Quotulatiousness

December 16, 2020

The NKVD: from Pen-Pushers to Communist Hit Squads – WW2 Special

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

World War Two
Published 15 Dec 2020

The NKVD started out as your regular old Ministry of the Interior. But over time, they grew out to a hugely influential and highly lethal weapon for some of the Soviet Union’s leaders.

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Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sources

Hosted by: Spartacus Olsson
Written by: Joram Appel and Spartacus Olsson
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Joram Appel
Edited by: Miki Cackowski
Sound design: Marek Kamiński
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory)

Colorizations by:
Klimbim – https://www.flickr.com/photos/2215569…
Mikołaj Uchman
Julius Jääskeläinen – https://www.facebook.com/JJcolorization/
Dememorabilia – https://www.instagram.com/dememorabilia/

Sources:
Picture of Lavrentiy Beria in court, courtesy of Фотограф – Ист.доки https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi…
Yad Vashem 1019-2, 143EO1, 55AO6
IWM HU 106212
USHMM
I.M. Bondarenko
from the Noun Project: border police by IcoLabs, fire building by dDara, Police by Cuputo, Skull by Muhamad Ulum

Soundtracks from the Epidemic Sound:
Reynard Seidel – “Deflection”
Johannes Bornlof – “Deviation In Time”
Farrell Wooten – “Blunt Object”
Andreas Jamsheree – “Guilty Shadows 4”
Fluow – “Endlessness”
Johannes Bornlof – “The Inspector 4”
Gunnar Johnsen – “Not Safe Yet”

Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

From the comments:

World War Two
2 hours ago
We have been talking about the NKVD a lot in our War Against Humanity episodes and in several Between Two Wars episodes. If you found this video to be interesting, I can highly recommend you try our B2W episode on the Great Terror and Military Purges in 1938. It provides some crucial context that we couldn’t expand on in this special episode. You can find it right here: https://youtu.be/MNnK0LAoyMo
Cheers,
Joram

Other videos about the NKVD we mentioned in this special are:
– War Against Humanity episode covering the Katyn Massacre: https://youtu.be/gd5YhhNcC44
– War Against Humanity episode covering the Great Prison Massacre: https://youtu.be/kykPusygzOw
– Biography episode on Richard Sorge: https://youtu.be/fn9NyRfbSOo

December 15, 2020

Port wine

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

In The Critic, Henry Jeffreys considers how Port became so popular in Britain:

Before there were package holidays, there was port. This was the way British people shivering on their cold wet island could get a bit of sunshine. It’s a miracle drink, preserving the heat of the Douro valley in liquid form for decades ready to be uncorked and spread cheer. And don’t we need cheer more than ever at the moment? According to Adrian Bridge, CEO of Taylor’s, British port sales were booming during lockdown.

Our love affair with port goes back a long way but the funny thing is that when wines from Portugal began to arrive in large quantities in the 17th century, people hated it. Port was a necessity because Bordeaux, the traditional wine of choice, had become expensive due to the high duty put on it from Cromwell’s time onwards. Early port was a rough sort of wine, often transported down to the city of Oporto in pig skins and adulterated with brandy and elderberries. A poem from 1693 by Richard Ames captures the mood of the times: “But fetch us a pint of any sort, Navarre, Galicia, anything but Port.” The Scots in particular were not impressed. After the Act of Union, wine drinking took on political connotations with Jacobites drinking claret and Hanoverians port. This antipathy to port still persists: a few years back, I sat next to a Scottish woman at dinner who complained that the English only drank port to thumb their noses at Napoleon.

It took a long time before port became the sweet smooth consistent wine that we know and love today. In fact, until 1820 it would usually have been dry. The vintage that year was so hot that the grapes contained more sugar than the yeasts could deal with, so brandy was added while the wines were still fermenting. It was such a success in Britain that this became the model for how port was made in future. Not everyone was keen, however. Baron Forrester, the man who first mapped the course of the Douro river, was still complaining about the new-fangled sweet port right into the 1850s. The current winemaker at Taylor’s, David Guimaraens, reckoned this year’s heatwave had more than a little in common with the 1820 vintage.

