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gradenko_2000 posted:As for the phrase "went about as well as anyone could hope for", I do want to say that that is perhaps too deterministic (acknowledging that counter-factuals have their own set of pitfalls). There were changes in objectives and targets as Barbarossa rolled on that may be argued as mistakes in the context of "what would it have taken to make the Soviet government collapse". Instead of maintaining the force of a mailed fist the whole time through, divisions and corps and whole armies were redirected to seize secondary and tertiary goals to the effect of the fist opening up and prodding at Russia with outstretched fingers. Do go on. I'm aware of the usual argument that diverting Guderian and friends to fight at Kiev surely cost the Germans Moscow or whatever, but it seems unclear as to whether 2 Panzer Army would have successfully taken Moscow, and the victory they did win at Kiev was one hell of a victory, so I don't buy that particular one. By the sounds of what you wrote though, it sounds like this was happening all over the place?
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May 27, 2014 18:09
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Petain kind of got poo poo on by historians/politicians down the road but that was more due to the whole Vichy thing. Kind of same deal with Hindenburg and Ludendorff really. So much of what was written about them in the 50s-80s was really colored by what they did in the 20s/30s. Edit. Doh this was like two pages ago stupid phone ignore me Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 18:20 on May 27, 2014 |
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May 27, 2014 18:13
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There is a tendency to discuss Barbarossa (this is also the case of stuff like the western front) as though it were a puzzle to be solved, that if only the Germans found the 'right' solution they would have won. I don't think that is realistic or even that helpful, ignoring as it does the tremendous efforts of the Soviets to stop them.
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May 27, 2014 18:34
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Arquinsiel posted:Yeah... there were also a lot of English and Irish there. Gallipoli was a full commonwealth fuckup. Good luck finding many people who even know it happened here though. There was a pretty substantial French force involved in the campaign as well.
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May 27, 2014 18:34
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mastervj posted:Please do not ever stop posting. You guys talking about tactical changes, what about technological changes? Everything between the development of gunpowder artillery and...the 1870s-ish, I think...is more or less identifiable to me. I am comfortable with it, and recognize all the parts and stuff as technology I can interact with meaningfully. But by World War 1 it is science fiction levels of technology. That's a lot of change in thirty years.
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May 27, 2014 18:44
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Fangz posted:There is a tendency to discuss Barbarossa (this is also the case of stuff like the western front) as though it were a puzzle to be solved, that if only the Germans found the 'right' solution they would have won. I don't think that is realistic or even that helpful, ignoring as it does the tremendous efforts of the Soviets to stop them. There's an argument that regardless of what the Germans did, simply getting enough ammunition and fuel to support the capture of Moscow to the front was impossible.
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May 27, 2014 18:44
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PittTheElder posted:Do go on. I'm aware of the usual argument that diverting Guderian and friends to fight at Kiev surely cost the Germans Moscow or whatever, but it seems unclear as to whether 2 Panzer Army would have successfully taken Moscow, and the victory they did win at Kiev was one hell of a victory, so I don't buy that particular one. Diverting Guderian to Kiev was the right call unless you wanted a faster Soviet victory by having a million Red Army soldiers remain on Guderian's extended flank.
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May 27, 2014 18:45
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wdarkk posted:There's an argument that regardless of what the Germans did, simply getting enough ammunition and fuel to support the capture of Moscow to the front was impossible. That's the fallacy I'm talking about. There's an implicit assumption that the level of resistance of the soviets is a fixed inevitability.
