Quotulatiousness

March 14, 2022

Legends Summarized: Journey To The West (Part IX)

Filed under: Books, China, History, Humour, Religion — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 26 Nov 2021

Journey to the West Kai, episode 6: Two Weddings And An Asskicking

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March 10, 2022

Salvaging WW2 Battlefields – How Vehicles & Weapons Were Reused

Filed under: Asia, Europe, France, History, Italy, Military, USA, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Mark Felton Productions
Published 25 Nov 2021

After the wounded and dead had been removed from a battlefield, what happened to all the military vehicles and weapons left lying around? Find out here.

Dr. Mark Felton is a well-known British historian, the author of 22 non-fiction books, including bestsellers Zero Night and Castle of the Eagles, both currently being developed into movies in Hollywood. In addition to writing, Mark also appears regularly in television documentaries around the world, including on The History Channel, Netflix, National Geographic, Quest, American Heroes Channel and RMC Decouverte. His books have formed the background to several TV and radio documentaries. More information about Mark can be found at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Fe…

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Disclaimer: All opinions and comments expressed in the ‘Comments’ section do not reflect the opinions of Mark Felton Productions. All opinions and comments should contribute to the dialogue. Mark Felton Productions does not condone written attacks, insults, racism, sexism, extremism, violence or otherwise questionable comments or material in the ‘Comments’ section, and reserves the right to delete any comment violating this rule or to block any poster from the channel.

Credits: US National Archives; Library of Congress
Thumbnail colorisation (left image) by Paul Reynolds

March 6, 2022

Another Naval Disaster for Japan – WW2 – 184 – March 5, 1943

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

World War Two
Published 5 Mar 2022

The Japanese again fail to reinforce New Guinea, losing many transport ships, and their forces there are ever more isolated. In Tunisia the Axis lose a bunch of new Tiger tanks, but in the Soviet Union it is the Axis forces that are on the offensive as Erich von Manstein’s offensive continues.
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February 27, 2022

“Putin finally called our bluff. The question to me is when and if Xi will decide to do the same”

Filed under: China, History, Military, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Andrew Sullivan on what Winston Churchill referred to as “the historic life-interests of Russia”, the inability (and unwillingness) of the western nations to do more than send hopes and prayers to Ukraine, and the parallels between the Russia-Ukraine situation and the China-Taiwan potential conflict:

Taiwan relief map.
Library of Congress Geography & Map Division via Wikimedia Commons.

… in one crucial sense, Putin has already won a victory. A nuclear-armed great power has invaded and occupied a neighboring country in Europe, and there is nothing anyone else has been able to do to stop it. Many in the West assumed Putin wouldn’t go that far — surmising that international law, universal condemnation, economic sanctions, and the lack of any serious threat from Ukraine to Russia would restrain him. But he has called our bluff. He has even hinted at Russia’s nuclear capacity to intimidate other states from intervening. And so we have a precedent. Ukraine is a Russian possession. A fact on the ground. All we have been able to do is watch.

All of which brings us to what seems to me to be the larger dimension of this clash: how it will resonate in Beijing and Taiwan. With apologies to Mitt Romney, China is easily the greater geostrategic challenge. And the parallels with Russia are as striking as they are unnerving. China sees Taiwan as part of its national identity in a similar way to how Russia sees Ukraine as part of its. And we are committed to the defense of Taiwan the way we have committed to the defense of Ukraine: kinda, but not really. In the face of this underlying Western ambiguity, the fall of Kiev is news that Xi will be watching closely.

The parallels are not exact, but nonetheless striking. Taiwan is next door to and deeply entangled with China in its history and culture, just as Ukraine is uniquely entangled with Russia. Seeing Taiwan and China (like Ukraine and Russia) as simply random sovereign states with a right to self-determination under international law is correct, so far as it goes. It’s also moral — as majorities of both Ukrainians and especially Taiwanese want independence and have constructed nascent democracies in the wake of autocracy.

But the nationalist passion Russia feels about Ukraine and China feels about Taiwan is real, visceral, and hard for outsiders to understand intuitively. The sense of a rogue region that somehow got away from the homeland is vivid among Russian and Chinese nationalists. This kind of understanding — claiming a “sphere of influence” — is now deemed reactionary by the West’s foreign policy elites, as, perhaps, it should be. But that doesn’t mean that everyone, especially China and Russia, have actually moved past it. Even Americans have very different emotional responses to perceived threats in our own hemisphere compared with the rest of the world. So this is also a culture clash of sorts — globalism and the nation state vs nationalism and spheres of influence.

