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Shimrra Jamaane posted:Oh so it was so popular because it basically tells the reader that no way would YOU have done such evil things if you were living in those exact circumstances. Because YOU are a good person, unlike those Germans. And it got us talking about anti-Semitism as a motivation again, so from a historiography point of view it may not have been good in its own right but it was very useful. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 10:01 on Feb 28, 2014 |
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Feb 28, 2014 08:06
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Here's a thing: everyone calls the First Gulf War the First Gulf War, but I've never heard anyone call the Iraq War the Second Gulf War. Is the First Gulf War the only war in history that's a "first" with no corresponding "second"?
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Feb 28, 2014 11:13
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The First Gulf War was the Iran-Iraq war. Desert Storm was the Second Gulf War.
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Feb 28, 2014 11:19
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ArchangeI posted:The First Gulf War was the Iran-Iraq war. Desert Storm was the Second Gulf War. Edit: Wait, Wikipedia disagrees. Edit 2: Huh, look at that, Wikipedia also agrees. It's possible that this is not only the only series of wars where there's a "first" but no "second," it may also be the only one where there's two "firsts" and no "second." HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 11:26 on Feb 28, 2014 |
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Feb 28, 2014 11:20
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WEEDLORDBONERHEGEL posted:Really? Ohhhhhh. Thanks. We need to go back to the medieval practice that both side agree after a battle what the name of the battle is. Only, you know, for wars.
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Feb 28, 2014 11:39
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brozozo posted:I read it several years ago. I thought it was decent, but I definitely don't remember that. quote:Like all post-1945 terrorist organisations, it appears to have learnt a great deal from the operations of the Western states' special forces during the Second World War, such as SOE and OSS, which developed and diffused most of the modern techniques of secret warfare among the resistance groups of German-occupied Europe during 1940-44; the copious literature of secret warfare against the Nazis provides the textbooks. Among the techniques described is resistance to interrogation by captured operatives, which often failed against the Gestapo, since it was prepared to use torture, but succeeds against today's Western counter-terrorist organisations, culturally indisposed to employ torture and anyhow inhibited from doing so by domestic and international law. Despite the arrest and detention of hundreds of al-Qaeda operatives, reports suggest that they have successfully overcome American efforts to break down their resistance to questioning. To be somewhat fair, he does go on to say signals and communications intelligence is one point that is open to being intercepted and analyzed by intelligence agencies.
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Feb 28, 2014 13:16
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:Having read neither book, what was the controversy and feud between the books Ordinary Men and Hitler's Willing Executioners? I know Ordinary Men is near unanimously regarded as the superior scholarly work but HWE is far more popular. My paperback copy of Ordinary Men has an appendix that is just the exchange of letters between Browning and Goldhagen about which of them was right. If you have a copy with that section or you can find one to borrow I can't think of a better resource for learning about that controversy. The second time I read through Ordinary Men it was for an assignment, and the prof said that rather than read Hitler's Willing Executioners, which he thought was a waste of time because of its scholarly inferiority, we would read the Goldhagen-Browning debate and discuss it.
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Feb 28, 2014 17:05
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EvanSchenck posted:My paperback copy of Ordinary Men has an appendix that is just the exchange of letters between Browning and Goldhagen about which of them was right. If you have a copy with that section or you can find one to borrow I can't think of a better resource for learning about that controversy. The second time I read through Ordinary Men it was for an assignment, and the prof said that rather than read Hitler's Willing Executioners, which he thought was a waste of time because of its scholarly inferiority, we would read the Goldhagen-Browning debate and discuss it. WEEDLORDBONERHEGEL posted:Hitler's Willing Executioners explicitly states that the only reason the Nazis were able to do what they did is because German culture was uniquely anti-Semitic (as opposed to all other kinds of anti-Semitism, German culture had "eliminationist anti-Semitism," which is special because I still have a hard time believing that Hitler's Willing Executioners is the far more popular book in Germany.
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Feb 28, 2014 17:52
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) and uniquely barbarous. Goldhagen also claims that only Germans would have been able to commit cold-blooded genocide of the sort you see in the Holocaust. He ignores genocides which were not due to anti-Semitism, anti-Semitism which did not lead to genocide, and non-Germans who committed genocide against Jews. As scholarship, it's very bad.
