My friend Herman Gunter III turned me on to \u201cThe Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel: Genius, Power, and Deception on the Eve of World War I\u201d by Douglas Brunt (Atria books, 2023).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am grateful: I learned a lot from reading it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the more mechanically inclined among you, Brunt shows us how critical Diesel\u2019s eponymous engine concept was, in many arenas. Oil magnate John D. Rockefeller feared that the diesel engine would put his vast empire out of business. The diesel engine was ideal for submarines and giant battleships, something Winston Churchill and the British Navy recognized and encouraged. This infuriated Kaiser Wilhelm, since what would be the Great War was already brewing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Diesel\u2019s brilliant invention had made him vastly wealthy. Thus, the world was shocked when, in 1913, he disappeared from an ocean liner, leaving some of his clothing neatly folded on the deck. He was presumed drowned and lost at sea. Sometime later, a decomposing corpse was discovered in the water, with some of what were identified as Diesel\u2019s personal effects in its pockets. The body itself was returned to the sea, ostensibly because of its rotting condition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hence, the \u201cmysterious case\u201d of the title.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Author Brunt deftly analyzes the many conspiracy theories that followed. \u201cRockefeller had him killed to save his own vast oil wealth!\u201d \u201cNo, the Kaiser had him assassinated so Germany could rule the seas in the coming conflict!\u201d \u201cHey, even the rich and famous can get so depressed they commit suicide!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Brunt makes a strong case for another explanation: That the English colluded to fake his disappearance and spirited him off to safer parts of the Commonwealth, Canada or Australia, to continue his research on behalf of their military. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A fascinating read, altogether, which shows among other things that conspiracy theories are nothing new.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My friend Herman Gunter III turned me on to \u201cThe Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel: Genius, Power, and Deception on the Eve of World War I\u201d by Douglas Brunt (Atria books, 2023). I am grateful: I learned a lot from reading it. For the more mechanically inclined among you, Brunt shows us how critical Diesel\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8145,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8143","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8143"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8147,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8143\/revisions\/8147"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}