The Tank Museum
Published on 25 May 2018At TANKFEST 2017, the Musée des Blindés brought their unique Saint Chamond tank, which sat alongside the Museum’s replica Mark IV and A7V. David Fletcher took the opportunity to talk about the three First World War vehicles as they stood side-by-side.
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July 3, 2019
Tank Chats #51 TANKFEST 2017 | The Tank Museum
July 2, 2019
QotD: Italy and the Nazi Final Solution
Surprisingly given the bad associations I have with the word “fascist”, Mussolini’s Italy may win third prize in the Righteous Among The Nations stakes. [Hannah] Arendt describes it [in Eichmann in Jerusalem] as “sabotaging” the Final Solution within its borders despite nominal alliance with Germany:
Colorized portrait of Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini in 1940.
Colorization by Roger Viollet via Wikimedia Commons.
The gentlemen of the Foreign Office could not do much about it, because they always met the same subtly veiled resistance, the same promises and the same failures to fulfill them. The sabotage was all the more infuriating as it was carried out openly, in an almost mocking manner. The promises were given by Mussolini himself or other high-ranking officials, and if the generals simply failed to fulfill them, Mussolini would make excuses for them on the ground of their “different intellectual formation”. Only occasionally would the Nazis be met with a flat refusal, as when General Roatta declared that it was “incompatible with the honor of the Italian Army” to deliver the Jews from Italian-occupied territory in Yugoslavia to the appropriate German authorities.
An element of farce had never been lacking even in Italy’s most serious efforts to adjust to its powerful friend and ally. When Mussolini, under German pressure, introduced anti-Jewish legislation in the late thirties he stipulated the usual exemptions – war veterans, Jews with high decorations, and the like – but he added one more category, namely, former members of the Fascist Party, together with their parents and grandparents, their wives and children and grandchildren. I know of no statistics relating to this matter, but the result must have been that the great majority of Italian Jews were exempted. There can hardly have been a Jewish family without at least one member in the Fascist Party, for this happened at a time when Jews, like other Italians, had been flocking for almost twenty years into the Fascist movement, since positions in the Civil Service were open only to members. And the few Jews who had objected to Fascism on principle, Socialists and Communists chiefly, were no longer in the country. Even convinced Italian anti-Semites seemed unable to take the thing seriously, and Roberto Farinacci, head of the Italian anti-Semitic movement, had a Jewish secretary in his employ…
What in Denmark was the result of an authentically political sense, an inbred comprehension of the requirements and responsibilities of citizenship and independence – “for the Danes … the Jewish question was a political and not a humanitarian question” (Leni Yahil) – was in Italy the outcome of the almost automatic general humanity of an old and civilized people.
Scott Alexander, “Book review: Eichmann in Jerusalem”, Slate Star Codex, 2017-01-30.
July 1, 2019
Theodore Dalrymple on “the ancient rhetorical tricks of suppressio veri and suggestio falsi“
In the New English Review a recent Theodore Dalrymple post on “inventing European identity”:
I doubt whether there is anyone who has never resorted to the ancient rhetorical tricks of suppressio veri and suggestio falsi. Some do it knowingly, others unknowingly. The omission of relevant facts and the insinuation of falsehoods are dual and often inseparable techniques that are the stock-in-trade of most practising politicians. Arguments have often to be schematic and if in theory it is possible to tell no falsehoods, it is virtually impossible not to suppress, or at least omit, some truths if a discussion of complex matters is not to be interminable.
Nevertheless, universal resort to error, whether honest or not, is no defence for those who utilise it. This is particularly so of intellectuals, whose metier above all is, or ought to be, honest argumentation. I was therefore intrigued to read an open letter published in the Guardian newspaper by what were described as “30 top intellectuals.”
The letter began with a ringing suggestio falsi: “The idea of Europe is in peril.” What the authors meant was that the idea of the European Union is in danger. They implied, in effect, that Europe and the European Union were synonyms, which is clearly false. If a country ceases to be a member of the European Union, or has never been a part of it, it does not cease to be European, neither geographically nor culturally.
