Ask me about Military History!

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > Ask me about Military History!

Iseeyouseemeseeyou: Jan 3, 2011

Mans posted:

I really like how back in the day the people who drew maps would get bored and start drawing animals soldiers and monsters all over the place.

Uh what? They are depicting the epic battles that happened in ancient times when we drove the centaurs, flying reindeers and combat bears into extinction.

# ? Jun 2, 2012 21:53

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Jun 10, 2024 00:27

steinrokkan: Apr 2, 2011; Soiled Meat

Hey, whoever sponsored those maps paid good amounts of money for them, might as well throw in some fancy stuff.

# ? Jun 2, 2012 22:23

Ghost of Mussolini: Jun 26, 2011

Speaking of military animals, we all know about that bear but I wonder how many people here know about Kuznechik?

I was reading Vasily Grossman and amongst a plethora of other fairly irrelevant tales he describes Kuznechik, the Kazakhstani camel of the 308th Rifle division. Kuznechik was the unit's mascot (his uniqueness was used as a reference point by soldiers returning from the front in order to find the unit HQ). He was with the unit trough its formation previous to the battle of Stalingrad to the end of the war. The division was renamed the 120th Guard Mechanized Brigade, and further participated in Bagration (he was "almost bald" by this point), the liberation of Orel, the East Prussian offensives and the taking of Berlin. Through all this Kuznechik received three wound ribbons and the medal for the defense of Stalingrad.

Once having arrived in Berlin, Kuznechik spat on the Reichstag :ussr:

# ? Jun 2, 2012 23:30

New Division: Jun 23, 2004; I beg to present to you as a Christmas gift, Mr. Lombardi, the city of Detroit.

Dr. Tough posted:

I unironically agree with this statement.

Also, can anyone recommend a good book about the Korean War? Not about any one thing or battle in particular, but just the war in general.

A bit late, but the Forgotten War by Clay Blair is the most detailed description of the operations and battles of the Korean War if the shooty part of warfare is what interests you.

# ? Jun 3, 2012 01:24

Mans: Sep 14, 2011; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Ghost of Mussolini posted:

Speaking of military animals, we all know about that bear but I wonder how many people here know about Kuznechik?

I was reading Vasily Grossman and amongst a plethora of other fairly irrelevant tales he describes Kuznechik, the Kazakhstani camel of the 308th Rifle division. Kuznechik was the unit's mascot (his uniqueness was used as a reference point by soldiers returning from the front in order to find the unit HQ). He was with the unit trough its formation previous to the battle of Stalingrad to the end of the war. The division was renamed the 120th Guard Mechanized Brigade, and further participated in Bagration (he was "almost bald" by this point), the liberation of Orel, the East Prussian offensives and the taking of Berlin. Through all this Kuznechik received three wound ribbons and the medal for the defense of Stalingrad.

Once having arrived in Berlin, Kuznechik spat on the Reichstag

Steven Spielberg needs to make a film about THAT!

# ? Jun 3, 2012 03:41

Dopilsya: Apr 3, 2010

Medieval Medic posted:

How prevalent have war animals been throughout the ages? I know about war dogs and war elephants, have there been other noticable animals(war bears and rhinos, I want to believe even though they most definitly weren't)? Were they more of a gimmick or could they be reliable to help a battle?

EDIT: Yes, I do know of THAT bear.

You'd be amazed; consider this excerpt:

The German tank men would well be forgiven if they thought that every living creature in Russia was against them, particularly in view of the telex message from Army Operations Section of OKH and sent to all Army Groups.

This read: "A panzer division on the Eastern Front which had placed its vehicles under cover and in a warm place, in accordance to standing orders, found that when an alarm call was received only 30 percent of its vehicles were ready for action. Mice had gnawed through the electric leads on the engines of the tanks." A Staff Officer with a sense of humour had annotated the document with the words "Soviet mice!!!!"
-"War on the Eastern Front 1941-45"; James Lucas

When I first read the above, it seemed just an amusing anecdote from the OstFront, but the chance discovery of previously restricted Soviet files, and a fluke of luck during an interview with a former Waffen-SS member, put me onto the trail of that most secret of secret wars within WW2. Initially following the lead on Soviet mouse detachments, this led to revelations about SS cat operations, and eventually to the untold story of what really happened to the disbanded antitank dog units of the Red Army. This is the story of animal heroics amidst the carnage and brutality of the OstFront. Battles fought in cellars and engine-compartments, away from the prying eyes of the better-known human combatants.

Formation of the First Soviet Mouse Units:

During the bleak days of "Barbarossa" in 1941, the beleagured Soviet Union was struggling desperately for survival,and all non-essential tasks were put to one side to concentrate on the defeat of Nazi Germany and her allies. One such area of non-essential work was the "Mouse Research Unit" at the University of Smolensk, led by Dr. Igor Valenkho. He had pioneered Pavlovian methods for teaching tricks to laboratory mice, and intended to use his mice for fine repair/recovery in industry and engineering - allowing work to be carried out without need to strip down machinery. But it was not regarded as realistic, and (especially with the approach of the Wehrmacht). Valenkho was re-assigned to the newly created anti-tank dog training unit. While despairing of his new work, the mouse-expert secretly continued with his old research, but with a new goal - anti-tank mice!
Combining the two areas of research with which he had become involved, he spotted a niche for his trained mice.

With their ability to get inside engines and destroy wiring and other small components, they were ideal for the task of disabling tanks and other vehicles. But there was a problem - how to get the mice to their targets? A flash of new inspiration came to Valenkho - the Polikarpov light bomber aircraft were famously making low-level nuisance raids on the Germans. They could drop his mice directly into action! After some persuasion, he was allowed to carry out an experimental drop on a German Panzer unit near Kirov in early April 1942. The results must have impressed the Red Army, because further drops were authorised, and in particular the mouse attack on 22 Panzer Division, 18-19 November 1942 which had a dramatic effect on the Stalingrad Campaign...