I’m not saying that this belief in a sphere of influence is a universal view in Russia or China — or that it is justifiable. I’m just saying it is real. And I’m not excusing Putin or Xi from taking a particularly zealous view of this irredentist nationalism, which they both do, for their own personal and political advantage. I’m just noting how national pride deeply informs them, that resentment of the West consumes them, that a sense of historical grievance spurs them on — and that they are not outliers among their compatriots. It is crazy to underestimate the power of this kind of revanchist nationalism — among rulers and ruled. And I fear we underestimated it in the case of Putin.

This means, as Barack Obama once insisted, that Russia will always care much more about Ukraine than we do; and China will always care much more about Taiwan than we do. In those cases, the last thing we should do is promise support that we do not seriously — truly seriously — intend to provide. The vague pledge by the Western powers not to rule out future NATO membership for Ukraine was the worst of all worlds: poking the bear, with no serious intention of fighting it.

The fall of Afghanistan was a margin call … and Ukraine is the point where airy western “guarantees” will have to be backed up with actual force. But western leaders have grown very comfortable in a world where gestures were taken seriously and few if any such gestures actually had to be followed-through with meaningful action. And now, the geopolitical pantomime is over and we’re back in a world where gestures are seen as signs of weakness and do nothing to deter adventurism.

February 26, 2022

In The Highest Tradition — Episode 3

Filed under: Asia, Britain, History, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

British Army Documentaries
Published 27 Oct 2021

This third episode in a six-part series delving into the world of regimental tradition looks Gurkhas’ history and commitment to the British Army. They swear their oath of allegiance directly to Her Majesty the Queen and continue to revere “The Queen’s Truncheon”, which was awarded to them by Queen Victoria in recognition of their service during the Indian Mutiny.

© 1989

This production is for viewing purposes only and should not be reproduced without prior consent.

This film is part of a comprehensive collection of contemporary Military Training programmes and supporting documentation including scripts, storyboards and cue sheets.

All material is stored and archived. World War II and post-war material along with all original film material are held by the Imperial War Museum Film and Video Archive.

February 25, 2022

Total War NOW – WAH 053 – February 1943, Pt. 2

Filed under: China, Europe, France, Germany, Greece, History, Italy, Japan, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 24 Feb 2022

Germany declares total (unconditional war) putting its economy on a full war footing over three years into the war. Given the unconditional war they are already waging, and the resistance and opposition they now face, it’s unclear what it shall mean.
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February 20, 2022

Can the Red Army Capture Hitler? – 182 – February 19, 1943

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

World War Two
Published 19 Feb 2022

The Red Army liberates both Rostov and Kharkov this week, but their advancing spearheads are close to an even bigger prize, Adolf Hitler himself. It is the Axis, however, who are both advancing and consolidating in Tunisia, and gearing up for new offensive actions next week.
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February 18, 2022

Battle of Iwo Jima 1945 – Day by Day

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

Real Time History
Published 17 Feb 2022

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The battle of Iwo Jima in 1945 was one of the most brutal battles of the WW2 Pacific Campaign. The small volcanic island of Iwo Jima had an important strategic position for the US military. But the Japanese Army had learned how to defend in previous hard fought battles on other islands like Guam, Peleliu or Guadalcanal.

Special thanks to Project’44 co-created by Nathan Kehler and Drew Hannen from the Canadian Research and Mapping Association (CRMA). Check out their Iwo Jima map: http://iwojimamap.com/

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» BIBLIOGRAPHY
Akikusa Tsuruji, 17-sai no Iōtō (Tokyo: Bungei Shunjū, 2006)
Allen, Robert E, The First Battalion of the 28th Marines on Iwo Jima: A Day-by-Day History from Personal Accounts and Official Reports, with Complete Muster Rolls, (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc. Publishers, 1999)
Leckie, Robert, The Battle of Iwo Jima, (New York: Random House, 1967)
NHK Shuzaihan, Iōjima Gyokusaisen: Seikanshatachi ga kataru shinjitsu, (Tokyo: NHK Shuppan, 2007)
Rottman, Gordon L & Wright, Derrick, Hell in the Pacific: The Battle of Iwo Jima, (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2008)
Sandberg, Walter, The Battle of Iwo Jima: A Resource Bibliography and Documentary Anthology, (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc. Publishers, 2005)
United States Fleet, Headquarters of the Commander in Chief, Navy Department, “Amphibious Operations, Capture of Iwo Jima: 16 February to 16 March 1945” COMINCH P-0012, (17 July 1945)

