Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan used the power vacuum after the 1917 revolution in Russia and after the collapse of the Central Powers in 1918 to gain their independence. But the Caucasus region was of vital strategic importance to the new Russian regime, to the British and to the Turks.
»CREDITS
Presented by: Jesse Alexander
Written by: Jesse Alexander
Director: Toni Steller & Florian Wittig
Director of Photography: Toni Steller
Sound: Toni Steller
Editing: Toni Steller
Mixing, Mastering & Sound Design: http://above-zero.com
Maps: Daniel Kogosov (https://www.patreon.com/Zalezsky)
Research by: Jesse Alexander
Fact checking: Florian Wittig
Channel Design: Alexander Clark
Original Logo: David van Stephold
A Mediakraft Networks Original Channel
Contains licensed material by getty images
All rights reserved – Real Time History GmbH 2019
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After its decline, Angkor had become the Ancient, Lost City so prominent in our pop culture. Just one problem: Angkor was neither ancient (having declined around the same time as Hundred Years War) nor lost (people still lived there!). That didn’t stop the European visitors from trying to invent all kinds of stories for how this city could possibly exist, and stealing parts of the temple to bring back home. But despite all the hardships Angkor faced, it managed to become a national symbol for Cambodia and still remains to this day.
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Sounds like a bit of a bold claim that one engine helped change the course of WW2 but when you see the evidence it has a lot of validity but how did one little engine change the course of world events and become the engine that won the war?
I would like to thank David Irwin of Historic Aero Engines not only for the generous use of his footage but as in checking over the script and finished video for technical accuracy.
Sponsored by
Craig Fleming, Florian Hesse, Peter Barber
Presented by Paul Shillito
Written and Researched by Paul Shillito with assistance from David Irwin.
Images and Footage:
Historic Aero Engines, Rolls Royce, USAF, RAF, Boeing, Packard,
Joel Trick
Music From the Youtube library
“Magical Gravity” by Asher Fulero
“Saving the World” by Aaron Kenny
“Adrift” by ELPHNT
“Oceans, Rivers, Canyons” by ELPHNT
“The Story Unfolds” by Jingle Punks
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Thanks to World of Tanks for sponsoring this episode. Download the game on PC and use the invite code CHECKPOINTC to claim your $15 starter pack https://tanks.ly/2NoVfjx.
The Berlin Wall has become a symbol of the Cold War. It encircled West Berlin, separating it from the Soviet-controlled East Berlin, placed to try and stop the flood of skilled professionals leaving to the West. Multiple US presidents had penned speeches about tearing down the wall, to no effect. But the Wall did fall. As the USSR underwent massive reforms and the Velvet Revolution was underway, East Germany was undergoing its own reform. And one clerical oversight in a press conference will destroy the Wall for good.
Update: Austin Bay linked to a column he wrote in 2009 on the 20th anniversary of these events.
Many in the West, including the U.S., believed that the communists had history on their side. The wry debate reply from the defeatist lefties favoring unilateral U.S. nuclear disarmament was “better Red than dead.” For decades — I repeat, decades — this crowd had a media pulpit from which its self-proclaimed intelligentsia preached the moral equivalency of the U.S. and the Soviet Union, and at times dropped the all pretense and fingered the U.S. as the “fascist state” and global oppressor.
In the language of the defeatist left, the U.S. was the jailer, the warmonger, the threat to world peace.
The Berlin Wall’s collapse exposed that Big Lie, as did the documented moral, political, economic and ecological wretchedness of the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, we still hear echoes of this “blame America” cant lacing al-Qaida propaganda and the lectures of hard-left reactionaries like Bill Ayers. The great anti-American lies of the Cold War are recast as the great anti-American lies of the War on Terror.
Breaching the wall in 1989 was bloodless, but the Cold War certainly wasn’t. World War III did not break out along the intra-German border and produce a nuclear conflagration, but the Cold War’s battles on the periphery (e.g., Greece, Korea, Vietnam, El Salvador, Angola, Afghanistan) were expensive, fatiguing and deadly.
