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So, I recently learned that there is a popular opinion that Rommel was a Nazi. And, immediately after that, learned that this was one of those things that "goons know." Any truth to it? Googling lead me to a museum exhibit a couple years back called "The Rommel Myth" or something that proved Rommel was a hardcore Nazi supporter. Problem to me was that most of the evidence the newspaper articles listed were letters from Goebbels gushing about Rommel, wanting to make him a star. Which is like saying Wagner was a Nazi because of how much Hitler liked his music. Basically, is the adoration of Rommel much like the adoration of Lee, in that it's not fully justified and is a little revisionist? Also, is it true that the communists and anarchists parties in the Weimar Republic forced France out of a German territory through the use of a general strike? (I really had a better second question but forgot it.)
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Aug 21, 2012 08:10
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tallkidwithglasses posted:Uh I was always under the impression that the Luftwaffe went from "pretty good but not truly exceptional" at the beginning of the war to "utterly decimated" by the end. The fact they were able to shoot down lots of unescorted American bombers in daylight is not a sign of their organizational prowess. The Luftwaffe was exceptional at providing air support in the early war, though of course it was surpassed by the USAAF later on. Of course, this was a result of doctrinal measures where even lower echelons of the German ground forces had access to air support instead of having to go through a superior officer to get a Heinkel to sling bombs at someone. The air war is in many ways self-contradictory. For instance, up until late 1945, the Luftwaffe could gain local air superiority on the East Front, which is mentioned by Beevor in his Berlin book. The main issue here was that they didn't have enough avgas to actually do it most of the time. And neglecting strategic bombers wasn't really out of ignorance, but more out of necessity. Germany had limited resources and industrial capacity. Göring himself is an interesting figure, because he was a genuine war hero and as far as anyone knows, extremely intelligent but addicted to opiates due to his war injuries. I don't have the books at hand, but either Kershaw or Bullock mentions that Göring was more or less opposed to the war in 1939, having the foresight to actually realize things might go badly. This lead to some significantly schitzophrenic behavior from his side and some utterly rotten leadership. for instance his promises to supply Stalingrad despite it being impossible to do so with the resources the Luftwaffe had.
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Aug 21, 2012 09:09
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BirdOfPlay posted:So, I recently learned that there is a popular opinion that Rommel was a Nazi. And, immediately after that, learned that this was one of those things that "goons know." Any truth to it? Googling lead me to a museum exhibit a couple years back called "The Rommel Myth" or something that proved Rommel was a hardcore Nazi supporter. Problem to me was that most of the evidence the newspaper articles listed were letters from Goebbels gushing about Rommel, wanting to make him a star. Which is like saying Wagner was a Nazi because of how much Hitler liked his music. Basically, is the adoration of Rommel much like the adoration of Lee, in that it's not fully justified and is a little revisionist? Well, Rommel commanded the Führerbegleitbattalion - Hitlers Bodyguard Battalion (not the same unit as Leibstandarte though!). Unlikely that they would give that to someone who was politically suspect. There is also a quote from him (letter to his wife I think, might have been a diary entry) going "Yeah that Hitler fellow is pretty cool, he is what Germany needs to get back on its feet". On the other hand, there is the whole business with his involvement in the assassination plot. If I had to make a point, I'd say that Rommel, like many of his colleagues, started out fairly Nazi and then slowly grew more disillusioned as the war progressed. quote:Also, is it true that the communists and anarchists parties in the Weimar Republic forced France out of a German territory through the use of a general strike? (I really had a better second question but forgot it.) There was a general strike to force France out of the Ruhr after they occupied it when the new German government couldn't pay for the reparations it was supposed to make. But that was a) supported by the (social democrat) government and b) led to Weimar's hyperinflation, and was c) unsuccessful.
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Aug 21, 2012 11:43
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Goering chat itt: http://youtu.be/hjz8pAGRvsg
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Aug 21, 2012 13:42
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Has there been a recent, as in the last 100 years, case of psychological warfare having a tangible effect on a battle?
