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Germany reacted to shenanigans in the east by immediately throwing its drat army west. Germany and France were on a hair trigger.
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Aug 9, 2014 09:04
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Phobophilia posted:Germany reacted to shenanigans in the east by immediately throwing its drat army west. Germany threw its army West because they expected the opponent to the East to mobilize slowly. The thinking was probably "If we head East first, the French will gently caress us in the rear end. If we wheel West, knock France off the board and swoop back East via rail, we should be back in time to gently caress up the Russians." Instead, Russia got rolling faster than Germany expected (though it didn't exactly deliver victory), and Germany got bogged down in France despite having a pretty good start. Then everyone else realized poo poo had gotten real as gently caress in the preceding months and hopped in. FAUXTON fucked around with this message at 09:16 on Aug 9, 2014 |
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Aug 9, 2014 09:13
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My dad just came back home from England and the daily mirror had an insert of the front page from August 5 1914. I'm gonna head over to kinkos and get it scanned in soon and will post in this thread. quick dirty teaser pic 
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Aug 9, 2014 09:17
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How much did the western front line move after the first few months of the war? Did Germany make any more significant progress, and when did the Entente start regaining lost ground?
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Aug 9, 2014 09:23
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The old Blackadder line about Haig and his drinks cabinet's an exaggeration, but not much of one. The line was capable of moving significant distances, but at horrific cost and with the obvious disadvantages of moving further and further from your own railheads, across complete wastelands, towards an army that was being moved closer to its own supplies, with little hope of being able to create a gap wide enough for long enough to shove some cavalry through. What it's not is a simple case of Germans advancing, then Allies retreating; then Allies advancing while the Germans retreated. Until mid-1918 the front line was perfectly capable of moving both ways; this is not at all like WWII in Europe, which you can reasonably depict as "the Germans advanced on all fronts until the Xth of X 1942, then the Allies advanced on all fronts thereafter". In Belgium the BEF installed itself a few miles outside Ypres and was pushed back completely by accident after the Germans conducted a little gas test in the Ypres salient and ended up nearly throwing them into the sea; as it was they were pushed out of their unsafe-but-defensible positions and forced to occupy much worse ones right on the outskirts of the town, which they then broke out of in 1917 and advanced about ten miles before being bogged down at Paaschendaele. The Somme is of course the greatest British image of futility and slaughter, but unlike Verdun it did actually result in an advance (much like how Third Ypres was ultimately a failure because they failed to reach the rail junction at Rouleurs, the objective of the Somme was the rail junction at Bapaume, which they stalled out well short of), and by the winter of 1916 they'd advanced six miles, which was the biggest advance since the Marne. Of course in 1918 the Spring Offensive happened, and by the end of that the front line had in some places moved forty miles or more. But that had been preceded by the withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line, during which the Germans had voluntarily given up about forty miles... So it was possible for the front line to move during the static period, but you can also draw a very narrow set of lines on a map of France and Belgium marking the two furthest lines of advance (and it doesn't get too much better if you expand the lines to mark furthest advance during the whole war). On that grand scale, it really was chateaux and drinks cabinets.
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Aug 9, 2014 10:18
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AATREK CURES KIDS posted:How much did the western front line move after the first few months of the war? Did Germany make any more significant progress, and when did the Entente start regaining lost ground? The front remained largely unchanged from 1915 until the Spring Offensive in 1918. For example the Germans attempted to capture Ypres in October 1914 and was still trying to take it in early 1918.
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Aug 9, 2014 16:32
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gradenko_2000 posted:Agreed. For however much the Russians are portrayed as a inferior army, the Austro-Hungarians were even worse And yet they still managed to be better than the Italians.  Let's attack the same exact spot 12 times, we'll break those drat Austrians eventually!EDIT: Oh, I know the terrain made attack nearly impossible, they literally had to climb up to where the Austrians were fortified. Its just that with the benefit of hindsight we can see why that was a VERY BAD IDEA, just like most of the offensives on the Western Front. Don Gato fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Aug 9, 2014 |
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Aug 9, 2014 16:44
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I made an effort post about the Isonzos some time ago in the milhist thread; I know it is fun and all to say "lol 12 battles", but when you take a hard look at the terrain and the objectives of each side, there really isn't much else that they could have done. In the end it really wasn't all that different from what went on across the Western Front, it just happened in one geographic location instead of 4-5.
