Quotulatiousness

March 19, 2021

Did Soviet Soldiers Ever Get Time Off? – WW2 – OOTF 021

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

World War Two
Published 18 Mar 2021

Ever wonder if the Kriegsmarine saw any action in the Pacific Ocean? Or if the average Soviet soldier ever got a vacation from the most destructive conflict in the history of humanity? You can find out the answers in this episode of Out of the Foxholes!

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Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at: https://timeghost.tv

Follow WW2 day by day on Instagram @ww2_day_by_day – https://www.instagram.com/ww2_day_by_day
Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sources

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Lewis Braithwaite and Dennis Stepanov
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Dennis Stepanov and Lewis Braithwaite
Edited by: Miki Cackowski
Sound design: Marek Kamiński
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory​)

Colorizations by:
Daniel Weiss

Sources:
David Rumsey Map Collection, David Rumsey Map Center, Stanford Libraries
Bundesarchiv
Portrait of Robert Eyssen, courtesy of Gareth Collins
Komet schematics, courtesy of Rama https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi…​
Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe
State Library of Queensland

Soundtracks from the Epidemic Sound:
Phoenix Tail – “At the Front”
Johannes Bornlof – “The Inspector 4”
Howard Harper-Barnes – “Prescient”
Jo Wandrini – “Puzzle Of Complexity”

Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com​.

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

March 17, 2021

Sunny Beaches, Fascist Leaders, and Nazi Spies – WW2 – Spies & Ties 01

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

World War Two
Published 16 Mar 2021

South America is home to one of Germany’s most effective spy-networks. In Operation Bolivar, dozens of German operatives transmit information from and to the USA, Brazil, Argentina, and other South and Central American countries, giving the Abwehr and SD access to crucial information on politics, economics, and military business.
(more…)

March 5, 2021

Privateering today?

Filed under: China, History, Law, Military, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In a recent post at Astral Codex Ten, Scott Alexander posted a link to an article in the US Naval Institute Proceedings putting forward arguments for the United States issuing modern day Letters of Marque. Today he posted a few reactions from his readers to the proposal:

On the article about privateers, local naval expert Bean writes:

    It’s time for the standard disclaimer any time Proceedings comes up: Proceedings is intended as a forum for discussion of matters of interest to naval officers, and it is not peer reviewed. Often very not peer reviewed. Like in this case. Please don’t judge the USNI on the basis of this stuff. They do a lot of good work.

    And yes, it is that stupid. First, privateering is probably illegal today. The US didn’t sign the 1856 Paris declaration outlawing it, but the ban is almost certainly considered customary international law today, and thus binding on the US, too. (International law is very weird.)

    Second, it makes no sense. It was something that people did in an era when the ability of the state to do things was sharply constrained, and it was never all that profitable. These days, the government is a lot more effective, and if it wants to hunt Chinese commerce (never mind the issues about who owns the cargo, which is rather different in the days of worldwide communications and the shipping container) it will make auxiliary commerce raiders of its own. There’s definitely no need to have a DDG sit outside a Brazilian port waiting. Take any reasonable civilian ship (big yacht, fishing boat, tug, whatever) and fit it with a couple of 40mm guns and a boarding party. Have it do the waiting instead.

And our other defense expert, John Schilling, writes:

    Modern naval weapons are too good at sinking ships, whereas privateering requires capturing ships intact to be profitable. For a trivial, and in this context uncontroversial, investment, China can equip their merchant fleet with defensive weapons that will sink any privateer, unless the privateer sinks them first.

    – Privateers, being incapable of surviving a fight with real warships (especially modern ones), need to be able to hide from and if necessary outrun enemy warships. That’s a lot harder to manage in a world of radio, radar, maritime patrol aircraft, and satellites. Harder still if you insist on taking prizes, which will be Lojacked beyond your ability to clear at sea. Even in a hot war with the United State, China will probably be able to spare e.g. an H-6K for a day to sink the privateer that just sank one of China’s freighters, and that’s all it will take.

    – The rest of the world regards privateering as flat-out illegal, so virtually all of the ports of the world will be closed to the privateers *and their prizes*. Operating in the South China Sea directly from Hawaii, without any intermediate bases (what’s left of Guam will have its hands full), is going to be logistically challenging to say the least. And the value of that prize ship you just took is greatly diminished if it can only be used in the US coastal trade, its cargo sold only on the US domestic market never to be reexported.

