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Oh yeah, also I learned a thing. You can tell a lot about a general by what the soldiers call them. Tilly's nickname was "Father Tilly." The men loved him, despite the fact that he wasn't very imposing as a figure, and he was anxious enough about his German to have a translator for all his battlefield speeches. (Hardly anyone could hear battlefield speeches, but they were in the Classics, so...) He was pious and personally abstemious, and they seemed to respect that. Wallenstein's was "der Henker-Herzog"--the Hangman Lord, because if he caught you doing something against military discipline in his general vicinity rumor had it he'd flip out on you and have you killed. Also, they hated each other but at one point they had to be roommates for some reason. Edit: The common soldiers supposed both of them to be wizards, partly because most old soldiers were supposed to be wizards, partly because anyone as pious as Tilly probably had occult dealings and anyone as hosed up as Wallenstein definitely did. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Jul 3, 2014 |
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Jul 3, 2014 21:26
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Hah, gently caress, yeah . . . I always forget what you guys have to deal with on the manuscript front. OK, I don't feel quite so bad now. I'll go back to reading really boring stuff where my biggest issue is kinda-fuzzy carbon paper transfers on 60-year old toilette paper grade E. German (probably soviet) pink sheets.
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Jul 3, 2014 21:28
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HEY GAL posted:(Or feel bad. Poor Eckert.) Why exactly was Eckert killed exactly? Because he'd drawn arms against someone above him in the chain of command?
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Jul 3, 2014 21:57
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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PittTheElder posted:Why exactly was Eckert killed exactly? Because he'd drawn arms against someone above him in the chain of command? Edit: I preserved the original word choice in a bunch of places, so it might have been confusing. Yeah, the dude was lying in his quarters dying for eight days straight and he probably called his friends in there when he believed that he was about to die, since dying publicly and with foreknowledge is very important for this culture. Edit 2: Christ, how awkward must that have been for whoever it was who actually lived in that house. Especially since this is all happening in Italy, and these people may or may not speak the language. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Jul 3, 2014 |
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Jul 3, 2014 22:07
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HEY GAL posted:Also, they hated each other but at one point they had to be roommates for some reason. How has this not been turned into a sitcom yet?
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Jul 3, 2014 22:32
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ArchangeI posted:How has this not been turned into a sitcom yet? He's a low born money hungry bloodied German Mercenary! He's also one too. Together, they make the whackiest bromance this side of the Rhine! They also fight crime.
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Jul 3, 2014 22:49
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SeanBeansShako posted:He's a low born money hungry bloodied German Mercenary! He's also one too. Together, they make the whackiest bromance this side of the Rhine! Commit. Edit: And Wallenstein was minor nobility (he had the panic about money that everyone who grows up poor does, though), but Tilly was a count or something. And I'm not sure you could call either one "German"--Tilly definitely wasn't, he's Dutch. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 22:54 on Jul 3, 2014 |
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Jul 3, 2014 22:50
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Sacrifices are going to have to be made to get it syndicated. One of them must be played by Charlie Sheen.
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Jul 3, 2014 22:56
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SeanBeansShako posted:He's a low born money hungry bloodied German Mercenary! He's also one too. Together, they make the whackiest bromance this side of the Rhine! Imagine MASH except both Hawkeye and Frank Burns get killed.
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Jul 3, 2014 22:56
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SeanBeansShako posted:Sacrifices are going to have to be made to get it syndicated. One of them must be played by Charlie Sheen. Edit: According to one source, Tilly was spotted during the sack of Magdeburg riding through the ruined city with a baby held awkwardly in his arms--he had pulled it from its dead mother and had no idea how to hold it. That would have to go in there, for sure. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Jul 3, 2014 |
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Jul 3, 2014 23:02
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HEY GAL posted:Lord no. Because the Gemeinwebel stabbed him when they fought. He got sick from it and died eight days later. Stabbing Tilly is probably a no go, but at a level this low you're allowed to fight with a dude, you're not slaves or something. Now that you say that I'm not sure how I missed it on my first read. I also didn't pick up that the Feldscherr's apprentices were medics, I guessed they were MPs of some sort, subordinate to the Feldscherr, who in my head was a command type, not a barber-doctor. Also I guess Feldscherr remains a term for a paramedic sort of doctor in rural parts of the former USSR, which is pretty cool. It was also the 'ritual of public death' death bit, which I assumed meant they were going to kill him publicly to prove some sort of point, even though that didn't fit at all with the rest of the passage. It's all much more clear with your clarifications there. The Imperial War Law exempts the Gemeinwebel from punishment on the grounds of self-defence then I take it?
