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steinrokkan posted:It's not like there's a shortage of thread specific smileys at this very moment And how much use will that thing see once that thread is over?
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Apr 27, 2014 13:58
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 is all this thread ever needs.
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Apr 27, 2014 18:28
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HEY GAL posted:And how much use will that thing see once that thread is over? Ah, but you see the Atlanta Falcons are eternal(ly bad).
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Apr 27, 2014 19:27
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Also the Sherman emoticon would get used constantly in D&D.
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Apr 27, 2014 21:05
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Is there any good books/videos/podcasts that debunk or at least give a good explanation of how the Soviets actually fought in WW2 beyond myths? I know things were really desperate early on and I know numbers helped but the whole 'Soviets (only half with guns) rushed the Germans en masse in a human wave while their inferior tanks swamped everything'. It is sort of amazing how pervasive that sort of thinking is and how assumed it is at every level of the Eastern Front.
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Apr 27, 2014 23:49
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SkySteak posted:Is there any good books/videos/podcasts that debunk or at least give a good explanation of how the Soviets actually fought in WW2 beyond myths? I know things were really desperate early on and I know numbers helped but the whole 'Soviets (only half with guns) rushed the Germans en masse in a human wave while their inferior tanks swamped everything'. It is sort of amazing how pervasive that sort of thinking is and how assumed it is at every level of the Eastern Front. Well, the first stop is this youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Clz27nghIg, in which Glantz pretty much tears the myth of a steadily retreating Red Army in 1941 to shreds.
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Apr 27, 2014 23:59
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SkySteak posted:Is there any good books/videos/podcasts that debunk or at least give a good explanation of how the Soviets actually fought in WW2 beyond myths? I know things were really desperate early on and I know numbers helped but the whole 'Soviets (only half with guns) rushed the Germans en masse in a human wave while their inferior tanks swamped everything'. It is sort of amazing how pervasive that sort of thinking is and how assumed it is at every level of the Eastern Front. Pretty much anything you care to read beyond the most pop-culture of action/war movie cliches. I know that answer sounds snarky as hell and I tried to write it in a way that wouldn't, but I couldn't manage to, and that is my own failing. It's a good question. If you want some halfway decent movies that show warfare on the eastern front pretty well, check out: Unsere Mütter, Unsere Väter. From the German perspective, people who are way too into history can argue around the edges, but on the whole it's pretty good. Also, before now I had no idea what the title was translated to in English and holy hell that is an awful re-titling. Stalingrad. Note that it's the 1993 version, not the Russian film by the same name that came out last year or os. Again, German perspective, history geeks can argue about the fine points, but it's pretty decent. Cross of Iron. Same caveats as above, same German perspective, notably decent at not depicting the Soviets as blundering buffoons. Brestskaya krepost.Russian film about the fortress at Brest that fell early-ish in the war. Pretty good depiction of combat in that early phase that gets turned into all those steriotypes you mentioned, but from a Russian view that does a pretty good job of showing how it was less "lol loving peasants we don't care about you" and more hosed logistical and command situations. Again, it's a movie, history and military geeks can and will nitpick around the edges, but it's all in all a good film. These are all fictional, but they all do a pretty good job of at least giving a feel for the war in the east. As for books, the most accessible one is going to be Ivan's War. For the non-specialist reader it does a good job of describing life in the Red Army during WW2. It's a bit of a favorite for grad students to bat around and criticize, but as an introductory text it's really solid. Russia's War is another solid book and is a good step up from Ivan's War. Bartov's Eastern Front, '41-41: German Troops and the Barbarization of Warfare is more about the German Army on the Eastern Front but it works great as a companion piece to Overy's book above. At this point you're getting well into "history book for historians" waters, but it's still highly readable if you just have an interest in the subject matter. If you can be any more specific about what aspects of the Eastern Front you're into I can probably give you a few others. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 00:58 on Apr 28, 2014 |
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Apr 28, 2014 00:49
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I would highly, highly recommend A Writer at War which follows Vasily Grossman around basically the entire theater. Less about how the Red Army functioned and focuses more on the individual experiences of soldiers.
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Apr 28, 2014 00:59
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Have a buttload of badass primary sources.
