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Hey, Hegel, do you know anything about espionage during your era? Like how spies were recruited, how they were used, and if in fact there was anything like a formal position of spymaster and whatnot? Anything on the subject would be interesting!Slavvy posted:This may sound retarded but: in all the cold war gone hot talk it always revolves around how far the soviets could get into europe before the nukes got busted out. What I don't understand is: why would the soviets want to do this at all? Like, what would be the point of attacking NATO and building tremendous armies and developing strategic plans to attack NATO. Why would they want to attack at all? I'm hardly an expert, but as far as I can tell: Mutual paranoia. "Oh, poo poo, they have an enormous army and they could curbstomp us if they wanted to. We'd better build up so we can protect against them in case they try anything, and they might, who knows! It's not like anyone was expecting Hitler to go batshit!" "Oh poo poo, those guys are building up a big army, and who are they going to use it on except us? poo poo, maybe they're planning to attack us, we'd better build up as well." "Oh poo poo, those guys are building up a big army..." And so on ad infinitum until you have enough nukes to blow up the world and enough armies to defeat every single military force before that in history combined in one massive battle.
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Dec 2, 2014 19:23
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I'm looking to get my dad a few books for Christmas about the First World War and/or warships. Is The Guns of August still a great choice for one of them or is there better now? And any good recommendations for warships?
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Dec 2, 2014 19:34
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Taerkar posted:I'm looking to get my dad a few books for Christmas about the First World War and/or warships. Is The Guns of August still a great choice for one of them or is there better now? And any good recommendations for warships? Castles of Steel is a pretty good book about the fleets and warships of WWI - I enjoyed it.
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Dec 2, 2014 19:36
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Nenonen posted:There was no actual deal to be made because there was no independent Austria between 1938 and 1955 Not quite. The fate of Austria was sealed in 1943. That's when the allied powers agreed that they would treat Austria as the first victim of Nazi aggression rather than a constituent part of the Reich. The initial plans were to treat it as a liberated nation rather than as an occupied one. The immediate post-war period buggered the gently caress out of that, however. The western allies weren't too happy with Stalin's unilaterally plopping socialist regimes down in the eastern european countries the Red Army liberated, especially in the cases where there was a competing government-in-exile and a legitimate non-communist wartime resistance movement (Poland is the classic example). Everyone's already agreed, though, that Austria was a victim rather than a component of the German state, so they adopted a miniature version of the four sector joint occupation and administration plan that Germany got, largely due to Stalin's insistence that he get a foot in the door with Austria - his assumption seems to be that a western occupied or independent Austria wouldn't be a neutral party, and he wanted his western belt of buffer states. Austria was therefore a singular geographical entity with well recognized borders (which, really, you can't even say about Germany at that time) as early as 1945, but its over-all governance was in the hands of an Allied Control Council operating out of a four-way divided capital. Pretty much the same as Germany, only much more agreement on Austria actually being a single nation rather than a bag of affiliated occupation zones. If it wasn't for the 1943 agreement we very likely could have seen Austria go the way of Germany, with two smaller rump states elevated independently to nation status in the late 40s. As a side note Stalin croaking and Khrushchev denouncing the worst of his excesses is how we end up with an end to the occupation in 1955 and a (officially at least) politically neutral Austria during the remainder of the cold war. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Dec 2, 2014 |
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Dec 2, 2014 19:39
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Slavvy posted:This may sound retarded but: in all the cold war gone hot talk it always revolves around how far the soviets could get into europe before the nukes got busted out. What I don't understand is: why would the soviets want to do this at all? Like, what would be the point of attacking NATO and building tremendous armies and developing strategic plans to attack NATO. Why would they want to attack at all? Both sides saw themselves as the underdog from the beginning. USSR had more tank and motorized divisions stationed in Central Europe, USA had a lead in nuclear weapons and methods to deliver them - which is why short range missiles stationed in Cuba became such a big deal, it was a radical rift in status quo.
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Dec 2, 2014 19:40
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Tomn posted:I'm hardly an expert, but as far as I can tell: Mutual paranoia. It's a pretty good example of a security dilemma at work.
