Quotulatiousness

December 4, 2019

The British Blitz Spirit is a Myth – WW2 – War Against Humanity 005

Filed under: Britain, Germany, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

World War Two
Published 3 Dec 2019

Strategic bombing was used to destroy the popular support for their governments war effort, and the British boosted that their resistance to bombing was an unique trait. But both are false, based on lies and propaganda.

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Written by: Joram Appel and Francis van Berkel
Produced and Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
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Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Francis van Berkel and Joram Appel
Edited by: Karolina Dołega

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Sources:
– Imperial War Museum: D2168, D1623, D2956, 36206, D1587, D2154, D2157, HU36143, HU 36199
– Deutsche Fotothek, 0000436
– Noun Project: Natural Disasters 1674928 By Claudia Revalina, ID
noun_prisoner 63221 By carlotta zampini, IT, Bomb by P Thanga Vignesh
– Toni Frissell, Abandoned boy, London, 1945
– Battle of Britain, film from United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

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From the comments:

World War Two
7 hours ago (edited)
Having spoken to many British people while researching this episode, I realised that many in the United Kingdom still grow up with the idea that the perseverance in the face of constant bombing was something uniquely British, and that the so-called “Blitz Spirit” caused people to proudly face Hitlers bombs and transcend class-differences, and that bombing actually boosted their morale. However, research – half of which was done by Francis who is from Britain as well, shows that this idea is mainly based on propaganda. Furthermore, it is still considered controversial to doubt Churchill’s war cabinet’s policy of mass bombing German cities to force them out of the war. However, the effectiveness of this too has been proven to be based on falsehoods and lies. The true effectiveness of strategic bombing was already known to Churchill’s advisors during the war. Feel free to enter discussion about this in the comment section, but keep it civil and back up your arguments with examples and sources wherever possible.

Cheers,
Joram

Defund the BBC? Well, if you can’t just sack, burn, and salt the earth it stands on, defunding might help

Filed under: Britain, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Hector Drummond wonders if the Overton Window has moved far enough that the BBC might lose its sacred status:

In a notorious talk given to Conservative Future in 2009, Sean Gabb made the following radical recommendation:

    On the first day of your government, you should close down the BBC. You should take it off air. You should disclaim its copyrights. You should throw all its staff into the street … You must shut it down – and shut it down at once.

I have for many years been torn between thinking this a good idea, and thinking that it would result in such uproar that the government would immediately fall, and be replaced by a new government who would restore the BBC. But the question was purely abstract anyway, because no Conservative government would even contemplate doing such a thing. No Conservative government was even going to contemplate taking away the licence fee.

But finally, after three years of disgraceful conduct — well, extra disgraceful conduct — the future of the BBC is finally an issue that that can be broached. It’s finally an issue that can be talked about without people throwing up their hands in horror and demanding you be thrown out of wherever you are. People will listen sympathetically if you suggest that the BBC can’t go on like it has been. People will join in enthusiastically if you say that Channel 4 is a disgrace that should no longer be state-funded. Well, not if you’re in the common room. But in the ordinary pubs around the country they will. They will at the dinner parties that are being held outside the M25. And even some inside it.

So what should be done? The conventional conservative/libertarian idea is that the BBC should be moved to a subscription model. The more radical Gabb idea is not one that has ever been talked about much. In fact, it’s an idea that until recently would have shocked most people, even most conservatives. (If you read to the end of the Gabb article, you’ll see that the young conservatives were themselves outraged by Gabb’s idea). But actually it’s a very good idea. Because here’s the thing. If you privatise the BBC, it may do very well for itself, and then it would be free to spin the news far more outrageously than it currently does.

More recently than Dr. Gabb, Richard Delingpole made a suggestion that I stole for my headline:

So the idea is no longer so alien. Particularly amongst younger people, who just don’t watch the BBC any more. They generally don’t watch much TV at all, they prefer YouTube and TikTok (which are filled with rubbish, it has to be said, but that’s another story), but they especially don’t watch the BBC (or channel 4). So most young people won’t even notice if the BBC is closed down, although about thirty sociology undergraduates will eventually tweet about it once their lecturers tell them what’s happened, and then the Guardian will have a fit and try to make it a big story, but there’ll be no BBC to amplify that, so it won’t be that effective. And the other channels are unlikely to shed too many tears over the shutdown of a subsidised rival (although I expect that the news staff will as they’re all lefties now).