The opening salvo sets the tone for the rest. Any opposition to the ever-closer union that is the aim of the European Union is characterized as purely irrational, nostalgic and even fascistic. It cannot by definition be founded on any rational considerations whatever. It success would be, as the authors put it, the triumph of “a politics of disdain for intelligence and culture” — which is in effect to say that anybody who opposes the proposed ever-closer union is either a demagogue or uncouth and stupid. Thus the top intellectuals, including five winners of the Nobel Prize and many world-famous writers, appear to have learned nothing from the single most disastrous phrase used in any recent election, Mrs. Clinton’s infamous “basket of deplorables.” Who is more stupid than whom?
The top intellectuals say of opponents of the drive towards a large federal state something like, “Let’s reconnect with our ‘national soul!’ Let’s rediscover out ‘lost identity’!” They go on to say, “Never mind that abstractions such as ‘soul’ and ‘identity’ often exist only in the imagination of demagogues.”
I overlook the fact that any British politician, however fervent a supporter of Brexit would never use a term such as “the British soul” for justified fear of being laughed out of court, but notice only that a few lines further on the top intellectuals say “We count ourselves among the European patriots.”
History of England – A New Future – Extra History – #6
Extra Credits
Published on 29 Jun 2019The 116-year struggle helped define and unite the English. In France, the wars forced the kings to tackle the separatist forces, and France would become the undisputed arbiter of Europe.
Thanks again to David Crowther for writing AND narrating this series! https://thehistoryofengland.co.uk/pod…
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A new Blackadder?
Colby Cosh retweeted a link to British Comedy Guide:

BBC promotional photo for Blackadder Goes Forth.
Photo via http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/content/images/2007/02/22/trench_1600_1600x1200.jpg
The stars of Blackadder have reportedly agreed to reunite for a new episode or series, after having met up in London to discuss the idea of bringing back the hit sitcom.
The Sun reports Rowan Atkinson, Tony Robinson, Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie agreed on a return, after meeting together at the Soho House members club in London.
A source told the newspaper: “They were all having a great laugh and they are all old friends. So they just said, ‘Yes, let’s do it’. It is being written now. Rowan has been saying he is extremely excited.”
The new series will reportedly be set in the modern day, with Blackadder as a university lecturer.
Speaking in a recent newspaper interview, co-writer Richard Curtis said: “The thing about Blackadder was, it was a young man’s show criticising older people, saying how stupid those in authority were. So I did once think, ‘If we ever did anything again, it should be Blackadder as a teacher in a university, about how much we hate young people’.”
Very Early Mars Pistol #4
Forgotten Weapons
Published on 17 Apr 2015Sold for $46,000.
Until the midle of the 20th century, the most powerful automatic pistol made was Sir Hugh Gabbett-Fairfax’s Mars pistol. With the .45 caliber version approaching the energy of a .45 Winchester Magnum, it was quite the accomplishment for a gun designed initially in 1898! Well, RIA has a very early example of the Mars – serial number 4 – coming up for sale. This gun (chambered for the .360 Mars cartridge) has a number of features that differ from the more “typical” Mars pistols (all 80 or so that were ultimately made). These include a very long barrel, a tangent-style rear sight, and a 3-lug bolt instead of the standard 4-lug type. A very cool pistol to have a look at!
June 30, 2019
Woodrow Wilson and the Versailles Treaty
Michael Filozof on the hundred-year anniversary of the Treaty of Versailles and the American President who had so much to do with the casting of the treaty:
Eight months after committing troops to war, Wilson cobbled together a list of progressive war aims in his Fourteen Points. They demanded an end to secret deals (i.e., the Treaty of London and the Sykes-Picot Agreement); “ethnic self-determination” for Poland and Austro-Hungarian territories that would soon become Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia; “a free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims,” and finally, a collective security organization, the League of Nations, which would be formed by a “covenant” (using the biblical term for a pact with God Himself) to maintain peace and territorial security of all nations.