    This is a stupid idea that keeps coming back every year or two because somebody read too many Napoleonic sea-adventure stories and thinks they’re the only one who read those stories so their clever “obscure” idea is something the rest of us haven’t heard and rejected a dozen times already.

There’s a problem in medicine where people think doctors are trustworthy experts. While this is often true, there are about a million doctors, and some tiny fraction of them are insane. The reasonable doctors mostly keep their mouths shut, but sometimes an insane doctor will endorse some sort of terrible alternative medicine, and then people will get excited: “A doctor endorsed it! It must be real!” The fact is, you can find doctors saying pretty much any bizarre thing — I hear some of them even have Substacks.

My thought when reading that article was “this sounds crazy … but wait! It’s written by a colonel and published by the US Naval Institute! That sounds just wacky enough to make a good link!”

Now I am concerned that colonels work the same way as doctors. I wonder what else is like this.

Colonels absolutely do work the same way as doctors, lawyers, and (especially) journalists — Michael Chrichton christened this the “Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect”.

The topic is as good an excuse as I’m likely to find to post Mark Knopfler’s “Privateering”:

“Privateering”

Yon’s my privateer
See how trim she lies
To every man a lucky hand
And every man a prize
I live to ride the ocean
The mighty world around
To take a little plunder
And to hear the cannon sound
To lay with pretty women
To drink Madeira wine
To hear the rollers thunder
On a shore that isn’t mine

Privateering we will go
Privateering, yo ho ho ho
Privateering we will go
Yo ho ho, yo ho ho

The people on your man o’ war
Are treated worse than scum
I’m no flogging captain
And by God I’ve sailed with some
Come with me to Barbary
We’ll ply there up and down
Not quite exactly
In the service of the Crown
To lay with pretty women
To drink Madeira wine
To hear the rollers thunder
On a shore that isn’t mine

Privateering we will go
Privateering, yo ho ho ho
Privateering we will go
Yo ho ho, yo ho ho

Look’ee there’s my privateer
She’s small but she can sting
Licensed to take prizes
With a letter from the King
I love the streets and taverns
Of a pretty foreign town
Tip my hat to the dark-eyed ladies
As we sally up and down
To lay with pretty women
To drink Madeira wine
To hear the rollers thunder
On a shore that isn’t mine

Privateering we will go
Privateering, yo ho ho ho
Privateering we will go
Yo ho ho, yo ho ho

Britannia needs her privateers
Each time she goes to war
Death to all her enemies
Though prizes matter more
Come with me to Barbary
We’ll ply there up and down
Not quite exactly
In the service of the Crown
To lay with pretty women
To drink Madeira wine
To hear the rollers thunder
On a shore that isn’t mine

Privateering we will go
Privateering, yo ho ho ho
Privateering we will go
Yo ho ho, yo ho ho

February 11, 2021

“… the entire Canadian constitution boiled down to the government saying, essentially, ‘trust us'”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, History — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Andrew Potter on the interesting and almost certainly unCanadian notion that the Prime Minister actually accept responsibility for things that happen on his watch:

Former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien speaking at the “No to the war in Iraq: 10 years later” colloquium, 15 March 2013.
Detail of a photo by Gopmtl1 via Wikimedia Commons.

The late UBC law professor Wesley Pue once remarked that the entire Canadian constitution boiled down to the government saying, essentially, “trust us.” He was speaking in the wake of the release of the Hughes Report into the APEC affair.

A refresher: In 1997 it was Canada’s turn to host the annual APEC summit, a free trade and cooperation gabfest for countries in the Pacific Rim. Prime Minister Jean Chrétien decided to hold the meeting on the campus of UBC. Given that it is probably one of the most gorgeous pieces of real estate in the country, Chrétien probably thought he was being a good host. But some UBC students objected to the presence of Indonesian dictator Suharto at their school, and so they marched, held up signs, blocked campus roads and exits, chanted slogans, the usual student protest stuff.

