Mustard
Published on 14 Nov 2017During World War Two, hundreds of cargo ships raced across the Atlantic in an effort to keep Britain supplied. But these ships were being sunk by German U-boats, warships and aircraft. In 1940 alone, over a thousand allied ships were lost on their way to Britain.
The United States, while not yet at war, was playing a vital role in supplying Britain. But with ships being sunk daily, Britain and America desperately needed a way to keep all that material moving across the Atlantic. In response, 18 shipyards across the coastal United States mobilized to build thousands of large cargo ships known as Liberty Ships. They would be built even faster than the enemy could sink them. At one point the shipyards were building one large Liberty Ship every eight hours.
Two revolutionary changes in shipbuilding will make this enormous feat possible. The first is welding and the second is the use of a modular assembly process. By mid 1941, the sheer number Liberties out at sea, along with increasing armed escorts overwhelmed German forces. Advances in anti-submarine technologies also started stamping out the U-boat threat.
Today, there are only three Liberty Ships remaining of the 2,710 built that remind us of their enormous contribution to winning World War Two.
December 28, 2017
How A Cargo Ship Helped Win WW2: The Liberty Ship Story
December 27, 2017
The Second World War – Operation Dynamo completed, The Long March has started.
TimeGhost
Published on 20 Dec 2017Thank you all for your support so far! Every minute, every hour we move closer to launching The Second World War as the largest collaborative effort on YouTube ever, and you’re making it happen!
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Audio: Winston Churchill’s speech to the House of Commons on 4 June 1940 after the completion of Operation Dynamo, the evacuation from Dunkirk.
Footage from Frank Capra’s “Why We Fight” series from 1942 and “The True Glory” from 1945, a documentary based on photography by combat camera men produced by the governments of Great Britain and The United Sates. Both courtesy of The National Archive, all right released.
December 26, 2017
The Hush Hush Army – The Adventures of Dunsterforce Part 1 I THE GREAT WAR Special
The Great War
Published on 25 Dec 2017Dunsterforce Book: http://amzn.to/2BA5IRM
The Dunsterforce was a small British military mission under Colonel Dunsterville. Its goal was to prevent the spread of German influence in the South Caucasus and Caspian Sea. The soldiers soon find themselves in the complicated and violent post-revolutionary Caucasus where no one can really be trusted.
December 25, 2017
WW1 Christmas Truce: Letters from the Trenches – Extra History – #2
Extra Credits
Published on 24 Dec 2017Sponsored by World of Tanks! New players: Download the game and use the code ARMISTICE for free goodies! http://cpm.wargaming.net/ivmqe6kc/?pu…
PLUS! In the spirit of the Christmas Truce, World of Tanks has prepared a gift box for EVERY PLAYER. Redeem the bonus code: HULSE14
“Yesterday there was a fierce and terrible onslaught… of Christmas packages into our trenches.” So began one soldier’s letter home after the Christmas Truce of WWI. These letters give us a peek at the joys and sorrows experienced by troops on deployment, from the pleasure of a surprise holiday truce to the pain of being too long apart from families.
Filling Trenches – General PoWs – Blindness I OUT OF THE TRENCHES
The Great War
Published on 23 Dec 2017Ask your questions: http://outofthetrenches.thegreatwar.tv
December 24, 2017
Post-Brexit Britain as “a Venezuela without the oil or the tropical climate”
Theodore Dalrymple on the possible downsides of a hard Brexit:
Important (for good or evil) as Brexit may be to the future of Britain, it is not without its importance for the European Union. Indeed, it was always essential for the Union that Britain’s departure should be an economic disaster for Britain: for if it were not, why have a union at all?
It was therefore entirely predictable that the Union should drive a hard bargain with Britain, even a bargain economically harmful to itself, provided only that it was worse for Britain: for the self-preservation of the European political class is at stake. In the European Union politics always trumps economics.
In Britain too, political considerations were uppermost in the minds of those who voted for Brexit. They saw in the European Union a Yugoslavia in the making, led by a megalomaniac class without effective checks or balances. But now they are increasingly apprehensive of the economic costs of Brexit.
And the economic auguries for Britain are indeed poor, though not only, or even principally, because of the European Union’s hostility. The fact is that Britain is unlikely to be able to take any advantage of life outside the European straitjacket because its own political class is itself in favour of straitjackets that are no better, and quite possibly worse than, the European ones. The present Prime Minister, Theresa May, is very much a statist, indistinguishable from European social democrats, and the leader of the opposition, Mr Corbyn, who might well be the next Prime Minister, is an unapologetic admirer of Hugo Chavez. It is hardly to be expected that foreign investors will place much trust or confidence in an isolated country whose next government might very well weaken property rights, impose capital controls and increase corporate taxation in favour of supposed social justice. It would not take very long to turn Britain into a northern Venezuela: a Venezuela without the oil or the tropical climate.
