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Comstar posted:Has there been any wargames where this has been played out? Was the RN any better in 1918 than they had been at Jutland? The number disparity of capital ships that favored the UK generally grew in the UK's favor as the war went on and as Germany spent more naval resources on subs.
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Nov 19, 2014 00:29
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The Merry Marauder posted:Should we not instead compare the successes of the French against the Austrians? You sure could, although it's roughly the same, yes? The Prussians applied some lessons learned and Napoleon III was pretty content that his army had performed effectively. I'd argue that the French and the Prussians had roughly similar success against the Austrians, which might make it a better comparison.
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Nov 19, 2014 00:43
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WoodrowSkillson posted:I know you have answered this before, and I failed to save the response. What would be a good book on your period? This thread has only made me realize how little I really know about it.
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Nov 19, 2014 00:55
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Crimea! That's what I was trying to remember! Man I hate this feeling of knowing something but having it buried somewhere in my memory.
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Nov 19, 2014 02:23
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Cyrano4747 posted:The version he's giving is basically Cold-war-french-liberal.txt and the version you're giving is basically cold-war-french-conservative.txt . The whole thing becomes hyper politicized in the 50s and 60s due largely to French domestic politics and the role that Gaullists played in them at the time. Well the memory of the french resistance was actually my thesis. Your right that I did overstate the situation. Was there a resistance in september 1940? Absolutely. There were a few resistants de la premiere heure like henry frenay, robert noireau and georges guingoiun but that certainly does not constitute a willingness among the people to continue fighting. Until the summer of 44 its hard to talk about the resistance as a mass movement and even then most of the maquis were guys trying to avoid the sto. My point still stands that there was no will in the populace to keep fighting. What resistance there was didn't have radios money or arms. They hardly had any contact with de gaulle in london until 42. And you're right that pertain had enormous personal appeal up until 44 even. I was thinking he must of read de gaulles memoirs or something where he got the idea that the people of france were ready to become franc tireurs like they did in 1870.
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Nov 19, 2014 02:36
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Comstar posted:Has there been any wargames where this has been played out? Was the RN any better in 1918 than they had been at Jutland? In 1918, the British had roughly double the amount of battleships as the high seas fleet, AND they had an American squadron as well. It would not have ended well if the high seas fleet sortied out.
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Nov 19, 2014 02:44
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Saint Celestine posted:In 1918, the British had roughly double the amount of battleships as the high seas fleet, AND they had an American squadron as well. At the very least, it could have ended well and still left the Germans in a worse position. It's the way modern wars go.
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Nov 19, 2014 02:59
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I had a few questions, sorry is some of them might prove inflamatory in nature 1. When rebuking various articles and videos about how Germans could have won WWII, lists of German mistakes pile up pretty fast. Looking at those, it seems hard to believe that they managed to wage war for 6 years. So what did Germans do right/Allies did wrong to allow it? 2. Soviet human waves: if you can't trust German accounts (because they felt the need to show Russians as subhuman) and you can't trust Soviet accounts (because they're the first to white wash stuff), then how can you know, with any degree of certainty, what happened and if it happened? 3. Were the Soviets the only ones deploying units with machineguns in the back with the purpose of forcing the first ranks forward? One of my friends is adamant that Allies did that too. 4. Human wave: one guy on Quora claims that Normandy landings were a human wave attack, no different from Nork waves in Korean war. How wrong is he (because I think he is)? 5. World War I and white washing: with the centenary of WWI, it seems to me that a lot of people putting a lot of effort to portray it in a more positive light. Like, the command wasn't exactly stupid, the troops would be regularly rotated out of the trenches, attacks were done with best tactics of the time in mind, etc.. How right/wrong are they? 6. More on topic: Franco-Prussian war saw employment of needle rifles, right? Did that help much?
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Nov 19, 2014 04:56
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JcDent posted:4. Human wave: one guy on Quora claims that Normandy landings were a human wave attack, no different from Nork waves in Korean war. How wrong is he (because I think he is)? Well they're both assaults, but that's about where the comparison ends. Human wave attacks are conceptually reliant on overwhelming the defense with the sheer number of targets, and then engaging in a melee attack. But the Normandy landings were comprehensive in nature - supported by paratroopers, tanks, naval artillery, a variety of aviation, military intelligence operations, French resistance saboteurs, etc. On Omaha Beach specifically the landings were very difficult (due to a variety of conditions including the cliffs, limited avenues of attack, poor sea conditions, and the fact that it was the most heavily defended) and the American troops assigned there were initially forced to attack without the benefit of armor or allied bombardment. But the fact remains that the entire concept of the attack was completely different, that the soldiers had no intention of throwing themselves into bullets so their comrades could attack with bayonets, and that the deficiencies in supportive arms were remedied as quickly as possible. At Omaha Beach the planners had expected to face two battalions and ended up fighting nine. After they recognized the problem, the commanders called a halt to the landings until a destroyer group could come up and shell the defenders. Of course this doesn't get featured nearly as much in the movies. I would assume that the Quora guy simply watched Saving Private Ryan too many times. Kaal fucked around with this message at 05:33 on Nov 19, 2014 |
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Nov 19, 2014 05:21
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JcDent posted:3. Were the Soviets the only ones deploying units with machineguns in the back with the purpose of forcing the first ranks forward? One of my friends is adamant that Allies did that too. Ummmm... quote:4. Human wave: one guy on Quora claims that Normandy landings were a human wave attack, no different from Nork waves in Korean war. How wrong is he (because I think he is)? Well, they went from the ocean to the shore, that's as wave as you can possibly get!  Well, I mean, how do you define human wave? The landings happened in concert with naval arty, fire from boats, and attacks from the air but end of the day it was a lot of dudes stepping off of boats and hoofing it over open ground until they could get close enough to fire back.