Chrétien was clearly embarrassed, and orders went out from the PMO to clear the roads. The Mounties started telling students their campus was now a “Charter-free zone,” arresting a bunch of them. In a notorious incident captured by CBC cameras, RCMP Staff Sgt. Hugh Stewart walked amongst the students hosing them down with pepper spray. (Asked about the incident at a press conference, Chrétien made a joke.)

The only proper investigation into the affair was led by commissioner Ted Hughes, who issued his report in the summer of 2001. Hughes found that the RCMP had behaved by turns incompetently and unprofessionally and that they had systematically violated the Charter rights of the students. Further, Hughes found that they had done so under direction from the PMO — in particular at the behest of its director of operations, Jean Carle. While Chrétien himself escaped direct censure (Hughes could find no evidence that Carle had acted on Chrétien’s explicit orders), Pue pointed out that the fundamental principle of responsible government requires that the prime minister accept responsibility for what happened. Yet Chrétien did not. He neither accepted personal responsibility, nor did he throw Carle under the bus. Instead, what happened was typically Canadian: the matter simply went away.

The APEC affair serves as a useful reminder of a fundamental truth about our system of government. As Pue noted, there are virtually no effective parliamentary or legal checks on a prime minister’s authority, and as a result it is pretty much impossible to hold our executive branch to account. We need to just trust them.

[…]

It’s worth rehearsing all of this because we are going through a rather extended “just trust us” phase in Ottawa. After shuttering parliament last spring, ostensibly to focus their energies on fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, Justin Trudeau’s Liberals spent the summer dreaming of “building back better” while fighting a ferocious rearguard action to keep MPs from finding out the truth about payments to Trudeau’s family by a charity. Trudeau has since spent the better part of the last six months governing by press conference from the front steps of his cottage, but even as the extreme levels of federal spending continue, and even as scandals and reports of gross mismanagement pile up, the Liberals have been brazenly testing the waters for a spring election.

January 22, 2021

Japan’s Only Pacific “Ally” – Phibun’s Thailand – WW2 Biography Special

Filed under: History, Japan, Military, Pacific, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 21 Jan 2021

Thailand’s prime minister and de-facto dictator Plaek Phibunsongkhram imported European fascism, nationalism and militarism to his country. But when Japan’s threat to South-East Asia became imminent, Phibun didn’t know what to do. His story is one of utter indecisiveness and opportunism.

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at: https://timeghost.tv

Follow WW2 day by day on Instagram @ww2_day_by_day – https://www.instagram.com/ww2_day_by_day
Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sources

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Joram Appel
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Joram Appel
Edited by: Miki Cackowski
Sound design: Marek Kamiński
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory)

Sources:
IWM HU 675
Portrait of Plaek Phibunsongkhram, courtesy of 冯銮披汶 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi…
From the Noun Project: people by ProSymbols, tick by akash k

Soundtracks from the Epidemic Sound:
Johannes Bornlof – “Deviation In Time”
Philip Ayers – “Trapped in a Maze”
Rannar Sillard – “March Of The Brave 4”
Fabien Tell – “Last Point of Safe Return”
Johannes Bornlof – “The Inspector 4”
Farrell Wooten – “Blunt Object”

Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

December 28, 2020

Another aircraft that’s about to become a political football in Canada

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Ted Campbell discusses the need to replace the Royal Canadian Air Force long-haul VIP transport aircraft (the current CC-150 Polaris planes were built and first operated by Wardair in 1987 and obtained by the government in 1993). It’s traditional for the government to be assailed by the opposition and the media (at least when it’s a Conservative government in office) for wanting to spend far too many dollars for unnecessarily luxurious planes (Jean Chretien in opposition called the Polaris a “flying Taj Mahal”)*. The Polaris and its eventual replacement do a lot more than just fly junketing politicians around:

RCAF CC-150 Polaris at Zurich, Switzerland on 25 January, 2012.
Photo by Kambui via Wikimedia Commons

… let’s all remember please that the primary roles of this fleet of aircraft are to transport Canadian troops to wherever in the world they might need to go, for operations, and to refuel our jet fighters when they are deployed overseas, and to carry cargo, but smaller loads that do not require a big CC-130 Hercules or the mighty CC-177 Globemaster III. The Royal Canadian Air Force needs a fleet of specially modified aircraft for those roles. There are several more modern “tankers” available including the Boeing KC-46 which is used by the USA and Israel and the Airbus A330 Multi Role Tanker Transport (MRTT) which is used by several nations including Australia and the United Kingdom. […] Some commercial aircraft can be converted, easily and quickly, from carrying passengers in seats to carrying cargo in containers to carrying aircraft fuel in giant bladders with refuelling hoses attached. They are true multi-role aircraft. They can also be converted to VIP aircraft with special suites for sleeping, with showers, work spaces, secure telecommunications and regular conventional passenger seats for support staff and journalists.

