Quotulatiousness

September 5, 2022

Amon Göth: The Super Nazi – WAH 076 – September 4, 1943

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Germany, History, India, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 4 Sep 2022

While the Allies give up on the first Battle of Berlin, Amon Göth goes on a murderous rampage in the Tarnow Ghetto.
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The Tragic Life of Rudyard Kipling

Filed under: Books, Britain, History, India — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered
Published 14 Aug 2019

The life of the youngest-ever winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, Rudyard Kipling, was filled with tragedy. He survived a difficult childhood to go on to become one of the most celebrated authors of his day, penning such classics as The Jungle Book and Just So Stories. But only one of his children would survive him and his legacy has been tied to some of his out-dated political beliefs. The History Guy remembers the tragic life of Rudyard Kipling.
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August 23, 2022

Greece Burns Under Nazi Occupation – WAH 074 – August 21, 1943

World War Two
Published 21 Aug 2022

The aerial bombing of Germany takes a new turn but continues to fail to bring long-term results. In occupied Greece and Poland, over a thousand children are murdered by the Nazis.
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August 17, 2022

Amazing Money Heist by Polish Resistance – WAH 073 – August 14, 1943

World War Two
Published 14 Aug 2022

The 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.
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August 13, 2022

The Great Escape from a Death Factory – WAH – August 7, 1943

World War Two
Published 12 Aug 2022

While 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.
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August 1, 2022

Hamburg’s Citizens Burnt Alive – WAH 071 – July 31, 1943

Filed under: Britain, France, Germany, History, India, Italy, Military, USA, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 31 Jul 2022

In 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.
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July 25, 2022

Stalin, Hitler, and Churchill – Architects of Death – WAH 070 – July 24, 1943

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July 11, 2022

The Master Race of Asia? – WAH 067 – July 3 1943

Filed under: Asia, Britain, France, Germany, History, India, Japan, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 8 Jul 2022
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July 6, 2022

Decapitating the French Resistance – WAH 066 – June 26, 1943

World War Two
Published 5 Jul 2022

The Gestapo deals a devastating blow to French Resistance, and in Bengal, British India the famine is only getting worse.
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June 20, 2022

Japan – Liberators of India? – WAH 065 – June 19, 1943

World War Two
Published 19 Jun 2022

As 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.
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June 13, 2022

Nazis in a Balkan Mess – WAH 064 – June 12, 1943

World War Two
Published 12 Jun 2022

In 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.
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May 30, 2022

The Deadliest Job in World War Two – WAH 062 – May 29, 1943

World War Two
Published 29 May 2022

Arthur 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.
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May 23, 2022

Drowning Germans, Burning Jews – WAH 061 – May 22, 1943

World War Two
Published 22 May 2022

When 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.
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April 21, 2022

QotD: Self-promotion in the modern job market

Filed under: Britain, Business, India, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

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.

April 18, 2022

QotD: Colonialism in the British Raj

Filed under: Britain, History, India, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

A few years back during my doctoral research, I was invited to a colloquium on imperialism at Oxford, which, because of our modern standards of free and open intellectual discourse, was effectively a secretive little conclave. This was during the Rhodes Must Fall campaign, around the time when, due to mob pressure, Portland professor Bruce Gilley’s “The Case for Colonialism” paper was redacted by an academic journal. The seminar’s organisers did not want hysterical teenagers egged on by activist dons to disturb what turned out to be the nuanced discussion you’d hope scholars would, and could, engage in.

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.

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