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»CREDITS
Presented by: Jesse Alexander
Written by: Mark Newton, Jesse Alexander
Director: Toni Steller & Florian Wittig
Director of Photography: Toni Steller
Sound: Above Zero
Editing: Toni Steller
Motion Design: Toni Steller, Philipp Appelt
Mixing, Mastering & Sound Design: http://above-zero.com
Maps: Project ’44 https://www.project44.ca/
Research by: Mark Newton
Fact checking: Mark Newton

Channel Design: Battlefield Design

Contains licensed material by getty images
All rights reserved – Real Time History GmbH 2022

From the comments:

Real Time History
8 hours ago
Support Real Time History on Patreon: https://patreon.com/realtimehistory

We hope you liked this surprise episode. Special thanks to Project ’44 and the Canadian Research and Mapping Association for their help with this episode. Their map (http://iwojimamap.com/) was the inspiration for this Iwo Jima documentary. We wanted to try out if we could hook their map data to our motion graphics. Iwo Jima was the perfect test case since it was geographically a limited campaign. As you saw, our idea was a success and we will build on what we learned here for our upcoming Napoleon project.

February 16, 2022

QotD: The fall of Kabul was “a margin call”

Filed under: Asia, History, Military, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The fall of Kabul will make the United States less willing to use military power to achieve national goals and, at the same time, make the use of decisive and overwhelming military force more necessary when the U.S. does decide to act. For years, America used her military scorecard in World War II as “credit” with our allies and adversaries. The positioning of a small American military force in some corner of the world provided deterrence at a fraction of the cost of placing a large enough force to actually win a decisive engagement or a campaign. We can all think of innumerable examples where America “held the fort” in a variety of strategically valuable locales while in reality planning to fight no more than two — I mean one and a half or maybe even just one — actual conflicts at any given time. America was and is securing key terrain “on margin”.

Kabul was a margin call. From now on, America may well be obliged to “pay cash”, viz., deploy combat capable formations of sufficient size to engage and win if we want anyone to take us seriously. A token “speedbump” force or a promise of “over the horizon” support — which is the majority of what the U.S. military now does — isn’t going to reassure any friends or deter any adversaries. At least not anyone who is paying attention.

Our adversaries will be emboldened. It is not so much that America’s military reputation has been irretrievably damaged, but the lessons that the Vietnamese, the Hmong, and now the Afghans have learned so painfully cannot fail to be appreciated by us or by the wider world. It appears that America (not the military, but America herself) has lost her stomach for a real fight. Americans taught the world the same lesson about the British Empire during the Revolutionary War (although Britain recovered enough to build her “second empire”), it would be foolish to fail to now see ourselves through that particular historical prism.

Garri Benjamin Hendell, “The Day After Kabul”, The Angry Staff Officer, 2021-11-02.

February 13, 2022

Victory at Guadalcanal – WW2 – 181 – February 12, 1943

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

World War Two
Published 12 Feb 2022

Operation KE, the Japanese evacuation of Guadalcanal, concludes this week and the campaign has been a big loss for the Japanese. The Axis forces are also withdrawing — and the Red Army advancing — in the Donbas and the Caucasus, closing in on both Kharkov and Rostov. And a front that’s been quiet for a while, the Burma front, begins heating up again with an Allied advance out of India.
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February 8, 2022

QotD: The East India Company’s rise to power

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

We still talk about the British conquering India, but that phrase disguises a more sinister reality. It was not the British government that seized India at the end of the 18th century, but a dangerously unregulated private company headquartered in one small office, five windows wide, in London, and managed in India by an unstable sociopath – Clive.

In many ways the EIC was a model of corporate efficiency: 100 years into its history, it had only 35 permanent employees in its head office. Nevertheless, that skeleton staff executed a corporate coup unparalleled in history: the military conquest, subjugation and plunder of vast tracts of southern Asia. It almost certainly remains the supreme act of corporate violence in world history. For all the power wielded today by the world’s largest corporations – whether ExxonMobil, Walmart or Google – they are tame beasts compared with the ravaging territorial appetites of the militarised East India Company. Yet if history shows anything, it is that in the intimate dance between the power of the state and that of the corporation, while the latter can be regulated, it will use all the resources in its power to resist.