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ArchangeI posted:We need to go back to the medieval practice that both side agree after a battle what the name of the battle is. Only, you know, for wars. Was there actually an organized way to do that? I know the American Civil War used different naming conventions, so you have things like the Battle of Bull Run/Battle of Manassas.
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Feb 28, 2014 17:58
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AATREK CURES KIDS posted:Was there actually an organized way to do that? I know the American Civil War used different naming conventions, so you have things like the Battle of Bull Run/Battle of Manassas. I remember reading about Agincourt where the heralds from each side met up after the fight. (One of the reasons it came up; despite everyone meeting up and hashing it out, the name of the battle is one of the few things every account agreed on.) So it was definitely a thing during the Hundred Years War.
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Feb 28, 2014 18:33
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I've recently started attending lectures on chosen elements of political history in Mesopotamia up to and before Hammurabi. It's been very interesting, we've started with the Akkad state and Naraam-Sin (the first ruler in the area to deify himself - very interesting stuff, particularly how exactly he went about it) and are working our way from there. Today we've had a lecture on the beginnings of the 3rd Ur dynasty and the rule of Shulgi. The guy apparently reigned for 48 years, which is really impressive for third millennium BC, and as was the convention at the time, dating revolved around year names. Every year had a name based on what the ruler (lugal) did, with their first year being traditionally "The year Whatever, the lugal, took the throne," and then you'd have years like "The year Whatever, the lugal, chopped the cedres," or "defeated Elam", or whatever. Shulgi's year names are pretty well preserved and for the first 18 years of his rule are fairly boring. The 18th year of his rule was "The year the sons of Ur by Shulgi, the lugal, were bound to spears." In other words, this means he created a standing army (after pushing through many administrative and legal reforms to allow for it) - pretty much unique in the area at the time (although I don't think he was the first Mesopotamian ruler to do that?). His foes could only count on pseudo-levies and militias. From that point on, the next few years were all "The year Shulgi, the lugal, razed City X," or "City Y", or whatever. Then there was a break for two or three years, then again "Shulgi razed City A". Sometimes "Shulgi razed City X for the second time", then the third and fourth. By the end of his reign the names just said "Shulgi destroyed B, C and D" and two of the cities were listed as razed ten times over and there was just a huge wall of "Shulgi razed Whateversburg" and I was in full  mode.
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Feb 28, 2014 18:54
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the JJ posted:I remember reading about Agincourt where the heralds from each side met up after the fight. (One of the reasons it came up; despite everyone meeting up and hashing it out, the name of the battle is one of the few things every account agreed on.) So it was definitely a thing during the Hundred Years War. Certainly beats the naming convention in the ACW where both sides systematically named battles after different classes of locations (towns vs. waterways). Today it seems to be mostly sorted out, but it's not too uncommon to hear the other name of some battle dropped in there. Then there's the wider (and stupid) debate over what the war itself should be called.
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Feb 28, 2014 19:22
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Handsome Ralph posted:To be somewhat fair, he does go on to say signals and communications intelligence is one point that is open to being intercepted and analyzed by intelligence agencies. To be fair, that reads like a standard academic statement, which is not intended as an ethical statement, but more as a falsiable premise. That would certainly fit Keegan's history and style. If torture would be more efficient against that type of network - which seems to be highly contested - then that statement is a statement of fact, nothing more nor nothing less. However, whatever the author actually suggests or argues for are a different matter completely.
