Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
Retarted Pimple
Jun 2, 2002

ArchangeI posted:

The American Brooklyn class cruisers had 15 152 mm guns, giving them arguably more firepower than contemporary US Navy heavy cruisers.
Newer St Louis class but the same guns...

quote:

Due to the proficiency of the gunners, Japanese radio announcer Tokyo Rose referred to the Helena as the "machine gun ship"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Helena_%28CL-50%29
If they could get close enough, those 15 6"/47 guns were devastating.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Frostwerks
Sep 24, 2007

by Lowtax

Koesj posted:

The Cold War thoroughly messed things up: in one shot, a missile boat with nuclear tipped ordnance could potentially sink more tonnage than both sides lost during the Battle of Jutland.

Likewise I heard that the total payload of a missile sub with nuclear ordnance could deliver more lethal energy than had ever been released in the sum totality of human warfare that wasn't used for testing (disregarding the test results of various countries nuclear programs). That includes every big gun from the world wars, every air-dropped bomb both conventional and atomic including the massive campaigns in the second world war and operation linebacker/II, everything. No idea if it's true or not but it's still harrowing to think about.

Koesj
Aug 3, 2003
Yeah, a notional late Cold War full payload delivers dozens of megatons on target. Hell, even a Polaris A1 boat can throw around ~9.5Mt, provided all the missiles work, which is more than three times the explosive energy dropped from aircraft in WWII.

Frostwerks
Sep 24, 2007

by Lowtax
Actually I think the example that I heard wasn't even boomer subs but cold war and modern destroyers, what with the now retired nuclear warhead tomahawk cruise missiles as well as with what I assume were submarine evaporating nuclear tipped torpedoes. Granted, I don't know very much about anti-submarine weapon systems, but I don't doubt that such a creature was at some point designed to combat cold war era 2nd world CBG-killing submarine weapons be they either anti-ship missiles or torpedoes. I guess for When you need something destroyed post-haste in dimensions not measured in area but in volume.

hogmartin
Mar 27, 2007
I’ve asked this before, months ago, but we have some new readers and I figured I’d throw it out again. I'm interested in commercial armies and navies - not mercenaries, but the actual military arms of commercial entities like the VOC, EIC and Hanseatic League. Has anyone got any recommendations for books about these militaries, and how companies were allowed to develop armies and navies that rivaled (and sometimes conquered) sovereign countries?

KYOON GRIFFEY JR
Apr 12, 2010



Runner-up, TRP Sack Race 2021/22

hogmartin posted:

I’ve asked this before, months ago, but we have some new readers and I figured I’d throw it out again. I'm interested in commercial armies and navies - not mercenaries, but the actual military arms of commercial entities like the VOC, EIC and Hanseatic League. Has anyone got any recommendations for books about these militaries, and how companies were allowed to develop armies and navies that rivaled (and sometimes conquered) sovereign countries?

Seconded on this. I'd love to grab a comprehensive history of the EIC and its various wars.

SeanBeansShako
Nov 20, 2009

Now the Drums beat up again,
For all true Soldier Gentlemen.
Thirded. I always wondered how EIC worked and why they hosed up managing India so badly (aside from the obvious corrupting and grift).

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

FOPTIMUS PRIME
The Business of War isn't primarily about commercial armies and navies but it has some stuff about them in it. I'd recommend looking through the bibliography, I bet there's works about the EIC etc. in there.

Rodrigo Diaz
Apr 16, 2007

Knights who are at the wars eat their bread in sorrow;
their ease is weariness and sweat;
they have one good day after many bad

Ensign Expendable posted:

There has been a recent push for continuation of service after the mandatory term, but the mandatory term has been decreased to 1 year from 3 (my grandfather used to complain that the new enlisted were worthless and couldn't learn anything in a year). This probably resulted in an increase of the officer corps and junior commanders, but the effectiveness of peasant conscripts didn't go up any.

1 year service is actually a serious problem because it is not met with a corresponding, adequate increase in kontraktniki, that is to say professional soldiers.

Conscripts already take a significant portion of that year to train, and this leaves them with very little time to integrate with the existing force. This means that (edit: in addition to creating a manpower shortage) the conscripts do not get the time needed to fully acclimate to the armed forces and institutional knowledge takes more effort to communicate because you have fewer people to retain it. Interpersonal bonds also suffer because of this abbreviated conscription.