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Aug 21, 2012 14:56
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tallkidwithglasses posted:Uh I was always under the impression that the Luftwaffe went from "pretty good but not truly exceptional" at the beginning of the war to "utterly decimated" by the end. The fact they were able to shoot down lots of unescorted American bombers in daylight is not a sign of their organizational prowess. Once the RAF got its act together, they were able to fight the Luftwaffe to a standstill and found that dive bombers don't work too well if there's fighter opposition and if the ground forces start packing effective AA. Similarly, they destroyed a LOT of Soviet aircraft during the early days of the Eastern Front, outdated or otherwise, but later could only establish local and temporary superiority as the sheer weight of the SAF's numbers started bearing down on them. I always had a kind of respect for Stukas, up until I started doing some deeper reading into it and dive bomber doctrine versus the Il-2 Sturmovik and realized that by the end, the Luftwaffe build ground-attack variants of the FW-190 because they themselves figured out that killing tanks and ground troops with cannon and rocket fire is safer than putting yourself on the same relative path leading up to your bomb release every single time.
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Aug 21, 2012 15:26
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KildarX posted:Has there been a recent, as in the last 100 years, case of psychological warfare having a tangible effect on a battle? Um... I imagine you can find instances of leaflet containers that failed to open properly and landed on someone's head. Otherwise I suspect you meant to ask the question using a word other than 'tangible'.
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Aug 21, 2012 15:37
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^^^^^ These dudes had some success: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Army OperaMouse posted:The Luftwaffe was a feared opponent right until the end of the war. Also let me go back to this quote because its really weird how you keep using "we" to refer to the fuckin LUFTWAFFE dude. Kemper Boyd posted:The Luftwaffe was exceptional at providing air support in the early war, though of course it was surpassed by the USAAF later on. Of course, this was a result of doctrinal measures where even lower echelons of the German ground forces had access to air support instead of having to go through a superior officer to get a Heinkel to sling bombs at someone. I dunno, the interwar period had the Luftwaffe attempting to design and develop a "Ural bomber" under the guidance of Wever but that kind of stalled when he died in a plane crash. There were a couple prototypes built and they basically took after the Lancaster or the B-17, so it's not like they were one of those Nazi pipe-dream superengineering projects. There just wasn't administrative clout behind them after their main advocate died. Sure, Germany always had fuel-access problems but the decision to focus on tactical and dive bombers at the expense of strategic bombers was absolutely an administrative decision that, even if it didn't originate from Goring, it certainly was championed by him. Once everyone became enamored with the idea of ground-attack planes as super mobile tank units it was kind of downhill from there. tallkidwithglasses fucked around with this message at 15:43 on Aug 21, 2012 |
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Aug 21, 2012 15:40
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KildarX posted:Has there been a recent, as in the last 100 years, case of psychological warfare having a tangible effect on a battle? There were numerous points during the Indochina war with France where Viet Minh propaganda successfully caused local forces (or in some cases colonial troops) on the French side to desert. This was of course in part because these troops weren't fully committed to their commanders and in part in these battles because the Viet Minh were able to exert noticable battlefield superiority but often times a good propaganda move would be the trigger for a unit deserting its position. Now whether this was ever a decisive factor in a battle is a very different matter and one could argue that this required quite specific circumstances in which to be effective but I'd say that those were cases where there was a tangible effect.
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Aug 21, 2012 16:36
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tallkidwithglasses posted:Also let me go back to this quote because its really weird how you keep using "we" to refer to the fuckin LUFTWAFFE dude. "We" as in military historians/goons in this thread :S. I don't know. It doesn't seem weird to me.
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Aug 21, 2012 17:28
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Alchenar posted:Um... I imagine you can find instances of leaflet containers that failed to open properly and landed on someone's head. I meant having units just desert the field or having their effectiveness cut because they where forced to listen to the very best of Metallica all night[and thus had to stay up all night rockin out.]
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Aug 21, 2012 18:28
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I don't remember what this was related to, probably WW2 east front, but occasionally it was found that men were afraid to surrender unless they happened to have one of those bi-lingual "by presenting this document to our soldiers you are guaranteed a good treatment" leaflets because they thought that everybody who didn't have one would be just tortured and shot. Which is ridiculous, of course. They would just be starved to death in labour camps.
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Aug 21, 2012 18:51
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Nenonen posted:I don't remember what this was related to, probably WW2 east front, but occasionally it was found that men were afraid to surrender unless they happened to have one of those bi-lingual "by presenting this document to our soldiers you are guaranteed a good treatment" leaflets because they thought that everybody who didn't have one would be just tortured and shot. I suspect it was probably 'unless I'm waving one of these things they won't realise I'm trying to surrender and will just shoot me out of hand'.