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Jul 3, 2014 23:10
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PittTheElder posted:It was also the 'ritual of public death' death bit, which I assumed meant they were going to kill him publicly to prove some sort of point, even though that didn't fit at all with the rest of the passage. It's all much more clear with your clarifications there, thanks. PittTheElder posted:The Imperial War Law exempts the Gemeinwebel from punishment on the grounds of self-defence then I take it? It wasn't that he was defending himself (Eckert didn't attack him), it's that he was responding to a challenge. If someone else mouths off to you, especially if you're their boss, they have given you cause to fight them. That said, a lot of soldiers get executed for killing their opponents in fights, the Gemeinwebel didn't, possibly because he was honestly broken up about the whole thing and sought reconciliation with his opponent, but I think also because Eckert was insubordinate. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Jul 3, 2014 |
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Jul 3, 2014 23:12
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HEY GAL posted:If someone else mouths off to you, especially if you're their boss, they have given you cause to fight them.
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Jul 3, 2014 23:21
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Holy poo poo, Hegel, that is a loving great post. Can you like just give daily anecdotes or something? Also, you made me lose a lot of time learning German officer titles just now so thanks I guess?
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Jul 3, 2014 23:24
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So, about that link to Tilly's wikipedia article, you know how members of lots of skilled professions are often depicted next to something they've made? 
HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 23:51 on Jul 3, 2014 |
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Jul 3, 2014 23:48
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So there's a new WW2 movie coming out and with the Stalin chat I'm curious about the impact of Lend-Lease on the Eastern Front. What I've read on Wikipedia makes it sound like it was primarily about trucks and other logistical aids to the Soviets. Also, at what point did the US and Soviet leadership realize that they were going to be staring each other down over the coming decades following Nazi Germany's defeat? Were there American/British generals/politicians who wanted to turn on the Soviets and get rid of Stalin's regime/liberate the various nations they'd annexed since '39? How practical would that have been, in the sense of how the Allied-sans-Soviet forces compared to the Soviet forces alone?
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Jul 4, 2014 00:36
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Lassitude posted:So there's a new WW2 movie coming out and with the Stalin chat I'm curious about the impact of Lend-Lease on the Eastern Front. What I've read on Wikipedia makes it sound like it was primarily about trucks and other logistical aids to the Soviets. Also, at what point did the US and Soviet leadership realize that they were going to be staring each other down over the coming decades following Nazi Germany's defeat? Were there American/British generals/politicians who wanted to turn on the Soviets and get rid of Stalin's regime/liberate the various nations they'd annexed since '39? How practical would that have been, in the sense of how the Allied-sans-Soviet forces compared to the Soviet forces alone? Churchill wanted to do that. Nobody else did.
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Jul 4, 2014 00:49
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^^ Beat me to it.Lassitude posted:Were there American/British generals/politicians who wanted to turn on the Soviets and get rid of Stalin's regime/liberate the various nations they'd annexed since '39? How practical would that have been, in the sense of how the Allied-sans-Soviet forces compared to the Soviet forces alone? Yeah, Churchill mused about doing this. It definitely would not have worked.