Port really is perfectly designed to deal with this heat. Even with modern temperature-controlled fermentation it can be difficult making balanced dry wine with such ripe grapes whereas adding brandy during the fermentation preserves the fresh fruit flavour. Furthermore, heavier wines can be blended with lighter vintages to make tawny ports which are aged for years in wood with oxygen contact. Tawnies were traditionally enjoyed more by the Portuguese but they’re becoming increasingly popular over here. They’re mellow, pale and nutty from oxygen contact, quite different to vintage wines. The great thing is they are ready to drink, no ageing or decanting needed, and an open bottle will last for months. In fact, wood-aged ports are practically indestructible, I’ve had examples from 1937 and 1863 that were both fresh and vigorous.

Grapes with the right balance can go into vintage releases, though a declared vintage from 2020 does look unlikely. The discovery of how well port aged in bottles was probably an accident. A well-off individual would buy a pipe of port (around 500 litres) and have it bottled and corked. It was discovered that after years in bottle, something sublime happened to the fiery tannic wine. A vintage from a declared year will need at least 20 years. Happily, for the impatient among us, ready to drink vintage ports aren’t terribly expensive when you compare with the price of say, mature Bordeaux or Burgundy.

History Summarized: Spread of Christianity

Filed under: Europe, History, Middle East, Religion — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 10 Jan 2017

Things I learned when making this video: 1) when your script goes beyond 4 single-spaced pages, you’re heading into the danger zone 2) Gregorian Chants are awesome and you should totally listen to them, 3) editing always takes longer than you’d hope 4) self care is huffing frankincense for breakfast lunch and dinner and single-handedly sacking a levantine city!

Have a question about something I mentioned, or maybe something I might have left out? Leave it down below and I’ll do my best to respond!

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QotD: TedX

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

TedX, a non-official version of the sanctimonious ubiquitous Ted Talks programme, is more inclusive than official Ted because they have added a random letter ‘X’ into the word. On an unrelated note, TedX London have decided to start using the totally real and not at all just made-up word “Womxn” when they talk about members of the female persuasion, chapettes, fillies, gels, y’know, charming, delightful, non-men – them. They told a normal person bigot on Twitter who asked why they were using the word “womxn”: “No, that’s not a typo: ‘womxn’ is a spelling of ‘women’ that’s more inclusive and progressive. The term sheds light on the prejudice, discrimination, and institutional barriers womxn have faced, and explicitly includes non-cisgender women.” But are TedX really the inclusive group they claim to be? Trans Media Watch, a pro-trans lobby group told the BBC it would never use the word Womxn: “because we feel it’s important for people to recognise that trans women are women. Trans women aren’t a special, separate category.” So it turns out “women” is the most inclusive term after all. If TedX London hasn’t been cancelled by the end of the week then Twitter’s not what it was.

David Scullion, “UN-Believable”, The Critic, 2020-09-09.

December 13, 2020

Hitler Declares War on the USA and the Jews – WW2 – 120 – December 12, 1941

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

World War Two
Published 12 Dec 2020

The Japanese launch attacks all over Southeast Asia and the Pacific, and launch a preemptive surprise attack on the American Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. The war is suddenly much larger. In the USSR, the Germans find themselves now heavily on the defensive after the failure to take Moscow, while in North Africa, Erwin Rommel decides he must withdraw out of Cyrenaica to await reinforcements.