Moreover, Britain already has many weaknesses and few strengths. It has a huge and persistent trade imbalance, because it does not produce enough of what the world wants and cannot easily be made to do so; it has a large national debt, about the same size as that of France, but without a highly functioning infrastructure such as France’s to show for it; its household debt is among the highest in the world. For many years, its economic policy might as well have been presided over by Mr Madoff; its social policy has been to smash up all forms of social solidarity or support for the vulnerable that do not pass through the state. The destruction of the little platoons has been very thorough: most large ‘charities’ in Britain are now dependent on government rather than on private funding, and hence are in effect departments of state.
December 23, 2017
Repost – Kate Bush – Christmas Special 1979 (Private Remaster)
Published on 5 Oct 2013
I know there’s a good few copies of this out on YouTube, but here it is, again! The other copies were either split up into individual tracks, the best complete one (from BBC Four’s rebroadcast in 2009) had the wrong aspect ratio, which annoyed the hell out of me! So, here this is…
Video and audio have been tidied up very slightly, not much was needed!
Kate Bush – Christmas Special
Tracklist:
(Intro) 00:00
Violin 00:29
(Gymnopédie No.1 – composed by Erik Satie) 03:44
Symphony In Blue 04:44
Them Heavy People 08:20
(Intro for Peter Gabriel) 12:52
Here Comes The Flood (Peter Gabriel) 13:22
Ran Tan Waltz 17:02
December Will Be Magic Again 19:43
The Wedding List 23:35
Another Day (with Peter Gabriel) 28:05
Egypt 31:41
The Man With The Child In His Eyes 36:21
Don’t Push Your Foot On The Heartbreak 39:24“I was recently asked about this BBC TV special and I thought I’d share my comments here. Kate: Kate Bush Christmas Special is a stage performance by Kate Bush with her special guest Peter Gabriel. Though most of the songs are not holiday ones, they come from Bush’s first three albums (Never for Ever her third album would be released in 1980 after this 1979 TV special was taped). The performances include costumes, choreographed dances and a wind machine, creating an eclectic music TV special to say the least.
This is one of the programs that makes my research quite difficult — because it calls itself a Christmas Special yet it contains only one performance of a Christmas song “December Will Be Magic Again” (a song that wouldn’t be released as a single by Bush until the following year, in 1980). TV programming that calls itself a Christmas Special and yet contains little to no Christmas entertainment is actually quite common — especially on the BBC.
Between the end of November and the end of December each year, there is quite a bit of special programming on television. Remember Elvis’ 1968 Comeback Special — it aired in December that year and includes only one holiday song, a performance of “Blue Christmas.” Is it considered a Christmas special? No, not really. And so, despite its title, the lack of holiday programming in Kate Bush’s 1979 TV special means it shouldn’t be considered a Christmas special either. But the Kate Bush Christmas Special is certainly worth watching!”
H/T to Ghost of a Flea for the link.
QotD: Charles Dickens’ ability to portray happiness
The thought of Christmas raises almost automatically the thought of Charles Dickens, and for two very good reasons. To begin with, Dickens is one of the few English writers who have actually written about Christmas. Christmas is the most popular of English festivals, and yet it has produced astonishingly little literature. There are the carols, mostly medieval in origin; there is a tiny handful of poems by Robert Bridges, T.S. Eliot, and some others, and there is Dickens; but there is very little else. Secondly, Dickens is remarkable, indeed almost unique, among modern writers in being able to give a convincing picture of happiness.
Dickens dealt successfully with Christmas twice in a chapter of The Pickwick Papers and in A Christmas Carol. The latter story was read to Lenin on his deathbed and according to his wife, he found its ‘bourgeois sentimentality’ completely intolerable. Now in a sense Lenin was right: but if he had been in better health he would perhaps have noticed that the story has interesting sociological implications. To begin with, however thick Dickens may lay on the paint, however disgusting the ‘pathos’ of Tiny Tim may be, the Cratchit family give the impression of enjoying themselves. They sound happy as, for instance, the citizens of William Morris’s News From Nowhere don’t sound happy. Moreover and Dickens’s understanding of this is one of the secrets of his power their happiness derives mainly from contrast. They are in high spirits because for once in a way they have enough to eat. The wolf is at the door, but he is wagging his tail. The steam of the Christmas pudding drifts across a background of pawnshops and sweated labour, and in a double sense the ghost of Scrooge stands beside the dinner table. Bob Cratchit even wants to drink to Scrooge’s health, which Mrs Cratchit rightly refuses. The Cratchits are able to enjoy Christmas precisely because it only comes once a year. Their happiness is convincing just because Christmas only comes once a year. Their happiness is convincing just because it is described as incomplete.
