One rapid but fairly sure guide to the social atmosphere of a country is the parade-step of its army. A military parade is really a kind of ritual dance, something like a ballet, expressing a certain philosophy of life. The goose-step, for instance, is one of the most horrible sights in the world, far more terrifying than a dive-bomber. It is simply an affirmation of naked power; contained in it, quite consciously and intentionally, is the vision of a boot crashing down on a face. Its ugliness is part of its essence, for what it is saying is “Yes, I am ugly, and you daren’t laugh at me”, like the bully who makes faces at his victim. Why is the goose-step not used in England? There are, heaven knows, plenty of army officers who would be only too glad to introduce some such thing. It is not used because the people in the street would laugh. Beyond a certain point, military display is only possible in countries where the common people dare not laugh at the army. The Italians adopted the goose-step at about the time when Italy passed definitely under German control, and, as one would expect, they do it less well than the Germans. The Vichy government, if it survives, is bound to introduce a stiffer parade-ground discipline into what is left of the French army. In the British army the drill is rigid and complicated, full of memories of the eighteenth century, but without definite swagger; the march is merely a formalized walk. It belongs to a society which is ruled by the sword, no doubt, but a sword which must never be taken out of the scabbard.
George Orwell, “The Lion And The Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius”, 1941-02-19.
February 13, 2019
QotD: The goose-step
February 11, 2019
QotD: Gandhi’s conflicted views of war and pacifism
… the real center and raison d’être of Gandhi is ahimsa, nonviolence, which principle when incorporated into vast campaigns of noncooperation with British rule the Mahatma called by an odd name he made up himself, satyagraha, which means something like “truth-striving.” During the key part of his life, Gandhi devoted a great deal of time explaining the moral and philosophical meanings of both ahimsa and satyagraha. But much as the film sanitizes Gandhi to the point where one would mistake him for a Christian saint, and sanitizes India to the point where one would take it for Shangri-la, it quite sweeps away Gandhi’s ethical and religious ponderings, his complexities, his qualifications, and certainly his vacillations, which simplifying process leaves us with our old European friend: pacifism. It is true that Gandhi was much impressed by the Sermon on the Mount, his favorite passage in the Bible, which he read over and over again. But for all the Sermon’s inspirational value, and its service as an ideal in relations among individual human beings, no Christian state which survived has ever based its policies on the Sermon on the Mount since Constantine declared Christianity the official religion of the Roman empire. And no modern Western state which survives can ever base its policies on pacifism. And no Hindu state will ever base its policies on ahimsa. Gandhi himself — although the film dishonestly conceals this from us — many times conceded that in dire circumstances “war may have to be resorted to as a necessary evil.”
It is something of an anomaly that Gandhi, held in popular myth to be a pure pacifist (a myth which governments of India have always been at great pains to sustain in the belief that it will reflect credit on India itself, and to which the present movie adheres slavishly), was until fifty not ill-disposed to war at all. As I have already noted, in three wars, no sooner had the bugles sounded than Gandhi not only gave his support, but was clamoring for arms. To form new regiments! To fight! To destroy the enemies of the empire. Regular Indian army units fought in both the Boer War and World War I, but this was not enough for Gandhi. He wanted to raise new troops, even, in the case of the Boer and Kaffir Wars, from the tiny Indian colony in South Africa. British military authorities thought it not really worth the trouble to train such a small body of Indians as soldiers, and were even resistant to training them as an auxiliary medical corps (“stretcher bearers”), but finally yielded to Gandhi’s relentless importuning. As first instructed, the Indian Volunteer Corps was not supposed actually to go into combat, but Gandhi, adamant, led his Indian volunteers into the thick of battle. When the British commanding officer was mortally wounded during an engagement in the Kaffir War, Gandhi — though his corps’ deputy commander — carried the officer’s stretcher himself from the battlefield and for miles over the sun-baked veldt. The British empire’s War Medal did not have its name for nothing, and it was generally earned.
Richard Grenier, “The Gandhi Nobody Knows”, Commentary, 1983-03-01.
