Comments by "EdMcF1" (@EdMcF1) on "TIKhistory" channel.

  1. The Kingdom of Hungary had an Admiral as Head of State as Regent, and that Admiral didn't have a navy as Hungary lost its coast post WWI.
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  2. Franco was more a military Catholic Corporatist riding the Falange tiger and holding it by the ears all the way to his death in 1975, using the Falange as a political movement then a label, and really he was a Catholic 'anti-Cromwell", more like Cromwell than either would have wished to admit. A lot of influential Spaniards were horrified at at the German treatment of Catholic Poland in particular right from the off.
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  3. Two anecdotes about Mannerheim that I have read. 1. in the Winter War, a German military attaché, a Colonel, was having dinner (Germany being pacted with the Soviets at this point) and was rather sneering towards Finland. Towards the end of the meal, he asked Mannerheim if he would mind if the Colonel smoked whilst he was still eating. Mannerheim replied that he didn't know as no one had ever tried it. The Colonel did not light up. 2. During the Continuation War as Germany was losing WW2, he had a conference with Hitler as he sought to extricate Finland from the war. Mannerheim lit a cigar knowing Hitler hated smoking, and by Hitler's passive reaction to smoking in his presence deduced that Hitler knew he was in a weak position. Tidbit: From that meeting, secretly recorded by Finnish intelligence, the voice of Hitler in 'normal' conversation was recorded, and this recording was used by Bruno Ganz to get Hitler's voice right for Downfall.
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  4. In a way, he was Spain's Oliver Cromwell, 300 years later. He effectively took the Crown for himself after leading the bulk of the Army to victory over his enemies, and his main drive was his religion, although he was a direct opposite of what Cromwell believed in, the approach was very similar. Once in power, he stayed until death, but let the Crown return as he died.
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  5. There was a song about this: Fuel if you think it's over, it's just begun.
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  6. 'Pfennig' = German for 'penny', 'hydrogenation' = adding hydrogen to carbon and hydrocarbon molecules to make them into useful alkanes etc. for use as fuel in this case, also used to make margarine. Rothbard is fine on economics, but a nut job on wider history.
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  7. Franco was a bit ambitious, good job he sat on his hands, he had no reason to go for Portugal, but if he had, a second Wellington (please God not Monty) lands forces at Lisbon and Porto to shore up Portugal, the UK gets sea and air bases in the Azores, Madeira and the Canaries, and the Battle of the Atlantic tilts more strongly to the Allies.
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  8. 'Hitler Channel' nice one. I know what you mean, and I stopped watching it nearly 10 years ago. Still UFOs haven't turned up.
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  9. Chris Rea did a song about this 'Fuel if you think it's over.'.
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  10. Which is why he will never be forgiven.
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  11. That President was reportedly a NKVD/KGB agent and Finland had a 'secret police' after WW2 persecuting the old guard. Finland was subject to an Allied Control Commission (USSR and the UK had a small voice). The USA was not part of that Commission as it was never at war with Finland.
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  12. The ex-GRU defector 'Viktor Suvorov' wrote about the mind-boggling size of the Soviet Army c. in the late 1970s counting all the reserve formations and said it exceeded all the other armies on Earth combined. And he added a rhetorical question about what happens when nobody is left to gather in the crops? The Soviets in WW2 had their reserve divisions systems with c. 180 mothballed divisions previously unknown, which, even if with rubbishy old kit, would nonplus the enemy and upset his calculations.
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  13. Wouldn't Occam's razor suggest that Hess was simply bonkers?
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  14. "Snow Excuse" - surely that pun is a court-martial offence.
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  15. Finland has two official languages, the second being Swedish due to its significant Swedish-speaking population, a legacy of centuries of Swedish rule. Yes, Finnish is the dominant language, but the elite of Finland were predominantly Swedish speakers (e.g. Mannerheim).
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  16. Quite clear that the Commies wanted this, and most likely Soviet sympathisers in the British government were happy for this to go ahead, to discredit the West and to help Stalin.
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  17. 31:34 That joke is a war crime.
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  18. Adolf asked Keitel about the Swedish invasion plans in June 1944, and he said 'Knowing me, knowing you, there is nothing we can do, we just have to face it, this time we're through.'
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  19. Indeed, their song 'Cara al sol, con la camisa puesta' - 'face to the Sun, with the shirt on.'
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  20. So Emperor Haile Selassie I, the conquering lion of the tribe of Judah and inspiration for Rastafarians, was backed by Hitler, which means Hitler, had he lived, might have had common cause with Bob Marley (said no reputable historian ever).
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  21. They would have been fiddling with the synthetic butter recipe till the cows came home.
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  22. By the '77th Brigade' I take it that you mean 'The Blairmacht'?
