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But then again, the whole thing might as well have been called OPERATION WISHFUL THINKING given how it was supposed to go down.
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Aug 23, 2014 17:54
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ArchangeI posted:But then again, the whole thing might as well have been called OPERATION WISHFUL THINKING given how it was supposed to go down. More or less. The entire notion that we could conduct a meaningful occupation of a country that size with so few soldiers was ludicrous from the get go. The thing you have to keep in mind is American domestic politics at this time. The US public is generally A-OK with blowing the poo poo out of a bunch of people somewhere else in the world but it really doesn't have the stomach for an extended occupation of anything. It should probably have been called OPERATION HAVE OUR CAKE AND EAT IT TOO. They wanted all of the patriotic cock-stroking of a short, nearly bloodless (for us at least) military victory without any of the messy reality of an extended occupation. gently caress, avoiding a long-term occupation is the whole reason Bush Sr. left Saddam in charge in the first place.
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Aug 23, 2014 21:08
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Cyrano4747 posted:More or less. The entire notion that we could conduct a meaningful occupation of a country that size with so few soldiers was ludicrous from the get go. The thing you have to keep in mind is American domestic politics at this time. The US public is generally A-OK with blowing the poo poo out of a bunch of people somewhere else in the world but it really doesn't have the stomach for an extended occupation of anything. It should probably have been called OPERATION HAVE OUR CAKE AND EAT IT TOO. They wanted all of the patriotic cock-stroking of a short, nearly bloodless (for us at least) military victory without any of the messy reality of an extended occupation. gently caress, avoiding a long-term occupation is the whole reason Bush Sr. left Saddam in charge in the first place. Should have just partitioned away a Kurdistan in the north and declared it a win. People forget that there are entire provinces in the north of Iraq where the US death toll for the entire occupation was Three.
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Aug 23, 2014 21:13
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Jack B Nimble posted:
I think you can basically toss the idea the UN would do much since Bush pretty much gave them the finger going in. I can't believe the top brass would be too reliant on the Iraqi military either given the culture and the fact it's never really worked in the past.
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Aug 23, 2014 21:21
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Can anyone shed some light on the relationship between the concept of the nation-state and modern wars? Like in the WW1 discussion last page it was all "pan-Slavism" and "Italy wants Tyrol" and then you've got Germany in Poland and Austria in WWII and then I think of what's going on in Crimea, Kurdistan, Gaza, Kashmir, etc. and it starts to seem like a lot of blood gets shed over the difference between the black-and-white exactitude of nation-state boundaries and the messy reality of cultures, languages, and ethnic groups coexisting and intermeshing.
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Aug 23, 2014 23:26
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Were there significant doctrinal differences on a tactical level on the Western Front of WW1? Were they things that the troops would've taken into account? I recall, for example, that germans in WW2 hated american artillery because of how trigger-happy they were, firing on lone dudes running through a field and such. Anything like that?
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Aug 23, 2014 23:55
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SlothfulCobra posted:What is the best way to recover from a war?I mean, other than the good ol' American way of not getting bombed to hell. Weimar Germany was more than capable of meeting her reparation payment obligations and chose to serially default as soon as she could get away with it as part of a wider strategy to undo the Versailles settlement and restore Germany's rightful place as Master of Europe. It is left as an exercise for the reader as to whether this worked out as planned.
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Aug 24, 2014 00:17
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vintagepurple posted:Were there significant doctrinal differences on a tactical level on the Western Front of WW1? Were they things that the troops would've taken into account? Yes, and this is a question with a huge answer. As the war develops quite different tactical doctrines appear on the Western and German sides. To make a gross simplification: the Germans ended up with small-unit tactics and doctrine because they don't really have a choice. They aggressively isolate and bypass strongpoints in order to keep momentum up on attacks. The Entente on the hand end up leveraging their massive production capacity in shells and tanks and stuff to throw absolutely overwhelming force on small segments of the line and then 'bite and hold' bit by bit until they force a withdrawal to a more tenable position.
