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Wild Horses posted:any of you guys got any good ww2 books to recommend? I read some of beevor's stuff, even drier stuff is a plus. Obligatory mention: Shattered Sword. It reads amazingly dry at times ("Let's talk about Japanese deck-handling procedures and how they impacted the war at large"), but after reading it you'll want the same level of detail for every battle of the war. We should really compile a goon recommended reading list.
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Dec 29, 2014 12:39
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ArchangeI posted:Obligatory mention: Shattered Sword. It reads amazingly dry at times ("Let's talk about Japanese deck-handling procedures and how they impacted the war at large"), but after reading it you'll want the same level of detail for every battle of the war. I find the dry stuff really interesting - it's important to be reminded that wars are much more than counters moving around a map, what people are doing at every level matters.
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Dec 29, 2014 12:54
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I just went through Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors over the holidays, so that is great, though parts are very very dark with the blow by literal blow account of 'then the next shell hit here, killed two men instantly and then severed a hot steam pipe, cooking the remaining men in the room alive'.
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Dec 29, 2014 14:44
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Has anyone got a solid WW1 milhist book recommendation? I can feel a last minute present or two coming on.
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Dec 29, 2014 15:32
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Disinterested posted:Has anyone got a solid WW1 milhist book recommendation? I can feel a last minute present or two coming on. Peter Englund's The Beauty and the Sorrow. It presents the war from the perspectives of various people, like a chilean adventurer who signed on with the Ottoman army as an officer, a Baltic noblewoman, a Danish dude from Schleswig who got drafted into the German army, a British woman who was an ambulance driver near Thessalonika and so on. I liked it a lot.
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Dec 29, 2014 15:51
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Hunterhr posted:I've never looked up because I don't want to ruin it, but I always imagined shotput originated from a lack of powder, desperation and a really big dude on a cannon crew... It's called "Shot Put". As in "How far can you put the shot?" Without looking it up and boys being boys it almost certainly all comes down to betting. "The big guy in our battalion/ship can throw a 3 lb (or 12 lb or whatever) shot further than your guy!", "Oh, yeah?" "Yeah! Wanna bet?"
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Dec 29, 2014 16:05
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Disinterested posted:Has anyone got a solid WW1 milhist book recommendation? I can feel a last minute present or two coming on. Guns of August is always a solid recommendation but it's as much Polihist as Milhist and I have a hunch you considered it already.
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Dec 29, 2014 16:07
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Disinterested posted:Has anyone got a solid WW1 milhist book recommendation? I can feel a last minute present or two coming on. GJ Meyer's A World Undone is my go-to recommendation for a single book on WW1
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Dec 29, 2014 16:12
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Disinterested posted:What military history related poo poo did everyone get for Christmas, then? I got a book on Stuxnet, that's sort of military history, right?
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Dec 29, 2014 16:17
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Disinterested posted:Has anyone got a solid WW1 milhist book recommendation? I can feel a last minute present or two coming on. The Price of Glory by Alistair Horne is by far the best book on the battle of Verdun and, I would argue by extension, on the French military in WW1.
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Dec 29, 2014 16:42
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Castles of Steel by Robert Massie is a great one on WWI naval history.
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Dec 29, 2014 17:46
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Or there's the bigger option, From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow by Arthur Marder. I've heard but haven't had time to confirm that it's basically a superset of the information contained in Massie's books, and they're reprinted for less than 20 bucks a volume. Also most anything by Norman Friedman is top notch, although do take context into account when reading the stuff about late cold war era things. xthetenth fucked around with this message at 19:38 on Dec 29, 2014 |
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Dec 29, 2014 19:36
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ArchangeI posted:We should really compile a goon recommended reading list. There's a milhist goons Goodreads group that was created earlier this year, but it almost immediately went inactive 
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Dec 29, 2014 20:00
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Wild Horses posted:any of you guys got any good ww2 books to recommend? I read some of beevor's stuff, even drier stuff is a plus. The Fast Carriers by Clark Reynolds. Its about how US aircraft carriers went from being scouts for the battle line to the main force responsible for defeating Japan. It goes into excruciating detail about the good and bad decisions made by the captains and admirals in 1943 and 44, including one anecdote about a carrier captain losing his composure and his breakfast on the way to a minor target, who had to be replaced by his XO. It also includes one of the best analyses of the Battle of the Philippine Sea, which should have been the carriers' finest hour but resulted in the the bulk of the Japanese fleet escaping. I wouldn't call it dry though, there's a lot of colour in there and you really get a sense of the personalities of the major characters. It's not available as an ebook, my copy was a second hand hardback. It's well worth it though.