The German Response
Following this successful operation, Valenkho examined one of the disabled tanks (recovered by the Soviets) and discovered one of his mice sleeping in the engine compartment. This was the famous "Mikhail", who was honoured with a special "Hero of the Soviet Union" medal for his part.

However, the easy days for the mouse specialists were drawing to a close. Apart from the awareness of mouse activity (as represented in the quote at the start of this document), the shooting-down of one of the specially-equipped Polikarpovs gave the Germans a clue as to what was going on...Thus, in late 1942, there developed the use of cats in Panzer units to combat the Red Army Mice. In Wehrmacht units, a random collection of cats were unofficially added to the ration list, and gave sterling (if unrecorded) service. But, in typical style, the SS would only allow pure black cats into their "Katzesicherheitabteilungen" (KSA - Cat Security Units). While showy, these units were often inferior to their scruffier Heer contemporaries (where the cats were chosen as mousers, rather than by how they looked). But Germany could not seem to supply enough cats. In desperation, the SS then organised special "Handschar" and "Hiwi" units of non-German cats, with some success. The KSA-Katsicherheistabteilungen were formed under command from SS-Oberk�tzchenf�hrer Katzenjammer and comprised of two battalions of five companies each. They were engaged in heavy action against Russian mice (Bolshevik coagitators, as the Nazis referred to them). The schnurren of these troops as they advanced through the night spread fear and panic and were otherwise fairly demoralising to Soviet rodent troops. However, "Aber wenn SS-Oberk�tzchenf�hrer Katzenjammer fort ist, tanzen die M�use."

(It has been noted that, in the immediate post-war period, due to intelligence gleaned from former-Wehrmacht and SS officers, the US and UK both organised provisional cat units to protect their armoured units from possible Soviet sabotage - this was later rendered unnecessary when British scientists discovered a wire-coating inedible
to mice).

Every Dog Has His Day?
With the reduction in success of his rodent legion, Dr. Valenkho despaired again - until another flash of inspiration struck him. The anti-tank dogs had proved a failure, and dogs were now being reassigned (mainly to Gulasch or Vivisection duties). Realising a use for limited numbers of these already trained dogs to escort his mice into action. If one or two dogs could be dropped in conjunction, these would chase off or distract the cats and allow the mice to infiltrate the AFVs. It was a desperate measure, but given the options a number of dogs did "volunteer" for duty. The resulting actions were of limited success, however, partly as the new Tigers were virtually proof against mouse attack - the petrol fumes tended to kill/overcome the mice before they could chew through the wiring.
Anyway, by now the Soviets were on the upsurge, and had less need of such tricks...

# ? Jun 3, 2012 05:23

Mr. Sunshine: May 15, 2008; This is a scrunt that has been in space too long and become a Lunt (Long Scrunt); Fun Shoe

Flippycunt posted:

It's interesting to think about how differently things might have turned out if the purge had only been slightly more or less vicious. If it had been any more thorough some of the great military leaders that the USSR depended on to win the war, such as Chukov, might have been liquidated.

I think that Stalin's purges (of both the party and the army) went as far as it was possible to take these things without descending into some bizarre state suicide. Hell, towards the end of his life Stalin had Molotov's own wife expelled from the party and sent to gulag, and Molotov just accepted it. Some talented people (like Zhukov) survived mostly through sheer luck.

I think what fascinates me the most about the purges is that, while they did start out targeting Stalin's genuine rivals, in the end anyone in any position of power was a target. It was either a monstrous act of runaway paranoia, or a cold-blooded, calculated action to reduce the entire civilian and military leadership into a state of complete paralysis, unable to even think without Stalin's approval.

# ? Jun 4, 2012 09:50

Nenonen: Oct 22, 2009; Mulla on aina kolkyt donaa taskussa

I'm playing Revolution Under Siege, and gently caress if I've learned not to look up the names of my Bolshevik officers by now. Without exception (well, with the exceptions of Stalin and Voroshilov) they die somewhere between 1937-1940.

So I noticed that General Miller was operating against me in Arkhangelsk, and thinking that as a White general supported by the Entente he must have had a somewhat happy ending as an emigrant, decided to check his story in Wikipedia. Well, gently caress me:

quote:

On September 22, 1937, NKVD informer and All-Military Union intelligence chief Nikolai Skoblin led General Miller to a Paris safe house, where he was to meet with two German Abwehr agents. The agents were not who they appeared to be. They were in fact officers of the Soviet NKVD disguised as Germans. They drugged Miller, placed him in a steamer trunk and smuggled him aboard a Soviet ship in Le Havre. However, Miller left behind a note to be opened if he failed to return from the meeting. In it he detailed his suspicions about Skoblin.

French police launched a massive manhunt, but Skoblin fled to the Soviet embassy in Paris and eventually was smuggled to Barcelona, where the Second Spanish Republic refused to extradite him to France.

However, Skoblin's wife, Nadezhda Plevitskaya, was arrested, convicted and sentenced by a French court to 20 years in prison.

The NKVD successfully smuggled General Miller back to Moscow, where he was tortured and summarily shot nineteen months later on May 11, 1939. According to NKVD General Pavel Sudoplatov, "His kidnapping was a cause celebre. Eliminating him disrupted his organization of Tsarist officers and effectively prevented them from collaborating with the Germans against us."

Comrade Skoblin didn't have it much better:

quote:

There are several accounts of Skoblin's death, all of them secondhand. Pavel Sudoplatov alleges that Skoblin escaped to Spain and died in republican-held Barcelona during a German bombing raid. In Deadly Illusions (1993) by John Costello and Oleg Tsarev, the authors suggest that an NKVD General Alexander Orlov, smuggled Skoblin into civil war-ridden Spain by airplane and disposed of him in a Republican front area, keeping his ring to use in a later blackmail scheme. Victor Alexandrov speculates in The Tuchachevsky Affair (1963) that Skoblin was poisoned aboard a Soviet vessel, the Kuban, bound from Spain to Odessa (Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union), and his skeleton ultimately ended up in a Soviet anatomical laboratory. Alexander Orlov in his own memoir, The March of Time (2004), writes that the NKVD compelled Skoblin to write undated love letters to Plevitskaya, which were used to buy her silence, and then smuggled him aboard a Soviet cargo vessel bound for Leningrad. Orlov ends his story in the Baltic Sea, leaving it to the reader to guess Skoblin's fate.

