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Bacarruda posted:For the early modern warfare buffs in the thread. Is the combat in "Alatriste" even remotely accurate? Specifically the bits with people sneaking under the pikes and kneecapping enemy soldiers. I'd assume that the knee-capping was their attempt at showing the three elements of the tercio triad: the arquebusier, the pikeman, and the swordsman. Certainly it was true that swordsmen would be expected to tangle with the pikemen, but probably not by ducking under their pikes and hoping they don't get noticed. They'd use their shields and close-order weapons to flank and disrupt pikemen once the two pike squares met - the classic weakness of a pike unit being its undefended sides. Of course the ending of the movie probably wouldn't be that satisfying if the main characters got stabbed in the gut because they tried to ninja their way into a pike square. Really the most ahistorical element though, is that by 1645 firearms had already developed to the point that the pike square-era had largely died out. If an army of pikemen tried to just march up on a group of mid-17th century arquebusiers, they'd get shot to pieces. Which certainly did happen a few times until generals adapted to the technological shifts. edit: I looked up the battle, and it was known for being the deathknell of the Spanish tercio. The tough Spanish infantry put up a good fight, but they were encircled by French cavalry and then shelled into compliance with artillery. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Rocroi Kaal fucked around with this message at 02:24 on Jun 9, 2014 |
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Jun 9, 2014 02:13
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I have learned a ton from this thread, especially the consensus that the outcomes of the American Civil War and World War II were more lopsided that I had thought in my Turtledove added mind (the South never having a chance, and the German wartime economy being a mess rather than possessing mad-scientist efficiency.) I wanted to ask if the American Revolution and World War I had the same inevitable outcomes. Those wars seemed to be much closer and I would assume that if the Continental army had been crushed a replacement army wasn't waiting to be raised, or that the Germans were doomed to fail on the Western front and never had a chance of forcing a French surrender. Could these wars have plausibly gone the other way?
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Jun 9, 2014 05:12
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Mojo Threepwood posted:I have learned a ton from this thread, especially the consensus that the outcomes of the American Civil War and World War II were more lopsided that I had thought in my Turtledove added mind (the South never having a chance, and the German wartime economy being a mess rather than possessing mad-scientist efficiency.) To be fair, Turtledove's what if involved Britain and France leaning on Lincoln which while unlikely is at least plausible; Turtledove never doubted the economics of the fight. Paul Kennedy wrote about the American Rebellion and generally the gist was fighting a war across 6000 miles of ocean was really difficult and expensive when the British arguably made more money trading with the United States post war anyways. So unless the British somehow crushed the Americans really early they were going to fight an long drawn out insurrection they couldn't put down before the next inevitable French-English war in Europe broke out. World War I from what I've read probably could have been a really close thing if the American's don't enter due to the French army having problems and the Russian withdrawal from the war.
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Jun 9, 2014 05:30
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IIRC Operation Michael petered out before the Americans got involved, and that despite the breakthrough the Germans had no plan (nor means?) to really force a decision in the Western Front, so even without American intervention the front lines would have moved a bit, then calcified again, then Germany still ends up looking for an armistice some months down the line because they're still blockaded and have no means of feeding the population nor keeping the soldiers supplied. It would have been a much closer thing, and longer, and who knows what the post-war treaties would have been like without Wilson's involvement, but I want to say that the Central Powers were inevitably going to lose. As always, it's the political dimension that's the problem with such counter-factuals - I don't know how domestic support/national morale in Britain and France would have turned out if the US was still neutral by 1918.