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Dec 29, 2014 20:06
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JcDent posted:Because of this thread and my recent successes in Warthunder, I'm in love with Panzer III. If anyone wants to sperg about it, please do. PzIII loving owns. It was hella upgradeable. Up from a 37 mm gun and tinfoil armour designed to defeat French 25 mm guns to a solid 50 mm plate and either a long 50 mm or short 75 mm gun? Very nice. That torsion bar suspension was beefy as hell, too, except when burning rubber at 70 kph it was literally burning rubber, so the speed had to be limited because modern technology just couldn't handle how awesome the PzIII was . The Soviets loved the hell out of this thing. When they bought one in 1939, the overwhelming opinion was "we want one'. The T-50 was basically a PzIII on steroids, but never got off the ground. After 1941, the Soviets went for PzIIIs whenever possible to outfit their captured tank units. Not only that, but two vehicles were based on the chassis: the SG-122 (with a 122 mm howitzer) and SU-76I (with a 76 mm gun). Those were produced until the deficiency in tank production was made up for. Tiger? Yawn. Soviets let that garbage rust out on no man's land for months without lifting a finger to recover it. Panther? Got a grand total of 19 pages in the post-Kursk report on new enemy tanks. PzIII Ausf M? 47 pages in that report. Also the PzIII produced the StuG, and the StuG is the best tank that's not a tank. 
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Dec 29, 2014 20:08
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Well this is a shot in the dark but does anyone have any easily digestible information on the USMCs "Advanced Base Force" that's not listed in the wiki article?
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Dec 29, 2014 21:32
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Ensign Expendable posted:PzIII loving owns. I don't know man, the SU-152 is hella fun a couple times a minute. It reminds me of hit indicators in an old Source mod called Dystopia - the pitch of the hit indicator would change with the damage done, so plinking away with pistols would give little blips while tacking some asshat to a wall with a tazerbolt gives a deep, round "BLOO-DOOP." 152mm of HE dropping onto a tank and turning it into paperclips and razorblades is definitely "BLOO-DOOP" territory.
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Dec 29, 2014 22:01
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brozozo posted:There's a milhist goons Goodreads group that was created earlier this year, but it almost immediately went inactive I'm all for trying to revive this poo poo, since I'm always asking for book recommendations.
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Dec 29, 2014 22:13
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Disinterested posted:I'm all for trying to revive this poo poo, since I'm always asking for book recommendations. It went inactive because I stopped receiving join requests
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Dec 29, 2014 22:17
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Link it!
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Dec 29, 2014 22:30
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Koesj posted:Link it! http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/133084-goons-and-their-military-history
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Dec 29, 2014 22:50
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Koesj posted:Link it! And don't forget to let us in!
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Dec 29, 2014 23:26
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Having never been to Germany: How is WW2 treated in museums? How are the various weapons and uniforms and things presented? I can't even imagine what a German military museum would look like.
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Dec 30, 2014 01:44
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Slavvy posted:Having never been to Germany: Tangentially related note: the large, fancy and new museums of the major car manufacturers pretend like nothing ever happened. In the Posche museum they essentially seem to make you want to believe they built nothing in the war, or at least nothing but tractors. Quite a funny experience. Of course, real war museums in Germany are incredibly sobering and serious about the whole thing.
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Dec 30, 2014 01:51
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Disinterested posted:Of course, real war museums in Germany are incredibly sobering and serious about the whole thing. It's weird how differently Germany and Japan treat their history during the war, Germany seems to have opted for the Robert Byrd path towards atonement, whereas Japan's government seems to avoid confronting those past demons until facing massive public scrutiny - the treatment of civilians on Okinawa near the end of the war, for example. Every once in a while you get these oblique wordings for stuff like that and then there's the big public outcry inside and outside Japan and they have to fix textbooks to point out how IJA soldiers massacred thousands of civilians and ordered them to blow their families up with grenades. It isn't Japan as a monolithic entity, just the government and likely certain factions thereof, it's weird.
