TimeGhost History
Published 15 Jun 2025From Tsarist Russia to Stalin and the Cold War, the Soviet secret police evolved through endless name changes — but their mission never wavered: repress, control, and terrify. Discover how these agencies — from the Okhrana to the Cheka, GPU, OGPU, NKVD, and eventually the KGB, shaped Soviet life with ruthless efficiency. Torture, purges, and mass surveillance weren’t just tactics; they were the system.
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June 16, 2025
The Machine of Terror: How the Soviet Secret Police Ruled – W2W 32
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June 15, 2025
Day Three – Guderian, Rommel, and The Race to Cross The Meuse – Ten Days in Sedan
World War Two
Published 14 Jun 2025May 12, 1940: Blitzkrieg, WW2’s new form of war, arrives in Sedan as Heinz Guderian’s Panzers capture the town and prepare to cross the river. Further north, Erwin Rommel drives toward the Meuse in the face of fierce French resistance. With the Luftwaffe dominating the skies and French reinforcements en route, the battle for Sedan is about to ignite.
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America’s Forgotten SMG: The Hyde/Marlin M2
Forgotten Weapons
Published 4 Oct 2019 #36270The United States went into World War Two with the Thompson submachine gun — a weapon far too heavy and too expensive for its role. The British went to the other extreme with the Sten and while the US did not want a gun quite that crude, the Sten did spur a desire for something cheaper than the Thompson. George Hyde (then working for the Inland Division of GM) had worked on submachine gun designs in the 1930s, and he put together a weapon that would fit US needs. It was much cheaper than the Thompson and weighed in a full 2 pounds lighter. At tests in the spring of 1942, it also proved to be much more accurate in automatic firing, as it had a much more ergonomic stock design than the Thompson. The weapon was approved as the M2 submachine gun in 1942, and a contract went to Marlin to produce it (Inland had no extra production capacity at the time).
The receiver of the M2 was made through a metal sintering process, and Marlin had trouble getting this properly tooled up. The first gun delivery didn’t actually happen until May of 1943, and by that time Hyde had finished designing the M3 “Grease Gun”, which was cheaper still, and more attractive to the military. The contract for the M2 was cancelled in June of 1943, with only 400 guns delivered. There are only six known surviving examples today, split between private collections, museums, and military institutions.
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June 14, 2025
Surviving on Tulip Bulbs during World War 2 – Dutch Hunger Winter
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 14 Jan 2025Mashed potatoes, red cabbage, carrots, kale, and tulip bulbs
City/Region: The Netherlands
Time Period: 1945The Netherlands was relatively well off for food during much of WWII up until the harsh winter of 1944-1945. A combination of factors like German occupation, extreme weather conditions, and lack of Allied relief resulted in the population existing on only 500 calories a day. Tulips, a major Dutch export, were stored as dried bulbs, and the government issued documents that instructed people on how to prepare them safely.
If you make this dish, be sure to use organic bulbs and remove the yellow sprout in the center of the bulb completely as described in the instructions below. The yellow center is what can make you sick.
The flavor of the dish comes from the vegetables, and the unique flavor of the bulbs is lost in everything else. Save at least one bulb back before you mash it to taste it. Different varieties of tulip bulbs are supposed to have different flavors, and mine had a kind of earthy metallic sweet taste that was quite unlike anything I’ve ever had.
Stamppot with Tulip Bulbs
1 kg of vegetables, 1/2 kg of potatoes, 1/2 kg tulip bulbs, salt, oil.
Clean and finely chop the vegetables. Scrub the potatoes and quarter them. Clean the tulip bulbs. Put everything in a pot with a little water and salt. Boil for 30 to 45 minutes. Mash everything and add oil to taste.
— Dutch State Office for Preparation of Food Distribution, 1945
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June 13, 2025
HMS Eskimo (F75) – Guide 362
Drachinifel
Published 18 Nov 2023HMS Eskimo, a destroyer of the British Royal Navy, is today’s subject.