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Jun 9, 2014 05:46
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Mojo Threepwood posted:I wanted to ask if the American Revolution and World War I had the same inevitable outcomes. Those wars seemed to be much closer and I would assume that if the Continental army had been crushed a replacement army wasn't waiting to be raised, or that the Germans were doomed to fail on the Western front and never had a chance of forcing a French surrender. Could these wars have plausibly gone the other way? Most accounts of the American Revolution that I've read suggest that it was a very near run affair, with Britain favored by a narrow margin. Popular opinion in the Colonies was evidently very divided, something like a 40/30/30 split for Revolutionary, Loyalist, and Undecided, respectively. Additionally, there's several points where the Americans pulled off some very lucky wins. Washington escaping from New York was basically a weather dependent miracle, and Saratoga probably should never have gone the way it did if the British commanders could have maintained basic communication. And without Saratoga, there's no French entrance to the war, and then the Americans would have been far worse off than they were. India was a much more valuable prize than America, and Britain poured quite a bit of effort into defending it. Queue somebody who's read more than two books on the American Revolution coming in and telling me I'm completely wrong.  e: Personally, a British victory at Saratoga is perhaps the most interesting counter-factual I've ever pondered. With an American defeat there, the Americans quite probably lose the war (though the colonies would have kept simmering), and France probably doesn't enter the war, doesn't rack up massive debts fighting it, and perhaps the French Revolution doesn't occur, which means no Napoleon, and Europe looks fundamentally different. But counter-factuals are also terrible. PittTheElder fucked around with this message at 06:42 on Jun 9, 2014 |
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Jun 9, 2014 06:39
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Mojo Threepwood posted:I wanted to ask if the American Revolution and World War I had the same inevitable outcomes. Those wars seemed to be much closer and I would assume that if the Continental army had been crushed a replacement army wasn't waiting to be raised, or that the Germans were doomed to fail on the Western front and never had a chance of forcing a French surrender. Could these wars have plausibly gone the other way? Germany in WWI had essentially the same problems that it would later have in WWII - it's essentially landlocked and unable to feed itself. As such it really has a handicap in both of the wars. Each time they'd do well on the battlefield, make lots of promising initial gains, and then slowly the Allied powers would win the war of attrition. As such, any potential victory for the Germans remains tied to the concept of a quick and defining strike on the Western front - one that eluded the Germans in 1914. That being said, Germany was in a much better position in WWI than in WWII, and had global colonies to call on. Conversely, Britain was much more economically and agriculturally vulnerable - and there was a real possibility that the island could have been starved out. While Britain's navy had control of the sea and quickly wrested away the German colonies, Germany's submarine force proved very effective at targeting shipping and in April 1916 Britain had only six weeks of wheat left. But then again, it's difficult to imagine the US simply standing aside while Britain starved to death. Even in a hypothetical world where Germany heavily emphasized its U-boat forces and implemented the doctrine of total war two years early, I think that it would have simply started rationing earlier and drawn the US and its large navy into the war all the quicker. One must remember that Britain prides itself by saying that not a single person starved to death in either of the world wars - a feat that certainly Germany could not attest (nearly 500,000 starved in The Great War).* I think that Germany's best bet to winning the war would have to be found by redefining it at the outset. The Western powers weren't that attached to the idea of fighting Germany because of wars in Eastern Europe. The biggest strategic motivator for the Allies was the occupation of Belgium and France - without that, it's very difficult to see them suffering the kind of casualties they faced in 1914-1916 and still being willing to mount an offensive war for the sake of Russia and Serbia. By 1917, France alone had lost nearly one million soldiers - leading to the French Army mutinies**. Germany proved excellent at constructing elaborate defenses that proved extremely economical in terms of men and war material. At the same time, it was quite effective at demolishing the Russians and the other Eastern powers once it took over the front from Austria-Hungary. So if Germany had constructed a Hindenburg Line upon its own soil, daring the Allies to waste themselves in attacks, and restricted its offensives to the Eastern theatre, then perhaps it would have been able to achieve a victory on its own terms. The Allies would have spent themselves trying to break through German fortifications, and eventually public opinion would have halted the offensives - meanwhile, the Germans and the Austrians would have focused on the Russians and the Serbs, and perhaps would have won themselves an early victory on that front. Once that job was done, and with German boots firmly planted in the Rhineland instead of France, they could have persuaded America that this European war needed to brought to a close, and used that leverage to sue for peace. But that's not what happened, and it's assumes some pretty significant changes that happened right at the beginning of the war. Such a decision would have had massive and wide-ranging effects, and would have presented significant risks to the stability of the Kaiser's rule. So it's difficult to ascribe too much weight to the idea. * For those who are interested in economic warfare during the World Wars, Wikipedia has a pair of stupendous articles on the blockade of Germany and its effects. Definitely worth a read if you can set aside the time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_Germany http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_Germany_(1939%E2%80%9345) **The French Army mutinies of 1917 are one of the three significant points where France was in danger of falling to a German offensive. The other two being during the initial push toward Paris in 1914 at the Battle of the Marne, and the Spring Offensive of 1918 where Germany threw everything they had at pushing the British into the sea. Taken chronologically:
Kaal fucked around with this message at 08:13 on Jun 9, 2014 |
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Jun 9, 2014 07:17
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Kaal posted:Britain's navy had control of the sea and quickly wrested away the German colonies, Germany's submarine force proved very effective at targeting shipping and in April 1916 Britain had only six weeks of wheat left. People always post that line, and it always strikes me as completely meaningless. At the very least, you need to include the amount of wheat Britain normally kept on hand. For all I know, Britain only ever had seven weeks of wheat at the best of times, because why would you need more? And even if the U-Boats continue being effective, they're still not going to stop every ship. The whole thing where nobody actually starved to death, and in fact people got healthier due to rationing forcing a healthier diet on people, makes me thing the whole 'Britain starving' thing is entirely overblown.
