World War Two
Published 2 Jan 2021At the ongoing Arcadia Conference, 26 nations sign the Declaration of the United Nations. Otherwise it is very much a week of motion and changes in motion: in the USSR the Soviets are on the move in the center and the Crimea, the Japanese are slowing their movement in China, the Americans are finishing their movement in the Philippines, and the Axis are moving backward in North Africa. The Luftwaffe also decides that Malta must be eliminated as a base for the Allies.
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Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sourcesWritten 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: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Indy Neidell
Edited by: Iryna Dulka
Sound design: Marek Kamiński
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory)Colorizations by:
– Julius Jääskeläinen – https://www.facebook.com/JJcolorization/
– Mikolaj UchmanSources:
– Election1960 from Wikimedia
– Battleship by Anand Prahlad from the Noun Project
– Supermarine Spitfire by Joel Wisneski from the Noun Project
– Afrrs from Wikimedia
– National Portrait Gallery
– BundesarchivArchive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
January 3, 2021
The Formation of the United Nations! – WW2 – 123 – January 2, 1942
Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon ranks with Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four
James E. Hartley on why Koestler’s 1941 novel should be seen as a prescient guide to modern-day “wokeness”:
The puzzling thing about wokeness is not that it is fashionable among a small subset of the Campus Left. One should never be surprised by what is fashionable among college faculty and students. The curious question is how these ideas broke out of the academic asylum and met acquiescence among a large group of people who should have known better.
The answer is found in a book which should have never fallen off the radar: Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon. First published in 1941, it was — along with 1984 — one of the great books about totalitarianism written in the 1940s. Widely praised when it was published, the book was enormously influential in fostering the consensus view of post-war anti-communism. In 1998, Modern Library published a list of the 100 best English novels of the 20th century; Darkness at Noon was ranked eighth, five places above 1984.
The plot of the novel itself is fairly simple. The story begins with the imprisonment of Nicholas Rubashov, one of the heroes of the communist revolution in a country which is clearly the Soviet Union. Decades after the revolution, Number 1 (read: Stalin) has assumed power. Rubashov is imprisoned on the absurdly false charges of plotting to kill Number 1. The entire novel takes place in prison, as Rubashov is interrogated and eventually comes to voluntarily confess at a public trial to crimes he did not commit. He is then shot.
The novel explores the philosophical puzzle of why Rubashov would join with what has obviously become a murderous cult run by a totalitarian who is solely interested in amassing enough power to stamp his will upon the whole country. Rubashov, a devoted communist to the end, abandons his principles and bit by bit comes to accede to demands of the new generation who are seeking scapegoats and ritualistic confessions of guilt.
What is the nature of the new generation? One of the Party officials interrogating Rubashov explains:
There are only two conceptions of human ethics, and they are at opposite poles. One of them is Christian and humane, declares the individual to be sacrosanct, and asserts that the rules of arithmetic are not to be applied to human units. The other starts from the basic principle that a collective aim justifies all means, and not only allows, but demands, that the individual should in every way be subordinated and sacrificed to the community — which may dispose of it as an experimentation rabbit or a sacrificial lamb.
The individual does not matter. The group matters. What is good for the group is by definition good, regardless of whether it is good for the individual. As the interrogators make abundantly clear, no individual has the right to stand in the way of the group. The Party represents the group, and thus no individual has the right to oppose the Party.
December 27, 2020
Heinz Guderian’s Christmas and the fall of Hong Kong – WW2 – 122 – December 26, 1941
World War Two
Published 26 Dec 2020The Japanese offensives and advances in Southeast Asia and the Pacific continue unabated and both Hong Kong and Wake Island fall. British and American leaders begin the Arcadia Conference to decide just how they are going to fight this war together, and there are more changes made in the German High Command on the Eastern Front, even as the Soviets make advances there.
Check out Jean Paul’s museum here: https://www.romagne14-18.com/english-…
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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: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Indy Neidell
Edited by: Iryna Dulka
Sound design: Marek Kamiński
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory)Colorizations by:
– Dememorabilia – https://www.instagram.com/dememorabilia/
– Carlos Ortega Pereira, BlauColorizations – https://www.instagram.com/blaucolorizations
– Norman Stewart – https://oldtimesincolor.blogspot.com/Sources:
– IWM: FE 203
– Battleship by Anand Prahlad from the Noun Project
– Man by Milinda Courey from the Noun Project
– prisoner by Luis Prado from the Noun Project
– bockelsound from freesound.orgArchive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
December 20, 2020
The Japanese are unstoppable everywhere – WW2 – 121 – December 19, 1941
World War Two
Published 19 Dec 2020The Japanese make gains in Malaya, Burma, Hong Kong, Borneo, and the Philippines. The Allies also have trouble in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, where they are beginning to seriously suffer from a lack of capital ships. The Soviet Red Army is advancing, though, and Stalin takes personal control of planning for the upcoming counteroffensive, while Adolf Hitler takes personal control of the German Army.
