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Trin Tragula posted:100 Years Ago I agree. Check out this excerpt from the "Russia and Constantinople" editorial. quote:That Russia must be given a stretch of territory which will enable her to reach Constantinople by land is obvious. It has always been an essential of the Russian Empire that no parts of it should be sea-sundered, but that it should be a single territorial unit. Owing, however, to the presence of the Roumanians and the Bulgarians, Russia cannot have a land link on the European side of the Black Sea. There- fore she must have it on the Asian side. "Why, yes, it is perfectly reasonable to grant Russia Constantinople as well as a stretch of land right across Northern Anatolia (or all of Anatolia!) and the Caucasus as a fair reward for their contribution to the war, and this will obviously be right and proper and have no negative consequences whatsoever. Doing so would be a victory for democratic and constitutional Russia, and anyways the Russians have demonstrated that they treat their Islamic population fairly and thus would have no difficulties in ruling the aforementioned stretch of land." It's particularly funny given that, if you read the rest of the article, it becomes clear that the Spectator has apparently had a long-standing bug up its rear end about this exact issue and a lot of the article reads like a defense of much-argued positions.
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Nov 16, 2014 02:34
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relative to the average russian peasant how badly off were muslims anyway? i know pretty much nothing about russia at that time
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Nov 16, 2014 02:44
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I'm curious about something, was States Rights a reason people used during the civil war to justify their secession or did that appear after the fact? I've read through the CSA's constitution and seriously it's almost exactly the same as the US constitution. If I'm reading it correctly, the only rights granted to states under the CSA constitution that didn't exist in the US constitution was the right to enter treaties with other states to regulate waterways and the ability to distribute bills of credit. And states lose the rights to ban slavery and the ability extend voting rights to non-citizens. From what I've heard, especially from those weird tea party people over in New Hampshire, you'd think that the CSA was some radical departure from how the federal government was organized and that's why they were fighting against the US. Because slavery wasn't an issue at all 
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Nov 16, 2014 03:16
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Sorta both. In the Civil War era states rights was pretty much only brought up in things relating to slavery, see people using it to try to ignore the Fugitive slave act. States rights had come up before the Civil War on issues that weren't slavery though (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nullification_Crisis)
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Nov 16, 2014 03:32
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Don Gato posted:I'm curious about something, was States Rights a reason people used during the civil war to justify their secession or did that appear after the fact? I've read through the CSA's constitution and seriously it's almost exactly the same as the US constitution. If I'm reading it correctly, the only rights granted to states under the CSA constitution that didn't exist in the US constitution was the right to enter treaties with other states to regulate waterways and the ability to distribute bills of credit. And states lose the rights to ban slavery and the ability extend voting rights to non-citizens. The CSA wasn't a radical departure from the past because national politics in the antebellum USA had accommodated different viewpoints about states' rights. The Democratic Party generally represented a school of thought that minimized the powers and responsibilities of the federal government, whereas the Whig Party had envisioned a stronger role for it. The states' rights stance and the Democratic Party were very very strong in the South, and that mainly expressed itself on issues like tariffs and government investment in infrastructure. i.e. Tomn asked earlier if shoddy infrastructure in the South really was an indictment of states' rights, and the answer is "sort of": Northern state and local governments had quickly grasped the desirability of accessible transportation networks that reached across states and allowed for rapid back-and-forth commerce, whereas the South had a more parochial view and didn't develop infrastructure beyond the local level. Anyway, national politics was divided on the issue but speaking regionally the South was very strongly in favor of states' rights and all the politicians who had disagreed were still back in the USA. So it wasn't a radical departure as much as a new government in which only the states' rights viewpoint was heard. The CSA's constitution was very similar to the USA's but their way of interpreting it was different--although as it turned out they didn't have a lot of time to showcase all the differences of interpretation. At the same time the opposite effect was seen in the North. The disappearance of the Southern bloc in Congress allowed the Federal government to quickly assume new responsibilities and make expansive commitments that would have been blocked in the antebellum period. Federal involvement in railroad building generally and the transcontinental railroad specifically are a huge example of that.
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Nov 16, 2014 04:26
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Tomn posted:I agree. Check out this excerpt from the "Russia and Constantinople" editorial. I mean, if you look at the post war plans for Anatolia it is pretty much "okay, who want's a slice?" e: Except for the Italians. Lord Balfour, after a bunch of messages from the Italian Embassy he's been pointedly ignoring posted:"The Italians will never be able to penetrate any part of Yemen worth having if their Abyssinian and Tripolitan deeds are any guide... Italy has no business in the Aegean, still less in Asia Minor."