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Follow WW2 day by day on Instagram @ww2_day_by_day – https://www.instagram.com/ww2_day_by_day
Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sources

Written and Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Indy Neidell
Edited by: Miki Cackowski
Sound design: Marek Kamiński
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory)

Colorizations by:
Daniel Weiss
Adrien Fillon – https://www.instagram.com/adrien.colo…
Mikołaj Uchman
Carlos Ortega Pereira, BlauColorizations – https://www.instagram.com/blaucolorizations
Klimbim – https://www.flickr.com/photos/2215569…
Julius Jääskeläinen – https://www.facebook.com/JJcolorization/
Jaris Almazani (Artistic Man) – https://instagram.com/artistic.man?ig…

Sources:
IWM HU 56120, K 1385, HU 675, TR153, HU 81216, WPN 298
NARA
Bundesarchiv
Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe
Picture of a victim of starvation during the siege of Leningrad, courtesy of George Shuklin
Picture of Alfred Godwin-Austen, courtesy of Berserker276 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi…
Picture of Harold Cole, courtesy of Cumbria County Archives

Soundtracks from the Epidemic Sound:
Phoenix Tail – “At the Front”
Johannes Bornlof – “Deviation In Time”
Johan Hynynen – “Dark Beginning”
Rannar Sillard – “March Of The Brave 4”
Jo Wandrini – “To War!”
Reynard Seidel – “Deflection”
Wendel Scherer – “Defeated”
Johannes Bornlof – “Death And Glory 3”
Johannes Bornlof – “The Inspector 4”
Hakan Eriksson – “Epic Adventure Theme 3”
Skrya – “First Responders”
Bonnie Grace – “Imperious”

Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

From the comments:

World War Two
2 days ago (edited)
Five days ago, we covered the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor minute by minute in real time over five hours. If you missed that, then check out episode one right here, you’ll love it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Joh2BXPsrXs&t=4s

NOTE: An error snuck through our controls regarding the Japanese casualties at Wake, we are working with YouTube to have it fixed before the video goes public. We apologize for this inconvenience.

Japan attacked a whole variety of places that day, launching massive offensives all over SE Asia and the Pacific. I’ll be covering them here weekly, of course, but for even more coverage, check out our day by day Instagram coverage of the war: https://www.instagram.com/ww2_day_by_day

Islamism and the French Republic

Filed under: France, Politics, Religion — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Niccolo Soldo talks to Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry about the rise of Islamism in France and the dangers it poses:

Brigitte Macron and Emmanuel Macron, 11 November, 2018.
Photo from the office of the President of Ukraine via Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-4.0.

Islamism presents an existential threat to the French Republic. Statements are being made, positions are being taken, and the smell of action is in the air to counter this threat. Will we see a follow through from Macron?

Your guess is as good as mine. Macron is hard to predict. Although there are many reasons to be pessimistic, from French elites’ general lack of follow-through to Macron’s own (I believe, sincere and deeply-held) commitment to so-called “liberal values”, I will note that it hasn’t been all talk. BarakaCity (the biggest Muslim NGO in France) whose leaders happen to think ISIS is misunderstood, was shut down by executive decree. CCIF, a prominent “anti-islamophobia” organization, dissolved itself after the government announced its intent to shut it down. So an important Rubicon has been crossed, at least in principle: the French government has rhetorically and legally committed itself to combating not just those who engage in Islamist violence, but those who engage in Islamist advocacy and activism.

Can France’s secularism hold on in light of this challenge? Islamism is rather dynamic, and secularism lacks the ingredients for fanaticism that only the irrational are able to muster. In many countries it seems that only the elites are strongly-wedded to secularism.

I’ll let you in on a little secret we don’t share with foreigners: nobody in France believes in “laïcité“, it’s all a code to say we don’t like Islam. We have a freaking concordat, for crying out loud!

The entire notion that there is this specific French culture of “laïcité” that goes beyond institutional separation of church and state was a retcon invented in the 1980s when the Muslim population became too big to ignore. Nobody — nobody — is fooled that banning the hijab in public schools as well as “large ostentatious crosses” is a neutral secularist measure.