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Nov 19, 2014 05:24
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JcDent posted:1. When rebuking various articles and videos about how Germans could have won WWII, lists of German mistakes pile up pretty fast. Looking at those, it seems hard to believe that they managed to wage war for 6 years. So what did Germans do right/Allies did wrong to allow it? The Allies hosed up left and right as well. In addition to loads of general incompetence in the early periods of the war, war is the kind of environment where everybody is going to be making mistake left and right, because good intelligence is hard to come by. quote:5. World War I and white washing: with the centenary of WWI, it seems to me that a lot of people putting a lot of effort to portray it in a more positive light. Like, the command wasn't exactly stupid, the troops would be regularly rotated out of the trenches, attacks were done with best tactics of the time in mind, etc.. How right/wrong are they? They are, and they aren't. There's a whole lot of revisionism going on about WWI, and the short answer is that the leadership defies easy characterization. It's easy to look back and think 'why the gently caress didn't you learn from Thing X?' when the people involved had a lot of conflicting information to deal with. But on the other hand there were plenty of leaders on all sides who appear to have been Grade A Fuckups. Trin Tragula is doing a great series on the war day-by-day here: https://makersley.com/. If I might take the liberty of quoting from his entry today: quote:[Possibly apocryphal anecdote] demonstrates very nicely the mindset that was instilled in Allied and particularly in British senior officers after First Ypres. They’re absolutely convinced that they would have folded if only the Germans had kept attacking. Prisoner interrogations are showing that the Germans are utterly shocked to find that there aren’t masses of British reserves in the rear areas. This means that estimates of enemy strength, especially during a battle, are extremely unreliable, and they’re intent on not making the same mistake as the Germans just have. Attacks will be pressed until the enemy folds up.
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Nov 19, 2014 05:25
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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JcDent posted:I had a few questions, sorry is some of them might prove inflamatory in nature For this one it's pretty much that a large, modern, centralized nation with a population willing to, or effectively coerced into, fighting to the bitter end is incredibly hard to subdue due to the amount of people and resources it can mobilize for war. Add on to that the fact that Germany's occupied territories gave it a lot of space that it could both drain more resources from, and retreat into, and that drags things out even longer.
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Nov 19, 2014 05:27
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Kaal posted:Well they're both assaults, but that's about where the comparison ends. Human wave attacks are conceptually reliant on overwhelming the defense with the sheer number of targets, and then engaging in a melee attack. But the Normandy landings were comprehensive in nature - supported by paratroopers, tanks, naval artillery, a variety of aviation, military intelligence operations, French resistance saboteurs, etc. On Omaha Beach specifically the landings were very difficult (due to a variety of conditions including the cliffs, limited avenues of attack, poor sea conditions, and the fact that it was the most heavily defended) and the American troops assigned there were initially forced to attack without the benefit of armor or allied bombardment. But the fact remains that the entire concept of the attack was completely different, that the soldiers had no intention of throwing themselves into bullets so their comrades could attack with bayonets, and that the deficiencies in supportive arms were remedied as quickly as possible. I would assume that the Quora guy simply watched Saving Private Ryan too many times. I will say though that the Chinese (not North Korean) tactics which were often called human wave were really more infiltration/shock. American's described them as human wave because hey, suddenly Orientals* everywhere shooting at poo poo, but it wasn't just 'we want to knife the Americans and have the men to throw away' it was 'lets sneak up so their arty has to fire danger close while we can use our grenades.' Often as not the *Period accurate terminology, not mine.