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Feb 28, 2014 19:37
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El Perkele posted:To be fair, that reads like a standard academic statement, which is not intended as an ethical statement, but more as a falsiable premise. That would certainly fit Keegan's history and style. If torture would be more efficient against that type of network - which seems to be highly contested - then that statement is a statement of fact, nothing more nor nothing less. However, whatever the author actually suggests or argues for are a different matter completely. I've read and enjoyed a good number of Keegan's other books, so I'm familiar with his writing style and his political stance on a few issues. I don't think Keegan was a goose stepping conservative, and his political views don't bother me despite them often conflicting with my own because he avoided the Niall Ferguson way of doing things. However, that paragraph was a load of poo poo, be it an ethical or academic statement. The problem I have with that statement is that Keegan spends a good chunk of an earlier chapter on intelligence during WWII talking about how SOE/OSS/HUMINT was really not that effective towards fighting against the German occupation. He then ultimately concludes that their inability to withstand torture and giving up their networks/cells was only part of the reason why they weren't as effective as popular memory seems to think they were. He also spends another chunk of the book talking about how the Western Allies more often than not captured high ranking German officers or operatives, and were able to get them to become double agents, or provide information that was beneficial to the allied cause, entirely without using the same torture methods the Gestapo utilized. So when that statement shows up later on, it's disjointing from the arguments seen earlier in the book. It's just a let down to see it happen and if I had one wish, it's that he avoided going into very recent events all together with that book, as it felt more influenced by his political beliefs than it did on any scholarship of the issue at hand. Handsome Ralph fucked around with this message at 20:30 on Feb 28, 2014 |
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Feb 28, 2014 20:27
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MassivelyBuckNegro posted:I still have a hard time believing that Hitler's Willing Executioners is the far more popular book in Germany. A big public thing doesn't develop around a controversial book because of its merits as scholarship, usually it develops because of the things the book says or the way it fits into the wider cultural context. Many laypeople can't tell the difference between good scholarship and bad, because they're not used to evaluating a work on that level. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 06:19 on Mar 1, 2014 |
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Feb 28, 2014 21:18
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PittTheElder posted:Certainly beats the naming convention in the ACW where both sides systematically named battles after different classes of locations (towns vs. waterways). Today it seems to be mostly sorted out, but it's not too uncommon to hear the other name of some battle dropped in there. Then there's the wider (and stupid) debate over what the war itself should be called. As someone from the South I feel I can contribute to this discussion! Not in that I want to get into the debate, just to clarify what he's talking about for those less familiar with the events. I'm just going to list off the names that I have personally heard attributed to the conflict and give a little blurb about them as I understand it. The Civil War, The War Between the States, the Slave War, the War of Succession, the War of Southern Independence (only once though), the War of Northern Aggression, The Brothers War and I may be remembering incorrectly but I recall the Second Revolution having come up a few times as well. The Civil War/American Civil War is the most common that I've heard. The War Between the States I heard just last night, and is similar to the Civil War in that it is a literal statement of what happened. Less popular but has some traction because it implies that there was no 'legitimate authority' that the South was rebelling against, rather it was a more equal disagreement between states. The Slave War is obvious, but I've only heard this in context of "That's what those people up North call it to make themselves feel better about it." Many people in the South contend that the North was not concerned about slavery at all and that it was economic or other concerns that drove the decision to to war. The War of Succession is more of a secondary historical name because it is also a literal statement of fact. May also be a jab at the idea that the Southern States had the legal right to succeed (independent of all moral considerations regarding the nature of the conflict), which I've heard bandied about before. The War of Southern Independence isn't one you bring up in polite conversation. Honestly neither is The War of Northern Aggression. Both of these I've only heard from older folks. The Brothers War is kind of a "dramatic" name that never pops up in history texts but is fairly common for people trying to make a statement along the lines of "War turns brother on brother" and so forth. Or "We called the Civil War the Brother's War because in my family X joined the Union and Y fought for the South..." In addition, at least my mother and her family still have bitterness from the Civil War and I've heard General Sherman called "the butcher" and other more colorful names more than once. It's a massive clusterfuck, to the point that I just don't talk about American history or politics with my family anymore.
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Feb 28, 2014 21:35
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ProfessorCurly posted:The War of Succession is more of a secondary historical name because it is also a literal statement of fact. May also be a jab at the idea that the Southern States had the legal right to succeed (independent of all moral considerations regarding the nature of the conflict), which I've heard bandied about before. 
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Feb 28, 2014 21:40
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Not to be pedantic, but do you mean "War of Secession" rather than "Succession"? I ask not to be an rear end in a top hat about spelling, but because "succession" implies an argument over who should rule the country, where "secession" implies a desire of a faction to break away from that rule entirely, which I think would be a better description. The argument I've heard against calling it a "Civil War" is that "Civil War" implies that two or more factions are fighting over the authority to rule a nation, whereas the South had no interest in leading the United States, they wanted to break off and do their own thing.