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Nov 16, 2014 06:18
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The post Roman Empire trend of people laying sick burns on Italy never ceases to amuse 
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Nov 16, 2014 08:02
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Raskolnikov38 posted:The post Roman Empire trend of people laying sick burns on Italy never ceases to amuse Alaric was a trendsetter and a true burnmaster.
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Nov 16, 2014 08:05
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Always makes me wonder what the ancient Romans would think of their Italian descendants, at least the Spaniards had a respectable empire going on for a while only to have it kicked in the teeth in the end by another nation speaking a barbaric Germanic language Also makes me wonder what they would think of the US, the first Western state to really rival Rome in power and influence. Uppity barbarians or amusement at all the Classical Roman influence on the American Republic?
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Nov 16, 2014 08:22
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"why haven't you gotten yourself a good emperor yet"
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Nov 16, 2014 08:57
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Deteriorata posted:There's a lot of stuff about the Confederacy that didn't make much sense. They obviously hadn't thought through a lot of this stuff beforehand. Sherman's letter to his friend is pretty much the "you loving idiots are going to get yourselves killed" warning that came true in huge measure. Industrial capacity, population, technology, all of it was heavily slanted towards the favor of the American against the Confederates, but the Confederacy still thought it could win because reasons. Was there ever any writing about why they thought they could pull it off? I mean the Confederacy was a balkanized mess before they even tried shelling an American fort.
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Nov 16, 2014 11:57
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Sheer aristocratic arrogance.
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Nov 16, 2014 12:46
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FAUXTON posted:Was there ever any writing about why they thought they could pull it off? I mean the Confederacy was a balkanized mess before they even tried shelling an American fort. The House of Dixie actually discusses this as an essentially cultural phenomenon. These are people who literally owned other human beings--they simply thought they were a superior race of men to the Northerners, and felt that they had a martial tradition that guaranteed battlefield superiority. They also thought that slavery would give them an industrial advantage over the North, that the Northerners were weak-willed and would let go after a few victories and that the slaves would remain loyal whatever occurred. Phobophilia posted:Sheer aristocratic arrogance. Essentially this
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Nov 16, 2014 16:18
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Willy T, in 1860 posted:The North can make a steam-engine, locomotive or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or a pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical and determined people on earth--right at your doors. You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared. . . . At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, and shut out from the markets of Europe by blockade as you will be, your cause will begin to wane Its pretty easy to see why he's want to burn down a few cities after being stuck in a 5 year long trainwreck.
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Nov 16, 2014 16:27
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Chapter 03: Everything begins with Julius Caesar Between 58 and 51 BC, Julius Caesar, surely known to all of you, conquered Gaul. Gaul is mostly modern France with some Belgium and Netherlands thrown in for shits and giggles. This is my incredible imprecise description and I'm sticking with it.  After the Roman Empire reached Gaul for the first time, they also became inadvertently neighbours to some sort of giant, neverending forest to the east of Gaul. There were also some weirdos in furs hiding out in said forest. First, the empire ignored them mostly, but those weirdos had other ideas about that! While Caesar was busy stretching the imperial border from what is now the Provence up to the Atlantic ocean in the northwest and to the river Rhine in the east, more and more Germanics streamed across the Rhine. The more he waged war against the Gauls, the more Germanics turned up. The more civilization he spread with fire and Roman swords, the more suddenly appeared at the border. What he didn't know at the time, there was even a strange tradition of Gallic leaders hiring Germanic tribes as mercenaries in their fights among each other. For the Germanics, crossing the Rhine in huge streams of warriors and people was completely normal. Which the Romans first had to learn after they arrived at the Rhine themselves for the first time. The most well-known of these inter-Gallic conflicts happened when at the end of the 70s BC, the Gallic tribes of the Arverners and the Sequaners called upon Ariovist and his Suebi to help against the Gallic Häduer. So a goddamn shitload of Suebi crossed the Rhine and during the fighting, about 15000 more Germanic mercenaries from other tribes joined