The Tank Museum
Published 11 Apr 2020Join Curator David Willey as he takes you on a tour of The Tank Museum’s Tank Story Hall, which houses over 30 key vehicles from Little Willie to Challenger 2. In this section he looks at the inter-war vehicles and gives you a potted history of the time period between the two World Wars.
Support the work of The Tank Museum on Patreon: ► https://www.patreon.com/tankmuseum
Visit The Tank Museum SHOP & become a Friend: ► https://tankmuseumshop.org/Twitter: ► https://twitter.com/TankMuseum
Instagram: ► https://www.instagram.com/tankmuseum/
Tiger Tank Blog: ► http://blog.tiger-tank.com/
Tank 100 First World War Centenary Blog: ► http://tank100.com/
April 13, 2020
Curator’s Tank Museum Tour: Tank Story Hall – Inter-War | The Tank Museum
April 11, 2020
3.7cm PAK – Germany’s Basic WWII Antitank Gun
Forgotten Weapons
Published 10 Dec 2019http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http://shop.bbtv.com/collections/forg…
Germany developed its first 37mm (or as German designations put it, 3.7cm) antitank gun in the last months of World War One; a very simple design built using barrels from obsolete Hotchkiss revolving cannons. In the mid 1920s, the concept was reinvigorated by Rheinmetall, which developed a much more modern 37mm gun using a much larger and higher-pressure case (37 x 249mm). In its initial pattern, the Tak as it was called (Tankabwerhkanone) has wooden spoke wheels and no suspension, intended for transport by horse. A small number were made for the German military (to avoid aggravating the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles), and the gun was sold commercially by Rheinmetall. The Soviet Union in particular was interested, and used the 3.7cm Tak as the basis for its later 45mm antitank gun.
Between 1934 and 1936, a number of changes were made to the design. The wooden wheels were replaced with steel wheels and pneumatic rubber tires, and spring suspension was added to allow the gun to be towed at higher speed by motor vehicles. The designation also changed at the time from Tank-abwehrKanone to Panzer-abwehrKanone, as the new term “panzer” entered German military parlance. Under Germany’s 1930s rearmament program, the Versailles limitations were ignored, and Pak production took off. By September of 1939, the German military has some 11,200 of the guns in service. They were solid dependable guns at the beginning of World War Two, but became obsolete by 1941 as tank armor began to rapidly increase. A new tungsten-core AP round was introduced in 1940, and a rifle-grenade-like hollow charge munition (the Stielgranate 41) added in 1941, but there was stopgaps at best. The last few 3.7mm Paks were built in early 1942, as both it and the 50mm Pak 38 were phased out in favor of the 75mm Pak 40 antitank gun.
There is an excellent article on the development and use of the 3.7cm Pak at Tank Archives: http://tankarchives.blogspot.com/2016…
I’d like to thank DriveTanks.com for giving me the opportunity to bring you their 3.7mm Pak! They have a very cool collection of armored vehicles, artillery, and machine guns available for rental in Texas; check them out: http://www.drivetanks.com
Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
6281 N. Oracle #36270
Tucson, AZ 85704
April 8, 2020
Belgian Model 1915/27 Improved Chauchat
Forgotten Weapons
Published 9 Dec 2019http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http://shop.bbtv.com/collections/forg…
The Belgian Army was the second to adopt the Chauchat automatic rifle, after the French. Almost all of Belgium was under German occupation during World War One, leaving Belgium significantly dependent on French aid for arms during the war. The initial Belgian purchases were standard 8mm Lebel CSRGs, but by 1917 Belgian engineers were working on a solution to convert the guns to the Belgian standard 7.65mm Mauser cartridge. This was completed by the end of the war, and the Chauchat remained a standard arm of the Belgian military after the war.
Work to improve the design continued, and an upgrades version was formally adopted in 1927. This included the 7.65mm conversion, with the best magazines made for any model of the Chauchat, as well as a series of dust covers to close off every hole in the gun (magazine well, ejection port, charging handle slot, and barrel shroud vents). The Belgians also replaced the original bipod with a much better type (similar to what they would use on the FN BAR), simplified the feed system, and added a tension latch to ensure reliable operation.
This new pattern of CSRG would be standard Belgian front-line armament until the FN BAR was adopted in 1930. The Chauchats were still in service with some units at the beginning of World War Two though, and saw service at that time.
Thanks to the Liege Arms Museum for access to film this for you! If you are in Belgium, definitely plan to stop into the museum, part of the Grand Curtius. They have a very good selection of interesting and unusual arms on display.
Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
6281 N. Oracle #36270
Tucson, AZ 85704
April 1, 2020
The Orient Express: King of Trains, Train of Kings
Geographics
Published 29 Nov 2019The journey to the Express was not a simple one. For upper class travellers to enjoy a luxury, non-stop train ride across seven nations, it would take the dream of a lovesick Belgian engineer, with his rather interesting supporting cast: an American industrialist, the inventor of US tabloid journalism, the Prince of Wales, and one of the most prolific mass murderers of the 19th and 20th Centuries.
Credits:
Host – Simon Whistler
Author – Arnaldo Teodorani
Producer – Jennifer Da Silva
Executive Producer – Shell HarrisBusiness inquiries to admin@toptenz.net
March 27, 2020
The Best SMLE: The No1 MkV Trials Rifle
Forgotten Weapons
Published 18 Nov 2019After World War One, the British looked at how to apply the lessons of the war to development of a new infantry rifle. Even before the war, a decision had been made to move to an aperture type rear sight — which would have been used on the Pattern 1913 Enfield, had the war no interrupted adoption of that model. So after the war, trials were made on some MkIII SMLE rifles refitted with rear aperture sights. These trials were successful enough to justify production of a substantial number of rifles for troop trials. This would be designated the No1 MkV rifle, and 20,000 of them were made between 1922 and 1924.
The magazine cutoff was retained in the MkV rifles, as were the volley sights in the initial production — along with an aperture rear sight marked out to 1500 yards. Following concerns about the durability of the sight and its adjustment latch, it was redesigned slightly, and the new version only went out to 1400 yards. On this second variation, the volley sights were omitted.
The new rifles was taken to Bisley and input was sought from both military units and civilian marksmen from the British NRA. The feedback that was received was that the sight was too fragile, its adjustments were too coarse, and the barrel was too light. These changes were implemented in the No1 MkVI rifle which would ultimately be adopted as the N4 MkI; the classic World War 2 version oft he Lee Enfield.
http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http://shop.bbtv.com/collections/forg…
Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
6281 N. Oracle #36270
Tucson, AZ 85704
March 24, 2020
Thompson 1921: The Original Chicago Typewriter
Forgotten Weapons
Published 6 Oct 2018https://www.forgottenweapons.com/thom…
http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http://shop.bbtv.com/collections/forg…
The first prototype Thompsons submachine guns (and it was Thompson who coined that term, by the way) were produced in 1919 and dubbed the “Annihilators”. The gun was intended to be a military weapon to equip American soldiers in World War One, but by the time the gun was developed the war had ended. Still, Thompson and his Auto-Ordnance company contracted with Colt to manufacture 15,000 of the guns. These were the Model of 1921, and they were marketed to both the US military and as many European armies as Thompson and his salesmen could reach. They found few takers in the climate of the early 1920s, however, and sales were slow.
This is the first in a 5-part series about the development of the Thompson, concluding with a trip to the range to fire three different patterns side by side…
Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
PO Box 87647
Tucson, AZ 85754If you enjoy Forgotten Weapons, check out its sister channel, InRangeTV! http://www.youtube.com/InRangeTVShow
February 1, 2020
The Greco-Turkish War & The Turkish War Of Independence I THE GREAT WAR 1920
The Great War
Published 31 Jan 2020Sign up for Curiosity Stream and Nebula: https://curiositystream.com/thegreatwar
The Ottoman Empire was among the losing powers of World War 1 and left a power vacuum after the armistice of Mudros. The Great Powers had already made plans for the territory beforehand and now Greece had ambitions to take over the parts of Turkey where Greeks lived.
» SUPPORT THE CHANNEL
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thegreatwar
Merchandise: https://shop.spreadshirt.de/thegreatwar/» SOURCES
Criss, Nur Bilge: “Occupation during and after the War (Ottoman Empire)”, in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, ed. by Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keene, Alan Kramer, and Bill Nasson, issued by Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin 2015-08-05 https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online…Leonhard, Jörn. Der überforderte Frieden. Versailles und die Welt 1918-1923 (CH Beck, 2018).
Macmillan, Margaret. The Peacemakers: Six Months that Changed the World (London: John Murray, 2001).
Karsh, Efraim and Inari Karsh. Empires of the Sand (London: Harvard UP, 1999).
Llewllyn Smith, Michael. Ionian Vision: Greece in Asia Minor (London: Hurst, 2016 (1973))
Gerwarth, Robert. The Vanquished. Why the First World War Failed to End, 1917-1923 (Penguin, 2017).