Today some people are claiming that wearing religious garb in the National Assembly is a breach of laïcité, but after the War the Canon Kir sat as a member of Parliament in his cassock for twenty years and nobody had any problem with it. (My favorite Kir story: during a late-night parliamentary session, a Communist deputy asked him “How come you believe in God, even though you’ve never seen him?” “What about my asshole? You’ve never seen it, yet you know it exists!”)

The fig leaf of laïcité was useful, and perhaps still is, as politically correct cover for defending French identity, but over time it will have to be discarded. There are signs that it’s beginning.

The bottom line is that France has always been assimilationist. The idea is that assimilation was invented by the Republic, but it’s not true. When Louis XIV invaded a province, he would create schools with scholarships for poor, talented youth from those places to “turn them into Frenchmen.” The self-conscious project of the French Kings was to restore the Roman Empire, and this bequeathed to us the Roman concept of citizenship: laws, language, and culture. This is what is behind “laïcité.” This assimilationism therefore has deep roots, and it is perfectly legitimate that we demand of immigrants that they assimilate into our culture, which is inescapably Judeo-Christian.

H/T to Colby Cosh for the link.

December 12, 2020

Pearl Harbor and the Global War Against Humanity – WAH 024 – December 1941, Part 1

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

World War Two
Published 11 Dec 2020

December 1941 marks the shift to a new chapter in the War Against Humanity. New fronts open up, exposing millions more to the horrors of war. Other developments continue their path of continuous escalation.

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at: https://timeghost.tv

Follow WW2 day by day on Instagram @ww2_day_by_day – https://www.instagram.com/ww2_day_by_day
Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sources
—

Hosted by: Spartacus Olsson
Written by: Joram Appel
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Joram Appel
Edited by: Karolina Dołęga
Sound design: Marek Kamiński

Colorized by:
– Daniel Weiss
– Julius Jääskeläinen – https://www.facebook.com/JJcolorization/
– Carlos Ortega Pereira, BlauColorizations – https://www.instagram.com/blaucolorizations
– Jaris Almazani (Artistic Man) – https://instagram.com/artistic.man?ig…
– Mikołaj Uchman
– Klimbim
– Spartacus Olsson

Sources:
– Yad Vashem: 76CO9, 3150-122, J3065-2, 85DO1, 1427 83, 1007_31,
– Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe
– National Archive NARA
– Library of Congress
– Bundesarchiv
– Berlin Gestapo Museum
– United States Holocaust Museum

Soundtracks from epidemic sounds:
– “Guilty Shadows 4” – Andreas Jamsheree
– “For the Many STEMS INSTRUMENTS” – Jon Bjork
– “Remembrance” – Fabien Tell
– “Not Safe Yet” – Gunnar Johnsen
– “London” – Howard Harper-Barnes
– “Moving to Disturbia” – Experia

Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

From the comments:

World War Two
3 hours ago
Before we get comments about the countries currently participating in World War Two: in December 1941 there are more countries that are still neutral than we list here, but that won’t last, or as Sparty said these are the ones that will REMAIN neutral. They are without a doubt not at war, not occupied, and not in a state of war. All the other ones are – more or less. Mongolia? Has been in a de-facto state of war with Japan since the Manchurian incident. Ethiopia and Iraq? Both occupied, or at least on the lines of contested territory. The South and North American states? They will mostly enter the war later – but we’d argue that already now the Panama declaration ties them to each other to an extent that the fate of the “neutrals” has been complicated by the countries joining the war in December ’41. Now that you know our reasoning behind this, we encourage you to offer any alternative or additional thoughts on this in the comments.

