Published on 14 Sep 2017
The situation in Russia further escalates as Lavr Kornilov attempts to gain complete power with a military coup. The result is a disaster for him and thousands of armed Bolsheviks in the streets of Petrograd.
September 15, 2017
Attempted Military Coup in Russia – The Kornilov Affair I THE GREAT WAR Week 164
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September 14, 2017
Ken Burns and Lynn Novick: The Vietnam War Is the Key to Understanding America
Published on 13 Sep 2017
Nick Gillespie interviews Ken Burns and Lynn Novick about their new documentary series: The Vietnam War.
The Vietnam War led to more than 1.3 million deaths and it’s one of the most divisive, painful, and poorly understood episodes in American history.
Documentarians Ken Burns and Lynn Novick have spent the past decade making a film that aims to exhume the war’s buried history. Their 10-part series, which premieres on PBS next week, is a comprehensive look at the secrecy, disinformation, and spin surrounding Vietnam, and its lasting impact on two nations. The 18-hour film combines never-before-seen historical footage, with testimonies from nearly 80 witnesses, including soldiers on both sides of the conflict, leaders of the protest movement, and civilians from North and South Vietnam.
A two-time Academy Award winner, Burns is among the most celebrated documentary filmmakers of our time, best-known for the 1990 PBS miniseries The Civil War, which drew a television viewership of 40 million. He and Novick are longtime collaborators, and in 2011 she co-directed and produced Prohibition with Burns. In 2011, Reason’s Nick Gillespie interviewed Burns that film and the role of public television in underwriting his work.
With the release of The Vietnam War, Gillespie sat down with Burns and Novick to talk about the decade-long process of making their new film, and why understanding what happened in Vietnam is essential to interpreting American life today.
Produced by Todd Krainin. Cameras by Meredith Bragg, Mark McDaniel, and Krainin.
Full interview transcript available at http://bit.ly/2x0e5U4
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The art of leadership and other secrets
In Taki’s Magazine, Steve Sailer remembers the late Jerry Pournelle, including a helpful leadership tip he once shared:
I didn’t meet Jerry until 1999, but I’d known his son Alex in high school. The Pournelle family asked me to go with them to Kansas City in August 1976 to the science-fiction convention at which Heinlein, the central American sci-fi writer of the 20th century, received his lifetime achievement award. (But I had to be at college that week.)
But Jerry, one of the great Southern California Cold Warriors, had a remarkable number of careers, starting as a teenage artillery officer during the Korean War, which deafened him in one ear. (At the lunch table, he’d choose his seat carefully to position his one remaining good ear next to his guest.)
He once recalled a question from the Army Officer Candidate School test:
Q. You are in charge of a detail of 11 men and a sergeant. There is a 25-foot flagpole lying on the sandy, brush-covered ground. You are to erect the pole. What is your first order?
The right answer is:
A. “Sergeant, erect that flagpole.”?
In other words, if the sergeant knows how to do it, then there’s no need for you to risk your dignity as an officer and a gentleman by issuing some potentially ludicrous order about how to erect the flagpole. And if the sergeant doesn’t know either, well, he’ll probably order a corporal to do it, and so forth down the chain of command. But by the time the problem comes back up to you, it will be well established that nobody else has any more idea than you do.
He also quotes Dave Barry’s breakdown of Pournelle’s monthly columns for Byte magazine:
In 1977 Jerry paid $12,000 to have a state-of-the-art personal computer assembled for him, supposedly to boost his productivity. By 1980 that led to his long-running “Chaos Manor” column in Byte magazine in which he would document his troubles on the bleeding edge of PC technology. As fellow word-processing aficionado Dave Barry explained jealously, Jerry got paid to mess around with his computers when he should be writing:
Every month, his column has basically the same plot, which is:
1. Jerry tries to make some seemingly simple change to one of his computers, such as connect it to a new printer.
2. Everything goes hideously wrong…. Sometimes there are massive power outages all over the West Coast. Poor Jerry spends days trying to get everything straightened out.
