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The Bismarck, probably Germany’s most famous battleship in World War Two, was sunk on May 27th 1941. The Bismarck had already sunk HMS Hood before being sunk herself. For many, the end of the Hood and Bismarck symbolised the end of the time when battleships were the dominant force in naval warfare, to be replaced by submarines and aircraft carriers and the advantages these ships gave to naval commanders. The Bismarck displaced over 50,000 tons and 40% of this displacement was armour. Such armour gave the Bismarck many advantages in protection but it did not inhibit her speed – she was capable of 29 knots. Launched in 1939, the Bismarck carried a formidable array of weaponry – 8 x 15 inch guns, 12 x 5.9 inch guns, 16 x 4.1 inch AA guns, 16 x 20mm AA guns and 2 x Arado 96 aircraft. The Bismarck had a crew of 2,200.

In comparison, HMS Hood (built 20 years before Bismarck) was 44,600 tons, had a crew of 1,419 and was faster than the Bismarck with a maximum speed of 32 knots. The Hood had been launched in 1918 and was armed with 8 x 15 inch guns, 12 x 5.5 inch guns, 8 x 4 inch AA guns, 24 x 2 pounder guns and 4 x 21 inch torpedoes. However, the Hood suffered from one major flaw – she did not have the same amount of armour as the Bismarck. The fact that the Hood was faster than the Bismarck by 3 knots was as a result of her lack of sufficient armour. Within two minutes of being hit by the Bismarck, the Hood had broken her back and sunk. On May 18th, 1941, the Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen slipped out of the Baltic port of Gdynia to attack Allied convoys in the Atlantic. Grand Admiral Raeder had already had experience of large warships attacking convoys at sea. Ships such as the Graf Spee, Admiral Scheer (both pocket battleships), Hipper (a cruiser) and Scharnhorst (a battle cruiser) had already been at sea but had found that their power was limited by the fact that they were so far from a dock/port that could carry out repairs if they were needed. Such a difficulty meant that mighty ships such as the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were loathed to take on a convoy if that convoy was protected by any naval ship...

What better way to show God you appreciate him than to squander his most precious gift, life, in a miasma of ruthlessness and gore? In addition to justifying Crusades, Witch Trials and Wars, this theological breakthrough is also the main justification for the time-honored practice of human sacrifice. Sacrifices are perhaps the most ancient method to honor deities, going right back to the earliest ancestor-worship religions of Egypt and Mesopotamia. The original theory was "everyone needs to eat," including the ancestor-gods. So priests would dutifully leave food sitting out for the gods, who would never actually eat the food.

It was embarrassing to have all this food sitting around, so the priests eventually began burning, cutting or bleeding the sacrifices instead of just leaving them out to rot. As time went on, the original theory of feeding the gods was forgotten and the practice became a ritual which was essentially meaningless to its participants (like the use of chrism in a Christian baptism, just for example). The first sacrifices consisted of food and meat, but the emphasis slowly shifted to animal sacrifice and from there to blood sacrifice. Once you've moved past the notion that you're actually feeding the gods, an animal hierarchy kicks in, so a goat is a better sacrifice than a chicken, and a cow is better than a goat. So what would be the bestest sacrifice of all? Eureka! There is some controversy about when the practice of human sacrifice actually began.

Some argue for a prehistoric origin, but the evidence for these claims unfortunately tend to be 10,000-year-old bodies found in Northern European bogs, which leaves room for a not-insignificant amount of interpretation. There's a better than even chance those bodies were the result of early executions or ritual killings, among all of which there is an admittedly fine line. Human sacrifice is more or less defined here as the ritual killing of a person to appease or coerce a god figure. The scholars don't really agree on where to draw the lines, but the bloodthirsty bastards have a marked tendency to designate just about any ancient death a "human sacrifice" for no defensible reason. Virtually every culture and region has a history of human sacrifice, from the Romans to the Celts to the Aztecs... Hell, even the Dutch...

© Jerome C. Krause

Countess of Transylvania, vampire: Born 1560/61;  died, August 21, 1614.

In order to improve her complexion and also to maintain her failing grasp on her youth and vitality, she slaughtered six hundred innocent young women from her tiny mountain principality. The noble Báthory family stemmed from the Hun Gutkeled clan which held power in broad areas of east central Europe (in those places now known as Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and Romania), and had emerged to assume a role of relative eminence by the first half of the 13th century. Abandoning their tribal roots, they assumed the name of one of their estates (Bátor meaning 'valiant') as a family name. Their power rose to reach a zenith by the mid 16th century, but declined and faded to die out completely by 1658. Great kings, princes, members of the judiciary, as well as holders of ecclesiastical and civil posts were among the ranks of the Báthorys.