Nadezhda Plevitskaya died in prison in 1940. Might as well, the prospects of a Russian communist gypsy NKVD-affiliated prisoner in German-occupied France were not very good. :smith:

# ? Jun 4, 2012 15:19

SeanBeansShako: Nov 20, 2009; Now the Drums beat up again,
For all true Soldier Gentlemen.

The Russian Civil War of the Twenties: Everyone dies horribly.

# ? Jun 4, 2012 15:26

Comstar: Apr 20, 2007; Are you happy now?

I'm going to a tour to Gettysburg. Anything in particular I should go to or look at?

# ? Jun 4, 2012 15:31

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Yeah, there were no happy endings. Denikin died due to a heart attack at 74 years, so I guess he could consider himself lucky.

Trotsky had a pretty :black101:

last stand though: he was hit with an ice axe in the back of his head, after which he spat on his assasin and singlehandedly kicked his rear end (at the age of 60!), nearly killing him before bodyguards came to the rescue. He died two days later, unable to deal with blood loss and general trauma.

Lichtenstein fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Jun 4, 2012

# ? Jun 4, 2012 18:37

SeanBeansShako: Nov 20, 2009; Now the Drums beat up again,
For all true Soldier Gentlemen.

That backs up my belief that if Stalin and Trotsky went one on one bare knuckle brawl style, only Trotsky would emerge alive.

# ? Jun 4, 2012 18:41

Nenonen: Oct 22, 2009; Mulla on aina kolkyt donaa taskussa

The Russian civil war history is full of delightfully grotesk details. Like when Mikhail Muraviev, the commander of the Red Army Eastern Army Group, ceased fighting with the Czechs in the east and instead declared that the real fight should be with the Germans in the west:

quote:

The situation was saved by the Bolshevik chairman of the Simbirsk Province ExCom, a young Lithuanian worker named Vareikis (sent to the province in May). Vareikis set an ambush; he claimed later that Muraviev resisted arrest, Mauser in hand, but in any event he was killed. (It was reported that Muraviev committed suicide, but since his body had five bullet holes and several bayonet wounds this seems a little unlikely.)

# ? Jun 4, 2012 19:23

Schenck v. U.S.: Sep 8, 2010

SeanBeansShako posted:

That backs up my belief that if Stalin and Trotsky went one on one bare knuckle brawl style, only Trotsky would emerge alive.

Stalin was small in stature and his left arm was disabled and withered as a result of a childhood accident. He wasn't going to win a lot of brawls. On the other hand, while Trotsky was writing essays and theorizing about revolution, Stalin was planning bank robberies, kidnappings, and otherwise being an outlaw. This is one of the fascinating things about him as a historical figure, because he was basically the top henchman of the Bolshevik movement, the brutal mastermind who did the dirty work that kept the party alive. When it came down to a struggle between him and the smarter, more educated, and more charismatic Bolshevik veterans like Trotsky, Kamenev, and Zinoviev, he ran over them simply by virtue of being more capable, more vicious and cunning.

Stalin is one of the most evil figures in history, but at the same time he's also one of the most outstanding figures. He was born the son of an illiterate and alcoholic shoemaker in Tbilisi, and pretty much by dint of hard work and lucky circumstances he died as one the most powerful men who ever lived. Very few people could boast similar career trajectories.

# ? Jun 5, 2012 03:37

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

EvanSchenck posted:

Stalin is one of the most evil figures in history, but at the same time he's also one of the most outstanding figures. He was born the son of an illiterate and alcoholic shoemaker in Tbilisi, and pretty much by dint of hard work and lucky circumstances he died as one the most powerful men who ever lived. Very few people could boast similar career trajectories.

I think it's pretty ironic that Stalin himself has one of the bootstraps-iest life stories ever. I mean, considering the rhetoric of the Soviet Union's enemy during the Cold War.

# ? Jun 5, 2012 08:50

Nenonen: Oct 22, 2009; Mulla on aina kolkyt donaa taskussa

Stalin also spoke Russian with a heavy Georgian accent. There was one Georgian actor, Mikheil Gelovani, who played the role of Stalin in more films than anyone else, 15 times. Basil Rathbone comes close with 14 films as Sherlock Holmes, but very few could get even close to that. Gelovani looked a lot like Stalin and also sounded precisely the same:

quote:

Reportedly, he was not the premier's favorite candidate for depicting himself on screen: since he was Georgian, he mimicked Stalin's accent "to perfection". Therefore, the leader personally preferred Aleksei Dikiy, who used classic Russian pronunciation.

Comrade Gelovani as comrade Stalin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xItolrDvoVg

I'm not very fluent with Russian myself so I'm bad at appreciating the accent, but I do notice with many words that Gelovani doesn't use standard pronunciation. Interesting thing to note: in this 1949 film there are also US, British and French flags in Berlin, rushing to greet the Generalissimus. Not to say that the movie isn't a wank-fest to Red Army's achievements and its CinC's brilliance, but at least Soviets recognized that the western Allies participated in the affair. Also I'm loving the guys in striped uniforms, presumably fresh out of concentration camps... :ussr:

You'd think that this was a cushy career choice, but when Stalin died in 1953 Gelovani could no longer find any work in acting.

Now, one day within this century USA is going to have a president that speaks English as a second language and that day will be wonderful. Just the fact that Mitt Romney can speak French makes him unelectable to some.

# ? Jun 5, 2012 10:50

SeanBeansShako: Nov 20, 2009; Now the Drums beat up again,
For all true Soldier Gentlemen.

Today I'm kind of curious about that little war that split the Netherlands apart and made Belgium an independent nation.