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A Remembrance Day slideshow using Mark Knopfler’s wonderful “Remembrance Day” song from the album Get Lucky (2009). The early part of the song conveys many British images, but I have added some very Canadian images also which fit with many of the lyrics. The theme and message is universal… ‘we will remember them’.
A simple recognition of some of our family members who served in the First and Second World Wars:
The Great War
Private William Penman, Scots Guards, died 16 May, 1915 at Le Touret, age 25
(Elizabeth’s great uncle)
Private Archibald Turner Mulholland, Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders, mortally wounded 25 September, 1915 at Loos, age 27
(Elizabeth’s great uncle)
Private David Buller, Highland Light Infantry, died 21 October, 1915 at Loos, age 35
(Elizabeth’s great grandfather)
Private Harold Edgar Brand, East Yorkshire Regiment. died 4 June, 1917 at Tournai.
(My first cousin, three times removed)
Private Walter Porteous, Durham Light Infantry, died 4 October, 1917 at Passchendaele, age 18
(my great uncle)
Corporal John Mulholland, Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders, wounded 2 September, 1914 (shortly before the First Battle of the Aisne), wounded again 29 June, 1918, lived through the war.
(Elizabeth’s great uncle)
The Second World War
Flying Officer Richard Porteous, RAF, survived the defeat in Malaya and lived through the war
(my great uncle)
Able Seaman John Penman, RN, served in the Defensively Equipped Merchant fleet on the Murmansk Run (and other convoy routes), lived through the war
(Elizabeth’s father)
Private Archie Black (commissioned after the war and retired as a Major), Gordon Highlanders, captured at Singapore (aged 15) and survived a Japanese POW camp
(Elizabeth’s uncle)
Elizabeth Buller, “Lumberjill” in the Women’s Land Army in Scotland through the war. (Elizabeth’s mother)
Trooper Leslie Taplan Russon, 3rd Royal Tank Regiment, died at Tobruk, 19 December, 1942 (aged 23). Leslie was my father’s first cousin, once removed (and therefore my first cousin, twice removed).
For the curious, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission the Royal British Legion, and the Library and Archives Canada WW1 and WW2 records site provide search engines you can use to look up your family name. The RBL’s Every One Remembered site shows you everyone who died in the Great War in British or Empire service (Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans and other Imperial countries). The CWGC site also includes those who died in the Second World War.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD Canadian Army Medical Corps (1872-1918)
Before WW1 the army was optimised primarily as a colonial police force, coupled with a small expeditionary force of regular soldiers intended to deploy to the continent to work alongside the French or other allies in the event of war. WW1 was an event that really constituted three armies – the small regular/territorial force of barely 300,000 soldiers that mobilised in 1914 and was wiped out to buy time. The interim force of Territorials and Reservists that held the line in 1915-1916 while the army reconstituted, and the civilian volunteer/conscript force from 1916 onwards that saw the army grow to over 4 million men by 1918.
Rapid demobilisation followed, followed by regeneration in the 1920s and 30s to become the most mechanised army in the world by 1939, comprising some 224,000 regulars. It is often forgotten that the British army of 1940 had many more tanks and vehicles than the German Army – history is not kind to the losers. The army in WW2 grew to a citizen force of roughly 3.5 million men, before shrinking post war.
The continuation of National Service, the war in Korea and the end of empire saw the army stay at roughly 330,000 soldiers for much of the 1950s, causing significant damage to the national economy due to the cost and lack of manpower for rebuilding. By 1957 the army estimated that its regular strength was roughly 80,000 personnel (only a quarter of the whole force), many of whom were tied up training two-year National Servicemen. A major factor in the 1957 Sandys Defence White Paper was the need to reduce manpower costs and free people up for other economically important tasks.