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Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sourcesWritten 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: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Indy Neidell
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/
Dememorabilia – https://www.instagram.com/dememorabilia/
Julius Jääskeläinen – https://www.facebook.com/JJcolorization/
Carlos Ortega Pereira, BlauColorizations, https://www.instagram.com/blaucolorizations
Spartacus Olsson
Daniel Weiss
Mikołaj UchmanSources:
Bundesarchiv
IWM MH 26392, WPN 298, K 2204, FL 20432, A 12126, A 9257, FL 1203, E 3469E
Mil.ru
Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe
Picture of Mark Young, courtesy of National Portrait GallerySoundtracks from the Epidemic Sound:
Phoenix Tail – “At the Front”
Reynard Seidel – “Deflection”
Skrya – “First Responders”
Hakan Eriksson – “Epic Adventure Theme 4”
Philip Ayers – “The Unexplored”
Max Anson – “Ancient Saga”
Rannar Sillard – “March Of The Brave 9”
Johannes Bornlof – “Death And Glory 2”
Johan Hynynen – “Dark Beginning”
Fabien Tell – “Last Point of Safe Return”Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
December 16, 2020
The NKVD: from Pen-Pushers to Communist Hit Squads – WW2 Special
World War Two
Published 15 Dec 2020The NKVD started out as your regular old Ministry of the Interior. But over time, they grew out to a hugely influential and highly lethal weapon for some of the Soviet Union’s leaders.
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Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sourcesHosted by: Spartacus Olsson
Written by: Joram Appel and Spartacus Olsson
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)Colorizations by:
Klimbim – https://www.flickr.com/photos/2215569…
Mikołaj Uchman
Julius Jääskeläinen – https://www.facebook.com/JJcolorization/
Dememorabilia – https://www.instagram.com/dememorabilia/Sources:
Picture of Lavrentiy Beria in court, courtesy of Фотограф – Ист.доки https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi…
Yad Vashem 1019-2, 143EO1, 55AO6
IWM HU 106212
USHMM
I.M. Bondarenko
from the Noun Project: border police by IcoLabs, fire building by dDara, Police by Cuputo, Skull by Muhamad UlumSoundtracks from the Epidemic Sound:
Reynard Seidel – “Deflection”
Johannes Bornlof – “Deviation In Time”
Farrell Wooten – “Blunt Object”
Andreas Jamsheree – “Guilty Shadows 4”
Fluow – “Endlessness”
Johannes Bornlof – “The Inspector 4”
Gunnar Johnsen – “Not Safe Yet”Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
From the comments:
World War Two
2 hours ago
We have been talking about the NKVD a lot in our War Against Humanity episodes and in several Between Two Wars episodes. If you found this video to be interesting, I can highly recommend you try our B2W episode on the Great Terror and Military Purges in 1938. It provides some crucial context that we couldn’t expand on in this special episode. You can find it right here: https://youtu.be/MNnK0LAoyMo
Cheers,
JoramOther videos about the NKVD we mentioned in this special are:
– War Against Humanity episode covering the Katyn Massacre: https://youtu.be/gd5YhhNcC44
– War Against Humanity episode covering the Great Prison Massacre: https://youtu.be/kykPusygzOw
– Biography episode on Richard Sorge: https://youtu.be/fn9NyRfbSOo
December 13, 2020
December 6, 2020
November 29, 2020
QotD: The succession problem of totalitarian leadership
Back in the Cold War, prudent Kremlinologists had to take the marked decline in the Politburo’s collective intelligence very seriously indeed (the old adage “never attribute to malice what is adequately explained by stupidity” is terrifying when the potentially malicious dumbasses have nuclear missiles).
There were two main reasons for the decline, both structural. The first, of course, is Communism itself. A totally ideologized society is a society totally committed to make-believe. You could fill a good-sized book listing the catastrophes make-believe caused the USSR. Just to take the most obvious: Hitler did everything but send the Goodyear Blimp over Moscow, towing a banner announcing his invasion plans. But since everyone who accurately reported the goings-on in Poland ended up in the Gulag, the Wehrmacht walked right on in.
The second has to do with the nature of totalitarian leadership. Obviously sharing power is out of the question, so every Boss who finally claws his way to the top ruthlessly purges everyone who could conceivably challenge him. The purged are replaced by yes-men and toadies, who immediately enact mini-purges of their own inside their new departments. It doesn’t take more than a few rounds of this for smarter functionaries to learn to dig themselves in very, very deep, disguising themselves in a kind of protective stupidity. A few more rounds, and “protective stupidity” drops the modifier, as anyone with anything on the ball has decamped for the safer — and, not coincidentally, very soon much more profitable — havens of technical management.
It doesn’t take long before your “leadership” is nothing but ideology-addled dimbulbs. Sound familiar?
Severian, “How Dumb Are Liberals?”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2020-07-31.
November 22, 2020
Our World 100 Years Ago – November 1920 I THE GREAT WAR
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From the comments:
The Great War
2 days ago
Hope the new mic does its job and the audio is alright for all of you. We also got a lot of questions about the contents of Jesse’s bookshelf and the Emergency Lockdown Studio Also Known As Jesses Living Room (ELSAKAJLR™). Think we will film an extra video with Jesse (MTV Cribs?).
November 20, 2020
November 15, 2020
November 11, 2020
QotD: Appeasement and shifting allegiances between the wars
Although it was in every way more pardonable, the attitude of the Left towards the Russian régime has been distinctly similar to the attitude of the Tories towards Fascism. There has been the same tendency to excuse almost anything “because they’re on our side”. It is all very well to talk about Lady Chamberlain photographed shaking hands with Mussolini; the photograph of Stalin shaking hands with Ribbentrop is much more recent. On the whole, the intellectuals of the Left defended the Russo-German Pact. It was “realistic”, like Chamberlain’s appeasement policy, and with similar consequences. If there is a way out of the moral pigsty we are living in, the first step towards it is probably to grasp that “realism” does not pay, and that to sell out your friends and sit rubbing your hands while they are destroyed is not the last word in political wisdom.
George Orwell, “Who are the War Criminals?”, Tribune, 1943-10-22.
















