HardThrasher
Published 5 Apr 2025The background to the Dams raid; how it came into being and how it fitted into the assault on Nazi Germany. In which we discuss Banes Wallis, Arthur Harris and a man called Winterbotham.
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Merch! – https://hardthrasher-shop.fourthwall.com
Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/LordHardThrasherBibliography
James Holland – Dambusters: the Races to Smash the Dams 1943
Max Hastings – Chastise – The Dambusters Story
Alan Cooper – The Battle of the Ruhr
Adam Tooze – The Wages of Destruction
Martin Millbrook and Chris Everett – The Bomber Command War Diaries
Edward Westerman – Flak German Anti Aircraft Defences [sic] 1914-1945
Tami Davis Biddle – Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare
Donald A Miller – Masters of the Air
April 7, 2025
Dambusters Part 1 – The Battle of the Ruhr
April 6, 2025
Judgement Day at Nuremberg: Hitler’s Butchers Meet Their Fate
World War Two
Published 5 Apr 2025The Nuremberg Trials begin. Twenty-four of Hitler’s closest Nazi allies face judgment for crimes of aggressive war, mass enslavement, and genocide. At stake is more than justice for the dead; it’s the birth of a new legal order. We examine the trials, the accused, and whether Nuremberg delivered justice or simply vengeance.
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German democracy takes another blow as extremely extreme right pulls level with the extreme right!
Despite the heroic efforts of the progressives in the Bundestag (and the media and in the EU bureaucracy), the dangerous demagogues of the extremely extreme extreme right AfD are now equally popular with those benighted, detested, dunderheaded “voters” as the almost-as-dangerous extreme right in the CDU:
It has finally happened: Alternative für Deutschland are no longer the second-strongest party in Germany; for the first time ever, they have pulled dead-even with CDU/CSU in a representative poll. Both claim 24% support in the latest INSA survey, conducted for BILD between 31 March and 4 April. It is the strongest poll result the AfD have ever received.
The results are partly symbolic and well within the margin of error (2.9 percentage points), but the trend is clear, and nobody seriously doubts that in the coming weeks AfD will assume the lead and become the strongest-polling party across the Federal Republic.
The running average of all major polls – which lags a week or two but yields the clearest view possible of the trend – looks like this:
The Union parties have been experiencing a slow but steady collapse in support as their voters abandon them in ever greater numbers for their hated blue rival. The erosion began after Friedrich Merz struck a deal with the disgraced Social Democrats (SPD) to overhaul the debt brake with the outgoing Bundestag, contrary to one of his primary campaign promises. Everything we’ve heard about the disastrous coalition negotiations with the SPD in the weeks since have confirmed the image of a careless, inexperienced yet ambitious CDU chancellor candidate, desperate to ascend to the highest political office, whatever the cost. Back in 2018, Merz pledged he would cut support for the AfD in half and drive his party back to 40% supporter or higher. He has achieved very nearly the opposite, plunging his future government to the depths of unpopularity before it is even formed and ceding first place to his most hated rivals. It is a farce beyond what even I could’ve imagined.
There is no plan or strategy here; Merz has no idea what he is even doing. He and CDU/CSU leadership did have a brief flash of insight back in January, when they reached across the firewall to vote with the AfD on legislation to restrict migration. Back then at least, they knew they had to show the left parties they had other options, or they would be destroyed in coalition negotiations with any potential “democratic” partner. Leftist activists took to the streets and Merz rapidly retreated, returning to his standard denunciations of the AfD and pledging never to vote with them again. In return for a measure of mercy from Antifa, Merz voluntarily led his party into a trap, ceding all possible leverage over a radicalised SPD, who will force the Union parties to swallow one poison pill after the other. It is a win-win for them. They get what they want and they get to grind the CDU and the CSU to dust at the same.
The election might be over, but make no mistake – these poll results matter. First, collapsing support deprives the CDU options in the present. They can’t walk away from the negotiating table and seek new elections, because they know they’d come out of them vastly worse. Their terrible numbers further strengthen the negotiating position of the SPD, who will force the CDU to accept still more damaging compromises, driving CDU support even lower. Then we must remember that federal elections are not the only game in town. The rank-and-file of the CDU have to contend in an array of district elections in the coming months, and five state elections are approaching in 2026, including two in East Germany (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Sachsen-Anhalt) that may well end in the collapse of the firewall at the state level. Dissatisfaction with Merz inside the CDU is widespread and growing.
April 5, 2025
World of Warships – Battle Of Jutland
Sea Lord Mountbatten
Published 14 Jul 2024Hey guys! Today I am happy to bring you guys Jutland! Our cinematic on the 1916 Naval Battle of Jutland! Enjoy!