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Feb 28, 2014 21:40
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ProfessorCurly posted:
Whatever you think of the war and it's results, the states most certainly went in separately (both secessionist and union,) and came out as a unified nation, (and a collection of occupied states that would be readmitted after reconstruction,) for better or worse. The effects of the American Civil War go far and beyond "ENDED SLAVERY, BURNED ATLANTA."
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Feb 28, 2014 21:47
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Jefferson Davis named Abraham Lincoln a pretender and declared a War of Succession for the Presidency. Obviously.
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Feb 28, 2014 21:51
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ArchangeI posted:Jefferson Davis named Abraham Lincoln a pretender and declared a War of Succession for the Presidency. Obviously.
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Feb 28, 2014 21:53
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MrYenko posted:Whatever you think of the war and it's results, the states most certainly went in separately (both secessionist and union,) and came out as a unified nation, (and a collection of occupied states that would be readmitted after reconstruction,) for better or worse. Shelby Foote had a nice quote about that. "Before the war, it was said “the United States are.” Grammatically, it was spoken that way and thought of as a collection of independent states. And after the war, it was always “the United States is,” as we say to day without being self-conscious at all. And that’s sums up what the war accomplished. It made us an “is.”"
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Feb 28, 2014 21:56
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jng2058 posted:Shelby Foote had a nice quote about that. "Before the war, it was said “the United States are.” Grammatically, it was spoken that way and thought of as a collection of independent states. And after the war, it was always “the United States is,” as we say to day without being self-conscious at all. And that’s sums up what the war accomplished. It made us an “is.”" And it's a testament to how powerfully and finally it resolved that question, in that a very solid majority not only doesn't remember the US any other way, but has a hard time comprehending that it COULD BE any other way.
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Feb 28, 2014 22:21
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Tevery Best posted:I've recently started attending lectures on chosen elements of political history in Mesopotamia up to and before Hammurabi. It's been very interesting, we've started with the Akkad state and Naraam-Sin (the first ruler in the area to deify himself - very interesting stuff, particularly how exactly he went about it) and are working our way from there. How'd he go about it?
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Feb 28, 2014 22:22
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ProfessorCurly posted:In addition, at least my mother and her family still have bitterness from the Civil War and I've heard General Sherman called "the butcher" and other more colorful names more than once. It's a massive clusterfuck, to the point that I just don't talk about American history or politics with my family anymore. Can someone please dig up that excellent post about how Sherman's March to the Sea actually did NOT result in any civilian casualties?
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Feb 28, 2014 23:21
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If the Soviets (and later the Russians maybe, I don't know) called WWII the Great Patriotic War, what did/do they call WWI? The Lousy Tsarist War?
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Feb 28, 2014 23:35
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Obdicut posted:How'd he go about it? Well, he didn't want to be some sort of second-league backwater deity, so, uhh, actually he did nothing, you know. It was the citizens, whom he protected from vile usurpers on so many occasions, that visited the main temples of the biggest deities of the land (and not just Akkad, but also other parts of the empire - this was to foster some sort of unity in the state) and prayed that the gods accept Naraam-Sin as one of their own. And what do you know, each of the four (or five? I can't remember) deities was all for it! Also every royal stele ends with the phrase "May whoever erases this writing have his genitals ripped off by god Whatever, and may that god kill all his progeny." Every single one. quote:If the Soviets (and later the Russians maybe, I don't know) called WWII the Great Patriotic War, what did/do they call WWI? The Lousy Tsarist War? The Soviets AFAIK called it the Great War or World War I, except that they usually prefaced it with adjectives such as "bourgeois", "imperialist" or whatever. The problem here is that for anyone but the Russians GPW (1941-45) =/= WWII (1939-45).
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Feb 28, 2014 23:43
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They don't lump the fights over Finland, Poland, etc into the Great Patriotic War? I guess I can see that, as they were the aggressors and weren't being genocided at the time, but the Winter War (and I'd argue the Spanish Civil) were basically the same conflict more or less.
