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So, 75 years ago began World War II. At 0440 local time, 29 Ju-87 Stukas of the Luftwaffe's 76th Squadron bombard Wielun, a town of 16 000 inhabitants, 40% of them Jewish. It's the first attack of the largest conflict in recorded history. The town is completely defenceless, there are no military units in it and it has no AA emplacements. Why hit Wielun? The only possible reason seems to be a terror attack, as the town not only has no military significance or army presence, but also its sole industrial facility is a small sugar processing plant. This is nothing new for the Germans - the 76. includes some of the former Legion Condor pilots who had bombarded Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, and the order to strike comes from general Manfred von Richthofen, who was in charge of that attack. The inbound bombers were spotted by the Poles, but the townspeople ignored the air raid alert, thinking it was just a drill. They were wrong. The first bombs hit the (clearly marked) All Saints Hospital, killing 32. The entire town centre is in flames, and seeing that, the Germans turn to bombarding the west part of Wielun, then return to base. Half an hour later, they send another wave of bombers to destroy the east side of town. Oskar Dinort, the leader of the strike force, personally drops the last bomb straight into the market square and later gloats about it in Nazi press. The bombing of Wielun lasts nearly 10 hours. It used 380 bombs totalling at 46 tons of explosives. The death toll reached twelve to thirteen hundred civilians, including children and hospital patients. 90 percent of the town lay in ruins. The Germans have reported encountering no enemies. Around the same time the Germans also bomb a rail bridge at Tczew. At 0445, the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein, officially on a ceremonial visit, begins shelling the Polish Military Transit Depot on the Westerplatte peninsula in Danzig. The barrage is followed by an attack of 3000 German soldiers and policemen. The 200-strong garrison of Westerplatte (covertly and illegally reinforced in the months preceding the war) under major Henryk Sucharski repels that advance. Around 5 AM, the Germans attempt to take over the Polish Post Office in Danzig. The assault, aided by three heavy armoured cars, is met with fire from the workers inside. Further attacks fail to dislodge the defenders, forcing the Germans to bring more and more assets in - mostly sappers, artillery and explosives. Only after pumping the building basements full of burning gasoline do the Germans force the Polish to surrender. 38 of the surviving defenders are later shot as unlawful combatants. At 0530, junior lieutenant Stanislaw Skalski downs the first German plane loss of WWII - a Henschel Hs-126 recon aircraft. The crew are taken prisoner. At 0700, the Poles suffer their first pilot casualty when captain M. Medwecki is shot down in his outdated PZL P.11c fighter during take-off at Krakow's Balice airport. At dawn, Germans drop first bombs onto Warsaw. Further attacks are repelled by the capital's AA guns and the planes of the 54 craft-strong Pursuit Brigade, who down 14 Luftwaffe planes on that day. Other cities bombed on the first day of the war include Katowice, Krakow, Torun, Gdynia, Tczew, Grodno and several others. Poznan is first bombed around 1200 hours. In the morning, president Moscicki introduces a state of war within the country. By 1000 hours, German ground operations are already in full swing and begin to encounter stiffer resistance. At Mokra, near Czestochowa, the Volhynia Cavalry Brigade of the Lodz Army and an armoured train repel the German 4th Panzer Division. The main German thrust is now clearly aimed at Lodz and Warsaw, with Poznan Army (protecting Greater Poland) remaining completely unengaged in combat. The Modlin Army is starting its first battle at Mlawa. In Silesia, Boy Scouts and veterans of the Polish independence uprisings from the end of WWI support the regular army. Just before noon, the German armoured wedge pushing to the village of Pruszcz encounters a 12 kilometres wide gap in the Polish defence and threatens the rear of the two Polish divisions in the Danzig corridor. The Polish counter-attack is poorly coordinated and fails, giving Heinz Guderian's XIX Panzer Corps an open road to East Prussia. This threatens to create a pocket around the Poles in the Tucholskie Woods. The 1st Regiment of the Frontier Defence Corps in southern Poland is pushed away by the XVIII Panzer Corps, endangering the flank of Krakow Army. In the afternoon, the 10th Cavalry Brigade (one of the two Polish armoured brigades) under colonel Stanislaw Maczek is sent to remedy the problem. They repel the German attack near Jordanow, but the pressure to the flank continues to mount. Around 1800, German Stukas attack the minelayer ORP Gryf, while the Polish destroyer squadron (ORP Grom, Blyskawica and Burza) perform Operation Peking - the planned withdrawal to Great Britain. By evening, they reach Rosyth, near Edinburgh. Around 7 PM, two squadrons of the 18th Pomeranian Uhlan Regiment charge the German positions at Krojanty. In doing so, they deny Guderian's corps an important railway junction at Chojnice. An Italian war correspondent makes up a sabre-drawn attack against German tanks, which he will admit was bullshit in 1998. German propaganda quickly latch on to the idea, giving rise to a well-known myth of the September Campaign. The Germans commence Operation Tannenberg, i.e. planned and organised executions of civilians by Selbstschutz fifth column units and Einsatzgruppen. The Poles intern 15 000 Germans living in Poland. They are summoned to police posts and prisons and put under guard. They do not know what is going to happen to them yet. Antoni Guzy, arrested by the Polish police after detonating a bomb at the Tarnow railway station a few days earlier, confesses to having planted the explosives at the behest of a few Abwehr agents. He claims deep regret that his actions killed 21 people and injured 35 and ascertains that his motive was nationalist, not monetary. He did not survive the war, but his exact fate remains unknown.