February 10, 2019
Semiauto M2 Hyde Reproduction: The Interim US WW2 Subgun
Forgotten Weapons
Published on 9 Jan 2019http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
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George Hyde designed the gun that would eventually be adopted as the M2 submachine gun in the late 1930s, and it was first tested at Aberdeen Proving Grounds in October of 1939. At that time, the gun had many good traits (weight, handlings, etc) but suffered from parts breakage and unreliability. Hyde went back to work on the gun at the Inland Division of GM, and came back with a much improved version in April of 1942.
The Inland-Hyde SMG was chambered for .45 ACP ammunition and used standard Thompson magazines, and was poised to become the US Army’s new submachine gun, replacing the overly expensive Thompson. The Hyde passed a 6080 round endurance test with flying colors, and exhibited much better effectiveness in fully automatic than the Thompson. At the end of the April tests, it was formally accepted to replace the Thompson and given the designation M2.
A contract was given to the Marlin company (Inland being busy with other projects) to manufacture 164,450 of the guns, with delivery to begin in December 1942. However, Marlin had problems tooling up to produce the new gun, in particular with dies for several parts to be made using powdered metal sintering. Actual delivery of the first guns did not happen until May of 1943. In the meantime, Hyde and Inland had continued working on cheaper and simpler designs, and created the stamped sheet metal M3 “Grease Gun”. By the time the M2 was actually ready for delivery, the M3 had been tested and accepted by the Army as a better replacement than the M2. By mid-June, the M2 was declared obsolete and Marlin’s contract cancelled.
In total only about 500 M2 submachine guns were made, with (I believe) 6 surviving today. The example in this video is a semiautomatic-only reproduction made from scratch by a viewer of the channel, who graciously offered to loan it to me for this filming. Thanks, K!
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February 8, 2019
Equality comes to the US Army’s fitness standards
NBC News reported on the new US Army non-gendered fitness testing standards:
The Army is developing a new, more grueling and complex fitness exam that adds dead lifts, power throws and other exercises designed to make soldiers more fit and ready for combat. “I am prepared to be utterly embarrassed,” Sampson said on a recent morning, two days before he was to take the test.
Commanders have complained in recent years that the soldiers they get out of basic training aren’t fit enough. Nearly half of the commanders surveyed last year said new troops coming into their units could not meet the physical demands of combat. Officials also say about 12 percent of soldiers at any one time cannot deploy because of injuries.
In addition, there has long been a sense among many senior officials that the existing fitness test does not adequately measure the physical attributes needed for the battlefield, said Gen. Stephen Townsend, head of U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command.
The new test, “may be harder, but it is necessary,” Townsend said.
Reaching the new fitness levels will be challenging. Unlike the old fitness test, which graded soldiers differently based on age and gender, the new one will be far more physically demanding and will not adjust the passing scores for older or female soldiers.
This may be a case of a change that — on the surface — is all about equality, but will almost certainly work to reduce the number of women and older soldiers qualified for front-line combat duty. Which will not sit well with the non-military commentariat who will only see the drop in female participation and not necessarily the egalitarian reasons why.
This isn’t what we normally think of as an increase in justice and righteousness in society but it is indeed so – the US Army is to bias its fitness standards against women. It is going to do this by insisting that men and women be able to meet exactly the same standards. Obviously enough, in logic, demanding equal standards is not bias but that’s not the way that gender works in the current world. That fewer women pursue the top jobs and thus fewer get them is taken to be bias rather than that fewer so pursue. That there are fewer female engineers is apparently bias while the personal choices that lead to more female nurses is not.
[…]
We’re a sexually dimorphic species, the male and female physiques differ. Of course, there are women who can pass high and strict fitness tests. But there are fewer of them than men at any particular standard. Which is why the older tests were gendered. Women had to meet a good standard for women, men for men.
So, now think of this from the viewpoint of the Army. Great societal pressure to open up all jobs to all and any gender. It might even be that’s righteous too. But that did mean that the tests for women concerning lifting and hauling had to be different. Otherwise there simply wouldn’t be enough women who could pass them to get to anything like equality.
