Alchenar posted:

Incidentally the wikipedia page on Hart appears to have been vandalised into a sycophantic attack on his critics.

Squalid posted:

What really interests me is the government history. How the hell do you extend administrative control across territories larger than any European country in only couple decades? It's freaking me out.

Koramei posted:

Central Asia, during the mid-Bronze Age, pretty rapidly disseminating from there. Their quick adoption and massive spread should really be all you need to know to prove their usefulness.

Cavalry didn't exist during this time- war horses were the product of thousands of years of breeding; the horses you'd get in the Bronze Age were much smaller and more fragile, and chariots were the first step towards actually using them in battle. The image of chariots as heavy platforms thundering into enemy lines is a much later one- from the Iron Age, with the heavy scythed chariots and poo poo. The ones during the Bronze Age were light platforms for skirmishing off of, and more importantly, for shuttling the well-to-do troops to the front lines (and back out when things got messy). Especially in places like Egypt and Mesopotamia (and Central Asia) where the land is mostly flat, they were extremely maneuverable and startlingly quick, but they were used extensively in China too so it's not like they were useless elsewhere.

And actually, I don't know this for sure, but I'd imagine they were considered more agile than cavalry for some time; you get them filling that same role well into the Iron Age, even when actual cavalry started appearing in force, in places like Britain and France. Not to mention Roman chariot races that would persist well into the Middle Ages. Maybe there's something to those I'm missing, but "use fastest thing" sounds like it's half their point to me, so if cavalry were a better alternative I'd imagine they'd have maybe used them? Maybe tradition superseded that.

Slim Jim Pickens posted:

You don't, really. You coerce local governments, or install your own. Maybe your territory is mostly empty and you just ignore the unprofitable bits like French West Africa. Or maybe, you can divert all your resources into a single area that you can access easily, like the Congo river, rather than the entire territory of the Congo Free State.

Slavvy posted:

I guess I just can't picture how they would be useful in a direct combat role. They seem like something you could only ever use if you had really flat terrain to fight on and a really large battlefield (like the middle east). I can't understand how they were useful in Europe and other places because it seems like if there's some rocks in the paddock, or a river, or some trees or something they become pretty much worthless. I don't know anything about chariots which is really why I'm asking.

ArchangeI posted:

There is the (probably false) story about a poll conducted in India after they got their independence. 40% of the polled hadn't even noticed that the British were gone. 30 % hadn't even noticed the British had ever been there.

statim posted:

http://www.amazon.com/Wars-Imperial-Conquest-Africa-1830-1914/dp/0253211786

A bit more on the academic side of things and not a very narrative history but decent writing and a compact overview of most of the highlights such as the First Italo-Ethiopian war aka the Battle of Adwa, aka modern Italy's ur-military gently caress up. Also lots of really neat steamboat river campaigns by the French.

Also was pretty hilarious to find out that the local French military types in Senegal had figured out the same thing that the Kwantung Army would but back in the 1850s. That is:
1. Cook up a border incident requiring immediate retaliation
2. Use as pretext to get around parent governments status quo policy
3. Wrap selves in flag and present the politicos back home with a fait accomplis and dare them to return the territory the army has bled for.

And oh yeah 4. Bite off way more then they could chew and scream for reinforcements until the whole frontier is a giant, bloody, resource suck on the mother country

Frostwerks posted:

Reminds me of folks in remote parts of Afghanistan who either had no clue what the Twin Towers were or they thought that the Americans were the Soviets come back for more.

Slavvy posted:

I guess I just can't picture how they would be useful in a direct combat role. They seem like something you could only ever use if you had really flat terrain to fight on and a really large battlefield (like the middle east). I can't understand how they were useful in Europe and other places because it seems like if there's some rocks in the paddock, or a river, or some trees or something they become pretty much worthless. I don't know anything about chariots which is really why I'm asking.

Alchenar posted:

I've read one account of a British soldier on tour in Afghanistan who ended up explaining to the villagers he was posted near to that goats would only produce milk within x years of calving and was astonished they didn't have this basic understanding of cattle farming.

It's hard to comprehend just how knowledge-poor some parts of the world are.

Frostwerks posted:

Reminds me of folks in remote parts of Afghanistan who either had no clue what the Twin Towers were or they thought that the Americans were the Soviets come back for more.

Raskolnikov38 posted:

My personal favorite version of this story is Chinese peasants asking red guards in the sixties who the current son of heaven was.