# ? Jun 5, 2012 15:17

Proust Malone: Apr 4, 2008

How did the red army react to the concentration camps? Presumably they liberated the majority of them, but were they thinking they were the German gulags?

Or am I making that comparison due to have being fed cold war propaganda?

# ? Jun 5, 2012 16:20

twerking on the railroad: Jun 23, 2007; Get on my level

EvanSchenck posted:

Stalin was small in stature and his left arm was disabled and withered as a result of a childhood accident. He wasn't going to win a lot of brawls. On the other hand, while Trotsky was writing essays and theorizing about revolution, Stalin was planning bank robberies, kidnappings, and otherwise being an outlaw. This is one of the fascinating things about him as a historical figure, because he was basically the top henchman of the Bolshevik movement, the brutal mastermind who did the dirty work that kept the party alive. When it came down to a struggle between him and the smarter, more educated, and more charismatic Bolshevik veterans like Trotsky, Kamenev, and Zinoviev, he ran over them simply by virtue of being more capable, more vicious and cunning.

Stalin is one of the most evil figures in history, but at the same time he's also one of the most outstanding figures. He was born the son of an illiterate and alcoholic shoemaker in Tbilisi, and pretty much by dint of hard work and lucky circumstances he died as one the most powerful men who ever lived. Very few people could boast similar career trajectories.

Just to clear something up that I heard once about Stalin. Did his Georgian birth name Dzhugashvili actually mean Iron, as I read in a book one time?

# ? Jun 5, 2012 16:39

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

Nenonen posted:

Now, one day within this century USA is going to have a president that speaks English as a second language and that day will be wonderful. Just the fact that Mitt Romney can speak French makes him unelectable to some.

It has already happened, a lot of early US presidents would be completely unelectable today for a whole host of reasons.

# ? Jun 5, 2012 16:47

Exergy: Jul 21, 2011

Skeesix posted:

Just to clear something up that I heard once about Stalin. Did his Georgian birth name Dzhugashvili actually mean Iron, as I read in a book one time?

Stalin and Lenin are nicknames, used for conspiracy.

Lenin - born as Vladimir Ulyanov, Lenin probably is after river "Lena"
Stalin - born as Joseph Dzhugashvili, Stalin is after "Stal", which indeed means "steel".

# ? Jun 5, 2012 17:26

twerking on the railroad: Jun 23, 2007; Get on my level

Tovarisch posted:

Stalin and Lenin are nicknames, used for conspiracy.

Lenin - born as Vladimir Ulyanov, Lenin probably is after river "Lena"
Stalin - born as Joseph Dzhugashvili, Stalin is after "Stal", which indeed means "steel".

I know those were both nom de guerres, and I knew what Stalin meant. I was asking if anyone knew if it was accurate that Dzhugashvili translates to "Iron" or some equiavalent.

# ? Jun 5, 2012 17:28

tallkidwithglasses: Feb 7, 2006

Ron Jeremy posted:

How did the red army react to the concentration camps? Presumably they liberated the majority of them, but were they thinking they were the German gulags?

Or am I making that comparison due to have being fed cold war propaganda?

Most of the worst of the extermination camps were liberated by the Red Army by dint of the fact they were located in Eastern Europe and fell in the path of the drive to Berlin. It's important to note the difference between a traditional concentration camp, which was sort of a nexus for organizing prisoner/slave labor and was basically a gulag populated by POWs, dissidents and other Nazi undesirables, and the death camps, which were specifically built to carry out the Holocaust. Just about every side in WW2 employed some form of concentration camp (and often times explicitly called them "concentration camps"), either for housing prisoners or in order to relocate a segment of the population suspected of being a potential fifth column (such as the Japanese internment in the United States). The death camps were something unique to the Holocaust though and just about every first hand account of soldiers who liberated them reflects how horrifying they were, even to people familiar with the idea of interning a large portion of the populace.

# ? Jun 5, 2012 17:36

Exergy: Jul 21, 2011

Skeesix posted:

I know those were both nom de guerres, and I knew what Stalin meant. I was asking if anyone knew if it was accurate that Dzhugashvili translates to "Iron" or some equiavalent.

Ah, ok. I found that there are three possible origins:
- after small town "Dzhugani"
- that it is actually osetian and "Dzhugate" may be translated as "flock"
- and finally apparently the word "Dzhuga" may also mean garbage

# ? Jun 5, 2012 17:36

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

SeanBeansShako posted:

Today I'm kind of curious about that little war that split the Netherlands apart and made Belgium an independent nation.

Wikipedia's pages on the Ten Days Campaign in principal and the Belgian Revolution in general are a pretty good summary. I wouldn't know much more about the military side, Roegiers & van Sas are pretty negative about William I and his indecisiveness though. Is there anything in particular you'd like to know?

# ? Jun 5, 2012 18:12

SeanBeansShako: Nov 20, 2009; Now the Drums beat up again,
For all true Soldier Gentlemen.

Koesj posted:

Wikipedia's pages on the Ten Days Campaign in principal and the Belgian Revolution in general are a pretty good summary. I wouldn't know much more about the military side, Roegiers & van Sas are pretty negative about William I and his indecisiveness though. Is there anything in particular you'd like to know?

I think Wikipedia covers the basics, I just see this war always happening in the Victoria games when you start out and it made me curious.

# ? Jun 5, 2012 18:16

Class Warcraft: Apr 27, 2006

Not exactly military history per se but can anyone recommend a book on the Hatfield-McCoy feud? I just watched the History channel mini-series about it and it sparked my interest.

# ? Jun 5, 2012 18:29

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

SeanBeansShako posted:

I think Wikipedia covers the basics, I just see this war always happening in the Victoria games when you start out and it made me curious.

There's just not much going for it on the operational side of things while all the strategizing is directly linked to Great Power politics.

# ? Jun 5, 2012 18:35

Nenonen: Oct 22, 2009; Mulla on aina kolkyt donaa taskussa

Skeesix posted:

I know those were both nom de guerres, and I knew what Stalin meant. I was asking if anyone knew if it was accurate that Dzhugashvili translates to "Iron" or some equiavalent.

