World War Two
Published 30 Aug 2025People think that we’re perfect hosts, almost robotic in our perfection in our task of presenting history. Well, that is true. We are perfect. However, there are some people out there that look just like us, and they screw up all the time. Here’s a chance to see them in action.
(more…)
August 31, 2025
What Would Donald Sutherland Say About This? – Blooper Reel
Comments Off on What Would Donald Sutherland Say About This? – Blooper Reel
August 26, 2025
When Jagdpanther Fought Churchill
The Tank Museum
Published 18 Apr 2025Jagdpanther vs Churchill. Tank destroyer vs tank. New technology vs proven veteran. Who will emerge victorious?
It’s 6pm on 30th July 1944. Outnumbered 6 to 1, a platoon of 3 German Jagdpanthers is about to go into action for the first time. Facing them will be a squadron of 18 British Churchill tanks. Within 5 minutes, 11 tanks will be knocked out.
The Jagdpanther is the latest German armoured vehicle to arrive in Normandy. With a devastating gun, and a heavily armoured superstructure, this tank hunter is quick, reliable and deadly.
The Churchill has been fighting with Allied armies in North Africa, Italy and on the Eastern Front. The early marks struggled with a range of issues, but by 1944 it is an essential part of the British and Canadian tank force.
It’s during Operation Bluecoat where these two machines would come face-to-face for the very first time. The Churchills of S Squadron, 3rd Battalion, Scots Guards, have captured Hill 226 – a strategically important area to the south of Caumont. They are preparing for a German counterattack, but their infantry is yet to arrive – leaving their left flank dangerously exposed. And a platoon of Jagdpanthers is ready to take full advantage of their vulnerable state …
00:00 | Introduction
00:35 | The Jagdpanther
02:38 | The Churchill
05:43 | Operation Bluecoat
07:46 | A Turkey Shoot?
12:25 | Aftermath
17:40 | Roll of Honour
(more…)
Comments Off on When Jagdpanther Fought Churchill
August 24, 2025
August 21, 2025
Six Reasons Operation Market Garden FAILED
The Tank Museum
Published 3 April 2025Operation Market Garden failed because the tanks of XXX Corps did not reach the Paras in Arnhem in time. Many historians have argued that the British armoured column “let the side down”. But is this actually true?
We reckon there are six reasons why the operation was a total disaster. It was a poor plan from the get-go, relying on a rate of advance that would outmatch the German invasion of France in 1940. Bad weather prevented the deployment of badly-needed reinforcements, and the terrain Guards Armoured were expected to traverse – a single road with impassable conditions on either side – significantly hampered the efforts of the tank crews.
Poor intelligence also meant that the British column was not prepared for resistance from a retreating and desperate German Army. It was a combination of all these factors that caused Market Garden to unravel completely.
Despite the complications, many acts of valour were carried out by both the airborne and armoured divisions, including the legendary assault across the Waal by the US 82nd Airborne.
So, join us as we explore these six reasons why Operation Market Garden failed and decide for yourself whether XXX Corps could have done anymore.
00:00 | Introduction
02:23 | #1 – A Bad Plan
06:22 | #2 – Poor Intelligence
07:51 | #3 – Difficult Terrain
11:27 | #4 – Determined Resistance
13:45 | #5 – Bad Weather
14:38 | #6 – Loss of Surprise
19:45 | What Went Wrong?
(more…)
Comments Off on Six Reasons Operation Market Garden FAILED
August 19, 2025
Dieppe 1942: The Failed Raid That Shaped D-Day
Battle Guide
Published 2 May 2025On 19th August 1942, as dawn was breaking along the coast of occupied France, a force of just over 6,000 men stormed the beaches around the port town of Dieppe in the first major allied strike against Hitler’s Atlantic Wall. Within a matter of minutes hundreds lay dead or wounded, washed up against seawalls, hung on wire entanglements or incinerated in the burning landing craft. Over 60% of the mainly Canadian assault force were killed, wounded or captured by the end of the day, and the Dieppe Raid has, for the allies, gone down as one of the most infamous days of the Second World War.
(more…)
Comments Off on Dieppe 1942: The Failed Raid That Shaped D-Day
Operation Jubilee: Canada’s Devastating WWII Loss
WarsofTheWorld
Published 17 Jun 2023By 1942, the war was no longer another great European conflict. It was now a firmly global affair enveloping all of the world’s great powers as the Allies squared off against the tyranny and aggression of the Axis nations. Against such colossal forces, no one country could stand alone and events that affected one combatant would ultimately have consequences for the other further down the road.
