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Tomn posted:You know, all this talk about oil availability makes it seem like the greatest counterfactual of modern history would have been a bunch of dinosaurs deciding to die in different places. Has there been any other resource in history whose location and access has dictated events as much as oil has?
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Sep 29, 2014 15:38
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To stay out of too many counterfactuals, let's just look at the German/Soviet eastern front in 1941/1942. If Britain were out of the war, would the extra/freed up German forces from the western front really make that much of a difference? Isn't the Soviet manpower/industrial advantage that turned the tide in late-1942/early-1943 still present in this Britain-less scenario?
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Sep 29, 2014 16:05
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Thwomp posted:To stay out of too many counterfactuals, let's just look at the German/Soviet eastern front in 1941/1942. Another important thing, manpower and timetable wise, is that without MI-6, there is no Yugoslav coup and about a dozen third-rate divisions are now available to help garrison Russia with one or two more from Axis Yugoslavia itself.
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Sep 29, 2014 16:10
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FAUXTON posted:I wonder if a thread focused on this sort of diplomatic theorycraft would be welcomed. It would be an improvement.
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Sep 29, 2014 16:12
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Thwomp posted:To stay out of too many counterfactuals, let's just look at the German/Soviet eastern front in 1941/1942. There's way much more than freed up German forces to consider. You have a Luftwaffe that hasn't been bled through months of disadvantageous attrition with the RAF. You don't have a u-boat campaign sucking up resources. Most importantly of all, peace with the UK means the blockade vanishes and Germany can trade with the world while fighting the USSR - suddenly a whole load of resource limitation problems they historically suffered might not be so important. What if peace means that Germany gets an advantageous rate on oil from the British Empire?
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Sep 29, 2014 16:28
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Thwomp posted:To stay out of too many counterfactuals, let's just look at the German/Soviet eastern front in 1941/1942. In that scenario, the Soviets don't get British Lend-Lease Aid. It's also unlikely they would have received American Lend-Lease Aid. Firstly, if Britain was out of the war in late 1940, the Lend-Lease Act (ratified in early 1941) would probably never have been ratified. No war, no reason to give the British guns. The non-existence of the Lend-Lease Act in 1941 has ripple effects for the Soviets. The Lend-Lease Act of 1941 essentially gave FDR carte blanche when it came to handing out Lend-Lease materiel. Once the Act was passed, he could give aid to "any country whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States." That's why FDR was able to extend aid the Russians post-Barabarossa without having to slug through a reauthorization battle with Congress. Peace in 1940 meant the 1941 Lend-Lease Act wouldn't exist, which meant FDR couldn't use that legislation to help the Russians in 1941. He would have had to draft and get an entirely original Lend-Lease-like aid program passed. Politically and rhetorically, that would have been extremely difficult. Rhetorically, it would have been a hard sell. If you look at FDR's 1940 rhetoric re: aid to the Allies, much of it dealt with the issue of pre-emptive self-defense. In effect, helping the British was containing the Nazi problem on the other side of the Atlantic. If the US didn't help Britain, FDR argued, the Nazis would win in Europe, start taking over in Latin America, and threaten the United States. That logic works fine if you're dealing with a war in France and Britain, less so if you're talking about the Eastern Front. Politically, it would have been a really tough sell. The US political climate in 1940-1941 was very anti-Soviet. Americans hated Hitler more, but they were not warm on Stalin. There's a great quote from Harry Truman in June 1941 that sums up the way a lot of Americans felt: "If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don't want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances. Neither of them thinks anything of their pledged word." In 1939, 31% of Americans thought the US and Russia would fight a war within the next 25 years. Not a point of view conducive to giving the Soviets arms... Now, FDR probably could have gotten a Soviet Lend-Lease-type aid package through Congress in 1941. He had Democratic majorities in both houses and he had talented guys like James Byrnes whipping votes. But it wouldn't have been easy. Republicans were pretty unified against the idea of sending aid to Russia. Influential Republican newspaperman Robert McCormick called the Soviet Union “the greatest barbarian of modern time" and wrote that "“we are not required by our national interest to join hands with a system of government which professes undying contempt for everything we regard as necessary in our