This is also a problem because it means that conscripts cannot really be trained to use complex systems (such as SAMs).

edit: Though 3 years old, this post and the linked pamphlet, deal with the manpower problem in more depth than I can http://russiamil.wordpress.com/2011/07/29/the-russian-militarys-manpower-problem/

Rodrigo Diaz fucked around with this message at 00:56 on Mar 3, 2014

KYOON GRIFFEY JR
Apr 12, 2010



Runner-up, TRP Sack Race 2021/22

SeanBeansShako posted:

Thirded. I always wondered how EIC worked and why they hosed up managing India so badly (aside from the obvious corrupting and grift).

Isn't part of that stated objectives? EIC wasn't interested in having an unfucked India, they wanted a profit-making India. While in the long run these are probably the same thing, shareholders gotta get paid, yo.

Don Gato
Apr 28, 2013

Actually a bipedal cat.
Grimey Drawer
So would it be accurate to describe the EIC as every evil corporation from every cyberpunk novel ever? 'cause everything I read about them gives me that impression.

PittTheElder
Feb 13, 2012

:geno: Yes, it's like a lava lamp.

Don Gato posted:

So would it be accurate to describe the EIC as every evil corporation from every cyberpunk novel ever? 'cause everything I read about them gives me that impression.

Yeah, pretty much. Although I've heard it said that the Dutch East India Company, the VOC, somehow managed to be even more corrupt, and probably deserve the title of 'most corrupt company ever'. In addition to all the humanitarian abuses, I guess they were managing to defraud the hell out of the shareholders and get bailed out by the Dutch government a few times.

KYOON GRIFFEY JR
Apr 12, 2010



Runner-up, TRP Sack Race 2021/22
The Wikipedia article on the VOC is interesting though I am not sure how accurate some of it is.

SeanBeansShako
Nov 20, 2009

Now the Drums beat up again,
For all true Soldier Gentlemen.

KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:

Isn't part of that stated objectives? EIC wasn't interested in having an unfucked India, they wanted a profit-making India. While in the long run these are probably the same thing, shareholders gotta get paid, yo.

I do seem to recall reading that some EIC officials shafting the share holders entirely as bad as the Indians and keeping it for themselves.

Defenestrategy
Oct 24, 2010

So with the advent of ICBMs are nuclear bombers still in use? Also did nuclear armed weapons change how tanks, ships, and infantry move and deploy? I assume if you go to war with a country who'll use tactical nuclear weapons the name of the game is stealth, high speed, and dispersed forces.

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

KildarX posted:

So with the advent of ICBMs are nuclear bombers still in use?

Yes. The US and Russians still deploy nuclear capable strategic bombers (although in both instances they have been somewhat reduced in importance), and several other countries (France, India, Pakistan, China, and maybe a couple of other NATO countries depending on how you want to view that whole NATO Nuclear Sharing thing) deploy nuclear capable tactical bombers. That's modern day...back during the Cold War strategic bombers were an integral part of the US's nuclear triad. The idea behind the triad was that land based ICBMs gave you the accuracy necessary for a counterforce strike (something that lessened with the deployment of the increasingly accurate Trident II/D5), sea based SLBMs gave you a survivable second strike countervalue deterrent (as long as someone somewhere possessed the means to relay a launch order even if you schwacked all the other nuclear forces a country possessed their boomers would be ready to rain hate down on your cities long after the country they belonged to was completely destroyed), and land based bombers gave you a recallable deterrent, useful for messaging. Land based ICBMs and ballistic missile subs weren't much use at this, since the former couldn't do anything other than sit in their silo or be launched while the latter's whole job was to stay as hidden as possible. Bombers, on the other hand, could be forward deployed or even launched towards an adversary's airspace, something that would send a signal during a time of increased tensions...but they could still be recalled before carrying out a strike and going all the way to a shooting war.

Frostwerks
Sep 24, 2007

by Lowtax

iyaayas01 posted:

Yes. The US and Russians still deploy nuclear capable strategic bombers (although in both instances they have been somewhat reduced in importance), and several other countries (France, India, Pakistan, China, and maybe a couple of other NATO countries depending on how you want to view that whole NATO Nuclear Sharing thing) deploy nuclear capable tactical bombers. That's modern day...back during the Cold War strategic bombers were an integral part of the US's nuclear triad. The idea behind the triad was that land based ICBMs gave you the accuracy necessary for a counterforce strike (something that lessened with the deployment of the increasingly accurate Trident II/D5), sea based SLBMs gave you a survivable second strike countervalue deterrent (as long as someone somewhere possessed the means to relay a launch order even if you schwacked all the other nuclear forces a country possessed their boomers would be ready to rain hate down on your cities long after the country they belonged to was completely destroyed), and land based bombers gave you a recallable deterrent, useful for messaging. Land based ICBMs and ballistic missile subs weren't much use at this, since the former couldn't do anything other than sit in their silo or be launched while the latter's whole job was to stay as hidden as possible. Bombers, on the other hand, could be forward deployed or even launched towards an adversary's airspace, something that would send a signal during a time of increased tensions...but they could still be recalled before carrying out a strike and going all the way to a shooting war.