December 11, 2020

“The March to War” – The Great War Begins – Sabaton History 097 [Official]

Filed under: Europe, History, Media, Military, WW1 — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 06:00

Sabaton History
Published 10 Dec 2020

August 1914. Europe marched to war. Heavy boots resounded in unison over the pavement, while proud banners flew overhead the soldiers. Their leaders had promised them a short war. In a few weeks, maybe a couple of months, each man would return home as a hero. Cavalrymen in embroidered coats, white gloves, and plumed caps rode ahead, surging towards the front in search of promised glory. But the perceived enthusiasm, eagerly exploited by the propaganda, was not widely shared. Instead, it was the gloomy atmosphere, full of fear and doubt.

Support Sabaton History on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/sabatonhistory

Listen to “The March to War” on the album Primo Victoria (Re-Armed): https://music.sabaton.net/PrimoVictoria

Listen to Sabaton on Spotify: http://smarturl.it/SabatonSpotify
Official Sabaton Merchandise Shop: http://bit.ly/SabatonOfficialShop

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Markus Linke and Indy Neidell
Directed by: Astrid Deinhard and Wieke Kapteijns
Produced by: Pär Sundström, Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Executive Producers: Pär Sundström, Joakim Brodén, Tomas Sunmo, Indy Neidell, Astrid Deinhard, and Spartacus Olsson
Community Manager: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Editor: Karolina Dołęga
Sound Editor: Marek Kaminski
Maps by: Eastory – https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory
Archive: Reuters/Screenocean – https://www.screenocean.com

Colorizations by:
Klimbim
Cassowary Colorizations

Sources:
Imperial War Museums: HU 68424, HU 68463, HU 68487, Q 81765, PST 2734, Q 81840B, Q 93521, Q 53472, Q70232, Q 115391
Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe
National Archives NARA
National Army Museum
Rijksmuseum
Bundesarchiv
Library of Congress
Picture of Three Emperors courtesy of Anna Moscowriuo
Pictures from French Manufacture of Weapons and Cycles courtesy of mediatheques.saint-etienne.fr
Picture from the Battle of Bulair courtesy of Dupnitsa Municipality, Historical Museum
Pictures of the French departure to War, courtesy of 66emeri from Wikimedia
Picture from the Battle of Mons courtesy of Champagnepapi22 from Wikimedia Commons
Map of Europe courtesy of Altenhof from Wikimedia Commons

All music by: Sabaton

An OnLion Entertainment GmbH and Raging Beaver Publishing AB co-Production.

© Raging Beaver Publishing AB, 2019 – all rights reserved.

Shooting the Webley-Fosbery Automatic Revolver – Including Safety PSA

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, Weapons, WW1 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 10 Aug 2017

Following up yesterday’s look at the history and mechanics of the Webley-Fosbery self-cocking revolvers [posted here], today we are out at the range to do some shooting with one.

In terms of handling, it is a comfortable gun to shoot, albeit with some exaggerated recoil because of the very high bore axis relative to the hand. It has an interesting two-part recoil sensation, because the upper assembly takes quite a long time to return forward into battery.

Most importantly, we discovered that this particular Webley-Fosbery has a worn hammer engagement, which results in the firing pin coming into contact with cartridge primers even when it is in the safety notch. In other words, it can — and will — sometimes fire when the action is closed and without any manipulation of the trigger. This is a condition that could happen to any Fosbery revolver, so owners should handle them with this possibility in mind! This is also a great example of why gun safety rules are redundant — occasionally guns do have mechanical failures, so don’t point them at anything you don’t want to shoot!

Thanks to Mike Carrick of Arms Heritage magazine for providing this Webley-Fosbery for this video! See his regular column here: https://armsheritagemagazine.com

Cool Forgotten Weapons merchandise! http://shop.bbtv.com/collections/forg…

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

If you enjoy Forgotten Weapons, check out its sister channel, InRangeTV! http://www.youtube.com/InRangeTVShow

December 10, 2020

Tank Chats #88 | Valentine Archer | The Tank Museum

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

The Tank Museum
Published 15 Nov 2019

David Fletcher looks at the Valentine Archer, a British self-propelled gun based on a Valentine tank chassis and fitted with a 17-pounder gun.