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June 10, 2025
How Moscow Got the Atomic Bomb – W2W 31
TimeGhost History
Published 8 Jun 2025In 1949, the Soviet Union detonates its first atomic bomb — years ahead of Western expectations. This episode dives into how the USSR mobilized former Nazi scientists, forced Soviet physicists into secret cities, and relied on intelligence from spies like Klaus Fuchs. While Stalin pushes for rapid progress, Beria enforces brutal discipline, and Soviet scientists race to meet an impossible deadline. The nuclear balance of power is about to shift — forever.
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June 9, 2025
The Mighty Meteor – The World’s First Operational Jet Fighter
HardThrasher
Published 8 Jun 2025References
1. https://tinyurl.com/yc74kmed
2. Britain’s Jet Age, Guy Ellis, 2016, Amberley Publishing
3. Genius Of The Jet | The Invention Of The J… – Frank Whittle and Powerjets documentary, originally aired on the BBC
4. Meteor, Gloster’s First Jet Fighter, Steven Bond, Midland, 1985, Chpt 1
5. The British Aircraft Specifications File, Meekcombs and Morgan, 1994, p.298
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klimov_…
7. Most Secret Place, Johnson & Hefferman, Janes, 1983
8. https://mikesresearch.com/2020/12/25/…
9. Bond, op cit. p18
10. Bond, op cit.p34
11. QUEEN OF THE SKY: Meteor Night Fighters, U…
12. https://hushkit.net/2020/05/12/my-fav…
13. https://asn.flightsafety.org/wikibase… and https://asn.flightsafety.org/wikibase…
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Q&A: British Small Arms of World War Two
Forgotten Weapons
Published 24 Jan 2025Today’s Q&A is brought to you by the fine folks at Patreon, and by Penguin Brutality: https://www.varusteleka.com/en/search…
01:11 – Was the Vickers .50 any good, and why did the British use four different heavy cartridges instead of consolidating?
07:35 – The Sten and its single-feed magazine design
10:27 – Owen versus Sten, and German use of the Owen.
14:38 – British wartime work on an “assault rifle” sort of weapon?
15:44 – Why no British semiauto rifle during WW2? – Jonathan Ferguson on British semiauto rifle trials: Q&A 43 (feat. Jonathan Ferguson): Mil…
18:04 – EM2’s automatic bolt closure system
20:46 – Did the British use other allied weapons besides American ones?
23:15 – Is the PIAT a Destrucitve Device under US law and why?
26:07 – Bren vs Degtyarev
27:50 – Why not make the Sten in .45 to use Thompson ammo?
29:37 – Did the British get M3 Grease Guns?
31:01 – British SMG in .455?
32:03 – Sten vs Lanchester
33:26 – Was there an LSW version of the EM1/EM2 planned? EM1 Korsac: The Korsac EM1 – a British/Polish Bul…
34:25 – Why wasn’t the BESA in .303?
36:34 – Biggest British missed opportunity during the interwar period?
38:40 – British naval service small arms
41:45 – Did .280 cartridge development begin during the war?
43:24 – Impact of MP44 on British post-war small arms development?
44:25 – Gallilean sights on the Enfield
46:25 – Why is there a semiauto selector on the Sten?
49:17 – Did American soldiers use British small arms?
50:29 – Why did the British choose the Lee action over the Mauser action?
51:16 – Which was better, Sten or Grease Gun?
52:34 – Why did the whole Commonwealth not switch to the No4 Enfield?
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QotD: “Defending” democracy with totalitarian methods
One of the peculiar phenomena of our time is the renegade Liberal. Over and above the familiar Marxist claim that “bourgeois liberty” is an illusion, there is now a widespread tendency to argue that one can defend democracy only by totalitarian methods. If one loves democracy, the argument runs, one must crush its enemies by no matter what means. And who are its enemies? It always appears that they are not only those who attack it openly and consciously, but those who “objectively” endanger it by spreading mistaken doctrines. In other words, defending democracy involves destroying all independence of thought. This argument was used, for instance, to justify the Russian purges. The most ardent Russophile hardly believed that all of the victims were guilty of all the things they were accused of: but by holding heretical opinions they “objectively” harmed the regime, and therefore it was quite right not only to massacre them but to discredit them by false accusations. The same argument was used to justify the quite conscious lying that went on in the leftwing press about the Trotskyists and other Republican minorities in the Spanish civil war. And it was used again as a reason for yelping against habeas corpus when Mosley was released in 1943.