Ariovists' armies. And after so many Germanics already lived on the western side of the Rhine, all their women and children soon followed. When Caesar appeared with his mighty Roman armies, the Suebi numbered around 120 thousand people all around and they had taken over a third of the Sequaners' lands in Alsace (that other half of Alsace-Lorraine) and were already trying to get another third from them. This mass migration had many reasons: Better soil west of the Rhine, hardships back home, better civilization with cities and money instead of goats and dirt and ample opportunities to get said money while fighting in the service of those puny west-men. The better people lived on the other side of the Rhine, the more Germanics showed up, drawn to the light of Gaul and then the Roman Empire like hungry moths to a growing stash of fine clothes. At this point Caesar got scared. He remembered everyone about how the Cimbri and the Teutons had devastated the Roman Empire until Gaius Marius finally destroyed the Teutons in the battle of Aquae Sextiae in 102 BC and Quintus Lutatius Catulus one year later the Cimbri at the battle of Vercellae (in modern-day Piemont), ending their reign of terror. He called those new people with their aptitude for mass migrations Germanics and differentiated them from the Celts of old for the first time. Then even more Germanics streamed over the Rhine to join the empire (or to join their battleaxes with Roman faces, whatever happened first) and Caesar had to do something. He invoked a Gallic request for help and pushed the Germanics in Alsace back over the Rhine, which took several days of bloody fighting. Usipeters and Tenkterers, two other Germanic tribes which had tried to settle west of the Rhine were denied settlement. They also were denied fighting for Rome as payment for said settlement. Then Caesar massacred the still surprised lot of them and drove the few shocked survivors back over the Rhine. Caesar himself counted about 430 thousand people among his future victims: Men, women and children, most of them dead after the battle. But Caesar didn't stop here: Apparently some part of the Germanic cavalry from both tribes had survived. They had fled to the Germanic tribe of the Sugambrer, who then took them in. Caesar demanded their immediate extradition, but the Sugambrer didn't know him very well and told him to gently caress off. They argued since Germanics weren't allowed to cross the Rhine westwards, this meant Romans weren't allowed to meddle in internal Germanic politics. Caesar's messengers then told them the Germanic tribe of the Ubier had just called for Roman help and explicitly asked for a Roman army to cross the Rhine into their territory. The poo poo had just hit the fan. In 55 BC, Julius Caesar crossed the Rhine. Crosslink to the ancient history thread
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Nov 16, 2014 17:39
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Mustang posted:Always makes me wonder what the ancient Romans would think of their Italian descendants, at least the Spaniards had a respectable empire going on for a while only to have it kicked in the teeth in the end by another nation speaking a barbaric Germanic language Excuse me the British Empire would like a word.
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Nov 16, 2014 18:50
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The British Empire is more like Carthage than Rome.
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Nov 16, 2014 19:31
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100 Years Ago Hey, remember Serbia? Little Balkan country? The entire might of the Austro-Hungarian army's been bashing away at it for the past three months? Well, they're having another heave at the Serbs now. After a month and a half of vicious trench warfare the Serbs are in a bad way, but fortunately so are all the roads. Meanwhile, the Bergmann Offensive quietly expires, and we join Louis Barthas for his first impressions of life at the front. (Spoilers: He doesn't like it.) The Telegraph reports on the strange case of the staff of Lerwick Post Office, arrested and imprisoned for a week before being released without charge; happily, thanks to the National Archives of Scotland, we can now find out what's happened. They also note that "There is full confidence in the [Italian] CGS, Count Cadorna...", an observation for which there are hardly enough videos of dramatic chords, but I'm going to try anyway.
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Nov 16, 2014 19:39
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OctaMurk posted:The House of Dixie actually discusses this as an essentially cultural phenomenon. Is the full title The Fall of the House of Dixie by Bruce Levine? Interested in reading it, making sure I'm looking at the right book.
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Nov 16, 2014 19:53
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Mustang posted:Always makes me wonder what the ancient Romans would think of their Italian descendants, at least the Spaniards had a respectable empire going on for a while only to have it kicked in the teeth in the end by another nation speaking a barbaric Germanic language Most of the people responsible for kicking the Western Empire's teeth in spoke Latin.
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Nov 16, 2014 19:57
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
Fangz posted:The British Empire is more like Carthage than Rome. I never actually really thought of it that way but yeah that is a pretty good one right there, awesome.
