HardThrasher
Published 28 Feb 2024In which the USAAF and RAF finally start to Get Good at their jobs and tie up their respective campaigns for literally the first time.
00:00 – 04:01 – Introduction
04:06 – 08:12 – Forward Operating Base
08:15 – 11:30 – Changes in Command
11:32 – 16:16 – Doolittle’s Plan
16:20 – 22:25 – Big Week
22:34 – 29:32 – Aftermath
29:35 – 32:06 – Berlin
32:09 – 33:59 – Overlord
34:02 – Survivor’s Club
(more…)
June 4, 2025
Remarkable Victory – The Bomber War Episode 5 – Jan to June 1944
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QotD: Conquest empires
Empires can turn to becoming conquest empires on any scale only with the development of technologies that can overcome sheer numbers.
Specifically, metal.
Soft metals are not for conquest empire. Gold, silver, copper, tin, etc, may be used for plates or posts or jewellery or skin scrapers, but they are not war fighting metals. Even the lightest leather armour or layers of feather padding makes them practically valueless for war fighting. Metal only becomes an imperial material when it can be made hard enough for combat purposes.
The first such metal is Bronze, which is made by combining different metals in compounds. Copper compounded with enough tin (usually 5-10 percent) makes Bronze. Bronze can make armour and weapons and even axles and bearings. But copper (mined in mountains) and tin (usually from swamps) and the charcoal needed to melt them (from forests) combined in sufficient quantities for mass production (cities supported by taxed farmers), require extensive trade routes, and probably a stable currency of some sort. But once these elements can be combined, empires can give up on mere Security, and enter Conquest.
All the early Sumerian, Egyptian, Hittite, Persian, Greek, Roman, Indian and Chinese empires that we now scrawl across maps with lines to show how they conquered the territories of other empires are based on this simple concept. The Hittites with their Bronze, Egyptians with their chariots, and Romans with their Steel: being only different developments from the same basic “metal technology” roots.
Yet this is where motive becomes uncertain. All these empires got into conquest, but in many cases they did it either to continue their security (by pushing the dangerous boundaries ever further), or to protect the trade that made their system work. Conquest for the sake of conquest was certainly an element — particularly with rulers like Alexander the Great — but the original reason why Phillip of Macedon and his predecessors had developed the world’s most efficient fighting machine had more to do with constant threats from Persians and Greeks and other “barbarians” than with any desire to get into the conquest game itself. Sometimes things done for security lead to expanded boundaries for security, which then lead to expanding further for conquest. (Often because the system developed for paying those fighting for security requires conquest to pay them off … see Julius and many later Caesars!)
Nigel Davies, “Types of Empires: Security, Conquest, and Trade”, rethinking history, 2020-05-02.
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June 3, 2025
Exercise Tiger: The WW2 Cover-Up Before D Day
The History Chap
Published 23 May 2024Exercise Tiger 1944, was a large-scale dress rehearsal for the D-Day landings, off the Slapton Sands in England, that went horribly wrong. Over 700 US servicemen were killed, more than were killed on Utah beach on D-Day itself! With D-Day imminent, Allied Supreme Commander, General Dwight Eisenhower, ordered the disaster to be hushed up.
Following a friendly fire incident on Slapton Sands on the 27th April 1944, a convoy carrying US troops was attacked in the early hours of the 28th by German E-Boats. In what is called the Battle of Lyme Bay, two ships in the convoy were sunk resulting in the loss of over 700 US servicemen. Whilst rumours suggest that there were many casualties resulting from the friendly fire on Slapton Sands, the US Army has always remained tight-lipped. To this day, the mystery remains as to what extent the casualty figures were covered up.
In the 1980’s, a Sherman tank was raised from the seabed. It now stands at the end of Slapton Sands (near the village of Torcross) as a memorial to the young men who died 6 weeks before D-Day during Exercise Tiger.
Chapters
0:00 Intro
0:42 D-Day 1944
1:40 Slapton Sands
2:30 Civilian Evacuation
3:22 Military Build-up
4:58 Exercise Tiger
6:07 Live Fire Disaster
7:37 Convoy T-4
9:15 Spotted by Germans
10:03 E-boat attack
11:41 Battle of Lyme Bay
14:06 Casualty Figures
14:43 D-Day Compromised?