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Dec 30, 2014 02:12
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FAUXTON posted:It's weird how differently Germany and Japan treat their history during the war, Germany seems to have opted for the Robert Byrd path towards atonement, whereas Japan's government seems to avoid confronting those past demons until facing massive public scrutiny - the treatment of civilians on Okinawa near the end of the war, for example. Every once in a while you get these oblique wordings for stuff like that and then there's the big public outcry inside and outside Japan and they have to fix textbooks to point out how IJA soldiers massacred thousands of civilians and ordered them to blow their families up with grenades. It isn't Japan as a monolithic entity, just the government and likely certain factions thereof, it's weird. I've mentioned it before, but The Wages of Guilt can be pretty helpful here. Partly it's because peace with Japan, unlike with Germany, was a compromise based around the retention of the Emperor. Moreover, and to a degree relatedly, there wasn't ever a deep or interrogative war crimes tribunal process, because the Americans wanted Japan up and running pronto to fight communism; IJA soldiers were even used as colonial policemen in some places like Indochina while the empires took their time to repossess. There is an atonement school of thinking in Japan, and certainly a deep feeling of regret about the war. This is particularly expressed by the still-strong resistance to militarism and the total and overwhelming fear of nuclear power and weapons. However, that is being eroded a bit, and that has led to some really blatant revisionism; that isn't completely surprising, since whitewashing & a token sacrifice (in this case, Tojo) tends to be how institutional Japan deals with scandal if it can. That is counterbalanced by the fact that I believe a lot of Japanese people do not regard Japanese fascism or war crimes as exceptionally or uniquely evil, but really just another in a sequence of greedy agitations by great powers. There can even be a tendency to make pacifist equivalences: 'all violence is evil', or to resort to arguments that Japan was provoked by American resource starvation. As a result, they also feel a strong sense of injustice, particularly about their continued hatred in China, Korea et. al. That is particularly upsetting for political Japan, as it has long been a Japanese ambition to be the leader of the Asian world (or at least the loudest voice in Asia in America's ear). I think frustration at taking poo poo about Japanese war crimes for decades has driven people like Abe to try to partially deny them, which is, of course, highly counter-productive. On the other hand, China cynically beats Japan about the head on the subject of war crimes whenever it isn't getting its way in negotiations -- not that that is an excuse. It's a big and complicated picture, to be sure. Disinterested fucked around with this message at 02:28 on Dec 30, 2014 |
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Dec 30, 2014 02:25
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There's a cause to be made that the Japanese government never was totalitarian to the same extent as the Reich, and that there always was some sort of dissenting discourse against the official policies. Even during the war (including the 1937-1941 period) there was a steady influx of angry mail from ordinary citizens to Japanese ministries. This could explain why the ordinary Japanese person today need not feel the same level of culpability (or, given the time passed, inherited guilt) as his German counterpart, as from the popular point of view there was no political delineation comparable to the Wiemar ->Third Reich transition, but it of course doesn't excuse neither the rehabilitation of war criminals that happened after the armistice, nor the infamous revisionism, but do those decisions really reflect on the general populace?
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Dec 30, 2014 02:38
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Thank you for that PzIII bit! Vidja always ignores them, it's always PzIV, then the near mythical Panther, then the mythical Tiger, and I've never even seen a King Tiger in an FPS before. Speaking about Japan, most of tte museums you'll see are very much 'war is bad', and it works. However, everybody gets their share of poo poo from them, so the nukes are still called a war crime, a show that Americans did to scare the Soviets and to justify the Manhattan project spending. And then you go to Yasukuni Jinja, the one with enshrined military criminals (as well as general military dead). What the angry reports about Abe going there don't tell you is that it also has a museum. Hilariously revisionist museum. If you want a bizzaro history version of war in China and stuff, it's the place to go. To its credit, it has its moments - the kamikaze letters to family are touching, and you can see recovered and restored tank and plane.
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Dec 30, 2014 03:21
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Slavvy posted:How is WW2 treated in museums? How are the various weapons and uniforms and things presented? I can't even imagine what a German military museum would look like.
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Dec 30, 2014 03:36
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JcDent posted:King Tiger Bengal tiger.