way of living.” And there were Democrats like Truman who weren't hot on the idea of of helping the Russians. Bottom line, giving aid the Soviets would have been a hell of a political slog for FDR. Now, why does this matter? If the Soviets don't get American and British Lend-Lease Aid starting in 1941, they face some serious problems. Industrially, they're short on machinery, tooling, and raw materials. Logistically, they don't have as many locomotives, jeeps, or trucks. Tactically, they have fewer planes, tanks, and guns. Albert Week's book on Lend-Lease goes into the effects of Lend-Lease in great detail. It's well worth a read. Lend-Lease was a key factor in why the Soviets were able to bounce back from Barbarossa. The fact the Soviets were able to attempt major offensives in 1944 was partly due to the fact they had Studebaker trucks and Baldwin locomotives to support these operations. It's not like the Soviets couldn't have won without Lend-Lease. However, the fighting would have been longer, bloodier, and the outcome would have been far less certain. And even if FDR had managed to get a Lend-Lease-like program to Russian in our counterfactual 1941, it might not have been as big as the actual Lend-Lease deal to Russia. The counterfactual Lend-Lease program would probably have been smaller-scaled than the actual Lend-Lease package to Russia The terms of lease/sale wouldn't probably have been very favorable either. Historically, the first stages of US aid to Russia were cash, credit, or payment-in-kind sales. In our alternate scenario, it's not hard to imagine the US driving a much harder bargain with the Russians, especially given US domestic political factors. That means the Soviets can't afford (and thus don't get) as much aid as they did historically. e: TL;DR. If the Brits drop out in 1940, the Soviets don't get Lend-Lease. And even if they do, it might not make much of a difference. The Eastern Front is a much longer, much bloodier, and much more uncertain fight. Bacarruda fucked around with this message at 16:51 on Sep 29, 2014 |
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Sep 29, 2014 16:47
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The importance of Lend-Lease does hinge on how successful Barbarossa is in this alternate timeline. There isn't much the Soviet Union can do about its terrible top to bottom leadership and obsolete equipment, but I can't see Stalin ignoring warning from his spy network in this scenario and continuing to think that Hitler was going to be his BFF for much longer. Without this, a bloody stalemate might develops on the Eastern Front by 1942. Not having Britain to worry about would also probably put German industry even further away from proper war footing in 1941 than it was historically.
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Sep 29, 2014 17:14
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The Anglo-American bombing campaign alone drew off about a million men to man AA guns and other air defense apparatus when they could have been on the Eastern Front.
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Sep 29, 2014 17:14
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gradenko_2000 posted:The Anglo-American bombing campaign alone drew off about a million men to man AA guns and other air defense apparatus when they could have been on the Eastern Front. quote:In addition to the question of the cost-effectiveness of the flak, an associated criticism of the flak concerns
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Sep 29, 2014 17:18
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AceRimmer posted:The importance of Lend-Lease does hinge on how successful Barbarossa is in this alternate timeline. There isn't much the Soviet Union can do about its terrible top to bottom leadership and obsolete equipment, but I can't see Stalin ignoring warning from his spy network in this scenario and continuing to think that Hitler was going to be his BFF for much longer. Without this, a bloody stalemate might develops on the Eastern Front by 1942. If the Germans decided to burn their economic bridges with the Russians in favor of trade with Britain in this scenario, I could see the Soviets being a bit cagier about their relations with Nazi Germany. But I don't see why the Germans couldn't simply be duplicitous (as they were historically) and simply engage in economic activity with Great Britain and the USSR up until June 1941. In fact, that puts them on a better footing pre-Barbarossa. (more oil, raw materials, etc. stockpiled). If this happens, Stalin has (bad but still compelling) reasons to trust the Germans. He's engaged in mutually-beneficial trade with Nazi Germany, relations have been relatively smooth up to that point, the Germans didn't lose their poo poo when he took the Baltics, and German leaders haven't been vocal in international mdeia about invading the USSR. Historically, Stalin ignored a massive troop buildup on the German-Soviet border in June 1941 and GRU's intelligence that an attack was imminent. Why does a Brits-out-of-the-war scenario radically change Stalin's calculus on the eve of Barbarossa?
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Sep 29, 2014 18:44
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Wasn't Stalin's reasoning for not expecting a German attack something along the lines of "Hitler isn't a moron, he wouldn't wage a war on two fronts" ?
