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Nenonen posted:Objectively, Adolf Hitler was the most hosed by WW2. 100% of Adolf Hitler was killed during the war. Gotta go with this one. Although...  Wikipedia posted:The picture depicts two versions of a photograph of Adolf Hitler that was retouched by an artist of the United States Secret Service in 1944 in order to show how Hitler may disguise himself to escape capture after Germany's defeat. Since Hitler's death was not a certainty in 1945 the pictures were posted up all over Germany in 1945 to ease finding the (potentially) "fugitive" dictator.  HITLER LIVES AMONG US!
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Nov 18, 2012 20:43
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ClemenSalad posted:And anyone in China. Imagine being stuck in that 3 way shitfest as a peasant farmer. Not to mention that there also had been a civil war going on since 1913, a new civil war would start after the Japanese was kicked out, then the Korean war happened and then the glorious cultural revolution happened.
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Nov 18, 2012 20:58
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Crasscrab posted:Gotta go with this one. Although... I knew I never trusted Paul Giamatti.
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Nov 18, 2012 21:30
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If you guys have the time to watch it, I recommend giving this lecture a shot. It helped me understand the sheer scale of the eastern front and changed my opinions on how most of the war was carried out on this front. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Clz27nghIg edit: and by time, I mean its an hour long lecture.
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Nov 18, 2012 22:17
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Anyone in the Eastern Front was generally hosed. I mean this was a battleground so deadly that if you were simply alive at some points you were genuinely thought to be either a partisan or a traitor by one or the other side.
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Nov 18, 2012 22:36
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Blckdrgn posted:If you guys have the time to watch it, I recommend giving this lecture a shot. It helped me understand the sheer scale of the eastern front and changed my opinions on how most of the war was carried out on this front. Glantz is the best military historian on the "Eastern front" (as we learned to call it). I read his book I think twice now, and its an amazing read. Its called "How the Red Army stopped Hitler", and its a really good overlook on the current known history of the Eastern Front.
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Nov 18, 2012 23:22
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Hardcore History's 3 part podcast about the Eastern Front is really really good too. The only issue is Dan Carlin kinds of lets his innner Ron Paul fan out a few times.
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Nov 19, 2012 01:46
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Nenonen posted:Objectively, Adolf Hitler was the most hosed by WW2. 100% of Adolf Hitler was killed during the war. Isn't his sister still alive?
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Nov 19, 2012 02:05
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SlothfulCobra posted:Isn't his sister still alive? She died in 1960 according to wikipedia.
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Nov 19, 2012 02:50
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World War 2: 1931-1960
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Nov 19, 2012 06:32
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Speaking of china in world war 2, are there any good books covering the whole period? I can only find stuff about the flying tigers, Nanking or Unit 731.
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Nov 19, 2012 06:57
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ClemenSalad posted:And anyone in China. Imagine being stuck in that 3 way shitfest as a peasant farmer. Or Korea.
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Nov 19, 2012 08:24
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:Hardcore History's 3 part podcast about the Eastern Front is really really good too. The only issue is Dan Carlin kinds of lets his innner Ron Paul fan out a few times. He has this breathless overdramatic style that grates on me. OTOH, it's hard to overestimate the scale of the eastern front, so his style kinda worked for those podcasts.
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Nov 20, 2012 17:46
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WIth regards to the present conflict in Israel/Gaza, why are the Israelis using Iron Dome, and not THEL or its successor, Skyguard? It seems like with the sheer number of missiles Hamas and friends fire, a laser based system seems to be way more efficient and cost effective, even if it is a chemical laser. From what I know, THEL/Skyguard can intercept mortar shells and RPGs, so flying Quassams and Gards should be do-able as well. Is it a atmospheric interference issue or length of time needed to focus on the warhead or something?
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Nov 20, 2012 18:06
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Just watched Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy, despite being a work of fiction and it gave off the impression that along with the Philby defection that Cold War era British Intelligince was sort of rubbish. Why was this so?
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Nov 20, 2012 18:13
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SeanBeansShako posted:Just watched Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy, despite being a work of fiction and it gave off the impression that along with the Philby defection that Cold War era British Intelligince was sort of rubbish. Because it was heavily infiltrated by Communists. It wasn't just Philby, it was him and *four other guys*. And Philby worked in counter-intelligence, he was in a perfect position to take measures to prevent his own discovery and that of the other spies. At one point an NKVD agent offered to defect, and to bring along the names of three Soviet agents working in Britain. Philby was the guy assigned to deal with that defector, who surprise, wound up being dragged back to Moscow before he could defect. (Also, genies. If you like John le Carré *read this goddamn book* because it's awesome.)