George Orwell (writing as “John Freeman”), “Can Socialists Be Happy?”, Tribune, 1943-12-20.
December 22, 2017
The Armistice of Brest-Litovsk I THE GREAT WAR Week 178
The Great War
Published on 21 Dec 2017An armistice between Austria-Hungary, Germany and Russia is signed this week 100 years ago at Brest-Litovsk. And right away the Germans make their intentions clear that they want to dictate the terms for the following peace negotiations. Even Great Britain is exploring peace options but is there actually peace in Russia? After the Bolshevik Coup a Civil War is looming.
December 21, 2017
The bloody 20th century and the leaders who helped make it so
Walter Williams on the terrible death toll of the 20th century, both in formal war between nations and in internal conflict and repression:
The 20th century was mankind’s most brutal century. Roughly 16 million people lost their lives during World War I; about 60 million died during World War II. Wars during the 20th century cost an estimated 71 million to 116 million lives.
The number of war dead pales in comparison with the number of people who lost their lives at the hands of their own governments. The late professor Rudolph J. Rummel of the University of Hawaii documented this tragedy in his book Death by Government: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900. Some of the statistics found in the book have been updated here.
The People’s Republic of China tops the list, with 76 million lives lost at the hands of the government from 1949 to 1987. The Soviet Union follows, with 62 million lives lost from 1917 to 1987. Adolf Hitler’s Nazi German government killed 21 million people between 1933 and 1945. Then there are lesser murdering regimes, such as Nationalist China, Japan, Turkey, Vietnam and Mexico. According to Rummel’s research, the 20th century saw 262 million people’s lives lost at the hands of their own governments.
Hitler’s atrocities are widely recognized, publicized and condemned. World War II’s conquering nations’ condemnation included denazification and bringing Holocaust perpetrators to trial and punishing them through lengthy sentences and execution. Similar measures were taken to punish Japan’s murderers.
But what about the greatest murderers in mankind’s history — the Soviet Union’s Josef Stalin and China’s Mao Zedong? Some leftists saw these communists as heroes. W.E.B. Du Bois, writing in the National Guardian in 1953, said, “Stalin was a great man; few other men of the 20th century approach his stature. … The highest proof of his greatness (was that) he knew the common man, felt his problems, followed his fate.” Walter Duranty called Stalin “the greatest living statesman” and “a quiet, unobtrusive man.” There was even leftist admiration for Hitler and fellow fascist Benito Mussolini. When Hitler came to power in January 1933, George Bernard Shaw described him as “a very remarkable man, a very able man.” President Franklin Roosevelt called the fascist Mussolini “admirable,” and he was “deeply impressed by what he (had) accomplished.”
December 20, 2017
WW1 Christmas Truce: Silent Night – Extra History – #1
Extra Credits
Published on 17 Dec 2017Sponsored by World of Tanks! New players: Download the game and use the code ARMISTICE for free goodies! http://cpm.wargaming.net/ivmqe6kc/?pu…
PLUS! In the spirit of the Christmas Truce, World of Tanks has prepared a gift box for EVERY PLAYER. Redeem the bonus code: HULSE14On Christmas Eve in 1914, soldiers in the trenches sang together across the wastes of No Man’s Land. Some were brave enough to step out of their trenches and meet face-to-face, forming an unofficial truce that lasted (with a few blemishes) until the end of Christmas Day.
How to Have a British Christmas – Anglophenia Ep 20
Anglophenia
Published on 3 Dec 2014From explosives at the dinner table to burning letters to Santa, Siobhan Thompson looks at 10 ways Christmas differs in Britain. (Notably, they don’t call them the holidays.)
December 19, 2017
Transcaucasia in World War 1 I THE GREAT WAR Special
The Great War
Published on 18 Dec 2017The Caucasus region with its many different ethnic groups and its resources was always of particular interest to the greater powers like Russia, Persia or the Ottoman Empire. In the late 19th and early 20th century, the idea of ethnic self determination and resulting national movements, the fluctuating powers situation caused by World War 1 created a unique situation for Georgians, Azerbaijanis and Armenians.
James May and Jeremy Clarkson on cycle safety – Top Gear: Series 21 Episode 5 – BBC Two
BBC
Published on 19 Mar 2014http://www.bbc.co.uk/topgear Jeremy Clarkson and James May cycle around the streets of London after shooting a public information film to promote safer cycling.
December 17, 2017
Beer Brewing – Roger Casement – Surviving Aces I OUT OF THE TRENCHES
The Great War
Published on 16 Dec 2017Ask your questions here: http://outofthetrenches.thegreatwar.tv