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Nov 19, 2014 05:29
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JcDent posted:I had a few questions, sorry is some of them might prove inflamatory in nature Everyone makes mistakes, Germany got lucky just as many times as they got unlucky. For instance, attacking the USSR when they did was amazing luck on their part. The Stalin Line was empty, the Red Army was in the middle of restructuring, replacements for armoured forces were on their way to being manufactured... quote:2. Soviet human waves: if you can't trust German accounts (because they felt the need to show Russians as subhuman) and you can't trust Soviet accounts (because they're the first to white wash stuff), then how can you know, with any degree of certainty, what happened and if it happened? Soviet archives have been declassified, you can always go look in there. The Memorial Open Database has reams of paper with lists of the dead, listing where they died and when. You can tell with absolute certainty what happened. Armies tend to be good at counting their own dead in internal documents. If you hide your dead, you don't get reinforcements. Furthermore, you keep getting supplies. Receiving supplies for men that don't exist is sabotage. Sabotage in times of war puts you in front of a firing squad pretty drat quick. quote:3. Were the Soviets the only ones deploying units with machineguns in the back with the purpose of forcing the first ranks forward? One of my friends is adamant that Allies did that too. Spraying down soldiers that weren't advancing fast enough from 100 meters behind the front line existed only in Call of Duty and Company of Heroes. Real life blocking detachments weren't made for that reason, and certainly not used for that reason. quote:4. Human wave: one guy on Quora claims that Normandy landings were a human wave attack, no different from Nork waves in Korean war. How wrong is he (because I think he is)? "Human wave" doesn't have a strict definition. If you define it as "sending a lot of men to attack", then I guess they were, but that describes every offensive ever. I'm not nearly as familiar with the Korean War as I am with WWII, but from what I heard the "human waves" were a consequence of the Americans thinking they were fighting a lot more men than they actually were.
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Nov 19, 2014 05:32
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Ensign Expendable posted:"Human wave" doesn't have a strict definition. If you define it as "sending a lot of men to attack", then I guess they were, but that describes every offensive ever. I'm not nearly as familiar with the Korean War as I am with WWII, but from what I heard the "human waves" were a consequence of the Americans thinking they were fighting a lot more men than they actually were. Also the media getting lazy and wanting to copy/paste their reports on banzai charges because eh, they all look the same.
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Nov 19, 2014 05:37
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JcDent posted:1. When rebuking various articles and videos about how Germans could have won WWII, lists of German mistakes pile up pretty fast. Looking at those, it seems hard to believe that they managed to wage war for 6 years. So what did Germans do right/Allies did wrong to allow it? The Germans were fighting a war for a little under six years, but all those years weren't all continuous, high-intensity fighting. For example, there's the "Phoney War" of 1939-1940, in which the Germans only had to fight a short, one-front war against the Poles while the French twiddled their thumbs. And the pre-Barbarossa lull in 1941, where the Germans really only had to fight in North Africa and Greece. That's not to say the German war economy ever had an easy time of it, but it wasn't under continuous pressure during sizable portions of WWII. Geographically, you're also talking about a huge area of ground that was taken and re-taken. France, Poland, the Baltics, the Ukraine, western Russia, Libya, Algeria, Holland, Belgium, Italy, Greece. David Glantz's talk gives a good picture of the scale of the Eastern Front fighting. Invading millions of square miles took time. And organizing and staging the Allied counter-invasions took time as well. It wasn't until 1944 that Bagration and Overlord could be reasonably attempted. JcDent posted:2. Soviet human waves: if you can't trust German accounts (because they felt the need to show Russians as subhuman) and you can't trust Soviet accounts (because they're the first to white wash stuff), then how can you know, with any degree of certainty, what happened and if it happened? Determining the validity of sources is a huge challenge for historians. To borrow your phrasing, Soviet accounts" and "German accounts" encompasses an enormous amount of historical material, everything from OKH files, to propaganda films, to the war diary of a T-34 battalion, to the post-war memoirs of some landzer. Some of this material is more reliable than others, although none of it is perfect. The proximity of the the author to the events he's describing, his general perceptiveness, his role in the events, his motives (is he trying to cover his rear end or further his career?), his audience (he might leave gory details out of his letters to mom), and the time between the event and the writing (people forget, remember, and reconsider stuff over time) all play a role in determine the credibility of a source. With that said, the preponderance of reliable evidence (veteran memoirs, war diaries and reports, etc.) suggest that "human waves" were not standard Soviet doctrine and not an especially regular occurrence. During the crisis days of 1941-1942, there were some frontal counterattacks by massed Soviet infantry. However, these attacks were the result of undertrained and underequipped soldiers, the limited availability of armor, artillery and heavy weapons, and pressure on some officers to counter German advances or to break out