The Twelve Labors of Hercules – Rules Lawyering – Extra Mythology – #2

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

Extra Credits
Published 2 Dec 2019

Hercules (or Herakles in the Greek) needs to finish the last five tasks on the list before he will have properly atoned for murdering his family, but it isn’t going to be so easy. The king, seeing that Hercules has completed the tasks declares that two of them are invalid since Hercules got outside help. And I guess that’s technically cheating? More sidequests abound and we meet a familiar face from an older Extra Mythology!

The flesh-eating horses might be the worst monsters we’ve had on Extra Mythology. Something about those eyes. D:

What Life Was Like for the Home Guard During WW2

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

Forces TV
Published 8 May 2014

Scrapbooks revealing what the Home Guard was really like during World War Two have been published online.

The collection of maps, photographs and secret documents were compiled by Lieutenant Colonel Sir Morgan Crofton.

Now they are available for all to see thanks to work by the New Forest Park Authority.

The scrapbooks can be viewed online here – http://www.newforestww2.org

QotD: French anti-Americanism

Filed under: Books, France, Quotations, USA — Tags: — Nicholas @ 01:00

The list of French anti-American writers is long: it is its own unique genre, one found nowhere else in such abundance. Already, in 1793, Talleyrand, in exile before he would become French foreign minister, wrote in Philadelphia that Americans possessed “neither conversation nor cuisine.” He also famously observed, “These Americans, they have 32 religions but only one dish, roast beef with potatoes.” The genealogy of contemporary anti-Americanism is traceable to the beginning of the nineteenth century, to a Catholic France arrayed against a Protestant America, and then to the twentieth century, when a socialist France confronted a capitalist America; always just beneath the surface is the idea of a civilized France set against a supposedly uncivilized America. French anti-American literature, which Jean-François Revel analyzed perceptively in Anti-Americanism, is faithful to an eternal code: our civilization versus their lack of culture; our spirituality versus their brutality. Beneath these changing ideological masks, we might perhaps discern a rivalry between two nations that claim to be “universalist.” Americans have seized the torch of human rights from France, or at least the claim to embody them.

Guy Sorman, “French Anti-Americanism, Rebooted”, City Journal, 2017-11-27.

December 3, 2019

The Hungarian Romanian War & The Downfall of the Hungarian Soviet Republic I THE GREAT WAR 1919

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

The Great War
Published 2 Dec 2019

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In early 1919 Hungary was one of the European territories that saw a communist revolution. Bela Kun and his supporters established the Hungarian Soviet Republic while the country was in great turmoil and fighting against the Romanians, the Czechoslovaks, the Serbs and within Hungary itself.

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» SOURCES
Balogh, Eva S. “István Friedrich and the Hungarian Coup d’État of 1919: A Reevaluation” in Slavic Review, 1 June 1976, Vol.35(2): 269-286.

Borodziej, Wlodzimierz and Maciej Gorny. Der Vergessene Weltkrieg. Europas Osten 1912-1923. Band II – Nationen 1917-1923 (wbg Theiss, 2018).

Gosztony, Peter. “The Collapse of the Hungarian Red Army,” in Pastor, Peter, ed. Revolutions and Interventions in Hungary and its Neighbor States, 1918-1919 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988): 69-80.

Hetes, Tibor. “The Northern Campaign of the Hungarian Red Army,” in Pastor, Peter, ed. Revolutions and Interventions in Hungary and its Neighbor States, 1918-1919 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988): 55-60.

Horthy, Admiral Nicholas. Admiral Nicholas Horthy Memoirs. Simon Publications LLC, (2000).

Macmillan, Margaret. The Peacemakers: Six Months that Changed the World (London: John Murray, 2001).

Nouzille, Jean. “The July Campaign of the Hungarian Red Army as seen by France,” in Pastor, Peter, ed. Revolutions and Interventions in Hungary and its Neighbor States, 1918-1919 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988): 81-88.

Révész, Tamás: “Post-war Turmoil and Violence (Hungary)”, in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, ed. by Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keene, Alan Kramer, and Bill Nasson, issued by Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin 2019-08-05.
https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online…

Torrey, Glenn. “The Romanian Intervention in Hungary, 1919,” in Pastor, Peter, ed. Revolutions and Interventions in Hungary and its Neighbor States, 1918-1919 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988): 301-320.

