Quotulatiousness

March 18, 2022

Best SMG of World War Two: The Beretta M38A

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

Forgotten Weapons
Published 15 Nov 2021

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

https://www.floatplane.com/channel/Fo…

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The Beretta Model 38A was one of the very best submachine guns of World War Two. Designed by veteran Beretta engineer Tullio Marengoni (who designed most of Beretta’s pistols as well as the Beretta M1918 SMG and 1918/30 carbine), it was the first Italian weapon to use a cartridge equivalent to 9x19mm Parabellum instead of 9mm Glisenti. Development began in 1935, and the final version entered production in January 1938.

The change from the Model 38 to 38A is unclear, but seem most likely to be the change from the top ejection of the prototypes to the left-side ejection of the production model. The 38A was formally adopted by the Italian Army in July 1938, but issue was delayed until 1940/41 because Beretta first produced a 20,000-unit order for the Romanian military.

By 1941, the basic design had been significantly simplified, and the Model 38/42 would significantly reduce production cost by removing the magazine well cover, barrel shroud, and removable firing pin. Simplified 38/42, 38/43, and 38/44 models would enter production, but original 38As were also manufactured until 1944 (this particular example is dated 1943). The gun was very popular with both Italian and German troops, and production continued under German occupation late in the war. Total numbers are unavailable, but are probably in excess of 500,000. The gun was so popular that Beretta was able to restart production after the war and continue selling them until the early 1960s.

Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
6281 N. Oracle 36270
Tucson, AZ 85740

March 16, 2022

Etruscan Cities and Civilization

Filed under: Greece, History, Italy — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Thersites the Historian
Published 9 Apr 2020

The Etruscans were one of the most interesting civilizations of antiquity. In this video, I explore some of the distinctive features of Etruscan civilization and also look at some of the key urban sites in Etruria.

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March 14, 2022

Roman Republic to Empire 04 Slavery in the Roman Republic and Empire

Filed under: Economics, Europe, Greece, History, Italy — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

seangabb
Published 5 Feb 2021

[Update 2023-03-02 – Dr. Gabb took down the original posts and re-uploaded them.]

Here is the fourth lecture, which discusses the nature and extent of slavery in the Roman Empire. It begins with legal definitions and the attempted justifications by philosophers, then proceeds, via the use of slaves as workers in all occupations, including as sex objects, to the great slave revolts of the Late Republic. There is also a section on the valuation of slaves.

In this series, Sean Gabb will explain how the Roman Constitution was transformed, in just over a century, from an oligarchical republic with strong elements of democracy to a divine right military dictatorship.
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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…

Help support my channel:
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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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March 3, 2022

QotD: Diversity was Rome’s strength … as is true of almost every empire in history

Filed under: Europe, Gaming, History, Italy, Military, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The actual Roman Empire was fantastically diverse and more importantly, its military success hinged on its diversity at every stage of its existence. In many games and cultural products, that diversity is obscured because we lose sight of ethnic, religious, linguistic and cultural divisions which were very important at the time, but no longer matter to us very much. Let’s take a snapshot of Roman territory in 218 B.C. to give a sense of this.

Quite a few people look at a map like that, classify most of Rome’s territories as “Italian” and assume there is a large, homogeneous ethnic core there (except, I suspect, anyone who has actually been to Italy and is aware that Italy is hardly homogeneous, even today!). But Roman Italy in 218 B.C. was nothing like that.

Peninsular Italy (which doesn’t include the Po River Valley) contained a bewildering array of cultures and peoples: at least three distinct religious systems (Roman, Etruscan, Greek), half a dozen languages (some completely unrelated to each other) and many clearly distinct cultural and ethnic groups divided into communities with strong local identities and fierce local rivalries (if you want more on this, check out Salmon, The Making of Roman Italy (1982), Fronda, Between Rome and Carthage (2010), and Keaveney, Rome and the Unification of Italy (2005)).

The Roman army was by no means entirely Roman – it was split between Roman citizens and what the Romans called the socii (lit: “allies”) – a polite term for the communities they had subjugated in Italy (a periphery!). Rome demanded military service – this was the resource they would extract – from these communities; the socii pretty much always made up more than half of the army. Diversity was literally the Roman strength, in terms of total military force. Without it, Rome would have remained just one city-state in Italy, and not a particularly important one besides.

(As an aside: while citizenship is extended to nearly all of Italy in the 80s B.C., by then Rome is making extensive use of non-Italian troops in its armies. by the early empire, half of the army – the auxilia – were non-Roman citizens recruited from the provinces. Roman armies were essentially never majority “Roman” in any period, save possibly for the third century. And before anyone asks what about even earlier than my snapshot – it is quite clear – both archaeologically and in the Romans’ own foundation myths – that Rome was a fusion-society, culturally diverse from the city’s foundation. Indeed, sitting at the meeting point of Latin and Etruscan cultural zones as well as upland and coastal geographic zones was one of the great advantages Rome enjoyed in its early history, as near as we can tell.)

