World War Two
Published 14 Aug 2022The reality of war finally seeps through to the majority of Germans, and it didn’t match up with the propaganda. Meanwhile resistance is increasing, and part of that is a classic money carriers when the Polish Home Army robs a money transport.
(more…)
August 17, 2022
Amazing Money Heist by Polish Resistance – WAH 073 – August 14, 1943
Comments Off on Amazing Money Heist by Polish Resistance – WAH 073 – August 14, 1943
August 13, 2022
The Great Escape from a Death Factory – WAH – August 7, 1943
World War Two
Published 12 Aug 2022While enslavement, and mass murder continues unabated in August 1943, at the Treblinka Death Factory the forced laborers decide that enough is enough, and bring battle to the SS in a daring escape attempt.
Huge thanks to Purple Purple, Steven Yarnell, Pieter Kleij and Ruben Alikhanyan for their support during the episode premiere.
(more…)
Comments Off on The Great Escape from a Death Factory – WAH – August 7, 1943
August 1, 2022
Hamburg’s Citizens Burnt Alive – WAH 071 – July 31, 1943
World War Two
Published 31 Jul 2022In Italy the Fascists fall from power in a peaceful coup, while in Germany the RAF and USAAF bring down a rain of fire of biblical proportions in Operation Gomorrah, launching the Firestorm of Hamburg.
(more…)
Comments Off on Hamburg’s Citizens Burnt Alive – WAH 071 – July 31, 1943
July 25, 2022
Stalin, Hitler, and Churchill – Architects of Death – WAH 070 – July 24, 1943
Comments Off on Stalin, Hitler, and Churchill – Architects of Death – WAH 070 – July 24, 1943
July 11, 2022
The Master Race of Asia? – WAH 067 – July 3 1943
World War Two
Published 8 Jul 2022
(more…)
Comments Off on The Master Race of Asia? – WAH 067 – July 3 1943
July 6, 2022
Decapitating the French Resistance – WAH 066 – June 26, 1943
World War Two
Published 5 Jul 2022The Gestapo deals a devastating blow to French Resistance, and in Bengal, British India the famine is only getting worse.
(more…)
Comments Off on Decapitating the French Resistance – WAH 066 – June 26, 1943
June 20, 2022
Japan – Liberators of India? – WAH 065 – June 19, 1943
World War Two
Published 19 Jun 2022As the people of Bengal and Iran continue to be tormented by hunger, so are the people of Germany and Yugoslavia by bombs. In Eastern Europe, the Germans continue to kill anyone they deem an enemy.
(more…)
Comments Off on Japan – Liberators of India? – WAH 065 – June 19, 1943
June 13, 2022
Nazis in a Balkan Mess – WAH 064 – June 12, 1943
World War Two
Published 12 Jun 2022In the Balkans, the Axis powers fail to rout Yugoslav and Greek Partisans. In Bengal, British India starvation is spreading, and in the Netherlands, the Nazis send 1,296 children and infants from the Vught Camp to the gas chambers at Sobibor.
(more…)
Comments Off on Nazis in a Balkan Mess – WAH 064 – June 12, 1943
May 30, 2022
The Deadliest Job in World War Two – WAH 062 – May 29, 1943
World War Two
Published 29 May 2022Arthur Harris and the RAF set another record in bombing Germany, and the outnumbered Yugoslav Partisans show the Axis that numbers mean little when you’re clever.
(more…)
Comments Off on The Deadliest Job in World War Two – WAH 062 – May 29, 1943
May 23, 2022
Drowning Germans, Burning Jews – WAH 061 – May 22, 1943
World War Two
Published 22 May 2022When Air Marshal Arthur Harris and Reichspropagandaminister Joseph Goebbels agree that a lot of death and destruction is not enough death and destruction, the world is in trouble.
(more…)
Comments Off on Drowning Germans, Burning Jews – WAH 061 – May 22, 1943
April 21, 2022
QotD: Self-promotion in the modern job market
Self-promotion is not new, but never before has it been what theology was in the Middle Ages, the queen of the sciences.
A friend of mine, an Indian pediatrician, applied for temporary jobs in England and was considered for none of them. My friend was puzzled by this, for he had worked in England before and had good references. My wife, who knew the system from having worked in it at a senior level, asked to see his curriculum vitae that he sent to prospective employers, and soon spotted the problem: He boasted of nothing, and the culture had changed. What was necessary, my wife said, was to inflate his accomplishments as boastfully as possible. There was no risk that anyone would discover his exaggerations. He had once worked as a voluntary pediatric consultant to Mother Teresa’s charity in Calcutta; he had not even mentioned it in his CV, let alone made it sound as if he were all but the founder of her charity. If he once had helped an old lady across the road with her shopping, he should transmute this in his CV into a lifelong concern for the condition of the elderly; and so on and so forth.
It was all rather disgusting, but it worked like a charm: He immediately had offers of jobs aplenty, though of course his real worth as a doctor remained precisely the same. Reticence, which is to me a far more attractive quality than boastfulness, will get you nowhere, and nothing must be left to speak for itself. You must blow your own trumpet, if possible louder than anyone else’s.
Nowadays there are professional coaches in how to “big yourself up”, as the charming phrase has it, in applications for jobs or places in institutions. The son of a friend of mine used one to get into medical school. Lying will go undetected, but even if detected will do you no lasting harm. The most minor accomplishment can and should be made to sound like evidence of genius. It is almost a condition of employment that one should boast and write an advertisement for oneself.
