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Cardiac posted:Even the civil war that followed was not a guaranteed victory for the reds. Also the anti-Bolshevist forces couldn't agree on anything. Britain tried to goad Finland into marching to Petrograd but White Russian generals sought to restore Russian empire as a whole, including the Finnish Grand Duchy, whereas the Bolshevik government was the first to recognize Finnish independence. Supporting all peoples' right to self-determination, a concept very topical at the time thanks to Woodrow Wilson, was a very effective tactic for the party.
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Jan 22, 2014 09:41
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ArchangeI posted:... and a multi-ethnic monarchy in Austria-Hungary tethering on the brink of a revolution that may well go communist. The communists didn't play a notable role in Austro-Hungaria, the main cleavages ran along nationalities in the parliament in Vienna. Do you mistake the Social Democrats for the Communists? This party was never properly accepted into the political process by the powers that be, although being a major player on account of the mass of the workers - and that's a problem that was only fixed (with ducttape) after WWII. The only thing that kept the Monarchy going for a few years was the outbreak of the war and Kaiser Franz Joseph as an integrative figure being alive. If it wasn't for that or a federal solution that gave the same status to the Czechoslovaks that the Hungarians possessed, Austro-Hungaria would've been on the brink of civil war a few years down the road. I can hardly imagine a rational solution, as both the German and Hungarian estabishment had a vested interest to keep the status quo at any cost, while any possible Monarch was unable or unwilling to resolve the dilemma. The political situation was already being unbearable for more than a decade by 1914, and if my memory doesn't fail me, you can count the occasions that the parliament was able to put out anything meaningful on one hand. People would go to there to amuse themselves and see the delegates brawl and obstruct each other by playing pipes, ratchets and drums. Hitler went there often to watch the show. People would joke that it's cheaper and more amusing to go to the plenum than to go to the circus. What you have after WWI, namely the conflict lines of the remaining state Austria are secondary conflicts that carried over from the Monarchy, namely between the christian social party and the social democratic party, which fits the categories of political cleavages really well. But politically, anything before 1918 was overshadowed by national conflicts. If I was tasked with describing the whole deal after 1918 with one sentence, I'd say it's about "keeping the workers disenfranchised". Even now you can spark angry discussions about what happened in 1934. What remains up to this day is some kind of silent post WWI agreement not to speak about these things, they're not resolved by any means. Anyway, forget the classic communists if you talk about Austro-Hungaria, they never played any notable role (lest for their resistance against the nazis, which wasn't much and got lots of pretty brave people killed). Austromarxism might have been intellectually influential, but it wasn't something that could get anything done politically - because the national conflicts droned out everything else and the old elites were still in power. Also, the social democrats were very sucessful in capturing most leftist potential, which left the communists with a small hard core of supporters. In this context it is extremely unlikely to imagine anything that would shake Austro-Hungaria's diverse society (societies?) so profoundly that the communists had any realistic prospects to grab power across national borders. Think about it, not even the lost war and the economic crisis of 1929 moved the communists anywhere close to power in post 1918 Austria. It's actually remarkable. e: Sorry for the many edits. It's complex. Power Khan fucked around with this message at 10:40 on Jan 22, 2014 |
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Jan 22, 2014 09:54
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Was the distinction between Social Democrats and Communists more pronounced in A-H? At least in Germany, the Communist party started out as a wing of the social democrats that didn't want to vote in favor of the war. To the casual observer, that would indicate that there were no communists in Germany before 1914, which is silly. Social Democrats covered the entire left wing spectrum. Multi-ethnicity does not per se preclude a communist revolution, Russia had dozens of ethnic groups (who were shat on under Stalin and slightly less shat on later). Whether or not the various countries would stay without the monarchy is indeed doubtful.
