Quotulatiousness

September 7, 2021

How William Fairbairn Created the Modern SWAT Team in Warlord Era Shanghai

Filed under: Britain, China, History, Military, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 1 Jun 2021

William E. Fairbairn is best known for his work with Eric Sykes and their “Commando” knife design during World War Two. However, Fairbairn spent some 33 years in the Shanghai Municipal Police, working his way up from a beat constable to Assistant Commissioner. There he was responsible for the SMPD adopting truly forward-thinking fighting methods, and he essentially invented the modern SWAT team (the “Reserve Unit”, which Fairbairn led for 10 years). He combined expertise in formal marksmanship, instinctive practical shooting, and hand-to-hand combat schools (including jiu-jitsu and judo) into a comprehensive training program like no other on earth at the time.

Book references:
The World’s First SWAT Team, by Leroy Thompson:
https://amzn.to/2TrYiNv

Gentleman & Warrior, by Peter Robins:
https://amzn.to/3vuODn9

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

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

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

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

September 6, 2021

Early Rome, Part I: The Historical Problem of Studying Early Rome

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

Thersites the Historian
Published 2 Sep 2021

In this video, I discuss why early Rome is difficult to study and preview the upcoming episodes in this series.

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Why the British Rail Modernisation Plan Failed

Filed under: Britain, Economics, History, Railways — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Ruairidh MacVeigh
Published 27 Feb 2021

Hello again! 😀

Back to trains, and for this week we discuss one of Britain’s most audacious but ultimately futile projects to revitalise the network in the wake of World War II. However, rather than undertaking a comprehensive rebuild of the network, British Railways was short-changed time and again, ultimately resulting in a facelifted but largely unchanged system that dated back to the Victorian era, though it was much smaller and crippled by far more debt than ever before.

This video was actually a suggestion from an American viewer, who was curious as to why British Rail had such a vast array of diesel locomotives during its early years. 🙂

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:
– Railways Archive (and their respective sources)
– RMWeb (and their respective sources)
– Wikipedia (and its respective references)

September 5, 2021

This War is Three Years Old – WW2 – 158 – September 4, 1942

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

World War Two
Published 4 Sep 2021

As the war turns three there is is no slacking in the fighting. Erwin Rommel launches another Axis attack in North Africa, but it is foiled in only days, though the Axis are advancing in the Caucasus as well as on Stalingrad, where the fight for the suburbs is now beginning. They’re also advancing in the South Pacific, as the Japanese fight their way along the Kokoda Trail.
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September 4, 2021

Battle of Sedan – German Victory and Fall of the French Empire (Franco-Prussian War)

Filed under: France, Germany, History, Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

realtimehistory
Published 2 Sep 2021

The Battle of Sedan was one of the pivotal moments in the 19th century. The French 2nd Empire’s defeat at Sedan (and the capture of Emperor Napoleon III) unleashed social tensions in Paris and a new French republic was proclaimed. And while the victory of the German Armies was resounding, the cost at places like Bazeilles was also high.

» THANK YOU TO OUR CO-PRODUCERS
John Ozment
James Darcangelo
Jacob Carter Landt
Thomas Brendan

» OUR PODCAST
https://realtimehistory.net/podcast – interviews with historians and background info for the show.

» LITERATURE
Arand, Tobias: 1870/71. Die Geschichte des Deutsch-Französischen Krieges erzählt in Einzelschicksalen. Hamburg 2018

Barry, Quintin: The Franco-Prussian War 1870-1871. Vol 1: the Campaign of Sedan. Solihull 2006

Bourguinat, Nicolas/Vogt, Gilles: La guerre franco-allemande de 1870. Une histoire globale. Paris 2020

Gouttman, Alain: La grande défaite de 1870-1871. Paris 2015

Howard, Michael: The Franco-Prussian War. London 1961

Herre, Franz: Eugénie. Kaiserin der Franzosen. Stuttgart, München 2000

Milza, Pierre: L’année terrible. Paris 2009

» SOURCES
Chuquet, Arthur. La Guerre 1870-71. Paris 1895

Fontane, Theodor: Der Krieg gegen Frankreich. Bd. Berlin 1874

Kühnhauser, Florian: Kriegs-Erinnerungen eines Soldaten des königlich bayerischen Infanterie-Leib-Regiments. Patenkirchen 1898

N.N. (Hrsg.): Bismarcks Briefe an seine Gattin aus dem Kriege 1870-71. Stuttgart, Berlin 1903

Sheridan, Philip H.: Von Gravelotte nach Paris. Erinnerungen aus dem deutsch-französischen Kriege. Leipzig 1889

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Presented by: Jesse Alexander
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Maps: Battlefield Design
Research by: Cathérine Pfauth, Prof. Dr. Tobias Arand
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Contains licensed material by getty images
All rights reserved – Real Time History GmbH 2021

Recreating the original India Pale Ale

Filed under: Britain, History, India — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In The Critic, Henry Jeffreys discusses the rebirth of the original IPA:

From an early age Jamie Allsopp had wanted to bring back the beer that made his family name. It was his ancestor Samuel Allsopp who made the very first Burton IPA, and created a style that is now a global phenomenon. Hell, there are even brewers in Germany making IPA these days.

