Before 1939 the United States Army was small, but it was professional. Its tiny officers corps was parochial, but true. Its members devoted their time to the study of war, caring little what went on in the larger society around them. They were centurions, and the society around them not their concern.
When so ordered, they went to war. Spreading themselves thinner still, they commanded and trained the civilians who heeded the trumpet’s call. The civilians did the fighting, of course — but they did it the Army’s way.
In 1861 millions of volunteers donned blue or gray. Millions of words have been written on American valor, but few books dwell on the fact that of the sixty important battles, fifty-five were commanded on both sides by West Pointers, and on one side in the remaining five.
In 1917 four million men were mustered in. Few of them liked it, but again they did things the way the professionals wanted them done.
The volunteers came and went, and the Army changed not at all.
But since the Civil War, the Army had neither the esteem nor the favor of public or government. Liberal opinion, whether business-liberal or labor-liberal, dominated the United States after the destruction of the South, and the illiberal Army grew constantly more alienated from its own society.
In a truly liberal society, centurions have no place. For centurions, when they put on the soldier, do not retain the citizen. They are never citizens to begin with.
There was and is no danger of military domination of the nation. The Constitution gave Congress the power of life or death over the military, and they have always accepted the fact. The danger has been the other way around — the liberal society, in its heart, wants not only domination of the military, but acquiesence of the military toward the liberal view of life.
Domination and control society should have. The record of military rule, from the burnished and lazy Praetorians to the juntas of Latin America, to the attempted fiasco of the Légion Étrangére, are pages of history singularly foul in odor.
But acquiesence society may not have, if it wants an army worth a damn. By the very nature of its mission, the military must maintain a hard and illiberal view of life and the world. Society’s purpose is to live; the military’s is to stand ready, if need be, to die.
Soldiers are rarely fit to rule — but they must be fit to fight.
The military is in essence a tool, to be used by its society. If its society is good, it may hope to be used honorably, even if badly. If its society is criminal, it may be, like the Wehrmacht, unleashed upon a helpless world.
But when the Wehrmacht dashed against the world, it was brought to ruin, not by a throng of amateurs, but by well-motivated, well-generaled Allied troops, who had learned their military lessons.
T.R. Fehrenbach, This Kind of War: A Study in Unpreparedness, 1963.
September 14, 2019
QotD: America and its army
September 13, 2019
“Cliffs of Gallipoli” Part 1 – The Great War – Sabaton History 032 [Official]
Sabaton History
Published on 12 Sep 2019While the British were already dying by the thousands in the trenches in Western Europe, their high command decided to try to break the stalemate with an attack on the Ottoman Empire in the Dardanelles. This is the first episode on the Sabaton song “Cliffs of Gallipoli” about the Allied landings on the shores off Gallipoli.
Support Sabaton History on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/sabatonhistory
Listen to The Art of War (where “Cliffs of Gallipoli” is featured):
CD: http://bit.ly/TheArtOfWarStore
Spotify: http://bit.ly/TheArtOfWarSpotify
Apple Music: http://bit.ly/TheArtOfWarAppleMusic
iTunes: http://bit.ly/TheArtOfWariTunes
Amazon: http://bit.ly/TheArtOfWarAmz
Google Play: http://bit.ly/TheArtOfWarGooglePlayWatch the Official Lyric Video of “Cliffs of Gallipoli” here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOCe2…
Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Markus Linke and Indy Neidell
Directed by: Astrid Deinhard and Wieke Kapteijns
Produced by: Pär Sundström, Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Executive Producers: Pär Sundström, Joakim Broden, Tomas Sunmo, Indy Neidell, Astrid Deinhard, and Spartacus Olsson
Maps by: Eastory
Edited by: Iryna Dulka
Sound Editing by: Marek KaminskiEastory YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEly…
Archive by: Reuters/Screenocean https://www.screenocean.com
Music by Sabaton.Sources:
– IWM: Q 57165, Q 1309, Q 515124, Q 13550, Q 13411, Q 53319, Q 13297, Art. IWM ART 4279, Q 112876, IWM ART 2452
– Photos of Ottoman Cavalry courtesy of the National Library of Israel
– Archives New Zealand
– New Zealand troops landing at Gallipoli taken by Joseph McBrideAn OnLion Entertainment GmbH and Raging Beaver Publishing AB co-Production.
© Raging Beaver Publishing AB, 2019 – all rights reserved.