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Sep 29, 2014 18:48
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Libluini posted:Well, yeah. But what happens after Hitler destroys the Sowjet Union, Hell freezes over.
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Sep 29, 2014 18:52
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my dad posted:Wasn't Stalin's reasoning for not expecting a German attack something along the lines of "Hitler isn't a moron, he wouldn't wage a war on two fronts" ?
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Sep 29, 2014 19:06
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my dad posted:Wasn't Stalin's reasoning for not expecting a German attack something along the lines of "Hitler isn't a moron, he wouldn't wage a war on two fronts" ? The one time he doesn't listen to his paranoia and Barbarossa happens 
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Sep 29, 2014 19:06
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100 Years Ago Like Picardy before it, the Battle of Albert (During the war!) peters out into stalemate as the participants flow north in search of that elusive flanking battle. The line of the Somme will probably elude the Germans now, but they can still take the Channel ports and greatly impede British efforts to continue the fight. To the south, French attacks against the St Mihiel salient reach their peak. The line continues to hold. In the East, the Battle of the Vistula gets going properly; this will be a joint operation between German and Austrian troops, and the opposing Russians are obliged to fall back from their advanced positions near the German frontier. It's also becoming obvious to the Serbian commanders at Drina that they can't afford to keep fighting static warfare; the sheer weight of ammunition and guns to fire it on the Austrian side is beginning to tell. A while ago I wrote some things about discipline in the BEF, with a somewhat informal focus. Let's take a look at how discipline issues were dealt with once things were made formal. This is all a summary of the relevant sections from the enormous/exhaustive/exhausting Manual of Military Law (a shade under 1,000 pages), the officer's friend and possibly the longest crib sheet in human history, available from archive.org - the PDF version is over 50 megabytes! If the responsible NCOs felt that a breach of discipline was so severe that it couldn't be dealt with by colourful language or a good clip round the earhole, the offending soldier would be charged with an offence (too many to list) and taken before either the company major or the battalion's colonel, depending on the seriousness of the offence (and, incidentally, any man who felt hard done by in any matter always retained the right to see the colonel about it, although often the response would be "go away and stop wasting my time"; this principle was maintained whenever the battalion wasn't actively attacking or repelling an attack). A major's powers were relatively limited, but the battalion CO's position is perhaps best described as a magistrate on steroids; he had wide-ranging powers to investigate the matter, officially interview anyone he felt relevant, and then either dismiss the charge or uphold it and award punishment. (Or, if he felt so inclined, he could order an official board of inquiry to be set up to do it for him.) *The range of punishments a CO could award to a private soldier ran from extra duties and confinement to barracks, through suspension of pay (and/or a fine of up to 10 shillings), to imprisonment (without hard labour, which could only be given by a court-martial) for up to 21 days, and when on active service, up to 28 days of the feared Field Punishment (which came in two flavours, Number One and Number Two, and which deserves and will get its own post). His powers relating to NCOs were rather more limited, and more senior authority usually had to be invoked. NCOs who found themselves put on a charge usually found it to be an anchor on their careers, regardless of the outcome; charging an NCO (or, indeed, a commissioned officer) basically implied that the man was unfit to hold his position, so it was rarely done and taken seriously when it was done. (*Any punishment was almost always suspended while a unit was occupying the fire trenches, for obvious reasons.) After issuing any punishment, the CO would then customarily say something like "Do you accept my award?" to the soldier, to remind him that (similar to the civilan's right to be tried by a jury for any offence if he so chose) he retained the right not to accept the result and instead ask for the case to be tried by a court-martial. In peacetime, and at home during the war, there were various levels of court-martial, each empowered to try increasingly severe cases and issue increasingly severe punishments; the Regimental court-martial, then the District court-martial, and finally a General court-martial, the only court-martial that could try an officer, and the ones that could issue sentences of hard labour or death. However, in the context of the war, we'll more usually be interested in a rather curious creature called a "Field General Court Martial" or FGCM, which was a hybrid of all three. It was invented to deal with offences committed on active service, where it may not have been reasonable to jump through the hoops required of the other courts-martial to deliver timely justice. Where RCMs, DCMs and GCMs had plenty of rules and regulations about how many officers had to sit on it and where they had to come from (and so on, and so forth), the FGCM was designed so that it could be flexible enough to operate out in the furthest reaches of the Empire, where operations were usually conducted at company level (imagine things like the defence