History remembers the big things: the empires and the great kings and conquerors. But often it is common men who turn the tides. In the right place, at the right time, they stand in the path of history and by their will alter its course, like at the 1940 Battle of Drøbak Sound.
1/ In early 1940 the Second World War was going well for Germany. Having recaptured most of the former German Empire, they were enjoying the period known at the Phoney War, when Great Britain and France sat around and did nothing while the Germans took their half of Poland.
2/ But the Germans were not done, their war machine desperately needed Swedish iron ore. To create a buffer against Allied interdiction, and to give the Kriegsmarine access to more Atlantic ports, they decided to add neutral Norway to their win column.
3/ Their plan was simple, sail their brand new, state of the art heavy cruisers right up the fjord to Oslo, capture the king and the state gold reserves, and the rest of the country will fall in line.
The Kriegsmarine Kampfgruppe sailing to Oslo was small but extremely powerful.
4/ Leading the German battle line was the heavy cruiser Blücher, less than a year old. At the time, battleships still ruled the Atlantic. The only one sunk so far in the war had been an old one, sunk in harbor at anchor, by a submarine.
5/ Both sides assumed their heavy surface fleets would bring victory. The Blücher was a ship built semi-illegally under the German re-armament effort.
It was 18,000 tons, carried 20 heavy guns, including eight 203mm's, and could do 32 knots on the open seas. She was a monster.
6/ She was designed to chase down enemy ships all over the world’s oceans, and send them mercilessly to the depths. The Blücher also carried about a thousand men of the 163rd Infantry Division, and a large number of Gestapo agents.
7/ They hoped to capture and garrison the Norwegian capital quickly to crush Norway's resistance. All that stood between them and another quick victory was a 64-year-old man, a company of conscripts, and guns that were half a century old.
8/ Norwegian Colonel Birger Eriksen had spent his long career in the Coastal Defense Artillery, back when that was a thing. He commanded the Oscarborg Fortress, which was the last line of defense before Oslo. The fort boasted 3, 280mm guns bought in 1893 from…Germany.
9/ It also had two torpedo launchers, firing 40 year old torpedoes originally purchased from the extinct Austro-Hungarian Empire. Manning the guns were a collection of raw recruits and some trained officers, who in normal circumstances were no match for the oncoming Germans.
10/ Eriksen knew ships were coming up the fjord, but in the dark the outposts further up could not determine whose. Were they British, or German? What Eriksen did know was that he and his motley crew were the last line of defense for his King and his country.
11/ At the time, Norwegian ROE was to fire warning shots. But Eriksen knew his poorly trained gun crews, who had only been in the Army for a week, would never be able to reload the guns in time. As the blacked out fleet crept silently nearer, he decided to disobey orders.
12/ Yelling that "either I will be decorated or I will be court martialed. Fire!” he ordered his guns to fire on the massive ghostly ships. The first Norwegian shell tore into the Blücher, igniting some of the 163rd’s ammunition.
13/ The second slammed into an unarmored aircraft hanger, which the Germans had wisely decided to store aviation gas and fuel in. The fire from the Blücher light up the night sky, and only then did the voices from the burning ship betray the German crews.
14/ The Blücher burned, but it kept sailing past the guns at Oscarborg, and towards Oslo, directly into the sights of Commander Andreas Anderssen (who had retired in 1927). Anderssen fired his torpedoes into the side of the Blücher at point blank range.
15/ The first struck under a turret, causing minimal damage but the second hit directly below the second shell impact, and tore the Blücher apart. Flames roared through the dying ship as it drifted in the fjord towards the inevitable.
16/ The German crew tried desperately to save the ship, even firing her torpedoes into the shore so they wouldn’t ignite, but it was no use. The ship and the hopes for an easy invasion and occupation were doomed to a grave in an icy Norwegian fjord.
17/ As the rest of the German flotilla turned back, the brand new Blücher rolled over and sunk, taking almost a thousand soldiers, sailors, and Gestapo agents with it. One old man, his two old guns and his old torpedoes had stood between the might of Germany and his king, and won
18/ He had given his government the day it needed to evacuate Oslo, and to organize a hasty defense. The King and the gold would make it to England, where it would fund the Norwegian Resistance for the next five years of war. One man.
19/ Society tells us the same old story. “Who are you, you are one person, you can’t change anything”. And most of the time, they are correct. One person rarely changes the course of history. But it can. We rarely know the moment is coming, or even is upon us. But we can prepare.