The Sandys Review led to a reduction to 165,000 troops most of whom were focused on either colonial policing actions (it is often forgotten that in the early 1960s there were over 100,000 UK service personnel in the Far East) or deployed in Germany as part of the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR). The withdrawal from empire saw the army shrink to a strength of approximately 150,000 by the 1980s, where its role was primarily to provide a corps of four divisions in Germany in the event of general war, supported by mobilisation units from the UK which would provide further divisions to augment BAOR and conduct home defence roles.
The end of the Cold War saw the first deployment of a divisional-sized force, with an armoured division sent to the Gulf in 1990 for Operation Desert Storm. This happened just as the Options for Change review cut BAOR and reduced the army to approximately 120,000. Further deployments to Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s followed by the deployment of an armoured division to Iraq in 2003. Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2003-2014 saw the army struggle to sustain itself on two fronts without heavy support from the RN and RAF providing extra manpower and resources.
The 2010 SDSR initially preserved the army at just under 100,000 personnel, although later reviews cut this down to 82,000 regulars supported by a target of approximately 30,000 reservists working in a far more integrated manner. Today the army is struggling to sustain itself at 82,000, with recent manpower figures showing a total of roughly 78,000 troops.
The Battle of Britain is finished, but the war is far from over. New German plans are being made for the Balkans and Greece, where the Italian offensive is not as successful as planned.
Written and Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Produced and Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Research by: Indy Neidell
Edited by: Iryna Dulka
Map animations: Eastory
Sources:
– Money and factory icons by Adrien Coquet, ship icon by Edward Boatman, all: from the Noun Project
– IWM: HU 1915, ZZZ 1811C, IND 3595, E 1227, E 1107, E 1242, E 1239
– San Demetrio crew by Arranj on Wikimedia Commons
– Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
From the comments:
World War Two
2 days ago (edited)
Now that the new Greek offensive has been launched a week ago, more troops are moving and more terrain is changing hands. We are very lucky to have Eastory make maps for our episodes, allowing us to visualize movements and geographicial locations. Furthermore, Eastory is a historian who is very skilled in researching the exact locations and movements of fighting units. For these episodes, he has had some help from our loyal community member Avalantis. This really shows how much this channel is a team effort and how important our community is to us and our videos. If you want to contribute as well, you can start with supporting us on https://www.patreon.com/timeghosthistory or https://timeghost.tv. Every dollar counts!
Cheers, the TimeGhost team
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If I could have a conversation with any person in History, it’s Machiavelli. Easy. And I wouldn’t even have to do anything, I’d just say “So, tell me about Rome” and watch the fireworks. In the meantime, I’ll settle for playing Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood and liberating Roma with my boy Niccolò.
The recent antics of Extinction Rebellion activists in London encouraged Theodore Dalrymple to do a bit of reading on the psychology of such cults and their followers:
Man is the only creature, as far as we know, that enjoys the contemplation of its own disappearance from the face of the earth. We find the prospect of our annihilation by disease, famine, war, asteroid, or climate change deeply satisfying. We feel, somehow, that we deserve it and that the world would be a better planet without us.
When to this strange source of satisfaction is conjoined a license to behave badly in the name of salvation from earthly perdition, we can expect a mass movement that approaches insanity. So it is with the Extinction Rebellion, whose fanatical members have brought chaos to London recently by blocking streets, occupying crossroads, gluing themselves to public buildings and railings, and standing atop underground trains, to the fury of thousands of rush-hour commuters who don’t want to save the world but only get to work.
In order to try to understand their state of mind, I recently read a book by three psychologists, Leon Festinger, Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley Schachter, first published in 1956, called When Prophecy Fails. It recounts the reaction of a small doomsday sect in America founded by a housewife, who believed that most of North America was soon to be inundated by a great flood. When this failed to happen on the predicted date, members did not immediately conclude that the absurd grounds upon which their belief was based were false, but became even more convinced of their truth. When there is a contradiction between what we want to be the case and what is the case, our desire to believe often triumphs, at least for a time.