15:37 Cover-up?
17:00 D-Day Success
18:08 Exercise Tiger Remembered
(more…)
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QotD: Heinlein’s opinions on the right to bear arms
Between 1942 and 1966 Heinlein’s politics evolved from New Deal left-liberalism towards what after 1971 would come to be called libertarianism. But that way of putting it is actually misleading, because Heinlein did not merely approach libertarianism, he played a significant part in defining it. His 1966 novel The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress was formative of the movement, with the “rational anarchist” Bernardo de la Paz becoming a role model for later libertarians. By 1978, we have direct evidence (from an interview in Samuel Edward Konkin’s New Libertarian magazine, among other sources) that Heinlein self-identified as a libertarian and regretted his earlier statism.
But if Heinlein’s overall politics changed considerably and wandered down some odd byways during his lifetime, his uncompromising support of civilian firearms rights was a constant on display throughout his life. Brin observes that was already true in 1942, but attempts to attribute this position to John W. Campbell. Multiple lines of evidence refute this claim.
[…]
Heinlein, on the other hand, was a vocal and consistent advocate of civilian weapons ownership both during and after his association with Campbell. This is perhaps clearest in his 1949 novel Red Planet, written after their parting of the ways. In that novel, the bearing of personal weapons is explicitly connected to the assumption of adult responsibilities.
Red Planet is also interesting because, although we might consider the views of Heinlein’s characters an unreliable guide to Heinlein’s own, Heinlein’s letters about the novel reveal much more. His editor at Scribner attempted to delete the section of argument in which weapons-bearing is connected to adult responsibility; Heinlein rejected this, objecting that it eviscerated the book’s ethical core and making very clear that the views of the pro-gun mentor figures in the novel were his own.
Heinlein was to reiterate similar views not only in his later fiction but in the posthumous nonfiction collection Grumbles From The Grave – by which time they were no surprise to any Heinlein fan. And it would be difficult to overstate the influence they had on firearms-rights activists during the dark years between the Gun Control Act of 1968 and our vindication in the 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller ruling.
Heinlein’s gift to firearms-rights activism during that bleak four decades was to be able to draw on the principled case for civilian firearms going back to the framers of the U.S. Constitution and English Republican sources and restate it in language appealing to the brightest children of post-WWII America. But he did more than that, because in Red Planet and elsewhere firearms rights were presented as an inextricable part of a philosophical whole, with the personal firearm both as instrument and defining symbol of personal liberty and responsibility.
Eric S. Raymond, “Brin on Heinlein on guns is dead wrong”, Armed and Dangerous, 2011-07-18.
June 2, 2025
Fighting at Yenangyaung, 17-19 April 1942
Dr. Robert Lyman on the battle at Yenangyaung between 17-19 April 1942 early in the Burma campaign:
… the Yenangyaung battle is a fascinating one, with its own small degree of controversy, I decided to lay it out in this post. A mystery of the battle is the differing accounts of the Chinese attacks on the 19th April. In the British accounts (including Bill Slim’s in Defeat into Victory) the Chinese are blamed for failing to attack in the morning as they had promised, adding further jeopardy to the fate of the encircled 1st Burma Division. But was this true? The Japanese, Chinese and American accounts differ, so I thought I’d lay out the story to allow you, dear reader, to come to your own conclusion.
The fabulous map of Yenangyaung produced by the late Ian Lyall Grant.
The scrap at Yenangyaung was the final Corps-sized battle before the order to evacuate Burma Corps was given in early May. The Japanese had pushed out of Rangoon in mid-March, driving up the Irrawaddy on the left and against Toungoo on the right. Allied plans for the defence of Burma were inadequate, both Chinese (on the right) and Slim’s Burcorps (on the left) effectively fighting separate battles. Attempts by General Harold Alexander, the Army Commander, to control the battle and constrain the advancing Japanese ultimately came to naught. Alexander, Slim and Lieutenant General Joe Stilwell, nominally commanding the Chinese 5th Army, tried every trick in the tactical rule book to bring a halt to the relentless Japanese advance, and to destroy them in battle. After a month of fighting in which the Chinese were pushed out of Toungoo, the British lost control of Prome and an attempt to consolidate a defensive line across the country failed, the Japanese moved up the Irrawaddy in an attempt to turn the British flank, breaking in at the oilfield town of Yenangyaung on 17 April. At the time Slim’s Burma Corps was attempting to withdraw to the north from Allamyo. The Japanese infiltration into Yenangyaung cut the British in half. The 1st Burma Division was now cut off in Yenangyaung. The battle by the already weakened division (amounting to probably no more than 4,000 troops) into the Yenangyaung pocket over the period 17 and 19 April proved to be the severest trial yet faced by British troops in the short Burma campaign, the pressure applied by the Japanese exacerbated by the intense heat and the lack of water.