of encirclement. Human wave attacks were not the first choice of Soviet commanders. As the war progressed and things stabilized somewhat, you the Soviets still use large numbers of infantry, but they use fairly standard infantry fire-and-maneuver tactics, artillery barrages, and close tank support. JcDent posted:3. Were the Soviets the only ones deploying units with machineguns in the back with the purpose of forcing the first ranks forward? One of my friends is adamant that Allies did that too. The Soviets did employ NKVD-led "barrier troops" during 1941-1942, with orders to prevent retreat and desertion. But there are very, very few cases of barrier troops carrying out Enemy at the Gates-style massacres. Most of their work consisted of rounding up deserters and punishing malingerers (there's accounts of some NKVD officers executing men with foot wounds on the theory that they were self-inflicted wounds). Political officers were also responsible for some killings. During the Winter War, for example, a Soviet tank battalion commander was summarily executed by his political officer for ordering a withdrawal. As for the Western Allies doing this? I've never read or heard anything to suggest this ever happened. There are some unsubstantiated rumors broadly similar to this. For example, the allegations that Ronald Speirs shot a sergeant who disobeyed his orders in Normandy. But these stories seem to be "a buddy of mine said..."-type war stories. JcDent posted:4. Human wave: one guy on Quora claims that Normandy landings were a human wave attack, no different from Nork waves in Korean war. How wrong is he (because I think he is)? That's a lot of bullshit hiding a very small amount of truth. A "human wave" assault implies using lightly armed infantry to overwhelm the enemy through pure weight of numbers. Yes, the Normandy landings did involve landing large numbers of infantry. On Omaha Beach alone, the US Army landed two entire regiments, plus two Ranger battalions in the first waves. But these infantry efforts were part of a larger, multi-arms operation. The infantry that attacked the beaches weren't just tasked with charging machine gun nests. Combat engineers and beachmasters landed with the initial waves with the express purpose of clearing beach obstacles to heavier equipment could get ashore as quickly as possible. See, the Normandy planners didn't expect the infantry to secure a beachhead alone. Percy Hobart and others went to great efforts to ensure the invading troops would have armor support. The British and Canadians on Gold, Juno, and Sword had "Hobart's Funnies" and conventional tanks fighting right alongside them. The Americans landed DD Shermans and Shermans with wading kits with the early waves (although several DDs were swamped before they could land at Omaha). Plus, there was a major effort to provide fire support for the landings. There was the massive air and naval pre-bombardment. And during the landings, several US Navy destroyers came perilously close to shore to provide fire support to the troops on the beach. The "human wave" idea is also a mis-representation of North Korean/Chinese doctrine during the Korean War (and of the similar tactics used by VC and NVC sappers during the Vietnam Qar). Communist tactics in Korea/Vietnam certainly utilized sudden, massed infantry attacks to overwhelm enemy defenses. But these tactics had a certain degree of calculation and sophistication. It wasn't just a 100 guys screaming through a field hoping the enemy only had 99 bullets. Communist tactics generally used a combination of infiltration, suppressing fire, surprise, shock, and weight of numbers to achieve success. Usually, Communist attacks would be preceded by a small group of infiltrators (sometime these would be specially trained soldiers like VC sappers). These men would cut wire obstacles, kill sentries, and clear defensive positions. This would create a breach the main, follow-on force could exploit en masse. JcDent posted:6. More on topic: Franco-Prussian war saw employment of needle rifles, right? Did that help much? Yes. Both the German Dreyse and the French Chassepot. Because both sides had roughly-equivalent weapons (the Chassepot was better than the German rifle in some respects) needle guns didn't give either side a decisive advantage. There weren't the one-sided needle gun vs musket slaughters you saw during the Schleswig-Holstein War (e.g. the 1864 Battle of Lundby. But needle guns did force both sides to alter tactics somewhat. Massed cavalry charges against infantry became much more dangerous and much more costly for the horsemen. Infantry engagements tended to be fought at longer ranges and in looser order. In some cases, Prussian troops used their needle guns in Feuer im Vormarsch ("fire in manuever") tactics, with one group of soldiers firing while the other leapfrogged ahead. Bacarruda fucked around with this message at 06:23 on Nov 19, 2014 |
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Nov 19, 2014 06:20
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PittTheElder posted:The Allies hosed up left and right as well. In addition to loads of general incompetence in the early periods of the war, war is the kind of environment where everybody is going to be making mistake left and right, because good intelligence is hard to come by. To add to this, there's a lot of mistakes that were made that were not errors of judgment, but errors of intelligence. Given what they knew at the time (or thought they knew) the decisions were completely intelligent and rational. It only became a mistake later once more was known. There are plenty of just plain bone-headedness or egomania, or politics, or whatever that led to decisions that were obviously bad at the time, but we have to be careful about evaluating decisions based on later evidence. It's easy to be armchair generals and look at what should have been done knowing how it all turned out, but quite a bit more difficult to get into the heads of the commanders and understand why they made the decisions that they did.