3. Finally…Jerry gets his computer working again approximately the way it used to, and he writes several thousand words about it for ‘Byte.’
I swear it’s virtually the same plot, month after month, and yet it’s a popular column in a magazine that appeals primarily to knowledgeable computer people.
I like to imagine Steve Jobs circulating “Chaos Manor” columns to his executives with scribbled annotations suggesting that some people would pay good money to not have to go through all this.
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September 13, 2017
Adpocalypse Update – Out Of The Trenches Platform – Italy Trip I THE GREAT WAR
Published on 12 Sep 2017
Thank you to yukka.nl for the programming effort and support with the OOTT platform.
OOTT-Platform: https://outofthetrenches.thegreatwar.tv
September 18 – Meeting at Kobarid, Slovenia: http://bit.ly/Kobarid
September 19 – Meeting at Vittorio Veneto, Italy: http://bit.ly/VittorioVeneto
September 20 – Meeting at Lagazuoi: http://bit.ly/LagazuoiWW1
Merchandise (EU): https://shop.spreadshirt.net/thegreatwar/
Merchandise (US): https://shop.spreadshirt.com/thegreatwar/Flo has a few news to share with you concerning the YouTube “Adpocalypse” and more.
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September 12, 2017
Inside A British WW1 Airbase – Stow Maries Great War Aerodrome I THE GREAT WAR Special
Published on 11 Sep 2017
Visit Stow Maries Great War Aerodrome in Essex: http://www.stowmaries.org.uk/
The Royal Flying Corps and later the Royal Air Force maintained aerodromes and airfields around Great Britain for defence against German Zeppelin and Gotha Bomber raids. But would a WW1 aerodrome actually work?
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Great Northern War – III: Young and Violent – Extra History
Published on 9 Sep 2017
Flush from his victories against Poland-Lithuania, Charles XII of Sweden sets his eyes on an even greater enemy: Russia. But its ruler, Peter the Great, is no pushover: as the Swedish troops advance, he burns down the countryside and leaves them starving and exposed as a ferocious winter sets in.
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September 10, 2017
British Malaya – US Equipment – Boobytraps I OUT OF THE TRENCHES
Published on 9 Sep 2017
It’s time for another exciting episode of Out Of The Trenches again, this episode talks about British Malaya in WW1, the French and British equipment the US troops used and traps.
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Special Air Service (SAS) – The Falklands Campaign
Published on 13 Jul 2016
Special Air Service (SAS) – The Falklands Conflict
When Argentina invaded the Falklands in April, 1982, Britain dispatched a large Naval Task Force to recapture the Falklands. Steaming south with the British fleet were D and G Squadron of the SAS, with supporting signals units.
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Barbarossa: Why such high Soviet Losses? – Explained
Published on 20 Jun 2017
The Red Army suffered heavy losses during Operation Barbarossa, but it also inflicted heavy losses on the Wehrmacht. This means it was not just some helpless giant, but it also begs the questions, why were the losses so high? This video discusses several factors and refers heavily to current academic research namely from Alexander Hill and David Stahel.
Military History Visualized provides a series of short narrative and visual presentations like documentaries based on academic literature or sometimes primary sources. Videos are intended as introduction to military history, but also contain a lot of details for history buffs. Since the aim is to keep the episodes short and comprehensive some details are often cut.
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September 9, 2017
The Seven Years’ War
Published on 19 Nov 2016
The Seven Years’ War essentially comprised two struggles. One centered on the maritime and colonial conflict between Britain and its Bourbon enemies, France and Spain; the second, on the conflict between Frederick II (the Great) of Prussia and his opponents: Austria, France, Russia, and Sweden. Two other less prominent struggles were also worthy of note. As an ally of Frederick, George II of Britain, as elector of Hanover, resisted French attacks in Germany, initially only with Hanoverian and Hessian troops but from 1758 with the assistance of British forces also. In 1762, Spain, with French support, attacked Britain’s ally Portugal, but, after initial checks, the Portuguese, thanks to British assistance, managed to resist successfully.