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Dec 2, 2014 19:44
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But if you want a longer answer, there's a multipronged one. 1. They were seriously traumatised by WWII. The German attack on Russia was a sudden backstab by an ally with cataclysmic consequences, affecting pretty much everyone. It's really something of the sort the West has never experienced. It branded a pretty key imperative into the Soviet consciousness - *never let Operation Barbarossa happen again*. Never trust anyone you don't have the advantage over, never be caught by surprise, never allow Germany to rise, never let your enemies get into a position of military superiority, never be caught in a position where the enemy forces can even reach Russian soil to despoil it and rape your women and drag your children off to slave labour camps. You can sacrifice anything, but you must keep up with the military spending of your potential enemies:  2. They knew what their strengths are. At the end of WWII, the Soviets were pretty much the undisputed masters of combined arms conventional attack. They barely had a strategic air arm, their navy is pathetic, they don't have nukes. They knew they didn't have a lot of quality, but they can muster plenty of quantity. Their best commanders knew this one particular thing and knew it well. So that's basically the start of their post-war military tradition. Correspondingly NATO recruited wholesale from German military experts, and a pretty clear consequence is that NATO's planning reflected that. 3. Their military had a strong political role. Basically similarly to the military-industrial complex in the US. A leader of the Soviet Union pisses off the military at their peril. So how do you keep the military happy? You give it all the toys they want, obviously. When you have a gigantic military, then that starts to also tilt your foreign policy. Hey you've spent the resources, you might as well swing your dick around. And if your foreign policy is reliant on you having the big stick of your army, then you'd better keep that thing up. 4. Defending is for suckers. The US could afford to 'defend', at least initially, given that they are an entire ocean away, and can designate entire countries as sacrificial victims in the first battles of WWII. But ultimately wars are not won by defenders - at some point you have to attack. It doesn't matter whose fault it is, a treacherous Soviet assault on the free world or a righteous Socialist counterstroke to western aggression really look pretty much the same on the planner's table. On the eve of WWII, the US had plans for invading Canada. Making plans to invade your enemies is the duty of half-decent military strategists. This is example of the sort of scenario Soviet planners worked around: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Days_to_the_River_Rhine#Battle_outline quote:The plans predicted that NATO would launch a nuclear attack on the Vistula river valley in a first strike scenario, which would prevent Soviet bloc commanders from sending reinforcements to East Germany to prevent a NATO invasion of that country.[1][3][2] The plan expected that as many as two million Polish civilians would die in such a war and Poland would be completely destroyed.[1][3][2] We have a lot of information on Soviet battle plans because their regime collapsed. You can bet your arse that there does exist US contingency plans for how their forces would march on Moscow if somehow things haven't reached global nuclear war by that point. Those plans simply aren't public yet. Fangz fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Dec 2, 2014 |
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Dec 2, 2014 19:45
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P-Mack posted:I just picked up Team Yankee at a used book sale, so all of this NATO/ Soviet chat couldn't be better timed. Export models, poor training and morale, poor logistics, improper use of doctrine and so on. Also I don't think the Soviets intended to ever allow the West to have had the nearly invulnerable air superiority the Iraqi's permitted the West to have. So far the best reason I've heard albeit from the e-honour perspective is that most likely the Soviets would simply just want to do something before being forced to throw in the towel without firing a shot; it was as good a reason as any given in Red Army. Use it for lose it.
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Dec 2, 2014 19:57
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Tomn posted:Hey, Hegel, do you know anything about espionage during your era? Like how spies were recruited, how they were used, and if in fact there was anything like a formal position of spymaster and whatnot? Anything on the subject would be interesting! Not to speak for Hegel, but spymasters certainly existed, eg this chap - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Thurloe Half the point of having embassies and diplomats was to facilitate intelligence/spying, too, same as it is now.
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Dec 2, 2014 20:02
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Taerkar posted:I'm looking to get my dad a few books for Christmas about the First World War and/or warships. Is The Guns of August still a great choice for one of them or is there better now? And any good recommendations for warships? From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow is the go-to if price isn't an object according to someone whose opinion I respect and has read that and Massie's stuff.