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Nov 19, 2014 06:26
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JcDent posted:I had a few questions, sorry is some of them might prove inflamatory in nature 1. Mistakes congregate in wars and you could fill a book with all the allied blunders as well. The Germans ran roughshod over unprepared and outnumbered countries from 1939-41, with the exception of France, where the French and German militaries had made strategic choices that chanced into an overwhelming German victory. The Soviet army in 1941 was an unquestionable mess, and the extreme territorial gains made by Germany weren't very valuable, as Soviets made sure of. The Soviets completely reorganize their military through 1941-42, and 1942 is also the Year of Stalingrad. 1942-1944 in only a few years where Nazi Germany isn't fighting countries like Norway or Belgium, and they're losing the entire way through. You could say that Nazi Germany's greatest advantage was the fact that they had re-armed first, and their military leadership had gained good experience from the Spanish civil war or a career rank since WWI. Nazi Germany took over countries with an impressive pace, that is evidence of competence in upper and lower echelon leadership. It also speaks to how unprepared everybody else was. 2. You can trust the Soviet casualty records to a higher degree, because it would be uniquely ineffective to keep inaccurate records of losses within the military bureaucracy. What is going to happen when a battalion gets ordered to attack and 5 guys show up because the casualties were under-reported in dispatches? German casualties have been tallied using German war records, why wouldn't you use Soviet war records for Soviet casualties? The whitewashing excuse isn't valid because those military documents aren't meant for the public. 3. The Soviets were well motivated to attack the Germans that had invaded their country and executed their comrades. Somebody can talk about penal battalions, I don't remember anything about them. Generally, it is useful to have some soldiers (Perhaps with machine guns) manning a fall-back position in case the attack fails. I am certain that machine guns have been placed behind an attacking force many, many, times, but not for the purpose of slaughtering retreating soldiers. 4. "Human waves" are a horrendous pop history soundbite that doesn't describe an actual tactic. A human wave attack is when a group of people runs at another group of people and fights them hand-to-hand regardless of how either group is armed. The intention at Normandy was that the landing forces could break through coastal defences quickly and establish a front line inland that would protect further landings. This is evident from the extensive bombardment of the beaches, the select armament and extensive training of the first waves of infantry, and the presence of specialty equipment like floating tanks and landing craft. It isn't a human wave attack because nobody expected the landing force to show up on the beach and just run at the bunkers. The Chinese didn't engage in human wave attacks either. Chinese attacks were based around careful maneuvering of small units and concentrated firepower directed at weak points in the UN line. There is simply more care taken into the planning of each attack then what is depicted in popular media. It should be obvious that with modern arms, human wave attacks are not only wasteful, but ineffective. A big group of guys is a dead group of guys at the cost of a few artillery shells, or a well placed machine gun. There's no point. "Human wave" is often taken to mean "any attack which results in more casualties for the attacker than the defender". That's stupid, troops are more vulnerable attacking than defending, there's no reason for a defending force to take higher casualties. Countries like the US can afford plentiful, advanced munitions or vehicles to do tasks that would otherwise cost lives. But for most militaries, there isn't always such luxury in equipment, people have to die in order to seize a position, or destroy a tank. 5. In this thread, it's not about portraying anybody in a better light, it's about being truthful. History that seeps into popular culture is often incorrect, and is usually interpreted with some sort of agenda in mind. You can accurately describe WWI and it still paints a bleak picture: People can be forced to live in misery and death, because of arbitrary, seemingly unrelated advances in metallurgy, infrastructure, manufacturing, (every other 19th century technological advance), and nobody anywhere is able to effectively change those circumstances. 6. The French had the better rifle, the world's first bolt-action. The Needle gun was slow in comparison. The war was won by strategic decisions, but tactically, the better Prussian artillery had more impact than the rifles. Edit: Oh, they're named after the firing pin? Oh well, the French rifle was way more advanced in any case. Slim Jim Pickens fucked around with this message at 06:35 on Nov 19, 2014 |
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Nov 19, 2014 06:29
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I like how five guys jumped in and answered the question at the same time.  I love this thread.
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Nov 19, 2014 06:41
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Recalling the last time a discussion of Human Wave tactics came up, what I learned was that there's a specific meaning to it. In the context of modern warfare, there's fire-and-maneuver: apply fire to the enemy to force them to keep their heads down, allowing you as the attacker to either get in close enough to assault the enemy position directly and/or to move to a position that will let you shoot more accurately. In most (Western) armies, the "fire" part of fire-and-maneuver was usually achieved with artillery. With Chinese and North Korean armies, a lack of sufficient amounts of artillery meant that they had to apply direct fire. That is, part of the advancing soldiers would also be the ones shooting at the enemy for them to keep their heads down, while others would be moving to perform the "maneuver" part. It's therefore inaccurate to refer to Soviet attacks (and American attacks at Omaha Beach) as Human Wave because both armies very much used indirect fire, lots and lots of artillery, to prepare and cover their assaults. The fact that "there were lots of men charging" is completely normal in the context of an attacker seeking a 3:1, if not 10:1 ratio against the defender in the first place.
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Nov 19, 2014 06:42
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Acebuckeye13 posted:I like how five guys jumped in and answered the question at the same time. Without fail, it's the WWII questions. At least this way everybody can get it out of their systems.
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Nov 19, 2014 06:43
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:Without fail, it's the WWII questions.