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Czechoslovakia – the Last Bastion of Democracy | BETWEEN 2 WARS I 1935 Part 1 of 4

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

TimeGhost History
Published 2 Dec 2019

Czechoslovakia is holding on to democracy by a thread. It even looks like they might be able to integrate the German Czechoslovakians, but Hitler’s rise to power changes everything.

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Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Francis van Berkel
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Creative Producer: Joram Appel
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A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

From the comments:

TimeGhost History
2 days ago
The year is 1935 CE. Central Europe is entirely dominated by Authoritarians and Fascists. Well not entirely! One small country of indomitable Czechs and Slovaks still holds out for democracy. And life is not easy for the German Nazis who garrison the towns and villages in Bohemia and Moravia…

One thing in this episode might go unnoticed. It is how important it is to note that the term Sudeten German has only become widespread after WWI. It shows us how the delicate balance of ethnic groups had been upset after the Great War.

Before 1918, these same people felt comfortable called themselves Bohemian or Moravian. On the other side of the border that now divides Czechoslovakia from Germany, Austria, Poland and Hungary Czech and Slovak speakers felt comfortable calling themselves for instance Carpathian, Silesian, or Bavarian. In only 17 years this regional sense of unity has now been eradicated. It’s really easy to fall into the trap of the identity rhetoric of the time. To say that “Well, what did you expect? You forced people to be part of a country that wasn’t theirs” it’s an easy explanation for all of this conflict.

Well as we have often pointed out it wasn’t that simple. Fanned by identity politics on all sides, the borders have become fevering soars that are spreading infection into all of Europe. It is a disease that now threatens to develop into sepsis for the whole European continent. And think of this; borders are nothing but lines on maps, things invented arbitrarily in people’s minds… isn’t it remarkable how we as a species can invent our own demise?

“Useful idiots” during the Cold War

Filed under: Economics, History, Politics, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Robert Reilly reviews Judgement in Moscow: Soviet Crimes and Western Complicity by Vladimir Bukovsky, which has recently been republished in English:

Krushchev, Brezhnev and other Soviet leaders review the Revolution parade in Red Square, 1962.
LIFE magazine photo by Stan Wayman.

Judgment In Moscow contains autobiographical elements but is principally concerned with providing and analyzing documentary evidence for what should have been the USSR equivalent of what the Nuremberg Trials had been for Nazi Germany. In 1991, Bukovsky returned to the Soviet Union to take part in the “trial of the communist party” that was held in 1992. In an audacious move the Communist Party had sued then-President Boris Yeltsin to get its property back. To prepare a defense, Yeltsin ordered that the secret Central Committee archives be opened to Bukovsky. The order was obeyed, but only partially and for a short time. The trial fizzled, but Bukovsky, with the aid of a hand-held scanner, was able to gather many thousands of pages of top-secret Central Committee and Politburo documents and get them out of Russia. Some of these key documents are what we have in this priceless book. They are eye-opening.

During the Cold War, we had to speculate as to why, for instance, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and how the decision was made. Now we know for certain. Bukovsky provides the minutes of the Politburo meetings in which the invasion was decided. The Reagan administration was highly skeptical of détente and was therefore criticized for war-mongering. The skepticism was well-placed because, as the documents reveal, détente was simply a façade for advancing Soviet power and manipulating Western publics and governments against the Reagan plan to place Pershing IIs and cruise missiles in Europe to defend it against burgeoning Soviet power, including the SS-20s.

The revelations of the extent to which the Soviet Union manipulated the “peace” movement in the West should be an embarrassment to its participants, who may have been too naïve at the time to know how they were being used. Others, of course, acceded to being used, or even cravenly sought to be used. The names of some of these useful idiots are in the documents.

Another thing these documents disclose, much to the embarrassment of many American Sovietologists, is that there were no “hawks” and “doves” in the Kremlin — a premise on which they had banked their academic careers. The unanimity of the Politburo decisions reveals that the senior Soviet leaders were all of one stripe. It was to their advantage to create the impression that there were hawks and doves so that they could game the policies of Western governments and the opinions of its publics. For instance, providing Western credits to the USSR — it was thought by many so-called Russian experts in the West — would strengthen the doves in the Kremlin, whereas denying credits would empower the hawks. By buying this line of thought, the West was induced to keep the Soviet Union on life-support for more than a decade past what would have been its earlier collapse, according to Bukovsky.