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Jul 4, 2014 00:57
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The RAF and the French Air Force had plans in 1940 to bomb Soviet oilfields in order to destroy the Soviet economy and deny Nazi Germany access Soviet oil (the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact having just been signed). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Pike
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Jul 4, 2014 01:00
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I can't remember if this thread was discussing the last time a political leader led troops into battle, but there's an interesting anecdote in this piece (from today) about Nouri Al Maliki from Ali Khedery, one of the top American intermediaries in Iraq during the occupation:quote:Prone to conspiracy theories after decades of being hunted by Hussein’s intelligence services, he was convinced that his Shiite Islamist rival Moqtada al-Sadr was seeking to undermine him. So in March 2008, Maliki hopped into his motorcade and led an Iraqi army charge against Sadr’s Mahdi Army in Basra. With no planning, logistics, intelligence, air cover or political support from Iraq’s other leaders, Maliki picked a fight with an Iranian-backed militia that had stymied the U.S. military since 2003.
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Jul 4, 2014 02:46
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Lassitude posted:So there's a new WW2 movie coming out and with the Stalin chat I'm curious about the impact of Lend-Lease on the Eastern Front. What I've read on Wikipedia makes it sound like it was primarily about trucks and other logistical aids to the Soviets. Lend-Lease included weapons, vehicles (Lots of trucks and some half tracks. I've read that they really liked the M3 Scout car too), oil, food (Lots and lots of Spam) and other support. Of the vehicles received some were considered by the soviets to be quite poor (Matilda II, Valentine) while others they liked many aspects of (Later-model M4s). How important those vehicles were depended upon the theater of operations and how good their connection was to the Soviet supply lines. The Caucasus front used a lot of Lend Lease vehicles for a while because they drew supplies from Iran when they were cut off from the rest of the Soviet territory.
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Jul 4, 2014 03:53
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The translation I read of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisivich Constantly refers to the guards as being armed with "tommy guns". Is that just a quirky translation or did the USSR actually receive Thompson SMGs as part of lend lease? If they did it would sort of make sense to give them to Gulag guards who probably won't ever have to fire them or anything and waste lend-lease ammo.
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Jul 4, 2014 04:11
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The USSR did receive lend-lease Thompsons but apparently didn't use them very much because of the ammo commonality issue you mention. On the other hand, I have read memoirs (unfortunately no titles come to mind) in which basically any submachine gun is referred to as a "Tommy gun". If you don't know/care about guns (or have been in a Gulag since before the PPSh was introduced), it wouldn't be unreasonable to call an automatic stubby rifle-looking thing with a drum magazine a "Tommy gun".
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Jul 4, 2014 04:25
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I always thought it referred to the PPSh family myself. If you don't give a drat the -41 drum magazine model looks kinda-sorta like a Thompson. Wood stock, big round thing bottom center, fires fast, kills you, same dealie, right?
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Jul 4, 2014 04:57
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I know what you meant but i read it at first as a negative 41 drum magazine and was wondering how negative bullets work. I settled on it would probably make suicide with anything save a handgun very much easier. e: oh poo poo, maybe it steals ammunition from the enemy. Or spits out unspent cartridges at the rate of fire that you would shoot them.
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Jul 4, 2014 05:54
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Frostwerks posted:e: oh poo poo, maybe it steals ammunition from the enemy. Or spits out unspent cartridges at the rate of fire that you would shoot them. It's like watching Rambo backwards: soldiers healing people with their magic bullet vacuums.
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Jul 4, 2014 07:57
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PittTheElder posted:It's like watching Rambo backwards: soldiers healing people with their magic bullet vacuums. I'll have you know that this motif was used in both Slaughterhouse 5 and Come and See and both are very good 
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Jul 4, 2014 08:00
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Digging up my previous post on Lend Lease:gradenko_2000 posted:On the topic of "just how much did the Western Allies/the US contribute to WWII/would WWII have been winnable by the Soviets without US intervention", David Glantz's When Titans Clashed has a short chapter on Allied contributions to the Russo-Soviet War. If I may rattle off some bullet points:
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Jul 4, 2014 08:54
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gradenko_2000 posted:* The Red Air Force really liked the transport aircraft coming from the West, but did not like the combat planes very much. They wanted CAS, ground attack and low-altitude fighter aircraft, but most Western designs were high-altitude long-range fighters and heavy bombers. The A-20 bomber performed well enough, but the Hurricanes, P-39 Airacobra and P-40 Warhawks were either unsuited for what the Red Air Force really needed, were already obsolete, or both. About the best thing that can be said was that the P-39 Airacobra performed somewhat better in the Eastern theater than anywhere else since the lower altitudes made it less vulnerable to its particular handling idiosyncrasies Didn't a significant number of Soviet aces fly the P-39?