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Nov 19, 2014 06:45
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HEY GAL posted:Don't worry I post enough for five on my own, so the Early Modern is well discussed Was there any sort of popular uprising against the mercenary bands or was that sort of thing considered non-kosher? In the 30YW, I mean. I'm asking Hegel obviously. VanSandman fucked around with this message at 07:14 on Nov 19, 2014 |
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Nov 19, 2014 07:06
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VanSandman posted:Was there any sort of popular uprising against the mercenary bands or was that sort of thing considered non-kosher? The usual thing was the mutiny, and in the Army of Flanders it went like this: throw out your officers, elect your own leaders, swear to obey their orders on pain of death (mutineer discipline being much stronger than in the actual army). Then take a small town, hold it, and present your demands to the authorities. If they don't give in (and they usually do, these things are almost always settled by negotiation), you sell the town to the Dutch. Geoffrey Parker's got a pretty little article on it, if you can find it. E.P. Thompson's "The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the 18th Century," which describes how riots and the response to riots functioned in the early modern period, has been a good pointer to me when thinking about mutinies, and you should probably read it. Edit: Oh, against. Rural civilians carried out basically a perpetual guerilla war against all soldiers during the Thirty Years' War, and a number of diaries that I've read mention this. That's not an "uprising" per se, but burying a man alive in a pit with his dead comrade or tying him to a tree while you make him watch you torture his companions to death definitely signals your displeasure with him and his presence in your vicinity. Leaving my mistake up because the information is still good, and you should still read those articles I cited. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 07:29 on Nov 19, 2014 |
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Nov 19, 2014 07:20
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How detailed and current could the orders be in a Thirty Years War battle? What kind of orders could be delivered to troops out of shouting range, or out of sight? What kind of things made the difference between good and bad generals on the battlefield?
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Nov 19, 2014 07:33
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HEY GAL posted:Don't worry I post enough for five on my own, so the Early Modern is well discussed Hegel, can I ask you something maybe a little out of your wheelhouse? How/when did the warfare of the late middle ages evolve into what you study, and how/when did it turn into those massed-musket levee en masse things you see from 1780 or so to 1860ish? That's a ludicrously broad question, I know, so how's about one really specific, simple thing: When did the cartridge box supersede the apostles (or whatever you call those bandoliers that held pre-measured charges)?
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Nov 19, 2014 09:10
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A few World War One related questions: 1. Did the equivalent of special forces/special operations exist in WW1? From my super cursory internet search, it seems they were basically just the scouts or the shock troops, which makes sense. 2. Can anyone recommend any particularly good books on the war? I've only read The Guns of August by Barbara W Tuchman and Castles of Steel by Robert K Massie. Also interested in any Web resources. Basically, I have never known or read much about the first world war until this year, and it wasn't even because of the centenary it was just because I picked up Castles of Steel on a whim from the library. I'm finding it to be a fascinating period and I'm keen to learn more.
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Nov 19, 2014 10:01
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Am I the only one who just loving loves the idea of shading the battle-scapes of particular battles? Like, I know it's not perfect and it really makes sense for certain wars and certain fronts... but holy poo poo, this has done one hell of a job of mentally organizing hostilities in a conflict divorced by a century of time and on another continent. e: i mean gently caress, the only way I think it could be better is if was topographic. Frostwerks fucked around with this message at 10:44 on Nov 19, 2014 |
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Nov 19, 2014 10:42
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I'm very much overjoyed to see so many answers. As some people are already asking about TYW... Reading Pike and Shotte rulebook and playing videogames has left me entirely confused on how large were units on the battlefield. Like, if you have your mass of pikemen and the muskets flanking them, how big would the units be? Would they have internal division into companies and such?