Adopting an exalted name did not alter some basic familial preferences among lesser lights however, and in order to consolidate more tenuous clingings to influence there was considerable intermarriage amongst the Báthory family, with some of the usual problems of this practice produced as a result. Unfortunately, beyond the 'usual problems' some extraordinary difficulties arose (namely hideous psychoses) and several "evil geniuses" appeared, the notorious and sadistic Erzsébet the most prominent of them. Truly, she was evil enough to be recognized as one of the original "vampires" who later inspired Bram Stoker to write the legend of Dracula -- but unlike Stoker's story, she was real.

Unusual for one of her social status, she was a fit and active child. Raised as Magyar royalty, as a young maid she was quite beautiful; delicate in her features, slender of build, tall for the time, but her personality did not attain the same measure of fortuitous development. In her own opinion her most outstanding feature was her often commented upon gloriously creamy complexion. Although others were not really so equally impressed with the quality of her rather ordinary skin, they offered copious praise if they knew what was good for them, as Erzsébet did not accept unenthusiastic half-measures of adulation; and she was vindictive...

The Knights Templars were the earliest founders of the military orders, and are the type on which the others are modelled. They are marked in history (1) by their humble beginning, (2) by their marvellous growth, and (3) by their tragic end.

Their Humble Beginning : Immediately after the deliverance of Jerusalem, the Crusaders, considering their vow fulfilled, returned in a body to their homes. The defense of this precarious conquest, surrounded as it was by Mohammedan neighbours, remained. In 1118, during the reign of Baldwin II, Hugues de Payens, a knight of Champagne, and eight companions bound themselves by a perpetual vow, taken in the presence of the Patriarch of Jerusalem, to defend the Christian kingdom. Baldwin accepted their services and assigned them a portion of his palace, adjoining the temple of the city; hence their title "pauvres chevaliers du temple" (Poor Knights of the Temple). Poor indeed they were, being reduced to living on alms, and, so long as they were only nine, they were hardly prepared to render important services, unless it were as escorts to the pilgrims on their way from Jerusalem to the banks of the Jordan, then frequented as a place of devotion. The Templars had as yet neither distinctive habit nor rule. Hugues de Payens journeyed to the West to seek the approbation of the Church and to obtain recruits. At the Council of Troyes (1128), at which he assisted and at which St. Bernard was the leading spirit, the Knights Templars adopted the Rule of St. Benedict, as recently reformed by the Cistercians. They accepted not only the three perpetual vows, besides the crusader's vow, but also the austere rules concerning the chapel, the refectory, and the dormitory. They also adopted the white habit of the Cistercians, adding to it a red cross. Notwithstanding the austerity of the monastic rule, recruits flocked to the new order, which thenceforth comprised four ranks of brethren: the knights, equipped like the heavy cavalry of the Middle Ages...

Rarely has any creature of mythology taken such a firm hold upon the popular imagination as has the vampire. He is a prince of the night, an erotic and sensuous being with powers beyond mortality, and a history that stretches back centuries... except that this isn't the Slavic vampire at all! No - it is the post-Dracula vampire of modern society, the iconic modern vampire. To unearth the genuine thing ('genuine' in reference to the creature believed in by the various Slavic vampire cults from at least the 13th Century to even the present day), the reader must first of all undergo an exorcism. The thing to be exorcised is the modern conception of the vampire. The reader is urged to cast aside his notions of fangs, incredible strength, the power to fly, the lack of a reflection in a mirror, an aversion to garlic, a glittering and powerful sexual allure, immortality, beauty, and the power to hypnotise. These things should be put onto a metaphorical coat-hanger - they can always be picked up again later.

The Soil of the Vampire Cults: The subject of what actually contributed to the birth of the vampire cult is a huge topic in itself, and deserves an entry of its own. Suffice to say that the Slavs who poured into the Baltic regions prior to and after the 10th Century AD were subject to various waves of Iranian religious influences - such as the Mithraic Mysteries, Manichaeism, the Paulicians, and finally the most influential of all... Bogomilism. These religions (save the Mysteries of Mithras, about which too little is known to assert much) share several things in common - a belief in soul migration, a belief in dualism (there is a persistent belief that God had two sons, and that one of them was the devil, who was responsible for creating the body of man - and thus the body is considered to be unholy as opposed to the soul), a belief in periods of time that were crossroads, times of transition (such as twilight, cock's crow, noonday), and so on. These elements are discernibly carried over into the belief system of vampire cults...