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So I know that prior to the outbreak of WW1, people's expectations for how the war would be waged were different than what happened in reality. How were people expecting the second world war to play out?
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Jun 10, 2014 03:33
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A lot like WW1 actually. The British even designed/built this monstrosity as late 1940 assuming that trench warfare was still going to be a thing.
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Jun 10, 2014 03:39
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Vulture posted:So I know that prior to the outbreak of WW1, people's expectations for how the war would be waged were different than what happened in reality. How were people expecting the second world war to play out? Define 'people'. Different people had very different expectations.
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Jun 10, 2014 03:44
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It was expected that aerial bombardment would be ridiculously more lethal against civilian populations than it turned out to be in reality is one thing I remember reading a long time ago.
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Jun 10, 2014 03:58
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Pornographic Memory posted:It was expected that aerial bombardment would be ridiculously more lethal against civilian populations than it turned out to be in reality is one thing I remember reading a long time ago. I think if the aerial bombardment had included chemical and biological weapons, it would have been much much worse. The Anathrax alone by the British would have killed everything in Europe.
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Jun 10, 2014 04:26
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There was an economist who, a decade before the war, predicted that it would be a trench warfare battle of attrition that wouldn't end without total mobilization and utter ruin of everyone involved. People listened to him, of course. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Gotlib_Bloch
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Jun 10, 2014 04:45
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Comstar posted:I think if the aerial bombardment had included chemical and biological weapons, it would have been much much worse. The Anathrax alone by the British would have killed everything in Europe. I'm morbidly interested in eschatology, and I remember a grim post describing the 1930s' vision of the end: Massive fleets of bombers releasing poison gas onto every major city in the world. The fact that no one in WWII used chemical weapons on another power with chemical weapons was a sort of pre-nuclear Mutually Assured Destruction.
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Jun 10, 2014 04:52
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blackmongoose posted:Not even war material per se, but trucks were one of the most important components of Lend-Lease. If the Soviets had to choose between getting American trucks vs. the entire contribution of the American army, the correct decision would have been the trucks and it's not even particularly close. IIRC Locomotives were also a very important part of Lend-Lease. EDIT: According to wikipedia the US supplied the USSR 2,000 locomotives, but the Soviets only managed to build 92. EDIT2: I decided to check the source since the period wasn't clear but OOPS DEAD LINK. wdarkk fucked around with this message at 04:56 on Jun 10, 2014 |
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Jun 10, 2014 04:53
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blackmongoose posted:Not even war material per se, but trucks were one of the most important components of Lend-Lease. If the Soviets had to choose between getting American trucks vs. the entire contribution of the American army, the correct decision would have been the trucks and it's not even particularly close. Trucks and trains are totally war material.
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Jun 10, 2014 04:57
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Da, is good train. Am-yerikan train. *takes train apart with a pipe wrench and uses the scrap to maintain a T-34 division* Anyway, is there any outcome to WWII which would have seen an Allied (incl. USSR) victory but avoided the cold war?
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Jun 10, 2014 04:58
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FAUXTON posted:Da, is good train. Am-yerikan train. Depends what you mean by "avoided". If we wave a magic friendship wand so Truman and Stalin become best buddies, sure. The problem with hypotheticals like that is the huge number of political and economic factors that drove World War II to its particular outcome, and if you change those factors you have a completely different world. Most theories of international relations say that a clash between a massive democratic capitalist government and a massive autocratic communist government was historically inevitable, and everyone involved knew this. There was some hope for peace and good relations between the West and East, but events like the Berlin Blockade and Korean War quickly made that hope untenable.
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Jun 10, 2014 05:03
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wdarkk posted:IIRC Locomotives were also a very important part of Lend-Lease. You seem to be saying only like its all Soviet industry was capable of. If the Americans are happy to provide all that sweet heavy iron, would you rather build a bunch more locomotives yourself or have that many more factories producing tanks or planes?
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Jun 10, 2014 05:03
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FAUXTON posted:Da, is good train. Am-yerikan train. Well maybe if Stalin's purges hadn't been so effective at breaking the will of the Soviet officer corps, it's possible that the military coup that Stalin was sure was going to sweep him away in the early days of Barbarossa might have actually happened. In which case, maybe someone less dickish could have ended up in charge and maybe lived up to their promises about the restoration of Eastern Europe and without the "Iron Curtain" and related incidents things might not have gotten quite so bad? More of a Grumpy Peace than a Cold War? But that's a lot of if's, which is never good counter-factual work, really. I guess the other way would have been if the Germans did just well enough to cause some kind of revolution in the Soviet Union that shattered it into its constituent ethnicities the way the real USSR broke up in the early '90s. But they'd have to have done well enough to wreck the USSR but not well enough to actually win, which is another problem altogether.