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Sep 2, 2014 00:00
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Extra History now does World War One!
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Sep 2, 2014 04:45
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Tevery Best posted:Around 1800, German Stukas attack the minelayer ORP Gryf, while the Polish destroyer squadron (ORP Grom, Blyskawica and Burza) perform Operation Peking - the planned withdrawal to Great Britain. By evening, they reach Rosyth, near Edinburgh. Holy crap that's one uh hasty retreat.
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Sep 2, 2014 05:33
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Sort of chilling how the first major violent act of WW2, the utter brutal bombing of a defenceless Polish town sets the tone right away this conflict is going to be a horrifying slog especially for those non combatants on the Nazi poo poo list.
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Sep 2, 2014 05:36
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Frostwerks posted:Holy crap that's one uh hasty retreat.
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Sep 2, 2014 06:04
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Arquinsiel posted:They had actually started moving at around 2PM on August 29th. It was a two day journey. That's much more believable.
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Sep 2, 2014 06:20
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Calling it Tannenberg is an interesting touch...
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Sep 2, 2014 06:47
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To clarify, I have no intention of parroting Trin Tragula and his wonderful posts on WWI (keep on the good work, man!). Mostly I had just found a few articles and figured I'd post the brief.
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Sep 2, 2014 07:24
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AATREK CURES KIDS posted:War of the Worlds has a brilliant chapter where the Martians try to cross the English Channel and a naval ram destroys three of their fighting machines. A fast-moving ship ramming the enemy was the most powerful weapon in existence at that time, and modern adaptations have always fallen short of the story because the Martians need some kind of immunity to nuclear weapons for the plot to work. It's so much better when the naval ram is the best weapon we have, and a single one destroys 1/17th of the Martian invasion force, but after they learn to avoid open water the war goes right back to being hopeless for humanity. HMS Thunder Child hero of humanity  It was almost certainly based on HMS Polyphemous, launched in 1881. Wells wrote the book from 1895 until publication in 1898, so at the time there were a lot of people betting a lot of money that these new small craft, and their torpedoes, would be able to counter battleships for a fraction of the cost. Although it evidently did not render large all-gun craft obsolete, at the time it could be argued that it was a cutting-edge weapons system. This is key because although it is able to bring two tripods down, it is ultimately defeated by a third one. From Wells' (British) perspective, it being a naval craft is also obviously important. The best humanity could muster is ultimately unable to do more than put a small dent in the invasion.  Better than a heat ray   This theme is kept up, the infamous Orson Welles 1938 radio 1938 radio broadcast replaces the Thunder Child with the top weapon system that the US had available at the time, a B-17, also representing the growing importance of air-power. It is equally ineffective. In the 1950s film, a YB-49 drops a nuclear bomb on the tripods, which also doesn't do anything. The Jeff Wayne musical, although released in the late 70s, was set in the original time. However, in a small patch of revisionism, the torpedo ram is upgraded to a Canopus-class battleship (this is also updated in the 1999? videogame).  The Spielberg version has a scene in which a bunch of Abrams and Apaches are wiped out just outside the view of the characters, but this is sort of ruined in the completely horrible ending (not only just limited to this) anyways when ARE TROOPS are able to defeat the martians because their shields are down. e: 
Ghost of Mussolini fucked around with this message at 08:54 on Sep 2, 2014 |
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Sep 2, 2014 08:50
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Trin Trangula, did I read that wrong or did the GUNS got awarded the medals? I mean, considering cannon used to get names, this wouldn't surprise me.
