World War Two
Published 5 Jun 2021The supposedly surprise Japanese operations against Midway Atoll and the Aleutian Islands kick-off, but they don’t know that Allied intelligence has cracked their codes. As the Japanese fleet advances in the Central Pacific and Japanese planes bomb Midway, the US Navy has a big surprise waiting for them.
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June 6, 2021
Midway, pt.1 – Clash of the Titans – 145a – June 5, 1942
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Turning Point of History: D-Day Juno Beach
ch1201
Published 8 Nov 2014Examines Canada’s role on June 6th, 1944 and the advance through Normandy, France.
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June 5, 2021
Bren MkI: The Best Light Machine Gun of World War Two
Forgotten Weapons
Published 24 Feb 2021http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
https://www.floatplane.com/channel/Fo…
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In the years after World War One, the British military wanted a new machine gun, and they wanted it to replace both the Lewis and the Vickers. Through the 1920s the British would tinker with most of the light machine guns that became available, but it was not until the early 1930s that a serious formal trial was conducted. The initial trials found three particularly encouraging guns; the ZB-26, Madsen, and Vickers-Berthier. Over a series of followup testing, the Madsen and Vickers-Berthier were both eliminated, leaving the Czechoslovakian ZB as the final choice.
The British were extremely enthusiastic about the qualities of the ZB, and it is understandable why. The final .303 British version, the Bren, is widely regarded as the best magazine-fed light machine gun ever made. In its final preproduction trial, one of the prototype guns endured a 150,000-round trial without any real problems.
The design was licensed for British production as well as in the Dominions, and would be put into production at both Enfield in England and the John Inglis company in Canada. About 30,000 were produced before the Dunkirk disaster, which would lead to simplification of the design. But those changes are a subject for another video later…
Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
6281 N. Oracle #36270
Tucson, AZ 85740
From the comments:
Jeffrey Holdeman
5 hours ago
Ian- “this video is getting a little long already”Everyone else- “so what!”
Notable Discomfort
2 hours ago
Ian: “This video is a little long already.”
Everyone: “Baby doll, you take all the time you need, I’m in love with every second you take. Every minute you take to explain this rifle is a minute I get to spend with you and your comforting voice. Don’t never apologize. There’s nothing to be sorry about.FLIBFLAGGAFLUP
2 hours ago
The sheer amount of Victoria Cross citations that start with “he picked up a Bren gun” is stupendous, like a WW2 cheat code.
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QotD: British wartime censorship
Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news — things which on their own merits would get the big headlines — being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that “it wouldn’t do” to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is “not done” to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was “not done” to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.
At this moment what is demanded by the prevailing orthodoxy is an uncritical admiration of Soviet Russia. Everyone knows this, nearly everyone acts on it. Any serious criticism of the Soviet régime, any disclosure of facts which the Soviet government would prefer to keep hidden, is next door to unprintable. And this nation-wide conspiracy to flatter our ally takes place, curiously enough, against a background of genuine intellectual tolerance. For though you are not allowed to criticise the Soviet government, at least you are reasonably free to criticise our own. Hardly anyone will print an attack on Stalin, but it is quite safe to attack Churchill, at any rate in books and periodicals. And throughout five years of war, during two or three of which we were fighting for national survival, countless books, pamphlets and articles advocating a compromise peace have been published without interference. More, they have been published without exciting much disapproval. So long as the prestige of the USSR is not involved, the principle of free speech has been reasonably well upheld. There are other forbidden topics, and I shall mention some of them presently, but the prevailing attitude towards the USSR is much the most serious symptom. It is, as it were, spontaneous, and is not due to the action of any pressure group.
George Orwell, Unpublished Preface to Animal Farm, 1945.
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June 2, 2021
How Hitler Manipulated Germany into Committing Genocide – WW2 Special
World War Two
Published 1 Jun 2021In the wrong hands, propaganda is a powerful tool that can trick whole countries into supporting a dictator, go to war, or even commit genocide.
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May 30, 2021
Rommel’s Desert Dash – The Whole Bloody Afrika Korps! – Gazala – WW2 – 144 – May 30, 1942
World War Two
Published 29 May 2021Erwin Rommel begins his surprise new offensive with “Rommel’s Moonlight Ride”, bringing all of his mighty mobile units to the fray in North Africa, while in the Pacific, dozens of warships and tens of thousands of men set sail from Japan — their mission? Attack the Aleutian Islands and Midway Island, but above all, destroy the US Pacific Fleet!
