World War Two
Published on 22 Sep 2018When the USSR crushes the plans of the Allies for Poland and the Japanese plans in China in the same week, it is Germany that benefits.
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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
Research by: Indy Neidell
Edited by: Spartacus Olsson
Colorized Pictures by Olga Shirnina and Norman StewartOlga’s pictures: https://klimbim2014.wordpress.com
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH
September 23, 2018
The Russians are Coming! – WW2 004 September 22 1939
30 Years War | 3 Minute History
Jabzy
Published on 28 Oct 2015Thanks to Xios, Alan Haskayne, Lachlan Lindenmayer, William Crabb, Derpvic, Seth Reeves and all my other Patrons. If you want to help out – https://www.patreon.com/Jabzy?ty=h
September 22, 2018
Arthur C. Clarke – Master of Science Fiction – Extra Sci Fi – #1
Extra Credits
Published on 18 Sep 2018Arthur C. Clarke is well known for his work on 2001: A Space Odyssey, but even more importantly he ventured into writing novels instead of just magazine serializations. Works like The City and the Stars asked big philosophical questions in science fiction.
September 21, 2018
Allied Breakthroughs In Palestine And Macedonia I THE GREAT WAR Week 217
The Great War
Published on 20 Sep 2018In a turbulent week of the First World War, the Allies break through at the Macedonian Front during the Battle of Vadar and in Palestine during the Battle for Palestine. At the same time, the Ottoman defeats the last defenders of Baku.
Declassified: The Old RAF Base Bringing Hollywood To Upper Heyford | Forces TV
Forces TV
Published on 30 Aug 2018Upper Heyford was one of the largest US Air Force bases in Europe, housing bombers that carried NATO’s intermediate-range nuclear weapons… now it’s attracting Hollywood A-listers…
Read more: https://www.forces.net/news/declassif…
September 20, 2018
The Last Lee Enfield: the L42A1 Sniper
Forgotten Weapons
Published on 31 Aug 2018More info: https://www.forgottenweapons.com/the-…
http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
When the British military adopted the FAL (L1A1 SLR) in 1960, they adopted the 7.62x51mm NATO cartridge along with it. While the Bren guns were converted to the new cartridge, efforts at converting the Lee Enfield into a precision rifle were not successful at the time. However, civilian target shooters and the British NRA would work on perfecting that conversion for use in competition, and would ultimately produce very accurate 7.62mm rifles built on Lee Enfield actions – accurate enough that the military took notice. Copying the competition rifles, the British military would adopt the L42A1 in 1970, an Enfield action converted to 7.62mm NATO with a shortened and free-floated stock and hand guard and a heavy profile barrel. A total of 1,080 L42A1 rifles would be converted from existing No4 MkI(T) sniper rifles, and they would serve in the front lines of the British military until 1992, when they were replaced by the Accuracy International L96A1.
If you enjoy Forgotten Weapons, check out its sister channel, InRangeTV! http://www.youtube.com/InRangeTVShow
September 19, 2018
Belgian Uniforms Of World War 1 I THE GREAT WAR Special
The Great War
Published on 17 Sep 2018Visit the IJser Museum: http://www.museumaandeijzer.be/ijzert…
Indy talks to Peter Verplancke from the Museum at the former Yser front about the Belgian uniforms and their evolution during the war.
The Byzantine Empire should really be called the “Medieval Roman Empire”
Sean Gabb makes the case for the least well-known part of the Roman world that outlasted the western empire by a thousand years:
Properly considered, the history of what I will from now call not the Byzantine Empire, but the Mediaeval Roman Empire, is perhaps the most astonishing instance of how courage and determination can keep civilisation alive in the face of the most forbidding and apparently overpowering challenges. In setting out my argument, I hope you will forgive me if I begin with an introduction covering much that many of your will know at least as well as I do, but that may not be so familiar to those reading the text or watching the speech on YouTube.