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Aug 21, 2012 19:00
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Alchenar posted:I suspect it was probably 'unless I'm waving one of these things they won't realise I'm trying to surrender and will just shoot me out of hand'. Also "if the grunts on their side are any bit as vengeful as on my side, my best bet is that they will read this before they decide to shoot me. Also, that they can read." Appealing to authority always helps.
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Aug 21, 2012 19:06
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What was literacy like among infantry in WWII?
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Aug 21, 2012 19:09
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Grand Prize Winner posted:What was literacy like among infantry in WWII? Pretty drat good. All of the major combatants outside of China had national school systems, and the USSR had pretty phenomenal literacy gains between 1920 and 1930, so most Soviet troops were able to learn to read and write in school as children. Of course, lots of countries still had plenty of very very rural farmers too (the Soviet Union, China and the United States being the big ones). E: Looks like Soviet literacy went from about 25% to 80 or 90% between 1917 and 1940. Of the 10-20% of the population that was still illiterate, it would have mostly been the elderly. A lot of Lenin's social policies were extremely effective. tallkidwithglasses fucked around with this message at 19:31 on Aug 21, 2012 |
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Aug 21, 2012 19:25
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Grand Prize Winner posted:What was literacy like among infantry in WWII?  Pretty good for most European and American countries, though quality of the skill would vary a lot more than these days. Even in Soviet Union most men of conscription age could read and write which was a big change from WW1 era Russia's literacy levels, but then Soviet Union's multi-ethnic nature meant that some languages didn't even have a written form developed for them (some still don't). China was probably the least literate major country - only about 20% were literate, and I'd presume that the literate population was largely centered in the bigger cities and administrative centres. After the civil war China went through a similar rapid literacy program as Soviet Union had as schools were founded in every village or children were gathered from the country side to go to big city schools. I wonder what the statistics were for the British Empire as a whole - I'd imagine many militarily significant colonies like India had less than stellar stats. Ditto with French Senegalese etc. tallkidwithglasses posted:E: Looks like Soviet literacy went from about 25% to 80 or 90% between 1917 and 1940. Of the 10-20% of the population that was still illiterate, it would have mostly been the elderly. A lot of Lenin's social policies were extremely effective. Yeah, you can't raise a new generation of Homo Sovieticus if they can't read Pravda. One of my favourite Soviet war films is Mashenka from 1942, about the Winter War. It tells the romance of a Leningrad cab driver and a nurse who both end up in the Red Army to beat the Finnish fascists threatening the cradle of revolution. The hero impresses the girl by telling that he's progressed in his reading as far as Marx when she is still only reading Lenin! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q45l09T56-E You can skip the first hour to get a really  scene of the battle of Viipuri (that never happened) where T-26s drive around the streets like they were in World of Tanks the Movie.
Nenonen fucked around with this message at 19:48 on Aug 21, 2012 |
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Aug 21, 2012 19:38
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If I remember because of the Depression and Dust Bowl, enough American draftees were illiterate to warrant the creation of a special program to school them. I read a really good article on it a while back but I forget where.
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Aug 21, 2012 21:26
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Frosted Flake posted:If I remember because of the Depression and Dust Bowl, enough American draftees were illiterate to warrant the creation of a special program to school them. I read a really good article on it a while back but I forget where. When I was looking up the Soviet literacy numbers I came across a 97% literacy rate in America by 1940. However, blacks only had an 89% literacy rate and Hispanic and native populations weren't much better.
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Aug 21, 2012 21:49
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It has to do with where you set the bar for literacy. A draftee who could sign his own name and work his way through "Dick and Jane" by sounding out the words might qualify as literate for the purposes of a federal assessment, but the army will likely need him to be able to read at a higher level. The US manpower pool for WWII would have contained a lot of people from working-class or rural backgrounds who had to work at a very young age, and consequently had only a smattering of grammar school.
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Aug 21, 2012 22:58
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Is it true school lunch comes from WW2 draftees often being under or malnourished? If so, can someone cite it?