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Aug 24, 2014 00:41
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vintagepurple posted:Were there significant doctrinal differences on a tactical level on the Western Front of WW1? Were they things that the troops would've taken into account? I recall quite a few hated US troops because they could pick Germans off from further ranges with more accuracy
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Aug 24, 2014 03:03
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The American Expeditionary Force also used M1897 and M1912 trench shotguns in combat. quote:The shotguns elicited a diplomatic protest from the German government, claiming the shotguns caused excessive injury, and that any troops found in possession of them would be subject to execution. The US Government rejected the claims, and threatened reprisals in kind if any US troops were executed for possession of a shotgun. quote:The shotgun was also well suited for house-to-house fighting. An example of this effectiveness is an event from September 27, 1918. Sergeant Fred Lloyd, armed with a Winchester Model 1897 trench gun, single-handedly retook a German-held French village, routing 30 German soldiers. You could put a really mean bayonet on it too 
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Aug 24, 2014 03:50
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Does anyone know why Sir John French was so hell bent on getting out of France during the first month of the war? The Guns of August makes it sound like he lost his nerve and didn't want to stake his reputation on losing the entirety of the BEF on what he saw was a futile war, was that pretty much why? And how did he stay in command so long, seriously he sounded so incompetent that I was amazed by the references of him being in command well into 1915.Azipod posted:The American Expeditionary Force also used M1897 and M1912 trench shotguns in combat. A bayonet on a shotgun is one of those things you'd think would be redundant.
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Aug 24, 2014 04:18
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You might run out of buckshot but you never run out of stab.
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Aug 24, 2014 04:21
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SocketWrench posted:I recall quite a few hated US troops because they could pick Germans off from further ranges with more accuracy Was this because of any superiority of rifle quality or just because the US had more marksmen since at the time we had more people shooting things for the pot? Or is it bunkum altogether?
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Aug 24, 2014 04:49
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Was this because of any superiority of rifle quality or just because the US had more marksmen since at the time we had more people shooting things for the pot? SocketWrench is talking about artillery. Edit: Sorry, rereading his post it's ambiguous. Legendary Ptarmigan fucked around with this message at 04:57 on Aug 24, 2014 |
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Aug 24, 2014 04:55
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Nude Bog Lurker posted:Weimar Germany was more than capable of meeting her reparation payment obligations and chose to serially default as soon as she could get away with it as part of a wider strategy to undo the Versailles settlement and restore Germany's rightful place as Master of Europe. It is left as an exercise for the reader as to whether this worked out as planned. It should also be kept in mind that Britain and America didn't really care, and were more than happy to let Germany get away with that, because most non-French people thought the reparations bill was stupid in the first place. Don Gato posted:Does anyone know why Sir John French was so hell bent on getting out of France during the first month of the war? The Guns of August makes it sound like he lost his nerve and didn't want to stake his reputation on losing the entirety of the BEF on what he saw was a futile war, was that pretty much why? And how did he stay in command so long, seriously he sounded so incompetent that I was amazed by the references of him being in command well into 1915.
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Aug 24, 2014 05:59
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Legendary Ptarmigan posted:SocketWrench is talking about artillery. Riflemen actually, because we had more natural marksman in our backwoods wild west hell hole. Our guys could pick Germans off before they had range to return fire. Our rifle was about equal to anything the troops at the time were using. That combined with American troops being daring and reckless made a profound impression. Our artillery, on the other hand in WWI was stated as needing vast improvement by captured German officers. SocketWrench fucked around with this message at 07:34 on Aug 24, 2014 |
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Aug 24, 2014 07:29
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Can you cite a source on that? I've read a bit on the Great War (The Guns of August and not much else) and never heard that particular tidbit. v: Can you cite a source on your request for a source? Grand Prize Winner fucked around with this message at 07:48 on Aug 24, 2014 |
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Aug 24, 2014 07:37
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SocketWrench posted:Riflemen actually, because we had more natural marksman in our backwoods wild west hell hole. Our guys could pick Germans off before they had range to return fire. Our rifle was about equal to anything the troops at the time were using. That combined with American troops being daring and reckless made a profound impression. You're gonna need a source. That does not pass any sort of smell test.