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September 8, 2017
Attempted Military Coup in Russia – The Kornilov Affair I THE GREAT WAR Week 163
Published on 7 Sep 2017
The situation in Russia further escalates as Lavr Kornilov attempts to gain complete power with a military coup. The result is a disaster for him and thousands of armed Bolsheviks in the streets of Petrograd.
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Grant Vs Lee Who Was The Better General?
Published on 17 Aug 2016
Today I break down the book: Grant And Lee: A Study In Personality And Generalship By J.F.C Fuller
Here’s a quick break down of the two personalities
Grant: common sense, logical, simple plans with incredible precise execution, the ability to bring a whole lot of moving pieces into focus, and finally the ability to think clearly under stress.
Lee: The ability to motivate his men to an incredible degree, an extremely kind man, very good at doling out troops to his commanders when in a defensive situation.This video goes into more detail on all of this, I hope you enjoyed!
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Book Review: The Schmeisser Myth by Martin Helebrant
Published on 17 Feb 2017
The Schmeisser Myth: German Submachine Guns Through Two World Wars is a newly published history of SMG development from the Villar Perosa and MP18 through the MP38 and MP40, written by Martin Helebrant. Given that it is published by Collector Grade, it should be no surprise that it is an excellent volume, which includes both historical and developmental context as well as detailed collectors’ information on markings, variations, and production numbers.
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September 7, 2017
We Are Coming To Italy and Slovenia! I THE GREAT WAR On The Road
Published on 6 Sep 2017
September 18 – Meeting at Kobarid, Slovenia: http://bit.ly/Kobarid
September 19 – Meeting at Vittorio Veneto, Italy: http://bit.ly/VittorioVeneto
September 20 – Meeting at Lagazuoi: http://bit.ly/LagazuoiWW1
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Argentina expresses interest in laser death-beam-equipped USS Ponce
Those sneaky Argentines, trying to grab some surplus seagoing laser switchblade technology:
The U.S. Navy Afloat Forward Staging Base (Interim) USS Ponce (AFSB(I)-15) conducts an operational demonstration of the Office of Naval Research (ONR)-sponsored Laser Weapon System (LaWS) while deployed to the Arabian Gulf.
Date. 16 November 2014 (via Wikimedia)
Argentina reportedly wants to buy the US Navy’s laser death ray testbed warship, the fearsomely named USS Ponce.
According to the Mail on Sunday, the Argentinians are interested in buying the 46-year-old former landing platform (dock) from the American Navy when she is decommissioned next year.
“Senior Pentagon sources have confirmed talks are ongoing with the Argentinians over a Landing Platform Dock vessel capable of launching 800 troops, six helicopters and 2,000 tons of equipment into a war zone,” reported the paper, contrasting this with the Royal Navy’s HMS Ocean, which is very similar to the Ponce’s original configuration.
As regular readers know, the mighty Ponce has spent the last few years blasting various targets into bits using a shiny new $40m laser cannon and the US Navy even deployed her to the Gulf a few years ago.
To North American readers: if you’re wondering why this reads a bit oddly even by ordinary Register standards, it’s because the word “ponce” in British usage is a bit, um, odd. It’s taken as read that the primary purpose of an Argentine-flagged Ponce would sooner or later be intended for use in “liberating” the Falkland Islands:
The Ponce would be far from the first former US warship acquired by Argentina. In 1951 the Second World War cruiser USS Phoenix, a veteran of the Pearl Harbour attack by Japan, was bought by Argentina. She was renamed ARA General Belgrano – and sunk by British nuclear submarine HMS Conqueror during the 1982 Falklands War. Doubtless the same fate would befall the Ponce if Argentina tried the same trick again.
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