The key bit of a real VIP aircraft is a secure (high-grade encryption) communications and information suite. The prime minister, ministers and senior officials, when en route to a meeting in a foreign capital may need to have discussions that are SECRET-CANADIAN EYES ONLY with senior staff back in Ottawa and they may then need to have a video conference call with, say, the Prime Ministers of e.g. Australia and the United Kingdom using a different security system that allows them to discuss SECRET-FIVE EYES ONLY materiel. You’re talking a reliable satellite communications system (with a back-up, too) and various cryptographic terminals and the people to operate and maintain them. The comm/IT suite is complex and expensive. Everything else is optional and, even in the case of a VIP shower stall, pretty cheap, too.

OK, I can already hear the objections, many from Conservatives: “Why doesn’t he fly commercial? He can even fly First Class,” some will say. Aside from some very real security concerns, suppose he has to attend a G-20 meeting in Brazil. There are no flights from Ottawa, there are no direct flights from Toronto. Even if there were he would need an entourage of security and telecommunications/cryptography specialists. I know the Pope charters an Alitalia jet when he travels but I’m afraid that even Air Canada, which has 400± aircraft and carries over 50,000,000 passengers a year, might find it too difficult to keep an aircraft on something close to “hot-standby,” as the RCAF does, for the prime minister. This problem was examined many times over the years and the range of factors ~ security, communications, availability ~ dictate that a dedicated VIP squadron in the Air Force is the best choice … maybe the only sensible choice.

* I rarely say much in favour of former PM Jean Chrétien, but in this particular case he was consistent in his opposition even after being elected: he refused to use the VIP transport during his time in office and attempted to find a buyer for that particular aircraft. Successor Paul Martin had no such aversion and used the aircraft during his premiership.

December 18, 2020

The Warlords of the United Nations – WW2 Special

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, USA, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

World War Two
Published 17 Dec 2020

Following the German declaration of war on America on the 11th of December 1941, Britain gained an invaluable ally. Securing a joint military command between the new partnership will be central to its success, the question is, how can this be achieved?

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at: https://timeghost.tv

Follow WW2 day by day on Instagram @ww2_day_by_day – https://www.instagram.com/ww2_day_by_day
Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sources

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Markus Linke and Indy Neidell
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Markus Linke
Edited by: Miki Cackowski
Sound design: Marek Kamiński
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory)

Colorizations by:
Norman Stewart – https://oldtimesincolor.blogspot.com/
Daniel Weiss
Adrien Fillon – https://www.instagram.com/adrien.colo…
Mikołaj Uchman

Sources:
IWM A 14040, TR153, H 10306, ME(RAF) 5052, A 16709

Soundtracks from Epidemic Sound:
Max Anson – “Ancient Saga”
Johannes Bornlof – “Magnificent March 3”
Howard Harper-Barnes – “London”
Rannar Sillard – “March Of The Brave 4”
Johannes Bornlof – “The Inspector 4”
Phoenix Tail – “At the Front”

Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

November 24, 2020

Ten Minute History – The Thirty Years’ War

Filed under: Europe, France, Germany, History, Military, Religion — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

History Matters
Published 30 Sep 2018

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Tenminhistory
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4973164

Special Thanks to the following Patrons for their support on Patreon:
Chris Fatta
Joshua
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Rbj

This episode of Ten Minute History (like a documentary, only shorter) covers the outbreak of the Bohemian Revolt which was what would eventually spiral out of control into the Thirty Years’ War. The revolt was crushed fairly quickly but sparked intervention by Denmark, who didn’t do too well, and later Sweden who did very well. Both of these were aided by France who decided to get directly involved in 1635. By 1648 the Holy Roman Empire lay in ruins, with Austria and Spain struggling to pay for the war and rebuild the Habsburg Empire. This war saw the rise of Sweden and France but most importantly saw the foundations of modern diplomacy built.