It was critical that Slim defeated this Japanese infiltration, rescue the 1st Burma Division from encirclement and retain the integrity of his Corps. If Yenangyaung were lost the Japanese would be free to sweep north to threaten Mandalay. It was crucial therefore that the divisional commander – Major General Bruce Scott – held on for as long as he could. But Slim had no reserve. The only hope of relief lay in assistance from the Chinese far to his right. He concluded that if he could engineer a attack into the pocket by the Chinese, across the Pin Chaung, combined with a breakout attack by 1st Burma Division, they might have a chance of escape. Nothing else looked likely to succeed.
When asked, Stilwell agreed to Alexander’s request for help to be provided to Slim, and gave him Lieutenant General Sun Lijen’s 38th Division – responsible for the defence of Mandalay – for the task. Chiang Kai-shek had given Sun responsibility for defending Mandalay. At midnight on 16 April Sun received an order from General Lo Cho-yin, “to dispatch his 113th Regiment to Kyaukpadaung, there to be commanded by the British General Slim …” Sun’s friend, Dr Ho Yungchi, recorded that by 3 a.m. he had arrived at Lo’s HQ at Pyawbe to discuss the order. Lo explained that the British were in serious trouble “in the oil town of Yenangyaung and had sent repeated requests for help”. By 6.30 a.m. it was agreed that Sun would personally take command of the 113th Regiment, while the two remaining regiments stayed to defend Mandalay. Sun and 1,121 men of 113th Regiment (commanded by Colonel Liu Fang-wu) arrived at Kyaukpadaung on the morning of 17 April.
Slim recalled: “The situation was not encouraging, and I was greatly relieved to hear that 113 Regiment of the Chinese 38th Division was just arriving at Kyaukpadaung. I dashed off in my jeep to meet their commander and give him his orders … this was the first time I had had Chinese troops under me … I got to like all, or almost all, my Chinese very much. They are a likeable people and as soldiers they have in a high degree the fighting man’s basic qualities – courage, endurance, cheerfulness, and an eye for country.”1
At Yenangyaung, Slim’s plan was for Sun’s 38th Division to attack from the north on the morning of 18th April while the 1st Burma Division, within the pocket, fought its way out. As Slim and Sun Lijen talked, discussing the details of the attack planned for the following morning Slim decided that he would place the Stuart tanks of the 7th Armoured Brigade directly under Sun’s command. It was only a move a man confident in the capabilities of his allies could make. Slim commented that “I was impressed by Sun and it was essential to gain his confidence. His division had no artillery or tanks of its own, and I was therefore arranging that all the artillery we had this side of the Pin Chaung and all available tanks should support his attack.” The commander of the British armoured brigade – Brigadier John Anstice – accepted this arrangement and according to Slim “he and Sun got on famously together”. What’s more, the soldiers worked well together too, Slim recording that the “gunners and tank crews, as is the way of British soldiers, soon got on good terms with their new comrades, and, in spite of language difficulties of an extreme kind, co-operation was, I was assured by both sides, not only close but mostly friendly.”2 Accordingly, at 6.15 a.m. on 18 April, Major Mark Rudkin of 2nd Royal Tank Regiment (2RTR) reported as instructed by Anstice to 38th Division HQ:
There was little activity except for the cooking of breakfast and it seemed most unlikely that the attack could start on time. I asked the British liaison officer with the Chinese what was happening and he informed me that as the Chinese realized that they would not be ready to attack at 0630 hours, they had put their watches back one hour, so that officially they were still attacking at 0630 though the time would in reality be 0730. They had, therefore, not lost “face” by being late.