From the comments:
Sabaton History
2 days ago (edited)
Thats right, “Cliffs of Gallipoli” will be featured in not one but two Sabaton History episodes! The next episode will dive into a different but equally perspective of the battle.Joakim already mentions it in the call to action of this episode, but we’re making Sabaton History Special Editions of all the older Sabaton albums, just like we did with The Great War. Those who support us at a certain level on Patreon before the end of November will be rewarded with the Sabaton History Edition of the Sabaton album Heroes. Check out our Patreon page to find out more! -> https://www.patreon.com/sabatonhistory
Cheers!
Why You Wouldn’t Want to Fly The First Jet Airliner: De Havilland Comet Story
Mustard
Published on 1 Dec 2017Air travel before the Jet Age wasn’t always glamorous. The relentless noise and vibration from a piston powered propeller aircraft often made long flights even more exhausting. Most aircraft also couldn’t fly high enough to avoid bad weather, so air sickness was more common.
After World War Two, as part of an effort to develop its civil aviation industry, Britain stunned the world by unveiling the world’s first jet airliner. The de Havilland Comet was sleek, quiet, and flew higher and faster than any airliner of the day. As piston propeller technology was reaching its limits, the conventional thinking was that jet engines were too unreliable and produced too little power relative to their fuel consumption. But the de Havilland Comet proved that jet travel was the future. When the Comet entered service in 1952, it immediately began breaking travel time records and became a point of national pride for Britain.
The de Havilland Comet was perhaps little too ahead of its time. With such a clean sheet design, there were still lessons to learn. When early Comets suffered from catastrophic depressurization incidents, the entire fleet was grounded and their Certificate of Airworthiness was revoked. Flaws in the design of the aircraft’s fuselage were resolved in later Comet versions. However, the rest of the world was now catching up, and manufacturers including Boeing and Douglas began to offer their own jet airliners. While later version Comets served airlines reliably, they were outsold by competing aircraft. There’s no question However, that the comet paved the way. The British had taken a massive risk and brought the world into the jet age. #DeHavilland #CometAirliner #Airplane
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QotD: Orwell’s campaign against the jackboot
Orwell’s press card portrait, 1943
In spite of my campaign against the jackboot — in which I am not operating single-handed — I notice that jackboots are as common as ever in the columns of the newspapers. Even in the leading articles in the Evening Standard, I have come upon several of them lately. But I am still without any clear information as to what a jackboot is. It is a kind of boot that you put on when you want to behave tyrannically: that is as much as anyone seems to know.
Others besides myself have noted that war, when it gets into the leading articles, is apt to be waged with remarkably old-fashioned weapons. Planes and tanks do make occasional appearances, but as soon as an heroic attitude has to be struck, the only armaments mentioned are the sword (“We shall not sheathe the sword until”, etc., etc.), the spear, the shield, the buckler, the trident, the chariot and the clarion. All of these are hopelessly out of date (the chariot, for instance, has not been in effective use since about A.D. 50), and even the purpose of some of them has been forgotten. What is a buckler, for instance? One school of thought holds that it is a small round shield, but another school believes it to be a kind of belt. A clarion, I believe, is a trumpet, but most people imagine that a “clarion call” merely means a loud noise. One of the early Mass Observation reports, dealing with the coronation of George VI, pointed out that what are called “national occasions” always seem to cause a lapse into archaic language. The “ship of state”, for instance, when it makes one of its official appearances, has a prow and a helm instead of having a bow and a wheel, like modern ships. So far as it is applied to war, the motive for using this kind of language is probably a desire for euphemism. “We will not sheathe the sword” sounds a lot more gentlemanly than “We will keep on dropping block-busters”, though in effect it means the same.
One argument for Basic English is that by existing side by side with Standard English it can act as a sort of corrective to the oratory of statesmen and publicists. High-sounding phrases, when translated into Basic, are often deflated in a surprising way. For example, I presented to a Basic expert the sentence, “He little knew the fate that lay in store for him” — to be told that in Basic this would become “He was far from certain what was going to happen”. It sounds decidedly less impressive, but it means the same. In Basic, I am told, you cannot make a meaningless statement without its being apparent that it is meaningless — which is quite enough to explain why so many schoolmasters, editors, politicians and literary critics object to it.
George Orwell, “As I Please” Tribune, 1944-08-04.
