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I really want to get some more Anthony Beevor stuff, but the translations that end up in here are kinda bad in my opinion.  Any recommendations regarding his books? Already got D-Day, and I've heard good stuff about Stalingrad.Also, is there any particular reason as for why royalty names get translateda all the time while non-noble names don't? You won't see Mary Stuart or Franz Ferdinand as such in a Spanish translation; you will find them as Maria Estuardo and Francisco Fernando. Which is kind of translating Chevalier as Knight if the former were a surname. But Gavrilo Princip or Nedeljko Čabrinović don't.
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Apr 22, 2014 05:09
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:OK, I'm going to do something I never thought I'd do. I'm going to defend Niall Ferguson. One of my best friends, a guy I would very literally take a bullet or bury bodies for has the best David Irving story ever. My buddy is a holocaust historian. Around the time between writing his masters and sitting comps he's in DC for some research. He's tucked away in the bowels of the nat'l archives with the other drones spooling through his days allotment of microfiche and this old guy sits down at the reader next to him. the old guy is obviously having some difficulty with his machine. It's one of the older ones, really busted and jankey, and he's having a hell of a time with the controls. Only all of the librarians have loving vanished. So my friend helps him unfuck his poo poo. Fast forward a couple hours, old dude is trying to print off some copies, more technical problems. Equal parts crap machine and old guy. Again, librarians are all off having a smoke or eating lunch or whatever. Again, my friend helps him get straightened out. Soon after its about five so my friend tidies up his stiff, makes a few last notes, and goes to clock off for the day. One of the librarians he knows pulls him aside and asks about the old guy. "why the hell did you keep helping him?!?" "I dunno, old guy looked a bit lost is all" "don't you know who that was?!?" "uh . . . .no?" "David loving Irving!
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Apr 22, 2014 05:17
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:He's basically a low-rent Victor Davis Hanson, except without the academic rigor. He's a big neocon jagoff, but not in the "warped intellectual" where you could see them putting decent work together at some point in their career, just in the "raaargh America best bleghghgegh" Fox News talking head blowhard way. Yeah. He's awful. For instance, just one example from Savage Wars of Peace - did you know the Spanish-American war was entirely about freedom from oppression? I couldn't quite work out whether he actually perceived the world with the credulity of a fifth-grader, or if it was a series of laughable attempts at whitewashing, before I punted it.
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Apr 22, 2014 05:21
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All I ever read of Max Boot was War Made New and nothing seemed terribly bad or off in that.
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Apr 22, 2014 05:26
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:He's basically a low-rent Victor Davis Hanson...
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Apr 22, 2014 05:32
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Saint Celestine posted:All I ever read of Max Boot was War Made New and nothing seemed terribly bad or off in that. War Made New posted:“The U.S. military showed in Afghanistan that a combination of highly trained commandos and precision weaponry — a high-low mix of technologies — could subdue, at least temporarily, even a land renowned as the graveyard of empires.” Hahahahahaha. There's plenty of Victor Davis Hanson-style "west vs. east" stuff, too.
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Apr 22, 2014 05:33
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The Merry Marauder posted:Hahahahahaha. Hey he said temporarily!  It was years ago I read it, but I assume that bit was referring to when special forces + Northern Alliance + US airpower kicked out the Taliban, and not the... clusterfuck it turned into. Which, was at least partially true?
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Apr 22, 2014 05:39
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Yeah, but it's not a terribly high bar. Framing it that way, so did the British in 1839, and the Soviets. Speaking of, The Great Gamble is worth a look. The fact that Boot is still influential in certain circles concerns me.
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Apr 22, 2014 05:46
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Azran posted:I really want to get some more Anthony Beevor stuff, but the translations that end up in here are kinda bad in my opinion. I greatly enjoyed his book on the Spanish Civil War though it gets confusing at times, primarily due to how hosed up the Spanish Civil War was but I think Beevor could have tightened up the writing a little more.
