A forthcoming book argues that the Nazis were “wrongly accused” of destroying ancient pleasure boats belonging to Roman Emperor Caligula, according to a report published Tuesday.
Before the eccentric Roman emperor Caligula was assassinated in A.D. 41, he demanded an insane amount of luxury around him, particularly in his boats, according to The Times of London. His vessels were fitted with “ample baths, galleries, saloons and a great variety of vines and fruit trees.”
Caligula’s behavior sounds eerily similar to politicians of today, to a degree. He demanded lovely things, was a rude idiot and exploited those around him. He’d probably have been right at home on Jeffrey Epstein’s island.
Another example of his behavior, one outlet writes, included that “he demanded senators worship him as a god, brazenly took their wives as concubines, and ordered the arbitrary executions of many of those around him.” Oh, and he tried to commit genocide against ancient Welsh cultures, known colloquially as “Druids,” who have a really negative reputation to this day thanks to idiots like Caligula.
The remains of Caligula’s “Pleasure Boat”, found at the bottom of Lake Nemi. #Italy 1st c AD pic.twitter.com/Zn7NErUfjC
— The Aureus Press (@Trad_West_Art) July 20, 2019
Anyway, he had these insanely beautiful boats. Those boats sank, but were raised from the depths in the 1930s by Italy’s most famous fascist, Benito Mussolini. Unfortunately, we’ll never see the luxury of these vessels because Nazi troops set fire to them in 1944, reports from U.S. and British officials claimed, according to the Times. In fact, the blame probably lies with an American artillery unit.
The story told for decades was that a caretaker from the museum where the boats were held saw American 155mm howitzer shells hit the building, and a fire broke out two hours later.
“It was easier to point the finger at the Germans and the report was a hurried attempt to blame them,” Stefano Paolucci, co-author of forthcoming book “The Burning of the Nemi Boats,” told the Times. Paolucci and his co-author, Flavio Altamura, analyzed stories from the time to get to the bottom of the mystery.
“The Germans denied it but that’s been the view for 80 years before we analysed the report and realised it didn’t add up,” Altamura noted. “The report claimed the fire couldn’t have been started by the shelling because it broke out two hours later, but other bombed wooden structures at the time took a similar time to burn and we believe the light the caretaker saw was the fire slowly starting.” (RELATED: Netflix Documentary Could Rewrite All Of Human History)
The entire story really makes you question how much of history we’ve been misled about and how many of those false narratives we’re repeating today, only to let our grandchildren repeat them again in decades to come.