Outside of Italy, narrowly construed, the diversity only increases. Sicily’s population included Greeks, Punic (read: Carthaginian) settlers, and the truly native non-Greeks. Sardinia and Corsica had their own local culture as well. Cisalpine Gaul – the Po River Valley – was, as the name implies, mostly Gallic! As the Romans expended into Spain during the Second Punic War, they would add Iberians, Celt-Iberians, and yet more Punic settlers to their empire. And even those descriptions mask tremendous diversity – Iberians and Celt-Iberians were about as diverse among themselves as the Italians were; a quick read of Strabo reveals a wonderful array of sub-groups in all of these regions, with their own customs, languages, and so on.

Even if the Romans didn’t raise military force directly from any one of these groups, they do need to raise revenue from them – remember, the entire point of having the empire is to raise revenue from it, to make other people do the farming and mining and other labor necessary to support your society from the proceeds of their tribute. To keep that revenue flowing – revenue that, as the Roman army professionalized in the late second century B.C., increasingly paid for Roman military activity which held the empire together – you need to be good at managing those groups. Empires that are bad at handling a wide array of different cultures/religions/languages do not long remain empires.

Bret Devereaux, “Collections: Why Are There No Empires in Age of Empires?”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2019-11-22.

February 28, 2022

Roman Republic to Empire 03 Inequality and Corruption

Filed under: Europe, History, Italy, Military — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

seangabb
Published 5 Feb 2021

[Update 2023-03-02 – Dr. Gabb took down the original posts and re-uploaded them.]

Here is the third lecture, which describes the decay of the Roman Constitution as a result of changes in patterns of land tenure in Italy after the Second Punic War, and as a result of the flood of foreign money into Rome from military victories and war indemnities and bribes.
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February 27, 2022

The Blitzkrieg is Back – WW2 – 183 – February 26 1943

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

World War Two
Published 26 Feb 2022

Erich von Manstein’s Axis counterattack on the Eastern Front begins this week and right away smashes through the Red Army lines, threatening all the recent Soviet gains. The Allies — the Americans — also suffer a big defeat in Tunisia at the Kasserine Pass, though in the Pacific it is the Americans who occupy the Russell Islands.
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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 21, 2022

D-Day – The Biggest Trick in History – WW2 Special

Filed under: Africa, Britain, Europe, Germany, Greece, History, Italy, Military, USA, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 17 Feb 2022

It’s 1943, the preparations for D-Day have already begun: deceive the Wehrmacht. Here at TimeGhost, we have begun to prepare our D-Day for 2023, and we want you to join us! Find out how in the pinned comment.
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February 16, 2022

Roman Republic to Empire 02 The Carthaginian Curse

Filed under: Europe, History, Italy, Military — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

seangabb
Published 5 Feb 2021

[Update 2023-03-02 – Dr. Gabb took down the original posts and re-uploaded them.]

Here is the second lecture, which describes the vindictive treatment of Hannibal and Carthage, and explains this in terms of how the Second Punic War destabilised both Italy and the Roman Constutition. Between January and March 2021, Sean Gabb explored this transformation with his students. Here is one of his lectures. All student contributions have been removed.
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February 8, 2022

Roman Republic to Empire: 01 Mistress of the Mediterranean

Filed under: Europe, Greece, History, Italy, Military — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

seangabb
Published 21 Jan 2021

[Update 2023-03-02 – Dr. Gabb took down the original posts and re-uploaded them.]

In 120 BC, Rome was a republic with touches of democracy. A century later, it was a divine right military dictatorship. Between January and March 2021, Sean Gabb explored this transformation with his students. Here is one of his lectures. All student contributions have been removed.
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February 7, 2022

American pizza

Filed under: Food, History, Italy, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

At An Eccentric Culinary History, H.D. Miller makes a strong case for pizza being more an American dish than an Italian one:

“Pizza” by rdpeyton

Today, standing atop the sprawling edifice that is the American restaurant industry, it’s hard to imagine a time when pizza wasn’t popular. But, prior to World War Two, pizza was barely known in the United States outside of a few Italian enclaves in the Northeast. For all of the praise heaped upon Lombardi’s in New York City, until the war, few people north of Houston Street had heard of it, or the dish it served.

From the mid-19th century forward, there were plenty of Italians in America, in places like New York, New Orleans and San Francisco. Most of those early Italian immigrants — around 75,000 before 1880 — were from northern Italy, not the South, and the restaurants they built were usually serving multi-course, table d’hôte meals of meat, bread, macaroni, wine and coffee at reasonable prices. The model was Caffe Moretti’s in Manhattan. Established in 1858 by Stefano Morretti, an ex-seminarian from the Veneto, Morretti’s offered diners generous portions and cheap prices. It did not, however, offer pizzas.

I have to emphasize this, you couldn’t order a pizza in the vast majority of Italian restaurants in America prior to 1945. And the reason you couldn’t order a pizza in Italian restaurants is because pizza isn’t Italian.

Let me repeat that: Pizza isn’t Italian.

Pizza is Neapolitan. It’s a distinct speciality of Naples, developed at at time when Italy didn’t even exist as a nation. Saying pizza is Italian is like saying haggis is British. It might be technically true, but not really.