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Nov 20, 2012 18:25
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SeanBeansShako posted:Just watched Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy, despite being a work of fiction and it gave off the impression that along with the Philby defection that Cold War era British Intelligince was sort of rubbish. Because Philby was a section chief and was on the short list of names to head MI6. Let that sink in. They almost promoted a soviet spy to head their spy agency. Thats a pretty big fuckup that will cause chaos and paranoia for years to come. Plus they had a bunch of other moles too.
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Nov 20, 2012 18:25
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Holy goddamn, I didn't know that Communist infiltration was that deep. Jesus.
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Nov 20, 2012 18:30
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Saint Celestine posted:Because Philby was a section chief and was on the short list of names to head MI6.  So how did this guy finally get caught?
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Nov 20, 2012 18:40
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Oxford Comma posted:
Well turns out. MI6, in their infinite wisdom, were tipped off about Philby at least twice by Soviet defectors and what not. This was over the course of his career. They brushed it off and ignored it until Philby was being groomed to become Director General. Then they saw these and finally warning bells went off. Philby was kept on anyways. He even was the prime suspect in helping other soviet spies escape, Maclean, Burgess. Etc. So anyways, after being exonerated, he left MI6 and went to the middle east to putz around doing odd jobs and consultant work. Finally, another Russian defector comes along and fingers Philby. However, once again, MI6 takes their sweet time, and their agent literally tipped off Philby that they were on to him, but does nothing. So Philby catches on and hops a Russian freighter in Beruit that is bound for Odessa. Hes treated as something of a pariah when he reaches Moscow and lives the rest of his life in some lovely Soviet era dacha on meager pay and little work. Imagine how the KGB or Mossad would have reacted to this. They would have grabbed Philby, threw him in a plane or ship bound for the USSR/Israel, and "interrogated" him. Hell, it would never even have gotten that far I'd imagine... \/ I thought he escaped Beruit on a freighter. Saint Celestine fucked around with this message at 18:53 on Nov 20, 2012 |
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Nov 20, 2012 18:49
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Oxford Comma posted:
He didn't. A couple of the other spies, Burgess and Maclean, ended up fleeing back to Russia, and while Philby fell under suspicion due to his association with them and was questioned about it repeatedly, he was eventually cleared years later. By that point he had long since resigned from his post (and if he hadn't resigned, they'd have fired him.) He wound up getting a job as a journalist (where he started out) covering Beirut. While he was in Beirut, another Soviet defector (to the US) gave him up, and he wound up fleeing through Syria to Russia. He ended up living a lovely, untrusted life as a suicidal drunk in Moscow. Saint Celestine posted:Well turns out. MI6, in their infinite wisdom were tipped off about Philby at least twice by Soviet defectors and what not. Where "what not" includes James Angleton, who oh by the way became head of counterintel at the CIA. *shakes head* Saint Celestine posted:I thought he escaped Beruit on a freighter. It is entirely possible I'm mixing it up with _Declare_, which is both awesome and dangerous for how well it blends fact with fiction. Oddity: During Kim's service during the Spanish Civil War, he was covered as a journalist and was driving in a car with three other (real) journalists. A single artillery shell randomly and directly hits the car, and the three other guys die. Philby gets a scratch on his head. _Declare_ explains why he got off so lightly, among other things. It's one of those books where the more you know about the real history the cooler the secret history is. Phanatic fucked around with this message at 19:28 on Nov 20, 2012 |
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Nov 20, 2012 18:49
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Angleton kinda messed up the CIA with his witch-hunt though.
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Nov 20, 2012 19:18
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Saint Celestine posted:WIth regards to the present conflict in Israel/Gaza, why are the Israelis using Iron Dome, and not THEL or its successor, Skyguard? It seems like with the sheer number of missiles Hamas and friends fire, a laser based system seems to be way more efficient and cost effective, even if it is a chemical laser.
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Nov 20, 2012 22:22
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Blckdrgn posted:If you guys have the time to watch it, I recommend giving this lecture a shot. It helped me understand the sheer scale of the eastern front and changed my opinions on how most of the war was carried out on this front. This was pretty awesome, and I'm even more excited about other videos under the channel, thanks for sharing. I have to say though I want to see now the original 'Women in War' talk he was substituting for. On that note, some of the most awesome women in the history of war, the Soviet 588th night bomber regiment, or as the Germans preferred to call them, the Night Witches http://www.badreputation.org.uk/2011/05/27/unsung-heroes-the-night-witches/ Ovaries of loving steel.