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Jan 22, 2014 10:36
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I really have a problem to give an account on the differences between social democrats and austromarxists, because that ideological wankery always put me off to the point that I'd evade reading about it. Both wanted to get in power by parlamentary means, but the real split where each breaks into a different party is post 1918. For Austro-Hungaria, you also have to consider that the socialist party had to bridge national differences, which it was unable to do so in the end. So it broke down into different factions along national lines. Yet, the aspiration of the party was always international, with a strong orientation towards the socialist party in Germany (in the sense, there are no nations, only workers that get shafted everywhere). The more radical left that formed the communist party post 1918 never managed to get larger support, as it was seen as a dead end, because every other potential political partner felt threatened by their goals, so there was also a socialist undercurrent that wanted to separate the more radical elements within the party before the war in order to gain potential partners. I'd say was the relative size of the different portions of nationalities in Austro-Hungaria and the lacking political inclusion that made the Monarchy such a mess. One might also consider that democracy and compromise were unproven and distasteful ideas in the eyes of many back then. Another factor might have been the division of labout within the country that put lots of industrial potential in czechoslovak territories, but kept them misrepresented. (You should visit Moravia, especially you Hegel.) The whole state went apart with great centrifugal force, since the establishment was completely unwilling to make any concessions. If crownprince Rudolf had lived (many people mused that the was driven to suicide by this conservative faction) and became Emperor things might have looked different. That's something that does not entirely depend on a single person, but he could have been a symbol or some kind of lens that the supporters of such a solution could have used. Power Khan fucked around with this message at 18:22 on Jan 22, 2014 |
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Jan 22, 2014 10:57
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Raskolnikov38 posted:The key component of Joffre's head-rear end-ectomy of course being when he decided to actually listen to Gallieni. What was he doing beforehand, and what did he do afterwards?
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Jan 22, 2014 12:07
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Arquinsiel posted:Some people think that it largely incubated in the trenches and had such an effect on people because of wartime shortages and lowered immune systems after living in mud for years. I ain't no doctor, but that's what I've seen people claim. I remember reading an medical article about the spanish flu. If I remember it correctly, then the flu originated in spanish military hospitals tending to American soldiers. The virus was apparently introduced by US-soldiers unwittingly carrying the virus to Europe. Then it spread like wildfire throughout the continent. cheerfullydrab posted:Russia had a serious revolution in 1905. It was simultaneously crushed and reforms were made. There's no indication that with no war, any other revolution would have created a different result. The weakening of the mechanisms of control caused what happened in 1917. Imperial Russia had serious revolutions about once every generation. Most of those, like the uprising just a few decaded before Napoleon's invasion which almost toppled the entire empire by itself, are not very well known however. Imperial Russia always surfed on the brink of destruction.
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Jan 22, 2014 12:11
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Comstar posted:What was he doing beforehand, and what did he do afterwards? France was pretty much married to the idea of attacking/counter-attacking as soon as war broke out between them and Germany. In particular, they had planned to attack directly across the Franco-German border into Alsace-Lorraine. This was a doctrinal move (Cult of the Offensive) as much as a political one, Alsace-Lorraine being an object of French revanchism since 1870. Joffre and the rest of the French high command, GQG, were so dead-set on following through with this plan that kept ignoring all of the signs of the Schlieffen Plan's right-hook, even after the Belgian King had sent word that such a move was developing right across his country. This was exacerbated by Joffre's personality being a very laconic one, and his attitude towards his subordinate generals being that once orders had been issued, it was up to a general to execute them, but certainly not to question the reasoning behind it. As it happened, Lanrezac, who was commander of the French 5th Army on the left-most position of the French line (facing the German right-wing hook), kept bombarding Joffre with pleas to let him reposition his troops to better face the oncoming envelopment. Joffre refused until just about the last minute because he still wanted to launch his offensive into Alsace-Lorraine and the Ardennes Forest, both of which turned out to be failures anyway. Joffre's response to the right-hook was very late, almost disastrously so, but after he did pull his head out of his rear end he put his stoic, unwavering persona to good use during the withdrawal to the river Marne and the succeeding defense of the area just north of Paris. Whether Joffre stood fast out of sound and genuine military logic or out of a sheer lack of imagination is still debated to this day.