Where would this fit in the triad? Somewhere between B and C? I mean it's mobile but a big chunk of metal up in the air is waaaay more visible than any sub but I don't think there's any such recalling that launch.


e: That is by far my fave mil-hist youtube vid.

Frostwerks fucked around with this message at 08:29 on Mar 3, 2014

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

Frostwerks posted:

Where would this fit in the triad? Somewhere between B and C? I mean it's mobile but a big chunk of metal up in the air is waaaay more visible than any sub but I don't think there's any such recalling that launch.


e: That is by far my fave mil-hist youtube vid.

Useless.

Awesomely cool, but useless.

Frostwerks
Sep 24, 2007

by Lowtax

iyaayas01 posted:

Useless.

Awesomely cool, but useless.

Useless my rear end, they covered that year's budget.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy
I think the idea behind an air-launched SLBM would be, yes, somewhere between B and C: Something that you can put up in the air as a deterrent, but since it's an ICBM all by itself instead of a gravity bomb or a cruise missile or somesuch, the bombers themselves aren't as vulnerable since they can stay within the continental United States instead of having to fly out to the Arctic Circle.

I think the useless part comes in the form of the Skybolt missile having an operational range that's not much farther than an SLBM (I don't about these air-launched Minuteman ones) and then not having enough Minuteman-carrying C-5 Galaxy planes to make the program an effective deterrent (just yet?)

Libluini
May 18, 2012

I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...
Grimey Drawer

iyaayas01 posted:

Yes. The US and Russians still deploy nuclear capable strategic bombers (although in both instances they have been somewhat reduced in importance), and several other countries (France, India, Pakistan, China, and maybe a couple of other NATO countries depending on how you want to view that whole NATO Nuclear Sharing thing) deploy nuclear capable tactical bombers. That's modern day...back during the Cold War strategic bombers were an integral part of the US's nuclear triad. The idea behind the triad was that land based ICBMs gave you the accuracy necessary for a counterforce strike (something that lessened with the deployment of the increasingly accurate Trident II/D5), sea based SLBMs gave you a survivable second strike countervalue deterrent (as long as someone somewhere possessed the means to relay a launch order even if you schwacked all the other nuclear forces a country possessed their boomers would be ready to rain hate down on your cities long after the country they belonged to was completely destroyed), and land based bombers gave you a recallable deterrent, useful for messaging. Land based ICBMs and ballistic missile subs weren't much use at this, since the former couldn't do anything other than sit in their silo or be launched while the latter's whole job was to stay as hidden as possible. Bombers, on the other hand, could be forward deployed or even launched towards an adversary's airspace, something that would send a signal during a time of increased tensions...but they could still be recalled before carrying out a strike and going all the way to a shooting war.

To expand on that, the German Bundeswehr for example has a special squadron of Tornado-fighter bombers which can be fitted to carry missiles with nuclear warheads. In the event of the cold war ever becoming hot and the Sowjet Union escalating to use tactical nukes, this squadron would have been fitted with tactical nukes supplied by allied nations to rain death upon the advancing Warshaw pact armies.

Goatse James Bond
Mar 28, 2010

If you see me posting please remind me that I have Charlie Work in the reports forum to do instead

hogmartin posted:

I’ve asked this before, months ago, but we have some new readers and I figured I’d throw it out again. I'm interested in commercial armies and navies - not mercenaries, but the actual military arms of commercial entities like the VOC, EIC and Hanseatic League. Has anyone got any recommendations for books about these militaries, and how companies were allowed to develop armies and navies that rivaled (and sometimes conquered) sovereign countries?

The Hanseatic League was halfway a commercial entity and halfway a state-like entity (or rather, a confederation of trade cities). It doesn't count in quite the same way, unless you want to count Venice or Genoa as mini-Leagues in their own right.