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#tankmuseum #tanks

QotD: Italian Fascism and “corporatism”

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

… recently I ran across a quote beloved of American leftists in an email signature:

From Benito Mussolini: “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.”

This quote is often misconstrued nowadays by leftists who view profit-making corporations under capitalism (especially multinational corporations) as instruments of the devil. They love the implied image of capitalist fat-cats and fascist dictators conspiring in gilded opulence. Alas for them that this quote actually doesn’t imply anything like that; the terminological ground under it has shifted.

The “corporatism” Mussolini to which was referring had, actually, nothing to do with corporations, joint-stock or otherwise (in the 1920s the word “corporation” did not yet have its modern sense, either in English or Italian). His use of the word had to do with a feature of fascist theory forgotten by almost everybody but specialist historians.

In fascist theory, “corporations” were bodies like unions, craft guilds, professional societies, and grange associations. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism for discussion; see especially the section “[F]ascist corporativism” [section name changed since 2009].

What Mussolini was actually enunciating was a sort of organic statism in which the state would bless or admit representatives of various “corporations” into its governing councils — and no, that didn’t mean Fiat or Beretta but (say) the Abruzzo Building Trades Association, or the Society of University Professors.

While corporations-in-the-modern-sense were not outright excluded from being legitimized “corporations” in the fascist sense, neither did they have any special status or power in the system. Actually, it was rather the reverse …

It’s worth remembering that the founders of fascism were mainly Leninists like Mussolini with a sprinkling of anarcho-syndicalists (George Sorel being the best known of those). Actual fascism retained the founders’ doctrinal hostility to what modern leftists would call “corporate power”, never renouncing its state-socialist roots and being (in fact) hostile to all centers of power other than the state itself.

The modern idea that German and Italian fascism were conservative or pro-business ideologies is essentially a fantasy constructed by pro-Soviet propagandists during and after World War II. In fact, classical fascism never wandered very far from its left-wing origins; corporatism can be seen as an elaboration of the theoretical role of worker’s soviets in Leninist theory.

Eric S. Raymond, “Misconstruing Mussolini”, Armed and Dangerous, 2009-06-29.

December 9, 2020

Historical Models Summarized: The Military Expedition

Filed under: Asia, Europe, France, History, Humour, Military, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 18 Feb 2016

Today, Blue discusses recurring themes in history! This one’s the Military Expedition, aka what happens when a powerful military juggernaut gets too big for its britches and starts saying stuff like “too big to fail” unironically.

Blue: If you’re curious about the weird chart/graph thing blue showed during the Napoleon segment, look up Charles Joseph Minard [mentioned here and here], the guy who made it. It’s a really cool chart that shows the size of the army as it traveled across Russia (tan) and back (black). You can see how perilous the journey was based on how narrow the line gets. Graphs are cool.

December 8, 2020

Schmeisser’s MP-18,I – The First True Submachine Gun

Filed under: Germany, History, Military, Weapons, WW1 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 14 Aug 2017

When Germany began looking in late 1915 for a new weapon ideally suited for the “last 200 meters” of a combat advance, Hugo Schmeisser’s blowback submachine gun would prove to be the weapon that would set the standard for virtually all submachine guns to come. It was a fully automatic-only weapon with a simple blowback action and a rather slow 400 rpm rate of fire. Although relatively heavy, the only real shortcoming of the MP18,I was its use of 32-round Luger snail drum magazines, which was dictated by the German military. These magazines were unreliable and difficult to load, but they were already in production and were a reasonable logistical answer in a time when material and production shortages were an endemic problem in Germany.

The MP18,I managed to see frontline combat only in the closing few months of World War One (50,000 were initially ordered, 17,677 were produced before the Armistice, and only an estimated 3,000 actually saw frontline combat use). During that time, however, it made a significant impression, easily convincing anyone with an open mind that this new type of weapon would play a major role in future wars.