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Dec 2, 2014 20:16
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P-Mack posted:I just picked up Team Yankee at a used book sale, so all of this NATO/ Soviet chat couldn't be better timed. Lots of arguments about export models, but part of it comes down to execution at a strategic and operational level. The Russians had a pretty good general staff and senior officer corps, which is particularly important with deep operations. You can't really say the same thing for most of the client states.
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Dec 2, 2014 20:51
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Mightypeon posted:I am aware of that, and the flag making things took some balls because Vienna was literally chock full of Nazi Party members. I have never heard of this story. The provisory state government passed a law on the 1.May 1945 regarding this, but I couldn't find any info on what you suggest (which doesn't mean that it's wrong ofc). Somebody had the idea with the chains obviously, but I wouldn't buy into the cheese. The fact that Austria got a pretty good deal is found in the Moscow Declaration of 1943, which was meant to kindle armed resistance (or at least any kind of resistance) and drive a wedge between the population and the nazi leadership. Which it didn't, safe for a homoeopathic number of Austro-Slovenian guys and a few Communists that managed to join up with Tito's partisans who would have fought anyway. The other reason was to cement the fact that Austria was forbidden to join Germany should the war end (which was publicly viewed favorably up until the early 80s). By the end of the war, the Red Army was practically occupying the eastern part of the country until 1955, and we almost had a divide á la Germany via the Octoberstrikes of 1950 (where Stalin apparently wasn't interested in taking advantage of). Interestingly, the man who organized counterstrikes that broke the back of the communist strikes was Franz Olah (SPÖ), who seems to have been a man with CIA contacts as we learned in recent years. He was also involved in the initial funding of some pretty important newspapers here, where he conjured money out of thin air. They also set up massive caches of american weaponry in abandoned mines that were left behind for armed resistance, should the RA roll in. It's 10 years or so that the last one of them was found I think.
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Dec 2, 2014 20:54
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Sometimes writing effortposts gets a little trying, but all that goes flying away when you open the paper and see "BOGUS BABY CASE | ALLEGED CHILD STEALING" grinning back at you. Clickbait is clearly not a new invention. (Mind you, it has made today's update rather late.) 100 Years Ago The Austro-Hungarians arrive in Belgrade and start planning for the victory parade, at almost exactly the same time as the King of Serbia pulls off a masterstroke of morale-bolstering. The Russians have hosed up their troop movements (quelle surprise) and left themselves in a tricky spot near Krakow, and I'm taking the first of many looks at desertion in the BEF. It's not necessarily obvious to the Staff at the time, but about 2,000 men will desert their units during December 1914. (The Daily Telegraph, as you might have guessed, is particularly good today. Page 9 manages to firmly deny any alarming reports of a fresh German attack on Ypres even as, a few columns over, it carries an alarming report of, erm, fresh German attacks on Ypres. Strand Magazine is advertising its latest Sherlock Holmes serial (it's The Valley of Fear), the money market still has plenty of money, and Rudyard Kipling's writing at length about the training of Kitchener's Army. All that and the Bogus Baby Case too!)
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Dec 2, 2014 21:32
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P-Mack posted:I just picked up Team Yankee at a used book sale, so all of this NATO/ Soviet chat couldn't be better timed. Other interesting books in a similar vein: First Clash (canucks) Red Army (soviet perspective) Chieftains (ar boys  - in typically British fashion, it doesn't end well)
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Dec 2, 2014 21:40
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Lots of arguments about export models, but part of it comes down to execution at a strategic and operational level. The Russians had a pretty good general staff and senior officer corps, which is particularly important with deep operations. You can't really say the same thing for most of the client states. Your typical Middle Eastern state army is more a tool of patronage and repression for an authoritarian regime than a focused war-fighting force. It's why they load up on impressive looking toys like tanks and planes but then don't buy enough spare parts for them and home-produce value shells rather than buy the top-grade Russian stuff that'll actually hurt things. The bulk of these militaries are filled out with corruption, with a few core guards units that are super-corrupt but also lavished enough that they can be expected to do actual fighting on behalf of the regime their tied to (a lot like the SS were).