Recommended books:

Mark Greengrass – Christendom Destroyed: Europe 1517-1648. Does a great job of outlying the theological currents in Europe at the time and how all of the religious changes led to the Thirty Years’ War.

Peter H. Wilson – Europe’s Tragedy: A New History of the Thirty Years’ War. The go-to text for the war; incredibly detailed and honestly can’t be beat for the topic. 100% recommend.

November 6, 2020

An American Globalist – Cordell Hull – WW2 Biography Special

Filed under: Americas, History, Japan, USA, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

World War Two
Published 5 Nov 2020

Cordell Hull is the face of American diplomacy in 1941 as it navigates the precarious road to war against Imperial Japan.

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at: https://timeghost.tv

Follow WW2 day by day on Instagram @ww2_day_by_day – https://www.instagram.com/ww2_day_by_day
Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sources

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Francis van Berkel and James Newman
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: James Newman
Edited by: Miki Cackowski
Sound design: Marek Kamiński
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory)

Colorizations by:
Norman Stewart – https://oldtimesincolor.blogspot.com/
Mikolaj Uchman
Spartacus Olsson

Sources:
Naval History & Heritage Command
http://maps.bpl.org
FDR Presidential Library & Museum
Picture of MS St. Louis in Hamburg, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Herbert and Vera Karliner
from the Noun Project: Skull by Muhamad Ulum, Handshake by priyanka, Pickaxe by Luke Anthony Firth, oil barrel by BomSymbols

Soundtracks from the Epidemic Sound:
Howard Harper-Barnes – “London”
Johannes Bornlof – “The Inspector 4”
Farell Wooten – “Blunt Object”
Philip Ayers – “Trapped in a Maze”
Johannes Bornlof – “Deviation In Time”

Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

November 5, 2020

QotD: The idiocy of tariffs

Filed under: Business, Economics, Government, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The entire point of trade, the very purpose of it, is to gain access to the imports. Those things which Johnny Foreigner makes cheaper or better than we do. To tax ourselves because he makes things cheaper or better than we do is simple idiocy. […] Over and above this stupidity there’s the depressing point that trade and trade protection really is a spiral. Here we’ve got the two largest economies on the planet tripping over themselves to punish their own citizenry for their temerity in buying foreign. And as we can see, it is a tit for tat spiral. A little bit of sabre rattling, a response, a larger amount of shouting, a response, then truly impoverishing levels of rock throwing into own harbours and off we go into making our own people less wealthy.

The true sadness here being that the spiral works the other way too. But hugely, vastly, more slowly. GATT was founded in 1947, it became, the process was transferred to, the WTO and it has taken them since then, that two generations, to reduce tariff levels to where they’re not really all that important in trade matters. Something that is being undone in just a couple of months of foolishness. GATT being something of a response to the economic demolition work done by Smoot Hawley of course.

Trade protection does spiral up and spiral down, the sadness being that here’s an asymmetry to the process. The reductions that make us richer take very much longer than the nonsenses that impoverish.

Tim Worstall, “The China, US, Trade War – It’s All Mutual On The Way Down As Well As Up”, Continental Telegraph, 2018-07-11.

November 1, 2020

Polish-Lithuanian War – Caught Between Poland and Soviet Russia I THE GREAT WAR 1920

Filed under: Europe, History, Military, Russia — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

The Great War
Published 31 Oct 2020

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Like the other Baltic states, Lithuania declared independence at the end of World War 1 and was caught in the chaotic and violent situation of 1919 and 1920 when much of Eastern Europe was in turmoil. Territories that today belong to Lithuania were claimed by Poland and Soviet Russia alike — while these two were waging a war in the direct vicinity of Lithuania.