20/ I didn’t know Colonel Eriksen, but I am certain he prepared in his mind for that night. He readied himself both technically and mentally for this decision, and when his time came, he did not freeze. The same is true for us.
21/ We don’t know if we will be asked to answer the call of history, but we can prepare. Maintaining a sharp mental and physical edge, not giving into mental atrophy and refusing the black pill are the only way we will be fit enough to answer that bell.
22/ Eriksen had as much right as anyone to take a black pill. With his useless ass troops and old ass guns, he had no chance against Germany's best, right? Instead he stood his ground and fought. And today Blücher's anchor sits on display in Oslo as a war trophy.
23/ He deprived his new enemy of one of the crown jewels on their fleet, and did as much as any regular man to win the largest war in human history.
While generals may have their names etched into immortality, they rarely are the ones who win their most famous battles.
24/ It is us. You and me. The regular people who actually shape history. As long as we have done everything we can to prepare for the night our own Blücher rolls down our fjord, we too will have our chance.
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There is no justice in the world unless we make it. You might luck out and the system works in your favor
But if you have to snatch and grab and do an extraordinary rendition of the pedo that killed your daughter on your own, then you do it
The story of Kalinka Bamberski
In 1982, a healthy and athletic 14 year old French girl named Kalinka Bamberski died suddenly in Lindau, Bavaria while vacationing with her mother and step-father.
Her father Andre fought for over three decades, and against three governments to bring her killer to justice.
Kalinka's stepfather, Doctor Dieter Krombach, admitted to having given Kalinka an "iron injection" to help her tan, and also a sleeping pill. She was found dead the next morning.
A very rural (typical for backwoods Bavaria) autopsy revealed some startling discoveries.
The tactics of Generals can win battles and maneuver the enemy to defeat. But if the enemy refuses to be defeated, refuses to succumb to the norms, and stands their ground against the storm then no tactics can defeat them. Like the charge of the Imperial Guard at Waterloo.
1. By 1815 the Napoleonic Wars was on its last legs. Napoleon had won fame and glory with a simple formula: Spread the enemy out, gather your strength and overpower a small part of the enemy line. Time and time again, it worked. Break one part of the enemy line and they all run
2. Napoleon loved the column formation. Instead of spreading his men out in long thin lines, he massed them like a hammer, marched them straight at a terrified enemy, and broke them like glass.
All kidding aside this Antifa thing has a chance to get spicy. It has before
Not to dox myself but I worked for this company that had a huge footprint in Germany, and one day their head of Executive Protection (good dude, former Legionnaire, shot together) asked me for some help
He took me down to the armored garage and the “arms room” where there were no shit racks of full auto MP5s, Uzis, and crates of grenades.
He said back in the 70s and 80s this was standard issue to all EP groups because of the Red Army Factions killing CEOs and hijacking planes.
We did the inventory and the Bundeswehr came and picked it all up, (he didn’t even give me an MP5 as a thank you) but I never forgot that before we got distracted by Islam, (which the commies used to their advantage) we fought a decades long hot war with the Communists.
These people are idiots. They talk in these grandiose self important sentences that don’t mean anything. Also, they have no understanding of how LE works.
Remember; Occam says blame the mentally ill. And they are
2. LE fakes.
Probability: Low
Why? They have lots of evidence already. They have cooperating witnesses and physical evidence. Dude is going away. They risk all of that to run up the score. Besides it is too quick and cops are slow.
The thing about political assassinations is they almost always backfire.
Killing Caesar got you the Triumvirate 2
Lincoln got you reconstruction
Ghandis ended Hindu nationalism
MLK JFK etc
Leaders on the left know this. And fear us
They know regular conservatives aren’t lone wolf killer types. We aren’t laying on rooftops to kill a political celebrity. We have too much to lose yes, but that is not how we flex our power
What they fear is our turning our backs on them. Our indifference to their causes.
Most conservatives believe in America. And we believe that most Americans just want a good America.
At least we did. Over the past few years that belief has eroded to the point of vanishing. The left has pushed and pushed and now they see us about to push back
“Air supremacy” is a broad term. But a general definition is you can hit whatever you want from the air, and the enemy can not. Sure, people still will get shot down. But the mission is a success.
The Serbs shot down an F-117, no one is saying we didn’t have air supremacy in Kosovo
Same in 1944-1945 in Europe. The Allies bombed what they wanted, and the Luftwaffe could not return the favor: still men died, but its war.