Azran fucked around with this message at 09:13 on Sep 2, 2014 |
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Sep 2, 2014 08:55
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Are we still talking about guns? Because it's time to say a few things about gun safety. 7 August, 1625. Somewhere in Southern Germany or Switzerland. At roughly eight PM, as Fendrich Hieronymus Sebastian Schutzer and his friends--including our bro, Julius Caesar van Breitenbach, whose descendant will also join a Saxon army in the 1680s--were finishing supper, Schutzer was shooting his pistols out the window, like you do. At his direction, two of his eating companions followed him with their long guns and a drummer accompanied them by beating his drum with each volley. Before he did this, there is the lovely touch that he had forgotten his winding key and sent his servant to get it and bring it up. A soldier named Andreas Gauning had put it in his room, it turns out. When Schutzer finished one set of shots, he loaded one of his pistols again, but when he leveled it out the window, it didn't fire, so he wound it again. Either when he pulled the hammer back or shortly before he made to pull the hammer back, the pistol went off, hitting Hanns Heinrich Tauerling "through the head into the right eye and directly out the back." (These people give very precise descriptions of injuries.) Sadly, this is probably the best act of marksmanship Schutzer will accomplish in his life. In an interesting illustration of how casually everyone took this act up to the part where it killed a guy, one of the witnesses said later that he didn't know exactly how Tauerling got shot because he had been talking to someone else at the time. But he saw Tauerling fall, and thought the tube had exploded. Schutzer fell upon the dead man screaming. He tried to lift him up and called to him. "Would to God I lay in your place," he said, and begged the witnesses to shoot him or stab him, "so he could abandon the pain of his heart, because the one who was dead by him whom he loved as himself and had received nothing evil, except suddenly he was shot, so he desired no longer to live on the earth." The witnesses made it very clear that Schutzer and Tauerling had nothing against each other, and the regimental court decided that it was, in fact, an accident. Since this was due to carelessness, Schutzer was not punished with his life. However, he was still held responsible, and had to take an oath: "I swear by God the Almighty and by the praiseworthy Imperial German War Law that there was to him from me no hate or envy either against him or between us. Except it was the case that the pistol went off against my will. So it was, as God help me, and his holy pain and suffering AMEN." Furthermore, since he was an officer, Schutzer should handle his weapons more responsibly, because it will further the aims of His Grace The Graff von Mansfeld, Oberst and proprietor of this regiment. The Fendrich was deprived of his office for nine days and remained in his quarters under arrest. Finally, since he had payed for his crime, he was called free once again and put back in his Fendel as an honorable cavalier. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 09:30 on Sep 2, 2014 |
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Sep 2, 2014 09:12
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You lied to us, HEGEL. < > There is no gun safety in your post.