The plan was that a troop of tanks would follow the leading troops of the leading Chinese battalion and give what support it could. Another troop was to follow the leading infantry battalion and assist the leading troop if required. The tanks would be almost entirely road bound owing to the going off the road.
At 0730 the assaulting Chinese moved forward off the ridge on a front of about four hundred yards, the leading troop keeping very close behind on the road. On foot near the tanks was a Chinese interpreter who carried out liaison between the tanks and infantry.
After advancing about half a mile the leading tank was hit by a Japanese 75-mm gun situated on the road just north of the Pin Chaung which was firing straight up 300 yards of road. The tank was disabled but there were no casualties.
The Chinese advance continued and by afternoon had almost reached the line of the ford on the Pin Chaung which was still held by the enemy. The Chinese had had heavy casualties, especially amongst officers, as it was the custom for Chinese officers to lead, whatever their rank. It was finally decided to hold positions about half a mile north of the crossing and continue the attack next day.3
With the first attack a failure, the Japanese retained their grip on both the ford and the village of Twingon. The situation for the surrounded remnants of the 1st Burma Division was desperate; the Japanese close to achieving a complete victory. Slim and Sun then worked through a plan for another attempt to be made the following morning, 19th April. This day also began badly, however. The Chinese attack was scheduled to begin at 7 a.m. British accounts subsequently recorded that a Chinese attack did not materialise at this time. Slim subsequently recorded in Defeat into Victory that the failure to attack must have been a function of the administrative difficulties faced by the Chinese. He wrote that with the Chinese “lack of signalling equipment, of means of evacuating wounded and of replenishing ammunition, and their paucity of trained junior leaders it was not surprising that to sort themselves out, reform, and start a fresh attack took time”.4 Slim was invariably impressed with what he saw of the Chinese soldier in action, but considered their support and command functions to be shockingly poor and a source of constant frustration to themselves, and to all who had occasion to operate with them.
Slim, and most other British published accounts, including the Indian and British Official Histories, record that the attack finally went in at 3 p.m., when Colonel Liu’s 113th Regiment successfully captured the ford and penetrated into Yenangyaung.5 “When the Chinese did attack they went in splendidly” wrote Slim in admiration. “They were thrilled at the tank and artillery support they were getting and showed real dash. They took Twingon, rescuing some two hundred of our prisoners and wounded. Next day, 20th April, the 38th Division attacked again and with tanks penetrated into Yenangyaung itself, repulsing a Japanese counter-attack. The fighting was severe and the Chinese acquitted themselves well, inflicting heavy losses, vouched for by our own officers.”
1. Slim, Defeat into Victory (1956), p. 63.
2. Ibid., p. 65.
3. Bryan Perrett, Tank Tracks to Rangoon: The Story of British Armour in Burma (London: Robert Hale, 1978)
4. Slim, op. cit., p. 70.
5. Bisheshwar Prasad (ed,) The Retreat from Burma 1941 – 42 (Calcutta, Combined Inter-Service Historical Section, 1954), p. 296.
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June 1, 2025
Panzers Attack! – Ten Days in Sedan
World War Two
Published 31 May 2025May 10, 1940. A new kind of warfare comes to the fore as a German Panzer Group rumbles through the Ardennes towards Sedan. Heinz Guderian has one goal in mind — Get to the Meuse! If he can manage that, then the Battle of France may be over before it even begins. Can the Allies hold back the armoured armada?
Chapters
01:05 German Forces
04:13 Blitzkrieg Theory, Applied
07:37 The Advance Begins
14:50 The Allied Plan
17:59 A Tight Schedule
20:57 Summary
21:16 Conclusion
(more…)
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Praga I: A Blow-Forward Bullpup Semi-Auto-Selectable Vickers Gun
Forgotten Weapons
Published 15 Jan 2025The Praga I was the first machine gun design from noted Czech arms designed Vaclav Holek. Three examples were made for Czech military testing in 1922, but they were not acceptable. Instead, this design served as the first stepping stone to the eventual development of the ZB-26, perhaps the best of the interwar light machine guns.
Mechanically, the Praga I is largely based on the Vickers/Maxim system except with a locking wedge instead of a toggle joint. It also uses a forward-moving gas trap sort of action instead of recoil operation like the Maxim/Vickers. The fire control mechanism is essentially a Vickers lock, just built into the receiver of the gun instead of in a moving bolt or lock. It is a truly fascinating system!