Not to my knowledge. Dzhugasvili is ჯუღაშვილი and that's not similar to any Georgian spelling of iron or steel to my knowledge.

Molotov was also a porn name - molot being a hammer. But then 'Skryabin coctails' wouldn't sound as good, would they? Kirov was also born as Kostrikov. Maybe the practise should have been continued after the revolution. Eg. Gorbachev would have been much more convincing as Mihail Smertov (death).

Nenonen fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Jun 5, 2012

# ? Jun 5, 2012 18:37

Kopijeger: Feb 14, 2010

Nenonen posted:

Eg. Gorbachev would have been much more convincing as Mihail Smertov (death).

Since смерть is feminine like сталь and Лена, it would have to be "Smertin" instead, unless my grammar knowledge fails me badly. There are some actual people by that name, though it may derive from something other than the noun for "death".

# ? Jun 5, 2012 19:26

R. Mute: Jul 27, 2011

SeanBeansShako posted:

Today I'm kind of curious about that little war that split the Netherlands apart and made Belgium an independent nation.

Military-history wise, there's not a lot to be said. Not that I know of, at least. I'll give a general overview, though:

It's important to note that the Low Countries hadn't been united since the Dutch Revolt - so since the 16th century. Since then the area that is now Belgium had been part of the Habsburg Empire - so part of Spain and part of Austria. During the Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars, Belgium fell under French control. Once Napoleon was defeated, it was decided at the Congress of Vienna that Belgium would become part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. This was mostly pushed by Great Britain, who wanted to see the Low Countries as a buffer against French expansion.

It quickly became obvious that this wasn't going to work out, though. Belgium and the Netherlands were very different in many ways. Economically, the Netherlands were a seafaring, trade-nation with a large agricultural base. In Belgium, however, the industrial revolution had already taken root and this required a different economic approach. Another major point was that the Netherlands were protestant and Belgium was very much Catholic - both militantly so, after the Dutch Revolt. There was some heavy resistance coming from the Catholic Church towards King William's more liberal policy of freedom of religion. And though the Belgian liberals supported William in this regard, they eventually switched sides because he was a king, still, and to gain more political rights. There was also some discontent about language, seeing as the Belgian elites and its south were Francophone and were suddenly a minority again.

Anyway, in 1830, the July Revolution took place in France and as they say: 'When it rains in Paris, it trickles in Brussels'. After a performance of the opera 'La Muette de Portici' - which should tell you enough about who started the revolution -, the revolt was on. The upper class was quickly joined by the proletariat of Brussels and drove the Dutch forces from the city after some bloody street fighting. The Dutch made an attempt to take back Belgium in 1831 with the Ten Day's Campaign. This went about as well as you'd expect a war between an organised, professional army and a collection of militias and hastily assembled armies would go. The Dutch swept through Belgium, but were forced out after the Belgians asked the French for assistance. The Dutch couldn't do much against the might of the French armies and they couldn't rely on any of their allies seeing as they were preoccupied with crushing the revolt in Poland. This even though it was agreed at the Congress of Vienna that the European monarchs would assist each other in crushing internal revolts. But Poland's loss was Belgium's gain and in 1839 the Netherlands officially recognised Belgium's independence - though they held onto the traditionally Belgian area of North Limburg.

The Belgians established a constitutional monarchy and shafted the proletariat of Brussels by implementing the traditional 'Democracy for Rich People' system. After the son of the French king didn't want to be King of the Belgians, they took Leopold of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. He'd lost his chance at the British crown and denied the Greek one, but thought the Belgian one good enough. Or something.

If you have more specific questions, I probably won't be able to answer them but feel free to ask.

e: should check earlier posts as well.

Koesj posted:

There's just not much going for it on the operational side of things while all the strategizing is directly linked to Great Power politics.

This, pretty much. William I could've been the finest commander the world has ever seen, but there was no way the Dutch could've taken on the French army on their own.

R. Mute fucked around with this message at 20:08 on Jun 5, 2012

# ? Jun 5, 2012 20:06

Schenck v. U.S.: Sep 8, 2010

Ron Jeremy posted:

How did the red army react to the concentration camps? Presumably they liberated the majority of them, but were they thinking they were the German gulags?

You have to keep in mind that the German invasion of the USSR was incredibly brutal and had entailed many mass executions and other war crimes that resulted in millions of deaths. The Soviets already knew what the Nazis were all about long before they discovered any death camps. There is also the matter that the Gulags varied in severity, and only Kolyma, by far the worst of them, bears any comparison to the Nazi extermination camps. Even there the yearly death rate was something like 25%, whereas at Auschwitz the great majority of arrivals were killed even before they were technically inmates. When extermination camps were liberated, it was fairly obvious what they were, and I doubt it came as any surprise to the Soviet Army (though I'm sure the people who actually saw it were horrified).

# ? Jun 5, 2012 23:11

Nenonen: Oct 22, 2009; Mulla on aina kolkyt donaa taskussa

GULag was the organization that managed the Soviet prison camp archipelago, the letters standing for General Administration of Lagers (camps, not beer). To end up within the GULag you first had to be judged for a crime, whether actual or political.

NKVD also used deportations to places of internal exile, eg. lots of Poles and Balts were sent to Siberia (or just shot) and practically the entire Chechen nation was deported to Uzbekistan during WW2 because Stalin didn't trust them. These exile villages were not part of the GULag system itself, but the exiles were told that any attempts to escape or return to home would be punished with 20 years in GULag. It'd been impossible for entire families to escape, anyway.

In contrast, German camps were mostly for ethnic minorities or prisoners of war, and very few of the massive amounts of German concentration camp inmates had actually been sentenced in any tribunal, even a show trial.

# ? Jun 6, 2012 02:18

SlothfulCobra: Mar 27, 2011

How good was German espionage in WWII?

# ? Jun 6, 2012 02:56

wdarkk: Oct 26, 2007; Friends: Protected
World: Saved
Crablettes: Eaten

SlothfulCobra posted:

How good was German espionage in WWII?