The beginning of the book gives a brief and selective history of sects that have predicted Man’s total annihilation in the near future, among them that of the Millerites in the 1840s in the United States. Reading the account of this sect, I could not help but think of the Extinction Rebellion that is now gripping London, to the growing fury of the rest of the population.
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When World War Two began, Australia saw little threat of invasion from Germany (obviously), and sent a substantial number of firearms to Britain to help arm the Home Guard there, which was seriously concerned about the possibility of a German invasion. When Japan and Australia declared war in December 1941, the situation immediately became much more serious for Australia, and the government began looking for arms.
At the start of the war, there were effectively no submachine guns at all on the continent — just a couple examples. These included an MP38 somehow confiscated by Australian customs, which would take on a significant role. Australia looked to Britain for arms, and they were sent a technical data package to produce the Sten MkII — but found the design pretty underwhelming. Australian manufacturers decided to make their own improvements to it, using elements of the MP38 — specifically the sealed telescoping recoil spring system and underflowing stock. They also gave the gun a pair of pistol grips for improved handling.
The Owen SMG was going into production at this time, and had been in development for a while under private civilian supervision. The Australian Sten, called the Austen, lacked that developmental track record and it went into production without passing proper trials. It faced significant manufacturing delays and reliability problems, and was not well liked by troops — in contrast to the excellent Owen. The Austen was ultimately made in smaller numbers than the Owen (19,914 of the MkI guns) and pulled from combat use in August of 1944.
Many thanks to the Royal Armouries for allowing me to film this rare artifact! The NFC collection there — perhaps the best military small arms collection in Western Europe — is available by appointment to researchers:
Europe had grown weary of war by the summer of 1648 and after much deliberation, peace talks in Westphalia had reached their final stages. Warlords across the entire continent were preparing for peace but not all of them agreed. The exceptionally ruthless German-Swedish General Königsmarck advanced into Bohemia to lay siege to Prague.
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: Joram Appel
Executive Producers: Pär Sundström, Joakim Broden, Tomas Sunmo, Indy Neidell, Astrid Deinhard, and Spartacus Olsson
Maps by: Eastory
Edited by: Iryna Dulka
Sound Editing by: Marek Kaminski
Sources:
– Thumbnail image: Petri Krohn, CC BY-SA 3.0.
– Les misères et les malheurs de la guerre – The British Museum
– “Germania: dos mil años de historia alemana” series from Fondo Antiguo de la Biblioteca de la Universidad de Sevilla
– The peace of Munster painting courtesy of Amsterdam Museum
– RijksMuseum
An OnLion Entertainment GmbH and Raging Beaver Publishing AB co-Production.
Sabaton History
2 days ago
This episode about “1648” is about peace and about a devastating and deadly siege to Prague. We enjoy doing these episodes as we usually only make episodes about more modern topics. Now, we have to do without film and photo material, and be creative with paintings and sketches. Kudos to the editor Iryna who makes that work brilliantly! If you agree and want to support our work, you can do so by going to our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/sabatonhistory
Cheers, the Sabaton History team.
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This episode covers the reign of King John and the problems he had securing the Angevin inheritance and the subsequent issues his barons posed. These problems culminated in the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215 which severely limited the strength of John and his son, Henry III, whose reign was overshadowed by the document.
Ten Minute English and British History is a series of short, ten minute animated narrative documentaries that are designed as revision refreshers or simple introductions to a topic. Please note that these are not meant to be comprehensive and there’s a lot of stuff I couldn’t fit into the episodes that I would have liked to. Thank you for watching, though, it’s always appreciated.
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When Voltaire made his often-quoted statement that the country of Britain has “a hundred religions and only one sauce”, he was saying something which was untrue and which is equally untrue today, but which might still be echoed in good faith by a foreign visitor who made only a brief stay and drew his impressions from hotels and restaurants. For the first thing to be noticed about British cookery is that it is best studied in private houses, and more particularly in the homes of the middle-class and working-class masses who have not become Europeanised in their tastes. Cheap restaurants in Britain are almost invariably bad, while in expensive restaurants the cookery is almost always French, or imitation French. In the kind of food eaten, and even in the hours at which meals are taken and the names by which they are called, there is a definite cultural division between the upper-class minority and the big mass who have preserved the habits of their ancestors.