Many thanks to the VHU — the Czech Military History Institute — for giving me access to this fantastic prototype to film for you. The Army Museum Žižkov is a part of the Institute, and they have a three-story museum full of cool exhibits open to the public in Prague. If you have a chance to visit, it’s definitely worth the time! You can find all of their details (including their aviation and armor museums) here:
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QotD: Robert E. Howard was more accurate with Conan than the historians of his day
(I’m not the first to point this out. Credit goes to Greg Cochran, co-author of “The 10,000 Year Explosion”, on his blog West Hunter.)
How did this happen? Scholars, reacting against 19th century Romanticism (and especially the weird polyp of it that turned into Nazi racial theory) adopted a sort of meta-model of prehistoric civilizations in which they usually evolved peacefully in place, with large-scale migration and warfare being exceptional.
It was only the advent of paleogenetics that shattered this cozy image. We now know that the Cimmerians (the Yamnaya ancestors of modern Europeans) did in fact come storming off the steppes to kill every male in sight and take all the women as sex slaves. We can read the traces of this catastrophe in our chromosomes.
ESR, Twitter, 2025-02-10.
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May 31, 2025
Depending on how you read the tea leaves, are all the signed treaties now to be ignored?
In The Free Press Rupa Subramanya discusses King Charles’s land acknowledgement at the start of the Throne Speech earlier this week:
Mark Carney joins our visiting King in the traditional Making of the Small Talk.
Photo by Paul Wells from his Substack
Canadians have a fondness for land acknowledgments, [NR: while some of us think they’re merely virtue signalling on steriods which will end up causing more mischief in the long run] which have now become common at police press conferences, on Air Canada flights, at hockey games, and even at a Taylor Swift concert.
But nothing has caused more commotion than the spectacle of King Charles III opening the 45th legislative session of Parliament on May 27 with a land acknowledgment, when he declared from his throne: “I would like to acknowledge that we are gathered on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe people. This land acknowledgment is a recognition of shared history as a nation.”
People will point out that King Charles’s speech was written by Canadian prime minister Mark Carney’s government (true) and that as the monarch he was being respectful to Canadian traditions (fine). But there is something deeply funny about the literal King of England talking about the lands his predecessors brutally conquered centuries ago like they’re still up grabs.
Kicking off Parliament with a speech is a time-honored tradition, but it’s rare for the monarch to deliver it in person, and is normally delivered by the governor general, Canada’s official stand-in for the king. The reason the king was there was to push back against the idea that Canada is for sale.
“There is no better way to assert Canada’s sovereignty than by inviting the sovereign,” said Philippe Lagassé, a constitutional expert at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario. “Carney invited the king as part of his renewed emphasis on Canadian nationalism rooted in our institutions and history.” (Unlike the U.S., which broke from Britain in 1776, Canada remained a colony until 1867, when it became a constitutional monarchy with a British-style parliamentary system and the UK monarch as head of state.)
Lagassé added that Carney’s invite to Charles was also likely done to “leverage President Trump’s affection for the king in Canada’s favor.”
Trump may love the monarchy, but Canadians have traditionally been indifferent towards it. But that’s changing, thanks to Trump’s “51st state” rhetoric.
According to a recent poll, 66 percent of Canadians now believe the monarchy helps set the country apart from the United States, up from 54 percent in April 2023. In 2023, 67 percent thought the royal family should have no formal role in Canadian society; today, that number has dropped to 56 percent.
In his speech, King Charles didn’t mention Trump by name, but the subtext was hard to miss: “Canada faces another critical moment. Democracy, pluralism, the rule of law, self-determination, and freedom are values which Canadians hold dear, and ones which the government is determined to protect.”
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Social Hierarchy in the Early Roman Empire
seangabb
Published 31 Dec 2024The second lecture in the series – an exploration of social divisions within the Early Roman Empire. Contents include:
00:00:00 – Introduction
00:05:37 – The Roman Social Structure
00:09:02 – The Position of the Emperor
00:11:49 – Perception and Role of the Emperor
00:19:24 – Evolution of the Imperial Senate
00:22:19 – What Kind of Men became Senators?