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Jun 10, 2014 05:08
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Arrath posted:You seem to be saying only like its all Soviet industry was capable of. If the Americans are happy to provide all that sweet heavy iron, would you rather build a bunch more locomotives yourself or have that many more factories producing tanks or planes? I don't know. It's possible that locomotive production wasn't as easy to set up in the Urals or something, I'm just throwing up what I remembered on the topic.
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Jun 10, 2014 05:08
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AATREK CURES KIDS posted:Depends what you mean by "avoided". If we wave a magic friendship wand so Truman and Stalin become best buddies, sure. The problem with hypotheticals like that is the huge number of political and economic factors that drove World War II to its particular outcome, and if you change those factors you have a completely different world. Most theories of international relations say that a clash between a massive democratic capitalist government and a massive autocratic communist government was historically inevitable, and everyone involved knew this. There was some hope for peace and good relations between the West and East, but events like the Berlin Blockade and Korean War quickly made that hope untenable. The cold war has technically been over for almost a quarter century and it still haunts the world, of course it would be different having never happened. If the socioeconomic systems were destined to collide at some point, would there have been a way to, say, negotiate some post-war plan instead of leaving Europe/the world divided for 45 years followed by a collapse so sudden and thorough that the world is still dealing with the mess? It just seems like such a unique arrangement would have been unique in its avoidability. What kinds of opportunities were there, even if no single act or agreement could have diverted the course of history? E: given that a good portion of what made the SU such a power in WWII served to drive it towards the standoff afterwards. Unification of everyone from Siberia to the Mediterranean and industrialization by force basically requires a gigantic, brutal rear end in a top hat to hold poo poo together. Gigantic brutal assholes just can't stand playing second fiddle. FAUXTON fucked around with this message at 05:24 on Jun 10, 2014 |
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Jun 10, 2014 05:20
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AATREK CURES KIDS posted:Depends what you mean by "avoided". If we wave a magic friendship wand so Truman and Stalin become best buddies, sure. The problem with hypotheticals like that is the huge number of political and economic factors that drove World War II to its particular outcome, and if you change those factors you have a completely different world. Most theories of international relations say that a clash between a massive democratic capitalist government and a massive autocratic communist government was historically inevitable, and everyone involved knew this. There was some hope for peace and good relations between the West and East, but events like the Berlin Blockade and Korean War quickly made that hope untenable. If FDR had lived longer than maybe. Churchill didn't like/trust Stalin and all and passed that on the Truman. That led to a definite cooling of relations between the Soviets and the West by the end of the war.
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Jun 10, 2014 05:21
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Raskolnikov38 posted:A lot like WW1 actually. The British even designed/built this monstrosity as late 1940 assuming that trench warfare was still going to be a thing. Well come on, that was a one-off thing by a bunch of stodgy conservatives, and should not at all be representative of British tank building at a whole.  poo poo. FAUXTON posted:Da, is good train. Am-yerikan train. Uh, no, that's a completely inaccurate statement. It would be a T-34 brigade. Ensign Expendable fucked around with this message at 05:27 on Jun 10, 2014 |
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Jun 10, 2014 05:24
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Taerkar posted:If FDR had lived longer than maybe. Churchill didn't like/trust Stalin and all and passed that on the Truman. That led to a definite cooling of relations between the Soviets and the West by the end of the war. But it was more than just force of personalities, Stalin had this problem where he felt everyone was out to gently caress him raw, and that included everyone from St. Pete to Berlin.
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Jun 10, 2014 05:27
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Taerkar posted:If FDR had lived longer than maybe. Churchill didn't like/trust Stalin and all and passed that on the Truman. That led to a definite cooling of relations between the Soviets and the West by the end of the war. gently caress, Churchill hated Stalin. Before the war proper he was on record as saying that if he had to choose the Nazis or the Commies, he'd pick the Nazis and never look back.
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Jun 10, 2014 05:31
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jng2058 posted:gently caress, Churchill hated Stalin. Before the war proper he was on record as saying that if he had to choose the Nazis or the Commies, he'd pick the Nazis and never look back. I wonder how much Churchill's poo poo-stirring affected Stalin's need to essentially subjugate Eastern Europe so that it wouldn't rise up and kill him. He (Churchill) went around talking poo poo about Communism and the USSR like crazy.