These people don’t see that if you encourage totalitarian methods, the time may come when they will be used against you instead of for you. Make a habit of imprisoning Fascists without trial, and perhaps the process won’t stop at Fascists. Soon after the suppressed Daily Worker had been reinstated, I was lecturing to a working men’s college in South London. The audience were working‐class and lower‐middle‐class intellectuals — the same sort of audience that one used to meet at Left Book Club branches. The lecture had touched on the freedom of the press, and at the end, to my astonishment, several questioners stood up and asked me: Did I not think that the lifting of the ban on the Daily Worker was a great mistake? When asked why, they said that it was a paper of doubtful loyalty and ought not to he tolerated in war time. I found myself defending the Daily Worker, which has gone out of its way to libel me more than once. But where had these people learned this essentially totalitarian outlook? Pretty certainly they had learned it from the Communists themselves!
Tolerance and decency are deeply rooted in England, but they are not indestructible, and they have to be kept alive partly by conscious effort. The result of preaching totalitarian doctrines is to weaken the instinct by means of which free peoples know what is or is not dangerous. The case of Mosley illustrates this. In 1940, it was perfectly right to intern Mosley, whether or not he had committed any technical crime. We were fighting for our lives and could not allow a possible Quisling to go free. To keep him shut up, without trial, in 1943 was an outrage. The general failure to see this was a bad symptom, though it is true that the agitation against Mosley’s release was partly factitious and partly a rationalization of other discontents. But how much of the present slide to ward Fascist ways of thought is traceable to the “anti‐Fascism” of the past ten years, and the unscrupulousness it has entailed?
George Orwell, “The Freedom of the Press“, 1945 (written as the introduction to Animal Farm, but not published in Orwell’s lifetime).
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June 8, 2025
Day Two – Panzers Stuck in Europe‘s Biggest Traffic Jam! – Ten Days in Sedan
World War Two
Published 7 Jun 2025May 11, 1940: Our WW2 documentary continues as the Battle of France rages and German Panzers rumble through the Ardennes. The Battle of Sedan is on the horizon and Heinz Guderian has one objective: break the French defences! But all is not well for the Germans as Europe’s largest-ever traffic jam threatens to stall the Blitzkrieg.
00:00 Intro
00:51 The Ardennes Advance
08:55 The Air War
15:05 Conclusion
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The Canadian Retribution at Normandy | History Traveler Episode 196
The History Underground
Published 16 Feb 2022Throughout the Battle of Normandy, the Canadians of the 3rd Infantry Division and the Germans of the 12th SS Panzer Division found themselves locked in a battle of attrition that would mark some of the most vicious fighting of the entire campaign. After suffering a blow at Buron and Authie (as seen in the last episode) the fight shifted over to a place that has now become legendary in Canadian military history: Bretteville-l’Orgueilleuse. In this episode, we’re joined by Paul Woodadge of @WW2TV to show a small part of one of the most epic fights in the battle to take Normandy.
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June 7, 2025
The 12th SS Massacre of the Canadians in Normandy | History Traveler Episode 195
The History Underground
Published 9 Feb 2022In the days after D-Day, the Canadians of the 3rd Infantry Division found themselves up against the German 12th SS Panzer Division as they were making their way south through Normandy. Tragically, some of these men would find themselves as the victims of one the battle’s worst atrocities at a place called Abbey Ardenne. In this episode, we’re joining Paul Woodadge of @WW2TV as we retrace the final steps of these men as they made their way to a tragic fate at the hands of Kurt Meyer and a division of the most fanatical fighters that Germany threw into the Battle of Normandy.
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June 6, 2025
“All the Little Ships” (1964 – CBC Telescope)
Royal Canadian Navy / Marine Royale Canadienne
Published 5 Jun 2025🇨🇦 Honouring 80 Years of Courage at Sea ⚓
To mark the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War and the Battle of the Atlantic, the Hamilton Naval Association is proud to reintroduce a long-lost Canadian treasure: “All the Little Ships”.