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Aug 9, 2014 16:50
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FAUXTON posted:Had they been a better army and been able to handle Serbia, would WWI have been forestalled significantly or were things basically set to go off regardless of Ferdinand getting killed? The Austro-Hungarians were really dead-set on attacking Serbia, to the point of deliberately keeping their negotiations (or lack of it) secret from their German allies until it was too late as well as crafting the ultimatum in such a way that they knew that Serbia would have to decline it or part of it. The Austro-Hungarians having a better army probably would not have changed the sequence of events up through the July Crisis and the declaration of war, but if they were good enough to take on Serbia by themselves without getting shitloads of troops killed, and moreso if they were good enough to hold their part of the front against the Russians, the outcome of the war might have changed assuming Germany suddenly has so many more thousands of troops freed up from the Eastern Front.
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Aug 9, 2014 16:56
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gradenko_2000 posted:The Austro-Hungarians were really dead-set on attacking Serbia, to the point of deliberately keeping their negotiations (or lack of it) secret from their German allies until it was too late as well as crafting the ultimatum in such a way that they knew that Serbia would have to decline it or part of it. One of the ironies of the war was that by 1918 Austria-Hungary had actually achieved all of their war goals. Serbia was occupied. Russia was defeated. Italy was all but defeated and only in the war because it was being propped up with British and French troops. They were just stuck in a greater war that was being lost.
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Aug 9, 2014 17:10
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I just want to say that despite the failings of the Austro-hungarian army, the Serbian army was pretty drat impressive. Though they eventually lost their territory, and had to retreat across mountains, they launched some pretty drat good counter-offensives, didn't melt away after defeat and had to be bottled up in Salonika. Which I think is pretty good for getting in a war with a way bigger neighbour, just because of the crazy actions of a spymaster. They also required the Austro-hungarians to get help from the Germans when they probably would have preferred being elsewhere.
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Aug 9, 2014 17:37
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Thanks to everyone who jumped into the TBB Book of the Month thread, you're really improving that discussion a lot. We also have a general thread for books about history that y'all might be interested in.
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Aug 9, 2014 18:32
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Baloogan posted:Of course you can read the book. Its only 400 pages. Skimmed through the file and I think I got a reasonable handle on them, so expect some icons by me in the coming days. But I do have a few questions: Are there any hard rules for adding modifiers to a unit? Other than it being a contradiction or impossible, like a half track sonar bouy or pack animal fighter. Why does MILITARY INTELLIGENCE AERIAL EXPLOITATION (1.X.3.1.2.2.1) use the drone symbol as part of it? Is there a way to denote meteorological conditions created by man? Since weather is a real thing militaries have been working on, not to mention conditions caused by events similar to lighting oil fields aflame. While I can understand the need for many of the symbols, the reason for a graffiti one eludes me. Unless I missed it there isnt a way to note that a unit (potentially) has NBC capabilities. (I thought the proper term now was CBRN(e) [chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive] Also I'm amused theres an official symbol for where extortion is happening.
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Aug 11, 2014 09:44
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Communist Zombie posted:
They are in the MOTW section, so they are probably used to get a handle on gang signs or the like. Or to denote which building to storm (it's the one between the two buildings with obvious graffiti).
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Aug 11, 2014 10:20
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Communist Zombie posted:Skimmed through the file and I think I got a reasonable handle on them, so expect some icons by me in the coming days. But I do have a few questions:   Its close, not exactly the same though. Communist Zombie posted:Is there a way to denote meteorological conditions created by man? Since weather is a real thing militaries have been working on, not to mention conditions caused by events similar to lighting oil fields aflame. No clue here. Communist Zombie posted:Unless I missed it there isnt a way to note that a unit (potentially) has NBC capabilities. (I thought the proper term now was CBRN(e) [chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive]  Table III Symbol Modifier Field Definitions might shed some light on it. I'm not sure if there is a specific modifier for NBC capabilities. Communist Zombie posted:While I can understand the need for many of the symbols, the reason for a graffiti one eludes me. Heheh, I have no idea for the actual use of the graffiti symbol, might be used as a landmark.   No clue about extortion.