Pretty poo poo. There were 0-1 non-double agents in Britain, and the ones they put into the US had a tendency to get caught. Also they had two competing intelligence agencies, at least one of which was headed by a guy who wasn't entirely big on Nazism.

# ? Jun 6, 2012 03:35

jonnypeh: Nov 5, 2006

wdarkk posted:

Pretty poo poo. There were 0-1 non-double agents in Britain, and the ones they put into the US had a tendency to get caught. Also they had two competing intelligence agencies, at least one of which was headed by a guy who wasn't entirely big on Nazism.

Wilhelm Canaris, chief of Abwehr. Not only not entirely big on nazism, but worked with the allies a bit. Many of [citation_needed] in that article though.

At least one of the ones landed in USA gave himself up immediately and turned in other 3 who landed with him at the same time. Of course they all got to their destinations by a submarine.

I'm now reading volume 2 of Hitler's U-boats. They had quite a range to be operating off Cape town and some even around Madagascar. And at first successfully, owing to poor ASW measures when they showed up.

Same applied to U.S. east coast, Canadian coast and Caribbean sea - until the allies stepped up ASW measures in these places, they had many opportunities to sink ships. As allied presence increased, they always had to go elsewhere.

# ? Jun 6, 2012 05:18

Iseeyouseemeseeyou: Jan 3, 2011

wdarkk posted:

Pretty poo poo. There were 0-1 non-double agents in Britain, and the ones they put into the US had a tendency to get caught. Also they had two competing intelligence agencies, at least one of which was headed by a guy who wasn't entirely big on Nazism.

Did they actually use their u-boats to drop spies on American shores?

# ? Jun 6, 2012 05:32

Nckdictator: Sep 8, 2006; Just..someone

jonnypeh posted:

Wilhelm Canaris, chief of Abwehr. Not only not entirely big on nazism, but worked with the allies a bit. Many of [citation_needed] in that article though.

At least one of the ones landed in USA gave himself up immediately and turned in other 3 who landed with him at the same time. Of course they all got to their destinations by a submarine.

Here's a petty good write-up on ther German spies in the US

http://www.damninteresting.com/operation-pastorius/

quote:

Just after midnight on the morning of June 13, 1942, twenty-one-year-old coastguardsman John Cullen was beginning his foot patrol along the coast of Long Island, New York. Although this particular stretch of beach was considered a likely target for enemy landing parties, the young Seaman was the sole line of defense on that foggy night; and his only weapon, a trusty flashlight, was proving ineffective against the smothering haze. As Cullen approached a dune on the beach, the shape of a man suddenly appeared before him. Momentarily startled, he called out for the shape to identify itself.

�We�re fishermen from Southampton,� a voice responded. A middle-aged man emerged from the soupy fog, and continued, �We�ve run ashore.� This sounded plausible to Cullen, so he invited the fisherman and his crew to stay the night at the nearby Coast Guard station. The offer appeared to agitate the man, and he refused. �We don�t have a fishing license,� he explained.

Just as Cullen�s suspicions began to grow, a second figure appeared over the dune and shouted something in German. The man in front of Cullen spun around, yelling, �You drat fool! Go back to the others!� Then he turned back to Cullen with an intensity in his expression that left the Seaman paralyzed�for he was now almost certain that he was alone on the beach with a party of Nazi spies.

The German agent stood close, and hissed, �Do you have a mother? A father?� As Cullen nodded, he continued, �Well, I wouldn�t want to have to kill you.� He held out a wad of cash. �Forget about this, take this money, and go have a good time.� Cullen, realizing this might be his only chance to walk away alive, decided to accept. As he reached for the roll of bills, the man suddenly lunged forward and seized Cullen�s flashlight. He then pointed the light toward his own face. �Do you know me?� he asked.
�No sir, I never saw you before in my life.�

�My name is George John Davis. Take a good look at me. You�ll be meeting me in East Hampton sometime.� With that, he released his grip on the flashlight and the money, and disappeared back into the fog. The shocked coastguardsman took a few hesitant paces backward, then whirled around and set off at a run for the Coast Guard station to inform his superiors that their fears had been realized.

Cullen�s suspicion was correct, but the man he�d confronted was no hardened military commander. His real name was George John Dasch, a waiter and dishwasher who�d come to the attention of the German High Command for the time he�d spent living in America before the war. He and a team of three similarly inexperienced agents had been given several weeks of intense training at a secret farm near Berlin before being ushered onto a U-boat bound for the US coast. Their mission, led by Dasch, was to sabotage America�s manufacturing and transport sector, and to terrorize the country�s civilian population. It would be known as Operation Pastorius.

The evening�s events had already damaged Dasch�s tenuous hold on the group. Unbeknownst to Seaman John Cullen, two armed sailors had been crouched in the darkness during the conversation on the beach, awaiting the signal to attack. The landing party had been left with standing orders to kill anyone who confronted them during the landing. But Dasch had chosen to let the man go, and his assurances that he had �buffaloed� the coastguardsman did not convince his men. After some nervous arguing back and forth, the saboteurs finished burying their supplies in the sand, and set out for the nearby Long Island Railroad Station.

In the meantime, John Cullen reached the Coast Guard post and breathlessly recited what he�d seen, handing over the bribe money as evidence. Though skeptical, and concerned about raising a false alarm, his superiors agreed to send out an armed patrol to investigate. They were led back to the site by Cullen, where any doubts were quickly dispelled; in the pre-dawn light, the men could see the outline of a German submarine dislodging itself from a sandbar just offshore. Once it had gone, a quick search of the area revealed a series of small crates buried under a shallow layer of sand. Inside were large quantities of explosives, detonation equipment, Nazi uniforms, and quality German liquor.