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May 27, 2014 19:15
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PittTheElder posted:Do go on. I'm aware of the usual argument that diverting Guderian and friends to fight at Kiev surely cost the Germans Moscow or whatever, but it seems unclear as to whether 2 Panzer Army would have successfully taken Moscow, and the victory they did win at Kiev was one hell of a victory, so I don't buy that particular one. Diverting Guderian to Kiev is actually an example of the right call being made, for what I'm going to break down into three reasons: 1. Logistics - by Aug 1941, the front line was something like 300 miles ahead of the nearest working railhead. AGC needed that pause in westward movement just for the railroad repair units to catch up. It was less a case of Guderian being told to take a right turn and more of the gas just not being there anymore to keep pressing forward. 2. Crushing the Red Army - the shift to the Kiev pocket has often been portrayed as a political decision: Hitler wants the oil and coal and grain of the Ukraine and so needs to capture the regional capital to make it happen. Instead, look at it from Guderian's perspective: You have the opportunity to encircle and destroy something on the order of 300k troops in a huge Kiev pocket, on top of the 300k troops you already destroyed in the Minsk pocket during the first two weeks of the war. The last time you cut out the enemy's heart like this, it was May 1940, you were in France, and you had so completely gutted the French and BEF field armies in the Low Countries that by the time you swung south to capture Paris in Fall Rot/Case Red, there was barely a French Army left to stand in your way. Even from a purely military perspective it looked like the right call to make. Unfortunately, nothing in this scenario takes into the account the USSR's ability to pull another 300 divisions out of its hat. 3. Western Front crushing itself - that part that hardly gets any mention in most histories until more recent ones is that while AGC's panzers were taking part in the Kiev operation, Stalin had ordered Western Front to perform counter-attacks against the now-temporarily defensively-oriented AGC. The result was rather bad and dozens of Soviet divisions were chewed for little-to-no gain. What this meant 2 months down the line was that Western Front itself was so badly depleted that it could not put up an effective defense by the time Operation Typhoon had kicked off. If it did not seem like AGC was presenting an open flank, the march to Moscow may well have encountered much stiffer resistance once it had finally resumed. Anyway, what I was alluding to was how during the Sep-Nov period of Barbarossa, the Panzer groups were increasingly saddled with more and more diverse objectives that thinned out their striking power, whether it was Tikhvin in the north, Tula in the center and Rostov in the south. I'll have to review my sources for more details.
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May 27, 2014 19:33
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WoodrowSkillson posted:You have singlehandedly increased my interest in the early modern period with your anecdotes.
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May 27, 2014 22:37
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HEY GAL posted:If you're interested at all in actions which are the most hilarious thing you've read that day and, at the same time and for the same reason, a breathtaking tale of human misery and at least one easily-preventable fuckup, you need to study this period. Easily preventable fuckup?
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May 27, 2014 22:55
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gradenko_2000 posted:From the Crazy Political Forwards thread: The Nazis were virulently anti-Communist and, in their warped worldview, didn't view the Russian people as being much better than animals. Also, Hitler was so anti-Communist that he had hoped to bring Britain onto his side solely based on Germany's worth fighting Communism. While I don't think that this was ever particularly likely, it does serve to illustrate just how much he saw himself as being against Communism. While Hitler did tend to take public stances for/against a lot of things for politically expedient reasons, I don't think that his opposition to Communism was one of them. He had to fear an internal Communist revolution as a real threat to his power, thus the existence of a powerful Communist nation, who could support revolutionaries operating within his country, had to be considered an existential threat to Nazi Germany. Which brings us to the other side. Stalin, who was crazy paranoid at the best of times, had to view Nazi Germany as an existential threat to the USSR, and even if we have some crazy set of circumstances where Germany doesn't invade, there's no way that the Soviets could trust that an expansionist and vehemently anti-Communist Germany wouldn't invade at some point. Even if we posit some crazy set of circumstances where the Molotov-Rippentrop Pact holds up far longer than it actually did, Nazi Germany was going to turn