Fromkin, David. A Peace to End All Peace (New York: Avon, 1989)
McMeekin, Sean. The Ottoman Endgame (Penguin, 2015)
» SOCIAL MEDIA
Instagram: https://instagram.com/the_great_war
Twitter: https://twitter.com/WW1_Series
Reddit: https://reddit.com/r/TheGreatWarChannel»CREDITS
Presented by: Jesse Alexander
Written by: Jesse Alexander
Director: Toni Steller & Florian Wittig
Director of Photography: Toni Steller
Sound: Toni Steller Editing: Toni Steller
Mixing, Mastering & Sound Design: http://above-zero.com
Maps: Daniel Kogosov (https://www.patreon.com/Zalezsky)
Research by: Jesse Alexander
Fact checking: Florian Wittig ChannelDesign: Alexander Clark
Original Logo: David van Stephold
A Mediakraft Networks Original Channel
Contains licensed material by getty images
All rights reserved – Real Time History GmbH 2019
December 18, 2019
Adolf Hitler’s First Steps In Politics – The Foundation Of The Nazi Party I THE GREAT WAR 1919
The Great War
Published 17 Dec 2019Get a free audiobook and 2 Audible Originals with a 30-day trial: http://audible.com/greatwar or text
greatwarto 500 500.Like many former soldiers, lance corporal Adolf Hitler was disillusioned with the new German Republic after the Armistice in 1918. Like man of his country men he was also in dire need of a job. The Bavarian Army provided an opportunity and soon young Adolf Hitler found himself in the ranks of an obscure political party in Munich: The German Workers’ Party.
» SUPPORT THE CHANNEL
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thegreatwar
Merchandise: https://shop.spreadshirt.de/thegreatwar/» SOURCES
Dietrich Eckart, Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin.
Gottfried Feder, Brechung der Zinsknechtschaft 1919.
Fest, Joachim C.: Hitler. Eine Biographie, 1973.
Heiden, Konrad: Adolf Hitler: Das Zeitalter der Verantwortungslosigkeit. Ein Mann gegen Europa, 2016.
Ulrich, Volker: Adolf Hitler. Band 1: Die Jahre des Aufstiegs 1889-1939. 2013.
Fest, Joachim C: The face of the Third Reich: Portraits of the Nazi Leadership. 1999
Program of the German Workers’ Party, 1920 (http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/s…)
Jeremy Noakes and Geoffrey Pridham, eds., Nazism 1919-1945, Vol. 1, The Rise to Power 1919-1934. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1998, pp. 12-14.»CREDITS
Presented by: Jesse Alexander
Written by: Jesse Alexander
Director: Toni Steller & Florian Wittig
Director of Photography: Toni Steller
Sound: Toni Steller
Editing: Toni Steller
Motion Design: Phillip Appelt
Mixing, Mastering & Sound Design: http://above-zero.com
Maps: Daniel Kogosov (https://www.patreon.com/Zalezsky)
Research by: Markus Linke
Fact checking: Florian WittigChannel Design: Alexander Clark
Original Logo: David van StepholdA Mediakraft Networks Original Channel
Contains licensed material by getty images
All rights reserved – Real Time History GmbH 2019
December 10, 2019
In praise of Warren Gamaliel Harding
At Essays in Idleness, David Warren says nice things about an American president who rarely gets any love from historians:
Like most politicians, W. G. Harding was only semi-literate, yet well above the average. The Ivy League types are still querying his use of “normalcy,” which the Natted States president used during his election campaign of 1920. Harding himself ranks low in the polls of “Great American Presidents,” though he was quite popular until his death. That mistake, committed after a heart attack in San Francisco, anno 1923, was the first of several. It was discovered that his administration had been rather corrupt, and himself guilty of an adultery. One might say he was “impeached,” posthumously. Today, they impeach Republican presidents for breathing.
Warren Gamaliel Harding is naturally among my favourite presidents. This has something to do with his “return to normalcy.” For the better part of a decade, his countrymen had suffered under the ministrations of progressive Democrats, such as the unspeakable Woodrow Wilson, and from such foreign entanglements as the First World War. The federal budget was being blown to heck, and society was on the verge of the Jazz Age.
Harding, who stayed home in Marion, Ohio, for most of his presidential campaign — rather than “pressing the flesh” and risking the influenza — won by a landslide, promising: “Not heroics, but healing; … not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality.”