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Jun 9, 2014 08:33
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PittTheElder posted:People always post that line, and it always strikes me as completely meaningless. At the very least, you need to include the amount of wheat Britain normally kept on hand. For all I know, Britain only ever had seven weeks of wheat at the best of times, because why would you need more? And even if the U-Boats continue being effective, they're still not going to stop every ship.
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Jun 9, 2014 10:14
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Right - any scenario where Germany pursues a much more aggressive submarine campaign is pretty much guaranteeing that the US joins the war even earlier. The only way that'd work would be if (and this is something that proponents of Unrestricted Submarine Warfare themselves believed) Germany does cause starvation/deprivation in Britain and that either produces results on the combat front (I would say unlikely given Germany's own resilience) or on the political front before American entry into war produces results. As for a Russia-first strategy, everything I've ever read on WWI asserts that that would have been politically unfeasible even if we assume that the Prussian General Staff makes appropriate battle plans. That also assumes that Germany is prescient and knows that it can defend against France/Britain well, knows that it can beat the Russians rather handily and knows that revolution can cause Russian collapse. Otherwise, the prospect of having to march all the way to gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 11:16 on Jun 9, 2014 |
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Jun 9, 2014 11:03
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Is the case of Germany and Russia in WWI the only real example of one side *overestimating* their opponent's will to fight?
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Jun 9, 2014 11:40
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Fangz posted:Is the case of Germany and Russia in WWI the only real example of one side *overestimating* their opponent's will to fight? Russo-Japanese war, perhaps?
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Jun 9, 2014 11:42
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Fangz posted:Is the case of Germany and Russia in WWI the only real example of one side *overestimating* their opponent's will to fight? US/Japan home islands, WWII. That could be classified as a special circumstance, though.
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Jun 9, 2014 11:53
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Fangz posted:Is the case of Germany and Russia in WWI the only real example of one side *overestimating* their opponent's will to fight?
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Jun 9, 2014 12:24
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I'd argue most of the Cold War, at least from the Eastern side. East German officers were appalled to learn that their West German counterparts worked pretty much 9 to 5.
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Jun 9, 2014 12:39
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Raskolnikov38 posted:Austria hungry was a multi-ethnic state in the same way that pre- From a few pages back, but I was reading Chris Clark's 'The Sleepwalkers'and he seemed to be of the belief that the empire was actually quite egalitarian by the standards of the day. Particularly in its administration and justice system it was apparently widely seen as blind to aspects of religion or race with many of the empires minorities happy about living under the Hapsburg justice system since it meant they were treated impartially, by and large people would get an education and a fair hearing in a courtroom (Roosevelt seemed to have a favorable view of the Austrian treatment of its constituent peoples in light of the American bloodletting in the Philippines). He contrasts this with contemporary Russia and the USA and also points to the fact that the empire was internally peaceful despite the constant bickering between various groups with no major wars, pogroms or ethnic cleansing, again contrasting with almost every state that surrounded it. For example Poles were much more comfortable in Austria than they were in Germany and Russia, and Bosnian Muslims weren't being killed and expelled like they were in Bulgaria or Serbia. If anything he says that many Serbs within the Empire were ambivalent at best about the prospects of uniting with a Serbia that was smaller, prone to violent instability, had way fewer economic prospects and a way worse education system. Now I don't know if Clark is considered trustworthy here but he does give the Hungarians a hard rap in their lovely treatment of Romanians and others in their quest for Magyarisation, he also points out the security pratfalls of this considering Romanians had an independent Romania to call upon. But he also points out the increasing sway that non Germans and Hungarians had in the empire as reforms were launched, as well as Franz Ferdinand's own policies in remaking the empire. Leaving aside the 'United states of Austria' thing for a moment there was also the suggestion of elevating Slavic folk to the same status as Germans and Hungarians, making it a sort of triple monarchy, mostly to undermine the intransigent Hungarians. Heck, supposedly, in the last years before war the Hungarians seemed to consider not being tremendous assholes to everyone else for a while in the face of increasing opposition to Magyarisation. Now this is just stuff I garnered from one book who's reputation here and elsewhere I know little about, but It did offer a different perspective on the Empire than what I was used to.
