Quotulatiousness

January 22, 2022

World War Zero – The Russo Japanese War

Filed under: China, History, Japan, Military, Pacific, Russia — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

The Great War
Published 21 Jan 2022

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The Russo-Japanese War is nicknamed World War Zero – it was a clash between two world powers that foreshadowed war on an industrial scale as seen just 10 years later again. Gigantic land battles like the Battle of Mukden showed the true cost in manpower and materiel when modern armies clashed and the naval side of the war showed the strategic importance of modern navies.

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» BIBLIOGRAPHY
Akiyama Saneyuki, Gundan (Tokyo: Jitsugyō no Nihonsha, 1917)

Atsuo Yokoyama; Toshikatsu Nishikawa & Ichō Konsōshiamu, Heishitachi ga mita Nichi-Ro sensō, (Tokyo: Yūzankaku, 2012)

Corbett, Julian S., Maritime Operations in the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-1905, Volume I, (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2015)

Corbett, Julian S., Maritime Operations in the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-1905, Volume II, (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2015)

Деникин А. И. Путь русского офицера. (Нью-Йорк: Изд. им. А. Чехова, 1953)

Forczyk, Robert, Russian Battleship vs Japanese Battleship: Yellow Sea 1904-05, (Oxford: Osprey Publishing Ltd, 2009)

Hamby, Joel E, “Striking the Balance: Strategy and Force in the Russo-Japanese War” Armed Forces & Society, Vol. 30, No. 3 (2004)

Hosokawa Gentarō, Byōinsen Kōsai Maru kenbunroku (Tokyo: Hakubunkan Shinsha, 1993)

Ivanov, A & Jowett P, The Russo-Japanese War 1904-05, (Oxford: Osprey Publishing Ltd, 2004)

Jacob, Frank, The Russo-Japanese War and its Shaping of the Twentieth Century, (London: Routledge, 2017)

Jukes, Geoffrey, The Russo-Japanese War 1904-1905, (Oxford: Osprey Publishing Ltd, 2014)

Kowner, Rotem (ed), Rethinking the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-5, Volume 1: Centennial Perspectives, (Folkestone: Global Oriental, 2007)

Lynch, George & Palmer, Frederick, In Many Wars By Many War Correspondnets, (Tokyo: Tokyo Printing Co. 1904)

Mozawa Yusaku, Aru hohei no Nichi-Ro Sensō jūgun nikki (Tokyo: Sōshisha, 2005)

Murakami Hyōe, Konoe Rentai ki (Tokyo: Akita Shoten, 1967)

Paine, S. C. M., The Japanese Empire: Grand Strategy from the Meiji Restoration to the Pacific War, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017)

Steinberg, John W; Meaning, Bruce W; Schimmelpennick van der Oye, David; Wolff, David & Yokote, Shinji (eds.), The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective: World War Zero, (Leiden: Brill, 2005)

Stille, Mark, The Imperial Japanese Navy of the Russo-Japanese War, (Oxford: Osprey Publishing Ltd, 2016)

Takagi Suiu, Jinsei hachimenkan (Tokyo: Teikoku Kyōiku Kenkyūkai, 1927)

van Dijk, Kees, Pacific Strife: The Great Powers and Their Political and Economic Rivalries in Asia and the Western Pacific, 1870-1914, (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2015)

Warner, Denis & Warner, Peggy, The Tide at Sunrise: A History of the Russo-Japanese War 1904-1905, (London: Angus & Robertson, 1974)

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Presented by: Jesse Alexander
Written by: Jesse Alexander
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Contains licensed material by getty images
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1842 Retreat From Kabul

Filed under: Asia, Britain, History, Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered
Published 22 Sep 2021

On January 13, 1842, a single man on horseback approached the British garrison at Jalalabad, where soldiers were waiting for a retreating army of several thousand. Exhausted, the man had part of his skull shaved off by a sword and his horse was so exhausted that it would soon perish. As he was brought into the walls of the city the lone man was asked where the rest of the army was. “I am the army,” he replied. Thus ended a disastrous retreat from Kabul, where a British force of some 4,500 soldiers and thousands of civilians was almost entirely destroyed.

This is original content based on research by The History Guy. Images in the Public Domain are carefully selected and provide illustration. As very few images of the actual event are available in the Public Domain, images of similar objects and events are used for illustration.