of Rorke's Drift) by units many hundreds of miles from Battalion Headquarters, which in turn might be the only headquarters of any kind within a week or two's hard marching. A FGCM could be convened by any officer as long as he had two mates with him; it was strongly recommended that the President rank at least a Major, and convention said that the other two officers minimally required for a full FGCM should be a captain and a lieutenant. The only other restriction was that the man's commanding officer could not sit on the panel (due to the obvious conflict of interest with a soldier rejecting his CO's award and then seeing that same person judging him again), although other officers from his battalion could do so, and often did. The accused also had the absolute right to object to the composition of the panel for any reason, if he felt that any of the officers on it might not give him a fair hearing; and the court-martial was also bound by the contemporary civilian rules of evidence and plenty of further provisions to govern the proceedings. The FGCM was empowered to award any sentence available to a GCM, up to and including death, as long as it consisted of at least three officers. However, a backstop existed in those most serious of cases; all sentences of death (which constituted 1.1% of all court-martial sentences during the war) had to be confirmed by the Commander-in-Chief of the guilty man's force, and every officer with responsibility for the guilty man would make submissions upwards, the Chief reviewing all the reports before making his final decision. The vast majority of capital sentences during the war were commuted (3,080 death sentences, 306 executions), usually to imprisonment, hard labour and/or field punishment; by 1916 it was commonplace for sentences of imprisonment to be suspended to prevent men from committing crimes to get themselves safely locked up where they couldn't get shot or shelled. The FGCM could also substitute a lesser charge at its own discretion; it was relatively commonplace to clear a soldier of desertion, but substitute a charge of attempting to desert, or of leaving the front line without orders for a specific reason. (I was going to write more, but this is long enough for the time being. There'll be other dull/simple days to continue.)
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Sep 30, 2014 00:34
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Trin, if you could compile these posts into one great big thing of awesomeness, that would be glorious?
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Sep 30, 2014 05:49
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I would totally volunteer webspace, if we can work out a way to give you credit and not doxx my pants off.
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Sep 30, 2014 05:53
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I've been vaguely thinking about something like that. Watch this space. 100 Years Ago Bad news for the French; the St Mihiel re-entrant has held out (ref. the strategic situation east of the Aisne). Over the next two weeks, they will regroup, call in even more reinforcements, and throw even more men against the rapidly-improving German defences, but it won't do any good for anyone except the rats. The railway to Verdun is cut beyond hope of restoration, and all the roads worthy of the name along with them. This achieves more for the Germans than just isolating an important enemy fortress in a particularly nasty salient. The area would have been an ideal place for the Allies to launch an offensive from, but now this will be completely impossible; even if the troops could somehow be moved into Verdun without a welcome from the German gunners who will soon be interdicting the quote roads unquote, their arrival would soon be noticed and fresh defensive measures taken. In the north, finally someone has been beaten to the punch as both sides attempt the same flanking manoeuvre, and it's the French. A single division arrived at Arras yesterday, and today it cautiously moves forward into the fist of the German Sixth Army; so now is moving backwards rather less cautiously, fighting hard as it goes, but being gradually pushed back towards Arras itself. Once again, the Allies are on the defensive. The new Tenth Army is on the way, but where will it be going into action when it goes? And then comes news from Antwerp, where the Belgian Prime Minister, Charles de Broqueville, formally appeals for help defending the redoubt. The Germans are mercilessly battering the outer forts, and plans have been made to evacuate the King, the government and the field army up the coast towards Ostend and Zeebrugge if the position becomes untenable, which seems a distinct possibility. Churchill now has his excuse to volunteer the Royal Naval Division, and over the next day or so, the orders for their deployment are issued. In the East, the German offensive meets with success, the Russians falling back in the direction of the River Vistula itself, the Germans once again hot on an enemy's heels. This ends up working against them in a similar fashion to the rapid advance from Mons; intelligence on the Russians' actual strength is hard to come by (whereas in the West the enemy's strength was severely underestimated, in the East it's been overestimated), and over the coming days, opportunities for larger victories are unknowingly turned down.
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Sep 30, 2014 21:04
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I've been listening to the Revolutions podcast (I'm up to the end of the American one), and between this and modern day incompetence at the VA, I'm starting to notice a pattern. How often to governments try to renege on promises and payment to their troops?