Upon reading the Fourteen Points, French prime minister George “the Tiger” Clemenceau is said to have sniggered, “God gave us only ten.”
In 1919, Wilson became the first sitting president to venture overseas, practically abandoning his domestic duties and spending six months at the Paris Peace Conference personally negotiating the Treaty of Versailles. He was joined by “The Inquiry,” a group of over 100 academics and professors who surely knew how to fix the world and usher in Wilson’s global utopia.
Initially, Wilson and his Fourteen Points were wildly popular. He was greeted as if he were a latter-day rock star in France and Italy. Delegations from ethnic groups around the world came to Paris to beg Wilson for “self-determination.” (His French and British counterparts, Clemenceau and David Lloyd George, sneered that Wilson “thought he was Jesus Christ.”)
But they were soon to be disappointed. Wilson’s aims were so grandiose that they could not possibly be fulfilled. Italians, who had switched sides in the war to gain territory on the Dalmatian coast, became disillusioned when Wilson refused to accede to Italian demands. The negotiators did create Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, but all three were destined to become communist dictatorships, and the latter two failed to outlast the twentieth century.
Worst of all was Wilson’s hypocrisy when it came to dealing with Germany. Wilson had railed against German imperialism, but turned a blind eye to the biggest empire at the Conference: Great Britain. A pro-British bigot, Wilson was contemptuous of Irish demands for self-determination and had been disgusted by the Easter Rising of 1916. Wilson granted Britain and France Ottoman territories they had secretly agreed to divvy up in the Sykes-Picot agreement — not as “colonies,” but under the guise of League of Nations “mandates.” He willingly partitioned Germany into two non-contiguous territories, separated by the Polish Corridor, and placed millions of ethnic Germans in the newly created nation of Czechoslovakia and the Free City of Danzig.
On a slightly lighter note, Al Stewart’s “A League of Notions” does a wonderful job of capturing the machinations at Versailles:
Hitler ❤️ Paris – WW2 – 044 – June 29 1940
World War Two
Published on 29 Jun 2019Hitler goes to Paris, while Stalin occupies more territory… but something is on Stalin’s mind. News of the sudden success of the Wehrmacht in the West is not what he had hoped for. Churchill also looks to the West for help while a German invasion of the British Isles seems imminent. Far East the Japanese are on the advance.
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From the comments:
World War Two
2 days ago
We have been experimenting with some “catchier” titles in the last couple of weeks. At the moment, YouTube mainly looks at two things when deciding how often to recommend our videos. The first is average watch time. We’re doing great there. The second is called “click through rate”, which means the percentage of recommended videos getting clicked. That puts a huge emphasis on titles and thumbnails. So, we’ve been doing this and it has been quite successful in terms of viewer and subscriber growth. This has caused a great rise of comments as well, and as we still want to read everything and answer most of you, we have asked some community members to help us out. We are using software allowing to review, assign and share comments. This does mean that not all comments are made by someone you know (although Spartacus and Joram are still commenting a lot). We might later decide to have everyone commenting use their own name or a pseudonym, so you know who did the commenting. Just wanted to share that.Cheers,
Joram
June 29, 2019
Estonia and Latvia Fight For Independence – Russian Civil War Baltic Front I THE GREAT WAR June 1919
The Great War
Published on 28 Jun 2019GAME OF TRENCHES: The first 20 players to register at: http://bit.ly/GameOfTrenches will receive in-game rewards worth a total of 10 600 Gold
Estonia and Latvia had declared their independence from Russia in the late 1918 chaos. Over the spring of 1919 both countries’ new governments needed to defend that independence not only against the Russian Bolsheviks: there was also a violent internal struggle about the future of these countries. The Baltic Germans didn’t want to give up their social status and the even the anti-Bolshevik Russians considered the Baltics as part of the Russian Empire.