00:25:34 – The Functions of Senators
00:27:41 – The Equestrian Order
00:30:56 – Local Government
00:35:49 – The Imperial Bureaucracy
00:37:16 – Narcissus, Pallas, Felix
00:42:12 – Ordinary People
00:43:06 – Roman Citizenship
00:45:15 – How to Become a Citizen?
00:47:21 – Justice According to Class
00:51:34 – How was Status Legally Determined?
00:59:44 – Patron and Client
(more…)
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May 30, 2025
Was Germany Really Starved Into Surrender in WW1?
The Great War
Published 10 Jan 2025From 1914 to 1919, Allied warships in the Atlantic and Mediterranean controlled maritime trade to and from the Central Powers – stopping shipments of weapons and raw materials, but also food, from reaching their enemies. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of German civilians died of hunger-related causes. Often, these deaths and even the outcome of the war are attributed to the naval blockade – but did the British really starve Germany into surrender in WW1?
(more…)
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QotD: “Have fun storming the castle!”
Clifford Rogers has already laid out a pretty lay-person accessible account of the medieval siege playbook (in Soldiers’ Lives Through History: The Middle Ages (2007), 111-143; the book is pricey, so consider your local library), so I won’t re-invent the wheel here but merely note some general features. Rogers distinguishes between hasty assaults using mostly ladders launched as soon as possible as a gamble with a small number of troops to try to avoid a long siege, and deliberate assaults made after considerable preparation, often using towers, sapping, moveable shelters designed to resist arrow fire and possibly even catapults. We’ve already discussed hasty assaults here, so let’s focus on deliberate assaults.
While sapping (tunneling under and collapsing fortifications) remained in use, apart from filling in ditches, the mole-and-ramp style assaults of the ancient world are far less common, precisely because most armies (due to the aforementioned fragmentation combined with the increasing importance in warfare of a fairly small mounted elite) lacked both the organizational capacity and the raw numbers to do them. The nature of these armies as retinues of retinues also made coordination between army elements difficult. The Siege of Antioch (1097-8) [during] the First Crusade is instructive; though the siege lasted nine months, the crusaders struggled to even effectively blockade the city until a shipment of siege materials (lumber, mostly) arrived in March of 1098 (five months after the beginning of the siege). Meanwhile, coordinating so that part of the army guarded the exits of the city (to prevent raids by the garrison) while the other part of the army foraged supplies had proved mostly too difficult, leading to bitter supply shortages among the crusaders. Even with materials delivered to them, the crusaders used them to build a pair of fortified towers blocking exits from the city, rather than the sort of elaborate sapping and ramps; the city was taken not by assault but by treachery – a very common outcome to a siege! – when Bohemond of Taranto bribed a guard within the city to let the crusaders sneak a small force in. All of this despite the fact that the crusader army was uncommonly large by medieval European standards, numbering perhaps 45,000.
Crucially, in both hasty and deliberate assaults, the emphasis for the small army toolkit tends to be on escalade (going over the walls) using ladders or moveable wooden towers, rather than the complex systems of earthworks favored by the “big army” siege system or breaching – a task which medieval (or ancient!) artillery was generally not capable of. The latter, of course, is a much more certain method of assault – give a Roman army a few months and almost any fortress could be taken with near certainty – but it was a much more demanding method in terms of the required labor and coordination. Thwarting escalade is mostly a question of the height of defenses (because a taller wall requires a taller ladder, tower or ramp) and good fields of fire for the defenders (particularly the ability to fire at attackers directly up against the wall, since that’s where the ladders are likely to be).
The other major threat to castle walls (apart from the ever-present threat of sapping) was catapults, but I want to deal with those next time for reasons that I suspect will make sense then. For now it is worth simply noting that catapults, even the mighty trebuchets of the 14th century were generally used to degrade defenses (smashing towers, destroying crenellation, damaging gatehouses) rather than to produce breaches. They could in some cases do that, but only with tremendous effort and a lot of time (and sometimes not even then). Consequently, for most castles the greatest threat remained escalade, followed by treachery or starvation, followed by sapping, followed by artillery.
Bret Devereaux, “Collections: Fortification, Part III: Castling”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2021-12-10.
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May 29, 2025
The King of Canada
In the National Post, Colby Cosh tweaks the berries of the tiny number of dedicated Canadian republicans:
King Charles III and Queen Camilla, official portrait by Millie Pilkington.
