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Didn't those best two French armies include their entire armored reserve?
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Oct 11, 2014 20:45
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More or less, and they included some excellent Somua tanks. Had they bothered to actually use them, defeating the German thrust was a very real possibility.
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Oct 11, 2014 21:14
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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sullat posted:Also, the treaty of Versailles of 1917 was far less harsh than the treaty of Versailles of 1871, so the notion that France somehow were deserving of the attack is a little strange. Are you sure? Alsace-Lorraine, 5 billion francs and most-favored nation for Germany seems more lenient than Alsace-Lorraine, half of eastern Prussia to Poland, the loss of all overseas colonies, 132 billion marks, restrictions on the size of the army and navy... Is there something to the 1871 treaty that I'm not aware of?
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Oct 11, 2014 21:14
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Reading Beevor's Second World War he says the French collapse was also tied up with the French extreme right wing's communist paranoia. Their fear was a bitter fight for every inch resistance would benefit the communists and so were conspiring against each other to surrender sooner and gain the upper hand in the occupation government. I don't know how much of that was colored by Beevor's politics but his book in general paints a pretty terrible picture of the French political scene of the era. I've heard plenty of people say the French lacked the will to fight after the horrendous losses of WW1, but after reading his book it seemed like the civilian leadership and soldiers were still in it. It was the top generals who after the early reversals were panicking, weeping, and trying to figure out the best way to surrender.
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Oct 11, 2014 21:20
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Re: WWII - remember that most of these people will remember, extremely viscerally, what it looked like when the Germans invaded, looked completely invincible and nearly won before the Marne saved France at the last moment, at a huge cost of life and resulting in the Great War. General Gamelin was a staff officer in 1914 who'd helped plan the Marne. Gaston Billotte was a brigade commander, Georges and Petain were battalion colonels, Paul Reynaud was there somewhere too. Now it seems like exactly the same thing's happening as last time, but it's all bigger and faster and they don't have the time to make any kind of plan, because as soon as they break for lunch they find out that the Panzers have found another petrol station and they're another 20 miles up the road. 100.273972602739726 Years Ago Antwerp surrenders. Meanwhile, II Corps of the BEF is ferried forward by a fleet of requisitioned London buses, and takes its place in the line alongside the French 10th Army. Together, they begin to advance. For whatever reason, the Germans have been delayed just long enough at Antwerp that they will now definitely have to fight for the Channel ports. The Belgian army is advancing swiftly to the rear, to take up last-ditch positions on the River Yser, and 7th Division is covering them. This is also the day that the first Indian troops begin arriving in France. They are, ahem, slightly disorientated. The Germans continue marching on Warsaw, vaguely wondering where all the Russians have gone. 100 Years Ago II Corps and their new mates continue advancing towards the La Bassee Canal, and each side's cavalry patrols begin to run into each other. The last attempt at a flanking battle for some time is about to begin; there is still space to be exploited on the Western Front. Meanwhile, the German march on Warsaw suddenly finds rather a lot of Russians to fight at the River Vistula. Both sides attempt to attack each other at once in different places, and a large amount of extremely confused fighting follows. The crew of Emden says a reluctant goodbye to their Chagossian hosts, and departs with good feelings all round. Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Oct 11, 2014 |
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Oct 11, 2014 22:00
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Trin Tragula posted:The crew of Emden says a reluctant goodbye to their Chagossian hosts, and departs with good feelings all round. Smile and wave boys. Smile and wave.
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Oct 11, 2014 22:16
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Please keep on posting that stuff Trin. Please don't stop.
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Oct 11, 2014 22:20
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PittTheElder posted:More or less, and they included some excellent Somua tanks. Had they bothered to actually use them, defeating the German thrust was a very real possibility. One of the French Armoured Divisions fought a very hard battle just north of the Ardennes. The lost I think 200 tanks(?). After using the Somua in World War 2 Online, it really is amazingly bad to have the Tank commander also be the main gunner and loader (and there's no top hatch either, you open up the entire back of the turret to get your head out). That being said, the French could have stopped the Germans, but only if they had more ATG and quicker units at the breakthrough point. They did have multiple Divisions moving, but on a WW1 timetable, and their air doctrine and tank doctrine was all wrong too. Add in bad commanders, and that was it. If they had had a lot more good commanders, it would have been different, but when you have one of your armoured divisions going onto the defensive south of the breakthrough, there's very little you can do. That being said, the Allied plan probably would have worked somewhat, if the Germans had gone with their original plan, but I think the BEF and French armies just weren't in a condition to be willing to attack into Germany, even if they had stopped the initial thrust.
