That is correct (written by Janam Mukherjee in 2015 or so). You can see the source in the video itself.
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It happened, therefore it belongs.
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…a red herring fallacy
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I am confused… do the Zoot Riots belong to ww2 or not?
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As a wartime event, yes. It was a huge story in the front pages when it happened.
As something akin to, say, Operation Husky? Not so.
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True, that they’re hardly alone in being critical of British colonial administration and the British were bad. But that is not an excuse to make bad things worse. For eg : The latest WAH calls Stalin, Hitler, and Churchill - Architects of Death but Churchil did not order the deaths of Bengalis whereas Hitler did sign orders to Kills jews and many other people, so did Stalin for kulaks, Ukrainians but Churchil did not? He did ask for food and when the food did come, it sat there and rotted and did not go into the stomachs of the Bengalis.
Did Churchil dislike India? Yes… as he did serve in India and that coloured his views on the nation. And yes, he was one of the opponents of an “independent” India i.e give India a dominion status. But you don’t blow him out of proportion and say he was an “architect of death”.
Also true. But why not tell the truth and make stuff up? There were no ghettos in Bulgaria… .but he goes ahead and says it.
I am not arguing against the sources, I am arguing against oversimplification. It may create false ideas in peoples heads. You want proof? What about the idea Treaty of Versailles lead to the Nazi government become head of state in 1933 ? Or how about the idea that the French were cowards because they surrendered super fast? See how oversimplication may give people the wrong idea??
I know they can’t cover everything because of time and resources… but they could add 2 or 3 more lines to give the exact picture.
They why not tell history as it happened or if you don’t have time tell something close to it and then point the viewers towards a resource for more info. I am lead to believe that they have an agenda because well… they repeated failures (racism in America, Breen anti-semitism, The ruhr area bombing one, the bulgaria one, the patton one and the Architects of death one) which they have failed to acknowledge and correct.
… I don’t dislike any member of the timeghost. Heck, I still look forward to the regular episodes every Saturday and have a huge respect for them for getting and reading many in resources in a month where I can only finish one book. But the shoehorning of “facts”, is making me reconsider my opnion on them.
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I just watched that episode. The title is provocative, but the video itself criticizes British government mismanagement at distributing the food supplies that you refer to. It doesn’t directly blame Churchill for that. Although, as the plaque on Harry Truman’s desk stated, “The buck stops here.”
Even the part of the video talking the Soviets mostly dealt with conscript labor to support the Soviet Army at Kursk.
At no point during the WAH series that I can recall (admittedly, I have no not watched every episode) has Sparty been trying to persuade viewers that events like the Zoot Suit Riots or the Bengal Famine are equivalent to the Holocaust or Holodomor. Rather, the series is about the impact of the war on civilians, deliberate and accidental, from genocide to “only” a race riot.
Accidents have consequences. Trauma is not a zero sum game. Acknowledging suffering caused by the Americans and British, deliberately or accidentally, does not lessen or excuse Nazi crimes against humanity.
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It’s difficult to prove with such a small sample size, as it barely gets covered, however, there is one definitive test for that theory: January 1945.
That is the date of the so-called Bloody (Orthodox) Christmas, where over 20 000 ethnic Bulgarians in Macedonia were massacred by the Yugoslav authorities. It’s a massacre that barely if ever gets covered, and to this day the authorities in North Macedonia that are loyal to the old regime either deny it or claim that ‘it wasn’t that bad’. Or worse, they say that ‘they deserved it’.
If Sparty truly wants to cover obscure and forgotten war crimes, then this should be one of the main topics of that WAH episode. If he ignores it (which I suspect he will) then there will be a very strong case for his anti-BG bias.
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As we approach the liberation of Sicily and fall of Mussolini in July/August 1943, will we see the story how the Allies will support the Italian citizens?
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Dear fellow TimeGhosters,
I want to bring the discussion back to the original points which was about the use of sources of the TG videos. As I have said before, I would consider an addition historian next to Indy and @Spartacus as the quality of the WBW and WAH videos has fallen after the Battle of Stalingrad. It seams that the recent videos miss the depth that we were used to with the weekly WBW and (then bi-weekly) WAH videos.