Theodore Dalrymple, “Be Your Own Advert”, Taki’s Magazine, 2022-01-13.
Comments Off on QotD: Self-promotion in the modern job market
April 18, 2022
QotD: Colonialism in the British Raj
There I met a man of very advanced age, whose name I cannot remember (to my shame) who had been a civil servant in India during the final days of the Raj. He told me something I have pondered ever since. “We were just a handful of people providing guidance and administration”, he said, “with overwhelming consent in a gigantic country. We even slept in the streets during summer on khatias and had no fear of being killed.”
Whatever politics was happening was between the British and Indian political elites, and plainly did not affect most normal Britishers or Indians.
Consider, that in 1901 Indians numbered nearly 300 million while the British-born population of India was around 150,000. Colonialism was indeed by the consent of the governed, and the independence fight was primarily an intra-elite affair, where the mostly western-educated native would-be boss class fought with the foreign overlords who taught them, for political control.
In the sub-continent, the civil service, lower (and some higher) judiciary, magistrates, police officers, intelligentsia, landed gentry and local businesses were primarily Indian, a lot of them pro-imperial to the end of their time. What happened to those voices? In current post-colonial discourse, one cannot read any pro-imperial literature, which is either lost or considered too reactionary to be taught at universities, an injustice to a clear understanding of history.
Sumantra Maitra, “Pro-imperial truths of the old world”, The Critic, 2021-11-09.
Comments Off on QotD: Colonialism in the British Raj
April 15, 2022
The West Sacrifices Poland to the Soviets – WAH 056 – April 1943, Pt.1
World War Two
Published 14 Apr 2022There are cracks in the alliances on both sides. Hitler’s allies are refusing to do his every bidding, and the revelations about the Soviet massacre of Poles in Katyn has set a wedge between Poland and the USSR.
(more…)
Comments Off on The West Sacrifices Poland to the Soviets – WAH 056 – April 1943, Pt.1
April 14, 2022
QotD: “… when life was simpler”
And then you get hold of primary sources on the thirties or fifties. Let’s say it’s particularly hilarious to read stuff from the right lauding that time of great freedom in either of those decades. Let’s just say that if some of the things happening back then were happening now we’d all be talking about how we were ready for revolution. (And the only reason they weren’t then is that the press was mass-media. You think it’s bad enough now, with a lying press? They had the same, but no way to check it. It was that concentration and lack of individual communication or access to the public by individuals unfiltered by the media/publishers that put us in the situation we’re in, with what is functionally the enemy of western civilization in control of the vital organs of culture. Before you get discouraged, it helps to remember, we’re only now fighting back. Continue fighting, but remember things take time. The larger a movement is, the longer it takes for it to become noticeable, much less prominent in the culture.)
And as for the left thinking that everyone before the oughts were good white Christians or whatever … Oh, sweet summer children. Let’s say when they get their freak on, with witchcraft or being naked in public, or talking about their poly relationships, or whatever the actual hell they have in their heads that day, they rarely if ever (I’ve never seen it) would have managed to shock their ancestors or ancestresses 100 years ago. Those Edwardians … well … Let’s just say they had fewer hangups. Yes, I know what the public image is. But none of them would have worried about things that the left worries about now like “differential of power” or “implied patriarchy” which meant they were much freer to do whatever crossed their heads at the moment. Of course they also thought they would have shocked their ancestors. And I bet you they wouldn’t.
At some point, if you have a chance, read a book called Our Bones Are Scattered about the Indian revolt in Victorian times. I only read it once because it’s a deeply disturbing book, one of those clashes of civilization where you feel sorry for both sides. But it is very well written, and the beginning of the book is … revealing. The British commander was … well … sort of married to a woman who had been sort of married something like six times before and who went from man to man, collecting kids along the way. Notwithstanding which, they were Victorian nobility and had a bunch of kids of their own and …
Let’s just say Victorians aren’t the way we’ve learned to think of them either. In fact you can be sure pretty much no one ever was. People kept and keep the front they need to, but behind the scenes things were always messy and complicated.
Which often makes finding our own way in this messy and complicated way very difficult.
Sarah Hoyt, “Finding Your Way”, According to Hoyt, 2019-02-18.
Comments Off on QotD: “… when life was simpler”
April 3, 2022
QotD: Life in the Imperial outposts
That’s what all the Old Hands said in the 19th century, and if you think about it for a second, it’s obvious. Going East of Suez was more or less a life sentence. Retiring to a nice country house back in dear old Blighty was the standard-issue dream, but it almost never came true — and everyone knew it. You went to India knowing you’d die there — You went, so your brothers wouldn’t have to. Life in those circumstances, surrounded by like-minded men, is a blast. Ask anyone who has spent time in a war zone.
But, of course, the Raj wasn’t a war zone for long. The Mutiny took care of that, so much so that guys actually started coming home at the end of their tours. Word leaked out about how the Ruling Caste lived over there, and all of a sudden Calcutta harbor was home to “the fishing fleet”, the boatloads of single girls that arrived each spring determined to snag themselves a husband. Think about that for a second — take the kind of girl who doesn’t have the looks or connections to get married back home, then plop her down in a situation where she’s the only White woman in a thousand miles. Give her an army of servants, a basically unlimited budget, and the whole power of the State enforcing her whims. Is it any wonder social relations got so awful so quickly? The burra memsahib was a staple of Imperial fiction for a reason.
Severian, “If there is Hope, It Lies in the PUAs”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2019-02-27.
Comments Off on QotD: Life in the Imperial outposts