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Oct 11, 2014 23:07
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BurningStone posted:I've read that France's command and control operated at World War I speeds at the beginning of World War II. They just couldn't understand how the battlefield could change so quickly and were completely unprepared for it. James Holland's The Battle of Britain says it took 48 hours for orders to get from General Gamelin's HQ to the front. He didn't have a radio at HQ because he believed they were too insecure and could be listened in on by the enemy. (True, but there were workarounds even at the time. *cough* cryptography *cough*)
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Oct 12, 2014 00:58
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JaucheCharly posted:Murdering and raping their people? I have no doubt that a significant portion of the French population believed the horror stories that came out of occupied France and Belgium during WWI, notwithstanding that some of them weren't just stories.
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Oct 12, 2014 01:03
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Hunterhr posted:Smile and wave boys. Smile and wave. This reminds me of a quote from the Daily Chronicle regarding a later exploit of the Emden's: "Emden has had a momentous cruise. The ship's company have proved their gallantry. We admire the sportsmanship shown in their exploits as much as we heartily wish that the ship may soon be taken."
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Oct 12, 2014 01:34
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Comstar posted:One of the French Armoured Divisions fought a very hard battle just north of the Ardennes. The lost I think 200 tanks(?). After using the Somua in World War 2 Online, it really is amazingly bad to have the Tank commander also be the main gunner and loader (and there's no top hatch either, you open up the entire back of the turret to get your head out). Back when I played World War 2 Online I once drove into battle in a SOUMA with the turret hatch wide open because I'd hit the open hatch key without noticing (there was no notification or anything and you couldn't see it from the commander's position unless you turned your head using other key commands). I think I got a couple kills before the inevitable happened. The British A13 and the Vickers were way more fun.
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Oct 12, 2014 01:36
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Did that have any effect on fume concentrations inside the turret, or was that too complex for the game to model?
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Oct 12, 2014 02:32
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Interesting "What If" scenario Put Joffre, Lanrezac and Galenani into command positions during the WW2 invasion of France. What happens? I think a VERY different outcome. I do not think Joffre was an good commander. But the man was a rock when a rock was required.
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Oct 12, 2014 04:16
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MA-Horus posted:Interesting "What If" scenario Oh please, he went and hid in the red keep while making a dwarf fight in his stead.
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Oct 12, 2014 05:13
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Frostwerks posted:Oh please, he went and hid in the red keep while making a dwarf fight in his stead.
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Oct 12, 2014 07:31
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Frostwerks posted:Oh please, he went and hid in the red keep while making a dwarf fight in his stead. Psshh if you believe one source. More accurate data puts him in command of three trebuchets dubbed 'the whores' 
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Oct 12, 2014 09:15
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Some completely unbiased sources have him pissing into the wildfire to spice it up a little.
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Oct 12, 2014 14:11
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Ensign Expendable posted:Did that have any effect on fume concentrations inside the turret, or was that too complex for the game to model? This was in 2002, so there was no way in hell anyone even thought about modelling fumes or smoke.
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Oct 12, 2014 16:15
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WHAT ABOUT GAY BLACK TARGARYEN?
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Oct 12, 2014 16:16
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HEY GAL posted:poo poo keeps stopping around November and starting up again around May, over and over every year, while there's no such thing as a decisive battle in a world without really well-developed supply lines and in which you can always hire more people from...somewhere. So wars keep going as long as someone is willing to pump money into them, meanwhile from the 18th or 19th century point of view they look super desultory. This is from a bit back, but I wanted to point out this hasn't stopped. Civil wars can easily reach two or three decades when you don't have one specific town or faction to destroy and you can recruit men and material from neighboring countries. War based roughly around Clausewitz's ideas should end pretty quickly when one of the highly centralized entities collapses. That's because they burn up resources really fast and there are coherent bodies deciding when the conflict ends. In a civil war, you can just keep popping up new factions to fill in the gaps left by the losers. A fully mobilized modern country will burn out its resources relatively quickly, especially when it is fighting itself, but civil wars can drop down to low, rumbling insurgencies to regain footing. And, which is much more dangerous, foreign powers can keep feeding money and guns into the conflict long after the nation itself would have run out. There's an insurgency in Burma that's like 40 years old at this point. The ongoing Syria-Iraq civil war is doing it right now. The AQ linked insurgents fought for most of a decade in Iraq, lost ground to a different kind of militia, regained ground in Syria (along side a different coalition of rebel groups), returned to Iraq, and reignited the simmering conflict between other militia groups in that country. With support flowing in from the Gulf, the West, Iran, Iraq's central government, and private donors that war could keep burning for quite some time even if it doesn't manage to set off a broader proxy war. It is really hard to reach a decisive end when you don't have hegemonic actors, someone or group that can just say "Enough, the war's over, go home."