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Dec 2, 2014 21:41
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Slavvy posted:This may sound retarded but: in all the cold war gone hot talk it always revolves around how far the soviets could get into europe before the nukes got busted out. What I don't understand is: why would the soviets want to do this at all? Like, what would be the point of attacking NATO and building tremendous armies and developing strategic plans to attack NATO. Why would they want to attack at all? It's usually a variation on the Soviet Union facing imminent economic collapse and then either attacking NATO while they still can or wanting to expand into the Middle East but needing to attack NATO before they can grab the Arabian Peninsula's oil
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Dec 2, 2014 21:48
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Or if you're Tom Clancy, choose both options and write red storm rising.
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Dec 2, 2014 21:51
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Alchenar posted:Your typical Middle Eastern state army is more a tool of patronage and repression for an authoritarian regime than a focused war-fighting force. It's why they load up on impressive looking toys like tanks and planes but then don't buy enough spare parts for them and home-produce value shells rather than buy the top-grade Russian stuff that'll actually hurt things. The bulk of these militaries are filled out with corruption, with a few core guards units that are super-corrupt but also lavished enough that they can be expected to do actual fighting on behalf of the regime their tied to (a lot like the SS were). You're right about the basic difference between a military designed for war and one designed to prop up domestic politics, but the SS is a really bad example for the case you're making.
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Dec 2, 2014 21:53
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feedmegin posted:Other interesting books in a similar vein:
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Dec 2, 2014 22:03
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xthetenth posted:From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow is the go-to if price isn't an object according to someone whose opinion I respect and has read that and Massie's stuff. What's your opinion on The World's Worst Warships?
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Dec 2, 2014 22:05
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cheerfullydrab posted:For WW2, what would have stopped giant super death fortress tanks that advanced with a bunch of infantry keeping other infantry off their back? I'm talking tanks 3 or 4 times the size of "regular" WW2 tanks. I'm thinking it would just be artillery fire. The military cancelling the project before the prototype was built because it's a waste of resources.
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Dec 2, 2014 22:28
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Alchenar posted:Your typical Middle Eastern state army is more a tool of patronage and repression for an authoritarian regime than a focused war-fighting force. It's why they load up on impressive looking toys like tanks and planes but then don't buy enough spare parts for them and home-produce value shells rather than buy the top-grade Russian stuff that'll actually hurt things. The bulk of these militaries are filled out with corruption, with a few core guards units that are super-corrupt but also lavished enough that they can be expected to do actual fighting on behalf of the regime their tied to (a lot like the SS were). Barring a few Wehrmacht quality divisions, the SS was poo poo at fighting anyone that was armed, doubly so if they were actually an army.
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Dec 2, 2014 23:08
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Ensign Expendable posted:Barring a few Wehrmacht quality divisions, the SS was poo poo at fighting anyone that was armed, doubly so if they were actually an army. poo poo at fighting, but lavished with material and fanatical at defending the regime. That's where the analogy sticks.
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Dec 2, 2014 23:11
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I don't think they were all that well outfitted either for the most part.
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Dec 2, 2014 23:22
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Taerkar posted:What's your opinion on The World's Worst Warships? It's a fun read, and it's from a serious naval architect's perspective. Do note that it's kinda trying to justify why ships are built the way they are, but as long as you keep in mind that it's coming from that perspective it only adds to the value of the book. It doesn't devote that much space to each ship but it's fun and interesting. Plus it does a good job of discussing ship design from the concept to use, and doesn't hesitate to call ships out for accomplishing their goals but having stupid goals that make them a waste compared to other things that could be done with the resources. Re:Arab armies I seem to remember the Egyptians being successful the time they could plan and rehearse ahead of time but that's the one success amid a sea of failure because the rigid control so helpful for regime preservation is not at all compatible with a flexible military. xthetenth fucked around with this message at 23:41 on Dec 2, 2014 |
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Dec 2, 2014 23:33
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Taerkar posted:I don't think they were all that well outfitted either for the most part. Yeah, when you're talking about the ramshackle SS units, you're getting into the territory of guys who do nothing but rape and murder like these assholes , the Hitlerjugend division that completely exchausts itself over 2 months of fighting, or some French guys who really hate communists.