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Dec 30, 2014 14:12
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A 'what book to get in the sales' thread has started on the goodreads group. Go forth and 
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Dec 30, 2014 14:28
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steinrokkan posted:There's a cause to be made that the Japanese government never was totalitarian to the same extent as the Reich, and that there always was some sort of dissenting discourse against the official policies. Even during the war (including the 1937-1941 period) there was a steady influx of angry mail from ordinary citizens to Japanese ministries. This could explain why the ordinary Japanese person today need not feel the same level of culpability (or, given the time passed, inherited guilt) as his German counterpart, as from the popular point of view there was no political delineation comparable to the Wiemar ->Third Reich transition, but it of course doesn't excuse neither the rehabilitation of war criminals that happened after the armistice, nor the infamous revisionism, but do those decisions really reflect on the general populace? We got in to this a bit before. You're right and wrong. The Japanese phenomenon was much more caught up in religious adulation. It's hard to place blame on the general populace in the same way because no popular process was put in place to bring the junta to power; on the other hand, the structures of belief that made the emperor a divine being and the seat of all authority were centuries old, so one would expect a more willing populace. It's hard to say how to think about these kinds of question.
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Dec 30, 2014 14:31
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I've got a bit of a WWII bug. Can you guys recommend a good podcast on the subject? Bonus points for talking more about cool trivia than just rehashing D-Day or whatever.
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Dec 30, 2014 14:36
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Siivola posted:I've got a bit of a WWII bug. Can you guys recommend a good podcast on the subject? Bonus points for talking more about cool trivia than just rehashing D-Day or whatever. History of WWII by a guy whose name I can't recall. His voice isn't the greatest for a podcast and he seems to focus a little too much on Churchill's personal history (of course it could be considered acceptable background to explain his actions during WWII but I am not sure how his childhood qualifies) but it's quite detailed.
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Dec 30, 2014 17:49
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So I talked with a buddy of mine who served in Afghanistan about Simo Hayha, the sniper with the highest confirmed kills at 505, and he told me he couldn't believe that one man could manage so many kills with only a hunting rifle using a heavy round and with iron sights. Is Simo's 505 kill count legit?
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Dec 30, 2014 18:04
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Benny the Snake posted:So I talked with a buddy of mine who served in Afghanistan about Simo Hayha, the sniper with the highest confirmed kills at 505, and he told me he couldn't believe that one man could manage so many kills with only a hunting rifle using a heavy round and with iron sights. Is Simo's 505 kill count legit?
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Dec 30, 2014 18:19
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Benny the Snake posted:So I talked with a buddy of mine who served in Afghanistan about Simo Hayha, the sniper with the highest confirmed kills at 505, and he told me he couldn't believe that one man could manage so many kills with only a hunting rifle using a heavy round and with iron sights. Is Simo's 505 kill count legit? As far as we're able to determine, it's quite legit, and I personally think it is. PittTheElder illustrates well how Hayha was operating under easier conditions than most modern marksmen have to.
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Dec 30, 2014 18:31
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Benny the Snake posted:So I talked with a buddy of mine who served in Afghanistan about Simo Hayha, the sniper with the highest confirmed kills at 505, and he told me he couldn't believe that one man could manage so many kills with only a hunting rifle using a heavy round and with iron sights. Is Simo's 505 kill count legit? Probably not. The first time the 542 kills was mentioned was only after he got wounded. Not long before this, some big wigs had dropped by to congratulate him at which time his official score was mentioned as "219 kills with a rifle, and the same number with a submachinegun". It could be that the 500+ figure included both rifle and SMG kills. Iron sights were surprisingly good for the conditions in which Häyhä was fighting. In the northern forest during winter it's dark most of the time for a basic scope to gather much light, and the glass is liable to get frosty from your breath. More over staring through a scope means giving up your peripheral vision, which is vital in a forest. That roughly half of his kills were made with SMG tells that engagement ranges were often short.
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Dec 30, 2014 18:41
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He was also fighting an unprepared force that was spectacularly out of its element.
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Dec 30, 2014 18:43
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Is anyone aware of a well regarded analysis about what *might have happened* between the navies of NATO and the WP in a non-nuclear war? Any time period between 1960 and 1990.
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Dec 30, 2014 18:47
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