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Aug 22, 2012 02:28
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GreenCard78 posted:Is it true school lunch comes from WW2 draftees often being under or malnourished? If so, can someone cite it? Free school meals were introduced in 1906 in the UK, so I doubt it.
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Aug 22, 2012 05:59
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While that may be true for the UK that doesn't mean it's true for the United States or any other country.
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Aug 22, 2012 06:10
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GreenCard78 posted:While that may be true for the UK that doesn't mean it's true for the United States or any other country. No, but it does show that meals were being eaten at school prior to 1906 in at least one part of the world and the introduction of this concept did not come about because of the malnutrition of draftees.
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Aug 22, 2012 06:54
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General China posted:No, but it does show that meals were being eaten at school prior to 1906 in at least one part of the world and the introduction of this concept did not come about because of the malnutrition of draftees. He's not saying the idea of having lunch at school was conceived because of the draft, the idea was already out there. He's saying that school lunches were implemented in the US, at that particular time, specifically as a response to sub-par draftee fitness. When he says "school lunch comes from", he's presumably referring to the school lunch tradition in the US.
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Aug 22, 2012 07:41
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School lunches in the US were first implemented at the city and local level in the 1890s, 1900s, and 1910s, and the first federal programs were in the 1930s and were money to support these local programs. It was not a war-preparedness program.
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Aug 22, 2012 09:23
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General China posted:No, but it does show that meals were being eaten at school prior to 1906 in at least one part of the world and the introduction of this concept did not come about because of the malnutrition of draftees. And they still had to form special units with the height requirement lowered, the Bantam Battalions
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Aug 22, 2012 09:29
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gohuskies posted:School lunches in the US were first implemented at the city and local level in the 1890s, 1900s, and 1910s, and the first federal programs were in the 1930s and were money to support these local programs. It was not a war-preparedness program. National School Lunch Act posted:It is hereby declared by the policy of Congress, as a measure of national security.... http://federaleducationpolicy.wordpress.com/2011/02/19/1946-national-school-lunch-act/ I have no idea what they actually mean by that, probably nothing to do with undersized young American war fighters.
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Aug 22, 2012 09:33
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General China posted:No, but it does show that meals were being eaten at school prior to 1906 in at least one part of the world and the introduction of this concept did not come about because of the malnutrition of draftees. Actually it literally did come about because of the malnutrition of military recruits. Hint: WW1 is not the only war.
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Aug 22, 2012 09:55
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was there any surface action between capital US Navy ships and Kriegsmarine ships in ww2?
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Aug 22, 2012 11:14
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Trench_Rat posted:was there any surface action between capital US Navy ships and Kriegsmarine ships in ww2? No. By the time the USN battleships were anywhere near German territory the Kriegsmarine was pretty much either at the bottom of the ocean or in the Baltic. The Massachusetts did, however, engage an incomplete French battleship during Operation Torch.
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Aug 22, 2012 11:19
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anyone know where this is from have seen it labelled as both Battle of Caen and Arnhem
Trench_Rat fucked around with this message at 14:21 on Aug 22, 2012 |
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Aug 22, 2012 13:56
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One thing about WWII that I've always wondered about is that Dutch ships in the East Indies fought on the side of the Allies long after the Dutch mainland was occupied by the Germans. How, exactly, did they get away with that? I have to figure that surrender of those ships to the Japanese was one of the terms of the occupation, and while they couldn't directly enforce such an order, they certainly could find out who was commanding those ships and round up any family those officers had on the mainland.
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Aug 23, 2012 00:06
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Konstantin posted:One thing about WWII that I've always wondered about is that Dutch ships in the East Indies fought on the side of the Allies long after the Dutch mainland was occupied by the Germans. How, exactly, did they get away with that? I have to figure that surrender of those ships to the Japanese was one of the terms of the occupation, and while they couldn't directly enforce such an order, they certainly could find out who was commanding those ships and round up any family those officers had on the mainland. I think you might want to check your dates about when certain parties entered the war.