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Jun 9, 2014 13:20
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I haven't spent a ton of time in this thread, but in my experience Chris Clark is generally well regarded in historical circles and The Sleepwalkers is considered a very good book about the origins of WWI. On the Hapsburg empire, a lot of people who study Central Europe around that time end up with a rosy view of it, not because it was necessarily a great place to be a minority, but because it was an example of a relatively stable and successful multiethnic state that mostly contained ethnic conflict. When you're seeing this empire in relation to a) the Balkan states around it; b) the states that succeeded it; and c) the violent racial conflicts that tore Europe apart again a couple decades after its death, you end up with a pretty good impression of Austria-Hungary. Again, not as an objectively wonderful state, but as the best multiethnic state in a region renowned, at that time as today, for its quasi-genocidal ethnic conflict. This is not my field of specialization, though. Someone else here can probably answer better than I can.
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Jun 9, 2014 13:38
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Thanks for the replies. Leaving aside whether that interpretation is correct or not, that answers my question as to whether its a real historiographical trend.
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Jun 9, 2014 13:58
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khwarezm posted:He contrasts this with contemporary Russia and the USA and also points to the fact that the empire was internally peaceful despite the constant bickering between various groups with no major wars, pogroms or ethnic cleansing, again contrasting with almost every state that surrounded it. For example Poles were much more comfortable in Austria than they were in Germany and Russia, and Bosnian Muslims weren't being killed and expelled like they were in Bulgaria or Serbia. If anything he says that many Serbs within the Empire were ambivalent at best about the prospects of uniting with a Serbia that was smaller, prone to violent instability, had way fewer economic prospects and a way worse education system. The Austrian Poles were still quite miserable - while it was the one partition that was pretty chill politically, but it was a piss-poor hungry backwards piece of land. Where this becomes important is that Austrians have had bloodied their hands once there - by instigating a mass murder of local nobility. So I sort of wonder how much of it was them being chill as a general policy and how their partition being some far away unimportant piece of poo poo province with political elites already pacified. I've been meaning to read up on this, but  and video games.
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Jun 9, 2014 14:18
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Davincie posted:I got nothing left but the knowledge of having read it. Might have just been something the professor translated in his free time for the purpose of the class. To make up for it, a funny, vaguely related to military history picture: I'm giggling at that picture. While the quote vaguely encapsulates the difference, the utter frustration of the mod is palpable. Of course Guevara is lionized, he died with his boots on fighting against capitalist imperialism. Castro survived, became an autocrat, stocked up on the political prisoners, and is generally considered a dictator by everyone. I guess another platitude to piss that mod off would be the one about power corrupting/absolute power corrupts absolutely.
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Jun 9, 2014 14:50
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FAUXTON posted:I'm giggling at that picture. While the quote vaguely encapsulates the difference, the utter frustration of the mod is palpable. Castro is reasonably well liked in some places. http://www.pewglobal.org/2008/02/19/global-views-on-castro-and-cuba/ I think another difference is that the US has ample motivation, and several decades, to mobilise public opinion in the US, at least, against Castro. Whereas where is the point in hating a dead man?
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Jun 9, 2014 15:00
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Fangz posted:I think another difference is that the US has ample motivation, and several decades, to mobilise public opinion in the US, at least, against Castro. Whereas where is the point in hating a dead man? Theres also the large numbers of refugee's in certain parts of the US. Its hard to look at the positive qualities of Fidel when the guy in the apartment across from yours has relatives that were executed by him.
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Jun 9, 2014 15:30
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Mojo Threepwood posted:the consensus that the outcomes of the American Civil War I am curious what made you think there was a consensus on this.
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Jun 9, 2014 15:49
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Yeah, this argument has been going on since the war ended. Grant makes a good case in his memoirs that the Northern advantages were not nearly as overwhelming as it appears at first glance. (read Grants memoirs, they're great) One other point, if the Republicans lose the 1862 or 1864 elections, it doesn't matter what the military or industrial advantage is.