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April 4, 2025
Wine, Urine, Paperclips: America’s Secret Weapons of WWII
World War Two
Published 3 Apr 2025Today Astrid and Anna explore the Simple Sabotage Field Manual, a top-secret WWII guide that taught ordinary people how to disrupt the Nazi war machine. From factory slowdowns to derailed trains, they show how small acts of sabotage targeted Hitler’s regime, and how resistance often came from unexpected places.
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March 28, 2025
The Man Hitler Needs for Civil War, Ernst Röhm, Returns!
World War Two
Published 27 Mar 2025January 1931 starts with violence, economic collapse, and Nazi upheaval in Germany. Hitler secretly meets with army chief Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord, while Ernst Röhm returns to take command of the Nazi paramilitary SA. As hundreds of thousands of miners face mass layoffs and brutal crackdowns, the republic’s future hangs in the balance — how long can democracy hold on?
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The First Sturmgewehr: The MKb42(H)
Forgotten Weapons
Published 27 Nov 2024The first iteration of the iconic German Sturmgewehr was developed by Haenel starting in 1938. It was a select-fire rifle chambered for the short 8x33mm cartridge, developed by the Polte company. It used a long-stroke gas piston and a tilting bolt patterned after the Czech ZB-26 light machine gun. What makes the MKb42(H) stand out from the later Sturmgewehr models is that it was an open-bolt design. The original design spec was concerned about preventing cook-offs, and so it required firing from an open bolt. This means a very simple fire control system, but it also made the rifle difficult to shoot accurately in semiautomatic.
The first MKb42(H) prototype was finished in 1941, with 50 sample guns produced by late March 1942. A major trial was held in April 1942, in which Hitler rejected the design (mostly, he disliked the smaller cartridge). Development was continued anyway, with a move to a closed-bolt system that would become the MP43/1 which was ready for its first testing in November 1942. The open-bolt 42(H) was put into production anyway, as a stopgap measure to provide some much-needed individual firepower to troops on the Eastern front. Serial production began in January 1943, and continued until September 1943. In total, 11,813 of the rifles were manufactured. They saw use in Russia until replaced by newer MP43 models, and represent the first combat use of the assault rifle concept.
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March 26, 2025
Cooking on the German Home Front During World War 2
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 12 Nov 2024Casserole made from sliced potatoes, fennel, and caraway served with pickled beets
City/Region: Germany
Time Period: 1941How well people ate in Germany during WWII really depended on who they were, where they were, and how long the war had been going on. This recipe, from 1941, assumes that people will still have access to ingredients like milk and eggs, which would become extremely scarce for most people in later years.
If you like the anise-like flavors of fennel and caraway, this dish is for you. The flavors are very prominent and really take over the whole casserole. If you’re not too concerned about historical accuracy with this one, I think some more milk or the addition of some cream or cheese would be delicious and add some moisture.
Fennel and Potato Casserole
1 kg fennel, 1 kg potatoes, 1/3 L milch, 1 egg, 30 g flour, 2 spoons nutritional yeast, caraway, salt
If necessary, remove the outer leaves from the fennel bulbs and cut off the green ones. Then cut them and the raw peeled potatoes into slices. Layer them in a greased baking dish, alternating with salt and caraway and the finely chopped fennel greens. The top layer is potatoes. Pour the milk whisked with an egg and a tablespoon of yeast flakes over it. Sprinkle with caraway and yeast flakes and bake the casserole for about 1 hour. — Serve with pickled beets or green salad.
— Frauen-Warte, 1941.
March 25, 2025
“Grey Ghost” – The French Occupation Production P38 Pistol
Forgotten Weapons
Published 23 Nov 2024When the French took over control of the Mauser factory complex in May 1945, the plant had some 85 tons of pistol parts on hand — 7.3 million individual components in various stages of production. This was enough to make a whole lot of guns, even if many of them were not completed parts. So alongside K98k rifles, HST and Luger pistols, the French restarted P38 pistol production at Mauser.
German military production ended at about serial number 3000f in April 1945, and the French chose to start back up at 1g. They would make a total of 38,780 P38s by the early summer of 1946, completing the G, H, and I serial number blocks and getting mostly through K as well. A final batch of 500 were numbered in the L series after being assembled back in France at the Chatellerault arsenal.
French production P38s are generally recognized by the French 5-pointed star acceptance marks on the slides. They will have slide codes of
svw45andsvw46(the French updated the code to match the year in 1946). Many of the parts used were completed prior to occupation, and various German proof marks can be found on some parts.