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Jan 22, 2014 13:15
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Libluini posted:Imperial Russia had serious revolutions about once every generation. Most of those, like the uprising just a few decaded before Napoleon's invasion which almost toppled the entire empire by itself, are not very well known however. Imperial Russia always surfed on the brink of destruction. More like once a century, with Razin's Rebellion in 1670-1671 and Pugachev's Rebellion in 1773-1775; both were nowhere near at actually toppling the empire (Pugachev barely got to the province of Moscow) and were crushed once the scattered Imperial armies were called back - they relied too much on their leaders and were not true revolutions. The riots that followed the Crimean War and culminated in the elimination of the serfdom were not widespread. The revolutions of 1905 and 1917 were different in that their point of ignition was in the capital city of Petersburg (Bloody Sunday and bread riots respectively) and the flames went from it to other regions.
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Jan 22, 2014 14:01
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How important were the famed Parisian taxis in the battle of the Marne? Was it something specific about the bravery of the drivers in comparison to military transport, or was it just the material contribution of hundreds of motor vehicles?
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Jan 22, 2014 14:45
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The Entire Universe posted:How important were the famed Parisian taxis in the battle of the Marne? Was it something specific about the bravery of the drivers in comparison to military transport, or was it just the material contribution of hundreds of motor vehicles? 5,000 men surely didn't make much of a change in a battle that had 40+ divisions solely on the allied side, but it demonstrated how everyday workers of Paris were willing to do whatever they could to help, as well as giving the whole thing a bit of an air of drama.
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Jan 22, 2014 15:27
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Makes you wonder if the soldiers were good tippers or not. With respect to ”the Spanish flu”, I had heard that the name is a misnomer, the disease was all over the place, but the belligerents suppressed the news to avoid Morale hits, so only the Spanish papers reported it extensively, making it easy to paint as a Spanish problem. The Wikipedia article basically says nobody's sure where it came from, but in the US it was first reported at Fort Riley, which makes sense, because military hospitals are going to keep better records than Bob the country doctor.
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Jan 22, 2014 18:25
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So these have just turned up out of the vaults. It's interesting stuff.
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Jan 22, 2014 18:26
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sullat posted:Makes you wonder if the soldiers were good tippers or not. I wonder if the flu initially wasn't as quick a killer, leaving millions of soldiers able to contract it in the megacities of Europe and survive the trip home, only to spread it at home, with it later mutating to the 1918 pandemic strain. As for the soldiers being good tippers I imagine the survival of the republic would be enough of a tip.
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Jan 22, 2014 18:36
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Arquinsiel posted:Some people think that it largely incubated in the trenches and had such an effect on people because of wartime shortages and lowered immune systems after living in mud for years. I ain't no doctor, but that's what I've seen people claim. Well, see e.g. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC340389/ Remember that overseas travel (and indeed, travel within one's own country!) was much less common back then. So a viral outbreak would tend generally to die down as a localised incident. This one didn't, because you had millions of people and animals travelling all over the world and being in close proximity to each other. A lot of people and animals in close proximity also gives the virus opportunity to mutate and gain virulence, and all the evidence suggests this is exactly what happened. Fangz fucked around with this message at 18:49 on Jan 22, 2014 |
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Jan 22, 2014 18:42
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sullat posted:With respect to ”the Spanish flu”, I had heard that the name is a misnomer, the disease was all over the place, but the belligerents suppressed the news to avoid Morale hits, so only the Spanish papers reported it extensively, making it easy to paint as a Spanish problem. No, the name came to be because the flu killed the Spanish heir to the throne.