February 6, 2019
Yes, Minister – The North
Greger Tomasson
Published on 9 Oct 2012
January 30, 2019
WW2 from German perspective
FootageArchive – Videos From The Past
Published on 18 Dec 2012Welcome to FootageArchive! On this channel you’ll find historic and educational videos from the 1900s. Watch, learn, and take a trip back in time as we gain insight into a previous time. Subscribe for more.
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January 25, 2019
The Royal Canadian Regiment and The Battle of Paardeberg
The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered
Published on 1 Jan 2019The forgotten history of a storied regiment. This is the second episode of a special holiday series featuring the History Guy’s hat collection. It was originally made as exclusive content for the channel’s patrons on Patreon. You can get exclusive content too by giving as little as one dollar a month to The History Guy at https://www.patreon.com/TheHistoryGuy.
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All events are portrayed in historical context and for educational purposes. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
he History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered is the place to find short snippets of forgotten history from five to fifteen minutes long. If you like history too, this is the channel for you.
January 17, 2019
How effective was the Tiger really?
Military History Visualized
Published on 18 Dec 2018There are quite many debates about the Panzerkampfwagen VI Ausführung E & B – the Tiger & Königstiger – tanks, so in this video we look at how effective or ineffective these panzers were in combat. This means we look at doctrine, kill to loss ratios, mission accomplishment and various other issues.
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» twitter – https://twitter.com/MilHiVisualizedMilitary 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.
January 11, 2019
Battle of Stalingrad (German perspective)
FootageArchive – Videos From The Past
Published on 16 Jan 2014Welcome to FootageArchive! On this channel you’ll find historic and educational videos from the 1900s. Watch, learn, and take a trip back in time as we gain insight into a previous time. Subscribe for more.
Note: this video contains archived public domain / licensed footage. This footage serves documentary purposes on world history and is to be viewed as educational.
January 9, 2019
QotD: When the solution to one problem becomes a bigger problem
A couple of weeks ago I posted an article about the important of “junior leadership” in the military, especially, but, by extension, in all enterprises. My point was that if one lays a good, firm, foundation of “junior leadership” (tank and rifle section and troop and platoon commanders in the Army) then everything else ~ senior leadership, management, operations and even strategy ~ will probably thrive, but, if the foundation is weak, poorly laid, then success is unlikely in anything, and, if it does occur, it will be by accident.
I am reminded that back in the 1960s one of the (many) problems than then Minister of National Defence Paul Hellyer wanted to solve was pay. The Navy, Army and Air Force were having some trouble recruiting in the late 1950s and early 1960s: the post war recessions were over, the economy was growing, the threat of war seemed to be receding and military pay was quite low … all those things made recruiting and retaining the right people more difficult ~ especially for a military that was changing, rapidly, into a technologically sophisticated organization. There had been several boards and panels, reporting to both Prime Ministers Diefenbaker and Pearson, recommending new, better, higher pay scales for the military but little action had been taken because there was no public appetite for military pay raises. Paul Hellyer decided to ‘work around’ the problem by changing the definitions of “junior leadership.” Whereas, prior to the mid 1960s, the tank or infantry section commander had been a corporal (a rank that one could, theoretically, achieve after only 18 months of training ~ and 20 or 21 year old corporals were not rare, I was one) and the platoon or troop commanders were lieutenants, Mr Hellyer changed the rank of tank and section commander to sergeant (a rank that, typically, takes 10 years to achieve) and made promotion to corporal automatic, subject only to passing a trade/speciality skill course, and he made troop and platoon commanders captains and lowered the time that had to be spent as a lieutenant.
The effect was to debase the rank of corporal ~ which still retained its status as a “non commissioned officer” rank in the National Defence Act and Queen’s Regulations ~ by making privates and corporals interchangeable as “workers,” and, equally, to debase the captain rank by making captains and lieutenants interchangeable as first level combat commanders. In effect, while trying to solve one problem, Mr Hellyer created another ~ which I believe might be more serious.