To that end, while the western Allies and the Soviet Union were effectively fighting separate wars against the same enemy, there needed to be cooperation between the two fronts in order to squeeze the life out of Nazi Germany and insure victory against Fascism. However, the relationship was often a strained one as both Allied power blocks were suspicious of the other’s intentions once the war was over.
Thus, we come to the subject of today’s episode and a story of the war that is still the subject of much debate today. It was an operation with no specific military objective other than to experiment with conducting division-sized amphibious landings against a fortified beach and as a gesture to the Soviet Union who were starting to feel abandoned by their Allies. It is an operation that has become seared into the hearts and minds of the Canadian people for the sacrifice they were asked to make for it.
0:00 Introduction
3:26 A Red Request
7:50 Planning and Preparation
13:32 Operation Rutter – A False Start
18:10 Reviving Rutter
24:02 Operation Jubilee
35:52 A Necessary Lesson?
(more…)
Comments Off on Operation Jubilee: Canada’s Devastating WWII Loss
QotD: The fall of France: mass and defeat in detail
A reason to be cautious about anticipating attrition as the shape of future war is the danger of a “defeat in detail”. By failing to match mass against mass, your enemy has the chance to utterly destroy a part of your force. This offers the chance not only to shift the balance of force, but to subsequently overwhelm other elements caught off-guard by the initial defeat. In this way, one force may defeat another of comparable or even superior strength without the bloody cost typical of the clash of mass meeting mass. Prioritizing preparations for attritional struggle may allow your enemy to gain the seemingly small advantages that cascade into a defeat in detail.
As mentioned, for Clausewitz, the defeat of Prussia in the war of the Fourth Coalition was the template, but the more contemporary archetype is the Fall of France in WW2. French command and control was oriented towards a lengthy war of attrition and proved unable to react quickly enough to the German breakthrough at Sedan. Counterattacks were therefore only undertaken on the local level and without coordination. Despite German vulnerability, they were able to defeat the piecemeal commitment of superior forces and ultimately collapse Allied defenses.
The initial German breakthrough was made possible by local air superiority, enabled by the same principle. This was achieved despite an overall superiority by the Allies in aircraft (even when counting only modern planes) because the Allies kept many planes in reserve, anticipating a long war. By the time they realized the significance of the German concentration, the Germans had been able to move forward anti-aircraft guns and it was too late to destroy the bridgeheads over the Meuse (despite the desperate kamikaze-like efforts of a stricken bomber).
The case of France in 1940 gives a clear example of why a defeat in detail has been so feared. French strategy was premised on winning a lengthy war — the initial battle was assumed to be no more conclusive than the Battle of Frontiers had been in 1914 [Wiki]. The exact error of the French is unlikely to be replicated, but the nature of the mistake remains a universal peril. Dismissing the likelihood of an early decision and preparing for a “later” that never comes is the reciprocal mistake of assuming an early decision is inevitable (which can be identified with the “Cult of the Offensive” that preceded WWI).
Kiran Pfitzner, “In Defense of Taiwan: Attrition or Annihilation”, Dead Carl and You, 2025-05-14.
Comments Off on QotD: The fall of France: mass and defeat in detail
August 17, 2025
Battle of Norway, 1940
Real Time History
Published 7 Mar 2025The Battle of Norway in Spring 1940 cemented the reputation of the daring and invincible German war machine under Adolf Hitler. But while Denmark and Norway were successfully occupied by Germany, the campaign came at a heavy cost. This was especially true for the German Kriegsmarine which lost a significant amount of warships including the Blücher — losses that essentially crippled them for the remainder of the war.
(more…)
Comments Off on Battle of Norway, 1940
August 15, 2025
The pen that ended WWII: Inside Field Marshal Slim’s hidden collection
BFBS Forces News
Published 14 Aug 2025Ahead of VJ Day — go behind the scenes for a rare glimpse into the private collection of Field Marshal Slim’s wartime artefacts.
In this exclusive film, Tim Cooper visits Viscount Slim — grandson of the legendary Second World War commander — for an intimate look at a treasure trove of historical items. From a razor-sharp Japanese sword surrendered in 1945, to the pen that signed peace, and even the stark telegram announcing Britain’s entry into war, each item tells a powerful story.
(more…)
August 14, 2025
D-Day’s Flat Pack Ports OR Lord HT Gets Cross with The Fat Electrician
HardThrasher
Published 13 Aug 2025In which we use the @the_fat_electrician as an excuse to talk about the Mulberry Harbours, make a specific threat to a building in the United States and get to oogle at giant bits of floating concrete.