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Aug 11, 2014 10:28
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When the 2nd Guards Army comes through Berlin, we'll airdrop highly trained NATO graffiti units behind enemy lines to demoralise them completely. Then the extortion squads will move in!
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Aug 11, 2014 12:37
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Baloogan posted:No clue about extortion.
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Aug 11, 2014 12:47
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I can't imagine anything other than this sketch, sorry https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2QJBWq-gY0 You've got a nice army base here, Colonel...
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Aug 11, 2014 13:09
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HEY GAL posted:You are familiar with the history of armies, no? Nowadays we like to call it "voluntarily rendered assistance", thank you very much.
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Aug 11, 2014 13:29
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Baloogan posted:Heheh, I have no idea for the actual use of the graffiti symbol, might be used as a landmark. They're symbols to denote insurgent activities.
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Aug 11, 2014 13:55
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HEY GAL posted:You are familiar with the history of armies, no? How did leaders represent forces on maps in your era of expertise?
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Aug 11, 2014 14:13
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gradenko_2000 posted:How did leaders represent forces on maps in your era of expertise? This was made after the fact and was intended for publication:  I've seen one battle deployment sketch which was made at the time (before the battle, actually), intended as a memory aid, but I can't find it. They're somewhat less abstract than modern representations--here, a square on a map really is a square-shaped group of people. They are much less elaborate, though. I don't think the differentiation between infantry and cavalry, for instance, was used. Why would you, since you know the names of all your subordinates and know what they do already?
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Aug 11, 2014 18:24
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gradenko_2000 posted:Russia didn't really have munitions supply issues in WWI. At least, no more than what the rest of the world collectively experienced in 1915-1916 when there was a global shortage of artillery ammunition. The portrayal of Tsarist armies suffering defeats for want of supplies, arms, food is largely a myth - they were just lead really ineptly.
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Aug 12, 2014 00:50
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HEY GAL posted:A bunch of ways. I've seen squares/rectangles, square (or rectangular) shaped collections of little dots, etc. The name of each commander will be paired with the little square representing his battalion. How far back does this go? Are there medieval or classical documents that show troop dispositions in a top down, diagrammatical sense? Or was cartography too primitive for it to be a useful thing?
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Aug 12, 2014 04:31
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So it turns out my new boss has his doctorate in modern European history and is arguably an even bigger nerd than I am. He and I spent the whole afternoon debating what I thought was a very interesting hypothesis. His statement: had the Balkan crises been delayed by five or so years, the reichstsag would have taken power from the Kaiser and the junkers within the German Empire and move to Germany to wards an anti-war, anti-colonial position, which likely would have prevented both world wars. I am not doing justice to his arguments here, but I am curious what you other nerds think of this proposal.
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Aug 13, 2014 01:14
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bewbies posted:So it turns out my new boss has his doctorate in modern European history and is arguably an even bigger nerd than I am. He and I spent the whole afternoon debating what I thought was a very interesting hypothesis. Sounds pretty nuts to me, but I know hardly anything about domestic politics in the German Empire. Can you relay to us some reasons why he thinks it would have shaken out that way? And what's your position on his hypothesis?
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Aug 13, 2014 01:26
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brozozo posted:Sounds pretty nuts to me, but I know hardly anything about domestic politics in the German Empire. Can you relay to us some reasons why he thinks it would have shaken out that way? And what's your position on his hypothesis? I am also very out of my element here, but basically: the SPD gained a spectacular amount influence in Germany from 1890 through the start of WWI, and he was of the opinion was that that trend was going to continue its trajectory such that the Prussians would not be able to sustain their stranglehold on the Empire had the war not begun in 1914 (as this event pretty much unified the Reichstag and ended any influence of dirty peacenik hippies). Had the SPD or another leftist party seized a sufficent amount of political power, they would have immediately undone much of the strain of militarism (to include much of the the reservist system, at least in part, and certainly the naval buildup) that had dominated Germany over the previous couple of decades, which would have made a hair-trigger mobilization and thus a two-front war a strategic impossibility. At the same time, they would have moved away from supporting the A-H regime and perhaps would have even found more in common with France politically. edit - my position is...ambiguous, as I too don't know much about internal German politics prior to the war. I do think I agree though that if a significant amount of political power had been wrested from the Hohenzollerns and the junkers that WWI probably would not have happened as it did, and it likely would have emerged as a massive collapse of A-H, Russia, and the Ottomans all roughly simultaneously instead which would have been pretty spectacular. Of course without Versailles and the like it isn't likely that the Nazis ever emerge but that's getting pretty speculative. bewbies fucked around with this message at 01:48 on Aug 13, 2014 |
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Aug 13, 2014 01:42
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I'm weary of any scenario that requires a large number of contingencies to come off just right. What's the guarantee that the SPD keeps succeeding? What's the guarantee that they don't decide to get patriotism the next time a crisis comes along? Etc.