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Apr 28, 2014 16:20
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ArchangeI posted:Well, the first stop is this youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Clz27nghIg, in which Glantz pretty much tears the myth of a steadily retreating Red Army in 1941 to shreds. Edit: Reading that back, it almost looks like I'm talking about human waves. I guess a fun thing to tell people is that the Soviets weren't doing human wave attacks at a tactical level, but at a strategic level it looked like constant waves. Rocko Bonaparte fucked around with this message at 16:38 on Apr 28, 2014 |
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Apr 28, 2014 16:35
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Arquinsiel posted:Have a buttload of badass primary sources. Speaking of primary sources, here's some shameless self promotion! http://tankarchives.blogspot.ca/ It's largely technical documents addressing the "inferior tanks" bit, but I have lots on battles as well. If you want do dispel the "constant retreat in 1941" myth, these will do pretty well.
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Apr 28, 2014 17:32
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I'm currently reading through Decision in the Ukraine by George Nipe and the growing competency of the Red Army through 1943 is really something to behold. You get a real sense of coming disaster for the Germans as the Soviets just pour on the heavy armor, tons of artillery, swarms of Sturmoviks and topping it off with lots and lots and lots of infantry and the vaunted strategic maskirovka that turned the tide at Kursk.
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Apr 28, 2014 17:47
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Cyrano4747 posted:
I really hope I'm not sounding snarky or snobbish in turn by saying this, but honestly, that sounds to me like a misleading advice toward the question asked - it even conflicts with your advice to go beyond pop culture cliches. While films can answer simple questions or broaden your perspectives (mostly on the emotional level), and it helps in making the subject matter approachable to anyone completely new to the subject, I don't think fictional drama is going to give 'a good explanation' on anything beyond the writer's & director's personal views on the subject matter. Bretskaya Krepost is little more than Russian equivalent to Pearl Harbor (okay, that's just too harsh), and Cross of Iron, Stalingrad and many others are notable as memorable anti-war movies, not as offering anything particularly insightful on what actually went on. All of the above are definitely worth watching, though (not Pearl Harbor!). But Unsere Mütter was just awful, IMHO - it's like the sum of all WW2 film cliches. The result is just as if not even more mythological as that version depicted by German generals & front reporters during and after the war. This goes even with dramatizations firmly rooted in reality - eg. Band of Brothers is not going to explain to you anything beyond how US Airborne infantry fought at very small unit tactical level in NWE 1944-45 and how the men in the frontline felt about it. If it tried to give answers broader than that it would be a very different show. It would probably be a terrible mess, actually! Back to SkySteak's question, reading any decent book on East Front written in the last 20 years by someone not utterly clueless should help you get closer to finding your answer. You're not going to absorb it all from any one book, I'm sorry to say, you just can't condense the experiences of hundreds of millions of people in 200-500 pages. Nor is a book focusing on Stavka's strategic decisions going to give a detailed account on Stalingrad's house to house fighting, which in turn isn't going to explain the evolution of Soviet air doctrine during the war. Finally, there's some nicely done documentaries that are worth watching. Soviet Storm is one recent series that I can recommend, even if any good documentary is going to raise more questions than it can answer. So watch the series first, then read David M. Glantz  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhXKlYnSWjA
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Apr 28, 2014 21:46
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Nenonen posted:
I can broadly agree with this, but his question was also really broad and gave basically no indication whether he was looking for a more academic approach or a more pop culture approach. I basically tried to structure what I offered from most accessible with minimal effort (e.g. the films) to the material that would require some digging in and a bit of work. In retrospect you're probably right about leaving out the dramatizations, but in my own defense I was thinking more along the lines of the gentlest of possible correctives to the general American pop-culture portrayal of the "combat experience" on the eastern front. I've also been doing a lot of thinking recently about how to encourage people who have little inclination towards history to engage with historical subjects, so that probably also led to me overshooting my mark a bit.
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Apr 28, 2014 22:22
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Why are towed (as opposed to self-propelled) howitzers still in use today? Is it just them being cheaper to make and ship around the world, or are there some additional benefits to them, like being more stable or whatever?