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Script by JCG

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January 11, 2022

QotD: The decline of the “Blimp class” in the British empire

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, History, Military, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The stagnation of the Empire in the between-war years affected everyone in England, but it had an especially direct effect upon two important sub-sections of the middle class. One was the military and imperialist middle class, generally nicknamed the Blimps, and the other the left-wing intelligentsia. These two seemingly hostile types, symbolic opposites – the halfpay colonel with his bull neck and diminutive brain, like a dinosaur, the highbrow with his domed forehead and stalk-like neck – are mentally linked together and constantly interact upon one another; in any case they are born to a considerable extent into the same families.

Thirty years ago the Blimp class was already losing its vitality. The middle-class families celebrated by Kipling, the prolific lowbrow families whose sons officered the army and navy and swarmed over all the waste places of the earth from the Yukon to the Irrawaddy, were dwindling before 1914. The thing that had killed them was the telegraph. In a narrowing world, more and more governed from Whitehall, there was every year less room for individual initiative. Men like Clive, Nelson, Nicholson, Gordon would find no place for themselves in the modern British Empire. By 1920 nearly every inch of the colonial empire was in the grip of Whitehall. Well-meaning, over-civilized men, in dark suits and black felt hats, with neatly rolled umbrellas crooked over the left forearm, were imposing their constipated view of life on Malaya and Nigeria, Mombasa and Mandalay. The one-time empire builders were reduced to the status of clerks, buried deeper and deeper under mounds of paper and red tape. In the early ‘twenties one could see, all over the Empire, the older officials, who had known more spacious days, writhing impotently under the changes that were happening. From that time onwards it has been next door to impossible to induce young men of spirit to take any part in imperial administration. And what was true of the official world was true also of the commercial. The great monopoly companies swallowed up hosts of petty traders. Instead of going out to trade adventurously in the Indies one went to an office stool in Bombay or Singapore. And life in Bombay or Singapore was actually duller and safer than life in London. Imperialist sentiment remained strong in the middle class, chiefly owing to family tradition, but the job of administering the Empire had ceased to appeal. Few able men went east of Suez if there was any way of avoiding it.

George Orwell, “The Lion And The Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius”, 1941-02-19.

December 30, 2021

The Story Of Sir Arthur Currie: From Gunner To General | The Great War With Norm Christie | Timeline

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, History, Military, WW1 — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Timeline – World History Documentaries
Published 28 Dec 2021

Military historian Norm Christie presents a four-part series examining the First World War from a Canadian perspective. As he begins his journey through the historic battlefields of France and Belgium, Christie focuses on the career of General Sir Arthur Currie, a soldier who rose through the ranks from humble gunner in 1897 to lead the Canadian Corps to several victories during the conflict which began in 1914.

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Note: The original YouTube title said “from Gunman to General”. Perhaps in British usage, “gunman” is a variant of “gunner” (an artilleryman), but in Canadian usage the word “gunman” almost invariably means armed criminal or terrorist, and while Sir Arthur’s career had its difficulties, he was never a criminal.

The Army’s Labor Union: Winchester 94s for the Loyal Legion of Loggers & Lumbermen

Filed under: History, Military, USA, Weapons, WW1 — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 30 Aug 2021

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Today we have a rifle from a really neat forgotten corner of American military history. During World War One, the Pacific Northwest was the source of prime lumber, in particular Sitka Spruce that was ideal for aircraft production. The US military wanted that spruce for its own aircraft, and there was also massive demand from France and the UK for their production as well. As part of the American war effort, the Signal Corps (which oversaw military aviation) set about increasing spruce production severalfold.

The Corps sent a Colonel to investigate what would be necessary to do this, and he found that logging work was being significantly disrupted by labor union organizing, ranging from strikes to active sabotage. In response, the Army essentially created its own labor union, the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen which both provided some of the labor reforms sought by groups like the IWW and also succeeded in massively increasing timber output for the war. The LLLL is a mostly-forgotten organization, and most of the documentation on it is from very left-wing organizations that paint it as a government attempt to quash labor rights. The reality appears to be far more nuanced, with several very legitimate reforms instituted in good faith. Unfortunately, the best reference on this period is completely out of print, Soldiers and Spruce: Origins of the Loyal Legions of Loggers & Lumberman by Harold Hyman (https://amzn.to/3lErrRC).