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Sep 2, 2014 09:23
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my dad posted:You lied to us, HEGEL. < Edit: I think I can hear the exasperated sigh from almost 400 years away. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 09:46 on Sep 2, 2014 |
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Sep 2, 2014 09:25
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All this talk of Wells reminds me of what a massive goon he really was. He in fact developed a miniature wargame that he called Little Wars, first published in a magazine and then as a booklet in 1913.   You can read it at Project Gutenberg: Little Wars: a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books  Wells did have respectable even if in hindsight a tad naive intentions, though. And I must say that I agree with his point: wargames can be very effective at demonstrating what a horrible waste of human lives wars are. Unfortunately the thought of confining Europe's warmongers and hotheated patriots to playing with toy soldiers alone didn't work. Little Wars posted:VI
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Sep 2, 2014 10:03
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100 Years Ago: For most, the final day of the Great Retreat. After one final 20-odd mile slog on the hottest day of the year, the BEF reaches Meaux, on the River Marne. It has marched some 200 miles in 13 days, fighting innumerable rearguard actions along the way, and by that indispensable combination of good luck and good judgement, is not yet out of the fight. They have incurred 14,409 casualties, from an initial strength of 80,000; 18% of their total strength, and the losses have fallen extremely disproportionately upon II Corps. The precise details of casualty reports from other nations are much more frequently argued and haggled over, but ~200,000 German and ~325,000 French are enduring estimates. If prisoners are excluded, German and French casualties have surpassed those of the War of 1870. Meanwhile, the Battle of Galicia enters its final phase with a major Russian offensive at Rava-Ruska. Today, the town is in western Ukraine. The more things change! quote:Rifleman Gale, 1st Rifle Brigade [at Penchard, three miles from Meaux] As the battalion retires, its men hear explosions in the distance. The Engineers start destroying the bridges over the Marne. Azran posted:Trin Tragula, did I read that wrong or did the GUNS got awarded the medals? I mean, considering cannon used to get names, this wouldn't surprise me. No, they went to the chaps. I've found the full list of gongs, it's bloody large for such a small action (Le Cateau and Mons, both many orders of magnitude larger, only saw five and four VCs respectively). VCs were awarded to Captain Bradbury (posthumously), Battery Sergeant-Major Dorrell and Sgt Nelson of L Battery RAH; those two were subsequently commissioned from the ranks. The DSM and DSO (the not-quite-a-VC, Conduct Medals for men and Service Orders for officers) went to Maj Sclater-Booth (commander L Battery), Lt Lamb (commander Queen's Bays machine gun troop), and Privates Goodchild and Ellicock from that troop. The French, never shy of giving gongs to their allies, additionally decorated the Queen's Bays' Lt-Col Wilberforce, Lamb and Lt Heyderman, and Lt Gifford from L Battery, with the Legion d'honneur; and the Medalle Militaire for Cpl Short (Queen's Bays), and Gunner Darbyshire and Driver Short from L Battery. 2-for-1 in Aisle F!
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Sep 2, 2014 11:58
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Tevery Best posted:So, 75 years ago began World War II. Wolfram Von Richtofen, the Red Baron's cousin.
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Sep 2, 2014 12:12
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Ghost of Mussolini posted:
Don't forget that in _Independence Day_, which is pretty much a remake anyway (aliens invade, we greet them in peace but they blow us up anyway, our weapons are useless against them, including the atomic bomb, and then they're defeated by a virus), another Northrup flying wing drops another ineffectual nuke on them.
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Sep 2, 2014 15:53
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St_Ides posted:Wolfram Von Richtofen, the Red Baron's cousin. Yes, I know, it was 1 AM and I mistyped. Sorry.
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Sep 2, 2014 15:54
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HEY GAL posted:Are we still talking about guns? Because it's time to say a few things about gun safety. How drunk were they?
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Sep 2, 2014 17:43
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Phanatic posted:Don't forget that in _Independence Day_, which is pretty much a remake anyway (aliens invade, we greet them in peace but they blow us up anyway, our weapons are useless against them, including the atomic bomb, and then they're defeated by a virus), another Northrup flying wing drops another ineffectual nuke on them. The thing to remember about The War of the Worlds is that it's pretty much British colonial angst boiled down and crystalized. It's basically the colonizers imagining the situation from the other end of the stick, being the poor sons of bitches who are confronted by a foreign, implacable enemy outfitted with weaponry that they can barely conceive of, completely dead set on taking their land and resources. It's fitting that 1898 was the year of both the initial publication of Wells's work as well as the tragically lopsided Battle of Omdurman, where the British Army killed an estimated 10,000 Sudanese rebels with more or less early WW1 weapons (bolt action rifles, artillery, and maxim MGs) for the loss of 47 dead. Whatever happens, we have got The Maxim gun, and they have not Other parallels worth pointing out are what eventually takes down the Martians, namely disease. Tropical diseases were a constant nuisance to English forces abroad and the late Victorian public was increasingly aware of and concerned with public hygiene and the potential for mass disease outbreaks.