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Apr 22, 2014 05:56
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Azran posted:Wasn't that Niall Fergunson? Maybe I'm getting my historians mixed up. Right right right. Sorry. My profs always told me that I was too into the primaries and not the secondary sources. I'm the worst/best amature.
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Apr 22, 2014 06:06
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HEY GAL posted:I thought Victor Davis Hanson was the low-rent Victor Davis Hanson. Now imagine a lower rent version of that. That's Max Boot. Hanson's a shithead but he actually learned Greek and poo poo for a classics Ph.D so at least he's an educated shithead. Max Boot doesn't even have that going for him.
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Apr 22, 2014 06:14
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DoubleAughtMeowMix posted:Any suggestions on where to jump in online or in books to read about the evolution of 19th century naval warfare into what we see today as a person who is wholly out of touch with that aspect of combat?  Pretty much entirely the Royal Navy, but it should give you a (more than) good enough overview. It can get really technical though so if you are put off by that don't bother.
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Apr 22, 2014 07:51
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HEY GAL posted:I thought Victor Davis Hanson was the low-rent Victor Davis Hanson. Sorry, Hegel, but I got to ask... What did you do to get your new title?
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Apr 22, 2014 08:22
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mastervj posted:Sorry, Hegel, but I got to ask... What did you do to get your new title? Or it was the time I told PYF that fireworks weren't only a modern thing, and then posted links to relevant articles. Maybe that wasn't PYF's speed.
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Apr 22, 2014 08:38
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Is there a reason spears seem to be the preferred weapons of Angels in olde-tyme paintings?
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Apr 22, 2014 08:41
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Ghost of Mussolini posted:
That's a combination of technical detail on shipbuilding and a pretty good narrative of developments during the period. David Brown was a Constructor for the Royal Navy, so he knows what he's talking about. There are two more volumes, covering the Dreadnought days and the post-WW1 period through Vanguard. And they're available in very nice softcover editions for about $25 each. They are very focused on the Royal Navy, but the technical issues of warships don't change between navies, just the solutions.
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Apr 22, 2014 08:42
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Baron Porkface posted:Is there a reason spears seem to be the preferred weapons of Angels in olde-tyme paintings? I thought archangel Michael had a sword?
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Apr 22, 2014 08:44
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HEY GAL posted:No idea, but this is my fifth one. My presence angers some people to a pitch of rage and I think it's hilarious. I bet it was your posting in the religion themed threads.
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Apr 22, 2014 09:31
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HEY GAL posted:No idea, but this is my fifth one. My presence angers some people to a pitch of rage and I think it's hilarious. Five red titles or five involuntary avatar changes? Man, and I thought I had it bad with jokers occasionally changing my avatar. I should be happy I got lightly off with only two involuntary new avatars until now.
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Apr 22, 2014 10:25
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Hastings writes for the Daily Mail and his personal views on WW1 are highly political - Michael Gove lite. His work on the Falklands was good.
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Apr 22, 2014 13:44
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Slavvy posted:I thought archangel Michael had a sword? Relevant, vaguely :  I went to the Cloisters (a rather nice museum in Northern NYC that's a bunch of re-assembled monasteries/churches, hence the name) on Friday and saw this representation of Michael Slaying the Anti-Christ. God that is a weird looking loving demon.
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Apr 22, 2014 14:38
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Xiahou Dun posted:Relevant, vaguely : I went to a st Michael school and church growing up and in every representation of that scene the devil looks really goofy and Michael always has a spear, not a sword.
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Apr 22, 2014 15:22
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gradenko_2000 posted:I could have sworn I saw them do it once in broad daylight, but I guess that does make sense. Saint Celestine posted:Hey he said temporarily!