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» SOURCES
Balkelis, Tomas, “From Self-Defense to Revolution: Lithuanian Paramilitary Groups in 1918 and 1919”, in Fleishman, Lazar & Weiner, Amir (eds.) War, Revolution and Governance: The Baltic Countires in the Twentieth Century, (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2018)

Balkelis, Tomas, “Turning Citizens into Soldiers: Baltic Paramilitary Movements after the Great War” in Gerwarth, Robert & Horne, John (eds.), War in Peace: Paramilitary Violence in Europe after the Great War, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)

Gerutis, Albertas, “Independent Lithuania” in Gerutis, Albertas (ed.) Lithuania: 700 Years, (Woodhaven: Manyland Books, Inc, 1969)

Lieven, Anatol, The Baltic Revolution: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the Path to Independence, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005)

Mačiulis, Dangiras and Staliūnas, Darius, Lithuanian Nationalism and the Vilnius Question, 1883-1940, (Marburg: Verlag Herder-Institut, 2015)

Senn, Alfred Erich, The Great Powers, Lithuania and the Vilna Question 1920-1928, (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1966)

Snyder, Timothy, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569–1999, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008)

Leonhardt, Joern. Der Ueberfordete Frieden, (CH Beck, 2018).

Borzecki, Jerzy. The Polish-Soviet Peace of 1921 and the Creation of Interwar Europe, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008)

Lehnstaedt, Stephan. Der Vergessene Sieg. Der Polnisch-Sowjetische Krieg 1919-1921 und die Entstehung des modernen Osteuropa, (CH Beck, 2019)

Davies, Norman. White Eagle Red Star, (Random House, 2003 (1972))

Böhler, Jochen. Civil War in Central Europe, 1918-1921, (Oxford University Press, 2019)

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»CREDITS
Presented by: Jesse Alexander
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Director of Photography: Toni Steller
Sound: Toni Steller
Editing: Toni Steller
Motion Design: Philipp Appelt
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Maps: Daniel Kogosov (https://www.patreon.com/Zalezsky)
Research by: Mark Newton
Fact checking: Florian Wittig

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Contains licensed material by getty images
All rights reserved – Real Time History GmbH 2020

From the comments:

The Great War
1 day ago
As you can see and hear we are back in the Emergency Lockdown Studio Also Known As Jesse’s Living Room (ELSAKAJLR™) and we know the sound isn’t ideal. Starting with the next episode, Jesse will have a better mic that should improve things dramatically. Next step we will also make a few more improvements to Jesse’s overall recording setup. Recording TGW episodes remotely while Jesse is in his ELSAKAJLR™ and we are in Berlin is not easy, but that bloody pandemic will not stop us.

October 29, 2020

Cranking This War Up to Eleven – Hideki Tojo – WW2 Biography Special

Filed under: History, Japan, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

World War Two
Published 28 Oct 2020

A man who was both Japan’s War Minister and Prime Minister, who played a large role in escalating the already daunting scale of the war in China to a world war against multiple world powers. We learn about his life from his birth in Tokyo in 1884 to his execution at Sugamo prison in Tokyo in 1948.

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at: https://timeghost.tv

Follow WW2 day by day on Instagram @ww2_day_by_day – https://www.instagram.com/ww2_day_by_day
Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sources

Written and Hosted by Indy Neidell
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Indy Neidell
Edited by: Karolina Dołęga & Iryna Dulka
Sound design: Marek Kamiński
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory)

Colorizations by:
Carlos Ortega Pereira, BlauColorizations – https://www.instagram.com/blaucolorizations
Jaris Almazani (Artistic Man) – https://instagram.com/artistic.man?ig…
Mikołaj Uchman
Norman Stewart – https://oldtimesincolor.blogspot.com/

Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

October 23, 2020

On Stalin’s Secret Service – Richard Sorge – WW2 Biography Special

Filed under: Germany, History, Japan, Military, Russia, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

World War Two
Published 22 Oct 2020

A spy who is famous for warning Stalin about Hitler’s plan to invade the Soviet Union. But he was so much more than that. His fascinating life begins in the Caucasus and eventually leads him to Tokyo.

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Follow WW2 day by day on Instagram @ww2_day_by_day – https://www.instagram.com/ww2_day_by_day
Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sources

Written and Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Indy Neidell
Edited by: Monika Worona
Sound design: Marek Kamiński

Colorizations by:
Carlos Ortega Pereira
Daniel Weiss
Mikołaj Uchman

Sources:
Bundesarchiv
Milu.ru
Archive.org

Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

From the comments:

World War Two
16 hours ago (edited)
More fascinating World War Two spy stuff we know you love. We’ve already spoken about Popov, Enigma, and much more, but what makes Sorge particularly stand out is the amount of praise he has consistently received. Both Tom Clancy and Ian Fleming have said they consider him one of the world’s greatest spies, and other espionage workers, including ones who worked on the opposing side to him, have admitted their admiration for the man.