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Jan 22, 2014 18:50
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Tevery Best posted:No, the name came to be because the flu killed the Spanish heir to the throne. No, he got severely ill from the flu but didn't die (I'm assuming you're talking about Alfonso XIII who was King at that point), but his illness was heavily reported. The Allies and Central Powers censored reports of the flu's outbreak in their countries, but allowed reports about the epidemic in Spain to be published. Which led to people just calling it the Spanish Flu since unless you were a doctor or government official that knew what was up, people figured it was Spain that got hit the hardest, and the origin of the epidemic. Arquinsiel posted:So these have just turned up out of the vaults. It's interesting stuff. These are really interesting to look at, thanks for posting! Handsome Ralph fucked around with this message at 19:26 on Jan 22, 2014 |
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Jan 22, 2014 19:18
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sullat posted:The Wikipedia article basically says nobody's sure where it came from, but in the US it was first reported at Fort Riley, which makes sense, because military hospitals are going to keep better records than Bob the country doctor. Fangz posted:Well, see e.g. Well according to this Bob the country doctor was the first to not only notice it but issue a report on how deadly it was.
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Jan 22, 2014 20:15
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I'm reading Shattered Sword right now, and I have a question for fellow readers or posters familiar with Japanese naval aviation. As you may know, Parshall and Tully go to great lengths to explain how the Japanese operated the flight decks and hangars of their carriers. They mention several times that the Aichi D3A dive bomber was only loaded with its ordnance once it was spotted on the flight deck, but they never explain why. Can anyone shed some light on that? I know it may seem insignificant, but they mention it so much throughout the first 150 pages or so that I figure that there must be something to it.
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Jan 23, 2014 00:19
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I guess it means that they couldn't launch as many fully-loaded dive bombers at once so that they couldn't get as many torpedoes in the air in as short a time as the Americans could, thus giving American ships the advantage in surprise engagements or blanket searches. Pure guesswork here.
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Jan 23, 2014 00:34
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It screws up your deck management even further - if you have to arm on the flight deck you can't bring down CAP or recover returning strikes during that time, and if you're expecting to need to do that you just don't arm.
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Jan 23, 2014 00:35
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The rearming clusterfuck also contributed to the loss of the carriers - there were simply more bombs outside of the protected storage areas than there should have been.
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Jan 23, 2014 00:41
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Arquinsiel posted:I guess it means that they couldn't launch as many fully-loaded dive bombers at once so that they couldn't get as many torpedoes in the air in as short a time as the Americans could, thus giving American ships the advantage in surprise engagements or blanket searches. Given that dive bombers don't use torpedoes, that wasn't even good guessing.
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Jan 23, 2014 00:44
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Right, equipping the dive bombers on the flight deck can throw a pretty big wrench into flight deck cycles. However, I'm curious as to why the Japanese equipped their dive bombers in this fashion. What was the reasoning behind it? Ordnance was loaded onto every other plane in the hangar. What necessitated the dive bombers being armed on the flight deck? The authors mention that Japanese carriers had ordnance lifts to the flight deck to deal with the dive bombers, and since they mention it so many times I'm guessing American carriers didn't operate this way. brozozo fucked around with this message at 00:58 on Jan 23, 2014 |
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Jan 23, 2014 00:46
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brozozo posted:Right, equipping the dive bombers on the flight deck can throw a pretty big wrench into flight deck cycles. However, I'm curious as to why the Japanese equipped their dive bombers in this fashion. What was the reasoning behind it? The authors mention that Japanese carriers had ordnance lifts to the flight deck to deal with the dive bombers, and since they mention it so many times I'm guessing American carriers didn't operate this way. IIRC the Dive Bomber they used couldn't fold its wings due to the requirements of load during a dive. So it may be there just wasn't room to do it on the hanger deck.
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Jan 23, 2014 00:56
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Alchenar posted:Given that dive bombers don't use torpedoes, that wasn't even good guessing. 
