Published on 6 Aug 2015
After the Russian defeats on the Eastern Front, Warsaw falls. The first time in over 100 years a foreign power occupies the city. The German onslaught in the East seems to be unstoppable. Also on the Western Front the Germans are causing havoc with the new Fokker-Eindecker planes which start the so called Fokker Scourge. The British pilots even start to call their airplanes Fokker-Fodder. At the same time, the battle in Gallipoli continues with ever more troops landing while neither the Ottomans nor the ANZAC troops can gain any advantage.
August 7, 2015
Warsaw Falls – The Fokker Scourge Begins I THE GREAT WAR Week 54
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July 31, 2015
Russian Roulette – Germany Helps The Bolsheviks I THE GREAT WAR Week 53
Published on 30 Jul 2015
After Russia’s Great Retreat and the defeat on the Eastern Front, the Russian Army is demoralized and even revolution is in the air. Germany is fanning the revolutionary flames by sending Bolshevik prisoners of war back to Russia – equipped with money to support the Bolshevik cause. Meanwhile, the the war is continuing on the Western Front. Even small skirmishes are turning into atrocious battles with little gain for either side. A great offensive is not in sight.
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July 25, 2015
QotD: The King
Perhaps the most valuable asset that any man can have in this world is a naturally superior air, a talent for sniffishness and reserve. The generality of men are always greatly impressed by it, and accept it freely as a proof of genuine merit. One need but disdain them to gain their respect. Their congenital stupidity and timorousness make them turn to any leader who offers, and the sign of leadership that they recognize most readily is that which shows itself in external manner. This is the true explanation of the survival of monarchism, which invariably lives through its perennial deaths. It is the popular theory, at least in America, that monarchism is a curse fastened upon the common people from above — that the monarch saddles it upon them without their consent and against their will. The theory is without support in the facts. Kings are created, not by kings, but by the people. They visualize one of the ineradicable needs of all third-rate men, which means of nine men out of ten, and that is the need of something to venerate, to bow down to, to follow and obey.
The king business begins to grow precarious, not when kings reach out for greater powers, but when they begin to resign and renounce their powers. The czars of Russia were quite secure upon the throne so long as they ran Russia like a reformatory, but the moment they began to yield to liberal ideas, i. e., by emancipating the serfs and setting up constitutionalism, their doom was sounded. The people saw this yielding as a sign of weakness; they began to suspect that the czars, after all, were not actually superior to other men. And so they turned to other and antagonistic leaders, all as cock-sure as the czars had once been, and in the course of time they were stimulated to rebellion. These leaders, or, at all events, the two or three most resolute and daring of them, then undertook to run the country in the precise way that it had been run in the palmy days of the monarchy. That is to say, they seized and exerted irresistible power and laid claim to infallible wisdom. History will date their downfall from the day they began to ease their pretensions. Once they confessed, even by implication, that they were merely human, the common people began to turn against them.
H.L. Mencken, “Types of Men 8: The King”, Prejudices, Third Series, 1922.
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July 24, 2015
Scorched Earth – Russia’s retreat goes up in flames! l THE GREAT WAR Week 52
Published on 23 Jul 2015
This week Russia premieres her tactics of “Scorched Earth”. A new strategy of burning their own land is to avoid enemies profiting from their conquests. Russia had been retreating from the German and Austro-Hungarian armies for nearly three months now. Continuously losing huge areas of land and hundreds of thousands of men on the Eastern Front. As a consequence, millions of civilians had to flee their homes. At the same time allied troops at Gallipoli are weakened by infections and disease due to lack of hygiene and heat while Italy repeatedly failed to take out Austrian strongpoints.
