Quotulatiousness

May 2, 2019

The French Char B Tank – WORLD WAR TWO Special

Filed under: France, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published on 30 Apr 2019

After the Great War was over, the French reconsidered their army’s function and the role that tanks would play in future warfare. On the brink of World War Two, the Char B tank is deeply embedded in the structure of the French armoured defences. David Willey from the Tank Museum in Bovington (UK) tells how French politics influenced how the Char B will be used if the Germans attack. To learn more about the technical details of the Char B, check out the Tank Chat that David Fletcher from the Tank Museum has done about the Char B-1 Bis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz8L1…

Check out the Tank Museum YouTube Channel right here: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheTankM…

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Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sources

Written and Hosted by: David Willey and Indy Neidell
Produced and Directed by: Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: David Willey
Edited by: Wieke Kapteijns

Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

From the comments:

World War Two
44 minutes ago (edited)
David Willey from the Tank Museum in Bovington (UK) explains brilliantly what impact French politics in the 1920s and 1930s had on the development and use of French tanks leading up to World War Two. On their own channel, the Tank Museums own David Flecher dives into the technical ins and outs of the Char B-1 tank. You can find that right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz8L1FU74Rs Make sure to subscribe to their YouTube channel too, as it perfectly compliments the content that we show here. Cheers!

QotD: The Global Pottersville

Filed under: France, History, Media, Military, Quotations, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Director Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, set during the Depression, was a divine counterfactual thought experiment designed to remind a suicidal George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) that his hometown, Bedford Falls, would have turned out to be a pretty miserable place called Pottersville without his seemingly ordinary presence.

Consider the Obama administration’s first six years as a prolonged counterfactual take on what the world might have been like for the last 70 years without a traditionally engaged American president dedicating our country to preserving the postwar Western-inspired global order.

The what-if dream seems to be working to show the vast alterations in a world that Westerners once took for granted. France, a perennial critic of America, is suddenly an unlikely international activist. For seven decades, the French harped about American hyperpuissance – on the implied assurance that such triangulating would be ignored by an easily caricatured, aw-shucks American George Bailey trying his best to keep things in the global community from falling apart.

But now the Johnny-on-the-spot American everyman is gone, and lots of things have filled the vacuum. An overwhelmed France nevertheless intervened in Mali to staunch Islamic extremism. It bombed Libya, and then discovered that the United States’ new policy of “lead from behind” meant that America was no more likely to clean up the ensuing post-Qaddafi mess than was France — especially given that the new Mogadishu-on-the-Mediterranean was not far from Marseilles, but an Atlantic Ocean away from New York and Washington.

[…]

The aim of Capra’s fable was to remind us that the easily ridiculed, so-so status quo often hides Herculean efforts by those whom we take for granted, and who, working in the shadows, guarantee civilization instead of chaos. In the movie, the guardian angel Clarence can make the dream go away and cure George Bailey of his suicidal melancholy, as normalcy returns with the old Bedford Falls. In our version, we will learn soon after November 2016 whether we awake from the temporary alternative universe of a new Pottersville or whether it proves to be a depressing and continuing reality.

Victor Davis Hanson, “The Global Pottersville”, National Review, 2015-06-02.

May 1, 2019

Bavarian Soviet Republic – 1919 Economy and Reconstruction I BEYOND THE GREAT WAR

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

The Great War
Published on 30 Apr 2019

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Jesse Alexander takes a look at the short lived but historically important Bavarian Soviet Republic that existed for 3 weeks in April 1919. He also takes a look at the post armistice economy and reconstruction in the west.

» SOURCES
Deperchin, Annie. “Des destructions aux reconstructions,” in Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Jean-Jacques Becker, eds. Encyclopédie de la Grande guerre 1914-1918 (Paris : Bayard, 2013): 1063-1074.

Gerwarth, Robert. The Vanquished. Why the First World War Failed to End, 1917-1923 (Penguin, 2017).

Jones, Mark. Am Anfang war Gewalt. Die Deutsche Revolution 1918/19 und der Beginn der Weimarer Republik (Berlin: Propyläen, 2017). English edition: Founding Weimar. Violence and the German Revolution of 1918-19 (Cambridge University Press, 2016).