If you look at the first of the maps that I have put on your tables, you will see the Roman Empire as it was in the year 395 AD. This shows the Empire at something close it its greatest extent. The conquests that Trajan made to the north of the Danube and east of the Euphrates have been given up. But it includes the whole of the Mediterranean World and its various hinterlands – an area stretching from the North of England to Upper Egypt, from Casablanca to Trebizond. In that year, however, nearly a century of political experiments is formally ended with the division of the Empire into two administrative zones. There is the Western or the red Empire, ruled by an Emperor in Rome or Milan or Ravenna. There is the Eastern or the purple Empire, ruled by an Emperor in Constantinople.
If you look at the second map, dated roughly 650 AD, you will see that the Western Empire has disappeared. Excepting North Africa and parts of Italy, now ruled from Constantinople, the whole of the Western Empire has disappeared – replaced by a set of barbarian kingdoms from which modern Europe takes its origin. The Eastern Empire itself has lost both Syria and Egypt to the Arabs.
If you look at the third map, dated roughly 867 AD, you will see that the Empire has suffered the further loss of Cyprus and North Africa and most of Sicily. Nevertheless, what we have in that year should undeniably be called the Mediaeval Roman Empire. It has weathered the storm of the Early Middle Ages. It is the richest and most powerful state in the Mediterranean World. Indeed, during the next few centuries, it will expand. It has already reconquered Greece. It will conquer the Bulgarian Kingdom and re-establish its ancient frontier on the Danube. It will even retake Antioch and make Egypt for a while its economic and diplomatic client.
After 1071, the Empire falls on evil days. In that year, the Turks deprive it of its Anatolian heartland. But this loss is stabilised and in part reversed by a skilful handling of the Crusades. There is another disaster in 1204, when the Venetians take and plunder Constantinople. But this is not the end. The Empire is restored in large parts in 1261; and, even if as little more than a city-state based around Constantinople, it continues to the final Turkish conquest of 1453. Indeed, the formal extinction of the Empire comes nearly a decade after 1453, with the annexation of its last territories in Southern Greece.
There was a time when school textbooks in England dated the fall of the Roman Empire to 476 AD. Its continued survival for a thousand years after then had to be explained, where admitted, by taking a contemptuous view of what was called the Byzantine Empire. See, for example, W.E.H. Lecky:
Of that Byzantine empire, the universal verdict of history is that it constitutes, without a single exception, the most thoroughly base and despicable form that civilization has yet assumed. There has been no other enduring civilization so absolutely destitute of all forms and elements of greatness, and none to which the epithet “mean” may be so emphatically applied… The history of the empire is a monotonous story of the intrigues of priests, eunuchs, and women, of poisonings, of conspiracies, of uniform ingratitude.
Lecky is one of my favourite historians. But, if you look even at the mediaeval Greek and Italian historians of the Empire, you will see that this is a bizarre judgement. Undoubtedly, these historians tended to focus on intrigues in and about the Imperial Palace. But they also record much else. They record the story of a rich and powerful empire, directed with high military and diplomatic ability – an empire in which slavery and the death penalty have been almost abolished, where people lived, and knew that they lived, under a set of divinely-ordained laws that protected life, liberty and property to a degree unknown in any other mediaeval state.
QotD: The “generations” of jet fighters
American warplanes like the F-22 and F-35 are often called “5th generation” fighters. This leaves many wondering what the other generations were and what the next one will be. The generation reference is all because of jet fighters, and the first generation was developed during and right after World War II (German Me-262, British Meteor, U.S. F-80, and Russian MiG-15). These aircraft were, even by the standards of the time, difficult to fly and unreliable (especially the engines). The 2nd generation (1950s) included more reliable but still dangerous to operate aircraft like the F-104 and MiG-21. The 3rd generation (1960s) included F-4 and MiG-23. The 4th generation (1970s) included F-16 and MiG-29. Each generation has been about twice as expensive (on average, in constant dollars) as the previous one. But each generation is also about twice as safe to fly and cheaper to operate. Naturally, each generation is more than twice as effective as the previous one. Increasingly it looks like the 6th generation will come without pilots. That’s because producing fifth generation fighters has proved difficult as well as very expensive. So far only the United States has managed to get 5th gen fighters (F-22 and F-35) into service. The Russians are still trying as are the Chinese, even though one of their stealth fighter designs (J-20) is technically in service (even though production has been suspended after less than a dozen were produced).
