Quotulatiousness

February 28, 2024

Why Germany Lost the First World War

The Great War
Published Nov 10, 2023

Germany’s defeat in the First World War has been blamed on all kinds of factors or has even been denied outright as part of the “stab in the back” myth. But why did Germany actually lose?
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February 25, 2024

Iwo Jima! – WW2 – Week 287 – February 24, 1945

Filed under: Britain, Germany, History, Italy, Japan, Military, Pacific, Russia, USA, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 24 Feb 2024

This week the Battle of Iwo Jima begins and American forces raise the Stars and Stripes on Mount Suribachi. Elsewhere, the Allies fight the stiff Japanese defences in Manila. The Red Army continues fighting through East Prussia and Pomerania as Stalin plans the next stage of the advance on the Reich. There are Allied advances in Western Europe and Italy too.

00:01 Intro
00:54 Recap
01:16 Iwo Jima Begins
06:32 The war in the Philippines
07:56 The Battle of Manila
11:12 Fighting in Burma
12:14 Operation Grenade
13:46 Operation Encore
14:38 Soviet plans for new offensives
21:28 Moscow Commission Meets
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February 21, 2024

Can you make a tank disappear? The Evolution of Tank Camouflage

Filed under: Britain, Germany, History, Military, Russia, Technology, Weapons, WW1, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The Tank Museum
Published Nov 17, 2023

It’s not easy to hide a tank. But over the years, military commanders have developed ways to disguise, cover and conceal the presence of their tanks from the enemy. This video is about the “art of deception” – and how, since World War One, through World War Two and into the present day, the science of tank camouflage has evolved to meet the conditions and threats of the contemporary battlefield.

00:00 | Intro
01:38 | WWI
06:26 | WW2
13:42 | Post War
19:40 | Conclusion
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February 20, 2024

Belt-fed Madsen LMG: When the Weird Get Weirder

Forgotten Weapons
Published Nov 15, 2023

First produced in 1902, the Madsen was one of the first practical light machine guns, and it remained in production for nearly 5 decades. The Madsen system is a rather unusual recoil-operated mechanism with a tilting bolt and a remarkably short receiver. The most unusual variation on the system was the belt-fed, high rate-of-fire pattern developed for aircraft use. This program was initiated by the Danish Air Force in the mid 1920s, and several different patterns were built by the time World War Two erupted.

The model here was actually a pattern that was under production for Hungary when German forces occupied Denmark. Taking over the factory, they continued the production and the guns went to the Luftwaffe for airfield defensive use.

In order to use disintegrating links instead of box magazines, some very odd modifications had to be made to the Madsen. One set of feed packs are actually built into the belt box itself, and the gun cannot function without the box attached. The only feasible path for empty link ejection is directly upwards, and so a horseshoe-shaped link chute was attached to the top cover, guiding links up over the gun and dropping them out the right side of the receiver. Very weird!

While several thousand of these were made under German occupation, very few survive today and they are extremely rare on the US registry.
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February 19, 2024

The heirs of Walter Ulbricht

Filed under: Germany, Government, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Chris Bray linked to this fascinating — and depressing — report on the German government’s plans to crack down on “extreme” “right-wing” groups and individuals … to “protect our democracy”, of course:

After Germany’s defeat in 1945, Walter Ulbricht returned from exile in Moscow to become one of the founding politicians of the DDR. The new state, he said, “must look democratic, but we must have everything under control“. It has been 80 years since Ulbricht spoke those words, and while the DDR has faded away, their spirit lives on in the political establishment of the Federal Republic. Our present rulers are doing everything in their power to re-establish pseudodemocracy in the West. This is not a mere eugyppius exaggeration, and it is not sensationalism for internet clicks. It is what our politicians themselves are saying.

As in the DDR, we hear that these antidemocratic measures are necessary to protect us from the threat posed by the right. The truth is much more mundane: Germany has one of the oldest party systems in Europe. As has already happened in many other countries, this post-war establishment is coming apart. While our neighbours have endured the rise of new parties and political structures with some measure of equanimity, our cartel politicians in Germany are terrified of losing power, and they will use all the tools at their disposal to keep hold of it – up to and including the suspension of democracy itself.

Alternative für Deutschland find themselves in the targets of our nominally democratic priesthood not because they are extremely right-wing, or racist, or xenophobic or anything like that. Politically, they’re hardly different from the CDU of the 1980s. Their real crime is having achieved enough strength to threaten the establishment ecosystem. The stronger AfD become, the harder it will prove for the reigning parties to form anti-AfD coalitions. [my emphasis, NR] Some of these parties, like the FDP, seem destined to disappear entirely; others, like the SPD, fear a future of permanent irrelevance. The once-dominant centre-right CDU, meanwhile, will find itself unable to form workable governments with partners on the left, and thus without any excuse not to enact the mild nationalism that a clear majority of voters demand, and that is so deeply out of fashion with our globalist rulers.