Once the news reached FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover around noon, his excitement could hardly be contained. As Attorney General Francis Biddle later recalled, �All of Edgar Hoover�s imaginative and restless energy was stirred into prompt and effective action. He was determined to catch them all before any sabotage took place.�

Coast Guard Station at Amagansett, New York
Here at last was a chance for Hoover to prove his organization�s value to the war effort. But the situation was delicate; making the story public would put every American citizen on the lookout for the Germans, but it would also alert the suspects to the hunt and might cause public hysteria�not to mention considerable embarrassment for Hoover and his Bureau if the search should fail. It was therefore decided that a media blackout be imposed. Quietly, with only the most professional degree of panic, the FBI began the largest manhunt in its history.

By this time, the four would-be terrorists were settled in New York City, preparing for their task from the comfort of fancy hotels and fine restaurants. They had $84,000 in mission funds to enjoy�equivalent to over $1 million today�and in the great melting pot of New York City their German accents raised nary an eyebrow. They remained completely unaware that their essential supplies had already been confiscated and that the entire might of the FBI was secretly on the lookout for them.

But George John Dasch, the group�s daring leader, had a secret of his own. The day after the landing he called Ernst Peter Burger, the most guarded and disciplined member of the team, into the upper-storey hotel room the two men shared. He walked over to the window and opened it wide.

�You and I are going to have a talk,� Dasch said, �And if we disagree, only one of us will walk out that door�the other will fly out this window.�

He then revealed the truth to Burger: he had no intention of going through with the mission. He hated the Nazis, and he wanted Burger on his side when he turned the entire plot over to the FBI. Burger smiled. Having spent seventeen months in a Nazi concentration camp, his own feelings for the party were less than warm. He, too had been planning to betray the mission. They were agreed.

The two men were uncertain how best to proceed with their plan. They were reluctant to contact the authorities, having been told by their handlers that the Nazis had infiltrated the FBI. Eventually, Dasch concluded that their best option was an anonymous phone call to test the waters and arrange for further contact. He called the FBI�s New York Field Office, and after several transfers was put in touch with a special agent. Identifying himself as �Pastorius,� the name of the mission, Dasch carefully recited his story. Then, ominously, the man on the other end of the line hung up. Dasch was stricken with panic. Had he just exposed himself to a Nazi spy? Had the call been traced?

George John Dasch (left) and Ernst Peter Burger (right)
In fact, he had been speaking to the office�s �nut desk,� the post responsible for fielding calls from Cleopatra and the wolf-man. In the midst of the most important case in the Bureau�s history, the agent on duty had dismissed their only lead as a prank.

Shaken but not discouraged, Dasch ordered Burger to stay put and keep an eye on the other men while he headed for Washington D.C. to set things straight. The morning of June 19, a week after his landing at Long Island, Dasch stepped into the FBI�s headquarters carrying a briefcase. He explained who he was and asked to speak with Director Hoover.

The agents in the building, however, were too busy catching spies to be bothered with every crackpot off the street who happened to know classified details about secret Nazi landings. Dasch was bounced from office to office until finally Assistant Director D.M. Ladd, the agent in charge of the manhunt, agreed to humor him with five minutes of his time. Dasch angrily repeated his story, only to find himself greeted once again with patronizing nods and glances toward the door. Fed up at last, he lifted the briefcase he had been carrying, tore open its straps, and dumped the entire $84,000 of mission funds onto the Assistant Director�s desk. Ladd blinked with astonishment and began to reconsider Dasch�s claims.

For the next week, Dasch was the subject of an intense interrogation, and he happily revealed all he knew. His operation, he explained, was just the first of a long series of sabotage missions planned by the Germans to cripple the American war effort. They were scheduled to land every six weeks, with the second team expected imminently. Dasch exposed the targets he had been instructed to hit as well as the methods he had been trained to use. He revealed key information about German war production, plans, and equipment. He turned over a handkerchief upon which the names of local contacts had been written in invisible ink�although Dasch, who had snoozed his way through spy school, couldn�t remember how to reveal it. Most important of all, Dasch disclosed the locations of his three accomplices and their aliases, taking care to note Burger�s role in the defection.

The three men who had landed with Dasch were quickly located using the information he�d supplied. Dasch knew little about the second four-man team, but with the help of his handkerchief contacts�which the FBI�s lab quickly discovered could be revealed by ammonia fumes�they were soon tracked down and arrested. Just two weeks after the first landing, and without a single attempt at sabotage, all eight men were in custody.

J. Edgar Hoover
Hoover broke the media blackout on the evening of June 27. Across the nation, American citizens were astonished to wake up to front-page headlines declaring �U-BOATS LAND SPIES; EIGHT SIEZED BY FBI.� But it wasn�t the story known to those on the inside. Hoover reasoned that letting the truth be known now would do nothing to discourage the Germans from making further sabotage attempts. It was better to perpetuate the myth of an invincible FBI that had halted the plot through its own ingenuity and all-seeing eye�a story that also happened to fit nicely into Hoover�s personal agenda.

At his press conference, Hoover therefore made no mention of the defection of Dasch, or indeed of any details on how the case was broken. He opted instead to praise the brilliance and efficiency of his FBI. �The detective work of the century,� Hoover called it, referring perhaps to agent Ladd�s astute observation of $84,000 cash bouncing off of his forehead. Further details, he explained, would have to wait until after the war. The unsatisfied press room erupted with speculations about elite FBI agents infiltrating the Gestapo and the High Command. Hoover refused to confirm any such wild theories, but his triple-eyebrow raises, exaggerated winks, and menacing cackles encouraged the reporters to adopt their own conclusions.

With the last of his accomplices rounded up, it was time at last for Dasch to get his due. On July 3, his contacts at the FBI greeted him with smiles and handcuffs, and tossed him into a cell alongside his men. It was not the response Dasch had been expecting, but the arresting agents assured him it was little more than a formality. If he just went along with it, he was told, J. Edgar Hoover would ensure that he received a presidential pardon within 6 months.