After the end of the war, the Germany Army was prohibited from using submachine guns, so most of the existing ones (including the example in today’s video) were transferred to police organizations instead.

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http://shop.bbtv.com/collections/forg…

If you enjoy Forgotten Weapons, check out its sister channel, InRangeTV! http://www.youtube.com/InRangeTVShow

December 7, 2020

Churchill and the Bengal Famine of 1943

Filed under: Books, Britain, History, India, Military, WW2 — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In The Critic, Zareer Masani debunks a recent book’s claim that British PM Winston Churchill was responsible for the Bengal famine during the Second World War:

Prime Minister Winston Churchill greets Canadian PM William Lyon Mackenzie King, 1941.
Photo from Library and Archives Canada (reference number C-047565) via Wikimedia Commons.

A favourite trope of the current Black Lives Madness and its left-liberal white apologists has been the alleged infamy of Britain’s most cherished hero, Winston Churchill, charged with everything from mere racism to actual genocide. The worst accusation is that of deliberately starving four million Bengalis to death in the famine of 1943.

The famine took place at the height of World War Two, with the Japanese already occupying Burma and invading the British Indian province of Bengal, bombing its capital, Calcutta, and patrolling its coast with submarines.

The famine raged for about six months, from the summer of 1943 until the end of that year, and estimates of its victims range from half a million upwards, depending on whether one includes its indirect and long-term effects. Most famine experts agree that famines can be caused by both nature and human agency, but never by any single individual. So how has a 67-year-old British prime minister in poor health, 5,000 miles away, fighting near-annihilation in a world war, come to be charged with causing such a cataclysmic disaster?

The attempt to lay this at Churchill’s door stems from a sensationalist book by a Bengali-American journalist called Madhusree Mukerjee. As its title, Churchill’s Secret War, indicates, it was a largely conspiracist attempt to pin responsibility on distant Churchill for undoubted mistakes on the ground in Bengal.

The actual evidence shows that Churchill believed, based on the information he had been getting, that there was no food supply shortage in Bengal, but a demand problem caused by local mismanagement of the distribution system. Ironically, his view found unexpected support in a 2010 exchange between Mukerjee and the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen, the world’s foremost expert on famine in India.

Commenting in the New York Times, Sen said of Mukerjee, that “she seems satisfied with little information” and that her data came from only two rice research stations, and those in only two out of 27 districts in Bengal. “The analysis I made,” countered Sen, “using data from all districts … indicated that food availability in 1943 (the famine year) was significantly higher than in 1941 (when there was no famine) … There was indeed a substantial shortfall compared with demand, hugely enhanced in a war economy … but that is quite different from a shortfall of supply compared with supply in previous years … Mukerjee seems to miss this crucial distinction, and in her single-minded … attempt to nail down Churchill, she ends up absolving British imperial policy of confusion and callousness.”

December 6, 2020

Winter is Here! The failure of Barbarossa – WW2 – 119 – December 5, 1941

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

World War Two
Published 5 Dec 2020

The Wehrmacht is halted by the Red Army at the gates of Moscow. Not only that, but a Red Army counteroffensive begins pushing the Germans back decisively. The Germans are also beginning to withdraw from their siege of Tobruk in North Africa. Japan, however, is advancing all over the Pacific, sending troop transports into the South China Sea, though it is unclear just whom Japan plans to attack. The Japanese are also — in top secrecy — sending a force of aircraft carriers to soon attack the American Pacific fleet at anchor at Pearl Harbor.

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Mikołaj Uchman
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Sources:
RIA Novosti #2410
Bundesarchiv
IWM A 10499, A 6784, CH 11140
Visuotinė-lietuvių-enciklopedija
Yad Vashem 5705/34
from the Noun Project: low temperature by The Icon Z, Skull by Muhamad Ulum

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Jon Bjork – “Force Matrix”

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