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Apr 22, 2014 16:57
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:(his weird strawman interpretation of Clausewitz) Jesus christ don't get me started on this. e: It is amusing to me that multiple serious academic types have had to author works refuting Keegan's interpretation that basically boil down to "if you ACTUALLY READ On War, you will see that Keegan had no idea what he was talking about and in fact straight up made poo poo up." It's unfortunate that Keegan's interpretation has taken root in the popular consciousness as the sum total of what Clausewitz has to offer. The Merry Marauder posted:The fact that iyaayas01 fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Apr 22, 2014 |
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Apr 22, 2014 17:39
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iyaayas01 posted:Jesus christ don't get me started on this. Can you elaborate? What was Keegan's intepretation and why is it wrong?
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Apr 22, 2014 17:55
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gradenko_2000 posted:Can you elaborate? What was Keegan's intepretation and why is it wrong? I thought I said don't get me started I've gotta run back to my joke of a USAF school so this'll be quick, but in a nutshell Keegan completely bastardizes the most famous Clausewitzian aphorism that "war is a continuation of politik by other means." The problem is that where Clausewitz pretty clearly intended "politik" to simply be reflective of a goal outside of the grind of combat, Keegan takes that to mean that Clausewitz is saying that all war must be suborned to the political objective of a nation-state, and then goes "a-ha, I've got you now, war has existed before the modern concept of a nation-state, and continues to take place outside of the confines of nation-state on nation-state combat, therefore Clausewitz is irrelevant, QED."  There's really a lot more to it than that, that's the distilled version. If I have time later tonight I'll expand on it. He also got into some weird criticisms of Clausewitz as an individual that were at best grossly exaggerated and more likely completely made up.
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Apr 22, 2014 18:13
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iyaayas01 posted:I thought I said don't get me started I've written my BA on Keegan so I will try and do this. Correct me if I'm wrong. Keegan's interpretation of Clausewitz has several problems. His core is that he thinks Clausewitz advocates for total warfare, namely that once the decision for war is reached, all other political considerations are secondary, military necessity rules over all. That is the complete opposite of what Clausewitz actually wrote. He then continues to argue that this approach was tried by Clausewitz-influenced people such as the Samurai, the Mamelukes and the Easter Islanders, always with disastrous results. Keegan calls this the highest form of "civilized" warfare, which he traces as becoming increasingly sophisticated and increasingly brutal, with the end result of the Atomic Bomb. Against this Keegan sets the "primitive" war fought by Clausewitz, of course, did not set out to describe how wars should be fought. He starts out by describing how war is being fought during the first half of the 19th century (Clausewitz was influenced by his experiences during the Napoleonic Wars). Where Keegan assumes that the Total War of Clausewitz is a platonic ideal of warfare that can be approximated but never reached, Clausewitz is very clear in that he considers the Napoleonic Wars to have been Total Wars. On War is not the same as the Communist Manifesto, where someone proposes an entirely new form of doing something, it is closer to Das Kapital, which describes how something works. Large parts of On War are how to fight an actual, no poo poo war in terms of logistics and strategic considerations, how friction screws up everything you are planning and so on. And Clausewitz is very clear that warfare is massively influenced by politics, Keegan's interpretation of Total Warfare is just flat out wrong on a level that makes you doubt if he has ever even read Clausewitz. According to Clausewitz, warfare, for a modern nation state, is part of the political process. The decision to go to war is a political one, its goals are informed by political considerations and its circumstances are formed by policy decision made before the war (the German Politik means both politics and policy). War and politics are inextricably linked. According to Keegan, war according to Clausewitz is a big red button that is pushed by politicians who then retire and leave the field for the Generals. To that comes the fact that iyaayas mentioned, namely that Keegan ignores the fact that Clausewitz clearly wrote in the context of the 19th century European system, without any consideration of what some jungle tribe may be doing when they talk about waging war on another tribe. It also largely ignores the fact that these ritualized systems of warfare are perfectly capable of escalating to wars of extermination under dire circumstances, that modern warfare has its own mechanism to reduce casualties (such as cease-fires, protection of medical personal and defining the status of PoWs), or that in a system of nation-states it is impossible to go back to ritualized warfare, because you simply can not achieve a political objective by meeting in the middle of a field and firing into the air (not, at least, unless the other side is also willing to settle its differences the same way).
