World War Two
Published 27 Nov 2021Last week’s counterattack was just the beginning, for the Soviets launch another giant offensive this week. And things look bad for the Axis powers in the south of the USSR. Meanwhile in France, the French scuttle their navy rather than allow it to fall into German hands.
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November 28, 2021
Bigger Than Uranus? – Mars – WW2 – 170 – November 27 1942
November 21, 2021
The Red Army Kicks Ass – Operation Uranus! – WW2 – 169 – November 20th, 1942
World War Two
Published 20 Nov 2021After months of stubborn defense the time has finally come for the Soviet counterstroke, but is it in time to save Stalingrad? And can the Allies reach Tunis and take all of North Africa before the Axis can reinforce?
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November 14, 2021
Axis and Allies Both Invade France – WW2 – 168 – November 13, 1942
World War Two
Published 13 Nov 2021Operation Torch goes off this week, the Allied invasion of French Northwest Africa, but this prompts the Germans to invade Vichy France. This is the Allies’ first combined major offensive in the Western Hemisphere. The Germans launch another offensive of their own this week, though — Operation Hubertus in Stalingrad. And in the South Pacific, a major naval battle begins off Guadalcanal.
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November 7, 2021
The Allies Break Through! – WW2 – 167 – November 6, 1942
World War Two
Published 6 Nov 2021After all these months of fighting, the British 8th Army breaks through Erwin Rommel’s Axis positions in North Africa, but the Allies have even bigger plans for that theater of war — a huge invasion of Vichy French North Africa to take place next week. The Soviets also have a plan for a huge invasion to take place very soon near Stalingrad, though the fighting in the city itself sees a lull the second half of this week.
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October 31, 2021
Nazi General Dies of Heart Attack – WW2 – 166 – October 30, 1942
World War Two
Published 30 Oct 2021The Allies may be on the verge of a breakthrough in North Africa, but they’re losing at sea to the Japanese this week, and the Axis are also advancing in the Caucasus, though the street by street struggle at Stalingrad continues as always.
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October 27, 2021
Looting WW2 Java Sea Wrecks – “The Biggest Grave Robbery in History”
Historigraph
Published 26 Oct 2021Support on Patreon to help keep the videos coming https://www.patreon.com/historigraph
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[A] Mediacorp documentary on the salvaging: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9iRR…
[B] Footage of the wreck of Prince of Wales, by Nigel Sinclair – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YD96F…
[C] Footage of the wreck of Repulse, by Clayton Neilson – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3U_e…[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia…
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/201…
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/201…
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-…
[5] https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/bitst…
[6] https://www.reclamet.co.uk/scrap-meta…
[7] https://www.nst.com.my/news/2015/10/n…
[8] https://www.maritime-executive.com/ar…
October 26, 2021
What is Marmite?
Atomic Shrimp
Published 13 Mar 2021I used Marmite to flavour gravy in a previous video — loads of people asked what it was. Here (I hope) is the answer you need.
I’ve tried — and liked — both Marmite and Vegemite and I have a very slight preference for Marmite, but now I’ll need to search for the reduced salt and XO versions … for science, of course.
October 24, 2021
Showdown at El Alamein – WW2 – 165 – October 23, 1942
World War Two
Published 23 Oct 2021Could this be the beginning of the big break in North Africa? The Allies have the men, the armor, and the fuel … they just have to deal with the Axis minefields to try and get started. And the Axis are throwing ever more men at Stalingrad as the Soviets grimly hold on. Another roller coaster of a week.
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October 15, 2021
RV Petrel – The Pac-Man of Wartime Shipwrecks
Drachinifel
Published 13 Nov 2019A quick summation of the excellent work being done by the RV Petrel crew and the Paul Allen Foundation.
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October 14, 2021
October 13, 2021
A War Without Hate? – The Officers and Gentlemen of North Africa – WW2 – Gallery 05
World War Two
Published 12 Oct 2021In the history of European-style warfare, there has always been the ideal of “rules of warfare”. The horrors of the Eastern Front and the Pacific prove how hollow this ideal can be, but there is one theatre where some officers are trying to maintain it: North Africa.
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October 3, 2021
This is Russia, The Soviet Thermopylae – WW2 – 162 – October 2, 1942
World War Two
Published 2 Oct 2021The fighting for Stalingrad continues, but the Soviets forces are split and the Volga is on fire. In the Caucasus, the Axis forces for the most part are being held in check — at one point a single Soviet battalion holds off an entire Army Corps — but they’re being pushed back on the Kokoda Trail in the South Seas.
