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Disinterested posted:Dumb spitball question: who was the most inept Napoleonic marshal? Obviously Poniatowski. Won no battles as Marshall and got killed on his second day on the job. What a disgrace 
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Jan 18, 2015 13:42
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JcDent posted:I think there was a Gurkha who beat a Talib with either an MG or MG tripod. That would be Corporal Dipprasad Pun, who, with typical Gurka balls of cast iron, explained later that he thought he was going to die, and, having nothing to lose, might as well kill as many people with an improvised weapon as he could. E: and who is apparently related to Tul Bahadur Pun, who is also balls-to-the-wall badass. He captured a Japanese bunker in Burma by running chicken-style at them while hip-firing a Bren 
Tias fucked around with this message at 14:30 on Jan 18, 2015 |
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Jan 18, 2015 14:28
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One of the highpoints of my life was being presented with a gigantic fried breakfast by Gurkhas after a dreadful hangover after an army party. They're really awesome guys to hang out with. Gurkha bravery stories are insane. E.g.: quote:On 12/13 May 1945 at Taungdaw, Burma [now Myanmar], Rifleman Lachhiman Gurung was manning the most forward post of his platoon which bore the brunt of an attack by at least 200 of the Japanese enemy. Twice he hurled back grenades which had fallen on his trench, but the third exploded in his right hand, blowing off his fingers, shattering his arm and severely wounding him in the face, body and right leg. His two comrades were also badly wounded but the rifleman, now alone and disregarding his wounds, loaded and fired his rifle with his left hand for four hours, calmly waiting for each attack which he met with fire at point blank range. Afterwards, when the casualties were counted, it is reported that there were 31 dead Japanese around his position which he had killed, with only one arm. Disinterested fucked around with this message at 14:39 on Jan 18, 2015 |
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Jan 18, 2015 14:35
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Disinterested posted:One of the highpoints of my life was being presented with a gigantic fried breakfast by Gurkhas after a dreadful hangover after an army party. They're really awesome guys to hang out with. From Field Marshal Slim's memoirs: quote:It had been vividly impressed on me during the Retreat from Burma that in the jungle there are no non-combatants, so, with this physical toughening, we introduced weapon training for everybody. The whole headquarters from the Corps Commander downwards went through qualifying courses in rifle, pistol, Bren gun, bayonet, mortar, and grenade. I was not much good with the Bren gun, but kept my end up with the other weapons. My Gurkha orderly, Bajbir, when I ordered him to parade at the rifle rang protested:
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Jan 18, 2015 14:55
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I love reading Gurkha war stories. Those guys make eighties action heroes look like major wimps with body image issues. Also, adding onto the whole Napoleon Marshal thing Murat did a pretty lovely thing in the closing weeks of the 1812 Russian retreat shortly loving off after Napoleon leaving what was left of the Grande Armee in Vilnius to stop a little trouble at Paris. The man stuck around for several days, tried to make sense of that cluster gently caress then rode on ahead to the more warmer climate of Naples. Say what you will about Ney and his weird possible PTSD attitude at least he stuck around until the bitter end during the retreat. Bernadotte was just useless.
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Jan 18, 2015 15:51
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Napoleon's shunting off Davout to secondary duties during 1813 and the Hundred Days campaigns stands out as one of his several poor decisions.
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Jan 18, 2015 15:58
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Napoleon picked a lot of good people but his weird belief in luck and other extraneous factors did make him do some weird poo poo sometimes. Why was Suchet in the Alps in 1815?
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Jan 18, 2015 16:08
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It is a good thing Las Vegas wasn't a thing in the 19th century, or Napoleon would be one of those weird people on the fruit machines fruitlessly chasing The Big Win.
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Jan 18, 2015 16:12
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SeanBeansShako posted:It is a good thing Las Vegas wasn't a thing in the 19th century, or Napoleon would be one of those weird people on the fruit machines fruitlessly chasing The Big Win. He's not the guy chasing the one big win, he's the guy that rolled his number like 5 times in a row on roulette but decided to keep laying it all on lucky 18.
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Jan 18, 2015 16:17
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More like a guy hanging out at the casino and asking anyone who wins big to be his accountant.