Primary Source – Codename Mulberry – Guy Hartcup, Pen & Sword Military. Kindle Edition 2014 (org. 1977)
(more…)
Comments Off on D-Day’s Flat Pack Ports OR Lord HT Gets Cross with The Fat Electrician
“Just war” theory and nuclear weapons practice
On Substack, Nigel Biggar discusses the postwar argument about whether the use of nuclear weapons against Japan was justified or not:
Atomic cloud over Hiroshima, taken from “Enola Gay” flying over Matsuyama, Shikoku, 6 August, 1945.
US Army Air Force photo via Wikimedia Commons.
For pacifists, Christian or otherwise, the answer is clear: since any deliberate killing is wrong, the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945 was wrong about two hundred thousand times over.
But that clear answer generates further questions whose answers aren’t so obvious. If killing is always wrong, then the United States should never have gone to war against Imperial Japan and therefore its ally, Hitler’s Germany. What, then, would have stopped the triumph of brutally racist Japanese imperialism in Asia and massively murderous Nazism in Europe? The noble witness of innocent non-violence?
Unfortunately, the historical evidence is that the kind of people who ran the slave-labour camps in Burma, and the likes of Dachau in Germany and Auschwitz in Poland, were not at all shamed by the face of vulnerable innocence; on the contrary, it excited their lust for domination and they fed upon it.
On the other hand, those who think that war can sometimes be justified, might judge that the mass killing of civilians by the atomic bombs was, simply by its massive extent, indiscriminate and therefore unjust. But there are two problems here. The first is that the vast majority of people, certainly in the UK and the USA, regard the war against Hitler and his allies as morally justified, notwithstanding the fact that that cost between 60 and 80 million deaths, well over half of them civilian.
Image credit – Wikipedia
And the second problem is that the ethical tradition of “just war” thinking doesn’t say that we may not kill civilians, even on a massive scale; it only says that we may not kill them intentionally. If a military objective can’t be achieved except by risking the possible or probable deaths of civilians, then it may still be attempted, provided that the objective is sufficiently important, militarily, and that all reasonable measures are taken to avoid or minimise the side-effect of civilian casualties. The reason for this permissiveness is that in most circumstances just war would be impossible to prosecute otherwise.
So, for the “just war” proponent, if the intention in dropping the atomic bombs on Japan was to destroy vital military or military-related targets, and if there was no more discriminate way of achieving that end, then the bombing was morally justified. It was deeply, deeply tragic—but nevertheless just.
Comments Off on “Just war” theory and nuclear weapons practice
August 12, 2025
German-Soviet Invasion of Poland 1939
Real Time History
Published 8 Aug 2025Germany and the Soviet Union both regarded the Polish state as a creation of the post-WW1 system, and both had claims on Polish territory. In the summer of 1939, Adolf Hitler decided to invade Poland in a fait acompli against the Allies. In a secret agreement between Germany and the Soviet Union they agreed on dividing up the Polish state and Eastern Europe.
(more…)
Comments Off on German-Soviet Invasion of Poland 1939
August 11, 2025
Speed vs Armour: The Unexpected History of Fast Tanks
The Tank Museum
Published 21 Mar 2025Would you rather go to war in a tank that was quick but lightly armoured – or heavily armoured but slow?
The concept of fast tanks has existed since the First World War, but making a tank fast is easier said than done. You can increase the speed, but only by compromising the other two sides of The Iron Triangle.
Whilst a good power to weigh ratio is key to making a tank go fast, there are other factors that need to be considered. J Walter Christie pioneered the innovative helicoil spring suspension system – an invention that allowed tanks to cope with travelling at high speeds across country. Although not picked up by the US Army, the brilliance of Christie’s suspension was recognised by the Soviets and soon made an appearance on the BT-Series of tanks – and most effectively on the T-34.
Back in the UK, the newly mechanised cavalry was making use of some brand-new Cruiser tanks. Whilst these were fast vehicles, this was coming at the cost of effective protection. Some military thinkers advocated for the concept of “speed as armour” but results were mixed – with the Crusader and Cromwell both proving to be capable tanks.
After the war, the British Army finally moved on from “speed as armour” and settled on sacrificing a bit of speed for the sake of better protection. This was incorporated first into the concept of Universal Tanks and remains a fixture in the modern Main Battle Tank.
So, we’ll ask again. Would you rather go to war in a tank that was quick but lightly armoured – or heavily armoured but slow?
00:00 | Introduction
00:51 | What Makes it a Fast Tank?
02:39 | What is a Fast Tank For?
04:39 | Suspension of Disbelief
06:34 | Speedy Soviets
08:29 | Cruisers Replace Cavalry
11:20 | The Second Wave
13:19 | Cruising in Europe
19:08 | One Tank to Do It All
(more…)
Comments Off on Speed vs Armour: The Unexpected History of Fast Tanks