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Apr 28, 2014 23:04
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Lichtenstein posted:Why are towed (as opposed to self-propelled) howitzers still in use today? Is it just them being cheaper to make and ship around the world, or are there some additional benefits to them, like being more stable or whatever? As long as you don't have to fear counterbattery and fight to defend static positions, a towed howitzer is really no worse than a SP one. Besides, its not like you can just airlift a SP howitzer into a mountain outpost like you can a towed howitzer.
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Apr 28, 2014 23:07
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Lichtenstein posted:Why are towed (as opposed to self-propelled) howitzers still in use today? Is it just them being cheaper to make and ship around the world, or are there some additional benefits to them, like being more stable or whatever? My guess is that the most important reason is money. Second is that SP artillery requires more supply and people in logistics.
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Apr 28, 2014 23:13
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Aren't the maintenance/logistic requirements of self-propelled artillery an order of magnitude greater than towed pieces? I imagine them approaching MBT levels of cantankerousness.
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Apr 28, 2014 23:15
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Slavvy posted:Aren't the maintenance/logistic requirements of self-propelled artillery an order of magnitude greater than towed pieces? I imagine them approaching MBT levels of cantankerousness. "Approaching" is more like "surpassing", at least for the Paladins. The current Paladin fleet is just an awful thing. To that end, they're going away pretty rapidly...SP reinforcing tubes are gone completely from the force (ie, the corps/division level SPs that would support the mechanized maneuver guys) and the PIM program got heavily cut as well, though it is a massive improvement. It is basically Bradley components and the NLOS cannon bolted on a 109 chassis. Compared to the 777 even the PIM guns seem pretty ridiculous. In any case, I think the idea of armored SP howitzers is past its expiration date, but the one big consideration is that if/when BIG NEW GUN technology hits the streets (eg, railgun) it will almost certainly be mounted on a mobile platform.
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Apr 28, 2014 23:51
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bewbies posted:"Approaching" is more like "surpassing", at least for the Paladins. The current Paladin fleet is just an awful thing. Seems like railgun power requirements would mean we'd finally beat the Maus for heaviest SPG/tank/etc.
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Apr 28, 2014 23:57
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wdarkk posted:Seems like railgun power requirements would mean we'd finally beat the Maus for heaviest SPG/tank/etc. Haha yeah, pretty much. Conceptually the notional design is something like this: "power truck" follows around the gun, has a ~200kw generator and what would basically be the world's biggest capacitor. Gun stops, plug in the power supply, charge it, shoot, etc. As far as I know right now the biggest hurdle is heat dissipation (just like with lasers), but otherwise the power tech exists today.
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Apr 29, 2014 00:04
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Time to invest in armored high-voltage power cables.
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Apr 29, 2014 00:13
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Taerkar posted:Time to invest in armored high-voltage power cables. Monster Cables will be the Lockheed Martin of this century.
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Apr 29, 2014 07:38
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In Dan Carlin's latest Hardcore History episode, he seemed to imply that the Battle of Sarikamish was a catalyst for the Armenian genocide. Does anyone have any more specifics to this?
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May 1, 2014 21:44
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gradenko_2000 posted:In Dan Carlin's latest Hardcore History episode, he seemed to imply that the Battle of Sarikamish was a catalyst for the Armenian genocide. Does anyone have any more specifics to this? quote:On his return to Constantinople, Enver blamed his failure on the actions of the region's local Armenians.[30][31]
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May 2, 2014 00:39
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I think it was from this thread or it's predecessor, but a while back I remember seeing some Soviet propaganda posters calling for more people to join the partisans in occupied territory, with text like "Train A is heading towards Berlin at 60 km/h, while train B is heading towards Sevastopol from Berlin at 40 km/h. How long until they meet each other? Answer: they never do, because the tracks were destroyed by partisans." Anyone know what I'm talking about, and if there's a link for more posters like that? I tried googling it but I keep getting every other kind of propaganda poster the Soviets put out except for the ones I'm looking for.
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May 2, 2014 01:50
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Regarding catalysts for the Armenain genocide: Keegan makes the claim in The First World War that there were a fair few Armenian volunteers in the Russian army that attacked the Ottoman Empire from the north, and they were a little atrocity-prone. Combine tit-for-tat atrocities with rising nationalist sentiment, and you get stuff like that.
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May 2, 2014 02:28
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Arquinsiel posted:Have a buttload of badass primary sources. Thanks for that link! Someone recommended it in uPen's War in the East LP and I remember reading quite a lot of those stories, but then I've lost it.