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Aug 13, 2014 01:50
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bewbies posted:So it turns out my new boss has his doctorate in modern European history and is arguably an even bigger nerd than I am. He and I spent the whole afternoon debating what I thought was a very interesting hypothesis. His statement: had the Balkan crises been delayed by five or so years, the reichstsag would have taken power from the Kaiser and the junkers within the German Empire and move to Germany to wards an anti-war, anti-colonial position, which likely would have prevented both world wars. I am not doing justice to his arguments here, but I am curious what you other nerds think of this proposal. I don't know if this is the foundation of your boss's opinion, but there's a strong argument that Germany's rapid industrialization was causing significant power-shifting both internationally and domestically. The First World War can be partially seen as a response to that shift in power. And if that war had not occurred, then there's a better than even chance that Germany would have attained economic domination over Europe within 20 years - and with that the German domestic power structure would perhaps have shifted from the militarists to the industrialists.
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Aug 13, 2014 01:54
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bewbies posted:So it turns out my new boss has his doctorate in modern European history and is arguably an even bigger nerd than I am. He and I spent the whole afternoon debating what I thought was a very interesting hypothesis. I can kind of half see what he's getting at. I think he way overestimates the strength of the pre-war SPD and under-estimates the catholics and the center. I could see the Reichstag in general sidelining the Kaiser and the Junkers much more but I don't necessarily think that it would lead to anti-colonial or anti-war policies. There was an awfully big, patriotic push for those things from the growing middle class that was largely based in nationalism and national pride and you don't get the concerted push-back against them that we come to associate with a strong political left until WW1 so aptly demonstrates what the worst case scenario is. This is ignoring the fact that without WW1 you also don't get a communist revolution in Russia which is pretty much THE political event of the early 20th century. Then again, without the grand early-war coalition that the SPD signs onto for patriotic reasons you also don't get the self-destruction of the German left during the war, so god only knows how politically influential the SPD/KPD are in our hypothetical no-War 1919 (no communist revolution, but no Great Schism either. . . ) poo poo like this is why I hate counterfactuals. Also I don't suppose there's any chance you work at a small business that deals primarily in bicycle parts, is there? edit: VVVV not you, Bewbies Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 01:58 on Aug 13, 2014 |
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Aug 13, 2014 01:54
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Cyrano4747 posted:Also I don't suppose there's any chance you work at a small business that deals primarily in bicycle parts, is there?
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Aug 13, 2014 01:57
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This isn't about tank destroyers so hopefully people still know something about it, but does anyone have any idea what sort of weapon this guy has and why he'd have it? Only other place I can find it is in German Federal Archives but without a caption.  Any guesses are also fine!
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Aug 13, 2014 04:18
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Even if Germany doesn't want war, France, Serbia, Austria-Hungary and Russia would still want to fight for all the reasons they did historically. I guess we're generously assuming A-H is smart enough to back down in the absence of firm German support? Bewbies, why do you think the Russian empire would still collapse in the absence of WWI? I figure they'd be the primary beneficiary of Austrian and Ottoman decline and the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Balkan wars that would likely take WWI's place. Sure the Tsarist system was broken, but broken systems can limp along for very long times without an external stress bringing things to a head. Sorry for diving headfirst into gay black Kaiser territory.
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Aug 13, 2014 04:18
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Karandras posted:This isn't about tank destroyers so hopefully people still know something about it, but does anyone have any idea what sort of weapon this guy has and why he'd have it? I love guessing! Looks like a break action shotgun- maybe he's skeet shooting?