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Nov 16, 2014 20:18
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Trin Tragula posted:100 Years Ago Actually it's not nearly the entire might of the Austro-Hungarian army, but it's still a ridiculous mismatch in terms of force sizes. But the favorable defensive terrain, the fact the Austro-Hungarians have almost no artillery worthy of the name (they're still using bronze field guns that look like something out of the seventeenth century except for being breech-loaders), and the Austro-Hungarian offensive doctrine that's basically "throw infantry at the objective" goes a long way to explain how Serbia is holding out. Trin Tragula posted:They also note that "There is full confidence in the [Italian] CGS, Count Cadorna...", an observation for which there are hardly enough videos of dramatic chords, but I'm going to try anyway. I have almost nothing to add to this except to say that if you want an actual example of a First World War officer living up to the stereotype of an incompetent butcher, Cadorna's your best choice. The man was an inept monster. My grandmother's neighbor told me a story about his own ancestor who was an Italian soldier. His regiment had been pulled off the lines for an overdue period of leave and rebuilding. As soon as they get to their leave area they're called back to the front. When the soldiers point out they were due for leave and that this is kind of a bullshit thing to do, the high command decimates the regiment. Yes, as in the literal Roman definition of decimate. Cadorna was big on decimation, and it worked exactly as well as you'd expect it to in the twentieth century. Vincent Van Goatse fucked around with this message at 21:16 on Nov 16, 2014 |
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Nov 16, 2014 21:10
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:Actually it's not nearly the entire might of the Austro-Hungarian army, but it's still a ridiculous mismatch in terms of force sizes. It sounds better, though. One day soon I'm going to properly write up their mobilisation, and the chain of circumstances that saw a large group of A-H soldiers spend most of August sitting on trains travelling at about 2mph, as the Brains Trust tries to decide whether to send them to Serbia or Galicia. By the way, I've been plodding through Norman Stone, and when Romania enters the war in late 1916 there's this queeny little barbed sidenote about how apparently they introduced a regulation that only officers ranking Major and above would be allowed to wear cosmetics while in uniform. The only references to this that I can find on Google are a few other equally mean-spirited (and unexplained) sidenotes from different books, and a few very confused people posting forum threads going "what's all this, then?" So, um, what's all this then, what's all this then? Anyone here familiar with Romanian society in the 1910s? Was it the fashion to wear cosmetics, or is it just a parade of historians taking cheap shots?
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Nov 16, 2014 21:47
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Trin Tragula posted:It sounds better, though. One day soon I'm going to properly write up their mobilisation, and the chain of circumstances that saw a large group of A-H soldiers spend most of August sitting on trains travelling at about 2mph, as the Brains Trust tries to decide whether to send them to Serbia or Galicia. Maybe they were just really old-fashioned? Like in, 18th-century style old-fashioned?
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Nov 16, 2014 22:11
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Fangz posted:The British Empire is more like Carthage than Rome. 
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Nov 16, 2014 22:50
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Modern decimation? what the gently caress? goddamn, It really sucked being in the Italian Army during the First World War  .
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Nov 16, 2014 23:15
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FAUXTON posted:Sherman's letter to his friend is pretty much the "you loving idiots are going to get yourselves killed" warning that came true in huge measure. Industrial capacity, population, technology, all of it was heavily slanted towards the favor of the American against the Confederates, but the Confederacy still thought it could win because reasons. Well, outside of a psychological explanation they had a couple of key hope that gave them encouragement that they would win and handily. The first and biggest of these was that Britain and France had thousands of looms and garment factories employing hundreds of thousands of people who relied pretty much solely on Southern cotton to function. The South figured that this meant that a war which disrupted that flow of cotton would immediately trigger one or both to step in and recognize the Confederacy and force the North to the negotiation table by threatening to join the war. Unfortunately for them Europe was a lot more hesitant to take any action at the outset of the war then the South had expected and by the time the war had a shown that it was going to last a long time and starve European factories of cotton and European politicians are looking into recognizing the Confederacy, Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This didn't necessarily directly effect the opinion of European politicians, but it did soundly put the common folk in the Northern camp and thus public opinion pretty much assured Europe was never going to intervene. So what the Confederates had always recognized as their first and best hope ends up coming to nothing. The other advantages were more of a military nature. For one thing the South was initially dismissive of the thought of a Northern naval blockade, believing with some good cause that the outlets of most major Southern river systems and ports could not be blockaded due to their complicated and many mouthed nature. The North solved this by seizing key points with amphibious operations to cut down on the amount of sea that needed to be covered and building a ton of new boats to cover ever river mouth and sand bar outlet. Thus a blockade that looked difficult to impossible on paper ended up being implemented handily, starving the Confederacy first of critical war material and later on basic necessities. Another factor and one that gets brought up fairly regularly was the defensive advantage the South enjoyed. They didn't have to win, they just had to not lose long enough that the North gave up. Perhaps if there hadn't been a president as dedicated, politically crafty and oratorically gifted as Lincoln this might have worked. There were times during the middle of the war were it seemed like a sure thing that the anti-war party would take power and push out Lincoln and hand the Confederacy it's recognition. Finally the South knew it was going to get many of the most talented general and field officers, with even their choice for President recognized as a capable military man. This even held up, they did get the best military men at the outbreak, but it never translated into overwhelming victory, and no matter the class of the officer corp, in a brutal war of attrition the side with less men is eventually going to make a critical mistake and be ground to dust. So the South had some very legitimate reasons to expect to win the war, but the most powerful reasons were based on mistaken notions and the other reasons weren't enough to set off their disadvantages as the war dragged on.