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Sep 30, 2014 23:25
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You should look up the bonus army! A bunch of WW1 vets and their families try to get the benefits they were promised. It ends poorly.
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Sep 30, 2014 23:29
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SlothfulCobra posted:How often to governments try to renege on promises and payment to their troops?  always. God, it was Richelieu's deliberate and explicit policy to string people along on the minimum of pay. Everyone else just did it because they had no other recourse. Debt cascades down the levels of administration.
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Sep 30, 2014 23:48
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SlothfulCobra posted:I've been listening to the Revolutions podcast (I'm up to the end of the American one), and between this and modern day incompetence at the VA, I'm starting to notice a pattern. The phrase 'Things are better now than they have been before' applies to pretty much everything.
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Sep 30, 2014 23:50
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Taerkar posted:The phrase 'Things are better now than they have been before' applies to pretty much everything. Edit: In terms of human suffering, the Early Modern period was a lot worse than what came before it. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 00:03 on Oct 1, 2014 |
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Sep 30, 2014 23:54
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HEY GAL posted:What? No it doesn't. There have always been periods of good governance and periods of bad governance, good ideas and bad ideas. History has no direction. Sometimes the newer idea is a bad one. It's a little hard to argue that anyone who was born in 1900 saw a better version of the world than someone who was born in 1850 as well. edit: well, unless you're an American. Then you get the luxury of two oceans, hemispheric hegemony, and resources on a continental scale making you one of the most materially privileged people in the history of civilization, with a relatively low chance of violent death compared to your contemporaries anywhere else. Dude born in 1850 gets to deal with a poo poo war on home territory. for the rest of the world, though, 19th C > 1st half of 20th C for the most part. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 01:57 on Oct 1, 2014 |
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Oct 1, 2014 01:50
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SlothfulCobra posted:I've been listening to the Revolutions podcast (I'm up to the end of the American one), and between this and modern day incompetence at the VA, I'm starting to notice a pattern. IIRC, the New Model Army also had several instances of the troops being rather upset after Parliament went "PSYCHE you're not getting paid"
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Oct 1, 2014 02:27
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HEY GAL posted:What? No it doesn't. There have always been periods of good governance and periods of bad governance, good ideas and bad ideas. History has no direction. Sometimes the newer idea is a bad one. There's a few exceptions to this, I'd say, but there's always exceptions to everything, which is like the second most important lesson in history besides the fact that, as you say, history has no direction.
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Oct 1, 2014 03:36
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Agean90 posted:You should look up the bonus army! In 1918, Congress promised WW1 vets a lump sum "bonus" payable in 25 years, eg 1943. When the soldiers were getting on in years. Afterall, what were the odds that we'd be in another globe shattering war at that time? But during the Great Depression, a lot of veterans needed the money to survive now, not 10 years from now, so they asked for it early. Which was rejected by Hoover (austerity, yo). So technically the government didn't renege on a promise, it just used extremely excessive force in crushing a peaceful protest movement. I believe Congress ended up paying the bonus in 1936-7.
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Oct 1, 2014 04:34
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SlothfulCobra posted:I've been listening to the Revolutions podcast (I'm up to the end of the American one), and between this and modern day incompetence at the VA, I'm starting to notice a pattern. gently caress man, go listen to History of Rome or history of Byzantium and see how often that poo poo was happening thousands of year ago. If the Carthaginians hadn't tried to stiff their armies after the First Punic War, they might not have lost the Second. I can't count how many Roman Emperors end up getting beheaded by one of their own armies and replaced by that army's general, and most of the time it's because the army got shafted on pay or benefits. So yeah, promises to one's army being reneged on? That's a song as old as armies, really.
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Oct 1, 2014 05:54
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jng2058 posted:gently caress man, go listen to History of Rome or history of Byzantium and see how often that poo poo was happening thousands of year ago. If the Carthaginians hadn't tried to stiff their armies after the First Punic War, they might not have lost the Second. I can't count how many Roman Emperors end up getting beheaded by one of their own armies and replaced by that army's general, and most of the time it's because the army got shafted on pay or benefits. Well getting shafted is a strong word in Rome's case. Generally the issue was "refuse to pay immensely inflated bonuses to praetorians because it was bankrupting the empire, then suffer the consequences".
