http://www.somethingawful.com/d/photoshop-phriday/improper-propaganda-posters.php?page=1
A fantastic collection of propaganda posters that have been photoshopped to change the message. Very funny, especially the re-enactment one, and the Cthulhu poster. Worth a few minutes of browsing past in my opinion.
“Gary Hyland owns a successful company that produces original
sculptures. He has a long-held fascination for the Nazis’ development
of new technologies during the Second World War.”
Do I need to add any more?
This is one series of speculations about how the nazis might have invented (and built prototype) flying discs at the end of the second world war. There are parts that come across as well researched, particularly when describing the problems of the nazi era for scientists. However there is absolutely no evidence cited for what is contained in the book and even where it introduces things as speculative it then goes on later to treat them as if they were hard fact.
However it does have a high entertainment value. That and I discovered that someone has rcently built a small flying disc out of off the shelf components using the principles outlined in the book as being likely. That said, I still dno’t believe the nazis did it in 1944 and it was further developped by the British, Canadian and American governments in the last 60 years.
The extraordinary history of the secret Nazi technologies which were adopted by the Allies after the war
Many theories have been mooted to explain the Roswell incident, most of which involve flying saucers and little green men from Mars. What has never been considered, though, is the odd coincidence that the high-speed, high-flying spherical object which crashed on Roswell bears an uncanny resemblance to some of the extraordinarily futuristic aircraft which were blueprinted in top-secret conditions by Nazi scientists during the Second World War. Blue Fires tells an extraordinary story of cover-ups and conspiracies, and it gives a fascinating alternative version of world history since 1945.
Don’t buy it. I got it for a pound, it was thought provoking and entertaining, but also intensely annoying. If you pay postage I’ll send you my copy instead.
Invasion of the West was a Cold War turned hot alternative history game that I ran at the March meeting of Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group (CLWG).Â
Having cast around for someone to do a plan for Invasion of the West Mukul volunteered, even though he wasn’t able to turn up on Saturday. Mukul’s plan is at the end of this report along with the umpire briefings, but in essence it was for a pre-emptive chemical strike on 1 British Corps near Hanover followed by a mad dash for Antwerp.
On the day Andy Reeve, John Rutherford, Dave Boundy, Terry Martin and Brian Cameron turned up. Andy and John played the Soviets/Warsaw Pact forces with Dave Boundy as their LU. Terry controlled the NATO forces with Brian joining in when he arrived.
The players weren’t entirely happy with the chemical strike but did it anyway. The results were disappointing as the combat capacity of the NATO forces wasn’t degraded terribly as had been hoped, although the civilian casualties were horrendous. (As a game fudge I deemed that the chemical strike would take a step loss when it hit and also inflict a step loss on any units remaining in the area. Fighting in an afflicted zone would be twice as deadly and all combat factors would be reduced to one). The main game effect of the chemicals was to stiffen the resolve of the German territorial forces to fight.
The Warsaw Pact advance hit the slightly softened NATO forces and punched their way past them with a few casualties. NATO correctly guessed the main axis of Warsaw Pact attack and concentrated their air effort, reserves and logs support on the thrust. In a bloody second day the Warsaw Pact air were swept from the sky. At the same time the West German Northern Corps counter-attacked and inflicted a serious stop to the follow-on forces. The forward Soviet thrust bypassed Hanover and almost reached the Ruhr before being annihilated by a British counter-attack heavily supported by aircraft and LSPs. The West Germans died with the Soviet follow-on force in a bitter slogging match.
Down south all was quiet, relatively speaking. The Czechs having been given no orders decided not to play. NATO forces dug in and fortified their positions waiting to see what happened. In the meantime the all the reserve formations were diverted north. The arrival of the Reforger air-deployed division tipped the balance. Although arguably the lack of activity in the South allowed the LSPs that might have been used there to be used in the North. As my mechanism translates LSP use directly into combat step losses this was disastrous as the forces involved very quickly lost all their offensive combat power.
I was reasonably happy with how the mechanisms worked, although I still have one or two reservations. Given that this was the second outing for the game this doesn’t surprise me. The main thing that I got from it was a few ideas on scenario generation. In the post-game discussion it was reckoned that there was some mileage in a political game set in the final throes of the Soviet Union which would provide the background for a game like this.
Given that everyone there seemed keen on this I intend to try and run an invitation game at the June meeting of CLWG, possibly in John Rutherford’s house. The game will need 15-20 people, which means that I need to go further than CLWG for players. The main teams will be NATO, Warsaw Pact and a few other key states to represent the UN Security Council in a time of crisis. I’ll also need a few umpires as well.
Each team will have 4-5 members which means I need around 15 players, 3 Liaison Umpires, a military umpire and myself as Game Control.
The background to the game is that the Soviet Union has realised that its collapse is imminent unless it can do something to relieve its economic position. The choices open are either reform, which has a risk of getting out of hand, foreign aid or a relief from the pressures of the Cold War and the level of funding that the Arms Race requires.
NATO This will have representatives from Britain, USA, a European state and one of the peripheral members. Their role will be to try and resolve the tension by bringing the Cold War to an end and negotiating market reforms with the Soviet Union and other WP countries.
Warsaw Pact This will have a Soviet Union, East German, Polish & Czech players. They will be looking for ways to relief the economic pressures that they are under.
UN members To bring some sense to things I want to have a few unaligned states to represent the UN and the peaceful influence that it may have on the events. This is likely to have 5 players.
Umpires Each of the three teams will have an LU umpire to advise and also to relay orders to map control. The game will also use the telephone system for communications between teams (although letters and face to face will also be allowed).
This means I need a total of 17 people to play the game. If you are interested, or know anyone who is then please let me know as soon as possible.
The AD69 megagame was held in Eardley School, Streatham on Saturday 14th June 1997.
As all historians know, primary sources are often good for giving you an idea of what was going on, but are often biased by the perceptions of the people involved. For megagames this is even more so, since the players will have you believe that they personally triumphed over all the others. AD 69 is particularly prone to this phenomenon. To this end I collected the papers of Glitius Decianus, the Procurator of Belgica after the game. I also collected a number of papers from the ruins of the Senate including some of the letters from Fabius Fabullus the legate of Legio V, Alaudae and Defender of Belgica.
The recovered papers are:
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