browning famously replied that while his paratroopers could hold out four, he believed they might have gone “a bridge too far.”   As it turned out, he was all too right.  In a classic intelligence blunder, the Allies had drastically underestimated the number of German troops in the area, and Operation Market Garden would ultimately prove impossible. 

After perusing the World War II replicas websites, and watching the epic A Bridge Too Far, I decided to take a closer look at the monumental, yet at times overlooked Operation Market Garden.  In the fall of 1944, the Germans had suffered a string of defeats at Normandy on D-Day and across France that summer, retreating to Eastern France towards the German border.  American General and future President Dwight Eisenhower felt the time was right to launch a full-scale invasion of Northern Germany, laying waste to the region’s industrial centers before pushing on to Berlin.  The most effective way was to go through German-occupied Holland and cross the Rhine, a river on German-Dutch border.  The Allies had a mighty task ahead of them; they had to control Holland’s Highway 69 (tragically nicknamed “Hell’s Highway” in the aftermath), and three major bridges along the route, to move troops and equipment.  The bridges were the tricky part, since the Germans could blow them up if they figured out what was going on, and halt the invasion for weeks.  Speed and surprise were essential, and the Allied generals reasoned that paratroopers were the answer. Market Garden was born, a joint collaboration of American, British, Polish, and Canadian troops that poured into Holland by land and air.  The WWII paratroopers are the really amazing part; over 34,600 men were dropped into enemy territory, the largest airborne offensive in human history.  The stage was set for one of the greatest battles ever fought. 

In the rough and tumble days of the frontier West, lawmen and outlaws alike were only as good as the guns they carried. Slowly but surely, word would spread about the great men and women of the day, and over time, they became legends.  People on both sides of the law were known by their firearms, and in many cases, their weapons became priceless collector’s items (the one Robert Ford used to kill Jesse James was sold at auction for $350,000!).  One gun stands out from the rest, though, and that’s the Colt. 

Founder Samuel Colt had a simple yet unprecedented design: the automatic revolving chamber, which for the first time allowed gunfighters to fire up to six rounds without reloading.  It became the most famous of all Wild West guns, and won many a famous battle.  Billy the Kid favored the .41 Colt Thunderer, a double-action revolver that could fire without having to pull the hammer before each shot (another Colt innovation).  It gave him a distinct advantage over opponents with less advanced firearms.  Famous lawman Bat Masterson used a Colt .45, and did much to enhance the weapon’s reputation.  Outlaws Frank and Jesse James used them too; they are among the greatest figures of the Old West, and for a time, the Colt was synonymous with their names.  It’s no wonder that the Colt western revolver is the most famous weapon of our frontier past. 

Writing about the Civil War weapons and the Civil War replicas on our site has gotten me thinking about slavery and the larger role it’s played in human history.  Slavery is nearly as old as humanity itself. It is the ownership of one human being by another, the antithesis of the basic human rights guaranteed by the United States and other modern nations.  It is one of the most oppressive, horrific institutions ever devised, and, tragically, one that appears frequently in our history books.  Slavery was not invented in one place and imported elsewhere, to be foisted upon innocent native peoples like alcohol on the American Indians.  Nor was slavery a fluke, a detestable byproduct of one people’s excessive cruelty or pride.  Rather, the subjugation of others appears to have been a basic human impulse indulged all over the world, and one that’s only recently been curbed by compassion and collective reason.  Today, of course, individual freedom and the equality of all people are central to our culture, and the idea of slavery often fills us with disgust.  But different times had different ideals, and when slavery was the norm, many otherwise decent people probably thought it was the natural order of things, and never questioned it.  We’re all products of our environment, and as such, it’s important not to judge past generations too harshly.  Slavery has been justified in a variety of ways, and taken many forms over the course of history.  Let’s explore some of them and try to understand it a little better.