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Aug 13, 2014 04:20
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Karandras posted:This isn't about tank destroyers so hopefully people still know something about it, but does anyone have any idea what sort of weapon this guy has and why he'd have it? It looks like a typical over-under shotgun. Dude's probably blasting clay or birds.
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Aug 13, 2014 04:21
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Karandras posted:This isn't about tank destroyers so hopefully people still know something about it, but does anyone have any idea what sort of weapon this guy has and why he'd have it? Looks like a bird-hunting shotgun.
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Aug 13, 2014 04:26
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I believe it's a shotgun.
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Aug 13, 2014 04:59
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Terrible angle on the gun but it looks right dimensionally to be a drilling. It's a type of combo of a side by side with an under barrel hunting rifle. The Luftwaffe issued a few thousand to bomber and recon crews early war as survival weapons. For shooting game or birds in remote areas, not as defensive weapons. The photo looks staged enough to be any matter of propaganda or promotional material.
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Aug 13, 2014 05:03
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bewbies posted:I am also very out of my element here, but basically: the SPD gained a spectacular amount influence in Germany from 1890 through the start of WWI, and he was of the opinion was that that trend was going to continue its trajectory such that the Prussians would not be able to sustain their stranglehold on the Empire had the war not begun in 1914 (as this event pretty much unified the Reichstag and ended any influence of dirty peacenik hippies). Had the SPD or another leftist party seized a sufficent amount of political power, they would have immediately undone much of the strain of militarism (to include much of the the reservist system, at least in part, and certainly the naval buildup) that had dominated Germany over the previous couple of decades, which would have made a hair-trigger mobilization and thus a two-front war a strategic impossibility. At the same time, they would have moved away from supporting the A-H regime and perhaps would have even found more in common with France politically. I would tend to point out a few specific problems with this hypothesis. In the order that they occurred to me, (1) It assumes a continuous upward trend in the SPD's political fortunes, which doesn't necessarily follow. They had seen a meteoric rise in party membership culminating in their dominant showing in the 1912 Reichstag election, but realistically there were limits to growth. In the postwar elections in 1919 and 1920 the SPD together with its radical offshoot the USPD (the party's left wing had splintered off over support for the war) collected about right around 40% of the votes, and given the political context of the time that was probably the maximum share that the German left could have commanded. Since we're assuming no Great War, it's very possible that they were peaking in 1912 rather than on their way to permanent political control. (2) It overestimates the influence of the Reichstag over the government of the German Empire. Although they did have the often-cited "power of the purse" and that gave them a large degree of influence, executive power was overwhelmingly in the hands of the Kaiser and his selected appointees. There's actually a great example of this from just before WWI. In 1913 there was some unrest in Alsace-Lorraine and the Reichstag, led by a coalition of the SPD, Zentrum (Catholics), and PPD (liberals) overwhelmingly approved a vote of no-confidence in chancellor Theobald von Bethman-Hollweg. The vote had no real effect, because the Kaiser had sole authority to select his chancellor and ask him to form a government. Speaking of which... (3) The German Empire's political system vested tremendous authority in the Kaiser, and Kaiser Wilhelm II was notoriously a dilettante and autocratic bully. He did not have the inclination--or frankly the ability--to deal with a serious political opposition. Even if the SPD (or an SPD-led coalition) had been able to seize control of the Reichstag and effectively leverage their limited powers, the result would most likely be a long-term power struggle between Wilhelm and the Reichstag. To some extent this was already happening before the war started, and it's possible that the imperial establishment's eagerness to fight in part derived from a hope that war would quell those political conflicts. (4) Most pointedly, when the war started the SPD fell right into line supporting it, so you shouldn't overestimate their commitment to internationalism. I could go on a bit longer but I ran out of time just now.
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Aug 13, 2014 05:14
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Baloogan posted:
Well for meteorological conditions I suppose you could color them according to whoever started it. There is precedence in 'hostile' icebergs and navigational hazards.  Baloogan posted:
Reading through it, it seems youd just make a note next to the icon saying that. Anyways heres my first NATO icon, its supposed to be for the YAL-1 airborne laser ballistic defense system. 
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Aug 13, 2014 05:16
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