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Sep 2, 2014 17:45
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Pellisworth posted:How drunk were they?
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Sep 2, 2014 18:05
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HEY GAL posted:No idea, but probably comparatively sober/less drunk, because when alcohol is a mitigating circumstance the accused will usually mention it quite naively. "Why did you do that?" "I was so drunk I have no idea." What sort of moral weight is attached to that kind of thing? If someone gets blackout drunk and does something crazy, awful, destructive, etc. are they held accountable the same as if they were sober? Does the drink explain or mitigate the behavior in the eyes of the court? Does it compound the crime because it's their fault for getting drunk in the first place?
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Sep 2, 2014 18:16
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Nenonen posted:All this talk of Wells reminds me of what a massive goon he really was. He in fact developed a miniature wargame that he called Little Wars, first published in a magazine and then as a booklet in 1913.
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Sep 2, 2014 18:18
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SeanBeansShako posted:Sort of chilling how the first major violent act of WW2, the utter brutal bombing of a defenceless Polish town sets the tone right away this conflict is going to be a horrifying slog especially for those non combatants on the Nazi poo poo list. They were pretty consistent like that.
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Sep 2, 2014 18:18
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Cyrano4747 posted:What sort of moral weight is attached to that kind of thing? If someone gets blackout drunk and does something crazy, awful, destructive, etc. are they held accountable the same as if they were sober? Does the drink explain or mitigate the behavior in the eyes of the court? Does it compound the crime because it's their fault for getting drunk in the first place? I've read an Articles of War where it mentioned drunkenness as a bad thing, but since literally everyone gets drunk routinely and habitually I have no idea what was up with that. I read a case where it mentioned that the guy had violated that Article, but since he also violated the one about getting angry at people from different lands serving in your regiment and the one about not killing anyone, I don't know if that was foremost on anyone's mind. Drunkenness might have been a mitigating circumstance in the case of a guy who attacked the dude who was drunk-sitting him and when asked whether he intended to kill him, said that since he chugged the wine ("erschnellet," hurried it down--I love these peoples' slang) he had no idea what he intended. Since the victim didn't die and the accused didn't intend to kill him, he wasn't punished as heavily as he might have been. I have not yet read a case where someone appeared in front of the regimental court for drunkenness alone. It's also so common that I'm not sure, except in exceptional cases, that anyone would even notice it as something out of the ordinary. Like the bar fight where one of the witnesses said that he had fallen asleep on a bench, woke up because he heard something (a pair of guys fighting to the death outside), but was so drunk he fell back asleep, where he remained until his wife came to get him into bed. This is given and accepted without comment. And then there are the cases, like drinking to seal oaths or "drinking brotherhood," where not drinking would be bad. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 18:35 on Sep 2, 2014 |
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Sep 2, 2014 18:31
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I have to ask. Just when did Europe sober up?
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Sep 2, 2014 19:06
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Cyrano4747 posted:The thing to remember about The War of the Worlds is that it's pretty much British colonial angst boiled down and crystalized. It's basically the colonizers imagining the situation from the other end of the stick, being the poor sons of bitches who are confronted by a foreign, implacable enemy outfitted with weaponry that they can barely conceive of, completely dead set on taking their land and resources. It's fitting that 1898 was the year of both the initial publication of Wells's work as well as the tragically lopsided Battle of Omdurman, where the British Army killed an estimated 10,000 Sudanese rebels with more or less early WW1 weapons (bolt action rifles, artillery, and maxim MGs) for the loss of 47 dead. Don't forget that invasion literature was a very popular literary genre of the late Victorian period, too. It was the Tom Clancy airport fiction of its time. Dastardly Frenchmen are building a tunnel under the Channel! A fifth column of French waiters stands ready to seize a bridgehead while an army marches in! But not to worry, the gallant British Army arrives just in the nick of time to see them off in a giant battle south of London! Also you should probably report any suspicious behavior by French waiters. While the colonial angle is no doubt the bigger theme, I can't help but feel that Orwell also wanted to write an invasion story where the good guys don't win through superior force of arms.