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May 2, 2014 08:40
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Don Gato posted:I think it was from this thread or it's predecessor, but a while back I remember seeing some Soviet propaganda posters calling for more people to join the partisans in occupied territory, with text like "Train A is heading towards Berlin at 60 km/h, while train B is heading towards Sevastopol from Berlin at 40 km/h. How long until they meet each other? Answer: they never do, because the tracks were destroyed by partisans." Anyone know what I'm talking about, and if there's a link for more posters like that? I tried googling it but I keep getting every other kind of propaganda poster the Soviets put out except for the ones I'm looking for. These?   I've lost the translation though.
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May 2, 2014 15:59
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Rough translation (My Russian is godawful): Example 3: A German train is going from point A to point B. Question: When will it reach point B if the distance is 100km, and the speed of the train 30km/h? Answer: It will never arrive to point B because it will be blown up by the partisans. Example 4: How much fuel should a Germain aircraft carry during an attack on our troops, if it spends 300 liters to arrive, and spends the same amount on the return trip? Answer: 300 liters, because it ain't coming back.
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May 2, 2014 16:20
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my dad posted:How much fuel should a Germain aircraft carry during an attack on our troops, if it spends 300 liters going one way, and spends the same amount on the return trip? Why haven't I seen something like this in an action movie? It's such a silly one-liner. Although you'd think for propaganda purposes the answer would be something like "150 liters, because it will never reach the front lines"?
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May 2, 2014 16:23
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Partisans don't tend to have AA guns, I'm pretty sure it will make it as far as the front lines.
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May 2, 2014 18:03
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HisMajestyBOB posted:These? Ha! I scanned and posted those a couple years ago. I think they were from Ken Slepyan's book Stalin's Guerrilla's. I don't remember if those were the only examples he included. I think that was my second semester in graduate school - next weekend I graduate!
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May 2, 2014 19:21
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HisMajestyBOB posted:These? Sweet, that's exactly what I'm looking for, thanks. space pope posted:Ha! I scanned and posted those a couple years ago. I think they were from Ken Slepyan's book Stalin's Guerrilla's. I don't remember if those were the only examples he included. I think that was my second semester in graduate school - next weekend I graduate! And now I need that book. Because of this thread my reading list is almost as long as the books I'm reading.
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May 3, 2014 04:16
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my dad posted:Example 4: *Walks away from explosion, wind billowing jacket* Anyway, I'm back in Dresden, so any Central European goons, hit me up. Edit: What's Russian for YEEEEEAAAAAAH? HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 10:00 on May 3, 2014 |
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May 3, 2014 09:56
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HEY GAL posted:*Puts on sunglasses* probably just an inchoate drunken yell starting with something vaguely resembling the letter D.
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May 3, 2014 10:48
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HEY GAL posted:*Puts on sunglasses* EEEEEEAAAAAAX
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May 3, 2014 12:00
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Hogge Wild posted:EEEEEEAAAAAAX 
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May 3, 2014 16:45
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Wake up thread, you fell off the front page. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8yQw7H6IqI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBGkhPx529g Note the payment features expressed in this catchy song, which is how you know its core is probably laaaate 1600s or early 1700s. The main characters receive their first month's pay in a lump sum plus a travel bonus, plus a sign-up bonus.
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May 6, 2014 10:00
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I caught up with the Revolutions podcast and have a couple of observations: (Thanks by the way to those who responded to my Armenian question) 1. What was it about Yorktown that made it such a poo poo defensive position? The impression I got was that Washington knew and Cornwallis should have known and was a dumbass for deciding to go there. 2. Mel Gibson's Patriot. Jason Isaac's cruel British character was named Colonel Tarleton, and there was a real Tarleton that gave no quarter to the colonials, and then there was a Battle of Cowpens where the actual battle plan of "militia shoots two volleys then retreats behind the continentals, the British pursued and got beaten" even resembles the final battle of that movie. I know that otherwise large parts of that movie are bullshit, most egregiously the scene where the Brits lock up a whole town inside a church and torch everyone inside (actually done by the SS in occupied France) but I was surprised by what parallels there were.
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May 6, 2014 11:49
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