Opinion - Other History Youtubers

[NormanStewart]

Not really. His videos on feminism, gun rights and the party switch are downright atrocious. Absolutely won’t recommend. Even in the videos wherein he does try to put some effort (his video on Japan), he resorts to what I call “arrogance of modernity.”

[NormanStewart]

@nicholasrusson_58993

Atun-Shei Films - Andy does a lot of US Civil War and anti-Lost Cause videos and is quite strong on the Puritan period of New England, although he tends to explore those in both serious treatments and in semi-parodic forms.

I consider him one of the lesser historians on the Civil War. There’s simplification of complicated affairs and then there’s downright manipulation of the narrative and being a weasel, something which Atun engages in a lot especially when talking about the Confederacy (pro-tip: even for a slave-owning state, you have to be neutral in your analysis). He’s also proven to be a coward, in his stance on statues and historiography.

Folks like him are the reason why I know students who nearly quit history class.

[1nt17cs152.ritvik]

Ignore the videos of uh… Feminism and all that… We are talking about history… my friend. And the two outliers

“Arrogance of modernity”. I am not sure what that means.

[NormanStewart]

@nicholasrusson_58993

The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered - Bite-sized treatments of historical, scientific and cultural topics. Most recent episode was about a Fenian attempt to blow up a lock on the Welland Canal in 1900 (which I’d never heard before, even though I live not far from there).

One of my personal favorite videos of his is his video on the Halley’s Comet sighting of 1910.

[NormanStewart]

@1nt17cs152.ritvik

Ignore the videos of uh… Feminism and all that… We are talking about history… my friend. And the two outliers

That is a history video, he does talk about its history after all.

[michael]

Time Team Official - rereleased episodes of the classic archaeology series, plus new stuff.

[NormanStewart]

@1nt17cs152.ritvik

“Arrogance of modernity”. I am not sure what that means.

“We are more progressive and more “woke” than our ancestors. [Whatever side we talk about] are a bunch of morons.”

[NormanStewart]

@nicholasrusson_58993

The Cold War - A side project of the Kings and Generals team.

Eh, I don’t know. I found his videos (along with K&G in general) rather boring at best and downright false at worst (his video on the Civil Rights Movement makes TimeGhost’s video on U.S. Army racism look well-researched by comparison).

[NormanStewart]

My list:

• History Guy: History Deserves to be Remembered
• Mark Felton Productions (and also his second channel War Stories with Mark Felton)
• TIK
• Allec Joshua Ibay (if you consider videos on aviation disasters as being history content, which I do)
• Lindybeige
• Townsends
• The Laughing Cavalier (movie/TV review channel, especially those set in the Tudor period)
• The 8-Bit Guy (for some computer and electronics history)
• Montemayor
• Real Time History (highly recommend his videos on the Franco-Prussian War)
• Voices of the Past
• Military History Visualized
• Military Aviation History
• Tasting History with Max Miller
• Jack the Ripper Tour (for Jack the Ripper videos, if you consider true crime history)
• Criminally Listed and Horror Stories (again, true crime and strange events)
• The Great War (some of the time at least)
• Karolina Żebrowska, TheLongHairedFlapper, priorattire (the latter’s my wife’s favorite, for women’s fashion history)
• Forrest Haggerty
• Drachinifel
• Some special videos from Dark Corners Reviews (movie review channel wherein he talks about Old Hollywood history in said videos)

I would put TimeGhost here, but… well…

Racism of the US Army - Fighting for Freedom? - WW2 Special

Disclaimer: I have discussed this video with a friend of mine and history buff from Georgia whom I shall call JD at his request and this is what we thought of the video. We thought it would be a neutral take on segregation in the United States. Little did we realize how disappointed we would be. I won’t be discussing minor mistakes, like his pronunciations of certain names, because the content matters more here. And at the end, I would suggest improvements to the video (this entire post should…