As in America, prior to the 1950’s, pizza wasn’t something most Italians knew or cared about. In 1900, there were supposedly no pizzerias in Italy anywhere outside of the medieval walls of Napoli. You couldn’t even get pizza in the suburbs. Pizza was strictly street food for poor people in the crowded tangled alleys near the port. […]

In other words, pizza was not something the average Tuscan, Ligurian or Venetian would have thought suitable for a sit-down meal. Or, if they ever did think of it, it was to revile pizza as oily, unappetizing and a likely vector of cholera. This is because Naples was really famous at the time for being dirty and disease-ridden. (If you’re serious about early pizza history, one that strips away the just-so stories, then go read Inventing the Pizzeria by Antonio Mattozzi.)

What brought pizza to America was the mass immigration of southern Italians between 1880 and 1910, when more than 4 million people moved to the United States. That’s why Lombardi’s didn’t get going until 1905, when there were finally enough Neapolitans in Little Italy to keep the doors open.

The same dynamic played out in South America, in Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil. The first successful pizza restaurant in the world located outside of Naples was founded in Buenos Aires in 1882, when a Neapolitan immigrant baker named Nicolas Vaccarezza started selling the pies out of his shop in Boca. For reference purposes, a decade earlier, an attempt to open a pizzeria in Rome, Italy, had ended in bankruptcy, meaning, at the turn of the last century, you could get a pizza in Buenos Aries, São Paulo or New York, but not in Rome, Florence or Venice.

H/T to Ed Driscoll for the link.

February 6, 2022

Quebec Papal Zouave’s Ceremonial Gewehr 71/84

Filed under: Cancon, Europe, Germany, History, Italy, Military, USA, Weapons, WW1 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 4 Oct 2021

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

https://www.floatplane.com/channel/Fo…

Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http://shop.forgottenweapons.com

Here’s a rifle with an interesting twisting history …

This began life as a German military Gewehr 71/84, made in 1888. It was issued to a unit, but eventually replaced by the Gewehr 1888. It was sold to the Francis Bannerman company at some point around 1900, as part of a big batch of surplus weapons (Bannerman was a massive international dealer in arms and military equipment). Moving ahead a few years, World War One breaks out and prompts the organization of a couple Canadian “Home Guard” units. The Montreal Home Guard has some money, and buys a batch of Savage Model 99 lever action rifles (in .303 Savage, interestingly). The Quebec Home Guard isn’t quite so well-heeled, so they go to Bannerman to see what they can afford. Bannerman sells them a batch of Gewehr 71/84 tube-magazine repeating rifles, in the same configuration as when they were sold off by the German military.

Incidentally, I believe these become the only Mauser rifles formally purchased and issued by the Canadian government, when they are acquired by the Home Guard. At any rate, after the war ends, a subset of those old rifles are given to the Quebec Papal Zouaves, a ceremonial vestige of the Quebecois military volunteers who went to Italy in the 1860s to help defend the Papacy during Italian unification. By this time, the Zouaves are basically just acting as guards in parades, and they crudely cut down the 71/84s, removed their magazines, and fit them with cut-down British Snider bayonets for use as single-shot, blank-firing arms.

Quite the journey, right? And also a reminder that sometimes what looks like sporterized junk is actually something with distinct historical provenance …

Many thanks to Mike Carrick of Arms Heritage Magazine for providing me access to film this example!

Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
6281 N. Oracle 36270
Tucson, AZ 85740

February 2, 2022

Places – Lost in Time: The Vesuvius Volcanic Railways

Filed under: Environment, Europe, History, Italy, Railways — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Ruairidh MacVeigh
Published 23 Oct 2021

Hello, and welcome back to Places – Lost in Time, a series that looks back on the tale of places and locations that existed within living memory or photographic record, but are now lost to the pages of history.

In perhaps one of the most unlikely of places, among the world’s most popular funicular railways once existed on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, arguably the most dangerous volcano in the world. However, despite the inherent risk of putting a major tourist attraction on its slopes, the Vesuvius funicular railway, and the corresponding mountain railway, were among the biggest visitor magnets in Italy during the late 1800s and early 1900s, but sadly the forces of nature wouldn’t allow this unusual feature to stay in situ for long.

All video content and images in this production have been provided with permission wherever possible. While I endeavour to ensure that all accreditations properly name the original creator, some of my sources do not list them as they are usually provided by other, unrelated YouTubers. Therefore, if I have mistakenly put the accreditation of “Unknown”, and you are aware of the original creator, please send me a personal message at my Gmail (this is more effective than comments as I am often unable to read all of them): rorymacveigh@gmail.com

The views and opinions expressed in this video are my personal appraisal and are not the views and opinions of any of these individuals or bodies who have kindly supplied me with footage and images.

If you enjoyed this video, why not leave a like, and consider subscribing for more great content coming soon.

Thanks again, everyone, and enjoy! 😀

References:

– Thomas Cook Archive (and their respective references)
– Wikipedia (and its respective references)

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