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May 29, 2021
History Buffs: Midway Part Two
History Buffs
Published 28 May 2021As promised here is Part Two of my Midway review. Hope you guys enjoy it 🙂
You can join Nebula today and get Curiosity Stream at 26% off for a year! Click on the link below
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Part Two of this review will be out next Friday on the 28th of May!● Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HistoryBuffs_
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Prototype Jungle Carbine: A No1 MkV Becomes a No5 MkI
Forgotten Weapons
Published 17 Feb 2021http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
https://www.floatplane.com/channel/Fo…
Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http://shop.bbtv.com/collections/forg…
When the British began developing a shortened version of the No4 Lee Enfield in 1943 (which would become the No5 MkI “Jungle Carbine”), the development process included work with some rather older rifles. What we have here is a 1922 production No1 MkV rifle cut down as a trials prototype for the carbine development program. The No1 MkV was a trials gun itself from the early 1920s which basically gave a rear aperture sight to the classic MkIII SMLE. Unfortunately, I don’t have any specific details on the testing or use of this particular example, but I think it is a fascinating example!
Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
6281 N. Oracle #36270
Tucson, AZ 85740
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May 28, 2021
Justin Trudeau apologizes for WW2 detainment of card-carrying Fascists by Mackenzie King’s government
As Colby Cosh notes in the latest NP Platformed newsletter, it is hard to reconcile the mythological events the Prime Minister is busy apologizing for with the actual, documented facts of the case as recorded in a book published by three Italian-Canadian academics about 20 years ago:
What they found was that the 500 people, singled out from 112,000 Italian-Canadians by the government in 1940, were scarcely the victims of racial hysteria. They were, in fact, a hardcore fraction of 3,000 or so literal card-carrying Fascists in Canada. They hadn’t been thrown into camps willy-nilly, as Canada’s Japanese would be later; most had Fascist ties and sympathies that had been carefully investigated, abundantly documented and double-checked by the RCMP.
The internees had mostly been members of overtly pro-Fascist “fraternal organizations”, whose loyalty they later protested in the face of the facts. As that young reporter’s review observed, many of those groups reported directly to the Italian government, all were devoted to promoting the idea of Mussolini’s near-godhood and some helped finance Italy’s Fascist (and racist) 1935 invasion of Ethiopia, which annihilated the League of Nations security apparatus and set the table for further fascist aggression in Europe. Although the impugned Italians were detained without trial, none lost their homes or property as Japanese internees later would, and in fact none were held beyond the end of 1942.
That review was just about the only notice Enemies Within received anywhere in the Canadian press. The author, whose alliterative name you can probably guess by now, interviewed (now emeritus) Prof. Perin and was told the book had “fallen into a big black hole”. The revisionist account of Italian-Canadian internment as an out-of-control racial panic directed at anyone whose name ended in a vowel had long since taken hold in Canadian schools, and has never lost its grip.
Today, the prime minister, attentive to his nose for votes, apologized officially in the House of Commons for the “unjustified” detentions. And opposition parties are competing vigorously to out-apologize the apologizer-in-chief. One wonders what our present-day anti-fascists, who favour street beatings for anyone wearing the wrong hat, make of this laborious grieving for honest-to-God anti-Fascist action. As Michael Petrou argued courageously in the Globe and Mail on May 3, we shouldn’t be consecrating a falsehood for the sake of anyone’s political advantage. (And the CBC, to its credit, gives some attention to the historically informed side of the debate.)
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The Plot to Kill Hitler’s Hangman – Operation Anthropoid – WAH 035 – May 1942, Pt. 2
World War Two
Published 27 May 2021Arthur Harris and his RAF Bombers carry out a massive bombing raid on Cologne. Meanwhile, one of the architects of the Holocaust, Reinhard Heydrich is the target of a spectacular assassination attempt.
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May 26, 2021
The Great All-Out Battle – Naval Warfare in the Pacific – WW2 Special
World War Two
Published 25 May 2021Before the infamous day that was Pearl Harbor, US and Japanese military planners worked to envision what a future war in the Pacific would look like. With the entire region now a war zone, it is time to put their theories to the test. Watch the video to find out what these are.
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May 24, 2021
History Buffs: Midway Part One
History Buffs
Published 21 May 2021Thank you guys so much for your patience. Quarantine has made somethings difficult and I know its been a while but it’s finally here! I hope you enjoy it!
You can join Nebula today and get Curiosity Stream at 26% off for a year! Click on the link below
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Part Two of this review will be out next Friday on the 28th of May!● Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HistoryBuffs_
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HMS Ark Royal (91) – Guide 100 (Extended)
Drachinifel
Published 15 Dec 2018HMS Ark Royal, an aircraft carrier of the Royal Navy, is today’s subject.
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May 23, 2021
AF is short of fresh water – WW2 – 143 – May 23, 1942
World War Two
Published 22 May 2021Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov arrives in London to meet with Churchill, but at home in the USSR the Germans have launched an instantly successful offensive. In North Africa and Malta the British are building up, unaware that Erwin Rommel is just about to strike, and an American ruse discovers secret Japanese attack plans.
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May 21, 2021
Life Inside a Japanese PoW Camp – WW2 Special
World War Two
Published 20 May 2021The inhuman, torturous, and deadly Japanese PoW Camps famous from Bridge over the River Kwai, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, Empire of the Sun, and more recently Unbroken are a world of abuse and mistreatment managed by willfully incompetent and sadistically brutal men.
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