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July 17, 2015
The Tumbling Giant – Russia’s Army On The Verge Of Collapse I THE GREAT WAR Week 51
Published on 16 Jul 2015
The German-Austrian offensive on the Eastern Front had undone all of Russia’s territorial gains in the last weeks. Lemberg had fallen and the German troops were at the gates of Warsaw. The Russian casualties were in the millions, especially equipment and officers were becoming scarce. And exactly now, the German high command (OHL) prepared an all-out offensive along the entire frontline. At the same time in Gallipoli, one failure followed the other. How long would the Entente be able to continue this exercise in butchery?
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July 10, 2015
Adapt or Die – The Artillery Barrage I THE GREAT WAR – Week 50
Published on 9 Jul 2015
The Great Retreat of the Russians during the last weeks has shown one thing: Artillery is the key to success. More specifically, a new kind of artillery tactic called the artillery barrage which focuses shelling on one part of the front. August von Mackensen had actually stolen this approach from John French. The Entente tried to use it on the Western Front a few months earlier without the expected breakthrough.
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July 3, 2015
On the Move but going Nowhere – Optimism is Failing! l THE GREAT WAR Week 49
Published on 2 Jul 2015
Two months after landing in Gallipoli the fight has become a trench warfare. In Mesopotamia British troops were losing the optimism, they had felt just a few weeks ago. The change of seasons brought more heat, turning the weather from bearable to excruciating. Heat became a deadly foe. While the German crown prince Wilhelm unsuccessfully tried to break through the Western front in the Ardennes, the Austro-German force managed to drive back the Russians in the East.
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June 26, 2015
The Austro-Hungarian Empire Strikes Back I THE GREAT WAR Week 48
Published on 25 Jun 2015
Just a few weeks ago Austria-Hungary’s military laid in shambles. But with German support from August von Mackensen and other German generals, the tide is turning on the Eastern Front. Even Lemberg can be conquered again and the Russians are still on their Big Retreat.
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June 19, 2015
Cavalry, Spies and Cossacks I THE GREAT WAR Week 47
Published on 18 Jun 2015
The war seems like a romantic novel this week: In the East the Russians are saved by Cossack Cavalry while August von Mackensen’s artillery is plowing through Galicia. In the meantime, the British discover a German spy ring in London and the French gain a few miles in the west.
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June 15, 2015
The Key To Success Is Artillery I THE GREAT WAR Week 45
Apologies for presenting this one out of order, but last week was a bit disordered. The next Great War video will be week 47, probably on Friday.
Published on 4 Jun 2015
When Przemysl falls for the 2nd time and when the British and ANZAC troops fail at Gallipoli again, one thing becomes clear: Artillery is the key for future battles. August von Mackensen had used it with great success at the Gorlice-Tarnow-Offensive and the French even diverted one million men to shell factories. Meanwhile German Zeppelins bombed London and the US sent submarines for aid.
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June 12, 2015
Rex Warneford Destroys A Zeppelin – Austria Digs Into the Mountains I THE GREAT WAR – Week 46
Published on 11 Jun 2015
Reginald Warneford is important to Britain’s war effort. Not just because he shot down a German zeppelin, but because he is made a hero in times when heroes are needed. He receives a Victoria Cross soon after his victory because the commanders know about the average life span of pilots in World War 1. Meanwhile, the Austro-Hungarian army digs into the alpine rocks to fend of the Italian Attackers and Gallipoli continues to be a butchery without any progress.
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May 29, 2015
Frontline in the Alps – Italy Declares War I THE GREAT WAR Week 44
Published on 28 May 2015
After the defeats of Austria-Hungary against Russia, Italy is seeing her chance to grab disputed territories from them. Even though they are not prepared for a full scale war economically or militarily, the declare war against the Central Powers. So, just one month after the landing at Gallipoli, yet another front is opened in Europe. Meanwhile the Russians are still on the run from August von Mackensen and in Gallipoli the fighting stops to collect the dead.
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May 27, 2015
Russian deputy prime minister – “Tanks don’t need visas”
Your weekly dose of Cold War nostalgia this week comes by way of Dmitry Rogozin, the eminently quotable Russian deputy PM in charge of the Russian defence industry:
“I’ve always joked about it… so what if they won’t give us visas, put us on sanctions list … tanks don’t need visas,” he told an interviewer on Russian state television last Sunday, according to AFP.