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Aug 24, 2014 07:42
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100 Years Ago: Horrendously outnumbered, the BEF is doing the only thing it can, bravely running away. 80,000 men are directly in the way of an entire German army, intelligence having initially believed that they were facing rather less than that. Not only must they retreat, but they have to do so while both Corps keep in touch with each other, and II Corps maintains some sort of contact with the French 5th Army, to avoid leaving any gaps for the enemy to exploit. It's easy to sit in judgement over French's apparent loss of nerve after 100 years of hindsight; but at the time, all he's receiving are reports of Germans further than the eye can see (when reports can reach him), his ally's carefully-laid plans to take the offensive are in tatters, he can't properly resupply his men because they're going backwards too fast, and if his flank is turned that's certainly the end of his force and very possibly the end of the war. He's also had to take the (entirely correct) decision to evacuate GHQ from Le Cateau after a single day of fighting and is retreating along with everyone else. He's also doing something he's never been prepared to do, in commanding a concentrated continental body of men; the entire Army was designed to police an empire, operating at battalion and company level, conducting small, widely-flung operations. He's also just had a stroke of very bad luck when his friend Grierson, the commander of II Corps, died suddenly on a train a week earlier. Even worse, Kitchener then ignored his advice and (in full knowledge of what he was doing) appointed Horace Smith-Dorrien to replace Grierson, a man who he both disliked and distrusted, and who is sending his own private dispatches to the King. In that context, I think it becomes a lot easier to understand why French poo poo his breeches so completely. In 1914 he was the only serious candidate for CinC, and this undoubtedly played a major part in why he kept the job for so long. He'd been promoted to field marshal, he had the right political connections, he'd served as Inspector-General of the Army and as CIGS, he hadn't embarrassed himself in South Africa, he'd been directing the Army's annual manoeuvres, and some plans had already been laid on the assumption that he would be appointed. If you're looking for fault here, you must look past individuals and start to examine the entire system.
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Aug 24, 2014 09:21
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Yeah, I'd echo the sentiment that perhaps most crucially of all (and easy to forget): the BEF was effectively wiped out in 1914. It's understandable that the guy watching the destruction of the entire army he was responsible for would suffer crushing nerves. Nobody really blames Lundendorff for having a nervous breakdown in the Hundred days offensive.
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Aug 24, 2014 10:22
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I've been reading Storm of Steel and it seems there's a lot of complaining about the British using particularly brittle rifle ammunition that fragments and causes lots of wounds that way. I thought that sort of thing was already banned by one of the conventions regulating weapons so does anyone know if that was on purpose or an accident?
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Aug 24, 2014 11:20
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Can you cite a source on that? I've read a bit on the Great War (The Guns of August and not much else) and never heard that particular tidbit. I won't argue, you guys can call bullshit to it. Read it in the Men-at-war series a decade ago There is this though, which I found interesting http://mentalfloss.com/article/57121/42-quotes-germans-about-american-troops-after-world-war-i SocketWrench fucked around with this message at 11:35 on Aug 24, 2014 |
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Aug 24, 2014 11:27
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SocketWrench posted:I won't argue, you guys can call bullshit to it. Read it in the Men-at-war series a decade ago A source or an additional professional opinion from our MilHist experts would be cool, because I would not have expected to see significant differences in that regard with most of the killing done by artillery and machine guns during the time the Americans participated in WW1. SavageGentleman fucked around with this message at 11:44 on Aug 24, 2014 |
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Aug 24, 2014 11:39
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It sounds like a huge generalization, but US didn't have manpower problems rest had. I imagine other armies stopped caring about eyesight or physique of their recruits well before 1918.
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Aug 24, 2014 11:41
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alex314 posted:It sounds like a huge generalization, but US didn't have manpower problems rest had. I imagine other armies stopped caring about eyesight or physique of their recruits well before 1918. Also as far as I remember accuracy was much less a problem than the willingness to fire at an enemy in general. According to this book (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0316330116/warcatslair), even in WW2, only 15-20 percent of the soldiers actually took a shot when they had the chance to kill an enemy soldier, often not shooting or intentionally missing the enemy. This rate increased with the changes in military training and warfare, but I assume that WW1 soldiers had similar problems (or worse) with going for the killing shot as in WW2. SavageGentleman fucked around with this message at 11:55 on Aug 24, 2014 |
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Aug 24, 2014 11:50
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:You're gonna need a source. That does not pass any sort of smell test. It sounds a lot like our own national narrative. And Germany and Austria have a long, proud tradition of civilian shooting as well--hunting, gun clubs, etc. Although one of the modern German historians probably knows more about that than I do. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 11:57 on Aug 24, 2014 |
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Aug 24, 2014 11:54
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Weren't those clubs more of an upper class-ish type thing? Sure the officers might have been high enough to enjoy the sport, but the typical German poo poo stomper likely had far less time to devote to such a luxury
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Aug 24, 2014 12:08
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The thing is that the majority of troops wont be expert marksmen. I've heard the same thing about the American Civil war and confederate troops. The majority of soldiers are going to come from cities, or don't hunt for living. The "Backwoods Marksman Soldier" thing is mostly propaganda.
