TimeGhost History
Published on 24 Jan 2019When the Ottoman empire is torn apart by the Treaty of Sevres, ethnic conflicts in the old empire that have been boiling for almost a century lead to war between Greece and the parts of the Empire that will soon become the Republic of Turkey. A war that will have lasting effect on the world as both sides proceed to carry out stunning actions of ethnic violence, which is shockingly also sanctioned by international treaty after the fact.
Special thanks to Jonas Yazo Srouji and Valantis Athanasiou, who helped us with the research and image research for this episode. This behemoth of an episode is with 27 minutes the longest Between Two Wars episode yet. We really wanted to do the events justice. To deliver an unbiased, full telling of this eventful and controversial part of history, we couldn’t and didn’t want to make it any shorter.
An important note about the difference between ‘nationality’ and ‘ethnicity’: While ‘nationality’ is merely the relationship between an individual person and a state, someones ‘ethnicity’ depends on the racial, cultural, or religious group that a person is part of or identifies with. While these can overlap, they don’t necessarily have to.
Extra note: we recorded this way back in 2018, when our sound was not optimized. We apologise for the varying audio quality.
Cheers, Joram.
Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Directed by: Spartacus Olsson
Written by: Spartacus Olsson
Produced by: Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Edited by: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Spartacus Olsson and Jonas Yazo Srouji and Valantis Athanasiou.Thumbnail depicts Ataturk colorised by Olga Shirnina aka Klimbim.
Colorized Pictures by Olga Shirnina and Norman Stewart
Olga’s pictures: https://klimbim2014.wordpress.com
Norman’s pictures https://oldtimesincolor.blogspot.com/Video Archive by Screenocean/Reuters http://www.screenocean.com
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH
January 25, 2019
The Greco-Turkish War and Legalisation of Ethnic Cleaning | Between 2 Wars | 1922 Part 2 of 2
Putting the federal cabinet on a radical diet
Earlier this week, Ted Campbell suggested that one (of many) problems Justin Trudeau faces is the sheer size of his cabinet: there are limits to the number of people who can be successfully managed to achieve an organization’s goals by a single person. This is the reason most armies limit the size of their smallest tactical units to at most ten soldiers … much more than that, and the average leader is unable to maintain direct control without delegating sub-groups to subordinates. Running a federal government is a much more complicated task than running an infantry section. He begins by praising what he feels was the best cabinet in federal history:
A friend and regular interlocutor, reacting to a comment I made about a week ago, suggesting that the Trudeau cabinet is still too large, challenged me to look at the “ideal” cabinet. Now, it is certainly no secret that I think the “best” government Canada ever had, in modern times, say during the past century, was a Liberal one, led by Louis St Laurent. It was firmly grounded in liberal political philosophy that was shared, and broadly accepted, by most Canadians; the St Laurent cabinet was determined to govern for the people, for each person, not just to govern the people; it was economically bold but, at the same time, fiscally prudent; it believed, firmly, in a principled foreign policy and a strong enough military to give it the muscle it would need, from time to time; it advanced increasingly progressive social policies, step-by-step, but always in moderation; it was about as competent and as honest as almost any government was ever going to be … bearing in mind that governments are composed of men and women much like us.
This was the St Laurent cabinet:
There is some doubt about the date of this picture; one Government of Canada source says 1948 and another says 1953; the few familiar faces around the table, Douglas Abbott, Brooke Claxton, Brigadier Milton Gregg VC, C.D. Howe and Lester B. Pearson all served throughout that entire period. What is not in doubt is that the cabinet was much smaller than what we see today: fewer than 20 members. Today’s cabinet has over 35 members.
The problems of large cabinets are grounded in two realities: more and more complex issues, especially social issues, and more choices. Louis St. Laurent had between 245 and 265 MPs in the whole House of Commons and he governed with between 118 and 191 Liberal MPs on the government side. Justin Trudeau has a bigger problem: any modern majority government has 170+ members and Canadians are much better informed (or at least aware) of what government might do for (and to) them. He, like every prime minister before him, responds to the challenge by giving every group a voice. The outcome is a larger and larger cabinet. It’s not Justin Trudeau’s fault, it wasn’t Pierre Trudeau’s fault, either.
The correct answer, in my opinion, is a two tier cabinet: senior and junior ministers or an “inner” and “full” cabinet.
The Royal Canadian Regiment and The Battle of Paardeberg
The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered
Published on 1 Jan 2019The forgotten history of a storied regiment. This is the second episode of a special holiday series featuring the History Guy’s hat collection. It was originally made as exclusive content for the channel’s patrons on Patreon. You can get exclusive content too by giving as little as one dollar a month to The History Guy at https://www.patreon.com/TheHistoryGuy.
This is original content based on research by The History Guy. Images in the Public Domain are carefully selected and provide illustration. As images of actual events are sometimes not available, images of similar objects and events are used for illustration.
All events are portrayed in historical context and for educational purposes. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
he History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered is the place to find short snippets of forgotten history from five to fifteen minutes long. If you like history too, this is the channel for you.
QotD: Unacceptable facts
If one harbours anywhere in one’s mind a nationalistic loyalty or hatred, certain facts, although in a sense known to be true, are inadmissible. Here are just a few examples. I list below five types of nationalist, and against each I append a fact which it is impossible for that type of nationalist to accept, even in his secret thoughts:
BRITISH TORY: Britain will come out of this war with reduced power and prestige.
COMMUNIST: If she had not been aided by Britain and America, Russia would have been defeated by Germany.
IRISH NATIONALIST: Eire can only remain independent because of British protection.
TROTSKYIST: The Stalin regime is accepted by the Russian masses.
PACIFIST: Those who ‘abjure’ violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf.
All of these facts are grossly obvious if one’s emotions do not happen to be involved: but to the kind of person named in each case they are also intolerable, and so they have to be denied, and false theories constructed upon their denial. I come back to the astonishing failure of military prediction in the present war. It is, I think, true to say that the intelligentsia have been more wrong about the progress of the war than the common people, and that they were more swayed by partisan feelings. The average intellectual of the Left believed, for instance, that the war was lost in 1940, that the Germans were bound to overrun Egypt in 1942, that the Japanese would never be driven out of the lands they had conquered, and that the Anglo-American bombing offensive was making no impression on Germany. He could believe these things because his hatred for the British ruling class forbade him to admit that British plans could succeed. There is no limit to the follies that can be swallowed if one is under the influence of feelings of this kind. I have heard it confidently stated, for instance, that the American troops had been brought to Europe not to fight the Germans but to crush an English revolution. One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool. When Hitler invaded Russia, the officials of the MOI issued ‘as background’ a warning that Russia might be expected to collapse in six weeks. On the other hand the Communists regarded every phase of the war as a Russian victory, even when the Russians were driven back almost to the Caspian Sea and had lost several million prisoners. There is no need to multiply instances. The point is that as soon as fear, hatred, jealousy and power worship are involved, the sense of reality becomes unhinged. And, as I have pointed out already, the sense of right and wrong becomes unhinged also. There is no crime, absolutely none, that cannot be condoned when ‘our’ side commits it. Even if one does not deny that the crime has happened, even if one knows that it is exactly the same crime as one has condemned in some other case, even if one admits in an intellectual sense that it is unjustified — still one cannot feel that it is wrong. Loyalty is involved, and so pity ceases to function.
George Orwell, “Notes on Nationalism”, Polemic, 1945-05.