September 12, 2019
Book Review: The Ross Rifle Story
Forgotten Weapons
Published on 8 Sep 2019http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
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The Ross Rifle Story is the Bible of Ross rifle collecting — it is the only substantial reference work on the subject and it has a tremendous amount of information about the development of the Ross. However, it is also one of the worst-edited firearms reference books I am aware of. It has a second Table of Contents on page 85 — need I say more than that?
Well, I will. The photographs are black and white and often too dark or too light. Beyond it really being two separate manuscripts printed back to back, the organization is really lacking. Finding information in the book is sometimes very difficult, as the subject matter jumps around a lot. The story of the Ross — especially separating the civilian and military development — is a pretty complicated one, and even a well-edited book on the subject might be a bit difficult to parse. This book is really bad at times.
But for all that, it does have the information (with only a few errors), and it’s the only book that does. If you are interested in the Ross, this is a must-have book despite its problems.
A second printing was run in 2002, and not much effort was put into marketing it. Despite the online prices all being $300+, the seller still has a couple dozen copies remaining as of this writing. To order one (for $100 plus shipping, via PayPal) email him at ross.rifle.story@sympatico.ca .
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Maclean’s invades The Onion‘s pitch
Barbara Kay on a recent Maclean’s article that may indicate a change of editorial direction for the venerable Canadian magazine:
I never thought of Maclean’s as a satirical magazine, but perhaps they are testing the waters on a rebranding. I cannot otherwise account for the bizarre article just published under their aegis by Scott Gilmore, “Thank God I could Enjoy the Age of Mediocre White Men While It Lasted.” This self-flagellatory apologia for being a successful white male reads like a parody of our cultural moment.
I laughed when I read it, and checked the URL to make sure I hadn’t stumbled on a piece from The Onion by mistake, but no, it was indeed a Maclean’s piece. Sadly, I am all too aware that in these fanatically anti-white male times, a lot of identity-politics activists — including white men who pee sitting down to prove their wokeness — will not only take it seriously, they will applaud him.
Gilmore’s thesis is this in a nutshell: simply being white and male gives you such an advantage in life that for all of human history, other people, so dazzled by male whiteness that they are rendered oblivious both to white-male mediocrity and their own inherent superiority, willingly hand things over to you, things like their bodies, their possessions and their national sovereignty, and of course all the good careers. Your skin colour and sex are your ticket to ride. That state of affairs is now ending, Gilmore says, and this piece is effectively Gilmore’s thank-you note to history for allowing him to have benefited from this remarkable deal, and as well an expression of gratitude that white males are now headed to the dustbin of history, where they belong.
The first problem with the article is that Gilmore never defines “mediocre.” One dictionary definition is “of only moderate quality; not very good.” Let’s go with that. Let’s assume he means white men are dumber, lazier and of lesser character than all women and all non-white men. And yet, “being a white male has been the bee’s knees for about 2,000 years. We have been giving all the orders, taking all the credit, and pocketing all the money since Caesar told Cleopatra to pipe down. We wrote the history books and we built the empires (well, other people did the actual building, but we oversaw a lot of it from our sedan chairs). We drafted all the laws, and made sure to always stack the cards in our favour. And, for a truly impressive long time, we were able to keep all the fun to ourselves.”
September 11, 2019
Samson and Delilah – Old Testament Mythology – Extra Mythology – #1
Extra Credits
Published on 9 Sep 2019Join the Patreon community! http://bit.ly/EMPatreon
It was a time of trial for the tribes of Israel. They were no nation, but a loose confederation bound together by their divine covenants — which they had just broken. Amid this political and social chaos, a child was born, instructed by God to keep the Nazirite oath — stay away from alcohol, don’t eat unclean food, and don’t shave — and he would become a man of incredible strength.
Samson was on a mission from God to never drink alcohol, to not eat honey found in a lion’s carcass, and to not cut his hair ever. FORESHADOWING!
September 9, 2019
The Inca Empire – Life of a Dead Emperor – Extra History – #3
Extra Credits
Published on 7 Sep 2019Join us on Patreon! http://bit.ly/EHPatreon
To understand daily life in the Inca Empire, we travel from Cusco to Quito (located in modern-day Ecuador), where Thupa Inca wanted to establish a second capital city. From efficiently designed work assignments, to elaborate death rituals, life was neatly organized, masking rising tensions.