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Aug 24, 2014 12:17
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SavageGentleman posted:Also as far as I remember accuracy was much less a problem than the willingness to fire at an enemy in general. According to this book (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0316330116/warcatslair), even in WW2, only 15-20 percent of the soldiers actually took a shot when they had the chance to kill an enemy soldier, often not shooting or intentionally missing the enemy. This rate increased with the changes in military training and warfare, but I assume that WW1 soldiers had similar problems (or worse) with going for the killing shot as in WW2.
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Aug 24, 2014 12:25
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SocketWrench posted:Riflemen actually, because we had more natural marksman in our backwoods wild west hell hole. Our guys could pick Germans off before they had range to return fire. Our rifle was about equal to anything the troops at the time were using. That combined with American troops being daring and reckless made a profound impression. This was anything but the norm for US soldiers in WW1. The vast majority arrived in France having never fired an entire clip from their rifles; the standard clip for an M1917 Enfield had five rounds but the US Army considered shooting only three in training to be sufficient. Nevertheless there was a movement within the officer corps, led by General Pershing himself, that favoured accurate fire and mobility over massed fire and slow movement. Whilst this is now the norm it wouldn't have been particularly useful in trench warfare, but by the time the Americans arrived there were more opportunities to test these theories. Captain Sam Woodfill may have been the person the article you read was specifically mentioning, not the US Army as a whole. He was indeed a natural marksman, a hunter, and picked off several Germans from distance (and in one case only shooting at a belltower where he expected them to be, and hitting them all) which won him the Medal of Honor. The proponents of marksmanship training held him up as an example of their theories and largely blew his acts out of proportion, claiming that every American could do what he did which is clearly false. The US Army did put a far greater emphasis on marksmanship after WW1 but so did everyone else; and prior to that nobody had done so including the US. Here's a good page about him. He was awarded the highest millitary awards from three seperate countries but because he came up from the ranks his pension was a Sergeants salary and he died almost in poverty 
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Aug 24, 2014 13:09
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duckmaster posted:Here's a good page about him. He was awarded the highest millitary awards from three seperate countries but because he came up from the ranks his pension was a Sergeants salary and he died almost in poverty Being a hero and ending up in poverty isn't really all that unusual. Earn two Legions of Honor, a Croix de Guerre, Distinguished Order of St Michael, Cross of St George, and more, and end up raising a daughter and 3 adopted kids with a cleaning lady's pay.
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Aug 24, 2014 13:27
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SavageGentleman posted:Also as far as I remember accuracy was much less a problem than the willingness to fire at an enemy in general. According to this book (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0316330116/warcatslair), even in WW2, only 15-20 percent of the soldiers actually took a shot when they had the chance to kill an enemy soldier, often not shooting or intentionally missing the enemy. This sounds like SLA Marshall's debunked claims, is that it? It gets brought up a lot but it annoys me when too oftens the findings of one poorly conducted survey of one battle in the Pacific are generalized to be applicable to all soldiers in all armies in all wars.