Koesj
Aug 3, 2003

Libluini posted:

To expand on that, the German Bundeswehr for example has a special squadron of Tornado-fighter bombers which can be fitted to carry missiles with nuclear warheads. In the event of the cold war ever becoming hot and the Sowjet Union escalating to use tactical nukes, this squadron would have been fitted with tactical nukes supplied by allied nations to rain death upon the advancing Warshaw pact armies.

Lots of NATO countries still run a nominally nuclear flagged fighter plane squadron. It was an extremely important mission during the Cold War, but has receded in importance since, of course.

Also, don't discount the possibility of NATO having been the ones escalating towards nuclear levels. No first-use was never on the cards, and 'flexible response' was pretty much meant to look like the West was trigger-happy with nukes - useful from a deterrence perspective, but also giving rise to such memes as "NATO was weak and its land forces were only a tripwire" ever since.


KildarX posted:

I assume if you go to war with a country who'll use tactical nuclear weapons the name of the game is stealth, high speed, and dispersed forces.

This was very much the name of the game in the late 50s and early 60s. My knowledge only extends to how NATO countries approached the problem, but AFAIK the Soviets dabbled with pretty much the same kinds of solutions, and then came to broadly similar conclusions. Conceptually I'd say that there was a two-track road towards 'solving' the issues of the nuclear battlefield: force structure and optimized command & control were indeed supposed to be tailored towards stealhier, speedier, and dispersable forces, while technical solutions on the equipment level would harden them against fighting in contaminated environments.

These broad solution sets went hand in hand of course, since better equipment was a hard prerequisite for survival anyway. Radiation liners and overpressure systems got introduced to vehicles (the latter being very handy in slimed places as well), good old gas masks and waxed jackets were replaced with better versions, ever smaller units got better, smaller, and hardened radios, etc. I'd say that these tiny building blocks, or this bottom-up approach if you will, was as good as anything in trying to cope with the nuclear battlefield: almost every fighting unit got mechanized, there were enough trucks around to quickly move *everything* you needed, units outside high overpressure blast zones could be expected to survive (or at least long enough to keep at it for a bit), all that.

From the top-down perspective of trying to build an army specifically for nuclear war however, initial (and even later) efforts were... not so good. In two concrete examples of part-nuclear inspired streamlining - the 'Reorganization of the Current Infantry Division' (ROCID) under the 'Pentomic' structuring of the late 50s US Army, and rerolling UK Armored Divisions into battlegroups/task forces during the second half of the 70s (IIRC) - Western armies did away with whole layers of command & control (the Battalion and Brigade levels respectively), which led to major problems. Wikipedia has a decent list of what went wrong with ROCID:

quote:

  • Training: Officers would command with long periods of time between assignments to maneuver units. This would erode the experience and competence of Battle Group commanders once the experienced officers of World War II and Korea retired.
  • Span of control: Most people are capable of managing 2–5 separate elements. The pentomic battle group contained seven companies and in combat would habitually have 2–4 more attached such as engineers, artillery, or armor.
  • Loss of regimental cohesion: Traditional infantry regiments had long histories and commanded strong loyalty from their assigned soldiers. The Battle Groups, and later, the ROAD brigades, combined infantry battalions from different regiments in a chaotic fashion that eliminated regimental cohesion.
  • Loss of a level of command: Previously there had been Company Commanders (Captain), Battalion Commanders (Major or Lieutenant Colonel), and Regimental Commanders (Colonel); the Pentomic structure eliminated the level of Battalion Commander.

In the end both efforts were abandoned after only a short while, and analogous to Pentomic-stuff like the Dutch 'Divisie Atoom' never really saw the light of day. Funnily enough the Germans and I guess the Israelis as well pretty much led other Western militaries into the light, by showing how a strong, Brigade-centric structure could utilize new advances in mechanization and communication, while at the same time keeping larger maneuver units relatively well-arranged and manageable.

I'd say NATO's LANDCENT-approved force structure of the 1960s formalized this approach. Here's a link (Google Books) to Honig's Defense Policy in the North Atlantic Alliance: The Case of the Netherlands which sums it up in short. Out of the two competing command & control solutions the strong Brigade, with at its core either combined-arms Companies or Battalions, won out over the newfangled, highfalutin 'battlegroups'. The former being a rather closer approximation of the highly rated (but rather nebulous) Wehrmacht 'Kampfgruppe' concept anyway; now wholesale applied to entire Armies though, rather than on an ad-hoc basis.



Lmao as I typed this they did the monthly siren test. Talk about Cold War throwbacks!