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March 23, 2025
How To Invade France
HardThrasher
Published 2 Feb 2023For more than 1,000 years British people have studied how to invade France, here then are the fruits of that wisdom.
1. Be German
2. Head for Sedan
March 22, 2025
How One Movie Drove Hitler’s Men Crazy – Rise of Hitler 12, December 1930
World War Two
Published 20 Mar 2025December 1930 plunges Germany deeper into chaos. Nazis and Communists join forces against Chancellor Brüning’s emergency decrees, while a shocking court decision boosts Hitler’s power. Violent riots erupt over the film All Quiet on the Western Front, and police uncover a terrifying communist bomb plot aimed at sparking civil war. With extremism rising, is Weimar democracy heading for disaster?
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March 17, 2025
German politicians are willing to literally bankrupt the country to keep the AfD out of power
eugyppius is clearly no fan of Friedrich Merz, the CDU leader and presumptive next Chancellor of Germany, but even he seems boggled at how much Merz is willing to concede to his ideological enemies to get himself into that position:
Let us summarise, briefly, what has happened so far:
- The CDU are the party of fiscal responsibility. His Triviality the Pigeon Chancellor Friedrich Merz presented himself throughout the campaign as an unusual fan of Germany’s constitutionally-anchored debt brake. He told everybody that he could not imagine ever borrowing in excess of 0.35% of annual GDP, so interested was he in limiting the tax burden of future generations.
- All of the while, Merz and his advisers were scheming in secret about how they might overhaul the debt brake, firstly because they could not give the slightest shit about the tax burdens of future generations, and secondly because they spent the months since November 2023 observing what happens when a government that has no ideas is also deprived of money. “I have no ideas,” Merz said to himself during this time. “What happens if like Olaf Scholz I also end up with no money?”
- Exactly two weeks ago, U.S. President Donald J. Trump and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky had a verbal spat in the Oval Office. This spat put the fear of God into the Eurocrat establishment, for whom the Ukraine war has become a sacred and essentially religious cause. Merz capitalised on the panic to unveil his massive debt spending plan. He and his would-be coalition partners, the Social Democrats, announced that they wished to spend 500 billion Euros of debt on “infrastructure” and untold hundreds of billions of debt on defence. This would entail adjustments to the debt brake, in the same way setting your house on fire would entail adjustments to your living arrangements.
- This massive spending package will require a constitutional amendment, which can only be achieved with a two-thirds vote of the Bundestag. In the newly elected Bundestag, Die Linke and AfD will be in a position to block this amendment and Merz will be stuck with the debt brake. Thus Merz wants to break the debt brake in the final days of the old Bundestag – a strategy that has put him in the amazing position of groveling before the election’s biggest losers. Specifically, Merz has spent the past few days feverishly negotiating with the Green Party, who will not even have any role in his government, just to get them to sign off on his insane spending plans.
I wrote a lot here and on Twitter about the election nightmare scenario I called the “Kenyapocalypse” – a hypothetical in which the Greens and the Social Democrats would each be too weak to give the Union parties a majority on their own, such that Friedrich Merz would be forced to negotiate a coalition deal with both of them at once. In the end, Kenyapocalypse did not happen; the CDU avoided it by a razor’s breadth. Merz, however, turns out to be such a monumental retard that he has managed to recreate a simulacrum of Kenyapocalypse for himself. The man has been on his knees kissing not only Social Democrat but also Green ass for days. He has been begging the Greens to sign onto his debt plan, and the Greens have finally agreed, in return for the following concessions:
- The “defence” funding that will be exempt from the debt brake is to be defined as widely as possible. All kinds of things will count as debt brake-exempt “defence” spending now, probably including various climate nonsense.
- The 500 billion-Euro “infrastructure” debt is to include 100 billion Euros specifically earmarked for the “Climate and Transformation Fund” – the central financial instrument of the energy transition. This is basically infinity windmill money, you might as well set it on fire. Beyond this specific allocation, any projects that contribute to making Germany “climate neutral by 2045” will also be eligible for the 500 billion-Euro exception. This whole thing will be a massive wad of debt for Green nonsense and I would like to take this moment to laugh at everyone who told me how happy I should be that Merz was trying to fix Germany’s bridges with this debt bullshit. Nothing of the sort is going to happen.
- You will note that the explicit goal of achieving “climate neutrality” by 2045 is slated to be among the very few positive political points anchored in the German constitution. “Climate neutrality” is a more expansive concept than mere “carbon neutrality”, or net zero. It describes a utopian state of affairs in which human actions have no influence on the climate whatsoever.