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Jan 23, 2014 01:22
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wdarkk posted:IIRC the Dive Bomber they used couldn't fold its wings due to the requirements of load during a dive. So it may be there just wasn't room to do it on the hanger deck. More likely that without folding wings adding a 6+ foot long bomb to the forward section of the plane made it even more unmanageable on the elevators. It's pretty obvious it's not just some doctrinal reason, even the Akagi which didn't have a bomb elevator on the flight deck armed her dive bombers up top which meant that the carts and bombs had to make the trips up the already crowded airplane elevators.
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Jan 23, 2014 02:56
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I wanted to get the thread's opinion on a recent BBC column trying to debunk myths about WWI, by the historian Dan Snow: http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25776836 While I'm not an expert, two parts stood out as sounding wrong. First, Snow claims the British army were at their "best ever" in 1918. Wouldn't they have been in better shape during WWII, or against Napolean? Second, his last entry to debunk that everyone hated the war struck me as amateurish. He wrote "Many soldiers enjoyed WW1. If they were lucky they would avoid a big offensive, and much of the time, conditions might be better than at home." While I don't doubt that a handful of men from any war could be found to have enjoyed it, am I wrong that the British opinion after the war regarded it as a terrible experience?
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Jan 23, 2014 06:11
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The First World War was traumatic enough to scar the art and literature of Europe right up until a worse war came along and pretty much made pacifism a mainstream political movement, so I'm feeling that there's a bit of nostalgia for the GOOD OLD DAYS OF EMPIRE  here.
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Jan 23, 2014 06:16
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Mojo Threepwood posted:I wanted to get the thread's opinion on a recent BBC column trying to debunk myths about WWI, by the historian Dan Snow: http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25776836 1918 is definitely a high point for the british army but its highest was probably the desert war in ww2. I'm not familiar with the peninsula war which wikipedia shows as having pretty heavy british involvement but the British army's only historically famous action in the Napoleonic Wars was Waterloo which ended Napoleon's second reign known as the 100 days. The army's performance in Crimea would be hilarious if it wasn't so tragic and of course there's the American Revolutionary War. Basically Britain should be really really thankful their navy was top notch for centuries.
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Jan 23, 2014 06:25
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I'm no expert, but: #3 is to an extent only true for British and French forces. One of the oft-mentioned mistakes with how the Germans executed Verdun was keeping the committed divisions on the line for weeks/months on end until they were ground down to nubs, as opposed to Petain cycling French divisions in and out of the sector until most of the French army had gone through it. #5 I generally agree with - Sir Douglas Haig got unfairly bagged on as an incompetent commander because reasons, and some of the better late-war commanders were working-class men, Canadians and Australians especially. #7 doesn't really mean anything. Yes, tactics got better and people eventually stopped trying to do bayonet charges from 200 meters out, but the next question is "if tactics did get better over time, why was there still no large-scale movement on the Western Front (aside from Operation Michael and the final German collapse?" and as was tackled prior, it's because the superiority of defense over offense during the war was more a logistical/operational facet and less a tactical one.
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Jan 23, 2014 06:35
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gradenko_2000 posted:#5 I generally agree with - Sir Douglas Haig got unfairly bagged on as an incompetent commander because reasons, and some of the better late-war commanders were working-class men, Canadians and Australians especially. Haig's record always seemed okay to decent to me. Yes the Somme was poorly done but he did manage to learn from the mistakes of the battle and apply the lessons learned later on. e: Honestly he should have been given command of the BEF from the get go rather than Sir John "Holy poo poo I am loving Awful at This" French. Raskolnikov38 fucked around with this message at 06:45 on Jan 23, 2014 |
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Jan 23, 2014 06:43
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Raskolnikov38 posted:Haig's record always seemed okay to decent to me. Yes the Somme was poorly done but he did manage to learn from the mistakes of the battle and apply the lessons learned later on. I do agree, Desert War specifically under Monty seems to be the high point of British military achievement, but that was in some ways as the plucky underdogs rather than as the all-conquering Empire.
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Jan 23, 2014 07:38
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I would agree with the assessment that the British army was at its best during the last stages of 1918 - the British broke the German back and went from victory to victory, decisively and flawlessly reaping the rewards of prolonged war of attrition in a series of battles that were giant in scale but usually forgotten due to how one sided they were. Ultimately the British were responsible or about 50% of German casualties caused over the course of the final offensive. Compared to that - with all respect to the British - England played second fiddle to other powers in both the Napoleonic and Second World War.
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Jan 23, 2014 10:35
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I interpreted that claim as 'better than at any other point during the war'.
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Jan 23, 2014 12:12
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steinrokkan posted:I would agree with the assessment that the British army was at its best during the last stages of 1918 - the British broke the German back and went from victory to victory, decisively and flawlessly reaping the rewards of prolonged war of attrition in a series of battles that were giant in scale but usually forgotten due to how one sided they were. Ultimately the British were responsible or about 50% of German casualties caused over the course of the final offensive. As a counterpoint, the Germans deliberately chose the British part of the line when they did their Michael offensive because the British had no real experience seriously defending positions so the Germans found it easier to get breakthroughs.
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Jan 23, 2014 13:15
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Didn't the BEF get almost completely annihilated due to nearly across-the-board failures (literally everything from tactics to logistics) within weeks of the initial deployment? I understand they obviously recovered, but was that the case or am I misremembering my readings?
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Jan 23, 2014 16:22
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The Entire Universe posted:Didn't the BEF get almost completely annihilated due to nearly across-the-board failures (literally everything from tactics to logistics) within weeks of the initial deployment? I understand they obviously recovered, but was that the case or am I misremembering my readings? Kinda. Basically Sir John "hurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr" French got the BEF to the front lines on the French left and then refused to coordinate or cooperate with Lanrezac on his right at all. Cue the BEF and French 5th Army having to constantly retreat because the other has left their flank open. Also at some point during the retreat French has two just absolute retarded ideas, the first is that he orders the abandonment of supplies to speed up the retreat instead of conducting a fighting withdrawal and he wants to retreat all the way to Caen IIRC to re-embark the BEF to England. The last one finally gets Kitchener to go to France and tell French to stop being such a fuckup.
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Jan 23, 2014 16:54
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It's kind of comical hearing the British complain about the Belgians too, threatening to disposess them of their colonies if they didn't hold onto their little sliver of Belgium.
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Jan 23, 2014 17:03
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steinrokkan posted:I would agree with the assessment that the British army was at its best during the last stages of 1918 - the British broke the German back and went from victory to victory, decisively and flawlessly reaping the rewards of prolonged war of attrition in a series of battles that were giant in scale but usually forgotten due to how one sided they were. Ultimately the British were responsible or about 50% of German casualties caused over the course of the final offensive. It was a second fiddle in the Napoleonic Wars for sure compared to the Russians and Austrians, but it is still drat interesting reading about the fighting in Spain and Italy  .
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Jan 23, 2014 17:36
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Raskolnikov38 posted:Kinda. Basically Sir John "hurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr" French got the BEF to the front lines on the French left and then refused to coordinate or cooperate with Lanrezac on his right at all. Cue the BEF and French 5th Army having to constantly retreat because the other has left their flank open. Also at some point during the retreat French has two just absolute retarded ideas, the first is that he orders the abandonment of supplies to speed up the retreat instead of conducting a fighting withdrawal and he wants to retreat all the way to Caen IIRC to re-embark the BEF to England. The last one finally gets Kitchener to go to France and tell French to stop being such a fuckup. I had the hilarious thought of Kitchener showing up in full uniform regalia, leaning in and pointing at French's face like the propaganda posters, and saying "I WANT YOU TO STOP BEING SUCH A FUCKUP."
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Jan 23, 2014 17:54
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