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Oct 1, 2014 06:03
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MA-Horus posted:IIRC, the New Model Army also had several instances of the troops being rather upset after Parliament went "PSYCHE you're not getting paid" Yeah, the Revolutions podcast specifically compares Cromwell and Fairfax's decision to say 'Ah gently caress it' and seizing power to pay their troops and Washington's emotional speech which quashed the Newburgh Conspiracy. Revolutions is pretty good, it didn't really teach me anything regarding the American Revolution, but I didn't really know anything about Cromwell and it's becoming clear I had a bunch of big misconceptions about the French Revolution, so overall it's been really valuable.
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Oct 1, 2014 06:59
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Kaal posted:Well getting shafted is a strong word in Rome's case. Generally the issue was "refuse to pay immensely inflated bonuses to praetorians because it was bankrupting the empire, then suffer the consequences". Man did the Marian reforms ever totally gently caress over Republican Rome. Let's make armies totally loyal to their commanders instead of the state, that'll work out great!
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Oct 1, 2014 14:52
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MA-Horus posted:Man did the Marian reforms ever totally gently caress over Republican Rome. Let's make armies totally loyal to their commanders instead of the state, that'll work out great! Worked great for Marius (until Sulla did his thing) which was kind of his point. Amazing what you can get away with when you're able to tell the Senate "let me reshape the army in my image or those two huge hordes of barbarians are going to kill you all."
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Oct 1, 2014 15:52
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jng2058 posted:Worked great for Marius (until Sulla did his thing) which was kind of his point. Amazing what you can get away with when you're able to tell the Senate "let me reshape the army in my image or those two huge hordes of barbarians are going to kill you all." They're going to kill you all after they finish sledding down the Alps naked on their shields. The Cimbri sound pretty cool.
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Oct 1, 2014 16:46
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While we're discussing counterfactuals - what do you believe would have been the ramifications of France and Britain going through with their plans to aid Finland against the USSR during World War II? They would have needed to land troops in Norway and march them through Sweden, which would have put them at odds with both those countries, the USSR and the Germans. Would some sort of German-Soviet alliance against the French and the British have been possible, at least in the short term?
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Oct 1, 2014 21:54
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The intended force was ill equipped to cross Scandinavia in the winter, even unopposed. And Norway and Sweden would have opposed just enough to maintain neutrality. They expedition wouldn't have had a chance at reaching Finland, nor was it their actual purpose. Still, Stalin didn't like even the slightest possibility of his limited war spreading into another world war, so the scheduled expedition served its stated purpose. As such I don't see it likely.
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Oct 1, 2014 22:13
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100 Years Ago Spirited French resistance around the town of Douai ends this evening; the town had been holding out while Germans advanced around it on both sides. It's now obvious that French reinforcements are close enough to keep the flank intact and form a line; the question now is whether they will arrive in time to hold Arras. Meanwhile, the Royal Naval Division is assembling to embark for the journey to Antwerp, whose fate continues to hang in the balance. Every day that it continues to hold is a day that the Germans cannot march on the Channel ports.
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Oct 1, 2014 22:58
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I'd really like some recommendations for good books about European great power politics. I'm eyeing The Sleepwalkers for the leadup to WW1, but would love suggestions about earlier stuff too, especially around balance of power stuff and Bismarck's politicking.
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Oct 2, 2014 04:59
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Cyrano4747 posted:It's a little hard to argue that anyone who was born in 1900 saw a better version of the world than someone who was born in 1850 as well. And, of course, if you happened to be black and American you get to be a human being in 1900 too!  Edit: actually, life was better in most of the industrialised world if you were born working class, too. The welfare state was a developing thing by 1918, child labour laws existed, etc, etc.
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Oct 2, 2014 20:03
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feedmegin posted:And, of course, if you happened to be black and American you get to be a human being in 1900 too! You'd be getting into prime home buying age just as the depression hit, maybe you went out into the plains and tried your hand at farming since land was cheap and rates were low...
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Oct 2, 2014 20:46
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SocketWrench posted:
this isn't going to be true forever, right? wouldn't drones be capable of maneuvers that would kill/incapacitate human pilots (from G forces)? what's the "bottleneck" right now for drone performance? software? bandwidth?
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Oct 2, 2014 20:50
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