Generalising further, one may say that the characteristic British diet is a simple, rather heavy, perhaps slightly barbarous diet, drawing much of its virtue from the excellence of the local materials, and with its main emphasis on sugar and animal fats. It is the diet of a wet northern country where butter is plentiful and vegetable oils are scarce, where hot drinks are acceptable at most hours of the day, and where all the spices and some of the stronger-tasting herbs are exotic products. Garlic, for instance, is unknown in British cookery proper: on the other hand mint, which is completely neglected in some European countries, figures largely. In general, British people prefer sweet things to spicy things, and they combine sugar with meat in a way that is seldom seen elsewhere.
Finally, it must be remembered that in talking about “British cookery” one is referring to the characteristic native diet of the British Isles and not necessarily to the food that the average British citizen eats at this moment. Quite apart from the economic difference between the various blocks of the population, there is the stringent food rationing which has now been in operation for six years. In talking of British cookery, therefore, one is talking of the past or the future – of dishes that the British people now see somewhat rarely, but which they would gladly eat if they had the chance, and which they did eat fairly frequently up to 1939.
George Orwell, “British Cookery”, 1946. (Originally commissioned by the British Council, but refused by them and later published in abbreviated form.)
Austria is very divided in the 1930s. Austrian Nationalism opposes the idea of a Greater German Reich, which triggers the emergence of Austrofascism. They find themselves in a violet struggle against Nazis, Communists, Democrats and Socialists.
Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Spartacus Olsson, Joram Appel and Francis van Berkel
Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Naman Habtom, Joram Appel and Francis van Berkel
Edited by: Daniel Weiss
Sound design: Marek Kaminski
Sources:
– Image sources: Bundesarchiv, Bundesarchiv, Bild_183-R36187/102-10358/102-00842A/102-00836/102-00840/102-00839/102-09844. Fortepan_28800(FOTOFORTEPAN MZSLOfner Károly)
– Icons from the Noun Project: School by David, college by anbileru adaleru, Law by Delwar Hossain, Parliament by Gerald Wildmoser, Diploma by Alena, guns by Cards Against Humanity, poll by Bastien Ho,
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
From the comments:
TimeGhost History
2 days ago (edited)
A lot comes together in this episode. Austria in 1934 is where a lot of political movements, ideologies and methods we saw throughout the ’20s and ’30s in previous episodes go head to head. We explain how Austro-Fascism differs from fascism and how Nazism and Austrofascism engage in a violent clash.
So, this episode covers Communism, Fascism, Austrofascism and Nazism in the context of Austria in 1934. I can predict some of the comments that will appear under this video, so allow me to explain how we interpret and explain the key differences between some of these. In academia, we use a right-left axis to place political movements on based on their ideology, NOT just because of their methods or form of state. Our definition is not politically motivated or does not relate to current day politics. We only apply this definition to the specific historical context of the interwar era and World War Two. In short: totalitarian or authoritarian governments are not all the same. Fascism and Nazism are generally placed on the right because they were driven by state or race superiority, Communism and Socialism are placed on the left as they were driven by class-differences and (theoretical) equality.
Granted, there is a rich scholarly debate surrounding the function and interpretation of the left-right axis. Anyone who is interested to read more about that can read ‘Andrew Heywood, Political Ideologies: An Introduction (2017) 15-17.’ However, there are limits to what is accepted as an academic argument and what is plain propaganda. Socialism and Nazism are not the same by any respectable definition. Communism and Nazism both embracing totalitarian regimes does not make them the same. We love to engage in debates about this, and we will do so with anyone who presents a real argument with real examples and sources. We will not engage with trolls who are politicising this historical debate with a modern-day agenda.
Cheers,
Joram
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Private William Penman, Scots Guards, died 16 May, 1915 at 