At any rate, part of the effort included the creation of the Spruce Production Division — 25,000 soldiers (mostly with backgrounds in logging and lumber) to Vancouver. They were seconded to private logging companies with Army-subsidized wages, but retained a military structure and officer corps. The Signal Corps purchased about 1,800 Winchester Model 1894 rifles in .30-30 caliber to arm a segment of the Division for security and military police type duties. Winchester 94s were in production and readily accessible, and the Division’s mission did not justify giving them Enfield or Springfield rifles needed by troops in Europe. These Winchesters were marked with a “US” property stamp and flaming bomb, and had serial numbers between 835,000 and 853,000 (specific numbers are not known because Winchester’s records form this period were destroyed). When the war ended, the guns (along with the Division’s other equipment) were sold as surplus, and they are found to this day in the Northwest. Many are in poor condition from decades of hard use, and they can be difficult to identify (and are also faked …) but they are a really neat artifact of a long-forgotten part of World War One history.

Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
6281 N. Oracle 36270
Tucson, AZ 85740

December 15, 2021

Is the Wehrmacht Defeated in 1942? – WW2 Special

Filed under: Germany, History, Military, Russia, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 14 Dec 2021

It’s late 1942 and the German Army is close to ruin. The Ostheer alone has suffered more than a million casualties in its fight against the Red Army. If the Wehrmacht cannot find a way to return to its former strength or reap decisive strategic benefits in the near future, it will ultimately face destruction in a war of attrition.
(more…)

December 13, 2021

The Battle of Cannae (216 B.C.E.)

Filed under: Africa, Europe, History, Italy, Military — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Historia Civilis
Published 29 Jun 2015

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Music is Beethoven’s “Sonata No. 32 in C Minor, Op. 111” – I. Maestoso – Allegro con brio ed appassionato, performed by Daniel Veesey

December 7, 2021

The Byzantine Army, Dark To Golden Age

Filed under: Europe, History, Middle East, Military, Religion — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Epimetheus
Published 22 Mar 2019

The Byzantine army, Dark to Golden age

This video was sponsored by Skillshare

Sources
Romano-Byzantine armies 4th-9th Centuries (David Nicolle)
Larousse Encyclopedia of Ancient and Medieval History (Marcel Dunan)
The Late Roman Infantryman (Simon MacDowall)
Byzantium Beyond the Golden Gate
Fall of the West (John Lambshead)
The Late Roman Cavalryman (Simon MacDowall)

Tags:
Byzantine history, Byzantine, Byzantine documentary, Eastern Roman, Byzantine army, ancient history, Byzantine Cataphract, Byzantine Roman, history, Bulgaria Byzantium, Byzantine military, Byzantine legion, Byzantine empire, fall Byzantine, ancient, Rome, Constantinople, Byzantine empire documentary, crash course Byzantine empire, Byzantium, Byzantine army structure, Byzantine vs Roman, theme system, theme Byzantine, Roman tactics, Byzantine tactics, eastern Roman empire

From the comments:

Epimetheus
2 years ago (edited)
Notes/additional info:

1. Should the empire be called Byzantine, Roman or Greek? I see people arguing for each of these in the comments and there is merit to each of these; but it is important to note that they called themselves Roman, they were majority Greek in population and language spoken, and the term Byzantine is useful in differentiating the time period and has been colloquially used for a long time (although not during the empire) Being a reference to the earlier name of Byzantium for the city of Constantinople.

2. When I refer to “native troops” this includes many other ethnic groups living within the empire, notably the Armenians who lived in Anatolia for hundreds of years and had assimilated in many ways but maintained different views on aspects of the Christian faith which was the most striking differentiating factor between them and the rest of the population of the empire.

3. The Strategos and Domestikos label should be switched on the captions at 6 mins 17 secs in. A Strategos led a Thema(ta) and a Domestikos led a Tagma(ta). Unfortunately I switched those by accident and stared at the screen for a while and did not notice that … sorry guys ;(

4. The Varangian Guard was a personal bodyguard unit to the emperor which are pretty cool, they were mostly comprised of Norsemen (Scandinavians), Rus and Saxons. They are the unit I refer to when I mention a Scandinavian unit.

5. The coolest unit (in my opinion) that I did not mention was the Akritai which were kinda like the Cossacks in that they were a loosely controlled border guard on the eastern side of the empire; and were the subject of much folklore and poems and such.