Originally aired in 1964 on CBC’s Telescope, this rare film features recently retired Admiral Harry DeWolf aboard HMCS Haida as he tells tales not only of HMCS Haida but of “All the Little Ships” of the wartime RCN. Never-before-seen footage shot by Bill Pugsley, a wartime officer who resigned his commission so he could serve two years on the lower deck, as a gunner, and document it.
🎥 A story of sacrifice, memory, and Canada’s naval legacy — rediscovered. A special thank you LCdr Doug Martin (Ret’d, former CO of HMCS Star).
The opinions expressed in this video are those of the original creators and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Royal Canadian Navy. Any references to outside organizations, products, or services do not constitute endorsement or affiliation.
#WeTheNavy #CanadaRemembers #HelpLeadFight
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Juno Beach Landings | D-Day Normandy June 6, 1944
World War II – Epic Battles
Published 30 Jun 2021Juno Beach was assigned to the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division and the 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade. It was one of the five invasion beaches of Normandy on D-Day and the second deadliest beach after Omaha.
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QotD: D-Day landing on Sword Beach
Lovat had asked his personal piper, Bill Millin, to pipe his men ashore. Private Millin pointed out that this would be in breach of War Office regulations. “That’s the English War Office, Bill,” said Lovat. “We’re Scotsmen.” And so Millin strolled up and down the sand amid the gunfire playing “Hieland Laddie” and “The Road to the Isles” and other highland favorites. The Germans are not big bagpipe fans and I doubt it added to their enjoyment of the day.
There was a fair bit of slightly dotty élan around in those early hours. As I mentioned during On the Town, I knew a chap who was in the second wave of gliders from England, and nipped out just before they took off to buy up the local newsagent’s entire stack of papers — D-Day special editions, full of news of the early success of the landings. He flew them into France with him, and distributed them to his comrades from the first wave so they could read of their exploits.
But for every bit of dash and brio there were a thousand things that were just the wretched, awful muck of war. Many of those landing craft failed to land: They hit stuff that just happened to be there under the water, in the way, and ground to a halt, and the soldiers got out waist-deep in the sea, and struggled with their packs — and, in the case of those men on the Prince Henry, with lumpy old English bicycles — through the gunfire to the beach to begin liberating a continent while already waterlogged and chilled to the bone.
The building on the other side of the Bénouville Bridge was a café and the home of Georges Gondrée and his family. Thérèse Gondrée had spent her childhood in Alsace and thus understood German. So she eavesdropped on her occupiers, and discovered that in the machine-gun pillbox was hidden the trigger for the explosives the Germans intended to detonate in the event of an Allied invasion. She notified the French Resistance, and thanks to her, after landing in the early hours of June 6th, Major Howard knew exactly where to go and what to keep an eye on.
Shortly after dawn there was a knock on Georges Gondrée’s door. He answered it to find two paratroopers who wanted to know if there were any Germans in the house. The men came in, and Thérèse embraced them so fulsomely that her face wound up covered in camouflage black, which she proudly wore for days afterward. Georges went out to the garden and dug up ninety-eight bottles of champagne he’d buried before the Germans arrived four years earlier. And so the Gondrée home became the first place in France to be liberated from German occupation. There are always disputes about these things, of course: some say the first liberated building was L’Etrille et les Goélands (the Crab and the Gulls), subsequently renamed — in honour of the men who took it that morning — the Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada house. But no matter: the stylish pop of champagne corks at the Café Gondrée was the bells tolling for the Führer‘s thousand-year Reich.
Arlette Gondrée was a four-year old girl that day, and she has grown old with the teen-and-twenty soldiers who liberated her home and her town. But she is now the proprietress of the family café, and she has been there every June to greet those who return each year in dwindling numbers […] The Bénouville Bridge was known to Allied planners as the Pegasus Bridge, after the winged horse on the shoulder badge of British paratroopers. But since 1944 it has been called the Pegasus Bridge in France, too. And in the eight decades since June 6th no D-Day veteran has ever had to pay for his drink at the Café Gondrée.
Mark Steyn, “June 6th, 1944”, SteynOnline, 2024-06-06.
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