Ted Campbell, “The foundation (2)”, Ted Campbell’s Point of View, 2017-02-21.
January 7, 2019
The Private Army of the British East India Company
Brandon F.
Published on 15 Dec 2018Before the days of the Raj, British India was ruled by a private corporation: The Honourable East India Company. The Company, which began in India as a purely mercantile institution, eventually came to control vast territories across the subcontinent. These wild frontiers and busy cities required garrisons to defend them, and the expansion of Company interests demanded the ability to wage war. To do this, the Company commanded a massive private army. Made up of both European and Indian soldiers, and working in close — if not always frictionless — tandem with H.M.’s regiments, it was a fascinating institution that only came to an end with the massive Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 and the dissolution of Company rule.
In this video, I discuss the organization of this army, and the way in which it related to government forces.
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January 5, 2019
QotD: Nasser’s anti-American success, funded by the USA
If you’re familiar with the history of the region, you already know that Nasser aligned Egypt with the Soviet Union anyway and whipped up the Arab world into an anti-American frenzy. Ike’s gamble failed. Nasser’s heart was with Moscow all along. He cleverly used Eisenhower as a tool for his own ambitions and planned to stab the United States in the front from the very beginning.
One of Nasser’s deceptions should be familiar to anyone who has followed the painful ins and outs of botched Arab-Israeli peacemaking. Over and over again, Nasser used a strategy Doran calls “dangle and delay.” He repeatedly dangled the tantalizing idea of peace between Egypt and Israel in front of Eisenhower’s eyes, only to delay moving forward for one bogus reason after another. He never planned to make peace with Israel or even to engage in serious talks.
Nasser did, however, participate in theatrical arms negotiations with Washington that he knew would never go anywhere.
Eisenhower wanted to equip the Egyptian army. Nasser wasn’t stupid, though. He knew that Ike would attach strings to the deal. Egypt’s soldiers would need to be trained by Americans, and they’d be reliant on Americans for spare and replacement parts. Nasser really wanted to be armed by and tied to the Soviet Union, but had to pretend otherwise lest Eisenhower side with Britain, France, and Israel. So Nasser slowly sabotaged talks with the United States in such a way that made Washington seem unreasonable. That way, when he turned to the Soviet Union for weapons, he could half-plausibly say he had no choice.
Nasser did such a good job pretending to be pro-American that he convinced the United States to give him a world-class broadcasting network that allowed him to speak to the entire Arab world over the radio. Washington expected him to use his radio addresses to rally the Arab world behind America against the Russians. Instead, he used it to blast the United States with virulently anti-American propaganda and to undermine the West’s Arab allies. “Nasser,” Doran writes, “was the first revolutionary leader in the postwar Middle East to exploit the technology in order to call over the heads of the monarchs to the man on the street. Suddenly the Hashemite monarchy [in Iraq and Jordan] found itself sitting atop volcanoes.”
Nasser strode the Arab world like a colossus after his American-made victory in the Suez Crisis, and he became more brazenly anti-American as he gathered strength. Conning Ike was no longer possible, but Nasser didn’t need the United States anymore anyway.
Michael J. Totten, “We Are Still Living With Eisenhower’s Biggest Mistake”, The Tower Magazine, 2017-02.
December 28, 2018
Who are the best jungle troops?
Lindybeige
Published on 5 Dec 2018The answer may seem weird at first, but there is an historical reason for it.
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Shot on location in the Petén rainforest, Guatemala.
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December 26, 2018
Operation Sealion: Actually a Bad Idea
Historigraph
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December 2, 2018
Canada’s initial WW1 infantry weapon, the Ross rifle
During the Boer War, the British were busy producing Lee-Enfield rifles for the British army and didn’t have enough extra manufacturing capacity to fulfill a modest Canadian order. The government of the day took this opportunity to try to find a distinctly Canadian weapon to equip the (tiny) Canadian militia. They ended up purchasing the Ross rifle, which is what the men of the Canadian Corps took into the field during the First World War. It didn’t go well, as the highly accurate Ross was not well-suited to the rough-and-tumble life of an infantry weapon in the trenches of Flanders. The mechanism was prone to jamming in muddy conditions and did not work well with low-quality ammunition. It became a national scandal, and eventually most of the Ross rifles were replaced with British Lee-Enfields, except for the sniper weapons (where the Ross was much better suited to the needs of the job). The National Interest has the story:
Ross rifle model 1910B
Photo by Vaarok via Wikimedia Commons.