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Sep 2, 2014 19:12
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Spacewolf posted:I have to ask. Just when did Europe sober up? When I moved here to England from Canada I was absolutely staggered by the amount they drink here. Having gone out with them a fair few times now I'm used to it I feel like when I drink with people from NA I put them under the table like an alcoholic. So; still not completely by Canadian standards.
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Sep 2, 2014 19:14
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Spacewolf posted:I have to ask. Just when did Europe sober up? Broadly speaking? The 19th century, as part of the general Progressive push towards public health and generally improving society that you see people become really obsessed with during that time. You see temperance movements get started in England and the USA as early as the 1830s. Usually that's not really so much of a specifically anti-drink thing as it is a class based obsession with the health of the 'lower classes' and an attempt to save them from themselves. Basically middle and upper class people thought the working classes were a bunch of dirty drunks and wanted to educate them towards better lives. Later on you see them get really moralistic and just generally anti-drink, period. I know the same broad pattern also existed in Germany. This is pretty late-century, but here's a good webpage on the general history of an association against the abuse of "spiritous alcohol" - the specificity makes me suspect that beer wasn't necessarily included, although I've never confirmed this for myself. It's all in German, unfortunately, but if you throw it through Google Translate it does a half decent job of it - http://www.ak-trinken.de/galerie/Deutscher-Verein-DVgMG.html
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Sep 2, 2014 19:24
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Cyrano4747 posted:Broadly speaking? The 19th century, as part of the general Progressive push towards public health and generally improving society that you see people become really obsessed with during that time. You see temperance movements get started in England and the USA as early as the 1830s. Usually that's not really so much of a specifically anti-drink thing as it is a class based obsession with the health of the 'lower classes' and an attempt to save them from themselves. Basically middle and upper class people thought the working classes were a bunch of dirty drunks and wanted to educate them towards better lives. Later on you see them get really moralistic and just generally anti-drink, period. You're forgetting that temperance movements were prominent among socialist parties and labor unions as well (and Gorby's perestroika, but that's another story...). Alcoholism was seen as a scourge of urban industrial worker societies and as such a product of capitalism. Temperance movement was also largely a women's cause and as such became entangled with women's suffrage movement.
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Sep 2, 2014 19:50
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HEY GAL posted:No idea, but probably comparatively sober/less drunk, because when alcohol is a mitigating circumstance the accused will usually mention it quite naively. "Why did you do that?" "I was so drunk I have no idea." I'm reminded of an incident from one of Spike Milligan's war memoirs (if you haven't read them, they're amazing and you should do that); he was put into a heavy artillery regiment, seeing action at Tunisia and then Monte Cassino, where he was seriously wounded. After the fall of Tobruk, certain members of the Battery had a rather prolonged celebration. quote:Approaching are Gunners Musslewhite, Roberts and Wilson, riding donkeys and completely drunk: days later they were found in Sousse [approximately 125 miles from where they were supposed to be] with no recollection of anything.
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Sep 2, 2014 20:13
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Cyrano4747 posted:Broadly speaking? The 19th century, as part of the general Progressive push towards public health and generally improving society that you see people become really obsessed with during that time. You see temperance movements get started in England and the USA as early as the 1830s. Usually that's not really so much of a specifically anti-drink thing as it is a class based obsession with the health of the 'lower classes' and an attempt to save them from themselves. Basically middle and upper class people thought the working classes were a bunch of dirty drunks and wanted to educate them towards better lives. Later on you see them get really moralistic and just generally anti-drink, period. World War One did a lot to effect British drinking culture. Prewar it was actually a thing for workers to stop for a pint on the way to work in the morning. Restrictions imposed by Lloyd George, partly because of the U-Boat crisis and partly because he was a teetotaler (or so go some say the  beer obsessive types), killed this off and reduced the strength of beers across the board.