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Aug 24, 2014 13:48
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SocketWrench posted:Weren't those clubs more of an upper class-ish type thing? Sure the officers might have been high enough to enjoy the sport, but the typical German poo poo stomper likely had far less time to devote to such a luxury Oh god no, entire towns would hold shooting festivals complete with really large scale competitions. It might not have been something that your absolute poorest, most desperate citizen would be able to afford but it was also something that would be within reach financially of anyone who wasn't in utter poverty. Germany has a long and rich tradition of sport shooting that rivals the US's. SavageGentleman posted:Also as far as I remember accuracy was much less a problem than the willingness to fire at an enemy in general. According to this book (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0316330116/warcatslair), even in WW2, only 15-20 percent of the soldiers actually took a shot when they had the chance to kill an enemy soldier, often not shooting or intentionally missing the enemy. This rate increased with the changes in military training and warfare, but I assume that WW1 soldiers had similar problems (or worse) with going for the killing shot as in WW2. A lot of that "only 15-20 percent did any shooting" is pretty highly questionable. It derives primarily from SLA Marshall's Men Against Fire which is by far his most influential work and his most terribly problematic at the same time. His research methodology was really, really loving awful when it came to actual numbers. It's a drat shame because all the rest of the stuff he did is really neat. He had this huge interview project with German officers which is virtually unpublished today. There are a bunch of articles and I think a monograph or two that pretty strongly refute a lot of his work in Men Against Fire now. It's been a long time since I bothered myself about the controversy, but it should be fairly trivial to track down the dissenting commentaries if you have access to a good library. Baracula posted:I've been reading Storm of Steel and it seems there's a lot of complaining about the British using particularly brittle rifle ammunition that fragments and causes lots of wounds that way. I thought that sort of thing was already banned by one of the conventions regulating weapons so does anyone know if that was on purpose or an accident? I would be very careful with anything that Jünger wrote. Do you happen to know what edition you have? Since I'm assuming it's in English any indication what edition the translator used? That book went through a LOT of editions in German and was edited so many goddamned times for political reasons that you get some widely different texts. I'd take anything that's bitching about someone on the other side doing something nasty with a big grain of salt. SocketWrench posted:Riflemen actually, because we had more natural marksman in our backwoods wild west hell hole. Our guys could pick Germans off before they had range to return fire. Our rifle was about equal to anything the troops at the time were using. That combined with American troops being daring and reckless made a profound impression. I'm also going to call this into question, but more specifically the artillery half of it. It doesn't make since that German officers would single out US artillery as needing vast improvement, as we were using almost all french guns and french ammo. Maybe they meant that our artillery crews were poorly trained? Even that doesn't seem like much of a statement, as artillery that's been doing its job non-stop for 4 years (i.e. French, English, German) is going to be enormously better than a peacetime rump force that was just swollen to wartime numbers with regular citizens. The other thing is that I'm naturally leery of any kind of statement that implies vast, over-arching "national characteristics" for good or for ill. It's just one of those things that's almost always rooted in stereotype, prejudice, and propaganda rather than any kind of real research or investigation. Take this as a very quick and dirty example using just google-grade 'research': the US was about 54% rural in 1910. In Germany it was about 40%. Meanwhile the Russian population was about 85% rural in 1914 (Imperial Russian censuses are incredibly irregular, 1914 is the best year to compare western 1910 data to). By the "rural hilljacks more used to using a gun to hunt with" school of thought on superior marksmanship, the US and Germany should be nearly indistinguishable with the US maybe having a slight edge, and the Russian army should have been full of deadly crack shots. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 14:44 on Aug 24, 2014 |
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Aug 24, 2014 14:30
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Although, there are stories from the 30YW about rural people using fowling pieces to very good effect, not only because they had practice in shooting them but because those weapons were usually better than muskets. From C.H. Firth's Cromwell's Army, fourth edition, 87 quote:In 1626 two regiments of Imperialist horse were defeated by the Duke of Brunswick; the remnant took refuge in a wood where they were surrounded and hunted down by the country people. The situation where all peasants are the enemies of all soldiers is, of course, normal. You might have friendly cities, but there is no such thing as a friendly territory. Unless it's like your personal fief or something, a territory is what you move through and gain resources from, not really "hold." Everyone there hates you and will torture you to death if you go anywhere in small enough groups. The danger from civilians plus the lack of any real "front line" means that everything is transported in armed convoys, which is interesting to think about. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 14:49 on Aug 24, 2014 |
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Aug 24, 2014 14:44
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The best guess I can make at the 'shooting at/hitting guys at long range' is that in general there wasn't much concern for ammunition shortages with the US troops after D-Day. At times sure, but overall the bottleneck was more fuel than ammo, so that meant that they were far more likely to pop shots off at solitary targets, esp. artillery.