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Jun 10, 2014 05:35
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Pretty much every invasion that's hosed over Russia has come from the West, Eastern Europe makes a nice cosy buffer zone. I know a few people that are freaking out at it melting away lately.
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Jun 10, 2014 05:39
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Ensign Expendable posted:Pretty much every invasion that's hosed over Russia has come from the West, Eastern Europe makes a nice cosy buffer zone. I know a few people that are freaking out at it melting away lately. Well when the krakenguard and polar yeti contingent settle their poo poo Russia's in for a surprise.
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Jun 10, 2014 05:41
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I thought nowadays Russia's areas of military interest were in the south and east? Whether hotspots like Chechnya or potentially cool relations with Japan, China, and the Asia-"pivoted" US?
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Jun 10, 2014 05:50
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Jumping back to The Sleepwalkers, but this passage quoted earlier was one of my favorite parts of the book:quote:Nowhere were the frictions generated by nationalist politics more in evidence than in the Cisleithanian parliament, at 516 seats the largest in Europe. Among the thirty odd parties that held mandates after the 1907 elections, for example, were 28 Czech agrarians, 18 young Czechs (radical nationalists), 17 Czech conservatives, 7 old Czechs (moderate Nationalists), two progressive Czechs (Realist tendency) One 'Wild' Czech independent and 9 Czech National Socialists. The Poles the Germans, the Italians and even the the Slovenes and Ruthenians were divided among similar ideological lines. That parliament must have been hilarious to participate in. "My esteemed colleague's...REALIST tendencies have led him astray on this bill."
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Jun 10, 2014 06:10
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Ensign Expendable posted:Pretty much every invasion that's hosed over Russia has come from the West, Eastern Europe makes a nice cosy buffer zone. I know a few people that are freaking out at it melting away lately. Hey, the Mongols came from the East! Granted, that was
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Jun 10, 2014 06:17
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Mongols are *the* invasion that broke Russia (or various Rus city states) for centuries and shaped Eastern Europe for centuries. Russians also have it easy, try being Poland where disastrous invasions started from every side at least once (or in some cases from 3 sides simultaneously).
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Jun 10, 2014 09:36
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alex314 posted:Mongols are *the* invasion that broke Russia (or various Rus city states) for centuries and shaped Eastern Europe for centuries. Russians also have it easy, try being Poland where disastrous invasions started from every side at least once (or in some cases from 3 sides simultaneously). The swinging screen door of Europe.
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Jun 10, 2014 09:42
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Pharmaskittle posted:I'm just a history amateur (if even that) and lurker on this thread and I know you guys don't like to get into alternate history too deeply, but would the Soviets have a shot at winning WW2 if the US had never entered the war? I mean, say they keep helping in a proxy way, but not going all in with troops. If the US is still involved with its non-military support to the Soviets (the proxy you talk about), then absolutely. Take into account the size and strength of Soviet war industry. Here are some figures:     (from Harrison, The Economics of World War II) By one year into the German invasion of the USSR, the Soviets were producing more war materiel than all three major Axis powers put together, despite massive amounts of their industrial and demographic heartland being overrun by German armies. Before the United States even invaded North Africa, the USSR was stopping the German advance at Stalingrad and slowly beginning to reclaim their territory. If you're keeping Lend-lease and American support for the Allies without military intervention, the Soviet economy is still going to achieve this stunning industrial feat, without the serious economic, organizational, and logistical problems that plagued the Third Reich, its wartime economy, and its invasion of Russia (of course, the Soviets have their own economic, organizational, and logistical problems, but they didn't affect wartime performance as much as the nature of the Nazi state did). Italy is a virtual nonentity when dealing with the Eastern Front, and Japan is all-but irrelevant. For one, they were unwilling to attack the Soviet Union because they got trounced when they tried at Khalkin Gol; two, the bulk of their land combat power was tied up in China and unavailable for an invasion of vast tracts of horrible Siberian land; and three, even with a much diminished role for the Western Allies the Japanese resource problems wouldn't just go away, which would still most likely have pushed them towards the Southern Resource Area and an attack on the US, UK, and Dutch East Indies. Germany was losing on the eastern front before a second front was opened up in Europe, even if you count Italy as a second front. At the same time as the US and UK were invading Sicily (July-August 1943), and before they invaded Italy, the Battle of Kursk took place on the Eastern Front and the Germans lost any strategic initiative they had left. At the same time as the Western Allies were invading Normandy (June-August 1944), the Soviets were destroying an entire German Army Group in Operation Bagration. Roughly three quarters of all German army casualties for the entire war were on the Eastern Front. These are the reasons why people generally say that the Soviets could have beaten Germany singlehandedly. Without the Western Allies doing as much as they did to keep Germany busy in the air and at sea, and to provide the Soviets with aid, it would have been a longer, harder, and bloodier war, but the Soviets' industrial and strategic advantages and successes wouldn't magically disappear just because the US played a diminished military role in the war.