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  23. What they do have are private companies that can award shareholders and managers/directors high rewards 'living on the hog' of subsidies and regulated fares, so long as they keep the show on the rails as it were. Train companies don't own their trains, they lease them, they don't own the track and infrastructure, they might own the stations, and they have no incentive to innovate or cut costs.
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  24. Or they could have been good boys.
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  25. 'Cos he was nuts!
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  26. Numbers 5 and 6, if Hitler had been involved in WWI, he'd have realised that the USA was no pushover. Er, what?
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  27. Coming to Britain in a fortnight.
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  28. Chris Rea did a song about this: 'Fuel if you think it's over'.
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  29. Yes, there is on YT a great documentary about it and the convoy with it, featuring Adm of the Fleet Lord Lewin, who was a Lt. on the convoy.
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  30.  @matthiuskoenig3378  Tanks be zu Gott!
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  31. The RAF did bomb Finland, iirc they sent at least one 2-engine bomber up to Turku/Åbo on Finland's west coast and dropped a couple of bombs which landed in the harbour. New Zealand also declared war on Finland, now that would be a short video.
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  32. If the USSR was not in WW2 until June 1941, how come it invaded Poland in September 1939? (And attacked the Japanese in Mongolia the month before?). Soviet propaganda is that they were peaceful, Comboasts and Comlies.
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  33. 17:30 'No understanding that you can't just dump half-trained men and equipment in a new land and expect them to be operational'. Is that really true? (Just asking for a friend in Moscow).
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  34. And he was still a lying prat.
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  35. Igor, good points, and for others 'EUA' = 'USA'.
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  36. If they thought the railway system was messed up, you should have seen it when the Mighty Eighth, Bomber Command and the Second Tactical Air Force had a good bash at it.
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  37. The solution to the Soviets withholding POWs problem was dropped on Hiroshima.
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  38. Viktor Suvorov gave the answer in Icebreaker in the 1990s. Stalin thought the German plans were a bluff, as they hadn't made any preparations for winter warfare (indicated by the prices of mutton and wool - if winter clothing was being made, wool prices rise, mutton prices fall - glut of mutton, and no winter motor oils were being made to cope with a Russian winter). Premises was flawed, he didn't think they'd invade without making preparations. Stalin planned his own invasion for July, he'd stockpiled supplies on the frontier, had rails on the border, motorway tanks (for autobahns) and had dismantled his defences in the west of the USSR.
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  39. @Clinton Reisig Not Hartmann, but a history of the Wiking Division has a quote made to Felix Steiner, it goes something like 'Just look at that map for yourself Steiner, and see if that (the Soviet disposition) doesn't look the preparation for an offensive" said another General.
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  40.  @LazyPictures  There's no doubting that Soviet forces were on the border in June 1941, you don't say why. You don't refute anything with insults, except the proposition that you might have something to add.
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  41. It seems to me that TIK assumes (rightly, I would say) that the uni-testicled one knew that the Germany economy was headed for the buffers in the late 1930s, hence his need to go to war. This is premised on the UTO understanding economics, at a certain base level, and realising that his own economic policies were leading to disaster (which they were), but the UTO preferring to press on with his failing policies and following through by taking his (internally consistent) logic to its natural but absurd conclusion of war and conquest as being the way forward economically.
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  42. It was (apocryphally) said the following this, the Hungarian Ambassador to the United States went to the State Department in DC to inform them that Hungary was at war with the United States, stating: 'On behalf of the Kingdom of Hungary, I regret to inform you that our countries are now at war.' 'The Kingdom of Hungary, eh? So you have a King?' said the State Department official. 'No, we have no King. Our head of state is an Admiral.'. 'An Admiral? So you have a navy?'. 'No, we have no navy, we have no access to the sea.'. 'So you have a dispute with the United States?' asked the State Department official. 'No, we have no dispute with the United States. Our dispute is with Roumania.'. 'So why not declare war on Roumania instead of us?' 'Because Roumania are are loyal allies in our battle against the Soviet Union.'.
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  43. Fun fact, many years before this the future Marshal Mannerheim of Finland, whilst an Imperial Russian Army officer, went to Tibet and taught then Dalai Lama to pistol shoot.
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  44. I found a 1930s book with economic stats and I noted that almost all our pork came from Denmark, and war soon meant next to no pork. NB British Rail did not exist until after WW2.
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  45. Had the European war lasted 3 months longer, Berlin might have got nuked first.
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  46. Will TIK's diet plan catch on?
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  47. Was Rodin the 'thinker' of the operation?
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  48. The British Army is a criminal organisation.
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  49. Your most important video yet. Thank you for doing this.
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  50. The Germans coukd not have won that, even with a Pope in the flak units.
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