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Jan 18, 2015 16:27
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HEY GAL posted:Let me guess, speakers of modern German: you no longer use the cool new word I just learned: rottiren, "to join into Rotten." "Rotte" is still used in our airforce. It means a pair of planes. A form of "rotten" is still used for joining into a group: "Zusammenrotten". (Confusingly, we use "rotten" also to mean decay today.) A sentence like "Diese Rotte ist verrrottet." must sound really confusing to someone not well versed in German.
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Jan 18, 2015 17:57
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HEY GAL posted:During the holocaust the German people accepted ludacris statements about Jews. 
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Jan 18, 2015 18:23
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100 Years Ago The Germans cause yet more embarrassment for British operations in Africa, evicting Empire forces from their foothold at Jasin after a long, hard day of fighting. Back in London, various crackpot schemes for an armoured vehicle of some sort are whirling around trying to find patronage, a situation tailor-made for Winston Churchill to step into if ever there was one. Although his first moves are to push forward trials of a large steamroller and a staggeringly immobile bridging machine, the real value of these early experiments is in the people who are going to be brought together. Meanwhile, the paper has a new version of my favourite headline, which gives me truly childish amounts of happiness:  If there's an abundance of money, why do we need War Loans?
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Jan 18, 2015 18:25
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SeanBeansShako posted:Also, adding onto the whole Napoleon Marshal thing Murat did a pretty lovely thing in the closing weeks of the 1812 Russian retreat shortly loving off after Napoleon leaving what was left of the Grande Armee in Vilnius to stop a little trouble at Paris. The man stuck around for several days, tried to make sense of that cluster gently caress then rode on ahead to the more warmer climate of Naples. Oh yeah, Murat was a dick. He was a very talented commander though, so I wouldn't call him inept, just a selfish gloryhound who was amazing when things were going well but couldn't handle adversity. Ney is like the opposite of that: I will fight anyone who says bad things about the man's moral character, but objectively he made more stupid mistakes than anyone else among his peers, many of them driven by his obsession with honor. Panzeh posted:Napoleon's shunting off Davout to secondary duties during 1813 and the Hundred Days campaigns stands out as one of his several poor decisions. Possibly his worst decision outside of invading Russia, which is in a league of its own. I mean, it's Davout!  When you have a giant ironclad badass like that and don't use him, you deserve to lose.(I may be biased, Louis-Nicolas is probably my favorite historical figure)
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Jan 18, 2015 20:31
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Still, at least the French Marshals mostly vaguely got along. Unlike the Imperial Russian general staff of the Napoleonic Wars. Good loving christ, historical work dramatics of the century.
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Jan 18, 2015 21:06
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SeanBeansShako posted:Still, at least the French Marshals mostly vaguely got along. Unlike the Imperial Russian general staff of the Napoleonic Wars. Good loving christ, historical work dramatics of the century. Go on.
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Jan 18, 2015 21:41
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Basically, if you weren't a salt of the earth born Russian serving Tsar Alexander and the people of the Russian Empire, prepare to get poo poo on a lot and treated with suspicion by the nobles, your fellow officers and even the Tsar himself even if things go right for you. Especially if you were German.
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Jan 18, 2015 21:46
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Libluini posted:"Rotte" is still used in our airforce. It means a pair of planes. 
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Jan 18, 2015 23:05
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SeanBeansShako posted:Basically, if you weren't a salt of the earth born Russian serving Tsar Alexander and the people of the Russian Empire, prepare to get poo poo on a lot and treated with suspicion by the nobles, your fellow officers and even the Tsar himself even if things go right for you. Wasn't this partly the point of War and Peace where by being invaded by the French it got the Russians to decide that maybe pretending to be Western European wasn't such a good idea anymore and whelp, better get the kitchen staff to teach us our mother language!
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Jan 18, 2015 23:46
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What do you guys have to say about "The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government" by Jefferson Davis? (Sorry fixed the mistake.)
Kanine fucked around with this message at 00:28 on Jan 19, 2015 |
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Jan 18, 2015 23:58
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Kanine posted:What do you guys have to say about "The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government" by Robert E. Lee?