When it suited, the EIC made much of its legal separation from the government. It argued forcefully, and successfully, that the document signed by Shah Alam – known as the Diwani – was the legal property of the company, not the Crown, even though the government had spent a massive sum on naval and military operations protecting the EIC’s Indian acquisitions. But the MPs who voted to uphold this legal distinction were not exactly neutral: nearly a quarter of them held company stock, which would have plummeted in value had the Crown taken over. For the same reason, the need to protect the company from foreign competition became a major aim of British foreign policy.

The transaction depicted in the painting [Wiki] was to have catastrophic consequences. As with all such corporations, then as now, the EIC was answerable only to its shareholders. With no stake in the just governance of the region, or its long-term wellbeing, the company’s rule quickly turned into the straightforward pillage of Bengal, and the rapid transfer westwards of its wealth.

Before long the province, already devastated by war, was struck down by the famine of 1769, then further ruined by high taxation. Company tax collectors were guilty of what today would be described as human rights violations. A senior official of the old Mughal regime in Bengal wrote in his diaries: “Indians were tortured to disclose their treasure; cities, towns and villages ransacked; jaghires and provinces purloined: these were the ‘delights’ and ‘religions’ of the directors and their servants.”

Bengal’s wealth rapidly drained into Britain, while its prosperous weavers and artisans were coerced “like so many slaves” by their new masters, and its markets flooded with British products. A proportion of the loot of Bengal went directly into Clive’s pocket. He returned to Britain with a personal fortune – then valued at £234,000 – that made him the richest self-made man in Europe. After the Battle of Plassey in 1757, a victory that owed more to treachery, forged contracts, bankers and bribes than military prowess, he transferred to the EIC treasury no less than £2.5m seized from the defeated rulers of Bengal – in today’s currency, around £23m for Clive and £250m for the company.

William Dalrymple, “The East India Company: The original corporate raiders”, Guardian, 2015-03-04.

February 6, 2022

Guadalcanal, A New Offensive – WW2 – 180 – February 5, 1943

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

World War Two
Published 5 Feb 2022

This week sees the 10th anniversary of Hitler’s ascension to power in Germany, but while there may be celebrations and speeches in Germany, the Battle of Stalingrad comes to its end with the surrender of the German 6th Army. The Soviets are on the move all over, launching yet more winter offensives. It is the Axis who are attacking in Tunisia, and in the Solomon Islands … well, the Allies aren’t sure what the Japanese are up to.
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February 3, 2022

Colonies Lead the Way: Charger-Loading Lee Enfield MkI India Pattern

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

Forgotten Weapons
Published 27 Sep 2021

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While the Indian Army was looked down upon by much of the British military, it saw much more combat service than its European counterpart. The Indian Army was actually faster than the British to recognize and adopt a number of small arms improvements, and the CLLE MkI India Pattern is a good example.

When the mobile charger guide was first adopted by the British military, no effort was made to retrofit earlier rifles with it. The Indians, however, saw the advantage and began to convert Long Lees to the Charger-Loading configuration as early as 1905. Between then and 1909, some 22,000 of these MkI I.P. rifles were assembled at the Ishapore Arsenal. Following the adoption of the fixed charger bridge, a MkII I.P. became the new standard, with the fixed guide instead of the mobile one.

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February 1, 2022

Ancient Nian Gao | Lunar New Year Cake

Filed under: China, Food, History — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 9 Feb 2021

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Rat and Ox: D.h.Isais, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/…, via Wikimedia Commons
Chinese Zodiac Carving: By Jakub Hałun – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index…
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Hong Kong niangao: Mk2010, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/…, via Wikimedia Commons
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Spring and Autumn Period Map: By Yug – Own work, *Background data: ETOPO1 + QGIS > then vectorized using Inkscape *Semantic data: some from Le Monde Chinois, Gernet, p58.or (en:) Gernet (1996) A History of Chinese Civilisation, Cambridge university press, p. 59, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index…
Statue of Wu Zixu: By Peter Potrowl – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index…
Bronze DIng: drs2biz, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/…, via Wikimedia Commons
Great Wall at Mutianyu: By J. Samuel Burner – https://www.flickr.com/photos/lobster…, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index…

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January 30, 2022

Time to Fire Rommel? – WW2 – 179 – January 29, 1943

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

World War Two
Published 29 Jan 2022

The Allies are unable to win in Tunisia, though further east Bernard Montgomery has achieved his goal of driving the enemy out of Libya. To the west, the Casablanca Conference comes to its end and the Allies write a list of their war priorities. The Soviets, however, are on the move everywhere, closing in on Stalingrad, and launching new operations up and down the eastern front, to the dismay and detriment of the Axis forces.
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