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Jun 9, 2014 16:09
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cheerfullydrab posted:WW2, not WW1, but this reminds me how much I hate the narrative of "plucky little Britain" that stood alone post-Dunkirk, pre-Barbarossa. It was the world's largest Empire that ever existed, lead by an unelected demi-dictator, fighting against a gimcrack continental power run by incompetent genocidal nutjobs. Not the underdog, even in its supposed darkest days. To add to this, you're right to point out that the narrative is somewhat misleading. Great Britain did have an Empire that was unquestionably helpful for providing raw material, weapons, and manpower (about half of all "British" troops during the war were actually Indian, for example). And yes, the Germans could be mind-bendingly incompetent at times. Consider their fuckups during the Battle of Britain and the operational clusterfuck of Sea Lion. But the narrative has some truth. For one, the British Empire did stand alone, at least in terms of warfighting. The Free French, the Czechs, the Poles, and others fought bravely, but they were small armies in exile and their accomplishments were in proportion to their size. In June 1940, Britain was in a really, really bad way. The Navy had taken substantial losses in Norway, the British Army had left behind so much equipment at Dunkirk they had been effectively defanged, and the RAF was rushing very green pilots into the fight. The Nazis may have been putzes from time to time, but don't forget they'd just conquered six countries in about six months. Plus, the war was rapidly bankrupting Britain. The UK was already indebted from WWI and WWII only increased its financial burdens. Even if Great Britain wasn't an underdog, it was hardly top dog, either. However, Britain may have did enjoy substantial support from the United States (Lend-Lease, Cash and Carry, Destroyers for Bases, the Neutrality Patrols). As the British British Chiefs of Staff Committee realized in May 1940, “"we do not think we could continue the war with any chance of success" unless the United States provided its "full economic and financial support.”
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Jun 9, 2014 16:20
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cheerfullydrab posted:WW2, not WW1, but this reminds me how much I hate the narrative of "plucky little Britain" that stood alone post-Dunkirk, pre-Barbarossa. It was the world's largest Empire that ever existed, lead by an unelected demi-dictator, fighting against a gimcrack continental power run by incompetent genocidal nutjobs. Not the underdog, even in its supposed darkest days. 
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Jun 9, 2014 16:23
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I think 'plucky little britain' is somewhere closer to the truth than the invincible empire D&D idea. I mean the UK fielded about 40 divisions in the second world war, they didn't send endless Indian hordes to attack the Germans.
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Jun 9, 2014 16:47
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Bacarruda posted:(Lend-Lease, Cash and Carry, Destroyers for Bases, the Neutrality Patrols) Can anyone go into some of these deals in detail? I remember hearing that the Destoyers for Bases contract was laughably one-sided in America's favor.
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Jun 9, 2014 16:47
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While I really, really don't want to get involved to discuss just how lovely AH actually was, every time someone posts something like this:vyelkin posted:Again, not as an objectively wonderful state, but as the best multiethnic state in a region renowned, at that time as today, for its quasi-genocidal ethnic conflict. I'm going to reply with a link to this paper.
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Jun 9, 2014 16:55
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There's five hundred million British subjects in all of those imperial possessions, but a vanishingly small proportion of that five hundred million are all that interested in fighting Nazis in Europe, and a much smaller proportion of that can realistically be shipped out from India and elsewhere over to the UK. The British Empire was big, but much of that size is the apparatus required to maintain itself.
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Jun 9, 2014 17:09
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Vagon posted:Can anyone go into some of these deals in detail? I remember hearing that the Destoyers for Bases contract was laughably one-sided in America's favor. Yeah, it was. The destroyers were pretty poo poo because they'd pretty much been left somewhere since WW1. The US did upgrade many of the bases and let the UK continue to use them though.
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Jun 9, 2014 17:14
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Yeah, Austria-Hungary was pretty much a total basketcase by 1914. It wasn't quite held together by apathy and inertia, but it was pretty close in several important ways. Furthermore the structure of the government meant that Hungary could (and did) veto pretty much anything it liked in terms of reform attempts. This was certainly the case in terms of military policy, where thanks to pitiful spending and the ridiculous nature of the Empire's organization left the Army with an army more poorly-equipped than even the Tsarist Russians (bronze artillery pieces were standard issue in 1914). Seriously, Geoffrey Wawro's A Mad Catastrophe is a excellent, horrifying read.