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September 25, 2021
Samizdat from “Ozcatraz”
Through some miracle of invisible ink, blind mail drops, and all the necessary modern cloak-and-dagger technical equivalents, James Morrow manages to get some news out of locked-down-to-the-nth-degree Australia:
You really have to feel for the poor people at Tourism Australia.
Having spent decades happily if not particularly creatively pitching their product to the world with the time honoured formula of “beaches, Opera House, outback, crocs”, they now have to figure out how to sell a country that looks more and more like a tropical North Korea.
That is, of course, if the federal government ever lets visitors in again without forcing them to first spend a week or two quarantined in some prefab hotel or desert facility in the name of “keeping Australians safe”.
The question thus becomes, both for those of us trapped here in Ozcatraz as well as bemused outside onlookers, how did a free and easy land of opportunity become gripped by a neurotic covid puritanism that truly believes any sort of fun or joy or sociability is deadly, and a place where protesters and cops are having pitched battles in the street over mandatory vaccinations?
If you don’t believe me, consider that in Melbourne — ground zero for Australia’s covid madness, the city just crossed the line to become the most locked-down city in the world — the state premier ordered playgrounds shut and had concrete bollards hoisted into skate parks to stop kids from riding their bikes.
A few weeks ago, after some wags took advantage of a loophole that allowed bars to offer takeaway cocktails and organised an al fresco pub crawl, outdoor consumption of alcohol was banned always and everywhere.
Even a tiny loosening of restrictions there to allow beleaguered residents to meet up for a brief, vaccinated, socially distanced picnics left the prohibition on alcohol in place, all in the name of the Holy Blessed Science.
In Sydney, which is comparatively sane and where there is at least a decent plan to get back to some sort of vague simulacrum of normal over the next few months, everyone still has to “mask up” when outdoors, even if not around anyone else. The only socialising allowed is under very limited outdoor circumstances, among the fully vaccinated, who are not allowed to travel too far to meet up with one another.
What makes it most bizarre is that even the state’s health minister recently admitted outdoors was the safest place to be and everyone understands that the mask rule was imposed largely to shut up a depressingly totalitarian press gallery that wasn’t going to shut up until everyone was welded into their homes Wuhan-style.
Yet, as Sydney moves into summer, every weekend sees Twitter flooded with photos of sunbakers on local beaches asking WHY IS THIS ALLOWED? and demanding police action.
On any given Monday in the local park where I exercise my spaniel, my very earnest bourgeoise-left neighbours grumble about it all not being “in the spirit” of the health orders while rabbinically parsing whatever latest decree has just come down from the Temple, er, Ministry of Health.
Update: Alex Berenson confirms much of the situation in Oz (h/t to SDA for the link).
Americans have the wrong idea about Australia.
Thanks to some brilliant tourism branding and Crocodile Dundee, we think of it as rough-n-ready frontier country, Montana with bigger beer cans. The dingo ate my baby!
In reality it’s Canada with a mean streak. The Karens are in charge and they are mad.
[…]
So when Covid rolled in, the Australian government (and lots of Aussies) saw it as just another ugly export from China that needed to be beaten back at all costs. To its credit, Australia pushed hard for an independent investigation of the origins of Sars-Cov-2 last year (the Chinese pushed back, going so far as to call for a boycott of Australia’s delicious wine).
But Australia also went cray-cray — the technical term — for the fantasy of zero Covid. It effectively closed its borders not just to other countries but to its own citizens. For most of the last two years, they have had a hard time coming home — and an even harder time leaving.
[…]
Until the last couple of months, the frogs were not just luxuriating in the pot but asking for a little more heat! Australians were so pleased to be Covid-free — for the entire first half of 2021, they had only one Covid death — that the majority happily tolerated these restrictions.
Yes, a few rabble-rousers complained, but even videos of police arresting people inside their homes or attacking (truly) peaceful protestors didn’t dent support for the creeping police state.
But in the last couple of months, and especially the last few days, the equilibrium has shifted. And — inevitably — the response of Australia’s fearless leaders has been to try even harder to stamp down unrest. As a result, the situation is increasingly unstable.