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»CREDITS
Presented by: Jesse Alexander
Written by: Jesse Alexander
Director: Toni Steller & Florian Wittig
Director of Photography: Toni Steller
Sound: Toni Steller
Editing: Toni Steller
Mixing, Mastering & Sound Design: http://above-zero.com
Motion Design: Christian Graef – GRAEFX
Maps: Daniel Kogosov (https://www.patreon.com/Zalezsky)
Research by: Jesse Alexander
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A Mediakraft Networks Original Channel Contains licensed material by getty images

All rights reserved – Real Time History GmbH 2019

From the comments:

The Great War
28 minutes ago
As a small production announcement: This was the last episode in the classical format where we answer questions directly. From May onward, every video we publish every other week will have one main topic: an important event from exactly 100 years ago. This will make it much easier to follow the channel and it will be more in line with our mission statement to cover the war in real time 100 years later. Of course, you can still ask questions. We will answer some of the directly in our Patreon podcast and we will use them as inspiration for our episodes. As an example: A lot of fans asked if we will cover the American “Polar Bear Expedition” and so that will be exactly what we will cover in our episode in late May. On top of that, we will do a small “time jump” and starting with our episode in June we will have a synchronized timeline again meaning: The episodes coming out in June 2019 will cover June 1919 and so forth.

Mythology Matters #4 – Persian Myths – Extra Mythology

Filed under: History, Middle East — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Extra Credits
Published on 29 Apr 2019

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In this episode, Extra Credits goes to King’s Landing — er, so we can talk about the things we couldn’t fit in to our Persian myths episodes, *obviously.*

Myths offer us a fascinating look into the things that a culture historically valued, even though as modern viewers we may have a hard time relating to them.

The Wine Lover Meltdown that Changed the Wine World Forever

Filed under: France, History, Media, USA, Wine — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Today I Found Out
Published on 26 Mar 2019

Check out my other channel TopTenz! https://www.youtube.com/user/toptenznet

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Never run out of things to say at the water cooler with TodayIFoundOut! Brand new videos 7 days a week!

More from TodayIFoundOut:

Why Does the Yolk of an Overcooked Hard Boiled Egg Turn Green
https://youtu.be/ytqpeHcFT3Y

What’s the Difference Between Brown Eggs and White Eggs?
https://youtu.be/je44qy-_MHY

In this video:

Outside of wine snobs, I think we can all agree that wine snobs are just the worst. This is not because virtually every study ever conducted into the field of wine tasting as a whole has concluded that it’s ridiculously easy to convince even the top sommeliers that $5 boxed white wine is the finest red wine ever bottled. Nor is it because wines they would happily sacrifice their first born to have a glass of and would have otherwise raved about, when told the glass contains a variety of some cheap wine they are to identify, are more than likely to claim it tastes akin to horse piss.

Want the text version? http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.p…

QotD: Standardized measurements, feudalism, and revolution

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

The pint in eighteenth-century Paris was equivalent to 0.93 liters, whereas in Seine-en-Montane it was 1.99 liters and in Precy-sous-Thil, an astounding 3.33 liters. The aune, a measure of length used for cloth, varied depending on the material (the unit for silk, for instance, was smaller than that for linen) and across France there were at least seventeen different aunes. […]

Virtually everywhere in early modern Europe were endless micropolitics about how baskets might be adjusted through wear, bulging, tricks of weaving, moisture, the thickness of the rim, and so on. In some areas the local standards for the bushel and other units of measurement were kept in metallic form and placed in the care of a trusted official or else literally carved into the stone of a church or the town hall. Nor did it end there. How the grain was to be poured (from shoulder height, which packed it somewhat, or from waist height?), how damp it could be, whether the container could be shaken down, and finally, if and how it was to be leveled off when full were subjects of long and bitter controversy. […]

Thus far, this account of local measurement practices risks giving the impression that, although local conceptions of distance, area, volume, and so on were different from and more varied than the unitary abstract standards a state might favor, they were nevertheless aiming at objective accuracy. This impression would be false. […]

A good part of the politics of measurement sprang from what a contemporary economist might call the “stickiness” of feudal rents. Noble and clerical claimants often found it difficult to increase feudal dues directly; the levels set for various charges were the result of long struggle, and even a small increase above the customary level was viewed as a threatening breach of tradition. Adjusting the measure, however, represented a roundabout way of achieving the same end.