This is the purpose of the unceasing, astroturfed agitation “against the right” that the establishment have visited upon Germany for over a month now. The protests have not worked to destroy support for the AfD, so now they are being repurposed as a license to take enforcement action against “right-wing extremism”. Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) said at a press conference on Tuesday that the protests have given her both “encouragement” and a “mandate” to proceed against the right. “This really is a very positive signal,” she said, “because it is about defending our open society against its enemies. As a democracy on the defence, we must stand up to the extremists.”

Faeser spoke these words in the course of announcing a range of measures via which she hopes to combat “right-wing extremism”. These are also outlined in a 16-page Interior Ministry paper on “Resolutely Combating Right-Wing Extremism: Using the Instruments of Defensive Democracy“. Here, it is important to note that Faeser is among the most unpopular politicians in all of Germany. Last year she suffered a humiliating defeat in her effort to become Minister President of Hessen, and 60% of Germans view her unfavourably. That is powerful motivation to bring German democracy back under control. Her “package of measures” to combat “the right” are some of the most openly antidemocratic, dictatorial policies I have ever seen any Western politician articulate. In other nations these kinds of things are surely said behind closed doors, but in Germany they are printed in all the major papers. You can only imagine what these people contemplate in secret. [again, my emphasis. We already know that at least one Canadian government minister wanted to send the tanks in against the Freedom Convoy in 2022 – NR]

Faeser and her fellow political enforcers have such a wide-ranging, fluid understanding of what “right-wing extremism” constitutes, that the label can be deployed against basically anybody. The Interior Ministry paper claims that “The aim of right-wing extremists is to abolish liberal democracy and reshape our society according to their nationalist, racist and anti-pluralist ideas”. You might think, “well, that’s okay then, I’m a pluralist liberal,” but that would be as naive as thinking you were safe from the Stasi because you were not a fascist. The same paper proceeds to complain that “the extremist … New Right … aims to discuss topics and use terms that give their inhuman plans a harmless appearance”. Translated from democratese: “There are people out there who are not saying anything illegal but they have made themselves inconvenient anyway”. The president of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Thomas Haldenwang, likewise spoke at the press conference of the tendency of “right-wing extremists” to “dress up and camouflage themselves”. They must “be unmasked and exposed … [as] enemies of our democracy”.

This construction of “right-wing extremism” as a cryptic, hidden quality that requires unveiling by the political police is unimaginably dangerous. You are never safe from a regime that thinks this way, because what you actually say, do or even believe doesn’t matter. You are guilty of “right-wing extremism” if Haldenwang’s office thinks you are. This flexibility is important, because the establishment are not actually interested in driving out zombie National Socialists. They want to neuter the political opposition, whatever its form or programme.

February 18, 2024

German Counterattack in Pomerania – WW2 – Week 286 – February 17, 1945

World War Two
Published 17 Feb 2024

The Germans finally launch a counterattack into the Soviet flanks, but it does not go as well as was as hoped. The Siege of Budapest comes to an end, also not well for the Germans. The Soviets have now also surrounded Breslau. In Burma, the Allies cross the Irrawaddy River, in the Philippines the fight for Manila continues, and in the Pacific preparations are underway for an American invasion of Iwo Jima Island.

01:50 The fight for East Prussia
04:08 German counterattack in Poland
07:00 Breslau Surrounded
07:57 The Siege of Budapest
09:14 Operation 4th Term in Italy
10:07 Operation Veritable Continues
11:36 Allies cross the Irrawaddy
14:43 The Fight in the Philippines
17:52 Preparations for Iwo Jima
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February 17, 2024

Hitler speaking – not the raging, raving maniac we all think he was

Filed under: Germany, History, Politics, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Colby Cosh on a major German academic effort to provide an authoritative digital record of Adolf Hitler’s actual speeches, rather than the highly selective snippets we in the English speaking world have seen or the “official” transcripts that were published in Nazi propaganda organs:

Adolf Hitler making a speech sometime between 1933 and 1940.
Library and Archives Canada item number 3191955.

You may have seen reports that a consortium of German research institutions has set out on a seven-year project to compile, annotate and digitize every speech Adolf Hitler gave as chancellor of Germany. The effort is being led by the Institute of Contemporary History (Institut fuer Zeitgeschichte, or IfZ), a Munich-based German government research consortium founded in 1947 to preserve the various records of Germany’s experience under National Socialism. Since that time, there has been a whole lot more zeitgeschichte in Germany, of course, so the IfZ also does a lot of work on communism, the Cold War and German reunification. It helps run important museums and historical sites, such as Hitler’s mountain retreat on the slopes of the Obersalzberg.