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Nov 16, 2014 23:27
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:...the Austro-Hungarians have almost no artillery worthy of the name (they're still using bronze field guns that look like something out of the seventeenth century except for being breech-loaders) And don't even say "OK but they've got guns with toothed elevating thingies" either, since:  
HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 23:53 on Nov 16, 2014 |
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Nov 16, 2014 23:45
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The "states rights" issue had some huge effects on the CSA's military that were a lot more significant than railway gauges or asking permission to walk through a state. Governors (particularly the Georgia guy) routinely withheld badly needed supplies and soldiers for "state defense" or whatever , keeping them hundreds of miles away from the significant fighting for absolutely no good reason. There were also issues with this stuff within the armies themselves; commanders were sometimes hesitant or even outright insubordinate when asked to serve under brigadiers or division commanders from other states. This sort of thing happened in the federal armies as well, but it wasn't quite as pronounced. It is kind of mind-blowing to us today that these guys, facing a life-or-death struggle for the survival of their way of life and their new nation very literally chose fairly irrelevant political positions over increased chances of victory but....I guess it really WAS that big of a deal?
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Nov 16, 2014 23:53
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bewbies posted:It is kind of mind-blowing to us today that these guys, facing a life-or-death struggle for the survival of their way of life and their new nation very literally chose fairly irrelevant political positions over increased chances of victory but....I guess it really WAS that big of a deal? No, it was probably just shortsighted bullshit from local politicians that were more concerned with appeasing the local constituency than with doing what it would take to solve the bigger problem. Pick a time, pick a place, and if it involves a higher level of authority trying to wrangle agreements from lower levels of authority you'll see this kind of crazy bullshit. If you want to get super, super simplistic just for the sake of illustrating a point, it can be argued that the relative success of that higher (call it royal, federal, imperial, national, whatever) authority to dominate the lower authority is one of the major components that determine whether you end up with 16th century France or the 16th century Holy Roman Empire.
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Nov 17, 2014 00:01
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GhostofJohnMuir posted:Well, outside of a psychological explanation they had a couple of key hope that gave them encouragement that they would win and handily. That's the point Sherman was making - Just because the Confederacy doesn't think something like blockading a river system is possible doesn't mean it's impossible to American forces and their industrial might. It's basically arrogance all the way down - "If we can't do it, there's no way those sissy-rear end Yankees can." Why assume the European powers would jump in on the side of the Confederacy? It'd just be a matter of helping America put down an insurrection in exchange for the same cheap cotton but without the morally reprehensible sustenance of slavery, and you've got a grateful industrial power to negotiate trade with to boot. Practically everything except the officer talent was a bunch of bullshit, and a good amount of why it was bullshit also hampered the talent advantage.
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Nov 17, 2014 00:52
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SeanBeansShako posted:Modern decimation? what the gently caress? goddamn, It really sucked being in the Italian Army Ftfy In the first gulf war Italy sent 8 planes to bomb a target, 7 had to turn back due to mechanical and weather issues and the eighth was shot down.
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Nov 17, 2014 00:55
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Forget what the Romans would think of Britain or the US, what would they think of their Italian descendants?