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Jun 10, 2014 09:48
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Conversely, what if Molotov-Ribbentrop pact had lasted? With a steady flow of oil and other supplies from Russia and its forces free to be deployed anywhere in Europe and not wasting millions of lives and an immense amount of war materials in the east, would Germany have been able to beef up the Atlantic Wall and air defenses sufficiently that liberation of Europe would have been practically impossible or at least far more costly (man losses counting in the millions) and taking far longer time? Or would Nazis just have twiddled their thumbs instead of going to full war economy, so there wouldn't have been any greater preparation, just a bigger man reserve? Nenonen fucked around with this message at 10:25 on Jun 10, 2014 |
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Jun 10, 2014 10:21
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Gladi posted:What I remember is that many burghers already are soldiers. Cities are its own administrative units and have to raise their own levies. In rural areas will get some peasants and sign them up for twenty years of soldiering, but in cities the regiments are raised ad hoc from militia trained burghers. But they aren't professional soldiers; although many German heads of state have semi-standing Landesdefension armies as well as hiring mercenaries, those aren't the same things as the civic militia. And mercenaries and the civic militia don't serve for 20 years in this period--I think you got that from descriptions of 18th century standing armies? Mercenaries sign up for one month, six months (I think?) or a campaign, while citizens contribute to their city's defense just as part of living in a city, I don't know if there's a "time when they serve" or not.
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Jun 10, 2014 10:33
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Nenonen posted:Conversely, what if Molotov-Ribbentrop pact had lasted? With a steady flow of oil and other supplies from Russia and its forces free to be deployed anywhere in Europe and not wasting millions of lives and an immense amount of war materials in the east, would Germany have been able to beef up the Atlantic Wall and air defenses sufficiently that liberation of Europe would have been practically impossible or at least far more costly (man losses counting in the millions) and taking far longer time? Allies could try wrestling Norway away, but there's no way they could push 2m Axis soldiers from France, Belgium and Holland. I guess they could try with multi-directional strike against northern France, southern France, Italy and Greece, but with Luftwaffe active, massive reserves and manpower that wasn't depleted - who knows.
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Jun 10, 2014 11:28
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HEY GAL posted:And mercenaries and the civic militia don't serve for 20 years in this period--I think you got that from descriptions of 18th century standing armies? Mercenaries sign up for one month, six months (I think?) or a campaign, while citizens contribute to their city's defense just as part of living in a city, I don't know if there's a "time when they serve" or not. Were there many people who'd sign up for a month, earn/loot some cash, and go back to normal(ish) life after that?
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Jun 10, 2014 11:31
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my dad posted:Were there many people who'd sign up for a month, earn/loot some cash, and go back to normal(ish) life after that? Historians used to think that the makeup of 17th century armies would never be able to be studied in a systematic way. Hanlon's recent work on the Duke of Parma's army in '35-'37 (and it's Gregory Hanlon, not Geoffrey Hanlon, sorry about that) gets around that because the, um, Parmesan rolls still survive, and are unusually good. I'm trying to get around that by noting the name and place of origin of every single soldier I find mentioned in other official documents, such as trial transcripts, letters, official complaints, etc, so even without rolls I could catalogue at least some of them. Sort of a tracking isotope for the rolls I will probably never find. Edit: We found Peter Hagendorf's name because he mentioned the church where his last daughter was baptized and the names of her godparents, so someone looked through the baptismal records for that child and those godparents and found the father's name too. We don't have his name from his diary because the diary is incomplete--the beginning (which would have been the place for him to write his own name on the thing, if he even did) is missing. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 11:51 on Jun 10, 2014 |
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Jun 10, 2014 11:37
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By the way, question about the escuadrons (that's how you're supposed to refer to the fighting unit, right?) In most depictions of the escuadron that I see, there's a central pike block with four smaller musketeer blocks on its corners. My question is, how did such a formation prevent cavalry - or other infantry, for that matter - from charging in at the musketeers and avoiding the lowered forward pikes to flank the formation? Were the musketeers able to withdraw entirely into the pike blocks? (Contemporary depictions I've noticed tend to depict the blocks as being very thick and close together, making it seem a bit of a nightmare to get troops in and out - was that wrong?) Was the very presence of the pike block threatening enough that commanders didn't want to risk sending their troops in close even if the pikes were being threatened from the front? Was it considered too easy to lose control of a unit once you've sent it barreling through a hail of shot and past enemy lines? Was the presence of other escuadrons beyond the frontline great enough a great to dissuade such attacks? Or what? Similarly, Roman maniples are said to have been arranged in a checkerboard formation - but how did that stop the frontline units from getting attacked from three sides by someone who just arranged his dudes in a big line and charged straight forward?