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Nov 19, 2014 13:36
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JcDent posted:5. World War I and white washing: with the centenary of WWI, it seems to me that a lot of people putting a lot of effort to portray it in a more positive light. Like, the command wasn't exactly stupid, the troops would be regularly rotated out of the trenches, attacks were done with best tactics of the time in mind, etc.. How right/wrong are they? OK, so the history of the historiography. To grossly simplify, the "it was all a giant cake and arse party run by morons" view has at this point won the historiography war, and they've done so by effectively mobilising pop culture against the traditional Establishment view of a great and worthy struggle against the malevolent Hun, right? It's a broad-strokes argument that came about because it was trying to overturn a shitload of out-and-out propaganda, and it needed two major cultural icons to do that (Oh What A Lovely War! and Blackadder Goes Forth), backed by the efforts of historians like AJP Taylor and Leon Wolff. This is why, unusually, it's the people pushing a variation on the old Establishment line who are now the "revisionists". They seem to work along two lines of thought - one of which I'm very grateful for, and one of which I think is complete cobblers. Of course it's good that we have people giving us a better, more nuanced understanding of the armies and how they fought; of the large numbers of tactical innovations that took place on the Allied side as well as the German; of the problems inherent in converting a professional colonial police force (there's that phrase again) into a mass citizen land-army; of the First World War's uniqueness in terms of senior officers not being able to exercise direct voice control over subordinates; of Haig as an (admittedly rather strange) human being doing all he was capable of, neither an out-and-out bungler (like Frederick Stopford) nor an out-and-out butcher (like Luigi Cadorna), nor a great military hero either (as John Terraine would have it); and a hundred and one other points that it's very useful to have brought out in detail and which add to our understanding of the war. The broad-strokes cake-and-arse-party view does often misrepresent a lot of things about the war to make the war seem as bad as it possibly can (most notably the "Lions led by donkeys" quotation, which was almost certainly invented out of whole cloth). Now, the revisionists also argue that by bringing out these nuances, they also bring out a wider truth that the war was not only prosecuted about as well as it could ever have been, it was in fact a necessary and justified conflict; they attack the "pointless slaughter" conclusion as vigorously as individual concepts like "the blokes lived at the front line for months on end". The place they end up sounds depressingly familiar. Creaking autocracy vs liberal democracy*, aggressive German imperialism, necessary to enter the war for vaguely-explained reasons of self-defence and national security. Critically, from what I've read, it doesn't seem like they're bringing anything new to the table here. In that context, it's really hard to get away from the flip response, which is of course "George, the British Empire currently covers a quarter of the globe, while the German Empire consists of a small sausage factory in Tanganyika; I hardly think that we can be entirely absolved of blame on the imperialistic front." *As long as you're not female, or African, or Indian, or Russian, or... CNN Sports Ticker posted:A few World War One related questions: Go read this post, he knows more about stormtroopers. I'd also say that people like the aviators, the tankies, and even some of the cavalry aren't that far from being special forces. There's a guy called Stephen Badsey who's written extensively on paratroopers - he likes to characterise British cavalry tactics c. 1916 (yes, they had some; yes, they worked sometimes; no, they didn't get the chance for many actions) as very-short-range two-dimensional paratroopers - gallop through a gap in the line, shock-evict the enemy from some useful strong-point in their rear area, then dismount, dig in, and hold it until the infantry arrived. Of course, their effectiveness was seriously limited because first you needed a gap in the line... quote:2. Can anyone recommend any particularly good books on the war? I've only read The Guns of August by Barbara W Tuchman and Castles of Steel by Robert K Massie. Also interested in any Web resources. So what are you interested in most from what you've already read? There are a whole load of different ways of coming at this. The causes, the politicians, the generals, the tactics, the battles, the blokes, the quartermasters, the poetry, the executions, the nurses, the home fronts; as long as you don't mind a little Anglo-centricism, you can come at this from a hell of a lot of different angles and all of them have good writing. There are three pretty excellent general-knowledge websites that I use a lot: First World War.com, Great War.com and The Long, Long Trail. Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 16:02 on Nov 19, 2014 |
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Nov 19, 2014 13:47
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Bacarruda posted:Yes. Both the German Dreyse and the French Chassepot. Because both sides had roughly-equivalent weapons (the Chassepot was better than the German rifle in some respects) needle guns didn't give either side a decisive advantage. There weren't the one-sided needle gun vs musket slaughters you saw during the Schleswig-Holstein War (e.g. the 1864 Battle of Lundby. The Chassepot was very significantly better due to its higher muzzle velocity, giving it longer range and better accuracy. Proportionately more casualties were inflicted by rifle by the French; in part that's due to their very inferior artillery.
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Nov 19, 2014 13:56
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CNN Sports Ticker posted:2. Can anyone recommend any particularly good books on the war? I've only read The Guns of August by Barbara W Tuchman and Castles of Steel by Robert K Massie. Also interested in any Web resources. A World Undone by GJ Meyer is a very good single-volume book on the whole of the war.
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Nov 19, 2014 14:16
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Trin Tragula posted:
I think I'm quite a fan of the approach that Massie takes, which is exploring the people and the characters involved, the exploits and the dramas and the battles. The political side is a little less interesting to me, although totally intertwined with the whole thing. I'm also down to read about individuals on a smaller scale.
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Nov 19, 2014 14:22
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CNN Sports Ticker posted:I think I'm quite a fan of the approach that Massie takes, which is exploring the people and the characters involved, the exploits and the dramas and the battles. The political side is a little less interesting to me, although totally intertwined with the whole thing. I'm also down to read about individuals on a smaller scale. You are describing 1914: The Days of Hope, which will take you from August through the end of November; the same author also has volumes covering 1915, 1916, 1917 and the first half of 1918 in the same vein. (A World Undone is about as good as a single-volume comprehensive history can be; there's necessarily plenty that gets left out, and I have a few issues with the tone, but it does a good job of providing a grand overview of the war that you can slot more detailed reading into. It's also got an extremely useful quick timeline and cheat sheet at the front for all the leading political and military figures.)