Frostwerks posted:

Reminds me of folks in remote parts of Afghanistan who either had no clue what the Twin Towers were or they thought that the Americans were the Soviets come back for more.

The Wall Street Journal posted:

Many Afghans Shrug at 'This Event Foreigners Call 9/11'

By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV
September 8, 2011

KABUL—The Sept. 11 attacks that triggered the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan also uprooted 16-year-old Abdul Ghattar from his village in war-torn Helmand province, bringing him to a desolate refugee camp on the edge of Kabul.

Yet Mr. Ghattar stared blankly when asked whether he knew about al Qaeda's strike on the U.S., launched a decade ago from Afghan soil.

"Never heard of it," he shrugged as he lined up for water at the camp's well, which serves thousands of fellow refugees. "I have no idea why the Americans are in my country."

In a nearby tent that is the camp's school, his teacher, 22-year-old Mullah Said Nabi Agha, didn't fare much better. He said he has never seen the iconic image of the Twin Towers burning. He was vaguely aware that some kind of explosion had occurred in America.

"I was a child when it happened, and now I am an adult, and the Americans are still here," Mr. Agha said. "I think the Americans did it themselves, so they could invade Afghanistan."

The teacher's view is by no means rare here. The events of Sept. 11, 2001, of course, are known to educated Afghans, and to many residents of big cities. But that isn't always the case elsewhere in a predominantly rural country where 42% of the population is under the age of 14, and 72% of adults are illiterate. With few villages reached by television or electricity, news here is largely spread by word of mouth.‬

Such opinions highlight a contrast between American and Afghan perspectives on the longest foreign war in U.S. history, one that killed thousands of Afghans and, at the latest count, claimed the lives of 1,760 U.S. troops.

They also explain the Taliban's ability to rally popular support—in part by seizing the narrative to portray the war not as one triggered by America's need for self-defense, but as one of colonial aggression by infidels lusting for Afghanistan's riches.

"The Islamic Emirate wages a lawful struggle for the defense of its religion, country and soil," the Taliban's leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, told Afghans last month on the occasion of the Islamic Eid al-Fitr holiday.

According to a survey of 15- to 30-year-old men in the two southern provinces where President Barack Obama sent the bulk of American surge troops, 92% of respondents said they didn't know about "this event which the foreigners call 9/11" after being read a three-paragraph description of the attacks.

"Nobody explained to them the 9/11 story—and it's hard to win the hearts and minds of the fighting-age males in Helmand if they don't even know why the foreigners are here," says Norine MacDonald, president of the International Council on Security and Development, the think tank that carried out the survey of 1,000 Afghan men in eight districts of Kandahar and Helmand. "There is a vacuum—and it's being filled by al Qaeda and Taliban propaganda claiming that we are here to destroy Islam."

Some Afghans who do know about the events of 2001 often subscribe to conspiracy theories, imported from Pakistan and Iran, that have long lost currency even in the Middle East.

Maulvi Abdulaziz Mujahed, an imam at Kabul's Takbir mosque who served as chairman of the Kabul provincial council in 2008 to 2009, said in a recent interview that the Sept. 11 attacks were a Jewish conspiracy, a view he says was reinforced by his 2009 visit to New York's Ground Zero.

"I saw the photos of all those who have been killed in the attacks, and I saw people bring flowers for their loved ones. But I couldn't find a single Jew among them," Mr. Mujahed said. "The superpowers wanted a good pretext to invade Afghanistan, and these attacks provided it."

Abdul Hakim Mujahid, the deputy chairman of the Afghan government's High Peace Council, a body created to negotiate a peaceful solution to the war, was in New York when the two jets struck the Twin Towers—in his capacity as the Taliban regime's semi-official envoy to the U.S. and the United Nations.

While Mr. Mujahid says he was saddened by the attacks, he says he still doesn't believe al Qaeda was responsible for "the unfortunate incident."

"After 9/11, the whole world rushed to Afghanistan, and the people of Afghanistan were under the illusion that everything would be changed: The roads would be paved black, the houses would be painted white, the infrastructure rebuilt and the industries established," he says. "But gradually these expectations have come down, and now have reached the point of zero. The people are asking: When will the foreigners finally leave?"