Oh yes and, “not nostrums, but normalcy.”
The quote, which I have filched from the Wicked Paedia, is semi-literate throughout. Harding was a man who had an unhealthy relationship with a dictionary, and to his other sins, we must add an addiction to semi-colons. Still, “The Peeple” could guess what he meant. He wanted America to move backwards. He thought the whole country should forget about recent lunatic adventures, and return to her wonted calm.
Al Stewart wrote a song called “Warren Harding” (lyrics here):
Before the Lewis Gun was the McClean Automatic Rifle
Forgotten Weapons
Published 18 Oct 2019This is Lot 1158 in the upcoming October Morphy Extraordinary auction.
Samuel McClean was a medical doctor from Iowa who began tinkering with firearms designs in 1889, and formed the McClean Arms Company in 1896. He was an intelligent and talented designer, but never quite managed to get a gun good enough for military acceptance. His work included bolt actions rifles, self-loading shoulder rifles, machine guns, and self-loading cannons. By 1910 his company had gone bankrupt twice, and he was forced out by his investors. Isaac Newton Lewis was brought in, and turned McClean’s initial concepts into the ultimately-successful Lewis Machine gun.
However, McClean made one least attempt to produce his own gun after World War One. This is the McClean Automatic Rifle, and it was tested by the US Navy in 1919 – and rejected. This pattern uses an operating system similar to McClean’s early work, and thus also quite similar to the Lewis gun. Instead of two large locking lugs, however, it has several dozen small lugs in two rows on each side of the bolt. The gas piston is also huge by modern standards; over an inch in diameter. The gun is unfortunately missing its magazine Still, it is the only example of the type known to exist, and probably the only one ever manufactured.
http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http://shop.bbtv.com/collections/forg…
Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
6281 N. Oracle #36270
Tucson, AZ 85704
December 7, 2019
QotD: A “democratic” army
It is probable that the nature of modern war has made “democratic army” a contradiction in terms. The French army, for instance, based on universal service, is hardly more democratic than the British. It is just as much dominated by the professional officer and the long-service N.C.O., and the French officer is probably rather more “Prussian” in outlook than his British equivalent. The Spanish Government militias during the first six months of war — the first year, in Catalonia — were a genuinely democratic army, but they were also a very primitive type of army, capable only of defensive actions. In that particular case a defensive strategy, coupled with propaganda, would probably have had a better chance of victory than the methods casually adopted. But if you want military efficiency in the ordinary sense, there is no escaping from the professional soldier, and so long as the professional soldier is in control he will see to it that the army is not democratised. And what is true within the armed forces is true of the nation as a whole; every increase in the strength of the military machine means more power for the forces of reaction. It is possible that some of our more Left-wing jingoes are acting with their eyes open. If they are, they must be aware that the News-Chronicle version of “defence of democracy” leads directly away from democracy, even in the narrow nineteenth-century sense of political liberty, independence of the trade unions and freedom of speech and the press.
George Orwell, “Democracy in the British Army”, Left, 1939-09.
December 3, 2019
The Hungarian Romanian War & The Downfall of the Hungarian Soviet Republic I THE GREAT WAR 1919
The Great War
Published 2 Dec 2019SPONSOR: Get 20% off of your first order at Mack Wheldon. Go to https://mackwheldon.com and use promocode “
greatwar” at checkout.In early 1919 Hungary was one of the European territories that saw a communist revolution. Bela Kun and his supporters established the Hungarian Soviet Republic while the country was in great turmoil and fighting against the Romanians, the Czechoslovaks, the Serbs and within Hungary itself.
» SUPPORT THE CHANNEL
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thegreatwar
Merchandise: https://shop.spreadshirt.de/thegreatwar/» SOURCES
Balogh, Eva S. “István Friedrich and the Hungarian Coup d’État of 1919: A Reevaluation” in Slavic Review, 1 June 1976, Vol.35(2): 269-286.Borodziej, Wlodzimierz and Maciej Gorny. Der Vergessene Weltkrieg. Europas Osten 1912-1923. Band II – Nationen 1917-1923 (wbg Theiss, 2018).
Gosztony, Peter. “The Collapse of the Hungarian Red Army,” in Pastor, Peter, ed. Revolutions and Interventions in Hungary and its Neighbor States, 1918-1919 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988): 69-80.
Hetes, Tibor. “The Northern Campaign of the Hungarian Red Army,” in Pastor, Peter, ed. Revolutions and Interventions in Hungary and its Neighbor States, 1918-1919 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988): 55-60.