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Jun 10, 2014 12:37
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HEY GAL posted:Edit: We found Peter Hagendorf's name because he mentioned the church where his last daughter was baptized and the names of her godparents, so someone looked through the baptismal records for that child and those godparents and found the father's name too. We don't have his name from his diary because the diary is incomplete--the beginning (which would have been the place for him to write his own name on the thing, if he even did) is missing. Yeah, when I started studying, he was still known as the "unknown mercenary". It was pretty cool to learn how they managed to give him a name.
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Jun 10, 2014 13:42
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Tomn posted:Similarly, Roman maniples are said to have been arranged in a checkerboard formation - but how did that stop the frontline units from getting attacked from three sides by someone who just arranged his dudes in a big line and charged straight forward? Roman maniples didn't actually engage the enemy in the checkerboard (quincrux) formation. The purpose of it was actually to ensure that they DID present a solid, cohesive line when they actually got into combat. When they advanced into battle, they would have a solid line of velites (skirmishers), followed by the checkerboard pattern of the hastati, principes, and triarii, although some people believe the triarii may have always been deployed as a solid line. The velites pepper the advancing enemy with missiles, and then retreat. Instead of running through their own ranks and breaking up the formation, slowing them down, and causing confusion like you would with a solid line, the skirmishers simply run through the gaps of the checkerboard. The hastati then close ranks and present a solid line, then they charge and engage the enemy. If they have to fall back, they fall back through the ranks of the principes in good order (if possible), who close ranks after they pass and present a solid line. If the principes did not defeat the enemy you fall back to the triarii, which means you're pretty much screwed. "Ad triarios redisse" - to fall back upon the triarii, was a Roman idiom which essentially meant you were in a desperate situation and had to rely on your last resort.
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Jun 10, 2014 13:49
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alex314 posted:Mongols are *the* invasion that broke Russia (or various Rus city states) for centuries and shaped Eastern Europe for centuries. Russians also have it easy, try being Poland where disastrous invasions started from every side at least once (or in some cases from 3 sides simultaneously). Lmao. Yes, poor little Poland, one of the largest realms in Europe, who invaded Muscovy time and again, captured Moscow, and tried to put a pretender on the tsar's throne.
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Jun 10, 2014 14:11
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Didn't they basically cripple the Teutonic Knights too?
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Jun 10, 2014 14:18
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Tomn posted:By the way, question about the escuadrons (that's how you're supposed to refer to the fighting unit, right?) The "sleeves" of gunners were very mobile, and had the freedom to go where was needed. The pike blocks themselves were a lot more spread out than you would think, as guys needed to be able to move in between them, I'd hazard a man's width between each pikemen is possible. So the gunners would shelter under the pikes and fire at the attacking cavalry. I think there was a discussion about whether pikemen closed formation on the attack but nobody knows, I'd hazard to guess that that if 2 pike blocks came into contact ("bad war") you would have a lot of pike fencing and some men would subconsciously drift, phalanx style, to one side to attempt to gain protection from the man nearest them.
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Jun 10, 2014 14:27
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Rabhadh posted:The "sleeves" of gunners were very mobile, and had the freedom to go where was needed. The pike blocks themselves were a lot more spread out than you would think, as guys needed to be able to move in between them, I'd hazard a man's width between each pikemen is possible. ArchangeI posted:Yeah, when I started studying, he was still known as the "unknown mercenary". It was pretty cool to learn how they managed to give him a name. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 14:39 on Jun 10, 2014 |
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Jun 10, 2014 14:34
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