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Nov 20, 2012 23:19
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Rent-A-Cop posted:Because THEL was a one-off tech demonstrator and Skyguard is a proposed system that nobody has paid Lockheed to build. Didn't it work pretty drat well? I mean, I'd imagine a cheap laser based system would be preferable to launching hundreds of missiles.
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Nov 20, 2012 23:27
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Amused to Death posted:This was pretty awesome, and I'm even more excited about other videos under the channel, thanks for sharing. I have to say though I want to see now the original 'Women in War' talk he was substituting for. They're not exactly unsung heroes, when I went to the Kuban region, nearly every tour mentioned them in some capacity.
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Nov 20, 2012 23:59
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Koesj posted:Angleton kinda messed up the CIA with his witch-hunt though. The impression I get is that the KGB was extremely formidable as an intelligence agency in the 50s and 60s, and by the time that both the Soviet Union and the United States started getting really involved in proxy wars and deployments in the 3rd world, the KGB usually outclassed the CIA there too. They got a TON of mileage out of pretty minimal funding.
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Nov 21, 2012 00:10
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Ron Jeremy posted:Why after the success of the Japanese against the British around Malaysia did the Germans not take note and deny the sea to British surface ships within distance of land based air? Wanted to drag this up from a few days ago as I think it is an interesting discussion point. The Germans actually DID do this, sort of, over the channel during July and early August of 1940 (the Kanalkampf), and they were spectacularly successful. I've heard claims (very difficult to substantiate for obvious reasons, but still) that they sank ships at a faster rate during these roughly 4 weeks than were sunk anywhere else in the world throughout the entire rest of the war. Granted, most were smaller coal freighters and destroyers, but the Luftwaffe and particularly the Ju-87 were extremely good at destroying ships from the air. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it was the most effective anti-ship weapon available to anyone during the 1940 timeframe: it could deliver a big bomb with really exceptional accuracy, which was the basic formula for sinking a ship. The other good example to look at was the entirety of the Fw-200 program, which in my opinion was one of the most underrated aircraft of the war. These were simple converted airliners that were devastatingly effective antiship raiders during the early part of the war, much more so per man hour and by per capita operating cost than the U-boats ever were. For all the talk about stupid and ill-conceived German weapons programs they really hit this one out of the park: minimal development costs, simple, easy to maintain and operate, adaptable, etc. All that said, the Ju-87s and the Fw-200s, like every other antiship aircraft that was used during the war, needed more or less uncontested airspace to have any sort of chance at success. You will see very few examples of successful attacks against ships wherein the attackers were seriously contested in the air. The reason is pretty obvious: a ship is a very small, well armored, moving target, and your ingress must be extremely precise if you are to have any chance of hitting one with an aerial bomb. Being thrown off this ingress, even slightly, due to maneuvering away from a threat aircraft means that you are not likely to hit your target. Plus, the planes that conducted antiship attacks were typically very vulnerable themselves (SBD, Ju-87, Swordfish, etc) so they rarely fared well when intercepted. So, that brings us to the Luftwaffe trying to cordon off the British Isles by air, and/or trying to destroy the Home Fleet with aircraft. First premise: it simply was not going to happen as long as the RAF was around. Though the RAF losses during Kanalkampf were disturbingly high, they rebounded well from this once the fighting moved over English soil. The RAF, at any time in 1940, could have protected the Home Fleet and any other RAF warships in range of the Luftwaffe fairly easily. But what if the RAF had been beaten during the Battle? This gets a lot more interesting. The most likely scenario would have been to see the RAF cede air supremacy over southern England to the Luftwaffe, and in doing so that would likely have meant that any ship sailing anywhere south from Hull to Liverpool would have been easy meat for the Luftwaffe. The Home Fleet, assuming it stayed at Scapa Flow, probably would have been safe, however. The Ju-87s could not haul their big bombs that far, either from France or Norway, and no other German plane would have been a major threat to the big ships. I suppose they might have tried level bombing, but they had no experience with this and it was a very difficult skill. Most interesting to me is what might have happened had Sea Lion actually gone ahead. If we assume that Germany has air supremacy over southern England and that the Home Fleet would sail to meet the invading force, we have a really interesting scenario. Of course, any aircraft left in the RAF would be deployed to try and provide top cover for the Fleet, but ironically enough their ranges would have been stretched and in this scenario they would be badly outnumbered as well. So, I suspect the Luftwaffe could have attacked the Fleet relatively unmolested. The Ju-87s (and the Fw-200s, which could have been used) would have had little trouble hitting their targets, especially if they were deep in the Channel, but they likely would have had a problem with bombs: the PC500 (500kg AP bomb) was a rarity, and though they were easy to manufacture, they didn't have much of a stockpile of them in 1940/41. Long story short, this is really the only bomb that could have sunk a battleship. So, I think in this scenario it would come down to how effectively the Luftwaffe used its big AP bombs. They certainly had the capability to do some serious damage, and I think they probably would have. As I said above, all this was kind of a lost cause by actual 1941, the RAF was far too dangerous to try any serious interdiction of shipping by air.