December 6, 2021

The Battle of Lake Trasimene (217 B.C.E.)

Filed under: Africa, Europe, History, Italy, Military — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Historia Civilis
Published 22 Jun 2015

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Music is Beethoven’s “Sonata No. 07 in D Major, Op. 10 No. 3” – I. Presto, performed by Daniel Veesey.

December 3, 2021

Australian-American War of 1942 – The Battle of Brisbane

Filed under: Australia, Britain, History, Military, USA, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 2 Dec 2021

America shares a language and large parts of its culture with Britain and Australia. But when tens of thousands of US troops arrive in 1942, things will be far from smooth. While the alliance remains firm, their soldiers will spend almost as much time fighting each other as they do the Axis.
(more…)

The Battle of the Trebia River (218 B.C.E.)

Filed under: Africa, Europe, History, Italy, Military — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Historia Civilis
Published 12 Jun 2015

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Music is Beethoven’s “Sonata No. 11 in B Flat Major Op. 22” – I. Allegro con brio. Performed by Daniel Veesey

November 26, 2021

QotD: English working class culture

Filed under: Britain, History, Quotations, Religion — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

… in all societies the common people must live to some extent against the existing order. The genuinely popular culture of England is something that goes on beneath the surface, unofficially and more or less frowned on by the authorities. One thing one notices if one looks directly at the common people, especially in the big towns, is that they are not puritanical. They are inveterate gamblers, drink as much beer as their wages will permit, are devoted to bawdy jokes, and use probably the foulest language in the world. They have to satisfy these tastes in the face of astonishing, hypocritical laws (licensing laws, lottery acts, etc., etc.) which are designed to interfere with everybody but in practice allow everything to happen. Also, the common people are without definite religious belief, and have been so for centuries. The Anglican Church never had a real hold on them, it was simply a preserve of the landed gentry, and the Nonconformist sects only influenced minorities. And yet they have retained a deep tinge of Christian feeling, while almost forgetting the name of Christ. The power-worship which is the new religion of Europe, and which has infected the English intelligentsia, has never touched the common people. They have never caught up with power politics. The “realism” which is preached in Japanese and Italian newspapers would horrify them. One can learn a good deal about the spirit of England from the comic coloured postcards that you see in the windows of cheap stationers’ shops. These things are a sort of diary upon which the English people have unconsciously recorded themselves. Their old-fashioned outlook, their graded snobberies, their mixture of bawdiness and hypocrisy, their extreme gentleness, their deeply moral attitude to life, are all mirrored there.

The gentleness of the English civilization is perhaps its most marked characteristic. You notice it the instant you set foot on English soil. It is a land where the bus conductors are good-tempered and the policemen carry no revolvers. In no country inhabited by white men is it easier to shove people off the pavement. And with this goes something that is always written off by European observers as “decadence” or hypocrisy, the English hatred of war and militarism. It is rooted deep in history, and it is strong in the lower-middle class as well as the working class. Successive wars have shaken it but not destroyed it. Well within living memory it was common for “the redcoats” to be booed at in the streets and for the landlords of respectable public-houses to refuse to allow soldiers on the premises. In peace-time, even when there are two million unemployed, it is difficult to fill the ranks of the tiny standing army, which is officered by the country gentry and a specialized stratum of the middle class, and manned by farm labourers and slum proletarians. The mass of the people are without military knowledge or tradition, and their attitude towards war is invariably defensive. No politician could rise to power by promising them conquests or military “glory”, no Hymn of Hate has ever made any appeal to them. In the last war the songs which the soldiers made up and sang of their own accord were not vengeful but humorous and mock-defeatist. The only enemy they ever named was the sergeant-major.

George Orwell, “The Lion And The Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius”, 1941-02-19.