The local lord might, for example, lend grain to peasants in smaller baskets and insist on repayment in larger baskets. He might surreptitiously or even boldly enlarge the size of the grain sacks accepted for milling (a monopoly of the domain lord) and reduce the size of the sacks used for measuring out flour; he might also collect feudal dues in larger baskets and pay wages in kind in smaller baskets. While the formal custom governing feudal dues and wages would thus remain intact (requiring, for example, the same number of sacks of wheat from the harvest of a given holding), the actual transaction might increasingly favor the lord. The results of such fiddling were far from trivial. Kula estimates that the size of the bushel (boisseau) used to collect the main feudal rent (taille) increased by one-third between 1674 and 1716 as part of what was called the reaction feodale. […]

This sense of victimization [over changing units of measure] was evident in the cahiers of grievances prepared for the meeting of the Estates General just before the Revolution. […] In an unprecedented revolutionary context where an entirely new political system was being created from first principles, it was surely no great matter to legislate uniform weights and measures. As the revolutionary decree read “The centuries old dream of the masses of only one just measure has come true! The Revolution has given the people the meter!”

James C. Scott, Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, 1998.

April 30, 2019

You Will Never Do Anything Remarkable

Filed under: Health, History, Humour, Space — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

exurb1a
Published on 28 Apr 2019

Illegitimi non carborundum, yo.

So.
The original line was, “If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.” As far as I can tell it’s Juan Ramón Jiménez’s.

I am also now painfully aware I’ve written a half as ‘2/1’. Sorry maths.

Please note that this wasn’t intended to be a diatribe against critics or experts. They obviously play an important role. It was more directed at the recreational cynicism one comes across in daily life from time to time, generally pointed at young artists. I have had the privilege to meet plenty of people 1000x more talented than me, who are simultaneously doubting their abilities because of some stupid comment made by an unpleasant teacher or jaded family member.

If you are that artist, I really just wanted to say: You’re in good company; the Greats doubted themselves too. Don’t let the bastards get you down and I hope you make all manner of interesting and fantastic things.

The music is the 3rd movement of Big Baus Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D Major: https://youtu.be/Ev45Knhdlp8

I like that piece lots. I hope you do too.

Again, all the very best of luck in your projects.

Japan’s monarchy

Filed under: History, Japan, Religion, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Colby Cosh looks at the astonishingly successful Japanese monarchy over the last few centuries of change:

Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko at the Tokyo Imperial Palace in Chiyoda Ward, Tōkyō Metropolis on April 24, 2014.
US State Department photo by William Ng, via Wikimedia Commons.

Most everybody knows how the office of the Japanese Emperor became “ceremonial” for the better part of 700 years, and how the archipelago was governed in isolation by what we call the shogunate. The first Westerners who established diplomatic relations with Japan in the 19th century did not think of the Emperor as analogous to Queen Victoria at all. For years they thought of the Mikado as primarily a religious functionary, a sort of pope performing funny, tedious rites in seclusion. (As anyone who has been watching Japanese news in the run-up to Golden Week knows, there is some truth to this.)

Even as reality dawned on those foreign barbarians, their presence in Japan led to social breakdown, civil war, and a sharp, sudden revival of the power of their monarchy — the Meiji Restoration. This is still an awe-inspiring event. Japan was confronted by a little-known and hated outer realm, and was able to adapt with inexplicable confidence. It did not descend into psychic and economic malaise, but almost immediately began to compete with obtrusive Western “powers.” After centuries in abeyance, their constitution somehow allowed them to conjure a enlightened despot of enormous ability, the Meiji Emperor, at the precise moment one was required.

This led in time to the war in the Pacific — and to a second miracle of the same kind. If matters had been left up to American public opinion in 1945, or to the allies of the United States, or even to the American executive branch, the Japanese monarchy would have been abolished and the Emperor given a humiliating trial and death. Such a procedure could have easily been justified then, and can be justified in retrospect now. U.S. foreign policy almost always, in practice, seems to follow the country’s republican instincts.

But while Japan was defeated, it had not been invaded. So Gen. Douglas MacArthur and a few foreign-policy brainiacs reached a magnificent, cynical modus vivendi: they would exploit and reshape the Japanese monarchy rather than smashing it. As a soldier, MacArthur, made Supreme Commander of occupied Japan, would have shot the Emperor with his own sidearm and never lost a minute’s sleep. But he and others somehow managed to overcome racial and political prejudices, and perform an act of American “nation-building” that was not a cruel joke.

The Neurology of Hate – WW2 – WaH SPECIAL EPISODE

Filed under: Europe, Germany, History, Science, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published on 27 Apr 2019

In this special episode of War Against Humanity, we take a look at the underlying neurological functions that allow us to hate another group of people. Maybe it helps us to understand the ultimate question about WW2; how on earth could all of this happen?