Koesj fucked around with this message at 12:37 on Mar 3, 2014

Defenestrategy
Oct 24, 2010

So say you had to/wanted to start a war with a nuclear armed country do you attempt to neutralize their nuclear weapons first (send in special forces to air bases, bomb the ever loving hell out of missile silos, find their boomers?) Or do you start a fight and hope they don't resort to tactical use of weapons?

Fangz
Jul 5, 2007

Oh I see! This must be the Bad Opinion Zone!
Any attack on nuclear silos would by most doctrines trigger an immediate LAUNCH EVERYTHING response.

wdarkk
Oct 26, 2007

Friends: Protected
World: Saved
Crablettes: Eaten

Fangz posted:

Any attack on nuclear silos would by most doctrines trigger an immediate LAUNCH EVERYTHING response.

If it's special forces doing it, what do you do when you're not sure WHO is doing the attacking yet?

Although the whole thing seems insanely risky since it's quite possible that the decision to do something like that can't be concealed.

ArchangeI
Jul 15, 2010
Yeah, in the modern day (post Cold War) you assume that they won't go nuclear if you made it clear that this is a war over limited objectives. Say, a naval base on a strategically important peninsula. Besides, finding boomers is difficult as hell, these things are designed to be very, very quiet. A few years ago a British and a French boomer ran into each other in the middle of the Atlantic because each didn't know the other was there. Nuclear silos are also designed to survive pretty much everything, including a direct hit by a nuclear warhead, so in order to take them out, you'd need to go nuclear yourself.

Koesj
Aug 3, 2003

Fangz posted:

Any attack on nuclear silos would by most doctrines trigger an immediate LAUNCH EVERYTHING response.

This, in a broader sense means that

KildarX posted:

So say you had to/wanted to start a war with a nuclear armed country do you attempt to neutralize their nuclear weapons first (send in special forces to air bases, bomb the ever loving hell out of missile silos, find their boomers?) Or do you start a fight and hope they don't resort to tactical use of weapons?

these things, aren't really on the table.

You don't start a large fight with a nuclear weapons state, even if they only have a nascent capability, like North Korea or something. Never ever put a nuclear weapons state in the position where they gotta use 'em or lose 'em. You can't be 100% you'll get all of them, and having even one nuke go off where you didn't want/expected it is too much of an unknown unknown.

Deterrence, which has been the cornerstone of world stability for more than half a decade now and prevented WWIII from breaking out, is still a valid proposition.


wdarkk posted:

If it's special forces doing it, what do you do when you're not sure WHO is doing the attacking yet?

Special forces attacking what, missile silos? Are they part of a massive, nationwide fifth column or something? Any serious power will have redundancies in their nuclear capability.

ArchangeI posted:

Yeah, in the modern day (post Cold War) you assume that they won't go nuclear if you made it clear that this is a war over limited objectives. Say, a naval base on a strategically important peninsula. Besides, finding boomers is difficult as hell, these things are designed to be very, very quiet. A few years ago a British and a French boomer ran into each other in the middle of the Atlantic because each didn't know the other was there. Nuclear silos are also designed to survive pretty much everything, including a direct hit by a nuclear warhead, so in order to take them out, you'd need to go nuclear yourself.

You rather don't go to war directly against your enemy at all. Limited confrontations can escalate as well, so you're down to proxy conflicts and brush wars - Cold War 101.

Silos can be dug out so direct hits will actually wreck them, even the massively armored ones under review for the MX proposal. The *one weird* trick is loading your missiles with multiple, accurate warheads so a small amount of your own can take out a large amount. Exactly the reason why nations have been happy to cut their land-based arsenals in order to keep the subs intact. SORT will give the US and Russia a bit more leeway in where to cut their forces compared to earlier arms reduction efforts, and you can expect the undersea components of their triads to be held up compared to bombers and ICBMs.

wdarkk
Oct 26, 2007

Friends: Protected
World: Saved
Crablettes: Eaten

Koesj posted:

Special forces attacking what, missile silos? Are they part of a massive, nationwide fifth column or something? Any serious power will have redundancies in their nuclear capability.

Yeah, I was just thinking about it hypothetically.

Defenestrategy
Oct 24, 2010

So nuclear weapons have bought a sort of pax atom or something? When you can only use proxies to fight your wars it seems the ability to get much of anything accomplished via non-economics is limited.

Davincie
Jul 7, 2008

Are there any good sources on the daily life of 17th (maybe 18th too) Century soldiers besides Hagendorf's diary (and work using that as a source)?