Racism of the US Army - Fighting for Freedom? - WW2 Special

There, on the front lines, these colored units are rarer than you might think. You see, 80% of all black servicemen will never leave the United States. Partly because other members of the United Nations, such as Australia, request the U.S. to not send too many people of color to not upset the white population. So, what he said about Australia isn’t untrue. The Australian government, in Dec. 1941, asked that the U.S. not send blacks. The U.S. basically responded with, “Screw you, we’ll send wh…

WW2 CHANNEL DEMANTY (for the episode Yugoslav Resistance)

Hi everyone, hope all of you are fine as usually and sorry for not writing content for a longer period due to this whole virus crisis and other obligations. Anyhow since I following different historic YouTube international channels but also those from our own region who had different perspectives on the WW2 (and other) historic events I found out something very interesting and that is the official WW2 CHANNEL DEMANTY for the episode “Yugoslav Resistance and Serb Collaboration”. Demanty with sub…

[nicholasrusson_58993]

@NormanStewart

You forget TIK (inb4 someone in TG tells us to ignore him despite his workload and sources).

I ignore him because I find his presentation style to be aggressively abrasive. Even when I agree with what he’s saying, I find I have a very limited ability to watch before I have to stop.

[nicholasrusson_58993]

@NormanStewart

There’s simplification of complicated affairs and then there’s downright manipulation of the narrative and being a weasel, something which Atun engages in a lot especially when talking about the Confederacy (pro-tip: even for a slave-owning state, you have to be neutral in your analysis). He’s also proven to be a coward, in his stance on statues and historiography.

There’s a very intelligent and very articulate chap I often interact with on Gab who holds even stronger anti-Atun views than that. He and I generally agree not to discuss the videos whenever I post a link to them (I sometimes even hashtag the posts that I know will get him angry). Not being American, I don’t always see where the still-active fault lines are in discussing US Civil War topics, so perhaps I am taking more of his coverage at face value than I should, but I’ve generally found him entertaining and only occasionally find his presentation to be unfair or misleading.

@NormanStewart

“We are more progressive and more “woke” than our ancestors. [Whatever side we talk about] are a bunch of morons.”

I’ve usually seen that attitude described as “presentism”. And I agree it’s a serious issue with a lot of channels.

@NormanStewart

I found his videos (along with K&G in general) rather boring at best and downright false at worst (his video on the Civil Rights Movement makes TimeGhost’s video on U.S. Army racism look well-researched by comparison).

K&G/CW aren’t the most electric of presentations, agreed. Again, I don’t follow the details of US history as closely, so I’d imagine errors on the Civil Rights movement would probably get past me fairly easily.

[NormanStewart]

@nicholasrusson_58993

Even when I agree with what he’s saying, I find I have a very limited ability to watch before I have to stop.

I have that issue with TIK as well – I suggest he really needs a script doctor and to be more confident.

[NormanStewart]

@nicholasrusson_58993

Again, I don’t follow the details of US history as closely, so I’d imagine errors on the Civil Rights movement would probably get past me fairly easily.

I’ve detailed some of that in my criticisms of TimeGhost’s video from months ago.

[NormanStewart]

@nicholasrusson_58993

There’s a very intelligent and very articulate chap I often interact with on Gab who holds even stronger anti-Atun views than that.

I despise Atun too. I was being, well, nice in my reply there (cleaning it up for this forum).

[1nt17cs152.ritvik]

@NormanStewart

Karolina Żebrowska, TheLongHairedFlapper, priorattire (the latter’s my wife’s favorite, for women’s fashion history)

something tells me that you watch it to because of uh… curly hair

[Chewbacca]

@nicholasrusson_58993

I ignore him because I find his presentation style to be aggressively abrasive.

I have the same feeling when watching him. To me he also comes accross as a “quoter without evaluation”. E.g. Hitler was not obsessed about Stalingrad because he said so in speeches. The name was not a factor.

Obsessiveness is hard to measure BUT Hitler in his speeches was probably trying to convince the Germans that the name Stalingrad was irrelevant to him. In spite of the fact that it was a house to house forever slogging match.

Let alone his unwillingness to retreat from Festung Stalingrad later. The name mattered I think.