Though IPA is most associated with Burton-on-Trent, it was originally brewed in London by Hodgson’s, the nearest brewery to East India Dock. Here East India Company servants would buy beer to sell at a vast profit in India. The beer of choice was a strong, heavily-hopped ale designed to last through the winter months. On the six-month voyage through the tropics, it was found to have matured splendidly, rather like wine from Madeira did. Shipped in the early-nineteenth century, this was the first India Pale Ale, though it wasn’t known as such.

Frederick Hodgson then got greedy and tried to cut out the East India Company by shipping directly. So, Campbell Majoribanks, a director at the Company, approached Burton brewer Samuel Allsopp to make a rival beer. Allsopp brewed a sample in a teapot which met with approval and the beer was shipped to India from 1823.

Burton-on-Trent had an advantage over London in that the water contained gypsum, calcium sulphate, which made the beer brighter and clearer with a pronounced acidic bite. It suited a pale crisp beer, made possible by the recent invention of pale malt, very different to the heavy dark porter that London was famed for.

Other Burton brewers such as Bass & Ratcliff got in on the act. This new beer wasn’t just a hit in India; it became all the rage back in Britain. Railways meant that Burton beer could be sent to London cheaply, and the porter that had dominated the capital began to die out, displaced by this new refreshing beer. Some time in the 1830s the name IPA began to be used.

It was the drink of the aspirant middle class. It would have sold for twice as much as ordinary beer. So popular were Burton beers that by 1877 the Bass brewery was the largest in the world. Bass had the red triangle trademark whereas Allsopp’s symbol was the red hand.

The Allsopp family, like many of the great brewing families, moved into politics. Samuel’s son Henry was elevated to the peerage as 1st Baron Hindlip. In fact, so great was the political influence of brewing families that they were known as “the beerage”. Gladstone attributed the liberal defeat in the 1874 election to this powerful faction: “We have been borne down in a torrent of gin and beer”, he wrote.

But the Allsopp’s brewing heyday did not last long. According to Jamie Allsopp, in 1897, the family “built a big lager brewery and nobody wanted lager and it finished the company”. They were pushed out in 1911 when the firm went into receivership. It soldiered on before merging with another Burton brewer, Ind Coope, in 1934. Following waves of mergers and acquisitions, the name and the famous red hand disappeared in 1959.

The Mauser Train: High Adventure in the Last Days of WWII

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

Forgotten Weapons
Published 18 May 2021

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

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

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

Only days ahead of the French Army in April 1945, Ott-Helmuth von Lossnitzer and about 250 Mauser engineers and technicians fled Oberndorf with the core of Mauser’s new projects. They had the drawings, components, and gages for guns like the new StG-45 assault rifle, MK214 aircraft cannon, and Volkspistol and they were headed for an impregnable series of tunnels in the Austrian Alps to carry on the war. In a story that is absolutely worthy of film adaptation they scrounged a series of locomotives, dodged P47 Thunderbolt attacks, and went careening through the Alps with about 2 dozen boxcars of the most important prototype guns in the German arsenal.

Of course, the idea of continued resistance was a complete fantasy. When it did finally arrive in Ötztal, the Mauser refugees found all the tunnels already occupied by other groups with the very same idea. So they basically made camp and waited for American forces to arrive. The train was found by a British-American CIOS (Combined Intelligence Objective Subcommittee) party, the engineers were all questioned, and the train contents packed up for shipment to the UK and US. Ott-Helmuth von Lossnitzer himself emigrated to the US as part of Operation Paperclip, where he worked for Springfield Arsenal for many years until retiring in 1968 and then living in Wisconsin until his passing in 1989.

For anyone interested in this story, I highly recommend Lossnitzer’s oral recollections compiled into book form by Leslie Field and Bas Martens – ISBN 9789081737807. It is out of print now, but you may be able to find it on the secondary market.