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Jun 9, 2014 17:19
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Vagon posted:Can anyone go into some of these deals in detail? I remember hearing that the Destoyers for Bases contract was laughably one-sided in America's favor. Destroyers for bases was a 99 year lease for a number of British bases around the world in return for 50 WWI destroyers. I think most of the bases are now shut down and probably won't be returned to British hands in 2039 (most of them are now in former British colonial possessions, anyway, so they'd go to those countries). How vital those destroyers were in the course of the war is debatable since they were seriously outdated and had been mothballed for a long time. Cash and Carry was an attempt to keep the US as neutral as reasonably possible, and stipulated that anyone buying war materials in the US had to pay upfront (Cash) and carry it themselves. Thankfully, the US had a border with an active participant (Canada) so shipping wasn't as difficult as it may seem. The Neutrality patrols was Roosevelt expanding the definition of neutrality to the breaking point. US ships would shadow German shipping in the Caribbean and along the US coast and report its movements in the clear. If, by some random coincidence, a British ship would happen to receive these messages, they could now intercept the German ship. Later these neutrality patrols were extended up until the Midatlantic and involved active engagements with German subs. During one such engagement, a German submarine sunk the destroyer USS Reuben James, which was widely considered unsporting in America (to be fair, the opponents were Rules-Nazis themselves). Lend Lease was probably the most important and best known form of American support. in theory, it allowed the President to lend or lease any piece of US hardware to another power if he considered it necessary for national security purposes. Note that this is not the same as selling them, the hardware was supposed to be returned or replaced (in case it was damaged during the war) after the war was over.
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Jun 9, 2014 17:25
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Britain was absolutely in a very bad spot versus Germany in 1939-41. I realize the pendulum thing happens and the internet history community is largely in a "lol Germany sux" mode after many years of "Germany uber alles", but they were a seriously formidable opponent and a massive threat to the British homeland through at least the start of Barbarossa. Suggesting otherwise is pretty ridiculous.
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Jun 9, 2014 18:07
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Bacarruda posted:For the early modern warfare buffs in the thread. Is the combat in "Alatriste" even remotely accurate? Specifically the bits with people sneaking under the pikes and kneecapping enemy soldiers. (1) Everyone's too god damned close together, which you can actually see every time the camera shows extras pretending to fight; they struggle and are not physically capable of doing what they should be able to do, especially the shot (2) Alatriste is just standing there, he isn't doing his job, which is (he's a Captain, right?) to tell everyone else what to do and supervise the musketeers as they come up to fire. Which makes sense, of course, since this is fiction, and "Dude tells a bunch of other dudes to double-check the angle of their matches for several hours straight" isn't exactly gripping poo poo. Kaal posted:I'd assume that the knee-capping was their attempt at showing the three elements of the tercio triad: the arquebusier, the pikeman, and the swordsman. quote:Really the most ahistorical element though, is that by 1645 firearms had already developed to the point that the pike square-era had largely died out. If an army of pikemen tried to just march up on a group of mid-17th century arquebusiers, they'd get shot to pieces. Which certainly did happen a few times until generals adapted to the technological shifts. quote:edit: I looked up the battle, and it was known for being the deathknell of the Spanish tercio. The tough Spanish infantry put up a good fight, but they were encircled by French cavalry and then shelled into compliance with artillery. Secondly, while the Battle of Rocroi frequently used to be called the death knell of Spanish tactics, newer writers have pointed out that these tactics remained battle-winning options long after Rocroi (I think the fortress Rocroi itself was retaken the next year or something, for instance). Not to mention that a formation capable of repulsing repeated cavalry charges while being bombarded is hardly weak or inconsequential. (Encircling them barely matters, since one of the points of the escuadron is that each square can continue to fight independently for a long time, whatever else happens on the field.) What Rocroi was, was a failure of leadership--all of the over-officers, who were noble appointees rather than experienced soldiers from more common backgrounds, fled the field within half an hour of the beginning of the fight, leaving the escuadrons just...there. (Whereupon the Spanish army's German mercenaries promptly surrendered.) It was the logical result of governmental decisions to make nobles officers which had been going on for decades, ever since the Count-Duke of Olivares took office. Your are correct to say that the Spanish infantry is tough, though. Best in Europe at the time, in my opinion. And a high opinion of themselves too--they're very ready to go on strike, for instance. Edit: They weren't "shelled into compliance," either, they received unusually generous terms when they surrendered, the same that would have been given to a surrendering fortress, which I think meant that their opponents respected what they had done. Drums beating, flags flying, music playing, and musketeers with lit match and with a bullet in each man's mouth, to say "We can still fight if we please, we simply choose not to." HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Jun 9, 2014 |