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at: https://timeghost.tv

Written and Hosted by: Spartacus Olsson
Produced and Directed by: Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Spartacus Olsson
Edited by: Spartacus Olsson

Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

QotD: Successful “democracies” in history have usually been disguised oligarchies

Filed under: Europe, France, History, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Thus we get the “Revolutions” in America and France, where educated and newly politicised chattering classes try to find a simplistic solution to all the world’s problems. Their solution being to adopt a system which fits their preferred world order, and seems to give them an advantage that will allow them to force people into their way of thinking.

Humans being what they are, it didn’t work of course.

The American Revolution, supposedly about ‘equality for all’ – if you want to fall for idealistic propaganda – was actually a tax rebellion by Northern states (who also wanted to get rid of the English government’s treaties that kept them out of Indian land), and the Southern states (who wanted to block the English anti-slavery legislation from spreading to their nice comfy system). It was never really about equality, and all the exclusions of people from voting on the basis of colour, race, sex, religion, immigration status, etc., should have made it clear to anyone that what was being considered was really an Oligarchy. Similar in fact to the Ancient Greek and Roman slave-based societies, where some special and limited classes shared rights no one else had.

Actually all “successful” democracies in history have always been Oligarchies. The 1,000 year old “Sublime Republic of Venice” – on which large parts of the US constitution were based – for instance, being limited to a certain number of families that had the vote. Similarly the “Republics” of Ancient Greece or Rome, and modern Switzerland or Israel, being based on vote by military service – another way of ensuring the voters might put national interests above selfish ones.

The first few French republics (those squeezed in around the inevitable dictatorships and emperors that are the result of such systems) were also based on a limited franchise. In their case not a race or religion or sex one like the US, but a straight property qualification that saw a small percentage of both sexes as voters.

Unsurprisingly the Oligarchical Republics of the 18th and 19th centuries were some of the most internally violent (US Slavery, Civil War, Indian Wars, the Terror, multiple revolts and “communes”, Lynchings, Jim Crow laws, etc), and externally aggressive (Napoleonic Wars, Spanish–American Wars, “Interventions” in Central America, Occupations of Hawaii, Philippines, etc.) governments in history. Rivaling the Greek and Roman republics for their aggressive expansionism by land and sea, and certainly being no less effective than more traditional military (Russia and Germany) or trade (Britain and Netherlands) expansionist states.

(And here I would note that the one of the mitigating factors in the idea that German Nationalism was a problem in WWI, was that the populist Navy Leagues and Colonial Leagues of the newly enfranchised voting classes did in fact push Nationalism to dangerous extremes. The Kaiser was a dangerous loon, but he was a dangerous loon responding to the fervor of the dregs of the petit bourgeois who had been enfranchised in his nation, not a man with Napoleonic capabilities in his own right.)

Nigel Davies, “The Solution is… European Union/Multiculturalism/Communism… Name your poison!”, rethinking history, 2015-12-26.

April 29, 2019

Queen Nzinga – Rise of a Legend – Extra History – #1

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

Extra Credits
Published on 27 Apr 2019

Nzinga didn’t start out as a queen — but when she saw how incompetently her brother was running affairs in Ndongo (what would become Angola), she took advantage of his decision to send her to negotiate with the Portuguese — much to his grief later. Nzinga established herself against colonial forces and did not budge.

Queen Nzinga of the Ndongo and Matamba Kingdoms, a scion of the Mbundu people, will spend forty years standing between the Portuguese and their ambitions, using everything at her command — her cunning, her ruthless intellect, her military acumen, even the bodies of her people — whatever it takes to succeed.

Thanks again to Cassandra Khaw for guest-writing this mini-series!

Join us on Patreon! http://bit.ly/EHPatreon

System of a Nazi Terror – WW2 – WaH 002 – April 1940

Filed under: Europe, Germany, History, Russia, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published on 27 Apr 2019

In April 1940 in Poland, if you are on the list of Nazi or Soviet non-desirables, there three options: run for your life, be shipped off to a camp, or face the execution squad… if you happen to be Jewish it’s likely to be the fourth option: the Ghetto.