[NormanStewart]

@1nt17cs152.ritvik

something tells me that you watch it to because of uh… curly hair

TheLongHairedFlapper definitely

[NormanStewart]

@NormanStewart

Halley’s Comet sighting of 1910.

For anyone interested:

Halley's Comet and the End of the World

[NormanStewart]

@Chewbacca

To me he also comes accross as a “quoter without evaluation”.

One should evaluate, but when one is twisting what is said to imply meanings to fit his worldview, he runs a serious risk of becoming a “quoter with overevaluation” or, worse, “quoter with misinterpretation” or “quoter with fabrication.” As an example, I pointed out the blatant manipulation of Stimson’s quotes on black servicemen by TG in my posts months ago. That’s a combination of misinterpretation, sensationalism and even omission (in that they ignore what Stimson himself had to say on the matter).

@Racism of the US Army - Fighting for Freedom? - WW2 Special

When asked to justify this policy by a Representative to Congress in 1943, Secretary of War Henry Stimson would reply that:

Negro units have… […] …been unable to master the techniques of modern weapons.

That’s not what he said. That was a quote from William Hastie (who was not a Congressman, he was Stimson’s civilian aide) in a 1972 interview…
Judge William H. Hastie Oral History Interview | Harry S. Truman

…not Stimson himself…

…that was sensationalized and twisted quite sloppily:
The African American Experience during World War II - Neil A. Wynn - Google Boeken

Wynn is another British historian and this was his only published work (outside of essays for journals).

Gluckstein again:

The second part of the quote was sensationalized by the NAACP, through Hastie and Truman Gibson. Hastie actually stepped down as a civilian aide to Secretary Stimson because he claimed that they were planning a separate OCS for the Air Corps and he wasn’t informed. The Air Corps denied the claims, but he said they were lying, and resigned. Part of Hastie’s resignation letter, published on the Chicago Defender:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/813068464855187467/844810942263853086/unknown.png

And now we know where the “[…]” comes from. It’s because it was two things attributed to him, but not definitively said by him that JD and I could find, yet.

Regarding the second comment about “not knowing how to operate modern weapons,” Hastie’s big push wasn’t for ground combat. He wanted (not wrongfully) blacks to be represented in artillery, mechanized divisions, and most important to him, the Air Corps. So, the soft implication of the phrase, when spoken out of context, is that “black people can’t even use machine guns,” when Stimson could have been (and this is conjecture on our part) referring to the fact they didn’t have the education level to handle more advanced mechanized weapons, which require training and a certain level of basic education to use.

Even then, with context of the whole discussion (and considering Stimson did sign off on multiple mechanized all-black units), Stimson couldn’t have harbored that as a universal belief.

So, it’s easy to presume he may have been speaking about mass mobilization of “all blacks,” not just the higher-educated or capable ones. This does tie into racial (and regional) disparities in education.

The NAACP, following W. E. B. DuBois’ lead, really had and has a very bad habit of presuming that “anything one white man can do, all black men can do.” There’s a reality that “white militaries” learned a long time ago – some people really are just bullet fodder and they are useful. You give them a rifle, you give them some training, you point them at the enemy. But, that is “beneath the black man” in some views on the other side.

We will never know whether Stimson himself actually said that, because he died only 5 years after the war ended.

I see this a lot, “well, he said that, but he didn’t really mean it.” I’d ask: what makes one the authority to state that (unless he can read minds of people he had never even met associates of who are long dead)?

@Chewbacca

Hitler in his speeches was probably trying to convince the Germans that the name Stalingrad was irrelevant to him. In spite of the fact that it was a house to house forever slogging match.

Yes, because Hitler was seeing how the battle was going and was desperate to beat the Russians and fully take the Volga and the Caucasus before the harsh winter. When the battle didn’t end by wintertime, he was forced to bog down, there was so much territory to defend and his supply lines were already thin. So, he downplayed the true nature of the battle to the public.

Look at the oil production of the region at the time and the geography of the area to see why it’s strategically important. It wasn’t just the name.

[No_Retreat]

WOW! You’re the man! Can’t wait to dig into this list!