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Nov 21, 2012 01:05
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bewbies posted:The Ju-87s (and the Fw-200s, which could have been used) would have had little trouble hitting their targets, especially if they were deep in the Channel, but they likely would have had a problem with bombs: the PC500 (500kg AP bomb) was a rarity, and though they were easy to manufacture, they didn't have much of a stockpile of them in 1940/41. Long story short, this is really the only bomb that could have sunk a battleship. So, I think in this scenario it would come down to how effectively the Luftwaffe used its big AP bombs. They certainly had the capability to do some serious damage, and I think they probably would have. The Ju-87s had enormous difficulty hitting their targets at Dunkirk, where German air managed to sink 3 out of 42 British destroyers in something like 1200 bomber sorties. The Luftwaffe also caught Ark Royal off of Norway and Ju87s managed to completely miss it. quote:As I said above, all this was kind of a lost cause by actual 1941, the RAF was far too dangerous to try any serious interdiction of shipping by air. And the SeaLion barge fleet could have been seriously FUBAR just by being swamped in the wake of destroyers sailing by at 20+ knots. Even if the Luftwaffe made hits on the big ships the escorts would have sufficed to annihilate that not-ever-really-an-invasion-fleet.
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Nov 21, 2012 01:29
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Monocled Falcon posted:Speaking of china in world war 2, are there any good books covering the whole period? I can only find stuff about the flying tigers, Nanking or Unit 731. The first parts of Mao: A Life go into depth about the Chinese Civil War before, during, and after World War II. You might not be interested in the whole book, but it gives a good view of World War II from a Chinese perspective. The biggest lesson I drew from it is there were no good leaders in China during that time, only evil psychopathic bastards. I read about something evil Chang did, then about something even more evil that Mao did, then something still more evil from Chang. It was like tryouts for Satan's All Star Team.
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Nov 21, 2012 01:31
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Phanatic posted:SeaLion Why Sealion would have been a comedy of errors I wish I could quote one or two little things from there that would show how bad it was for the Germans, but its all awful so just click through and it in its entirety, or just one part, it would've been hopeless.
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Nov 21, 2012 10:31
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The chance of success of Sealion (which, barring some event that can't really be quantified, is somewhere around zero) doesn't affect the fact that the Royal Navy might have ended up badly mauled if they would have ever had to sail into the English channel. After all, the admirals themselves didn't really relish that thought. Ships can sink barges but planes can sink ships. It's not an attractive position to be in.
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Nov 21, 2012 11:28
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Push comes to shove, I think the Admirals will commit their precious ships to battle to fend off an amphibious invasion 
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Nov 21, 2012 12:34
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Phobophilia posted:Push comes to shove, I think the Admirals will commit their precious ships to battle to fend off an amphibious invasion To quote an admiral from the same war Admiral Cunningham posted:It takes three years to build a ship; it takes three centuries to build a tradition. The evacuation will continue.  He was talking about the evacuation of Crete where the royal navy continued to evacuate troops while under constant aerial bombardment and having no air support at all. You think the Royal Navy will do less if the safety of the British Isles is at stake?
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Nov 21, 2012 14:48
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I love Cunningham. If I recall correctly, he was also the guy whose staff strongly urged him to break off an engagement with the Italian fleet with darkness approaching. Cunningham, being the hardest bastard in the whole Med, said something along the lines of, "I'm going to eat my supper now, and then we'll see if my morale isn't higher than yours." After filling up, he then led the RN to go kill more Italians.