Neurology of Hate Special: https://youtu.be/yeZ3_OtDa7E

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Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at: https://timeghost.tv

Follow WW2 day by day on Instagram @World_war_two_realtime https://www.instagram.com/world_war_t…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sources

Written and Hosted by: Spartacus Olsson
Produced and Directed by: Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Spartacus Olsson
Edited by: Wieke Kapteijns

Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

From the comments:

World War Two
4 hours ago
Now… this is a tough episode. It’s also tough to illustrate with images. Many of the events we speak of were, for obvious reasons not documented at the time. As a result we have had to resort to using some imagery that is from later dates when similar events, or the aftereffects of these events were documented on film and photo. We have labeled these images as best we can when it is relevant. Last but not least… do please remember our rules, especially on an episode like this one. Respect the dead and never forget that the only way we can do them justice is to remember their loss and sacrifice.

April 28, 2019

Norway is Burning – WW2 – 035 – April 27 1940

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Germany, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published on 27 Apr 2019

The invasion and subsequent Battle of Norway has only just begun when the British decide to pull back. Poor planning and misfortune after misfortune harms the British campaign, which becomes very apparent this week while the fighting continues. Almost everywhere, except for in the far north, the Allied troops pull back under heavy German pressure.

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Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sources

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
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Research by: Indy Neidell
Edited by: Iryna Dulka
Map animations: Eastory

Colorisations by Norman Stewart and Julius Jääskeläinen https://www.facebook.com/JJcolorization/

Eastory’s channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEly…
Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com

Sources:
© IWM (HU 74922)
© IWM (HU 104678)
© IWM (A 22641)
© IWM (TR 209)
© IWM (N 97)
© IWM (A 1873)
© IWM (N 102)
© IWM (HU 104688)
© IWM (Q 88619)
© IWM (N 107)
© IWM (Q 92253)
© IWM (HU 91803)

National Army Museum (NAM), 1984-10-79-.

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

The Battle of Lützen – 1632 – The 30 Years War (in Swedish, with English sub-titles)

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

Gripen
Published on 3 Dec 2015

One of the bloodiest battles of the Thirty Years War. Sweden vs. the Holy Roman Empire. A mass grave has been found, with the victims from the battle. Are they Swedish/Finnish soldiers or German mercenaries?

(This Swedish documentary has English subtitles).

From the comments:

Blah b
2 years ago
This documentary is often painful to watch, the way inexperienced modern people with no sense of empathy project their values onto those times. They weren’t “defenseless men standing still”. Armies had learned the hard way that massed musket fire won battles. If everybody is looking for cover and looking out for themselves, you can never operate such rigid units.

So the individual soldier was harshly drilled to indeed stand still even with cannonballs tearing through his unit, or another unit standing 30-80 meters away. Because if individuals acted as individuals, the battle would be lost and the army would be destroyed.

But when that machine operated, it would win battles. The system invented by Maurice of the Netherlands ensured that if you were attacking a group of musketeers, every 20-25 seconds, they could deliver a crushing volley that can kill or injure 10-25% of a another unit, that means they only needed 2-3 salvos to achieve a local victory. Untrained units would literally never touch a musketeer, as his unit would’ve routed the attackers before they got within touching range.

Also there were no standing armies, there was no national identity as such. Mercenaries were totally acceptable. Mercenaries could become very loyal and reliable if paid on time [and] consistently, and would easily crush national armies that usually lacked the routine of professional soldiers. Loyalty and your identity was constructed differently. It would’ve been perfectly normal for me to utterly hate and maybe kill my neighbours if they were of a different religion. Otherwise, a Swedish protestant from far away was an ally with the right ideas. I wouldn’t have been able to understand him and everything would be alien about him, but I’d consider him a friend, and Catholics from the next village where I’d lived all my life would be enemies.

Unless the king comes around and says the Catholics are friends. Because the king is appointed by God who runs the world on a day to day [basis], and you obey without question. If the king says it’s so, that means God himself agrees and says it’s so, and you don’t question God. Loyalty until death is about the least you owed your king in those days.

People who can’t understand how such things worked historically, really should not be making documentaries…

QotD: Innovations in taxation

Filed under: Europe, France, Health, History, Quotations — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The door-and-window tax established in France [in the 18th century] is a striking case in point. Its originator must have reasoned that the number of windows and doors in a dwelling was proportional to the dwelling’s size. Thus a tax assessor need not enter the house or measure it, but merely count the doors and windows.

As a simple, workable formula, it was a brilliant stroke, but it was not without consequences. Peasant dwellings were subsequently designed or renovated with the formula in mind so as to have as few openings as possible. While the fiscal losses could be recouped by raising the tax per opening, the long-term effects on the health of the population lasted for more than a century.

James C. Scott, Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, 1998.

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