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Aug 24, 2014 14:47
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Taerkar posted:The best guess I can make at the 'shooting at/hitting guys at long range' is that in general there wasn't much concern for ammunition shortages with the US troops after D-Day. At times sure, but overall the bottleneck was more fuel than ammo, so that meant that they were far more likely to pop shots off at solitary targets, esp. artillery. We discussed this a couple pages ago, but in WW2 the US was at the end of a logistical train that reached back across an ocean several thousand miles. In WW1 we didn't even bother for the most part, choosing instead to just mooch off the French for most of the really heavy stuff. The Germans, meanwhile, had direct overland access to their industrial heartland. Now, if we're talking WW2 what the exact logistical situation at the front is for the Germans is contingent on way too much poo poo to be able to call with certainty at any given place and at any given time without sources that speak directly towards it. At some places and in some times units could be almost completely out of supply due to the awful disruptions that the train network was suffering and the depredations of roaming tactical air on any vehicle convoys caught out during the day. At other places and other times they might have more than they could possible ever shoot or even think about using, especially once pushed back to the German border. Meanwhile each US shell has to be put on a ship, transported to England, shipped again across the channel, and trucked to the front. While they might have never experienced shortages that precluded the use of the guns, it also isn't a situation that encourages wanton waste of ammo. The whole notion of the US fighting a "rich man's war" where we're just plastering everything backwards and forwards with ordinance rather than taking it via infantry assault or whatever just smells like the sort of soldier's steriotype you're prone to getting if you base your work entirely on interviews. That sort of stuff gets cited and re-cited and half the time you trace it all back and it boils down to one quote attributed to one old guy. You'd be amazed at how much people "know" about how these wars were fought and how each side typically behaved is ultimately based on the flimsiest of actual evidence.
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Aug 24, 2014 15:02
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I made an effortpost about SLA Marshall years ago; while I have the same issues with his methodology etc, I tend to think that the ~20% can only fire effectively is probably fairly accurate.
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Aug 24, 2014 15:30
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Cyrano4747 posted:I would be very careful with anything that Jünger wrote. Do you happen to know what edition you have? Since I'm assuming it's in English any indication what edition the translator used? That book went through a LOT of editions in German and was edited so many goddamned times for political reasons that you get some widely different texts. I'd take anything that's bitching about someone on the other side doing something nasty with a big grain of salt. I don't know about edition... It's a fairly recent penguin classics thing.
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Aug 24, 2014 15:50
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bewbies posted:I made an effortpost about SLA Marshall years ago; while I have the same issues with his methodology etc, I tend to think that the ~20% can only fire effectively is probably fairly accurate. Do you have any knowledge of any more recent scholarship on that issue? I know that the original work done in men under fire was the impetus towards a huge shift in how the US military trained riflemen, so I imagine that some kind of tracking and ongoing study must have been part of that. I'm having a bit of a sense of deja vu - I'm pretty sure you and I had a similar conversation when you did your first effort post. As I recall one of the things we talked about was the atmosphere that Marshall was operating under as well; even if he was tweaking the gently caress out of his data it was basically to give various reform-minded officers in the Pentagon something to point to in order to get infantry training shifted from the cluster gently caress that it was before the war to something more closely resembling what we had now. A lot of the training they did in the 20s was great if you wanted to be on the team going to the Camp Perry National Matches that year, kind of poo poo if you were actually trying to train guys to use a gun in combat.
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Aug 24, 2014 15:59
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SocketWrench posted:Weren't those clubs more of an upper class-ish type thing? Sure the officers might have been high enough to enjoy the sport, but the typical German poo poo stomper likely had far less time to devote to such a luxury Schützenvereine are something for the common man. There's still lots of them on the countryside. If they have a brass band, they will also have a Schützenverein. That doesn't mean though that they shoot high powered rifles there. Most of the time it's air pistols/rifles, crossbows or 22s. Cyrano4747 posted:I would be very careful with anything that Jünger wrote. Do you happen to know what edition you have? Since I'm assuming it's in English any indication what edition the translator used? That book went through a LOT of editions in German and was edited so many goddamned times for political reasons that you get some widely different texts. I'd take anything that's bitching about someone on the other side doing something nasty with a big grain of salt. It's also in the German edition that I own. Power Khan fucked around with this message at 17:35 on Aug 24, 2014 |
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Aug 24, 2014 17:21
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