I will give an additional example from the videos of the Battle of Kursk and the Battle of Stalingrad: We know that the Soviets made defensive lines during both Stalingrad and Kursk. At Stalingrad (see The Battle of Stalingrad Every Week with Maps - YouTube for instance) these defensive lines were drawn in the maps but the Germans did overrun them so there were not extremely important at that battle. At Kursk some of these lines held while others were overrun and these lines were mentioned in the videos of the buildup of the defenses of Kursk and when the Germans attacked. At Kursk the defensive lines were, among on others, one of the important things that STOPPED the Germans, but there were not shown on the map or mentioned how they exactly worked. If I would go back to the videos of prior to the battle of Stalingrad, the quality of the material was good (of not excellent). But the quality of the material has fallen (just like Paulus’ 6th Army at) after Stalingrad and it is unfortunately that this drop in quality has not been recovered to previous levels in the recent videos.
There can be several things why the quality has dropped:
- Work on D-Day 1944/2023.
- War in Ukraine as TimeGhost did make videos about the history of Ukraine, the Holodomor, and Babyn Yar. In addition some supporters of this show from Ukraine now have more urgent things to do in Ukraine, and as a result they can not contribute anymore. Think about colorist, map editors or very important people providing Indy and @Spartacus with translated sources in their language.
- Astrid who has fallen ill (and recovered), as she is the director of this show, which means that others had to take over her part while making the videos (hence the delay of some of the videos).
- and Indy’s wedding (plans)
As we all know, this war won’t have lulls in fighting anymore and will significantly increase in the upcoming months, this means that there won’t be time to recover from the lulls in fighting to backtrack and forecast the plans and strategies in the details we were used to. As a result, I would say (to among others @Spartacus) (when possible) hire an additional (full-time) historian that can work according to the TimeGhost ethics of the United Nations.
(Like this post if you also agree that TimeGhost should expand with an extra historian!)
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I’ve noted similar issues with their use (or the lack thereof) of sources in the older videos as well (I’m transcribing their older videos and some of them were… less than pleasing, shall we say). The difference, in my view, is the scale regarding the decline in quality.
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To point out some examples:
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Their overuse of Martin Gilbert, and for that matter, general books on WWII, since the very beginning, for one.
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Their constant need to stick to the popular views on things instead of confronting them outright (see their comment sections and Indy’s videos on drugs in Nazi Germany). Of course, they’d go too far in the other direction too (see how they’ve treated Churchill, for instance).
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Speaking of the drug videos, sensationalism. That was also a problem in the early videos.
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The overly emotionally-charged moments (See Sparty’s WAH videos; understandable for WWII, but it is definitely not the best method of teaching). It honestly came close to being borderline manipulative at times.
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Not using the proper videos and images at points (you can see an example of that in their racism video I criticized last year; see below)
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Speaking of the technical side of things, the sound quality was (and is) iffy in many videos. Even in some recent videos, Indy and Sparty sometimes sound like they’re shouting in empty rooms.
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I pointed out in an earlier post about their quoting a primary source from a secondary source despite the fact that the primary source is still readily available online (Molotov’s telegram to Poland, for instance)
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And of course, videos like these:
And that’s just a few I can think of at the top of my head. I haven’t finished transcribing all of them; maybe my views would change, maybe not.
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I’ll be honest, this isn’t the impression their content gave me, and on some fact not being mentionned, it’s not really a issue for me because they can’t say everything in 20minutes video, some things need to be left out. The episode on the bengal famine didn’t gave me the impression they laid the blame solely on churchill, more on british mismanagement.
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It would appear that way, but you have to be willing to look deeper into the sources and corroborate the story. That’s when I noticed more flaws in their presentations of the war.
It’s easy to say “the racism video is well-researched”… if you only took Sparty’s word for it.
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OK… but why call Churchill an architect of death in title? This is the title btw Stalin, Hitler, and Churchill - Architects of Death. For Clickbait? But… there are better ways to go about it and for WW2 clickbait is not something you want when you are making the largest documentary on ww2.
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Going back to one of my main issues with the series:
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I’ll admit this one has issues, although I don’t think not mentionning something mean spartacus is biased, the WAH episode often last 20min, you can’t say everything. Didn’t noticed issue on the video audio tho and it’s not issue to have emotionally-charged moment, you’re suppose to feel bad for the holocaust victims per example.
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True, but that should never be a crutch (which, to use an example from their later videos, the ad before Sparty introduces himself is definitely trying too hard to be emotional). Even the teaching of the Holocaust should never just boil down to moments like this.
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Didn’t felt it was just those moments for me, I did had a slight issue when he said pierre laval protected french jews because delaying their deportation isn’t protecting them and laval wished for a nazi germany victory, wich mean a holocaust of french jews.
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