Horthy, Admiral Nicholas. Admiral Nicholas Horthy Memoirs. Simon Publications LLC, (2000).
Macmillan, Margaret. The Peacemakers: Six Months that Changed the World (London: John Murray, 2001).
Nouzille, Jean. “The July Campaign of the Hungarian Red Army as seen by France,” in Pastor, Peter, ed. Revolutions and Interventions in Hungary and its Neighbor States, 1918-1919 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988): 81-88.
Révész, Tamás: “Post-war Turmoil and Violence (Hungary)”, in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, ed. by Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keene, Alan Kramer, and Bill Nasson, issued by Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin 2019-08-05.
https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online…Torrey, Glenn. “The Romanian Intervention in Hungary, 1919,” in Pastor, Peter, ed. Revolutions and Interventions in Hungary and its Neighbor States, 1918-1919 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988): 301-320.
»CREDITS
Presented by: Jesse Alexander
Written by: Jesse Alexander
Director: Toni Steller & Florian Wittig
Director of Photography: Toni Steller
Sound: Toni Steller
Editing: Toni Steller
Mixing, Mastering & Sound Design: http://above-zero.com
Maps: Daniel Kogosov (https://www.patreon.com/Zalezsky)
Research by: Jesse Alexander
Fact checking: Florian WittigChannel Design: Alexander Clark
Original Logo: David van StepholdA Mediakraft Networks Original Channel
Contains licensed material by getty images
All rights reserved – Real Time History GmbH 2019
October 28, 2019
The Surrender of the Imperial German High Seas Fleet
Historigraph
Published 26 Oct 2019Buy Historigraph Posters here! https://teespring.com/en-GB/surrender…
Support the channel on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/historigraph#SurrenderOfTheHighSeasFleet #OperationZZ #Historigraph
►Twitter: https://twitter.com/historigraph
►Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/historigraph
►Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/historigraph
►Discord: https://discord.gg/vAFTK2DMusic:
Crypto, Incompetech https://incompetech.com
Rynos Theme, Incompetech https://incompetech.com
Britain’s Naval March, “Hearts of Oak”
Kaiserlicher Marinemarsch “Gruß an Kiel“
September 29, 2019
Walther KKW: Competition Shooting in Nazi Germany
Forgotten Weapons
Published on 14 Aug 2019RIA on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/RockIsla…
RIA on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rockislanda…The KKW (“Klein Kaliber Wehrsportgewehr“, or small caliber military sporting rifle) was developed by BDW in 1937 as an amalgamation of various .22 rifle elements from other manufacturers as well as BSW itself. It was intended to fill the role of the German national standard target rifle. When the Nazi party took over Germany in the early 30s, the SA consolidated and reorganized the civilian shooting sports in to a format aimed at military training. To this end, they wanted a standardized rifle which would duplicate the handling of the Mauser K98k in .22 long rifle caliber. This was initially the DSM, but in 1935 the SA decided that it wanted a rifle that more closely mirrored the military pattern Mauser. The result was the KKW. For more information on these and other German 1930s/40s training rifles, I recommend the recent book on the subject by Bob Simpson.
http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http://shop.bbtv.com/collections/forg…
Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
PO Box 87647
Tucson, AZ 85754
September 28, 2019
The Freikorps Fights On – Estonia and Latvia War For Independence I THE GREAT WAR 1919
The Great War
Published 27 Sep 2019Support 16 Days in Berlin: https://realtimehistory.net/indiegogo
After the Battle of Cesis it seemed the situation in Latvia and Estonia was about to quieten down. But the German soldiers in the region and the ongoing conflict with Bolshevik Russia meant the 2nd half of 1919 saw even more fighting in the Baltics.
» SUPPORT THE CHANNEL
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thegreatwar
Merchandise: https://shop.spreadshirt.de/thegreatwar/»CREDITS
Presented by: Jesse Alexander
Written by: Jesse Alexander
Director: Toni Steller & Florian Wittig
Director of Photography: Toni Steller
Sound: Toni Steller
Editing: Toni Steller
Mixing, Mastering & Sound Design: http://above-zero.com
Maps: Daniel Kogosov (https://www.patreon.com/Zalezsky)
Research by: Jesse Alexander
Fact checking: Florian WittigChannel Design: Alexander Clark
Original Logo: David van StepholdA Mediakraft Networks Original Channel
Contains licensed material by getty images
All rights reserved – Real Time History GmbH 2019


