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Nov 19, 2014 14:46
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Trin Tragula posted:OK, so the history of the historiography. Ok, I really didn't want to be that guy, but words have meanings and meaning matters, especially when you're talking about history and doubly especially when you're using historian technical jargon in a history thread. This isn't even a specific call-out or anything, it's something I've seen misused in every history thread in SA at one point or another in the last few months. Historiography has a couple of meanings. The most common current usages would be 'the study of the methodologies of history' and 'the body of literature on a specific subject.' I get what you're saying, but you're saying it in a way that I've literally never encountered before in print or spoken English. "History of the historiography" is particularly redundant, as the word "historiography" implies the study of the history of the writing of history. When an advisor asks a 2nd year grad student what the historiography of a subject looks like he's implicitly looking for not only a basket of works that cover that subject, but how they fit in with one another into an ongoing dialogue. Second, I would strongly argue that you are vastly, vastly overestimating the importance on late 60s-early 80s British media. People didn't just then start to suspect that wartime propaganda was horseshit. Lloyd George and Churchill were throwing Haig under the bus the second he was dead and could safely be used as a scapegoat for wartime failures, and BH Liddel Heart was writing very critically about British higher leadership during the war as early as the 40s and 50s. The idea of the trenches of WW1 being an unremitting, horrible, bloody slog was something that was very much a part of the popular culture of every western nation beginning almost as soon as the gunfire started (just look at the art, literature, poetry, and cinema of the 20s-30s to find a plethora of examples of this - arguably it starts even during the war with the 1916 film Battle of the Somme, released in theaters before the battle had even truly concluded. Third, your understanding of german Stormtroopers is really flawed. It wasn't just a matter of combing the ranks for all the old guys who knew what the gently caress was up. Within the specific context of the German military in the First World War, the Sturmtruppen or Stoßtruppen (depending on what unit you're looking at and at what time in the war) were generally company-sized units that focused on what we would now call combined arms, fire and maneuver, and infiltration tactics. They were different from the line infantry in that they were often - although not always - wearing specialized uniforms designed for crawling long distances (reinforced elbows, knees, short jackets instead of greatcoats, etc), loaded down with a fuckton of grenades, and armed with either carbine-length rifles or, towards the end of the war, SMGs. They would also have LMG detachments advancing with them to quickly set up bases of fire. They were big on bypassing and avoiding enemy strong holds in favor of letting regular units encircle and wipe them out once they'd been isolated. They're a fairly slippery concept because of how much they change between 1915 (when you see what are arguably the first ones) and 1918. They were by no means as few in number as the common perception of special forces today, but there is also general tendency to vastly underestimate the number of modern spec ops (there are roughly 2500 active duty Navy Seals alone). That said, they were always a relatively small minority of the soldiers deployed and until 1918 (when you see them deployed in battalion strength) were almost always shipped around in company or smaller groups. At any rate they were very specially trained and equipped. While the training and equipment changed throughout the war, the fact that they were specially trained and equipped compared to the common line infantry did not. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 16:10 on Nov 19, 2014 |
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Nov 19, 2014 15:42
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CNN Sports Ticker posted:I think I'm quite a fan of the approach that Massie takes, which is exploring the people and the characters involved He certainly went very in-depth on the character of David Beatty's wife.
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Nov 19, 2014 15:57
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100 Years Ago Winston Churchill has turned his mind to the knotty problem of hunting down Konigsberg; and yes, he's had another Good Idea. This time he literally wants to set the river on fire, which is clearly a reasonable and proportionate response. Meanwhile, the men on the spot have come up with a barely less ridiculous proposal: they're going to put a chap in a flying-boat with some home-made bombs, and he's going to fly over Konigsberg and try to drop them down her funnels! Ludicrous suggestion. It'll never catch on. Ahem. We also have a convincing British victory just outside Basra, and apparently al-Jazeera is doing a three-part documentary on Arab views of the war, which might be worth a look. Cyrano4747 posted:"History of the historiography" is particularly redundant That was supposed to be the joke... quote:Stormtroopers Point taken, edited, happy to defer.
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Nov 19, 2014 18:52
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I bet the al-jazeera thing is interesting, because the war is basically the end of the middle east as a power bloc. The postwar stuff was an absolute mess.
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Nov 19, 2014 19:32
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xthetenth posted:I bet the al-jazeera thing is interesting, because the war is basically the end of the middle east as a power bloc. The postwar stuff was an absolute mess. On the other hand, huge swaths of the mid-east considered the Ottomans to be a bunch of occupying assholes in the first place.
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Nov 19, 2014 19:40
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Cyrano4747 posted:On the other hand, huge swaths of the mid-east considered the Ottomans to be a bunch of occupying assholes in the first place. This is also equally true. What I meant was more along the lines of that being one of the biggest shifts in middle eastern history, and the start of a huge mess of trying to make working nations with some sort of national identity out of what had been a relatively cosmopolitan empire.
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Nov 19, 2014 22:15
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