The Russians have said they will keep working on their 5th generation Su-57, although some of the derivatives of their Su-27 are at least generation 4.5. One of the reasons the Soviet Union collapsed was the realization that they could not afford to develop 5th generation warplanes to stay competitive with America. The Russians had a lot of interesting stuff on the drawing board and in development but the bankruptcy of most of their military aviation industry during the 1990s left them scrambling to put it back together ever since. At the moment the Russians are thinking of making a run for the 6th generation warplanes, which will likely be unmanned and largely robotic. As of 2018 they don’t have much choice because their answer to the F-22, work on the Su-57 was canceled (“indefinitely paused”.)
“Murphy’s Law: The Impossible 5th Generation”, Strategy Page, 2018-08-20.
September 18, 2018
A case to keep Theresa May in power … at least until March, 2019
Sean Gabb offers about the only possible justification for the British Tories to keep Theresa May on as Prime Minister:
Let us imagine that there is a vote of no-confidence in Mrs May as Leader of the Conservative Party. Let us imagine what is not certain — that someone more committed to leaving then becomes the Prime Minister. We can suppose that Anna Soubry and Damian Green will resign the Conservative whip — they and perhaps several dozen others of their kind. They are held from doing this at the moment because the ghostly electoral mandate Mrs May has gives them no excuse for splitting. A new Prime Minister without any mandate would give them their excuse. This would leave the Government with no majority. But there is worse.
Between a third and half the Parliamentary Labour Party would like an excuse to peel away and form a new party. So far, they have not found this excuse. A Conservative split would be their excuse. I can imagine a “centrist” block of 150 Members in the House of Commons. Add the Scottish Nationalists and the Liberal Democrats — that would be enough to form a new coalition government. Whether this new government then called a second referendum or found some less honest method, there would be no departure of any kind from the European Union. And, thanks to the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, they would keep their seats until 2022. After that, they could look forward to a shower of corporate sinecures.
Bearing this in mind, I call on the Conservative leavers not to allow a vote of no-confidence in Mrs May. Instead, let them focus on making it impossible for the Government we have to offer new concessions to the European negotiators. I call on the relevant Jewish organisations to keep up their pressure on the Labour leadership — but not to try for any killing blow. They can have Mr Corbyn’s head on a plate after next March. In short, I pray for no change in any direction in British politics until after we have left the European Union. Then, we can have blood on the moon — the more, the better. Until then, let the May Government continue shuffling towards departure on whatever terms they can get or want to get.
September 17, 2018
“Nazis on Drugs” – Wehrmacht & Meth – Wunderwaffe?
Military History not Visualized
Published on 17 Aug 2018There some over-blown claims out there that the “Blitzkriege” were mainly achieved due to the use of Meth (Pervitin) and that historians had ignored this issue. Is it true or false? In this video we take a look at Pervitin, the Wehrmacht, the early German victories aka “Blitzkriege” and various aspects. Was Pervitin a Wunderwaffe? Was the Wehrmacht on Meth? How long was it used? And some aspects.
September 16, 2018
Poland on Her Own – WW2 September 15 1939
World War Two
Published on 15 Sep 2018When the Wehrmacht and the SS continue devastating Poland and her people in the first weeks of September, her last chance is her western allies.
Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at: https://timeghost.tvWritten and Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Produced and Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Research by: Indy Neidell
Edited by: Spartacus OlssonA TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH
QotD: Austria’s share of the Nazi legacy
This ambiguity, or (to put it less kindly) dishonesty, if it really exists, replicates in symbolic fashion the attitude of Austria to its historical record in the 1930s and 40s. Officially, Austria was a victim of Nazi aggression; in reality, it was an enthusiastic participant in Nazi crimes. But whatever crimes Austrians as individuals committed during the war, they committed them as Germans, not as Austrians. They were responding only to force majeure; the Austrian state was not implicated.