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Oct 12, 2014 20:38
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100 Years Ago BEF GHQ moves along with the chaps, relocating to St Omer. The cavalry, having covered an advance towards Lille, is now ordered to spread out north, reconnoitre, and generally make some use of itself. They do so, and by the end of the day there's something that could, in an emergency, be called a "line", although there's still a significant gap before the coast. The entirely misnamed Race to the Sea is almost complete.
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Oct 12, 2014 22:44
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Extra History have finished up their series on the outbreak of the First World War. It's sad to think there were so many missed opportunities to stop the war. I can't wait to see what Extra History look at next.
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Oct 12, 2014 23:00
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Yvonmukluk posted:Extra History have finished up their series on the outbreak of the First World War. The gently caress!?  There are so many factual errors in the series that it boggles my mind.
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Oct 12, 2014 23:14
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my dad posted:The gently caress!? Are they factual errors in that they are simplifications or glossing over due to time constraints, but still try to get the meaning across or are specific acts or things mentioned are completely wrong?
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Oct 12, 2014 23:33
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my dad posted:The gently caress!?
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Oct 13, 2014 00:05
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Just from loving around on the July crisis wiki page it says that Austrian gunboats did shell Belgrade on the 28th when the video claims no shelling occurred.
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Oct 13, 2014 00:40
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I've run across this idea several times and since it's rather patently false, I was wondering where it originally came from: "Any Iron Age culture knew that letting many women participate in combat was a recipe for disaster if your side experienced massive casualties, and thus men handled matters related to the battlefield."
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Oct 13, 2014 17:31
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Some 19th century dude
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Oct 13, 2014 18:20
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I'm saying Victorian arse too.
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Oct 13, 2014 18:23
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Gonna buck the trend and guess a 21st Century U.S. Congressman.
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Oct 13, 2014 18:32
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Communist Zombie posted:Are they factual errors in that they are simplifications or glossing over due to time constraints, but still try to get the meaning across or are specific acts or things mentioned are completely wrong? Extra History is interesting, but it's also the definition of Great Man History. And it also realllllly plays up the "Good men tried for peace! Stop the madness!" angle waaaay too much.
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Oct 13, 2014 18:39
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:Gonna buck the trend and guess a 21st Century U.S. Congressman.
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Oct 13, 2014 18:46
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HEY GAL posted:I thought those were the guys who said we can't stand in water. That's saltwater. (sharks)
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Oct 13, 2014 18:56
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Women in combat also places you at a severe disadvantage when facing bear cavalry.
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Oct 13, 2014 20:32
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Wasn't there some Roman writing on Gallic/Celtic/Germanic women in combat? I am recalling stuff like the Cimbri being described as having women basically guarding the supply wagons and being the ones who go  (and then  ) if the men start running away from the front.
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Oct 13, 2014 21:12
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There is all those women who pretended to be men so they could fight, we know of a few from the 18th/19th/20th centuries but imagine how many there actually were throughout history.
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Oct 13, 2014 22:30
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Yvonmukluk posted:Extra History have finished up their series on the outbreak of the First World War. They also did the Punic Wars  I cried manly tears at that ending though. Babylon 5 really has nothing on actual history.
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Oct 13, 2014 22:34
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Rabhadh posted:There is all those women who pretended to be men so they could fight, we know of a few from the 18th/19th/20th centuries but imagine how many there actually were throughout history. And then there were the pair of 18th century French messmates that a colleague of mine told me about. In the 18th century French army, soldiers sleep two to a bed, and your bedmate is assigned to you at random. ("Billet" is French for "ticket," I think; the ticket that assigns you your quarters.) These two fell in love and decided to desert together...but I never knew if they had fallen in love before or after they figured out that one was a woman. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 22:45 on Oct 13, 2014 |
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Oct 13, 2014 22:39
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HEY GAL posted:I know of at least one from the 17th--she was dinged for being a bounty jumper, and in the ensuing kerfuffle they found out she was a chick. (I think she was whatever the hell the French had instead of Gefreyters, but I don't have the book I found that in with me.) She was also married to another chick who had no idea her husband wasn't a man. Gonna assume it was real dark then.  Wasn't consummation part of marriage back then and there? I know next to nothing about religion, so I may be grossly wrong, but still - one would think she'd notice there's something odd about the whole thing.quote:And then there were the pair of 18th century French messmates that a colleague of mine told me about. In the 18th century French army, soldiers sleep two to a bed, and your bedmate is assigned to you at random. ("Billet" is French for "ticket," I think; the ticket that assigns you your quarters.) These two fell in love and decided to desert together...but I never knew if they had fallen in love before or after they figured out that one was a woman. I think you also mentioned some medieval cases sometime ago, where priests checking the bodies left in the aftermath of a battle discovered that some of the dead were in fact women.
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Oct 13, 2014 22:55
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