No one was a greater master of this deception than Mikael Gorbachev. The minutes from many Politburo meetings chaired by Gorbachev show that glasnost and perestroika were façades constructed to ensure the continued existence of the Soviet Union through even more Western subsidies. And it worked to the extent that credits and subsidies ballooned under the Western illusion that Gorbachev had to be supported to ensure his success — ignorant of the fact that Gorbachev conceived of success in ways inimical to Western freedom.

H/T to Blazing Cat Fur for the link.

Turkish Conehammer “Broomhandle” C96 Mauser

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

Forgotten Weapons
Published 13 Oct 2019

This is Lot 2493 in the upcoming October Morphy Extraordinary auction.

The “cone hammer” was the first commercial version of the Mauser C96, so named for the stepped conical sides of its hammer. The C96 did not sell particularly well in the first few years after its introduction, and the only major bulk sale was to Sultan Abdul Hamid II of the Ottoman Empire, who bought 1,000 of the guns for his palace guard. These guns were numbered in Farsi in their own range from 1 to 1000, and were all sold with matching shoulder stocks. The order was signed in December of 1897 and the guns were shipped a few months later, in May of 1898.

Under the Sultan’s rule, there was significant concern over potential military coups, and most arms were locked away in armories, including many of the C96 pistols. After the revolution in 1908/9, guns were more liberally distributed to the military and police, and these C96 pistols were issued out to both groups for service use. Some were used in combat in World War One, and after the war they were considered surplus, available for purchase inexpensively by Army or police officers. This meant that they saw a lot of use, and as a result few survive today, with many of them in rather rough condition.

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December 2, 2019

The Battle of the Granicus (334 B.C.E.)

Filed under: Europe, Greece, History, Middle East, Military — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

Historia Civilis
Published 30 Nov 2019

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Sources:
Arrian, The Anabasis of Alexander, Book 1 | https://amzn.to/37F4qo3
Diodorus Siculus, “The Library of History,” Book 17 | https://amzn.to/2qPDP71
Plutarch, “Parallel Lives: The Life of Alexander” | https://amzn.to/2QUHXxu
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Ernst Badin, “The Battle of the Granicus: A New Look,” from “Collected Papers on Alexander the Great” | https://amzn.to/37zeuyO
Peter Green, Alexander of Macedon | https://amzn.to/2OogimY
Robin Lane Fox, Alexander the Great | https://amzn.to/2OlzZvx
Philip Freeman, Alexander the Great | https://amzn.to/35wVtv4

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Policing London – The Thief-Taker General – Extra History – #1

Filed under: Britain, History, Law — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Extra Credits
Published 30 Nov 2019

These days we kind of assume that police are a normal part of law and order. But that wasn’t always the case. In fact, it wasn’t the case for a lot of human history. So how did we start thinking of police as a natural part of a city? It all starts in London with the Thief-Taker General Jonathan Wilde, a man of two faces. Which one is real: valiant crime fighter or the puppet master of London’s underbelly?

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QotD: Evidence of markets in classical civilizations

Filed under: Economics, Europe, Greece, History, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

If someone were to claim that market behaviour was peripheral to life in eighteenth century England, it would be easy to laugh at him. This is not to say the claim has not been or will not be made. But if it were made, it could be refuted with a mass of government and private statistics, of newspaper reports and law reports, of high literature, of sermons, speeches and letters, of descriptive and analytical surveys, of biographies and novels, and of physical remains. Ludicrous claims can always be based on selective and misread evidence. In this case, the weight of the evidence must be decisive.

If we turn, however, to the ancient world, the evidence must almost always be indecisive. Very few ancient writings have survived. Obviously, two thousand years are a long time; and ancient civilisation did collapse. Add to this that far fewer documents relating to economic matters were produced or could be preserved than has been the case with us. There was no printing: everything had to be copied by hand. The best writing material was papyrus, which was both expensive and fragile. The normal writing materials for accounts and administrative documents were waxed tablets, which were scraped and reused, and thin wooden sheets, which were thrown away once they had served their purpose.

The literary remains of Greece and Rome which have come down to us through generations of copying and recopying are the products of a rather snobbish culture, and contain little direct information about economic behaviour. The great writers, as Finley observes, do seem to have lacked the conceptual framework for intelligent discussion of finance and commerce. Even otherwise, these were matters they regarded as beneath the notice of history. Thucydides, for example, gives full discussion to the political causes of the Peloponnesian War, but says nothing of what we know from the archaeological evidence was the complete Athenian displacement of Corinth in the pottery markets of the Western Mediterranean world.