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Jul 4, 2014 09:06
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Hole Wolf posted:Didn't a significant number of Soviet aces fly the P-39? If I remember right, there were a few posts following Gradenko's that kind of argued that the P-39 was actually rather well-liked by the Soviets, or at least regarded neutrally. It did what they needed, even if it wasn't too useful to the Americans. Search for Bewbies' posts, think it was him.
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Jul 4, 2014 09:42
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I should have linked to these in my original post: here's some stuff on the way Early Modern Europeans approached death. Ideally, you know beforehand--not just that you're dying, but down to the day. Then you prepare yourself spiritually and make a public display--forgiving people you've had disputes with, as Eckert did, exhorting the living to do good and follow God, getting someone to write down your words while you dole out your property (I read a testament from a dying Musterschreiber where he said that all his landed property went to his wife and children, and then said he had 26 ducats on him in cash at the time and that should go to his lieutenant). You should die conscious. When Catholic polemicists wanted to slander Luther, one of the things they said was that he died suddenly, which would have meant that he could not prepare and would have strongly indicated that he had been killed, then carried off, by demons. http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=7688 http://www.academia.edu/271597/The_Gift_of_Mourning_Death_in_the_Early_Modern_Household http://www.amazon.com/The-Hour-Our-Death-Attitudes/dp/0394751566 Edit: That's the cultural ideal, of course. If some fucker cuts your throat in the middle of pike-on-pike combat, or if (as was far more likely) you get so sick you have no idea what's going on and then they tip your body into an open pit along with all the rest, twenty a day...well, that's a problem, isn't it? I bet they thought about that a lot. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 10:10 on Jul 4, 2014 |
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Jul 4, 2014 09:45
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Grand Prize Winner posted:If I remember right, there were a few posts following Gradenko's that kind of argued that the P-39 was actually rather well-liked by the Soviets, or at least regarded neutrally. It did what they needed, even if it wasn't too useful to the Americans. Search for Bewbies' posts, think it was him. Yup, that's right. The Sherman was pretty beloved by the actual troops doing the driving as well
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Jul 4, 2014 10:06
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HEY GAL posted:So, about that link to Tilly's wikipedia article, you know how members of lots of skilled professions are often depicted next to something they've made? Brick-laying was a very respected profession back then 
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Jul 4, 2014 10:37
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gently caress trophy 2k14 posted:Brick-laying was a very respected profession back then Negative bricklaying.
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Jul 4, 2014 10:39
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HEY GAL posted:Negative bricklaying. Job-creation
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Jul 4, 2014 11:49
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Throatwarbler posted:The translation I read of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisivich Constantly refers to the guards as being armed with "tommy guns". Is that just a quirky translation or did the USSR actually receive Thompson SMGs as part of lend lease? If they did it would sort of make sense to give them to Gulag guards who probably won't ever have to fire them or anything and waste lend-lease ammo. In that period many people referred to any SMG as a Tommy Gun. Keep in mind the Thompson was one of the first successful SMGs, especially in the US where it entered public consciousness more than just about any single firearm ever. It's the same as how people say Kleenex instead of facial tissue.
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Jul 4, 2014 11:52
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Or "machine gun"
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Jul 4, 2014 12:55
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These days everything's an AK.
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Jul 4, 2014 12:57
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John McClane: "Ho ho ho I have HK94A with modified components from MP5A3"
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Jul 4, 2014 13:02
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That day in the life of mercenaries post made me want to rewatch The Last Valley for the millionth time. drat, I love that movie.
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Jul 4, 2014 13:52
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