Tested head to head with the Lee-Enfield Mark I, the Ross did well in some of the trials but came up short in other crucial ones, such as the endurance test. Some 1,000 rounds were fired through each rifle and, while the Lee-Enfield functioned well, the Ross repeatedly jammed. After the 300th round, the heat of firing melted away the foresight, which was fastened with common solder. Ross explained that prior tests had been conducted with ammunition of American and Austrian manufacture and that “the standard called for in the manufacture of British .303 cartridges is not of the same precision and quality of material hence greater limits have to be allowed.” His dubious explanation was accepted by the committee.
Already the enterprise was off on the wrong foot. Due to Borden’s choices, the investigative committee leaned in favor of the Ross. It was obvious that no accurate appraisal of anything can result from a biased investigative body. Hughes in particular championed the rifle, and his stubborn resistance to evidence that contradicted his opinions bordered on the irrational. To the end he would insist that the Ross was superior to the Lee-Enfield, even after thousands of Canadian soldiers had simply thrown theirs away on the battlefield.
If the weapon had flaws, so did the purchase contract. Under its terms, Ross was to provide 12,000 rifles during 1903 and 10,000 every year thereafter, with a 75 percent advance on all rifles ordered for the duration of the contract, which was not stipulated. The cost of the Ross was not to exceed that of a Lee-Enfield in Britain, yet the price set was $25, compared to $18.27 the War Office paid for a Lee-Enfield. The contract also stated that materials and machinery Ross needed to import to meet the manufacturing requirements were to be exempt from import taxes. Because there was no division outlined between military and sporting rifles, Ross could get all his imports duty-free, regardless of whether they were built for government contract or not. There was no guarantee Ross would provide more rifles in the event of a national emergency, only that he would provide 10,000 annually after the initial 12,000. There was also no mention in the contract of providing a bayonet.
[…]
The final verdict on the Ross was rendered in the vile ooze of mud, filth, and rotting corpses that characterized trench warfare during the Great War. From the first day of fighting, the frequent jamming of the Ross forced soldiers to strike the bolts with entrenching tools or boot heels to clear them. The problem was attributed to the British ammunition being used, which was slightly larger than Canadian- manufactured rounds, but a significant factor was faulty manufacturing that resulted in deformed firing chambers. Long and unwieldy, the Ross was also not well suited for use in narrow trenches. Soon, British Small Magazine Lee-Enfield rifles began appearing in the Canadian ranks, causing First Division commander Lt. Gen. E.A.H. Alderson to issue an order that his men were not permitted to be in possession of SMLE rifles. It was an order largely ignored.
If earlier investigations had repeatedly given the rifle a pass and rendered a skewed verdict, the Canadian soldiers in the trenches did not. In April 1915, after the bloody fight at the Second Battle of Ypres, Belgium, which also saw the first gas attacks of the war, 1,452 of the 5,000 surviving Canadian soldiers threw away their Ross rifles and picked up Lee-Enfields from British casualties. The verdict of the fighting soldier had been delivered. With confidence in the rifle badly damaged, British Commander in Chief Sir John French issued orders rearming the First Canadian Division with the SMLE.
Not all the reports from the line were negative; the superb accuracy and faster loading capability of the Ross made it an excellent sniper’s rifle, as Sergeant William Carey, one of Canada’s top snipers, discovered one morning at St. Eloi. He and a German sniper spotted each other at the same time and both fired, each missing the other. But the bolt action of the Ross gave Carey the edge; he was able to reload and fire faster than the German, and his next shot was lethal. Although it would be replaced as the standard issue service rifle, the Ross would remain a valuable sniper’s weapon.