it's attention east sooner or later. Knowing this, Stalin had to view the existence of Nazi Germany as an existential threat, in the same way that Germany viewed the existence of the USSR as an existential threat. Even if you don't buy my argument about Germany considering the USSR to be an existential threat, I think it's pretty clear that the Soviets at least believed Nazi Germany was an existential threat. In light of that, it's really a matter of when, not if, one side invades the other. I don't really buy the "Germany invaded the USSR right before the USSR was going to invade Germany" claim, as the USSR really needed more time to recover from Stalin's Purges and complete their reorganization and rearmament, but I have little doubt that had Germany occupied itself elsewhere, they would have found an opportune moment to attack. As for Barbarossa going "about as well as anyone could hope for", I would instead propose "as well as could reasonably be expected" instead. I think Nazi Germany picked the most advantageous time for them to invade. To delay any more would only see the Soviet Army get stronger relative to the German Army, and the German Army really did perform as well as could be expected. They certainly could have had additional lucky breaks (a quick capture of Stalingrad, for example, or starting the invasion earlier and being able to capture Moscow before winter set in), but barring a fantastical run of luck that would almost beg credulity to propose, the Germans were going to have to still be fighting when winter hit, they were going to have the same or even longer supply lines and an army that they just were not up to the challenge of supplying. I just don't see the capture of Moscow or the quicker capture of Stalingrad, or any reasonable change of objectives as causing a swift collapse of the Soviet government, which is the only hope they had of winning. I also do not necessarily like arguments of inevitability, but once it became clear that this war was not going to be like previous wars, which ended in negotiated peace settlements, and instead was a war for each side's survival, I have a hard time imagining a plausible set of circumstances which would lead a German victory over the USSR, particularly once Britain and the US came down on the side of the USSR. At that point, it became a war of population and industrial power, and since Nazi ideology precluded the inclusion of the people of captured territories into their army or the use of civilians as anything more than slave labor, there was little that they could do to alter the balance enough to win the kind of war that they were faced with.
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May 27, 2014 23:13
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my dad posted:Easily preventable fuckup? Their firearm safety practices are not great
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May 27, 2014 23:40
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HEY GAL posted:If you're interested at all in actions which are the most hilarious thing you've read that day and, at the same time and for the same reason, a breathtaking tale of human misery and at least one easily-preventable fuckup, you need to study this period. Looking forward to it, Landsknechte chat has been some of my favorite stuff in this thread. Is there a generally accepted cutoff point for what constitutes the early modern period? 1453? 1492? Also, what's the best place to start if I want to start reading up on the Thirty Year's War?
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May 27, 2014 23:45
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Wasn't half of the M-R pact the soviets selling the germans vital raw materials at below market prices? From Stalin's p.o.v., that would make it extremely unlikely that the germans would ruin sch a good deal.
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May 27, 2014 23:52
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It was such a good deal that the Germans specifically launched Barbarossa moments after a resource laden train crossed the border to ensure that they at least got that one last shipment.
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May 27, 2014 23:55
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P-Mack posted:Looking forward to it, Landsknechte chat has been some of my favorite stuff in this thread. If you're just starting out, read Peter Wilson (newest work on the subject, but avoids the war in Italy as well as--I think--anything to do with Muscovy, which is a bummer. Does not avoid the stuff with the Ottomans, which is a plus) or CV Wedgewood (a better writer than Wilson, but kinda out of date now). Oh poo poo, I got what you were saying, my dad: at least one fuckup per anecdote. Not in toto. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 00:23 on May 28, 2014 |
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May 28, 2014 00:02
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Hey y'all, I'm watching the World Wars documentary on History and I'm very mad about stahlhelms and British 1914 gas attacks and the like. What are some sweet documentaries that aren't... this?
