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.
June 15, 2025
Day Three – Guderian, Rommel, and The Race to Cross The Meuse – Ten Days in Sedan
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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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June 1, 2025
Panzers Attack! – Ten Days in Sedan
World War Two
Published 31 May 2025May 10, 1940. A new kind of warfare comes to the fore as a German Panzer Group rumbles through the Ardennes towards Sedan. Heinz Guderian has one goal in mind — Get to the Meuse! If he can manage that, then the Battle of France may be over before it even begins. Can the Allies hold back the armoured armada?
Chapters
01:05 German Forces
04:13 Blitzkrieg Theory, Applied
07:37 The Advance Begins
14:50 The Allied Plan
17:59 A Tight Schedule
20:57 Summary
21:16 Conclusion
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May 23, 2025
Bill Bailey – The Doctor Who theme re-imagined as Belgian jazz
Royal Ballet and Opera
Published 29 Jul 2021Comedian Bill Bailey re-imagines the Doctor Who theme as Jacques Brel-esque Belgian jazz. Taken from his DVD Bill Bailey’s Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra.
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May 18, 2025
The FAL for British Troop Trials in 1954: X8E1 & X8E2
Forgotten Weapons
Published 21 Feb 2020The NATO rifle trials of the early 1950s eventually chose the 7.62mm x 51mm cartridge, and the British and Belgians agreed on the FAL rifle to shoot it (and they thought the US would as well, but that’s another story). The British government formally accepted the FAL for troop trials, and in 1954 an order for 4,000 X8E1 rifles (with iron sights) and 1,000 X8E2 rifles (with SUIT 1x optical sights) was placed. These rifles were mechanically the same as what would be finalized as the L1A1 rifle, but they include a number of differing features. Both models had 3-position selector switches allowing automatic fire, and they also had manual forward assists on the bolt handles. The iron sights had top covers with integrated stripper clip guides, as there was concern that troops would have to manually reload their magazines, and stripper clips would speed this process up.
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April 30, 2025
The Korean War Week 45 – The Chinese Spring Offensive Begins! – April 29, 1951
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 29 Apr 2025This is a week of nothing but battle action as the Chinese Spring Offensive crashes down on the UN forces like a tidal wave — literally hitting them along all of the front lines across the whole Korean Peninsula.
Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:46 Recap
01:59 The First Night
07:25 The Next Day
10:19 The Eastern Sector
13:56 The Kapyong Road
15:57 The Gloster Surrounded
19:48 Flight of the Glosters
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April 26, 2025
The Fairey Battle – Light Bomber, Heavy Losses
Rex’s Hangar
Published 17 Nov 2021Originally conceived in the early 1930s, by the time the first prototype of the Fairey Battle flew in 1936 it was already becoming obsolete. However, the RAF desperately needed combat aircraft, and so the Battle was put into production. It would go on to fight in the Battle of France, where it would take exceptionally heavy losses due to its slow speed and poor defensive armament. After being retired from front-line duty, the Fairey Battle would go on to becoming a successful training aircraft for the RAF and Commonwealth forces, serving the needs of combat flight schools in Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.
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Producing these videos is a hobby of mine. I have a passion for history, and personally own a large collection of books, journals and other texts, and endeavor to do as much research as possible. However if there are any mistakes, please don’t hesitate to reach out and correct anything 🙂
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April 13, 2025
The Most Pointless Battle of WW1? – Passchendaele 1917
The Great War
Published 11 Apr 2025For more than three long months in 1917, Allied and German soldiers fought tooth and nail over a battlefield churned into a sea of sucking mud and shellholes by the guns. Hundreds of thousands were killed and wounded, some of them drowning in the soupy ground — for Allied gains of just a few kilometers. So why did the Battle of Passchendaele happen at all, and was it the most pointless battle of the First World War? (more…)
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March 15, 2025
Canada’s Unique WW2 Rocket Artillery: The Land Mattress
OTD Military History
Published 12 Nov 2022The Land Mattress, officially known as Projector, Rocket 3-inch, No 8 Mk 1, was the Canadian rocket launcher used during World War 2. The last surviving example is on display at the @CanWarMus.
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March 2, 2025
Which is better – Spitfire or Bf 109? – Battle of Britain Fireside Chat
World War Two
Published 1 Mar 2025Indy and Sparty answer questions about the Battle of Britain! Spitfire vs Bf 109, the Big Wing Debate, and whether Goering had any kind of plan for the battle.
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January 26, 2025
The FAL in Cuba: Left Arm of the Communist World?
Forgotten Weapons
Published 7 Oct 2024The full version of this video, including the fully automatic fire not permitted on YouTube, is available on History of Weapons & War here:
https://forgottenweapons.vhx.tv/video…
In 1958, Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista ordered some 35,000 FAL rifles from FN, including both regular infantry rifles have heavy-barreled FALO light machine guns. Before any of them could arrive, however, Batista fled the country and his guns were delivered to Fidel Castro beginning in July 1959.At this time, the FAL was still a fairly new rifle, having been first adopted by Venezuela in 1954 and Belgium in 1954/55. A few changes had been made by the time of the Cuban contract (like the slightly taller sights requested by the Germans), but these were still Type 1 receivers with early features.
The first consignment of rifles arrived from Belgium to Havana July 9, 1959 and this consisted of 8,000 rifles and ten LMGs. A second shipment of 2,000 rifles arrived October 15th, and a third of 2,500 rifles and 500 LMGs on December 1st. The final ship bringing FALs to Cuba (the French freighter La Courbe) docked in Havana March 4th 1960, and suffered a pair of explosions while bring unloaded. Several hundred people were killed or injured, and Castro blamed the CIA for the event. In total, the Cubans received 12,500 FAL rifles and 510 FALO light machine guns.