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Nov 21, 2012 15:52
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Phanatic posted:The Ju-87s had enormous difficulty hitting their targets at Dunkirk, where German air managed to sink 3 out of 42 British destroyers in something like 1200 bomber sorties. The Luftwaffe also caught Ark Royal off of Norway and Ju87s managed to completely miss it. Couple of things on this: Of the 9-odd days of evacuation, the Stukas were only able to operate for either two or three days (depending on your source) due to the weather. In this time, again depending on source, they sank or crippled around 50 ships all told. Remember, they were in littoral waters, so several of the ships that were hit were simply beached, not sunk. Third, their primary targets were the troop concentrations and shore facilities (which they were fairly effective in attacking), not the ships. In any case, my point wasn't to argue the viability of Sea Lion, only to propose that the Luftwaffe would likely have been able to sink most of the Home Fleet had they sailed into nearby waters without air cover. bewbies fucked around with this message at 15:58 on Nov 21, 2012 |
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Nov 21, 2012 15:53
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The short story is that the Navy and the Luftwaffe spent so much time arguing that the Luftwaffe wasn't really trained or very well equipped for anti-shipping strikes until much later in the war. The Luftwaffe was so spectacular at inter-service cooperation that it managed to sink a German destroyer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_destroyer_Z1_Leberecht_Maass) in Norway because you can't have those ship drivers telling us what to do! Or in other words: quote:“As a result, the Luftwaffe will simply have to acknowledge once more that the RAF is numerically better to cope with the more or less self-evident fundamental requirements of any sort of naval warfare. This example shows with striking clarity a discrepancy that can never be sufficiently regretted, namely, the absence of a naval air force or even a certain amount of authority of naval commanders over air forces.” -- German Naval Staff, OKM War Diary, 9 June 1942 Even when, in 1941, the Luftwaffe decided that there was something to these new-fangled 'air launched torpedoes' (after increased defensive armament on board ships made regular old bombing impractical -- Luftwaffe Chief of Staff General Hans Jeschonnek even argued that bombs were cheaper than torpedoes!), their anti-shipping aircraft were so incredibly slow and ponderous that they were extraordinarily vulnerable while flying in their torpedo launch envelope, and they nearly always had to overfly their target after torpedo drop. Best not miss, eh? The Fw200 was easy meat for any fighter aircraft ("Recent encounters between FW 200s and enemy TE (long-range) fighters when cloud cover has been insufficient have nearly always led to the destruction of the FW 200." -- Staff, Fliegerführer Atlantik), and the proposed scenario where the RAF is has to withdraw north out of range of the Luftwaffe but then doesn't come down to support the Home Fleet is kind of puzzling. quote:A further consequence of the unwillingness to deal with naval matters was the poor training of the Luftwaffe’s aircrews for operations over the sea. The training of land-aircraft crew (i.e., He-111, Ju-88, FW-200) was particularly unsatisfactory. An instruction group for missions over the sea was not set up before autumn 1941 and even then had only an improvised character. Operations with torpedoes and mines were taught in a three-week course in Großenbrode (northern Germany) and later in Grosseto (Italy) or Riga. In this period it was impossible to drill for all kinds of attack to a sufficient standard. Combined training-attacks by torpedo- and dive-bombers never took place. Sonke Nietzel, "Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe Co-operation in the War against Britain, 1939 - 1945", War In History 2003 10: 448 There simply weren't many anti-shipping units. The ones the Luftwaffe did have were poorly equipped and trained, mostly as a result of inter-service infighting over who was in charge, which was held to be more important by the Nazi leadership than actually sinking ships. Comrade_Robot fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Nov 21, 2012 |
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Nov 21, 2012 16:31
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tallkidwithglasses posted:The impression I get is that the KGB was extremely formidable as an intelligence agency in the 50s and 60s, and by the time that both the Soviet Union and the United States started getting really involved in proxy wars and deployments in the 3rd world, the KGB usually outclassed the CIA there too. They got a TON of mileage out of pretty minimal funding. The Soviet spies was pretty drat good before that as well, I mean just look how they completely infiltrated the Manhattan project. However one thing I wonder is why the Nazis were so laughably incompetent when it came to spying, was it because Canaris opposed Hitler or were there any other reasons? Pump it up! Do it! fucked around with this message at 19:23 on Nov 21, 2012 |
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Nov 21, 2012 17:52
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I want to say that it may be related to how they believed that the Enigma was unbreakable and that their U-boats weren't being detected by Huff-Duff and their radar warning receivers were still effective against the Allies not having developed smaller wavelength radar, but whatever term is appropriate for an unhealthy belief that you're just naturally superior to your opponent escapes me. Hell, wasn't there a double-agent that basically ran a network of spies inside his own head and just fed a constant stream of made-up bullshit to the Germans?
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Nov 21, 2012 18:38
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There were a lot of them Joan Pujol Garcia would probably be the most famous one, better known as Garbo. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Pujol_Garcia
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Nov 21, 2012 18:49
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