September 20, 2021
Canada was given advance notice of the AUKUS deal … about five minutes notice
When the news broke about a new western alliance involving Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, the official line — belatedly — was that our allies had kept Canadian officials “in the loop”, about the negotiations. Now that everyone’s attention is on the vote-counting, it can be safely acknowledged that the Canadian government got a heads-up just a few minutes before the formal announcement, as Ted Campbell discusses:
So, Steven Chase and Robert Fife say, in the Globe and Mail, that “The Canadian government was surprised this week by the announcement of a new security pact between the United States, Britain and Australia, one that excluded Canada and is aimed at confronting China’s growing military and political influence in the Indo-Pacific region, according to senior government officials [and] Three officials, representing Canada’s foreign affairs, intelligence and defence departments, told The Globe and Mail that Ottawa was not consulted about the pact, and had no idea the trilateral security announcement was coming until it was made on Wednesday by U.S. President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison.”
Not only did our oldest and closest friends and allies kick Canada out of the “inner circle”, they didn’t even bother to tell us that the political and diplomatic kick in the arse was coming, although, the Globe journalists say, the Australian and British defence ministers gave Harjit Sajjan a brief “heads up” just minutes before the announcement. Mr Sajjan’s spokesman said that Canada “had been kept in the loop”, I call BS.
Vice Admiral Mark Norman, someone who knows a lot about what happens at the highest echelons of government in Ottawa said that “if Mr. Trudeau was fully briefed” [on this new AUKUS pact, then] “he doesn’t understand what is going on internationally and he doesn’t understand what the significance of an arrangement like this is as it relates to international security.” I don’t think he had heard a word about this until Minister Sajjan’s senior aids called the PCO and PMO on Wednesday afternoon.
One can easily imagine the conversations on Wednesday and Thursday in some of the corridors of power in Ottawa: “
Biden us!” said one senior official. “No,” said another, even more senior, “this has been coming for a long time. It’s a shock, but it really shouldn’t be a surprise.” “They screwed us,” said a third, “we’ve done nothing to deserve this. It’s just because we aren’t spending as much as Biden and Morrison want on the military and it’s because we’re not sending more ships to Asia, more often.” “No,” the second person said, “it’s because we decided, all of us, you and me, too, to not do whatever it took to arrest the changes in our national strategic outlook.” “How can you say that?” the first speaker said, “We all protested, I wrote a long brief explaining why we needed to step up …” “We’re still here,” the more senior official said. “We didn’t resign and go public as soon as we saw how things were shaping up. Almost no one did.” “No one listens when senior officials or admirals or generals resign,” said the third official, “it wouldn’t have done any good.” “You’re right,” the most senior official answered, “resignations are, normally, not news and they rarely change politicians’ minds … not, anyway, when they’re done one at a time. Back in 2016, when many us started to see, clearly, how things were going we should have resigned en masse ~ and not just we three, but dozens of us from PCO, from Foreign Affairs and from DND and the military. If the senior public service had rebelled, as it should when the government makes destructive policy choice against our advice, then there would have been enormous, even irresistible political pressure. But we didn’t, did we? We all stayed on and wrote a couple of arse-covering briefing notes and went about our business. We are as much to blame for this as are those dimwits in Trudeau’s cabinet and inner circle. We failed Canada.” Vice Admiral Norman, the article explains, “said the agreement goes far beyond access to U.S. submarine technology [which is Mr Trudeau’s lame excuse for why Canada was kicked out of the inner circle] This is about accessing both current and emerging technologies, from cyber and artificial intelligence, to acoustics and underwater warfare – a whole range of very important strategic capabilities.” Further, “Mr. Norman said Canada has many national interests in the Indo-Pacific – including trade, promoting the rule of law and democracy, and countering China’s aggressive behaviour and posturing – but he suspects close allies do not take Canadian defence commitments seriously [and he added] I don’t think our allies think we are serious when it comes to defence. I think they have concerns not just about our defence expenditures, but also the extent to which our [international] commitments are both lasting and meaningful.” This has been evident since 2015. Justin Trudeau effectively campaigned on doing less in the world. Everyone knew this was coming ~ especially those who voted for the Liberal Party … it is what they wanted. It’s what Canada got.
September 19, 2021
Stalingrad Falls? – WW2 – 160 – September 18, 1942
World War Two
Published 18 Sep 2021It’s a big week, but by now they all are. The fighting in Stalingrad is intense, the fighting on Guadalcanal is intense, and the US loses a carrier in the Pacific. And the German quest for oil in the Caucasus … how’s that going again?
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