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Jun 9, 2014 18:20
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Bitter Mushroom posted:I think 'plucky little britain' is somewhere closer to the truth than the invincible empire D&D idea. I mean the UK fielded about 40 divisions in the second world war, they didn't send endless Indian hordes to attack the Germans. I'd agree that Britain was relatively isolated and that the Empire didn't guarantee victory (especially since major parts of it like India weren't too hot on the whole Imperial project. If Britain had fallen in 1940, I doubt British India would have lasted). However, there's a grain of truth to the otherwise-hyperbolic "endless Indian hordes" comment. Indian and Gurkha troops played really important roles in nearly every theater of the war. By 1945 there are over 2.5 million Indians in uniform, all volunteers. They fought in North Africa, East Africa, the Middle East, Italy, Burma, and Malaya. Great Britain probably could have won the war without Indian troops but the war would would have been a great deal bloodier, costlier, and longer (and Japan would almost certainly have conquered all or most of India by 1942). Vagon posted:Can anyone go into some of these deals in detail? I remember hearing that the Destroyers for Bases contract was laughably one-sided in America's favor. To elaborate on what ArchangeI wrote. The Destroyers deal was Churchill's idea. In his first telegram to FDR in 1940, he asked for a "loan of 40 or 50 of your older destroyers,” desperately noting that Britain had “immediate need” of new warships. Britain had lost a good number of destroyers in Norway and the Atlantic and was in dire need of escort ships. Now, the British did get kind of a lovely deal. The four-stackers they got were total shitboxes. They were slow, undergunned, and in poor condition. They did manage to sink a few U-boats, but generally weren't stellar performers. The fact that the most notable British use of a four-stacker was to ram HMS Campbelton (the former USS Buchanan) into a German-held drydock and blow it up should tell you something about their utility. The deal also meant Churchill had to effectively sign away part of the Empire, something he wasn't too happy about. But, the American takeover of British bases allowed the British to use the money and manpower they usually spent on these outposts to be used to prosecuting the war.
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Jun 9, 2014 18:21
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bewbies posted:Britain was absolutely in a very bad spot versus Germany in 1939-41. I realize the pendulum thing happens and the internet history community is largely in a "lol Germany sux" mode after many years of "Germany uber alles", but they were a seriously formidable opponent and a massive threat to the British homeland through at least the start of Barbarossa. Suggesting otherwise is pretty ridiculous. After the fall of France and before Barbarossa the picture was really bleak for UK. Not utterly hopeless, not 'plucky little Britain' hopeless, but Britain was mainly a sea power while Germany was rampaging through the continent and the British Army was no challenge. Not only that but Germany was allied with Soviet Union and the Baltic Sea was Adolf's lake so usual embargo policies wouldn't work. Hitler's invasion of Russia changed the situation, but for the first months no one expected Red Army to hold the tide. Nevertheless it meant that Germany would be tied onto a far bigger land conflict, and would ease the pressure in North Africa. Even after that Britain took more slaps to face in the Pacific theater and for a while was threatened with losing India, but that also meant that USA was entering the war at full throttle, and concurrently the Soviets were preparing for their first winter offensive. At that point UK's fortunes had completely reversed.
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Jun 9, 2014 18:25
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PittTheElder posted:People always post that line, and it always strikes me as completely meaningless. At the very least, you need to include the amount of wheat Britain normally kept on hand. For all I know, Britain only ever had seven weeks of wheat at the best of times, because why would you need more? And even if the U-Boats continue being effective, they're still not going to stop every ship. The whole thing where nobody actually starved to death, and in fact people got healthier due to rationing forcing a healthier diet on people, makes me thing the whole 'Britain starving' thing is entirely overblown. Well I'd assume the six week figure wasn't that Britain literally had six weeks worth of wheat sitting around - staple food prices had doubled, and very little food was simply stored for harder times (indeed it was illegal for private individuals to do so, though the government did have secret stores). What is likely meant by that is that within six weeks the dwindling production and import levels would lead to widespread wheat shortages. In early 1916 Britain was faced with the advent of unrestricted submarine warfare, as well as a food production failure; crop yields were down nearly 10 percent, while 20-25% of British shipping (which supplied 60% of British foodstuffs) was being sunk each month. First Sea Lord Jellicoe warned Britain that if nothing was done, Britain would be compelled to an armistice regardless of the situation on the Western Front. Fortunately for the Allies, German unrestricted warfare was the final straw for Wilson, and America entered the war in April - bringing with them a new willingness to participate in convoys and a large navy for convoy escort duty.