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Apr 22, 2014 18:52
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So the Navy is taking its railgun out to play next fiscal year. I think we can all safely assume that the era of the aircraft carrier is coming to an end and it will be replaced by nuclear powered mega dreadnoughts with turreted railguns and 10 foot thick titanium and carbon nanotube armor.
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Apr 22, 2014 19:46
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bewbies posted:So the Navy is taking its railgun out to play next fiscal year. You forgot "stealth" in there.
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Apr 22, 2014 19:51
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Your mouth to K Street's ear.
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Apr 22, 2014 19:51
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bewbies posted:So the Navy is taking its railgun out to play next fiscal year. We cannot allow the
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Apr 22, 2014 20:05
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bewbies posted:So the Navy is taking its railgun out to play next fiscal year. Due to the size required they'll only be able to operate in space.
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Apr 22, 2014 20:08
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Seriously though, if we assume 6 rounds per minute of 25 lbs guided projectiles moving at mach 8 it'd be a very serious threat to a carrier or just about anything else.
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Apr 22, 2014 20:11
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bewbies posted:Seriously though, if we assume 6 rounds per minute of 25 lbs guided projectiles moving at mach 8 it'd be a very serious threat to a carrier or just about anything else. It also seems like it'd be useful against area/access denial if they can get the range up enough. A solid block of metal is a lot harder to shoot down than something with thin walls and full of warhead/fuel.
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Apr 22, 2014 20:22
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bewbies posted:Seriously though, if we assume 6 rounds per minute of 25 lbs guided projectiles moving at mach 8 it'd be a very serious threat to a carrier or just about anything else. Not to go all video gamey  but what's the smallest nuclear warhead possible? Wikipedia says the Davey Crockett was around ~50 lbs; it's probably possible to miniaturize further by now?Could Metal Gear plausibly exist now?
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Apr 22, 2014 20:23
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Saint Celestine posted:Wait, whats wrong with Max Boot? The only letter to the editor I ever wrote was in response to a Max Boot OP-ED in the LA Times in the mid-2000's, where-in he complained about movies and TV shows portraying insurgents in a more nuanced tone than 'they came out of the womb as evil, sub-human mongreloids.' His argument was basically to the effect of humanizing the enemy makes it harder to indiscriminately kill them, so it should be avoided. He had many columns with the same basic point of 'don't question the United States when we kill loads of people, our correctness is secured by the fact that all of our actions are intrinsically good.' I'd shutter to think of anyone reading a history book or a book on foreign policy authored by him.
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Apr 22, 2014 20:23
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wdarkk posted:It also seems like it'd be useful against area/access denial if they can get the range up enough. A solid block of metal is a lot harder to shoot down than something with thin walls and full of warhead/fuel. Not to mention a heck of a lot cheaper than any comparable missile. Effects on the target would be pretty much limited to "boom" though. OGS-Remix posted:Not to go all video gamey I'm sure they could make something smaller but we'd have serious issues hardening anything except a solid slug to withstand the acceleration forces of a railgun. I'm no expert on nuclear anything but those things seem pretty sensitive and so 60,000g acceleration might be a bit much for it.
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Apr 22, 2014 20:36
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I think that at that point you're better off just using a pure KE round and let velocity be your main 'explosive', so to speak.
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Apr 22, 2014 20:37
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Taerkar posted:I think that at that point you're better off just using a pure KE round and let velocity be your main 'explosive', so to speak. How well would that do against infantry, say, in foxholes? Because it seems to me that KE projectiles are pretty bad at killing infantry in cover unless they hit directly. In which case, granted, you only bury the guy symbolically.
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Apr 22, 2014 20:45
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bewbies posted:Not to mention a heck of a lot cheaper than any comparable missile. Effects on the target would be pretty much limited to "boom" though.
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Apr 22, 2014 20:46
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