November 11, 2021

In memoriam

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, WW1, WW2 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

A simple recognition of some of our family members who served in the First and Second World Wars:

The Great War

  • A Poppy is to RememberPrivate William Penman, Scots Guards, died 16 May, 1915 at Le Touret, age 25
    (Elizabeth’s great uncle)
  • Private Archibald Turner Mulholland, Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders, mortally wounded 25 September, 1915 at Loos, age 27
    (Elizabeth’s great uncle)
  • Private David Buller, Highland Light Infantry, died 21 October, 1915 at Loos, age 35
    (Elizabeth’s great grandfather)
  • Private Harold Edgar Brand, East Yorkshire Regiment. died 4 June, 1917 at Tournai.
    (My first cousin, three times removed)
  • Private Walter Porteous, Durham Light Infantry, died 4 October, 1917 at Passchendaele, age 18
    (my great uncle)
  • Corporal John Mulholland, Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders, wounded 2 September, 1914 (shortly before the First Battle of the Aisne), wounded again 29 June, 1918, lived through the war.
    (Elizabeth’s great uncle)

The Second World War

  • Flying Officer Richard Porteous, RAF, survived the defeat in Malaya and lived through the war
    (my great uncle)
  • Able Seaman John Penman, RN, served in the Defensively Equipped Merchant fleet on the Murmansk Run (and other convoy routes), lived through the war
    (Elizabeth’s father)
  • Private Archie Black (commissioned after the war and retired as a Major), Gordon Highlanders, captured at Singapore (aged 15) and survived a Japanese POW camp
    (Elizabeth’s uncle)
  • Elizabeth Buller, “Lumberjill” in the Women’s Land Army in Scotland through the war.
    (Elizabeth’s mother)
  • Trooper Leslie Taplan Russon, 3rd Royal Tank Regiment, died at Tobruk, 19 December, 1942 (aged 23).
    Leslie was my father’s first cousin, once removed (and therefore my first cousin, twice removed).

For the curious, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission the Royal British Legion, and the Library and Archives Canada WW1 and WW2 records site provide search engines you can use to look up your family name. The RBL’s Every One Remembered site shows you everyone who died in the Great War in British or Empire service (Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans and other Imperial countries). The CWGC site also includes those who died in the Second World War. Library and Archives Canada allows searches of the Canadian Expeditionary Force and the Royal Newfoundland Regiment for all who served during WW1, and including those who volunteered for the CEF but were not accepted.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD Canadian Army Medical Corps (1872-1918)

H.G. Wells – The Outline of History – The Great War

Filed under: Books, Britain, Europe, France, Germany, History, Military, USA, WW1 — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Thersites the Historian
Published 5 Mar 2021

In this video, we look at H.G. Wells’ coverage of World War I, from the war’s outbreak to the Armistice. Here, we see Wells at his most passionate and he makes a few controversial claims as well as sharing a couple of his personal experiences as a Londoner dealing with German air raids and celebrating the Armistice.

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QotD: War and human capital

Filed under: Germany, History, Military, Quotations, Technology, WW1, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

… perhaps there is a parallel between the state of human capital in the American elite [today] and the German elite during the war. The German soldiers were the best in the world, but the people further up the line were not the best tacticians. At the upper reaches, the strategists were terrible in all sorts of ways, starting with Hitler, who was laughably inept at running a war. Winning was never an option, but the Germans could have avoided total obliteration if they had better leaders.

The blame for this is always put on Hitler and that’s a good place to start, but the Germans had a brain power problem throughout the planning layer. This is obvious in how they went about making tanks. Instead of going for a tank that was cheap and easy to produce by a civilian workforce, they tried to build tanks that were complex and required specialists to produce. The effects of allied bombing raids were amplified by this strategic blunder in production planning. This is a very basic error in planning and execution.

One possible cause of this was that the middle-aged men who would have been sorting these production and design problems had died during the Great War. The German army tended to “use up” their units, rather than cycle them in and out of lines. That meant that a lot of experience with supply and logistics was lost in the trenches. The British and the Americans rotated units in and out of the lines, thus they came out of the war with a vast number of people with experience in the nuts and bolts of war fighting.

The current ruling class needs the Germans to be seen as the ultimate in super villains, but the truth is the Germans were dumb about a lot of important things. The Russians came up with sloped armor, for example, and the Germans never bothered to steal the idea, even after Kursk. The Germans got their hands on the Churchill tank, but never bothered to learn anything from it. They never learned from the Americans how to use communications to coordinate their artillery and their armor.

In many respects, the story of the tank in the war is a great proxy for the story of human capital and cultural intelligence. The Germans had the best trained military on earth, but they lacked human capital in the strategy and tactics layer. Either the culture was unable to produce it or there was simply not enough smart people to create the necessary smart fraction. That was ultimately why Germany was wiped from the map. It’s probably why no new culture has arisen from that place on the map either.

The Z Man, “Tanking It”, The Z Blog, 2019-03-01.

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