The Post and other Canadian organs have been full of conscious praise for our unusual absentee monarchy lately, what with the King being in the capital to give the throne speech in person. But Canadian republicans must be hoping that our people will instinctively reject the spectacle, and at least see the genuine need for that blessing without which no sovereign state can hope to be taken seriously — a president.
There are rumblings about behind-the-scenes diplomatic tensions between Canada and the United Kingdom over the royal visit, rumblings which the Sunday Times (of London) put in print this weekend. The crux of the story is that Canada and the U.K. are not quite using the same playbook in dealing with the volatile and cutthroat Trump administration.
Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government is applying lots of soft-soap, using Trump’s fondness for the British monarchy and its highly ornamented nature as a means of getting special treatment in trade negotiations. Meanwhile, Canada and its government hope to use the presence in Canada of Canada’s King as a subtle way of asserting independence, determination and strength as we bear the economic blows of Trumpian whim.
And — wait for it — the crazy part is, THOSE TWO KINGS ARE THE SAME EXACT DUDE. WHAAAT?
To a republican, this seems like a mystery concocted to obfuscate a logical weakness in the system. No doubt they see it just the same way an atheist looks at the centuries of early Christian debate over the Holy Trinity. It’s not exactly as though the U.K. and Canada are at war, or as though there is any overt disharmony between the two states. But the monarchists have to concede at least this much: when mutually sovereign countries have a shared head of state, you do in fact end up with the exotic possibility that George XIV of Canada might one day, in theory, have to issue a declaration of war on George XIV of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. This is baked into the improvised post-Imperial ontology of our government and of Britain’s.
This is why Canadian monarchists are so fussy about the independent constitutional footing on which the Canadian Crown rests. We do this, implicitly insisting that our system of government was reinvented in 1931, while at the same time arguing that the advantages of monarchy include antiquity, historical continuity and the preservation of a special bond between Commonwealth realms. Perhaps we are sneaky imperialist (or racist) hypocrites. Perhaps we just feel that those advantages are legitimate and important, and that the Statute of Westminster is an optimum compromise that preserves them while guaranteeing our sovereign freedom of action in the interplay of governments.
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Q&A: The Falklands War of 1982
Forgotten Weapons
Published 3 Jan 2025Since I spent a couple weeks hiking across the Falklands and then visiting battlefields (and penguins), it seems reasonable to do a Q&A video about the place and the 1982 war there between Argentina and the UK. All the questions were provided by Forgotten Weapons Patrons.
01:38 – How did the FAL perform, seeing as both sides used it?
03:43 – Effectiveness of light and heavy weapons in the war
08:49 – Would the British have been better off Yomping with AR15s, like the SAS used?
10:09 – Is there much local animosity to Argentina today?
12:21 – Local food and adult beverages
15:31 – What do people do for fun on the Falklands?
17:52 – Oldest small arm in service during the war?
20:18 – Military equipment wreckage on the islands
22:06 – Value of full powered rifle round in the FI terrain?
24:31 – Minefields
25:44 – Interaction of weapons with different effective ranges
28:46 – Did Exocet spur development of CIWS?
31:00 – What has been done to defend the islands against another invasion?
33:51 – Issues with an army designed to fight the USSR in Europe deploying to the South Atlantic?
35:30 – Weirdest weapon used in the conflict?
36:29 – Field modifications of small arms and unique kit
38:20 – Were British vehicle at risk of damage there?
39:40 – Engagement ranges
40:23 – Relevancy of bayonet fighting
41:28 – Unique equipment used by the Falkland Islands Defense Force
43:27 – American view of the Falklands War today
44:41 – Which Yomp route did we take?
45:01 – Did we visit Ajax Bay or the cemetery?
46:00 – Reality vs my expectations of the islands
46:57 – How would the war go if it happened today instead of in 1982?
48:25 – Did British soldiers use Argentine FALs?