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Nov 17, 2014 01:23
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FAUXTON posted:That's the point Sherman was making - Just because the Confederacy doesn't think something like blockading a river system is possible doesn't mean it's impossible to American forces and their industrial might. It's basically arrogance all the way down - "If we can't do it, there's no way those sissy-rear end Yankees can." Why assume the European powers would jump in on the side of the Confederacy? It'd just be a matter of helping America put down an insurrection in exchange for the same cheap cotton but without the morally reprehensible sustenance of slavery, and you've got a grateful industrial power to negotiate trade with to boot. Practically everything except the officer talent was a bunch of bullshit, and a good amount of why it was bullshit also hampered the talent advantage. Well Europe had not only economic, but political incentives to do so. The thought of breaking up a rising power that had begun to compete in the international shipping scene had an appeal to many. And it wasn't just "cheap cotton", it was one of the main drivers of industry in the day, and for several years Europe took a big economic hit. After about a year France was ready to jump in and recognize the South, only the reluctance of Britain to do so stopped them, and at times Britain was on the edge as well. The Confederacy certainly over estimated the importance of "King Cotton" and the diplomats they sent were classic Southern Gentry, who's "honor" and stubbornness certainly didn't help diplomatic efforts, but it wasn't some blatantly impossible goal. And the success blockade wasn't solely the result of the North's industrial might, though it was certainly an element the South downplayed ahead to their ruin. There had been a quantum leap in technology few really took into account, namely the steamship. When sail driven warships had dominated, stationary forts were a huge impediment to movement, as after one run at the fort the whole fleet was basically stationary as it tried to tack the other way. If you didn't do a ton of damage to the fort on your first pass you were screwed and thus the ship/ fortress gun ratio had to be very high. What was quickly found in the Civil War was that steam ships mounting heavier guns and armor were much more mobile and unless the fort had overwhelming fire power and excellent gunnery, multiple runs could be quickly made on a fort. Suddenly taking outlying coastal forts becomes much easier unless a big effort is made to hold them, and the Union Navy more quickly and easily took positions that conventional wisdom said they shouldn't have been able to. Should the South have taken this into account when debating going to war? Yeah, ideally, but these kind of things are much easier to spot in retrospect. You seem to be bringing a really heightened level of emotion to this. Sure, the Southerners were by and large terrible people who hypocritically talked about fighting for freedom when they wanted to keep humans as property, they were by and large pretty arrogant and stubborn and they started a war against a power with more men, material and logistical capability to their detriment, but there's no need to depict them as pants on head retards with no legitimate reasons to think they could win or that everyone else at the time could see that they were obviously going to lose, it's just not true and unnecessary.
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Nov 17, 2014 01:25
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Phobophilia posted:Forget what the Romans would think of Britain or the US, what would they think of their Italian descendants? Consider the Renaissance and reconsider what you just said.
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Nov 17, 2014 01:49
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HEY GAL posted:That they're maintaining their reputation for cutting edge military engineering. I think he's talking about Italy as in "the country that's pretty new honestly" rather than "the collection of classics dorks who helped a lot with making the modern world and were the absolute worst at running a papacy".
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Nov 17, 2014 01:52
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xthetenth posted:I think he's talking about Italy as in "the country that's pretty new honestly" rather than "the collection of classics dorks who helped a lot with making the modern world and were the absolute worst at running a papacy".
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Nov 17, 2014 01:55
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GhostofJohnMuir posted:Well Europe had not only economic, but political incentives to do so. The thought of breaking up a rising power that had begun to compete in the international shipping scene had an appeal to many. And it wasn't just "cheap cotton", it was one of the main drivers of industry in the day, and for several years Europe took a big economic hit. After about a year France was ready to jump in and recognize the South, only the reluctance of Britain to do so stopped them, and at times Britain was on the edge as well. The Confederacy certainly over estimated the importance of "King Cotton" and the diplomats they sent were classic Southern Gentry, who's "honor" and stubbornness certainly didn't help diplomatic efforts, but it wasn't some blatantly impossible goal. They weren't, as you say, "pants-on-head retards," but they were arrogant critically so and in catastrophic (to their system) measure. Overstating their role in European affairs is exactly what you described in your first paragraph, and failing to take into account the technological advantage of American forces is what you described in your second.
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Nov 17, 2014 01:57
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HEY GAL posted:That they're maintaining their reputation for cutting edge military engineering. Personally, I like to think Italy has just had some bad luck recently. poo poo happens, even the Prussians weren't on the ball all the time. Maybe Italy just needs more citrus fruits to regain their glory?
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Nov 17, 2014 02:04
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Libluini posted:Personally, I like to think Italy has just had some bad luck recently. poo poo happens, even the Prussians weren't on the ball all the time.
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Nov 17, 2014 02:05
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