[…]

The co-head of the new project is Magnus Brechtken, deputy director of the IfZ and author of a landmark 2017 biography of Hitler’s pet architect and economic manager, Albert Speer. In January, Brechtken gave an absorbing German-language interview explaining the need for a contemporary, digital Hitler edition. Run that puppy through Google Translate and you’ll see that it commences amusingly with the question, “So do you have Adolf Hitler’s voice running through your head all the time?”

(This probably wouldn’t be as hellish as it sounds. Hitler didn’t really bellow like a rabid animal at his audiences for hours on end, contrary to the image of him that you and I have in our heads, and he spoke with a low, musical Austrian accent that German speakers like Brechtken seem to appreciate.)

Brechtken observes that in writing his Speer book, he spurned Domarus and went to the Sisyphean trouble of running down primary versions of relevant Hitler speeches himself. Hundreds of audio recordings of Hitler have survived in the German Broadcasting Archive in Frankfurt, and the project team has computer scientists and even linguists on board to help integrate text, sound and historians’ notes on persons, events and the context of the speeches.

No doubt the finished product will be consumed by the uglier parts of today’s German political right, and its reaction is fully predictable. Some will say, “At last, the real Hitler!”; and an equal number will say, “This whole project is a parcel of falsehoods — it’s fake Hitler!”

February 15, 2024

Artillery! A WW2 Special

Filed under: Britain, Germany, History, Italy, Japan, Military, Russia, USA, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 14 Feb 2024

The modern artillery of the Great War was responsible for the vast majority of military deaths in that conflict, but how has artillery developed from that war to this one? Today we take a look at some of the artillery of WW2.
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February 12, 2024

Yalta, When Stalin Split the World – a WW2 Special

World War Two
Published 11 February 2024

Indy and Sparty take you through the negotiations at Yalta as The Big Three thrash out the shape of the postwar world. As the splits between East and West continue to deepen, who will come out on top?
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Look at Life – Amphibian DUKW (1962)

Filed under: Britain, Germany, History, Military, USA, WW2 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Classic Vehicle Channel
Published Apr 23, 2020

The military have finished with their amphibious truck know as the DUKW. They’re sold off to the general public for use in civilian life, including divers and even a group of monks.

February 11, 2024

The Battle of Manila Begins – WW2 – Week 285 – February 10, 1945

World War Two
Published 10 Feb 2024

The American advance on Luzon has reached the Philippine capital, and it looks like they have a real fight on their hands with the Japanese there. There are supposed to be two new Allied operations starting in Western Europe, but one is delayed by flooding. The Allies do manage to eliminate the Colmar Pocket in the west, though. On the Eastern Front, there are new Soviet attacks in Pomerania and East Prussia, as well as out of the Steinau Bridgehead to the south, and in Budapest, it looks like the Soviet siege might soon end in victory.
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February 10, 2024

The War Goals to End WW2 in 1945 – a WW2 Special

World War Two
Published Feb 8, 2024

While World War Two looks like it is about to end, the belligerent powers have vastly different goals for that end. Differences that may or may not prolong the war, will decide the survival of tens of millions of people, and the future fate of all of Humanity.
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February 7, 2024

The Magician Who Fooled the Nazis (and all of us)

Filed under: Africa, Britain, Germany, History, Media, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

World War Two
Published 7 Nov 2023

Military deception is tricky. Sometimes you need to destroy a crucial piece of war industry or make an entire harbour disappear. Who do you call for this sort of job? Well, someone who knows a thing or two about tricking the eye. You need a professional magician. You need Jasper Maskelyne. But is there more to this illusionist than meets the eye?
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February 5, 2024

Western Front Tank Warfare 1944

Filed under: Britain, Germany, History, Military, USA, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

World War Two
Published Nov 8, 2023

Indy takes a look at the armoured beasts battling it out on the Western Front. On the German side we have vehicles like the long-serving Panzer IV, the sleek and modern Panther, and the obnoxiously heavy King Tiger. These are arrayed against the American stalwart, the M4 Sherman, and British tanks like the up-gunned Firefly, Cromwell, and Churchill.
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February 4, 2024

Is the Red Army too fast for its own good? – WW2 – Week 284 – February 3, 1945

World War Two
Published 3 Feb 2024

Soviet forces have reached the old German border in force, however, logistical issues and a strong enemy presence possibly threatening their flanks means that a drive on Berlin may not be doable just now. Heinrich Himmler is in charge of the new Army Group to defend the Reich, and he has a host of problems. On the Western Front, the Allies finally eliminated the Colmar Pocket, and in the Philippines, the American advance reaches Manila, and the battle for the city is about to begin.
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