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Merchandise: https://shop.spreadshirt.de/thegreatwar/» SOURCES
Bennett, Geoffrey Martin. Cowan’s War. The Story of British Naval Operations in the Baltic, 1918-1920 (London: Collins, 1964)Chester, Geoff. “When the Capital of Latvia was a Ship Called Saratov” (Deep Baltic, 2016). https://deepbaltic.com/2016/06/13/whe…
Fletcher, William A. “The British Navy In the Baltic, 1918-1920. Its Contribution to the Independence of the Baltic Nations”. Journal of Baltic Studies, Vol. 7, No. 2, Summer 1976, p. 134-144.
Gerwarth, Robert. The Vanquished. Why the First World War Failed to End, 1917-1923 (Penguin, 2017).
Hatlie, Mark R. Riga at War 1914-1919. War and Wartime Experience in a Multi-ethnic Metropolis (Marburg: Herder-Institut, 2014). https://digital.herder-institut.de/pu…
Jēkabsons, Ēriks: “Cēsis, Battle of”, 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 2014-10-08. https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online…
Ibid. “The Latvian War of Independence 1918-1920 and the United States”. In: Fleishman L., Weiner A. (ed). War, Revolution, and Governance: The Baltic Countries in the Twentieth Century (Boston, 2018).
Kirby, David. The Baltic World 1772–1993. Europe’s Northern Periphery in an Age of Change. (London: Longman, 1995).
Raun, Toivo U. Estonia and the Estonians, 2nd ed. (Stanford: Hoover, 2002).
Sammartino, Annemarie H. The Impossible Border: Germany and the East, 1914–1922 (Cornell, 2014).
Sullivan, Charles L. “The 1919 German Campaign in the Baltic. The Final Phase.” In The Baltic States in Peace and War, 1917–1945, ed. V. Stanley Vardys and Romuald J. Misiunas, 31-42. (University Park: Penn State, 1978).
Tammela, Mari-Leen. Saaremaa Uprising. Estonica (Estonian Institute, 2012). http://www.estonica.org/en/Saaremaa_U…
Uustalu, Evald. The History of Estonian People (London: Boreas, 1952).
Von Rauch, Georg. The Baltic States. The Years of Independence 1917-1940 (London: Hurst, 1995).
Smele, Jonathan. The ‘Russian’ Civil Wars, 1916-1926: Ten Years That Shook the World (Oxford University Press: 2016)
Palmer, Alan. Northern Shores: A History of the Baltic Sea and Its Peoples (John Murray, 2005)
»CREDITS
Presented by: Jesse Alexander
Written by: Jesse Alexander
Director: Toni Steller & Florian Wittig
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Sound: Toni Steller
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Research by: Jesse Alexander
Fact checking: Florian WittigChannel Design: Alexander Clark
Original Logo: David van StepholdA Mediakraft Networks Original Channel
Contains licensed material by getty images
All rights reserved – Real Time History GmbH 2019
Determining who the “original” inhabitants were
It’s become quite common in some countries to pay formal lip service to the “original” peoples who inhabited the land before being dispossessed of that territory by various Europeans. Actually determining who were the first human inhabitants, however, is much more fraught … you can’t exactly expiate some residual guilt of your culture by acknowledging the previous culture if the previous culture in their turn dispossessed an even earlier group, can you? How far down the rabbit hole do you need to go? Tim Worstall explains:

Detail from a 1688 map of western New France by Vincenzo Coronelli that locates “Lac Taronto” at Lake Simcoe.
City of Toronto Culture Division/Library and Archives Canada via the National Post
… within all that the accurate answer to “Whose land are we on?” is the land of the latest bunch of murderous bastards who killed all the previous inhabitants. Perhaps moderated to say the peeps who killed all the previous men then dated the remaining womenfolk. Because once we’ve got past that nullius stage that’s the way it has been. The Moriori are in short supply these days on the Chatham Islands given that the Maori decided to eat them.
The original inhabitants of the British Isles, the Beaker Folk, were entirely replaced by the next lot, the Iron Age Celts and similar. The Angles displaced to the west the Romano Celts in their turn, detailed DNA studies showing rather more of the female side of the R-C’s bred into the new population than the male. The Franks weren’t indigenous to France, the Allemani to Germany, the Turks to Turkey.