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May 28, 2014 00:39
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HEY GAL posted:Beginning is ????, end is the French Revolution. We just started using the term relatively recently to begin with, and I don't think there's a commonly accepted beginning. I've heard "more or less it's the same as the Renaissance only it extends later," "not the Middle Ages, not the modern period," "begins with Luther," "Renaissance history except you're not talking about art and Reformation history except you're not talking about religion," and "shrug." 100% agreeing about the beginning being essentially 1??? AD  but I've heard a few good compelling arguments.By far my favorite and the one I use the most with my students is ~1492-ish. The reasoning is that before then the actions of the major powers, and indeed the human experience, was (generally speaking) regional at best. Even the largest and most powerful empires were regional in nature. Sure you've got the odd explorer who manages to travel from one region to the one next door, and trade networks can lead to all sorts of oddball trinkets from distant lands ending up in the courtly treasure room of Count Whoeverthefuck, but on the whole a guy born in England in 1200 has no real way of seeing China in his lifetime, much less Peru. By 1522 you have Spanish ships that have circumnavigated the globe. White people were being buried in the Philippines and the Americas. By 1600 a European sailing to North America, Africa, and India didn't mean he was some kind of crazy explorer, he was just a merchant. It's the dawn of a truly global history and human experience. Of course your average dirt farmer is going to be born and die in the same village, but it's one of the major things that lets you draw a very clear difference between the world as elite Romans or contemporary Chinese understood it and the world that we deal with today. You know "early Modern" 
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May 28, 2014 00:40
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Chump Farts posted:Hey y'all, I'm watching the World Wars documentary on History and I'm very mad about stahlhelms and British 1914 gas attacks and the like. On the world wars or anything in particular because Ken Burn's The Civil War is the gold standard for historical documentary.
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May 28, 2014 00:41
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Raskolnikov38 posted:On the world wars or anything in particular because Ken Burn's The Civil War is the gold standard for historical documentary. Mostly the world wars but all recommendations are welcome.
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May 28, 2014 00:42
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Cyrano4747 posted:100% agreeing about the beginning being essentially 1??? AD
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May 28, 2014 00:43
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The World at War remains the gold standard of documentaries, even if it's a little outdated by now.
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May 28, 2014 00:58
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:
This is all I thought of during that scene 
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May 28, 2014 00:58
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HEY GAL posted:It's very rarely that I talk to someone about this who isn't at least an interested layperson. I did tell a guy once I studied the Saxons and he said "What, like...ancient tribes?" and in retrospect that was my own fault. To be perfectly fair to that guy, while I know that Saxony isn't simply relevant to the tribes that settled in Britain, that would be my first association with them as well. The whole "Anglo-Saxon Protestant" thing. At least as an American, that's my first impression. But if you started bringing up poo poo like gunpowder warfare I'd be all like, Oh, that's right, Saxons come from Saxony durr.
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May 28, 2014 00:58
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Chump Farts posted:Hey y'all, I'm watching the World Wars documentary on History and I'm very mad about stahlhelms and British 1914 gas attacks and the like. if you understand either german or french these are extremely cool: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbIWheaSUA0
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May 28, 2014 01:05
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Chump Farts posted:Mostly the world wars but all recommendations are welcome. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxK-qR14pVg It came out 50 years after the outbreak of WWI and did a lot of what Ken Burns did before Ken Burns could do it, except it also incorporated live interviews from WWI vets because those dudes were still around in decent numbers in 1964.
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May 28, 2014 01:06
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HEY GAL posted:
Thanks, checking those out. Is Wedgwood out of date in a "lots of new sources have been found/translated since she wrote", or "historians don't agree with her conclusions anymore" way?
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May 28, 2014 01:15
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Chump Farts posted:Hey y'all, I'm watching the World Wars documentary on History and I'm very mad about stahlhelms and British 1914 gas attacks and the like. World at War is boss, Die Deutschen Panzer seems to be pretty good (if you can find it in English).
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May 28, 2014 01:24
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Ofaloaf posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxK-qR14pVg
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May 28, 2014 01:29
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Chump Farts posted:Mostly the world wars but all recommendations are welcome. Just watch The World at War.
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May 28, 2014 01:30
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I am not watching the next part of that History monstrosity tonight. I just can't handle anymore.
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May 28, 2014 01:47
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:I am not watching the next part of that History monstrosity tonight. I just can't handle anymore. But Cheney might be on tonight.