Last year, the former ambassador to NATO and notorious Putin loyalist, was put on a sanctions list of both the U.S. Treasury Department and the European Union, which made Rogozin announce that the Russian defense industry has “many other ways of traveling the world besides tourist visas.”
Additionally, after Romania prevented the deputy prime minister’s plane from entering its airspace in 2014, he announced that “next time I will fly in a Tu-160″ — referencing Russia’s newest strategic bomber. That comment made the Romanian Foreign Ministry issue a statement calling Rogozin’s words “a serious threat.”
Back in 2013, after the commissioning of the first Borei-class SSBN (see: “Putin’s Red October: Russia’s Deadliest New Submarine”), the Russian Cabinet member tweeted: “You bourgeoisie tremble! You are screwed!”
The most recent diatribe comes in the wake of two-week long Western military maneuvers in the Arctic, codenamed “Arctic Challenge” and involving 115 fighter aircraft and 3,600 military personnel from nine countries.
[…]
In response to yesterday’s launch of “Arctic Challenge”, the Russian Defense Ministry announced a four-day long military exercise of its own, a “massive surprise inspection” involving 12,000 troops 250 aircraft and 689 units of “various weapons and military equipment” targeting an “imaginary enemy.” The snap maneuvers are taking place in the Ural mountains and Siberia – home to Russia’s central military district.
Dmitry Rogozin’s most recent comment on Russia’s ties with the West was published yesterday on his Twitter account: “It’s not Russia that threatens the West. Its foundations will crash down under the pressure of ISIS and gays.”
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May 16, 2015
Kazakhstan’s looming succession crisis
At The Diplomat, Catharine Putz wonders if there can be a Kazakhstan without President Nursultan Nazarbayev:
In a new report, the International Crisis Group says that Kazakhstan is facing a stress test – its only president since independence turns 75 this summer and Russia’s “actions in Ukraine cast a shadow over Kazakhstan.” To date, the report notes, Kazakhstan’s devotion to continuity has trumped needed democratic reforms. Nursultan Nazarbayev’s recent landslide reelection demonstrates his absolute centrality to political stability in the country and could prove to be “a serious vulnerability.”
The report encourages Kazakhstan to act soon – reconfirming its independence from Russia and lifting the veil on government operations in order to reassure citizens and foreign powers “that the state is not the work of one man or an exclusive ethnic project and that the transition to a post-Nazarbayev era will be smooth.” The report recommends that Kazakhstan continue to pursue a multi-vector foreign policy by engaging equally with Russia and the EU; take a “recognizable role” in pursuing a solution to the Ukraine crisis; give senior officials – other than Nazarbayev – some stage time; practice restraint in issues of language, ethnicity, and nationalism; and broaden economic development beyond Astana.
This is not the first time parallels have been drawn between Ukraine and Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan, like all of Central Asia, had a sizeable ethnic Russian population when the Soviet Union dissolved. That population has dwindled; in a country of 17 million a 2009 census determined that ethnic Russians accounted for 23 percent, ethnic Kazakhs more than 60 percent. This is a more modern development, as it wasn’t until the mid-1980s that the ethnic Kazakh population bypassed that of ethnic Russians in the region. Now, most ethnic Russians are concentrated along the northern border with Russia.
How do you say “Après moi, le déluge” in Kazakh?
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May 15, 2015
Artillery Crisis on the Western Front – The Fall of Windhoek I THE GREAT WAR Week 42
Published on 14 May 2015
The 2nd Battle of Ypres is still going but no side can gain a decisive advantage. The main reason on the British side is a lack of artillery ammunition. Even the delivered shells are not working correctly. But even the German supply lines are stretched thin. At the same time German South-West Africa falls to South African troops under Louis Botha.
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