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Sep 2, 2014 20:28
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HEY GAL posted:Combination mace and wheellock pistol which, if you're a curiassier, is probably a good idea (they carry at least two pistols, sometimes six or something, and after they fire they can just throw them at people). This thing looks like a thing a total  badass would wield.Which means it was likely borne by some doughy noble as a symbol.
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Sep 2, 2014 21:31
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ArchangeI posted:Don't forget that invasion literature was a very popular literary genre of the late Victorian period, too. It was the Tom Clancy airport fiction of its time. Dastardly Frenchmen are building a tunnel under the Channel! A fifth column of French waiters stands ready to seize a bridgehead while an army marches in! But not to worry, the gallant British Army arrives just in the nick of time to see them off in a giant battle south of London! Also you should probably report any suspicious behavior by French waiters. HG Wells, right? In Orwell's invasion story, the "good guys" don't win.
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Sep 2, 2014 22:01
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:World War One did a lot to effect British drinking culture. Prewar it was actually a thing for workers to stop for a pint on the way to work in the morning. Restrictions imposed by Lloyd George, partly because of the U-Boat crisis and partly because he was a teetotaler (or so go some say the I have a sweet quote from some factory foreman buried in some research paper on New England industry in the mid 1800s that I wrote for my MA. 'All hands drunk. Molders all agreed to quit work and went to the beach.' Living the dream dudes. Living the dream. 
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Sep 3, 2014 03:21
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100 Years Ago A rare quiet day in the early going. With a moment to stop and think about his dispositions, General Joffre begins sacking large number of his subordinates; the most notable casualty is Lanrezac, who is replaced in charge of Fifth Army by Franchet d'Esperey, who is rather more offensively-minded than his predecessor. Some uncharitable people suggest that if the BEF had been a pair of French corps, he would have done dismissed their commander as well, or instead of canning Lanrezac. The question of Lanrezac's reputation is a Matter of Mass Debate. On the one hand he's a cowardly fat pedant who refused to engage the enemy despite ample opportunity, who retired prematurely and left his allies and comrades on either side in the lurch, who lost his head under stress, who was consistently rude and insubordinate, who caused unnecessary friction between Britain and France. On the other he's a tall, far-sighted and perceptive man who predicted exactly how hosed his army was going to be but was ignored by Joffre, who took the necessary and prudent steps to save it, who like any fighting man hated to retire but saw it was the only option, who it was not surprising if he was suffering from stress owing to the extreme situation, who could easily have folded up entirely but got his army safely back to the Marne and in condition to counter-attack. These positions are not exactly in accord, have been defended over the years with shouts and great action, and provide a great example of why I have absolutely no time for this sort of thing. It just ends up making allegedly distinguished, educated people sound like bitchy high school kids defending the leader of their clique in the cafeteria. "It's all Joe's fault! You've got to be loyal to your friends! Charlie warned Joe that this would happen!" "No he didn't! And anyway, he was rude to Joe and John! Joe was completely out of order!" Etc and anon. Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 10:43 on Sep 3, 2014 |
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Sep 3, 2014 10:40
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sullat posted:HG Wells, right? In Orwell's invasion story, the "good guys" don't win.
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Sep 3, 2014 11:08
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Spacewolf posted:I have to ask. Just when did Europe sober up? You know, this constant drinking of wine also has another reason that people tend to forget. Good luck drinking water from a well. Usually there's a cemetry and/or public cesspits nearby in cities. At the end of the 2nd siege of Vienna the wine was running low. That was almost as bad as the walls being breached.
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Sep 3, 2014 13:23
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Was the "wine as clean water" paradigm the same as beer? Low alcohol content swill, drank only because it doesn't give you the flamin' shits?
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Sep 3, 2014 14:08
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| # ? May 23, 2024 19:16 |
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The wine was watered down
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Sep 3, 2014 15:56
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