Koesj
Aug 3, 2003

KildarX posted:

So nuclear weapons have bought a sort of pax atom or something? When you can only use proxies to fight your wars it seems the ability to get much of anything accomplished via non-economics is limited.

That's one of the *less* ideologically charged interpretations of the post-WWII order of things, yeah.

WoodrowSkillson
Feb 24, 2005

*Gestures at 60 years of Lions history*

KildarX posted:

So nuclear weapons have bought a sort of pax atom or something? When you can only use proxies to fight your wars it seems the ability to get much of anything accomplished via non-economics is limited.

That or requires some kind of gentleman's agreement during a war where things are kept strictly military and civilians are protected by both sides. Fat chance on that sticking if one side is destabilized enough that the country might fall apart.

Red7
Sep 10, 2008

Davincie posted:

Are there any good sources on the daily life of 17th (maybe 18th too) Century soldiers besides Hagendorf's diary (and work using that as a source)?

I can't give you direct recommendations, but if you get hold of "Rifles: Six Years with Wellington's Legendary Sharpshooters" and "Fusiliers", both by Mark Urban you should be able to find a pointer in the references. Also worth looking at is "Redcoat: The British Soldier in the Age of Horse and Musket" and "Soldiers: Army Lives and Loyalties from Redcoats to Dusty Warriors" both by Richard Holmes. All of these are social history books to a lesser or greater extent and built up from personal accounts.

e: thinking about it Rifles and Redcoats are both 19th Century, so errr maybe give those a miss!

Red7 fucked around with this message at 20:21 on Mar 3, 2014

PittTheElder
Feb 13, 2012

:geno: Yes, it's like a lava lamp.

wdarkk posted:

If it's special forces doing it, what do you do when you're not sure WHO is doing the attacking yet?

You launch at everybody.

Fangz
Jul 5, 2007

Oh I see! This must be the Bad Opinion Zone!

wdarkk posted:

If it's special forces doing it, what do you do when you're not sure WHO is doing the attacking yet?

Although the whole thing seems insanely risky since it's quite possible that the decision to do something like that can't be concealed.

Nuclear states generally know who their existential enemies are.

mastervj
Feb 25, 2011

Davincie posted:

Are there any good sources on the daily life of 17th (maybe 18th too) Century soldiers besides Hagendorf's diary (and work using that as a source)?

You just have to invoke Hegel!

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

FOPTIMUS PRIME

Davincie posted:

Are there any good sources on the daily life of 17th (maybe 18th too) Century soldiers besides Hagendorf's diary (and work using that as a source)?

mastervj posted:

You just have to invoke Hegel!
I've got a good wifi connection and an eldritch diagram made of quality Italian food (not that poo poo that they serve in most restaurants oh my goooood) and I summon...Hegel!

Anything in the War And Society series, which is somewhat dated now but whatever; anything by Christopher Duffy or John Lynn; anything by Stefan Kroll or his Working Group; Simplcissimus; anything by Hans Medick (who also covers civilian life during the 30YW and writes about memory); Experiencing the Thirty Years' War, edited by Medick and a friend of mine, which contains excerpts from a book of letters that I really need to read; Erik Lund's War For The Every Day, which is about how Austrian officers learned and did things in small war (theory: the way they approached learning contributed to the early Enlightenment--I love that book so much guys); Lauro Martines's Furies; and, if you want to branch out into navies, the excellent The Wooden World.

Edit: Or just ask me about what I'm researching right now. For instance: these guys have lunch with one another a lot. I'm going to have to put an entire chapter in my dissertation about doing lunch.

Edit 2: Keep an eye out for the upcoming book by Ilya Berkowitch (Berkowitz? Berkovitch?), a guy I met at the conference I went to a few weeks ago. He studies desertion, combat motivation, and primary group cohesion in 18th century armies, and his theory is that people deserted not because of harsh discipline (which he thinks was much less harsh than other historians think) but because of the primitive and ineffectual nature of early modern state surveillance--they knew they could get away with it. He seems really great, and I'm not just saying that because he and I went to Brussels for two days after the conference and acted like big dorky tourists walking around and staring at all the things.

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 00:34 on Mar 4, 2014

Davincie
Jul 7, 2008

Thank you both for the reccomandations, those should keep me busy for a while. If I got any questions after reading I'll be sure to ask.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Grand Prize Winner
Feb 19, 2007



That name's vaguely familiar. Did he ever TA at UC Santa Cruz? If he's the guy that I met he's pretty on-the-ball.

  • Locked thread