(more…)
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QotD: FDR and Herbert Hoover in the Great Depression
He had already met with congressional leaders and learned, as he had suspected, that they would not change their stance without Roosevelt’s support. Seized with the urgency of the moment, he continued to bombard his opponents with proposals for cooperation toward solutions, going so far as to suggest that Democratic nominees, not Republicans, be sent to Europe to engage in negotiations, all to no avail. Notwithstanding what editorialists called his “personal and moral responsibility” to engage with the outgoing administration, Roosevelt had instructed Democratic leaders in Congress not to let Hoover “tinker” with the debts. He had also let it be known that any solution to the problem would occur on his watch – “Roosevelt holds he and not Hoover will fix debt policy”, read the headlines. Thus ended what the New York Times called Hoover’s magnanimous proposal for “unity and constructive action”, not to mention his 12-year effort to convince America of its obligation and self-interest in fostering European political and financial stability …
During the debt discussions and to some extent as a result of them, the economy turned south again. Several other factors contributed. Investors were exchanging US dollars for gold as doubt spread about Roosevelt’s intentions to remain on the gold standard. Gold stocks in the Federal Reserve thus declined, threatening the stability of the financial sector … what’s more, the effectiveness of [Hoover’s bank support plan], which had succeeded in stabilizing the banking system, was severely compromised by [Democrats’] insistence on publicizing its loans, as the administration had warned. For these reasons, Hoover would forever blame Roosevelt and the Democratic Congress for spoiling his hard-earned recovery, an argument that has only recently gained currency among economists.
And:
Alarmed at these threats to recovery, Hoover pushed Democratic congressional leaders and the incoming administration for action. He wanted to cut federal spending, reorganize the executive branch to save money, reestablish the confidentiality of RFC loans, introduce bankruptcy legislation to protect foreclosures, grant new powers to the Federal Reserve, and pass new banking regulation, including measures to protect depositors … He was frustrated at every turn by Democratic leadership taking cues from the President-Elect … On February 5, Congress took the obstructionism a degree further by closing shop with 23 days left in its session.
In mid-February, there is another run on the banks, worse than all the other runs on the banks thus far. Hoover asks Congress to do something – Congress says they will only listen to President-Elect Roosevelt. Hoover writes a letter to Roosevelt begging him to give Congress permission to act, saying it is a national emergency and he has to act right now. Roosevelt refuses to respond to the letter for eleven days, by which time the banks have all failed.
Then, a month later, he stands up before the American people and says they have nothing to fear but fear itself – a line he stole from Hoover – and accepts their adulation as Destined Savior. He keeps this Destined Savior status throughout his administration. In 1939, Roosevelt still had everyone convinced that Hoover was totally discredited by his failure to solve the Great Depression in three years – whereas Roosevelt had failed to solve it for six but that was totally okay and he deserved credit for being a bold leader who tried really hard.
So how come Hoover bears so much of the blame in public consciousness? Whyte points to three factors.
First, Hoover just the bad luck of being in office when an international depression struck. Its beginning wasn’t his fault, its persistence wasn’t his fault, but it happened on his watch and he got blamed.
Second, in 1928 the Democratic National Committee took the unprecedented step of continuing to exist even after a presidential election. It dedicated itself to the sort of PR we now take for granted: critical responses to major speeches, coordinated messaging among Democratic politicians, working alongside friendly media to create a narrative. The Republicans had nothing like it; the RNC forgot to exist for the 1930 midterms, and Hoover was forced to personally coordinate Republican campaigns from his White House office. Although Hoover was good (some would say obsessed) at reacting to specific threats on his personal reputation, the idea of coordinating a media narrative felt too much like the kind of politics he felt was beneath him. So he didn’t try. When the Democrats launched a massive public blitz to get everyone to call homeless encampments “Hoovervilles”, he privately fumed but publicly held his tongue. FDR and the Democrats stayed relentlessly on message and the accusation stuck.
And third, Hoover was dead-set against welfare. However admirable his attempts to reverse the Depression, stabilize banking, etc, he drew the line at a national dole for the Depression’s victims. This was one of FDR’s chief accusations against him, and it was entirely correct. Hoover knew that going down that route would lead pretty much where it led Roosevelt – to a dectupling of the size of government and the abandonment of the Constitutional vision of a small federal government presiding over substantially autonomous states. Herbert Hoover, history’s greatest philanthropist and ender-of-famines, would go down in history as the guy who refused to feed starving people. And they hated him for it.
Scott Alexander, “Book Review: Hoover”, Slate Star Codex, 2020-03-17.
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