Much more accessible is the reprinting of the original CIOS report on Mauser published by Peter Dallhammer (whom you may recall from his Textbook of Pistol Technology and Design). This is a 360-page treasure trove of details on Mauser’s ongoing R&D in 1945, and it is available on Amazon:
https://amzn.to/2RrnNgT

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

September 3, 2021

Why Don’t the French Resist? – WAH 041 – August 1942, pt. 2

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

World War Two
Published 2 Sep 2021

Citizens in Stalingrad face German bombs as Soviet officials refuse to evacuate. The German counter-insurgency effort increases, but people continue to resist against all odds. The Treblinka camp breaks down under the ambitions of its commandant, Irmfried Eberl.
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Anti-Slavery Patrols – The West Africa Squadron

Filed under: Africa, Americas, Britain, History, Law, Liberty, Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Drachinifel
Published 1 Dec 2018

Title says it all really, we look at something that was definitely worth doing, which really should have been done much sooner.

September 2, 2021

Road to WWII: A Basic Causal Analysis

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

Thersites the Historian
Published 19 Nov 2019

This video is a primer for undergraduates in broad history survey courses that will hopefully help make sense of the interwar years between World War I and World War II.

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QotD: The Boer War

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

The last event in Queen Victoria’s reign was the Borewore, or, more correctly, Boerwoer (Dutch), which was fought against a very tiresome Dutch tribe called the Bores, because they were left over from all previous wars.

The War was not a very successful one at first, and was quite unfair because the Boers could shoot much further than the English, and also because they were rather despicable in wearing veldt hats and using PomPom bullets.

Numerous battles were fought against the Bore leaders (such as Bother, Kopje, and Stellenbosch) at Nek’s Creek, Creek’s Nek, Knock’s Knee, etc., and much assistance was given to the British cause by Strathcoma’s memorable horse (patriotically lent by Lord Strathcoma for the occasion) and by the C.I.D., who fought very bravely and were awarded a tremendous welcome on their return to London after the war.

Finally, the people at home took upon themselves the direction of the War and won it in a single night in London by a new and bracing method of warfare known as Mafeking. Thus the English were once more victorious. Memorable Results The Barwar was obviously a Good Thing in the end because it was the cause of Boy Scouts and of their memorable Chief Scout, General Baden Powell (known affectionately as ‘the B.O.P.’), and also because it gave rise to a number of very manly books, such as 40 Years Beating About The Bush, 50 Years Before The Mast, 60 Years Behind The Times, etc.

Death of Queen Victoria

Meanwhile Queen Victoria had celebrated another Jamboree, called the Diamond Jamboree (on account of the discovery of Diamond mines at Camberley during the Borewore) and after dying of a surfeit of Jamborees, Jokes, Gladstone, etc., had been succeeded by her son, Edward VII.

W.C. Sellar & R.J. Yeatman, 1066 And All That, 1930.

September 1, 2021

German Siege Tactics on the Eastern Front – WW2 Special

Filed under: Germany, History, Military, Russia, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 31 Aug 2021

German military doctrine is all about mobility and operational maneuverability, but there comes a time in this war, well, several times, when an actual classic siege is called for. So how does the Wehrmacht respond to that call? Find out today.
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1893 Lee-Metford Trials Carbine (One of Only 100 Made)

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

Forgotten Weapons
Published 17 May 2021

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

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

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

Once Lee-Metford rifle production was in place, the British began working on a carbine version of the same action for their cavalry. In 1893 a trial run of 100 carbines were made, and today we are looking at serial number 32 of that batch. These carbines are different in several ways from the ultimately adopted pattern. They had exposed muzzles like the Martini carbines, instead of the heavy snub-nose muzzle that would be adopted (similar to the muzzle of most early Mauser carbines). These trials carbines also had no safety, no sling attachments, and no barrel band. The did have the bent bolt handle of the final pattern (albeit not flattened down) and the short 6-round magazine.

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

QotD: The power of nationalistic feelings

Filed under: Britain, Germany, History, Quotations, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.

They do not feel any enmity against me as an individual, nor I against them. They are “only doing their duty”, as the saying goes. Most of them, I have no doubt, are kind-hearted law-abiding men who would never dream of committing murder in private life. On the other hand, if one of them succeeds in blowing me to pieces with a well-placed bomb, he will never sleep any the worse for it. He is serving his country, which has the power to absolve him from evil.

One cannot see the modern world as it is unless one recognizes the overwhelming strength of patriotism, national loyalty. In certain circumstances it can break down, at certain levels of civilization it does not exist, but as a positive force there is nothing to set beside it. Christianity and international Socialism are as weak as straw in comparison with it. Hitler and Mussolini rose to power in their own countries very largely because they could grasp this fact and their opponents could not.

George Orwell, “The Lion And The Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius”, 1941-02-19.

August 31, 2021

Spy Affair that Started the Cold War

Filed under: Cancon, History, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

The Cold War
Published 3 Aug 2019

Our series on the history of the Cold War period continues with a documentary on Gouzenko affair — a spy thriller that provoked the beginning of the Cold War.

Consider supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thecoldwar

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