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May 28, 2014 01:51
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uPen posted:But Cheney might be on tonight. I cannot imagine how horribly this episode will cover the delicate intricacies and political upheaval of the interwar period. I really don't want to find out. And I really don't want Dick Cheney to talk to me about power hungry despots rising to power, my brain would explode.
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May 28, 2014 01:59
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Would you say Danger 5 is a more accurate historical depiction?
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May 28, 2014 01:59
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P-Mack posted:Thanks, checking those out. I'd be interested in hearing an opinion on this as well. From what I remember Wedgewood takes more of a narrative rather than analytical approach, but she works in a lot of interesting anecdotes from the period, along with the occasional dark aside on 'the philosophy of the New Germany.'
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May 28, 2014 02:00
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WreckSov posted:Would you say Danger 5 is a more accurate historical depiction? I would say that that crazy animes with the Panzer tank girls and the Kawaii SS stormtroppers is a more accurate historical depiction.
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May 28, 2014 02:02
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:I cannot imagine how horribly this episode will cover the delicate intricacies and political upheaval of the interwar period. I really don't want to find out. And I really don't want Dick Cheney to talk to me about power hungry despots rising to power, my brain would explode. I'd be curious to see if they can make it all the way to the 40's without mentioning Trotsky once.
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May 28, 2014 02:02
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I just turned to the channel because of my awful lack of self control. The opening scene is literally a man calmly placing a chair in front of a window, opening said window, and stepping out and falling to his death. That sums up literally everything about this show. loving hell here I go again 1. the episode starts up with the Great Depression. It went from the Beer Hall Putsch to the Depression and Hitler taking advantage of it. Not one single second on the years of Wiemar Germany. 2. 8 minutes in and its 1932 and Hitler leads the German hivemind that are apparently 100% Nazis. No mention of the SPD/KPD/Central Party/anything 3. John McCain reluctantly and awkwardly praising FDR 4. Hitler is appointed Chancellor to "pacify his movement." Of course we all know that was part of it but again, no mention of ANY of the political chaos and intrigue of Germany. And again no names of anyone, including Von Papen. 5. Night of Long Knives. Literally nothing in between Hitler coming to power and this. No Reichstag Decree, no Enabling Act. NOTHING else is mentioned. The show says that this event is what gave Hitler ultimate power. 6. OH loving HELL the New Deal was alright and stuff but was only possible because FDR decided to CUT THE MILITARY BUDGET AND LEFT AMERICA VULERNABLE. gently caress YOU HISTORY CHANNEL you hacks. McArthur standing up for OUR TROOPS by personally insulting the President and saying that now we will inevitably lose the war and cause the deaths of OUR TROOPS. 7. The British efforts to reinvigorate their economy built homes, infrastructure, created jobs but IT WEAKENED THE MILITARY AND NOW BRITAIN IS DEFENSLESS. ONLY CHURCHILL STANDS UP FOR OUR TROOPS! 8. Germany's rapid rearmament was a complete a total secret and saved the German economy. INVEST IN OUR TROOPS. How the gently caress did they get Adam Tooze to agree to an interview for this show? 9. The World Wars, brought to you by Corona Light. Appropriate. 10. Mussolini is back. First time even mentioned since the 1922 March on Rome. But hey, they actually talk about Italy's war against Ethiopia. I mean, there are no details but they do mention it. Brownie Points for the History Channel. 11. The Rhineland was territory taken from Germany after WWI. No mention that it was merely demilitarized but still under German control. The show discusses it as Hitler's first invasion. And DICK CHENEY SIGHTING talking about the "invasion of the Rhineland." 