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Feb 28, 2014 23:52
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WEEDLORDBONERHEGEL posted:Trial by personal combat between two of the gangliest most awkward fuckers ever to walk the earth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KX-yxkPQT60 My moneys on Abe. Dude invented the choke slam.
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Feb 28, 2014 23:59
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Slaan posted:They don't lump the fights over Finland, Poland, etc into the Great Patriotic War? I guess I can see that, as they were the aggressors and weren't being genocided at the time, but the Winter War (and I'd argue the Spanish Civil) were basically the same conflict more or less. Well, it's not like the West considers the Second Sino-Japanese war as part of WWII either.
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Mar 1, 2014 00:05
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gradenko_2000 posted:Can someone please dig up that excellent post about how Sherman's March to the Sea actually did NOT result in any civilian casualties? Done. DarkCrawler posted:Haha, yeah, he's real bloodthirsty. Remember all those summary executions and mass rapes he did? Someone then tells Darkcrawler he's full of poo poo, we get this glorious response Darkcrawler posted:Why don't you show me all the various records of the mass murders caused by Sherman's troops.
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Mar 1, 2014 00:05
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I don't know about any of that, just reporting what the 'feeling' is at least in my small slice of experience.
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Mar 1, 2014 00:15
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I'm from Mississippi and consider Sherman an American hero. Dude did his job of crushing an unjust rebellion in a practically flawless way. I think another factor in his success would probably be the natural inclination of his troops to act civilized towards the occupied population, since they'd have spoken the same language and probably still considered them countrymen.
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Mar 1, 2014 00:16
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Slaan posted:They don't lump the fights over Finland, Poland, etc into the Great Patriotic War? I guess I can see that, as they were the aggressors and weren't being genocided at the time, but the Winter War (and I'd argue the Spanish Civil) were basically the same conflict more or less. In Soviet historiography Winter War was a 'border conflict' in same way as the battles of Khalkin Gol. From the GPW point of view it also makes some sense not to count the prologues and Manchurian epilogue as true parts of the Great Patriotic War - USSR's struggle with Germany was a battle of survival, all the other engagements were minor disturbances. These names are heavily subjective, eg. in Finnish parlance Winter War 1939-40, Interim Peace 1940-41 and Continuation War 1941-44 (names used already during each of those periods) contain a narrative that makes it impossible to separate the war of 1939 from the war of 1941. WW2 is simply more nebulous and subjectively defined than WW1 with which there isn't much disagreement over when it started and ended.
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Mar 1, 2014 00:22
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I strongly suspect that future historians will just lump together everything from 1914 to 1945.
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Mar 1, 2014 00:31
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2000BC - ????AD: the Long Dark Age before humanity discovered ????, leading to world peace and ponies for everyone.
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Mar 1, 2014 00:36
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BurningStone posted:I strongly suspect that future historians will just lump together everything from 1914 to 1945. Why stop there? Historians are already using 1914-1989 as the borders of the 20th century (much like they use 1789-1914 for the 19th). Personally, I wouldn't be ssurprised if future historians saw the time between 1776 and 1989 as one laarge epoch of struggle between participatory forms of government and governments that collected political power in the hands of a selected few.
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Mar 1, 2014 00:36
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Give it ten thousand years and a few collapses of civilized world, and eventually the standing interpretation of this era will be based on a surviving copy of Iron Sky. It will be our Gilgamesh.
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Mar 1, 2014 00:56
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Nenonen posted:Give it ten thousand years and a few collapses of civilized world, and eventually the standing interpretation of this era will be based on a surviving copy of Iron Sky. It will be our Gilgamesh. And that stupid Eve Online monument in Reykjavik's harbor with its thousands upon thousands of player names engraved will be our Sumerian King List.  Makes you thinking what stupid poo poo our ancestors hid from us, thanks to the wheel of time crushing everything to fine dust.
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Mar 1, 2014 01:14
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Libluini posted:And that stupid Eve Online monument in Reykjavik's harbor with its thousands upon thousands of player names engraved will be our Sumerian King List. Wait that's what those goddamn emails CCP was spamming me with were about 
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