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Dec 2, 2014 23:35
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Alchenar posted:but lavished with material No, they weren't. After about 1943 or so you begin to see a handful of Waffen SS divisions get choice material, but before that they were really hosed supply-side, and even on into the end-war period they had problems in units that weren't super-famous flagship divisions (eg Grossdeutschland). Even basic small arms acquisition was a giant pain in the rear end for them. There was a huuuuuge dick waving contest between OKW and the SS over resource allocation and SS lost for a really long time, hence Himmler's insistence on industrializing the concentration camps; it was one of the few ways that guaranteed his toy army access to the various goods it needed. edit: note that even the divisions people think of as really having their poo poo together had a rough time of it with equipment prior to '43. Small arms are a great example, but it can be seen in armor as well. That's one of the big reasons why GD was driving so many czech tanks in the early war period. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Dec 3, 2014 |
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Dec 3, 2014 00:14
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Alchenar posted:poo poo at fighting, but lavished with material and fanatical at defending the regime. That's where the analogy sticks. But it only makes sense if the regular army is worse at fighting than they are, which was not the case for the SS versus the Wehrmacht.
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Dec 3, 2014 00:16
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xthetenth posted:It's a fun read, and it's from a serious naval architect's perspective. Do note that it's kinda trying to justify why ships are built the way they are, but as long as you keep in mind that it's coming from that perspective it only adds to the value of the book. It doesn't devote that much space to each ship but it's fun and interesting. Plus it does a good job of discussing ship design from the concept to use, and doesn't hesitate to call ships out for accomplishing their goals but having stupid goals that make them a waste compared to other things that could be done with the resources. The Egyptians were clever and successful for a few reasons: 1. Attacking an enemy in prepared positions, which they were able to extensively study and recreate for practice. 2. Building a huge loving ADA umbrella, which negated one of the IDF's favorite ways to provide fire support on the battlefield. In the end though, that one ended up as a stalemate after the initial successes.
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Dec 3, 2014 00:20
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:The Egyptians were clever and successful for a few reasons: I seem to remember the rehearsed bit going great, and then everyone sitting there with no idea what to do next while the Israelis hit them back hard.
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Dec 3, 2014 00:32
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The Egyptians wandered out from under the cover of their SAM shield and then the Israelis bitched slapped them back to Cairo.
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Dec 3, 2014 00:42
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Arab armies are good at playing out extensively rehearsed actions that are plnned down to thelast detail. They just suck at everything else.AceRimmer posted:Hackett's Third World War series is pretty good, though it's in the style of a post-war history book. It does contain a lot of Cold War era misconcetions, though. Soviets using blocking detachments in a war in the 80's and the like. Cyrano4747 posted:units that weren't super-famous flagship divisions (eg Grossdeutschland) Grossdeutschland was a regular Heer outfit, not SS. 
Magni fucked around with this message at 01:52 on Dec 3, 2014 |
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Dec 3, 2014 01:48
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Magni posted:
you're right. sad brains day 
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Dec 3, 2014 03:29
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:The Egyptians were clever and successful for a few reasons: What's ADA?
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Dec 3, 2014 04:48
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Frostwerks posted:What's ADA? air defense artillery
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Dec 3, 2014 05:09
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Here is something I've always wondered. You always hear about the horse archers of the Mongols and the Hun completely devastating other armies of the time because they have no good defense against it, but what would make a good defense against horse archers besides other horse archers?
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Dec 3, 2014 05:52
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Magni posted:It does contain a lot of Cold War era misconcetions, though. Soviets using blocking detachments in a war in the 80's and the like.  Is that in the Untold Story sequel or something? I don't remember anything that stupid...well, besides the ending.
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Dec 3, 2014 06:03
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Man Whore posted:Here is something I've always wondered. You always hear about the horse archers of the Mongols and the Hun completely devastating other armies of the time because they have no good defense against it, but what would make a good defense against horse archers besides other horse archers? Heavily armored cavalry, massed archers, and crossbowmen were all effective counters to horse archers.
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Dec 3, 2014 06:10
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Frostwerks posted:What's ADA? The Americans with Disabilities Act. No Achille Lauro jokes, please.
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Dec 3, 2014 06:12
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I'd say another thing about Communism is that it has to expand as a definition. Now, after Stalin's death, there wasn't much expansion to be done and probably even less honest to Lening Communists up high, but everyone on the down low were constantly reminded that the West sucks and we should probably liberate them one day.
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