In fact, we’ve between little and no proof that the varied Amerinds were the original inhabitants of the lands where the White Europeans found then from 1492 onwards. In the case of both the Incas and Aztecs as political powers, proof they weren’t. And horses and Plains Indians simply weren’t a thing until the Eurasian horse was introduced post 1492.
Basically, this is indeed true. Anywhere is the possession of simply the last group of people to have slaughtered, or outbred, the previous group.
An interesting observation – if we apply the oft stated Americas example elsewhere, that Whitey stole it all and should give it back, then the Bantu should be back in Nigeria and Central Africa returned to the Pygmies, Southern to the Khoi San. We don’t say that and for the life of me I can’t work out why.
Ancient Rome in 20 minutes
Arzamas
Published on 30 May 2017Caesar, The Colosseum, Republic, Nero, geese, plebeians, legions – everything that you once knew, but forgot, in a crash course video by Arzamas.
Narrated by Brian Cox.
“Ancient Rome in 20 minutes” is a Russian version of a Russian video by Arzamas.
June 28, 2019
“Gott Mit Uns” – The Thirty Years War – Sabaton History 021 [Official]
Sabaton History
Published on 27 Jun 2019The Sabaton Song “Gott Mit Uns” is about the Battle of Breitenfeld, fought between the Swedish under command of King Gustavus Adolphus and the Holy Roman Empire under Count Tilly. This battle was hugely influential in the Thirty Years War and the religious wars that were plaguing Europe in the 17th century.
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Music by Sabaton.Sources:
– National museum
– National Portrait GalleryAn OnLion Entertainment GmbH and Raging Beaver Publishing AB co-Production.
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Lesser-known details of the France 1940 Campaign
The_Chieftain
Premiered on 22 Jun 2019Your friendly history lesson, with a little bit of Op-Ed thrown in, some parts of the 1940 campaign in France of which many folks weren’t aware.
Why was Guderian relieved of command?
Why might condoms have changed the course of the war?
What’s a Niwi?
Was the French failure one of doctrine, or execution?
You get the idea.Patreon link here:
https://www.patreon.com/The_ChieftainWorld War Two channel, if you haven’t already found it… : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP1A…
What does £1 trillion buy you?
Not much, apparently:
Tory MPs have been told by CCHQ to share this graphic boasting about their new commitment to make the UK carbon-neutral by 2050. No other major country has committed to the pledge although Theresa May is planning a desperate attempt at the G20 to talk other leaders into it. The fact that developed countries going ‘net zero’ simply means they’ll outsource all their emissions to the developing world instead seems to be completely lost on her…
The pledge will cost the UK at least £1 trillion, much of which will be borne by individuals and businesses rather than the exchequer, we don’t know the true cost as May hasn’t even done a proper Treasury analysis. Eco-fanatics love to talk about the burden this generation is placing on children and grandchildren. For a fleeting PR stunt Tory MPs are being told to boast about piling on mountains of economic harm for future generations by a leader who won’t be in office to deal with the consequences…
This is exactly the sort of virtue signalling that Justin Trudeau indulges in … I imagine he’s quite miffed that Theresa May got there first.
Panzerbüchse 39 German Anti-Tank Rifle
Forgotten Weapons
Published on 7 Apr 2015Sold for $37,375.
Most countries still had anti-tank rifles in their military inventory at the beginning of WWII – the Solothurn S18-100, the Lahti L39, the Boys AT Rifle, the PTRD and PTRS, and so on. For Germany, this role was fulfilled by the Panzerbüchse 39, a single-shot falling block rifle firing a high velocity 8mm AP cartridge. It was nominally effective in the opening campaigns of the war, but was quickly rendered obsolete as Allied armor improved. German planners has a huge number (25,000) of these on hand for the invasion of Russia, where they expected Russian armor to be vulnerable to them – which was not the case. Most were subsequently converted into Granatbüchse 39 AT grenade launchers, which were then used until the end of the war.
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