Hoover had indeed already spoken to President Roosevelt about the arrest, but his conversation had nothing to do with advocating Dasch�s release. The president was given an account similar to the one furnished to the press, with no mention of Dasch or Burger�s role in the investigation. According to Hoover, Dasch had been �apprehended� two days after his accomplices; and the arrest had been made in New York, not Washington, implying that the arrest of the subordinates had led to the capture of their leader rather than the other way around. Hoover�s revisions to the story may have had something to do with the river of letters and telegrams later received by the president urging him to award the FBI Director with the Congressional Medal of Honor. As it turned out, the majority of these messages came from the FBI�s own Crime Records Division, the office just a few doors down from Hoover�s. The campaign, however, was unsuccessful.

Explosive supplies recovered from the landing beach
Whether Operation Pastorius�s slapdash team of blue-collar workers and government pencil-pushers ever posed much of a threat is somewhat debatable. At the time of their capture, most of the saboteurs were too busy visiting gambling establishments and prostitutes to be planning any major acts of sabotage. Several were reuniting with family they�d left behind in America, while another had met up with an old girlfriend and was in the process of planning his wedding. The German High Command had perhaps misjudged the wisdom of sending naturalized citizens to attack their own adopted country. Nevertheless, the only concern of the US government was in reassuring its citizens and sending a powerful message to the Nazis. Since the men hadn�t actually committed any crime, a normal court could sentence them to at most a few years in prison�or even acquit them entirely. To President Roosevelt, this was unacceptable. In a memorandum sent to Attorney General Biddle, he wrote: �Surely they are as guilty as it is possible to be and it seems to me that the death penalty is almost obligatory.� A military tribunal, he felt, was the only way to ensure this outcome. �I won�t give them up,� he told Biddle, �I won�t hand them over to any United States marshal armed with a writ of habeas corpus.�

He would find no objections among the American populace. As shown in polls and editorials across the country, the general public was overwhelmingly in favor of execution for all eight terrorists. A letter printed in one newspaper called for the men to be fed to Gargantua, the Ringling Brothers� famous giant circus gorilla.

Within a month of the initial landing at Long Island, the eight saboteurs were put before a closed-door US military tribunal�the first to be assembled since the days of the Civil War. It was presided over by a panel of seven generals; there would be no jury, no press, and no appeal. During the trial, none of the defendants denied their involvement with the plot, instead claiming that they were forced into the mission by the Nazis, or that they had joined as a means to escape from Germany. Due to his unique circumstances, Dasch was defended separately. His counsel argued competently in his favor, noting that the case would never have been broken without him, that the FBI had promised him his freedom, and that he clearly had been planning to betray the mission from the start. Not only had he disobeyed orders by sparing coastguardsman Cullen, he had also deliberately revealed his face and assigned name�George John Davis�to the man.

Explosive delay devices disguised as pens, submitted as evidence
After 16 days in session and two rejected constitutional appeals from the defense, both sides had said their piece. A verdict was signed and sent directly to the president, who was to be the final arbiter of the sentencing. It was unanimous: the Germans, all eight of them, were guilty. The recommended sentence was death.

It was only upon reading the transcript of the trial that Roosevelt learned how Hoover had misled him. Regardless, it apparently didn�t shake the foundation of his opinion on the case. At the urging of defense counsel, FDR gave only enough ground to commute Dasch�s sentence to 30 years of hard labor, and Burger�s to life. George John Dasch, a man who had envisioned himself being welcomed as a hero by the American people and perhaps earning his own Medal of Honor, would instead spend what was likely to be the rest of his life in prison. His six accomplices were not so fortunate. Five days after the trial�s end, they were marched to the electric chair in alphabetical order. Within two months of landing in America, the men had been captured, charged, tried, and executed. The official verdict of the tribunal wouldn�t be released for another three months.

Dasch and Burger were locked away in a federal penitentiary, their true story only known to a handful of military and government officials. But as ethically suspect as J. Edgar Hoover�s deception may have been, his cover-up worked. Hitler was infuriated at the news of his men�s capture, and he refused to risk another submarine for further missions. Just as he had intended, Hoover effectively stopped any attempts at German sabotage for the remainder of the war.

Burger and Dasch�s stories didn�t end in prison. After the Allied victory in Europe, the documents pertaining to their case were released to the public despite the strenuous objections of J. Edgar Hoover. With the truth out in the open, and after a further three years of squirming, President Harry S. Truman finally agreed to commute the two men�s sentences. Having spent six years in federal prison, they were released and deported to Germany.

The Nazi saboteurs in court
The consequences of the 1942 Nazi sabotage plot remain very much present today. In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the United States government approved the use of military tribunals to try captured terrorist suspects. The major precedent for these tribunals is the case of Ex parte Quirin�the trial of George John Dasch and his seven Nazi agents. Their hastily assembled tribunal will also be looked to as the model for any future prosecution of �unlawful combatants.�

Stepping off the plane onto German soil, Dasch and Burger found themselves two men without a home: criminals in America and traitors in Germany. Burger turned against his former commander, publicly blaming him for the entire debacle before disappearing several years later. For his part, Dasch refused to run; he spent the rest of his life campaigning for acceptance in Germany and for a chance to return to America. He never received either. Dasch died in Germany in 1992, still awaiting the pardon promised him by J. Edgar Hoover half a century earlier.

# ? Jun 6, 2012 05:37

BogDew: Jun 14, 2006; E:\FILES>quickfli clown.fli

wdarkk posted:

The ones they put into the US had a tendency to get caught.

I do love how it was a comedy of errors. My memory's sketchy but I think one idea was to use agents who had family in America. Course the plan failed in part from oading them up with gold certificates which hadn't been in circulation for a few years. The spies then blew their cover by spending heavily with the funds they were given, which pretty much set off everyone's suspicions.

# ? Jun 6, 2012 05:45

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Jun 10, 2024 00:27

Nenonen: Oct 22, 2009; Mulla on aina kolkyt donaa taskussa

The menace to US way of life that the German 5th column presented was averted thanks to the adoption of racial profiling and enhanced interrogation techniques. Former Nazi sympathizers like Lindbergh and Ford were also put under 24/7 surveillance and wire tapping.

# ? Jun 6, 2012 11:14

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > Ask me about Military History!

«‹›372 »