12. Oh right, the Japanese exist. Gotta talk about them. 30 seconds in and the 1937 invasion of China is begun. No details of anything else in 20th century Japanese history. Also Tojo. And the Axis is formed overnight. No Anti-Commitern Pact, no previous Pact of Steel. It was the Axis from the beginning apparently... 13. In 1938 German had "the most powerful military the world had ever seen." 1938. Anyone with even an inkline of knowledge about the history of the Wehrmacht is crying right now. 14. 2 second mention of Austria. On to the Sudetenland. The 30s are almost over with 0 depth. 15. Surprisingly sympathetic to Chamberlain. But you can just taste the undercurrent of "oh those silly idealist pacifists, how naive of them to think diplomacy could solve anything.  " However apparently the Munich Agreement was a one on one conversation between Chamberlain and Hitler in his office over the course of 3 minutes. But overall not insultingly awful.16. Churchill was a physic and/or timelord and knew Hitler would do what he did from the very start. I don't know enough about Churchill's actions in the late 30s to comment about his reaction to the Suddetenland/invasion of Czechoslovakia. 17. We're about wrapped up with Western Europe I think. The Soviet Union must be close. maybe 18. Dick Cheney actually DEFENDING FDR and the very difficult situation he found himself in, recognizing that there was no way for FDR to intervene in Europe at the time due to the political climate and the American populations reluctance to get involved oversees. Holy poo poo Im shocked 19. STALIN. 20 years ago he seized power through brutal force and intimidation. No more details than that. So officially no Trotsky mention 20. First mention of Nazi camps. Hundreds of Thousands of Jews were sent to them in the 1930s. So apparently every single Jew in Germany because there were only a few hundred thousand in Germany itself... 21. Hey the war has begun. I wasn't expecting it so soon. Hitler signs pact with Stalin. No mention of Molotov or Ribbentrop. 22. BLITZKRIEG BLITZKRIEG BLITZKRIEG BLITZKRIEG oh and Stalin is in an empty theater watching a ballerina dance to Swan Lake 23. Poland has fallen in like a day. And now its May 1940 and Hitler invades France. And no mention of the French what so ever at all, apparently it was ALL Chamberlains fault that the phoney war happened. I am not exaggerating, it is putting EVERYTHING on Chamberlain for failing to attack Germany in an epic argument between him and Churchill. No mention of the allies fighting in Norway, apparently the Germans just walked in and took it. 24. Hitler only decided to attack France in response to Churchill becoming PM because he was worried about him and wanted to launch a preemptive strike. WHAT?! Also Hitler is literally Dr. Doom in his war room. 25. The Germans attacked France with T-72 tanks. And won because BLITZKRIEG. Absolutely 0 details of the war are mentioned. France falls, thats it. And no French perspective at all. 26. Dramatic shots of FDR and Hitler both sitting at their radio listening to Churchill's Fight Them on the Beaches speech in real time. Accompanied by the overused movie trailer stock music Heart of Courage (TM). 27. Battle of Britain time. They actually acknowledge the British Naval strength preventing the Germans from invading, forcing them to try and bomb England into submission. Huh. Broken clock is right twice and day and all that. But goddamn is the Battle of Britain/Blitz super simplified. At least it's not insultingly wrong. 28. Churchill personally oversees the invention and production of the Hurricane and Spitfires. ok... 29. Japan in China for 30 seconds. They decide to attack the US because they valued the Philippines for their strategic position to secure their required resources from the Pacific. Simple but true enough 30. Barbarossa. But of course they dont actually use the term because that might confuse people. Short montage of B/W battle footage. No details about anything at all. 31. Oh my god. FDR has to have the oil situation of Japan explained to him personally in the war cabinet meeting. The conversation goes. "Well what can we do.  " "Well sir, the Japanese are dependent on oil" FDR then asks "well who supplies it to them?  " "We do sir" And that is how the oil embargo happened. Apparently FDR was an oblivious idiot 32. Pearl Harbor. End of episode. I hate you all goodnight. Shimrra Jamaane fucked around with this message at 04:05 on May 28, 2014 |
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May 28, 2014 02:03
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I want to hear all the juicy details about this show. All of it.
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May 28, 2014 02:05
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