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Jun 9, 2014 18:25
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Lichtenstein posted:The Austrian Poles were still quite miserable - while it was the one partition that was pretty chill politically, but it was a piss-poor hungry backwards piece of land. Where this becomes important is that Austrians have had bloodied their hands once there - by instigating a mass murder of local nobility. So I sort of wonder how much of it was them being chill as a general policy and how their partition being some far away unimportant piece of poo poo province with political elites already pacified. I've been meaning to read up on this, but Not necessarily. There are, in general, two periods in the history of Poles in Austria: before and after the institution of the dual monarchy. The former is bad enough and hardly needs further explanation: between the Galician slaughter, the incredible poverty (imagine Ireland at the outset of the potato famine and assume that this is business as usual) and political oppression there is little there to envy. But then there's the other period, after the Ausgleich (and technically a bit before as well), when Poles had a huge influence in Austria-Hungary. The Austrian parliament was filled with tiny little parties that only differed from one another, as they say, in that some conservatives went to the church at 11, and some at 10. The Poles had a significant representation which, despite not being the biggest or the most influential, was the most pragmatic. They assumed a strict party discipline, giving them a reliable and notable voting bloc, which in turn meant that anyone who wanted to form a workable government had to contend with them. After 1870 or so, every single Austrian government had at least one Polish minister, even not counting the ministry for Galicia. And those were very important positions, for example, the ministry of the treasury was Polish for eleven years under Julian Dunajewski, who was one of the few to ever balance the budget of the country, and who left behind several Polish colleagues in important positions within the ministry. This meant that Galicia thrived culturally, as it could count on investments in education and sciences. However, even the considerable power the Poles had in this system had to take a back seat in the face of the fact that strategically, the Austrians did not want to invest in Galician industry and infrastructure, which was the only real way to improve the still critical situation of the rural and urban poor. But for the Austrians, it was clear that the moment a real war with Russia begins, they would consider this area pretty much an expendable buffer, so even the great oil fields of eastern Galicia were largely underutilized - any factory or railroad built in the area was a boon to the potential Russian occupiers, and that was deemed unacceptable. In the end, as enlightened as the area was in 1918, it was also the most economically backwards of the areas that made up the rebuilt Polish state.
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Jun 9, 2014 19:03
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bewbies posted:I am curious what made you think there was a consensus on this. I appreciate the responses to my questions, I seriously learn more from this thread than any other source except maybe Dan Carlin's podcasts. To answer your question about why I thought there was a consensus, I got this impression from reading a number of posts (usually in response to a counter-factual proposal) that would point out how doomed the Confederacy and Axis powers were. For example, I remember someone writing about how Germany's arms minister realized early how screwed they were once the American and Soviet industrial machines got roaring and how the outcome was pretty much inevitable. I thought this was a consensus as I don't recall anyone on the forum effectively refuting the argument that these powers were one battle away from winning (although I haven't read every page.) I had another question, was there a reason that Germany or Japan never made a serious effort to use submarines for harassment shelling of coastal American cities? I know that Japan did some pointless submarine shelling near Warrenton, Oregon (destroying a baseball backstop), but it seems like a missed opportunity, especially during early 1942 when coastal cities were still contributing to the "Happy Time" by not imposing black outs and German subs were operating very close to the American eastern seaboard. Was it every proposed to have five or so U-boats surface near Boston or NYC, fire off a few dozen 88 shells, and then scurry away? I'm sure in the late war period it would have meant instant death from an air response, but in the early days the subsequent panic might have been similar to the effect of the Doolittle Raid, where the bomb damage was tiny but the response made Japan waste a lot of time pulling ships back to the home islands.
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Jun 9, 2014 19:28
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Mojo Threepwood posted:I had another question, was there a reason that Germany or Japan never made a serious effort to use submarines for harassment shelling of coastal American cities? I know that Japan did some pointless submarine shelling near Warrenton, Oregon (destroying a baseball backstop), but it seems like a missed opportunity, especially during early 1942 when coastal cities were still contributing to the "Happy Time" by not imposing black outs and German subs were operating very close to the American eastern seaboard. Well... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardment_of_Fort_Stevens http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardment_of_Ellwood EDIT: oh wait you mentioned those. Fangz fucked around with this message at 19:46 on Jun 9, 2014 |
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Jun 9, 2014 19:42
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