These are prizes the Greens could not achieve even at the height of their influence, in the 2021 elections. Strictly speaking, the entire traffic light coalition fell apart over a matter of 3 billion Euros. Now the Greens are getting 100 billion Euros for free, all because Merz is determined to become Chancellor whatever the cost.
March 14, 2025
“CDU Chancellor hopeful Friedrich Merz is screwing up”
I don’t follow German politics closely, so I depend on regular updates from euygppius, like this post from the other day which I’m sure wasn’t popular among CDU voters or personal fans of Friedrich Merz, the likely next German Chancellor:
For some time now, I’ve wanted to catalogue in one place all the ways that CDU Chancellor hopeful Friedrich Merz is screwing up. His strategic failures are really a thing to behold; I’ve never seen anybody screw up this frequently and this dramatically before. Yet I have delayed writing this post, above all because I wanted Merz to reach the end of his present streak and stop screwing up for a while. I wanted to have a complete unit – a full collection of screwups – to present to my readers for analysis. I now accept that this is never going to happen, and that the coming months and years are going to provide nothing but an unending parade of screwups, one after the other, each more inexplicable and baffling than the last. We must begin the tiresome work of trying to understand Merz’s screwing up now, because there will only ever be more of this.
As with all deeply rooted phenomena, it is hard to tell where the present parade of screwing up began. There was the lacklustre CDU election campaign and Merz’s ill-advised flirtations with the Greens that began last autumn, which cost the Union parties precious points in the polls. None of that looked auspicious, but the screwing up did not begin in earnest until January, in the wake of Aschaffenburg – when Merz decided to violate the firewall against Alternative für Deutschland. For the first time in history, the CDU, the CSU and the FDP voted with AfD in the Bundestag, first in a successful attempt to pass a meaningless if sternly worded anti-migration resolution, and then in a failed attempt to pass an actual piece of legislation that would take real steps to stem the influx of asylees from the developing world.
This manoeuvre had the real glimmerings of strategy, and so we would do well to ascribe it to Merz’s underlings rather than to Merz himself. It was only superficially an attempt to stop the tide of voter defections to the AfD. Above all, it was an effort to gain leverage over the Greens and the Social Democrats in any future coalition negotiations. Merz and his CDU, sobered by polls showing a left so weakened that they feared having to govern in a nightmare Kenya coalition with the SPD and the Greens both, wanted to send a clear message: “We’re not afraid to achieve parliamentary majorities with the AfD if you won’t go along with our programme”. Had Merz stuck to this line, he’d be in a far better place than he is today. Alas, the man chose to screw up instead. Spooked by yet another wave of leftist protests “against the right” – a “right” which now included not only the AfD but also the CDU and the CSU – Merz lost himself in a string of disavowals. A minority government with AfD support would be unthinkable, he and his lieutenants said. The Union parties would never work with the AfD, he and his lieutenants said.
In this way, Merz’s firewall gambit succeeded only in outraging and energising his future coalition partners, while achieving nothing for himself or his own party. A lot of CDU voters would like to see some measure of cooperation between the Union parties and the AfD, and for his constant never-again-with-the-AfD rhetoric Merz paid a price. The CDU underperformed the polls, crossing the finish line with a catastrophic 28.5% of the vote on 23 February. The Greens whom Merz had spent months courting – at the cost of alienating his own base! – emerged from the vote too weak to give his party a majority, and so the man was left to deal with the Social Democrats, newly radicalised not only by their own dim showing but also by Merz’s firewall trickery.
Thus it came to be that Merz ceded the high ground in negotiations to the SPD, the biggest losers in the 2025 German elections. That is itself remarkable, the kind of thing you could not be certain of achieving even if you tried. And yet it is only the beginning!
March 9, 2025
Italy’s Italian Fiasco
World War Two
Published 8 Mar 2025Today Sebastian puts Indy and Sparty in the hot seat for questions about the war in China and North Africa. Just what is the deal with the Italian Army anyway? How much fighting did the CCP do against the Japanese? And what’s the most overlooked event of the first year of war?
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March 6, 2025
The Iron Curtain Descends – W2W 10 – News of 1946
TimeGhost History
Published 5 Mar 20251946 sees the world teetering on the brink of a new global conflict. George Kennan’s long telegram outlines Moscow’s fanatical drive against the capitalist West, while our panel covers escalating espionage, strategic disputes over Turkey, and the emerging ideological battle between the U.S. and the USSR. Tune in as we break down the news shaping the dawn of the Cold War.
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