The FALs were used, but many ended up being exported to other parties, as Cuba generally moved to Soviet bloc small arms starting in 1960 (when they began receiving weapons from the USSR and Czechoslovakia). These were often scrubbed of their Cuban markings before shipment, and can be found with a round hole milled in the magazine well where the Cuban crest originally was, similar to how some South African FALs were scrubbed before being sent to Rhodesia.
Thanks to Sellier & Bellot for giving me access to this pair of very scarce Cuban FALs to film for you!
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January 24, 2025
Was WW1 Pointless? – War Goals Of Every Major Nation
The Great War
Published 13 Sept 2024The First World War is often seen as futile and pointless. Millions of men fought and died for years, but no one was satisfied with the outcome, which did not bring a lasting peace. But that is not how governments and many people saw the war as it was being fought. So what did the countries fighting actually want to achieve? In other words, what was the purpose of the First World War?
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January 18, 2025
The Battle of the Bulge, LGBTQ+ Victims & Atomic Secrets – WW2 – OOTF 038
World War Two
Published 17 Jan 2025This episode of Out of the Foxholes dives deep into your WWII questions. From LGBTQ+ persecution during and after the war, to the potential impact of diverting Battle of the Bulge troops to the Eastern Front, and Ukrainian collaboration with the Germans, we unravel the complexities of war. Join us as we tackle the secrets, strategies, and untold stories of WWII.
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November 1, 2024
FN M249S semiauto for military collectors
Forgotten Weapons
Published Jul 10, 2024In 2015, FN USA introduced a Military Collector product line — semiautomatic versions of their military contract small arms. These were the M4, M16, and — most interestingly — the M249 SAW. The SAW is a version of FN’s Minimi light machine gun, developed in 1974 and adopted by the US in 1982. The semiauto version, designated M249S, is exactly the same as the military M249 but adapted to fire from a closed bolt in semiautomatic only, making it a non-NFA item like any other semiautomatic rifle. The semiauto conversion as done by essentially chopping off the back of the bolt carrier to act as a linear hammer, thus allowing the use of the original style of trigger mechanism. Since its introduction in 2016, FN USA has made more than 10,000 of these rifles, truly proving the depth of American collector interest in this sort of thing (much to the surprise of the Belgian FN administration …).
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August 24, 2024
How the CIA eventually got Patrice Lumumba assassinated
The CIA decided early on that the first democratically elected Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo was being controlled by their Soviet opponents and needed to be killed:
Patrice Émery Lumumba, first Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo on 27 December 1960.
Unknown photographer
I’m still making my way through David Talbot’s 2015 book The Devil’s Chessboard, a history that explores the life of CIA Director Allen Dulles and the sordid history of the agency.
There are too many grisly anecdotes to recount showing how the CIA was involved in unlawful and unethical acts all over the world, but one that sticks out was the book’s treatment of Patrice Lumumba, an African nationalist who served as the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo before he was killed in 1961 — with a shove from the CIA.
Lumumba was a thorn in the side of the agency, and his left-leaning politics led CIA officials to believe he was a stooge for the USSR (he wasn’t, as the CIA later admitted). So it was determined that Lumumba had to go—one way or the other.
First, a coup was arranged to have the democratically-elected Lumumba, who was demanding full independence for the Congolese people, removed from office and placed under arrest. To this end, the CIA tapped a young military colonel named Joseph Mobutu, who was friendly with Belgian intelligence (the Congo had long been under Belgian colonial rule) and would go on to rule for decades until he was ousted himself in a 1997 rebellion.
Then the CIA began exploring options to eliminate the popular Lumumba. Being the CIA, a single method was not chosen. Instead, various methods were explored to take out the Congolese leader and multiple people were tapped, including a pair of hitmen the agency had hired from Europe’s criminal underworld.
Talbot explains how the CIA equipped one of these cutthroats with a tube of poisoned toothpaste. Why toothpaste? Because one Dr. Ewen Cameron, at the behest of the CIA, had analyzed Lumumba and noted his immaculate white teeth. This led him to suggest a simple way to eliminate the troublesome leader: poison his dental products.
“In the end, the CIA did not go through with the toothpaste plot,” writes Talbot, “apparently deciding that poisoning a popular leader while he was under UN protective custody in his own house would be too flagrant a deed—one that, if traced back to the agency, would lead to unpleasant international repercussions.”
Instead, days before the inauguration of John F. Kennedy, the CIA arranged to have Lumumba chartered off on a plane to Katanga, a province that had broken from the Congo and was ruled by factions hostile to Lumumba.
This all but sealed Lumumba’s fate, CIA officials later testified.
“I think there was a general assumption, once we learned that he had been sent to Katanga, that his goose was cooked,” CIA station chief James Devlin, who helped orchestrate Lumumba’s fall, quipped to the Church Committee years later.
Devlin was right. During his flight to Katanga, Lumumba was beaten to a pulp. Then he was driven by jeep to a farm and beaten by members of rival political factions. The men, Talbot makes clear, had clear ties to US and Belgian intelligence.
“Eventually he was killed, not by our poisons, but beaten to death, apparently by men who had agency cryptonyms and received agency salaries,” said CIA agent John Stockwell, who was sent to the Congo in the aftermath of the assassination.
The Soviets managed a propaganda win out of the CIA’s clumsy wet work, renaming the Peoples’ Friendship University of the USSR (primarily used for training non-Soviet citizens from “fraternal socialist” and “unaligned” nations in Marxist-Leninist views) to the Patrice Lumumba Peoples’ Friendship University.
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