The EU’s sudden but inevitable betrayal on Brexit deal

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

After a long absence, Nigel Davies posts on the breakdown of the British talks with the EU:

… I suggested that the EU would finally have to face the fact that the failure of their system was nothing to do with xenophobic little countries in the Balkans, or corrupt east European dictatorships, or incompetent Mediterranean democracies in permanent crisis.

No this disaster — the disaster that finally reveals just how impossible the European “project” is — will be at the hands of the morally superior, self righteous goody two shoes of Europe … principally France and the Netherlands.

And it will be for the obviously domestic partisan, (and completely ethically unfathomable), reason, of protecting the unnatural rights of a few fisherman who have had the unlikely and unreasonable benefit of unfettered access to British fishing waters for the decades that Britain has been in the EU.

(An unwarranted privilege for which they probably should pay compensation … Certainly if Britain was an “unjustly persecuted” Asian or African country instead of an “obviously evil” European one, compensation for this unnatural practice would be a demand of every new age propagandist of any colour.)

Nonetheless I have been amazed at the number of column inches wasted in the last week as some journalists try and pretend that it must be the British who are being unreasonable. Or indeed that there is even a remote possibility that the EU could ever come to an agreement, no matter what the British do. (Short of the British admitting that it was all a ghastly mistake, and submitting to total and permanent subservience to the benign dictatorship of the Brussels bureaucrats of course.)

The truth is that the EU is completely incapable of accepting any agreement, because that presumes that 27 individual nations can agree to overcome the drag of their own domestic policies to agree on a common good. (Or on a common decency that would require even the slightest domestic discomfort in one or more of their members.)

October 18, 2020

The diplomatic spat with China is “forcing the prime minister to bring out the biggest guns in his arsenal: his really serious socks”

Filed under: Cancon, China, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The Line shows just how seriously Justin Trudeau is taking China’s most recent not-so-veiled threats against Canadians in Hong Kong:

The warm glow of a good feed faded quickly in Ottawa, alas, where our nice little vacation from history continues its unravelling apace. China’s ambassador to Canada is issuing increasingly dire threats to the safety of our citizens, specifically the hundreds of thousands of Canadians living in Hong Kong, forcing the prime minister to bring out the biggest guns in his arsenal: his really serious socks, a very frowny photograph by Adam Scotti, and, we expect, the imminent announcement that on top of all her current duties, Chrystia Freeland will be appointed Progressive Minister In Charge Of Figuring Out What The Hell We Should Do About China But Not In A Way That Offends Anyone The Middle Class Build Back Green Error Error Program Alarm—

Whoa! Sorry! The Freeland Job Generator glitched again. No surprise, considering the miles Trudeau has put on it in only five years. Let’s hope it doesn’t give out entirely — we’d need 47 years to procure another one.

Anyway, as to the matter at hand, your Line editors are pragmatic folk. Canada can’t punch at the same level as China; under Mr. Trudeau, indeed, despite all our for-Liberal-egos-only preening about Canada being back, we can’t even punch at the same level as Ireland and Norway. But it’s time Canadians face facts: we can either continue pretending that China’s increasingly aggressive and threatening behaviour is a problem that will go away if we ignore it long enough, or we can at least pretend that we have balls and take what actions we can. Obviously we’re not going to send a fleet to parade up and down their coast, but there are things we can realistically do, and we aren’t. Australia, for instance, also in Beijing’s sights, has rolled out a series of measures to curtail China’s substantial influence there. Canada ought to be doing the same. And we could start by immediately banning Huawei, and encouraging every other country that would listen — which doesn’t seem to be many — that they should too.

Do we expect the Liberal government to do this? No. Making money shilling for the Chinese regime is the best thing to happen to post-politics Liberals since Ontario’s air ambulance service. But they should do this. And the delay is only gonna make it hurt more when events eventually force us to accept that China is not our friend, never has been, and never will be under the current political leadership.

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