Suspicion of Austria runs deep, and with good reason. Everyone thinks (though it cannot be proved or disproved) that Kurt Waldheim, the former Secretary-General of the United Nations, was elected president of the country not in spite of his Nazi past, but because of it. The Austrians claim that they insisted on voting for him because they resented the hypocritical reaction of the outside world to his candidature – surely, they said, powers with the combined intelligence resources of the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain and France must have known of his Nazi past when they accepted him as Secretary-General, so why should the Austrians themselves not accept him as President? Once again the Austrians were able to conceive of themselves as the injured party in the whole business.
Even the Austrian prohibition of Holocaust denial, under which the British Nazi-supporting historian David Irving was (in my view wrongfully) imprisoned until he recanted, or at least pretended to recant, is ambiguous. On the one hand, of course, it is a recognition of the moral monstrosity of what the Nazis did, and of the Austrians’ special responsibility for it; but on the other, it implies a deep mistrust of the Austrian people, who (it must have been feared by those who framed the law) might recant their anti-Nazism if they could.
Of course, there have been Austrians who were deeply disgusted by their countrymen. The greatest Austrian writer of the post-war period, Thomas Bernhard, inserted a famous clause in his will that repays reflection. He ordered that, for the duration of his legal copyright after his death, nothing he had ever written, including his plays, should ever be published or performed:
within the borders of the Austrian state, however that state
describes itself. I categorically emphasize that I want to have
nothing to do with the Austrian state and I safeguard myself
concerning my person and my work not only against every
interference but also against every approach by this Austrian
state to my person and my work for all time to come.‘For all time to come:’ that is a pretty strong injunction, implying as it does that the Austrian soul, or whatever you want to call it, is so tainted by its original sin, or sins, that it is irrecoverably and irremediably evil.
Theodore Dalrymple, “Austria and Evil”, New English Review, 2008-05.
September 15, 2018
QotD: Churchill on brevity
To do our work, we all have to read a mass of papers. Nearly all of them are far too long. This wastes time, while energy has to be spent in looking for the essential points.
I ask my colleagues and their staffs to see to it that their Reports are shorter.
- The aim should be Reports which set out the main points in a series of short, crisp paragraphs.
- If a Report relies on detailed analysis of some complicated factors, or on statistics, these should be set out in an Appendix.
- Often the occasion is best met by submitting not a full-dress Report, but an Aide-mémoire consisting of headings only, which can be expanded orally if needed.
- Let us have an end of such phrases as these: “It is also of importance to bear in mind the following considerations…”, or “Consideration should be given to the possibility of carrying into effect…”. Most of there woolly phrases are mere padding, which can be left out altogether, or replaced by a single word. Let us not shrink from using the short expressive phrase, even if it is conversational.
Reports drawn up on the lines I propose may at first seem rough as compared with the flat surface of officialese jargon. But the saving in time will be great, while the discipline of setting out the real points concisely will prove an aid to clearer thinking.
Winston Churchill, memorandum to the War Cabinet, 1940-08-09.
September 14, 2018
A sensible post-Brexit farming policy
Tim Worstall linked to his 2016 post at the Adam Smith Institute that nicely summarizes the best post-Brexit farm policy for Britain:
We have an alternative policy framework to suggest. Let’s just not have a policy. No subsidies, no payments, no department, no Minister, nothing, nowt, zippedy dooh dah. The New Zealand option. You’ve had it good for a century or more now there’s yer bike and have a nice ride.
We would not swear that this is true but we have heard that it is so — British farming has long passed Parkinson’s Event Horizon. There are now more bureaucrats “managing” farming than there are farmers farming. Let’s not pay the farmers anything and thus we don’t need the bureaucrats paying it — a double saving. Instead of £2 to £3 billion a year in taxes going to the farmers, plus whatever the amount again to pay it to them, we could just keep that what, £5 billion? And go and buy food from whomever.
Sounds like a plan really and we recommend it to all. Let’s use Brexit to right some of the wrongs of our current system. One of those wrongs being the incessant whining and demands for bribery from the farming sector.
The correct design of the new domestic agriculture policy is that there isn’t one. And nor is there any funding for either it or its absence. In short Meurig, go away.