QotD: War
Pushbotton war has its place. There is another kind of conflict — crusade, jihad, holy war, call it what you choose. It has been loosed before, with attendant horror but indecisive results. In the past, there were never means enough to exterminate all the unholy, whether Christian, Moslem, Protestant, Papist, or Communist. If jihad is preached again, undoubtedly the modern age will do much better.
Americans, denying from moral grounds that war can ever be a part of politics, inevitably tend to think in terms of holy war — against militarism, against fascism, against bolshevism. In the postwar age, uneasy, disliking and fearing the unholiness of Communism, they have prepared for jihad. If their leaders blow the trumpet, or if their homeland is attacked, their millions are agreed to be better dead than Red.
Any kind of war short of jihad was, is, and will be unpopular with the people. Because such wars are fought with legions, and Americans, even when they are proud of them, do not like their legions. They do not like to serve in them, nor even to allow them to be what they must.
For legions have no ideological or spiritual home in the liberal society. The liberal society has no use or need for legions — as its prophets have long proclaimed.
Except that in this world are tigers.
T.R. Fehrenbach, This Kind of War: A Study in Unpreparedness, 1963.
September 8, 2019
Burn London, Burn it’s the Blitz – WW2 – 054 – September 07 1940
World War Two
Published on 7 Sep 2019This week, the battle in the skies of Britain enters a new, even deadlier phase, as the crowded streets of London turn into a war zone. It is the start of the Blitz.
Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at: https://timeghost.tvFollow WW2 day by day on Instagram @World_war_two_realtime https://www.instagram.com/world_war_t…
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Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sourcesWritten 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: EastoryColorisations 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: SP 2553, FL 5186, H 23836, HU 93069, CH 19
– Colorization of Hugo Sperrle by Ruffneck88
– Narodowe Archiwum CyfroweA TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
Miscellaneous Myths: Animal Brides
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published on 6 Sep 2019Yes, it really is as weird as it sounds. Sorry!
This video (specifically the Inuit myth) was requested by patron Richard Frederick Schubert III!
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How Did War Become a Game?
Invicta
Published on 28 Jun 2019Get your first audiobook and two Audible originals when you try Audible for 30 days. Visit https://www.audible.com/Invicta or text “Invicta” to 500 500!
In this video we continue to take a look at the history of Kriegsspiel and explore the early days of wargaming that eventually gave rise to modern table top games such as Warhammer and Dungeons & Dragons.
Research: Jon Peterson
Script: Invicta
Narration: Invicta
Artwork: Gabriel Cassata
Editing: InvictaBibliography
Playing at the World by Jon Peterson
Debugging Game History: A Critical Lexicon by Henry Lowood
War Games: A History of War on Paper by Philipp von Hilgers
Pluie de Balles – Complex Wargames In the Classroom by Jorit Wintjes and, Steffen Pielstrom
QotD: The Amritsar massacre and the partition of India
A comparison is in order. At the famous Amritsar massacre of 1919, shot in elaborate and loving detail in the present movie and treated by post-independence Indian historians as if it were Auschwitz, Gurkha troops under the command of a British officer, General Dyer, fired into an unarmed crowd of Indians defying a ban and demonstrating for Indian independence. The crowd contained women and children; 379 persons died; it was all quite horrible. Dyer was court-martialed and cashiered, but the incident lay heavily on British consciences for the next three decades, producing a severe inhibiting effect. Never again would the British empire commit another Amritsar, anywhere.
As soon as the oppressive British were gone, however, the Indians — gentle, tolerant people that they are — gave themselves over to an orgy of bloodletting. Trained troops did not pick off targets at a distance with Enfield rifles. Blood-crazed Hindus, or Muslims, ran through the streets with knives, beheading babies, stabbing women, old people. Interestingly, our movie shows none of this on camera (the oldest way of stacking the deck in Hollywood). All we see is the aged Gandhi, grieving, and of course fasting, at these terrible reports of riots. And, naturally, the film doesn’t whisper a clue as to the total number of dead, which might spoil the mood somehow. The fact is that we will never know how many Indians were murdered by other Indians during the country’s Independence Massacres, but almost all serious studies place the figure over a million, and some, such as Payne’s sources, go to 4 million. So, for those who like round numbers, the British killed some 400 seditious colonials at Amritsar and the name Amritsar lives in infamy, while Indians may have killed some 4 million of their own countrymen for no other reason than that they were of a different religious faith and people think their great leader would make an inspirational subject for a movie. Ahimsa, as can be seen, then, had an absolutely tremendous moral effect when used against Britain, but not only would it not have worked against Nazi Germany (the most obvious reproach, and of course quite true), but, the crowning irony, it had virtually no effect whatever when Gandhi tried to bring it into play against violent Indians.