Not every Afghan subscribes to the conspiracy theories or wants the Americans to leave. At the campus of Kabul University, where young women and men mix in a setting unimaginable under Taliban rule, students said in interviews they were fully aware of the Sept. 11 attacks and saw the U.S. invasion as bringing benefits to Afghanistan. Many of them were ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks from the country's north—ethnic minorities discriminated against under the rule of the Taliban.

"Under the Taliban, Afghanistan was a terrorist haven, nobody could leave their house, and I wouldn't have been able to attend university," says Nasser Hasrab, a 20-year-old literature student from the northern Faryab province. "After the Soviets left we had a civil war, and I am afraid that if the Americans leave, the same would happen again."

Across town in the Herat restaurant—once the favorite hangout of Taliban leaders and al Qaeda militants—owner Abdulazim Niyazi, dressed in a Polo shirt and clutching a Samsung cellphone, pondered the momentous change of the past decade.

Because TV was banned under the Taliban, there was no particular celebration or commotion in the restaurant on Sept. 11, 2001, he said. Since then, Mr. Niyazi complained, boomtown Kabul has been swamped with corruption, prostitution and vice. More importantly, his business has soured.

"Under the Taliban, we were the only place," he said. "Now, Kabul is filled with restaurants."

—Habib Khan Totakhil contributed to this article.

Raskolnikov38 posted:

Pu Yi was still alive until 1967 so I guess him.

quote:

The Germans were in the streets and attacking in strength, greatly outnumbering the small group of American soldiers. Fox radioed in to have the artillery fire adjusted closer to his position, then radioed again to have the shelling moved even closer. The soldier receiving the message was stunned, for that would bring the deadly fire right on top of Fox’s position; there was no way he would survive. When Fox was told this, he replied, “Fire it.” This shelling delayed the German advance until other units could reorganize to repel the attack.

Arquinsiel posted:

Goats aren't cattle

Alchenar posted:

It's hard to comprehend just how knowledge-poor some parts of the world are.

Ensign Expendable posted:

I read about a young lieutenant and her brilliant idea to shoot some Germans with indirect MG fire today. Sadly, the article leaves out how effective this measure was. Is this a thing that someone else has ever tried?

Ensign Expendable posted:

I read about a young lieutenant and her brilliant idea to shoot some Germans with indirect MG fire today. Sadly, the article leaves out how effective this measure was. Is this a thing that someone else has ever tried?

Hogge Wild posted:

edit: ^^^^

a travelling HEGEL posted:

Wait...how many Finns do we have here, anyway?

Ensign Expendable posted:

I read about a young lieutenant and her brilliant idea to shoot some Germans with indirect MG fire today. Sadly, the article leaves out how effective this measure was. Is this a thing that someone else has ever tried?

iyaayas01 posted:

Forget machine guns, why do you think pretty much every infantry rifle from the beginning of the smokeless powder period until at least the 1920s has tangent sights that go waaaaaaay out to 2000+ yards? They weren't planning on engaging point targets at that range, the idea was to have a whole platoon or whatever sight in on some landmark in the vicinity of the area they wanted covered, and then let loose. I'm not saying it would've been effective (way less effective than machine guns, obviously) but it was definitely a thing.

a travelling HEGEL posted:

Great Stuff

jaegerx posted:

Just stumbled on this on wikipedia, forgive the link.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_R._Fox

Pyle posted:

I read somewhere that it was common for forward observers in WWII to call fire on their own position if the situation was desperate. Does anyone else remember such occasion or is this just a myth?

Pyle posted:

I read somewhere that it was common for forward observers in WWII to call fire on their own position if the situation was desperate. Does anyone else remember such occasion or is this just a myth?

Bacarruda posted:

There are stories of US Army units in the Pacific using .30 cal M1919s for indirect fire at ranges out to a mile. So it wasn't just a Finnish or a British thing.

Alchenar posted:

The Soviet Union. With enough men you can brute force any problem!

tweekinator posted:

That's all awesome; thanks. Do you have any recommendations for a good biography of Wallenstein?

Capn Jobe posted:

Due to school, I had to delay my Christmas shopping a bit, but I usually get my father one or more military history books each Christmas. He shares my interest, and being retired, has far more time to read than I. He's enjoyed a couple books that I found out about via this thread in past years (like Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors).

Anyway, can anyone recommend any good books on the Ghost Army?

warcake posted:

It's still used now, in the british army we have the GPMG SF (sustained fire) which is mounted on a tripod and it's used as an area effect weapon out to about 1800m.

Bacarruda posted: