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Washington Post - June 27 1941 God I love having access to my university databases.
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Feb 8, 2014 05:08
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:Washington Post - June 27 1941 Ah yes, once the Germans march troops all the way across Eurasia, the Pacific Fleet will be helpless in the face of the Nazi air force, which will obviously be far more effective against the USN than it has been against the RN because Kamchatka is such a good place to fly planes out of.
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Feb 8, 2014 05:24
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:Washington Post - June 27 1941 Are these US experts implying that if the Soviets believed in god that they might be able to win the war?
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Feb 8, 2014 05:48
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:Washington Post - June 27 1941 I'm laughing at "no difficulty in taking over the vast Soviet area".
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Feb 8, 2014 05:49
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Ensign Expendable posted:I'm laughing at "no difficulty in taking over the vast Soviet area".
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Feb 8, 2014 05:59
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To be fair, to even a learned observer it seemed inevitable after the first 5ish disastrous weeks that the Soviets were going to fall any day now. But this was written just 5 days after the invasion... and assumed that a German victory would somehow involve occupying Russian territory all the way to the Pacific. What the gently caress.
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Feb 8, 2014 06:00
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:To be fair, to even a learned observer it seemed inevitable after the first 5ish disastrous weeks that the Soviets were going to fall any day now. But this was written just 5 days after the invasion... and assumed that a German victory would somehow involve occupying Russian territory all the way to the Pacific. What the gently caress.
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Feb 8, 2014 06:06
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I don't know, the coldest winter in a generation (or longer) seems like it would count as an act of God.
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Feb 8, 2014 07:09
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ArchangeI posted:I don't know, the coldest winter in a generation (or longer) seems like it would count as an act of God. The Germans were hosed after Smolensk, it's just no one knew it yet.
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Feb 8, 2014 07:21
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WEEDLORDBONERHEGEL posted:Many representations of landsknechts were idealized physical types. Some weren't. I live here all my life and never been to the Albertina so far. Well. These are indeed ideal representations of the baroque Kraftmensch. These guys look like bears. Power Khan fucked around with this message at 11:36 on Feb 8, 2014 |
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Feb 8, 2014 11:14
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InspectorBloor posted:I live here all my life and never been to the Albertina so far. Well. These are indeed ideal representations of the baroque Kraftmensch. These guys look like bears. Edit: They aren't baroque yet.
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Feb 8, 2014 11:55
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And what's going on with that weird cock-piece?
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Feb 8, 2014 12:02
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mastervj posted:And what's going on with that weird cock-piece? It's his cod, bro
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Feb 8, 2014 12:05
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mastervj posted:And what's going on with that weird cock-piece? Please don't purse-shame.
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Feb 8, 2014 12:14
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ArchangeI posted:Please don't purse-shame. Technically everyone had purses back then....
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Feb 8, 2014 16:20
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What were European predictions on the results of Grande Armée marching to Russia? For that matter, do we have any full of hubris quotes from Napoleon like the infamous "kick the door in and the house falls down"?
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Feb 8, 2014 16:33
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Nenonen posted:What were European predictions on the results of Grande Armée marching to Russia? For that matter, do we have any full of hubris quotes from Napoleon like the infamous "kick the door in and the house falls down"? An interesting question actually, since that army marching into Russia was one of the biggest multi-national forces ever put under one flag. I expect the nations that tangled and were openly defeated by Napoleon had some opinions whllst the Russians had their own.
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Feb 8, 2014 16:38
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Nenonen posted:What were European predictions on the results of Grande Armée marching to Russia? For that matter, do we have any full of hubris quotes from Napoleon like the infamous "kick the door in and the house falls down"? Hmm, best I can find is an account from Austerlitz from Reporting the Wars http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA Which I guess isn't very similar. Apparently there's some old copies of the Times on sale ... for hundreds of pounds. Fangz fucked around with this message at 17:08 on Feb 8, 2014 |
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Feb 8, 2014 16:57
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Davin Valkri posted:How does this sort of over-reporting even happen? I can sort of understand it for ships and planes--if multiple craft are engaging one enemy, they may each claim it for themselves and it may end up reported as "one each" instead of "one between us"--but for army units it seems like under-reporting enemy damage should be more frequent, since you can't confirm, e.g. a tank or gun that is heavily damaged but withdrawn in good order, then found too damaged to economically repair and scrapped, or enemy soldiers that retire in good order but of which most are sent home due to battle wounds. In air combat it is exactly what you describe, a pilot takes a shot, sees some rounds impact, the plane falls away, he doesn't pursue and then reports it as a kill when he gets back home. This isn't necessarily bad from a propaganda perspective, but it is not a good way to do your intelligence estimates. This is of course exactly what the Luftwaffe did during the BoB and it was a huge contributor to their defeat.
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Feb 8, 2014 17:01
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I note that there's large incentives in many of these cases to over-report, and you are rarely going to be found out.
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Feb 8, 2014 17:07
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Fangz posted:I note that there's large incentives in many of these cases to over-report, and you are rarely going to be found out. Final reporting by the RAF was actually pretty accurate, mostly because you could go round the countryside and literally count how many bombers had fallen out of the sky.
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Feb 8, 2014 17:14
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Aircraft talk got me looking in the old thread to drag out bewbies's cool old post on WWII air combat.
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Feb 8, 2014 17:24
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:The Germans were hosed after Smolensk, it's just no one knew it yet. I'd place the tipping point to be sometime in mid-to-late Oct-1941, when Typhoon was going so swimmingly that Hitler went YOLO and ordered the Panzers to take a half-dozen other miscellaneous objectives like Tikhvin, Velikiye Luki, Kalinin, Tula, et al. Of course, this is only we would grant that the fall of Moscow (and possibly Leningrad) would have lead to a Soviet collapse in the first place - without that particular political assumption, the Germans were hosed the moment the first shell crossed the border.
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Feb 8, 2014 17:54
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I generally hold that the Germans were hosed the moment they planned the war as a war of genocide. A nation could not absorb the sort of losses the soviets suffered - unless survival was on the line, and the Nazis put it on the line.
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Feb 8, 2014 18:02
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Really the Germans were hosed when the nazis took power in 1933. Hitler's rearmament program meant war or economic collapse. Or if you want to get really pedantic the Germans were hosed the moment Goering received the injury that got him addicted to morphine. Cue the next logical argument, the Germans lost WW2 the moment Fredrick the Great assumed the Prussian throne  .
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Feb 8, 2014 18:12
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Fangz posted:I generally hold that the Germans were hosed the moment they planned the war as a war of genocide. A nation could not absorb the sort of losses the soviets suffered - unless survival was on the line, and the Nazis put it on the line. No offense but that's a rather propagandistic line to take and one that would make you believe Russians fought the hardest in 1941 when the threat was the greatest and were less serious about it in 1944-45 (well, they did lose some motivation in spring '45 due to the universal "don't want to be the last casualty of the war" syndrome). Soviet Union was going to fight the same way no matter what the invader's conduct in the occupied territories was like. Maybe there would have been fewer partisan uprisings, but in the big picture that doesn't matter as much as the absolute control over the army and people that Stalin held. It's not like young men from Kazan are going to give their lives under fire just because some family in Minsk might have lost their homes, it's because if they refuse they will be shot and in the end they have no idea what really is going on in Minsk other than what Komsomolskaya Pravda and Izvestiya tell them. In general claims that "they were fighting for their country/freedom/religion/democracy/socialism" may SOMETIMES hold true, but when we're talking about young men ages 17-25 years old they generally have other priorities, and while some may buy the official line others are there just due to conscription or because war pays somewhat better or because they hope to come back as a decorated hero that every girl in Kazan (or Bremen, or Los Angeles, or Kioto, or...) wants to gently caress or because they're clueless idiots. Not to say that the sacrifices of clueless idiots aren't respectable, I merely find it tragic from an individual perspective that so many men die in droves without knowing what they give their lives for.
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Feb 8, 2014 19:06
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Nenonen posted:No offense but that's a rather propagandistic line to take and one that would make you believe Russians fought the hardest in 1941 when the threat was the greatest and were less serious about it in 1944-45 (well, they did lose some motivation in spring '45 due to the universal "don't want to be the last casualty of the war" syndrome). Soviet Union was going to fight the same way no matter what the invader's conduct in the occupied territories was like. Maybe there would have been fewer partisan uprisings, but in the big picture that doesn't matter as much as the absolute control over the army and people that Stalin held. It's not like young men from Kazan are going to give their lives under fire just because some family in Minsk might have lost their homes, it's because if they refuse they will be shot and in the end they have no idea what really is going on in Minsk other than what Komsomolskaya Pravda and Izvestiya tell them. I disagree with this. If you believe that the level of motivation is due to Stalin's terror, then you disregard that Stalin's attempts at 'motivating the troops' varied a lot over the war. The general argument that people have many and diverse reasons to fight is good, but the War on the Eastern Front is special. The losses we are talking about are not faraway things people have no idea about. We are talking about an event in which one-sixth to one-eighth the population of the USSR died. This is not a faraway thing, this is catastrophe large enough that almost everyone would likely know someone who has been directly affected by the war. Re: Soviets fighting hard in 1944, they had a pretty clear motivation: revenge. I think there's good evidence that the form of the war had a direct impact, on all levels of the soviet military. On the lowest levels, you have a swathe of memoirs from the period, where people wrote, explicitly, why they fought: quote:And then I began to weep: neither pain, nor losses nor fear were the cause of those tears. I wept from my awareness of the tragedy of the retreat which I had witnessed and in which I had taken part, I wept from the terrible thought that all our sacrifices had been in vain ... I wept because I had not even a grenade to blow myself up with the Germans. I wept from the very thought that the Germans were already on the left bank of the Dnieper. quote:G.K. – Was it difficult to think about going back to the front after all the things you’d experienced in the infantry and the hospitals? etc. Then you have examples like Rokossovsky, who went from Gulag inmate up to top command. We have a historical example of how the Russians fought when survival was not on the line - WWI. For all Stalin did in his purges, there were plenty under him who hated him. Note the de-Stalinisation process that happened immediately after he was dead. If the Germans offered the Russians an out, perhaps a limited surrender, Stalin would have found himself rapidly suffering a lead overdose. Why did the Soviets suffer proportionately 2 to 3 times the casualties they did in WWI, and did not surrender? Why did people who had seen their friends and families purged by Stalin not at least keep their heads down but repeatedly volunteer for frontline service? Because the stakes were what they were. Fangz fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Feb 8, 2014 |
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Feb 8, 2014 19:46
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Fangz posted:The losses we are talking about are not faraway things people have no idea about. We are talking about an event in which one-sixth to one-eighth the population of the USSR died. This is not a faraway thing, this is catastrophe large enough that almost everyone would likely know someone who has been directly affected by the war. You have to source a claim like that, otherwise I find it hard to agree. Your average Gorky family is not going to have many relatives in Pskov, and those that do are going to be unaware of what goes on behind the frontlines. Fangz posted:Then you have examples like Rokossovsky, who went from Gulag inmate up to top command. Rokossovsky was a professional soldier whose career was built on defending Russia, of course he'd be motivated to return from Siberia to lead troops. What else could he do, decline and be demoted to a rifleman or even be shot? In no way does he compare to a common peasant or factory worker. And sorry if I don't hold any opinion on quotes without knowing where they are coming from - like I said, there are always some who will buy the official line so two unsourced quotes are meaningless. Fangz posted:Why did the Soviets suffer proportionately 2 to 3 times the casualties they did in WWI, and did not surrender? Why did people who had seen their friends and families purged by Stalin not at least keep their heads down but repeatedly volunteer for frontline service? Because the stakes were what they were. Russia in 1914-1917 is not the same place as Soviet Union in 1941-45, just like Germany in 1914-1918 is not the same place as Germany in 1941-45. Back in WW1 neither empire was ruled by a totalitarian party and despite being ruled by despots they both had significant parliamentary factions not to mention their nonparliamentary undercurrents. Just consider how Russian empire treated dissidents and revolutionaries such as Stalin, compared to how Stalin's Russia treated dissidents and revolutionaries.
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Feb 8, 2014 20:21
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Nenonen posted:You have to source a claim like that, otherwise I find it hard to agree. Your average Gorky family is not going to have many relatives in Pskov, and those that do are going to be unaware of what goes on behind the frontlines. Yeah, while it's true now that most people know friends and relatives from all over their country, this was not so true in 1941. Back then it was hard to move a long way, especially across the Soviet Union, and not many people had a reason to do so.
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Feb 8, 2014 21:30
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WEEDLORDBONERHEGEL posted:It's his cod, bro I see my feeble attemp at humor has failed.
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Feb 8, 2014 21:43
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mastervj posted:I see my feeble attemp at humor has failed. I just wanted to say cod.
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Feb 9, 2014 01:50
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Whoah Hegel what happened to your name?
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Feb 9, 2014 01:56
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Koramei posted:Whoah Hegel what happened to your name? I change it every now and then.
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Feb 9, 2014 02:03
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WEEDLORDBONERHEGEL posted:I change it every now and then. Man, now it's going to be even weirder when friends ask me what my sources are. "On that forum I go to, WEEDLORDBONERHEGEL said x,y and z. What? She probably has more degrees than the rest of us combined. Stop laughing." Question: I've read the True History of the Conquest of the New Spain, and I just want to know, was the guy actually real? He is an absolutely fascinating man if he was, and he sums up the Conquest of the New World perfectly in one sentence ("We went there to serve God and get rich"), but there are a lot of details in the book that don't add up to reality. Admittedly, my only source on the Aztecs was the Mexican Museum of Anthropology's section on them, but I could see a lot of evidence that directly contradicted what he was writing, among other things. Did he just exaggerate their barbarity to make a point about why their conquest was just in response to Bartolome de la Casas' books, was he just a made up character like Marco Polo, or was he just an uneducated soldier who wanted to make his mark on history?
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Feb 9, 2014 03:44
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Don Gato posted:"On that forum I go to, WEEDLORDBONERHEGEL said x,y and z. What? She probably has more degrees than the rest of us combined. Stop laughing." 4 of those degrees are on her black belt in competitive hotdog eating.
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Feb 9, 2014 05:03
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:4 of those degrees are on her black belt in competitive hotdog eating.
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Feb 9, 2014 05:05
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WEEDLORDBONERHEGEL posted:You're just mad I took gold in San Marino and you didn't. THOSE DOGS WERE NOT REGULATION SIZE
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Feb 9, 2014 05:06
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Don Gato posted:Man, now it's going to be even weirder when friends ask me what my sources are. At this stage I think the main problem will be your citing goons in IRL conversations.
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Feb 9, 2014 05:49
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EvanSchenck posted:At this stage I think the main problem will be your citing goons in IRL conversations. But they know more than meeeeeeeee  . And I only cite goons when doing nerdy poo poo like tabletop RPGs, not on academic papers.I'm just digging myself into a deeper hole, aren't I?
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Feb 9, 2014 06:08
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It's come up for me as well, so I make an effort to find the sources and read them myself if I'm going to want to cite this thread.
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Feb 9, 2014 11:01
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