Despite this at best patchy record, the film-makers have gone to great lengths to imply that this same principle of ahimsa — presented in the movie as the purest form of pacifism — is universally effective, yesterday, today, here, there, everywhere. We hear no talk from Gandhi of war sometimes being a “necessary evil,” but only him announcing — and more than once — “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” In a scene very near the end of the movie, we hear Gandhi say, as if after deep reflection: “Tyrants and murderers can seem invincible at the time, but in the end they always fall. Think of it. Always.” During the last scene of the movie, following the assassination, Margaret Bourke-White is keening over the death of the Great Soul with an English admiral’s daughter named Madeleine Slade, in whose bowel movements Gandhi took the deepest interest (see their correspondence), and Miss Slade remarks incredulously that Gandhi felt that he had failed. They are then both incredulous for a moment, after which Miss Slade observes mournfully, “When we most needed it [presumably meaning during World War II], he offered the world a way out of madness. But the world didn’t see it.” Then we hear once again the assassin’s shots, Gandhi’s “Oh, God,” and last, in case we missed them the first time, Gandhi’s words (over the shimmering waters of the Ganges?): “Tyrants and murderers can seem invincible at the time, but in the end they always fall. Think of it. Always.” This is the end of the picture.
Richard Grenier, “The Gandhi Nobody Knows”, Commentary, 1983-03-01.
September 7, 2019
“A Lifetime of War” – Thirty Years War – Sabaton History 031 [Official]
Sabaton History
Published on 5 Sep 2019The Sabaton song “A Lifetime of War” is about the Thirty Years War, which influenced many lives of Northern European soldiers, mercenaries, farmers and city-dwellers.
Support Sabaton History on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/sabatonhistory
Listen to Carolus Rex (“Lifetime of War” is featured):
CD: http://bit.ly/CarolusRexStore
Spotify: http://bit.ly/CarolusRexSpotify
Apple Music: http://bit.ly/CarolusRexAppleMusic
iTunes: http://bit.ly/CarolusRexiTunes
Amazon: http://bit.ly/CarolusRexAmz
Google Play: http://bit.ly/CarolusRexGooglePlayWatch the official music video for Lifetime of War right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvdbD…
Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Markus Linke and Indy Neidell
Directed by: Astrid Deinhard and Wieke Kapteijns
Produced by: Pär Sundström, Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Executive Producers: Pär Sundström, Joakim Broden, Tomas Sunmo, Indy Neidell, Astrid Deinhard, and Spartacus Olsson
Maps by: Eastory
Edited by: Iryna Dulka
Sound Editing by: Iryna Dulka and Marek KaminskiEastory YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEly…
Archive by: Reuters/Screenocean https://www.screenocean.com
Music by Sabaton.Sources:
– Folger Shakespeare Library
– Map of Hanseatic League: H.F. Helmolt, History of the World, Volume VII, Dodd Mead 1902
– Fondo Antiguo de la Biblioteca de la Universidad de SevillaAn OnLion Entertainment GmbH and Raging Beaver Publishing AB co-Production.
© Raging Beaver Publishing AB, 2019 – all rights reserved.
C2A1: Canada’s Squad Automatic FAL
Forgotten Weapons
Published on 6 Sep 2019http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
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Canada was the first country to formally adopt the FN FAL as its standard service rifle, and in 1958 it added the C2 light machine gun version of the FAL to its arsenal. The C2, later updated to C2A1, was a heavy-barreled version of the regular FAL rifle. It shared all the same basic action components, but with a dual-use bipod/handguard, a rear sight calibrated out to 1000 meters, and 30-round magazines as standard. The gun was mechanically fine, but not a great light support weapon, as its rifle lineage sacrificed handling and sustained fire capability. Only about 2700 were produced, and it was ultimately replaced by the C9 (FN Minimi) in the 1980s.
Many thanks to Movie Armaments Group in Toronto for the opportunity to showcase their AR-10 rifles for you! Check them out on Instagram to see many of the guns in their extensive collection:
https://instagram.com/moviearmamentsg…
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Forgotten Weapons
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