During the past century or so, the rubbish dumps of Egypt have revealed a mass of the everyday documentation we have for no other area of the ancient world. There are tax records, and commercial correspondence, and administrative commands, among much else. The problem here is that Egypt was always an exception. From its earliest history, its geography opened it to capture and exploitation by rent-seeking élites. The Pharaohs were worshipped as gods and given whatever they demanded. The Ptolemies organised the country into one gigantic state enterprise and used the proceeds for making a big noise in the Hellenistic world. The Roman Emperors kept up the monopolies and requisitions, treating Egypt as their personal property, and so far as possible isolating it from the rest of the Empire. The documentary evidence, therefore, we have from Egypt may not be representative of the ancient world as a whole.

But this, plus the material archaeology, is all we have. And if we want to know anything for economic motivations and behaviour, we must press the evidence we have as hard as we can. The history of the ancient world is, in many important respects like a mosaic that has been broken up with many of its tiles thrown away. The whole must be reconstructed from the parts remaining. It is a difficult enterprise, but it can be attempted.

If there is little direct, there is much indirect evidence. This is scattered through the surviving body of ancient literature. It consists of casual remarks, illustrations to arguments, even comments that are in themselves foolish. It is a question of looking for this evidence, and of knowing how to use it.

An interesting example of how evidence can be extracted and used comes not from our own ancient world, but from pre-Columbian South America. Deirdre McCloskey has looked at the geographical distribution of Mayan obsidian tools. She notes that, the farther from the sources of their obsidian, the smaller was the ratio of blade weight to cutting length. She comments:

    By taking more care with more costly obsidian the blade makers were earning better profits; as they did by taking less care with less costly obsidian.

What we have here, then, is evidence that illiterate, stone age toolmakers were at least as conscious of opportunity cost as any Victorian mill owner, and rather more so than the average socialist planner of the next century. So long, of course, as this is evidence — this is, so long as the tools are distributed as claimed — we have empirical reason for doubting the Polanyi claim that,

    previously to our time no economy has ever existed that, even in principle, was controlled by markets…. Gain and profit made on exchange never [before the nineteenth century] played an important part in human economy.

Sean Gabb, “Market Behaviour in the Ancient World: An Overview of the Debate”, 2008-05.

December 1, 2019

The German Plan to Destroy French Culture – The Occupation of France – WW2 – 066 – November 30, 1940

Filed under: China, France, Germany, Greece, History, Italy, Japan, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 30 Nov 2019

While Hitler consolidates his power in occupied France, Japanese and Italian forces try to get an edge, but fail. The war is not looking too well for anyone at this point.

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Tank Chats #56 Sherman DD | The Funnies | The Tank Museum

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

The Tank Museum
Published 7 Sep 2018

Another episode in the Tank Chats Funnies Specials, with David Fletcher looking at the weird and wonderful vehicles of 79th Armoured Division led by Major General Percy Hobart, known as “Hobart’s Funnies”.

The Sherman DD, or Duplex Drive, was a term applied to Sherman tanks modified for amphibious operations. DD tanks were used by American, British and Canadian forces in WW2 on D-Day, 6 June 1944; by the Americans again in the south of France and by the Americans and British during the Rhine crossing.

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November 30, 2019

WW1 Villar Perosa SMG at the Range

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

Forgotten Weapons
Published 28 Sep 2019

Courtesy of the Morphy Auction Company, I am out at the range today with a very rare Italian Villar Perosa machine gun from World War One. These are pretty unorthodox machine guns, as they were initially designed as aircraft armament and later repurposed as ground guns. The basic design is a pair of actions and barrel with a single rear trigger housing. The actions are (slightly) delayed blowback, feeding from 25-round magazines and firing at about 1500 rpm each. The grip has two separate thumb triggers, which fire the two barrels independently.

For an aircraft application, this allowed a very high volume of fire for a very short time; exactly what aerial combat called for. As an infantry gun, the design was much less practical. The bipod held the gun up, but did not have any firm stop that could be pushed into. Coupled with the lack of a buttstock, the gun was very difficult to keep on pattern with anything but the shortest burst. The small aperture sight certainly doesn’t help things either.

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