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Aug 23, 2012 00:08
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Konstantin posted:One thing about WWII that I've always wondered about is that Dutch ships in the East Indies fought on the side of the Allies long after the Dutch mainland was occupied by the Germans. How, exactly, did they get away with that? I have to figure that surrender of those ships to the Japanese was one of the terms of the occupation, and while they couldn't directly enforce such an order, they certainly could find out who was commanding those ships and round up any family those officers had on the mainland. The japanese occupation of Amsterdam was one of strangest tales of WW2. As late as 1974, a party of very happy Japanese soldiers who were never ordered to surrender were found holed up and living in a side street of De Wallen. For them, the war was never over, nor did they want it to be. Seriously, does anybody know about the Japanese troops who were left on some godforsaken place who never surrendered, or is it all a myth? General China fucked around with this message at 00:36 on Aug 23, 2012 |
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Aug 23, 2012 00:24
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The Dutch had a government in exile, so presumably the ships reported to them.
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Aug 23, 2012 00:37
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Konstantin posted:One thing about WWII that I've always wondered about is that Dutch ships in the East Indies fought on the side of the Allies long after the Dutch mainland was occupied by the Germans. How, exactly, did they get away with that? I have to figure that surrender of those ships to the Japanese was one of the terms of the occupation, and while they couldn't directly enforce such an order, they certainly could find out who was commanding those ships and round up any family those officers had on the mainland. The Netherlands apparently never surrendered. They declared war on Japan on December 8, 1941. I can see where you're coming from though. The French turned over Indochina to the Japanese when they surrendered.
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Aug 23, 2012 00:40
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General China posted:Seriously, does anybody know about the Japanese troops who were left on some godforsaken place who never surrendered, or is it all a myth?
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Aug 23, 2012 01:02
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General China posted:The japanese occupation of Amsterdam was one of strangest tales of WW2. As late as 1974, a party of very happy Japanese soldiers who were never ordered to surrender were found holed up and living in a side street of De Wallen. For them, the war was never over, nor did they want it to be. the next Harry Turtledove novel! 
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Aug 23, 2012 01:13
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GreenCard78 posted:Is it true school lunch comes from WW2 draftees often being under or malnourished? If so, can someone cite it? Despite that forgiving threshold, the rejection rate was still around 50%; the Army had anticipated it would be only 20%. Bad teeth and bad eyes were the two most common grounds for rejection and they could often be traced to malnutrition. Another major problem was a lack of basic medical care. Vast swathes of the population simply never saw a doctor, dentist, or optometrist. But even knowing that America's embarrassingly unhealthy population seriously hurt the war effort, it is going to be hard to find a citation linking that to the Nation School Lunch Act, 1946, because (1) there probably isn't a real strong link, and (2) it is always hard to discern the purpose of legislation. There are just so many things going on both behind and in front of closed doors when legislative sausage is being made that a precise definition of an abstract notion like purpose is a fool's errand. That said, I'll give you my unasked for speculation as to the answer anyway. I'll start by looking at what the Act itself says is its purpose. Veins McGee already quoted the part of the "Declaration of Policy" that says, "It is hereby declared to be the policy of Congress, as a measure of national security, ..." but he cut off the quote there. In doing so, he/she omitted the other two purposes given in the Act, namely children's health and consumption of domestic agricultural products. I suspect those two reasons were more important than national security. The US Department of Agriculture website explains the Act's timing was a result of the re-emergence of domestic food surpluses after global demand settled back down post-WWII. People were probably worried that things were going to go back to the way they were in the Depression with food being tossed in the ocean while people starved. It's a win-win if you are addressing child hunger and boosting the agricultural industry with one stone. And denying food to hungry children is a hard platform to campaign on. But even if national security was the most important reason for the Act, you can't assume that "national security" in this context means "ensuring a plentiful supply of well-fed recruits for future wars." It could, for example, refer to the importance of keeping spare agricultural production because a country that can't independently feed itself is at a major strategic disadvantage. A poor country is also at a major strategic disadvantage, so if you thought in 1946 that America would grow rich on the back of a strong agricultural sector and well-nourished laborers, you could conceivably support the Act on national security grounds that were essentially economic grounds. The drafters of the legislation probably left it vague on purpose to make it easier for legislators to swallow and for judges to declare it constitutional. I wouldn't be surprised if you could find instances in the congressional transcripts where someone debating the Act pointed to the high rejection rates of recruit's in WWII as grounds for its enactment, but who knows how persuasive that was even to the hypothetical member of Congress that said it. American federal politicians are notorious for being beholden to agricultural interests.
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Aug 23, 2012 01:50
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