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Jan 19, 2015 00:01
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HEY GAL posted:Davis. Lee didn't write anything, for which I resent him a little. I wonder why he didn't write anything after getting h-oh I see.
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Jan 19, 2015 00:07
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SeanBeansShako posted:Still, at least the French Marshals mostly vaguely got along. Unlike the Imperial Russian general staff of the Napoleonic Wars. Good loving christ, historical work dramatics of the century. Got any interesting examples? I know the French side pretty well, but I'm admittedly kinda ignorant about the inner workings of the other combatants. Probably because I read about it mainly in Polish books, which tend to have a strong pro-French slant for obvious reasons. Also I think it's less getting along and more that the Corsican knew how to keep a lid on petty drama. They Marshals pissed in each other's cornflakes plenty and memoirs are full of little snipes, but Napoleon was pretty solid on keeping politicking away from the battlefield most of the time. Murat and Lannes hated each other's guts, but that meant they just obsessively tried to outdo each other, which was fairly productive for France. On the other hand, Ney and Soult's rivalry definitely adversely affected the Peninsular War, they constantly threw hissy fits over having to cooperate. Davout got poo poo on all the time by most of the other marshals because he apparently had the social skills of a brick wall, and he almost dueled Bernadotte over the Auerstaedt fiasco until Napoleon put his foot down. Admittedly most of this is because of strong personalities clashing, rather than ideological or ethnic bullshit like what you mention went on in Russia, but I'm curious to find out what that was like there. Guildencrantz fucked around with this message at 16:55 on Jan 25, 2015 |
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Jan 19, 2015 00:41
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all high officers are massive drama queens
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Jan 19, 2015 00:52
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HEY GAL posted:all high officers are massive drama queens And that's what makes their stories so fun. Sure, there's massive, futile bloodshed, but there's also soap opera!
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Jan 19, 2015 00:55
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FAUXTON posted:I wonder why he didn't write anything after getting h-oh I see. God bless that union quartermaster 
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Jan 19, 2015 00:59
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Guildencrantz posted:Got any interesting examples? I know the French side pretty well, but I'm admittedly kinda ignorant about the inner workings of the other combatants. Probably because I read about it mainly in Polish books, which tend to have a strong pro-French slant for obvious reasons. Here, read about this little mutiny of generals.
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Jan 19, 2015 01:06
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Raskolnikov38 posted:God bless that union quartermaster Also, he lost all his disposable labor units, so he probably had to get a real job and learn how to look after himself.
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Jan 19, 2015 01:09
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sullat posted:he probably had to get a real job
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Jan 19, 2015 01:13
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Not exactly military history but...Kaal posted:Sure, though typically it's more of the airlines upgrading service members if there's an empty seat. It's tricky though, because sometimes people have to dress up all fancy for the dignity of the service that would be let down if someone saw an unshined boot, and sometimes they have to travel in completely civilian clothes because terrorists might be hiding behind every corner and they're obviously targeting random soldiers. 
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Jan 19, 2015 01:17
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FAUXTON posted:I wonder why he didn't write anything after getting h-oh I see. While wondering this same thing, I found this little gem of a line on Lee's wikipedia page. It's from a letter written by an ally of his, endorsing Grant's Democratic opponent in some election. Lee had endorsed it with a signature. quote:"The idea that the Southern people are hostile to the negroes and would oppress them, if it were in their power to do so, is entirely unfounded." I know Lee himself wasn't all that bad of a guy, but god drat, The South.
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Jan 19, 2015 02:25
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Can anyone explain just how Russia, the easternmost settled European polity that bordered the steppe nomads, came about to own pretty much all of Siberia, and push up to the borders of China? Was it a case of a power vacuum that came about once the Mongol empire fell apart, as well as modern communication allowing governance from somewhere as far flung west as Moscow?
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Jan 19, 2015 03:54
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Phobophilia posted:Can anyone explain just how Russia, the easternmost settled European polity that bordered the steppe nomads, came about to own pretty much all of Siberia, and push up to the borders of China? Was it a case of a power vacuum that came about once the Mongol empire fell apart, as well as modern communication allowing governance from somewhere as far flung west as Moscow? For one thing, it's the power vacuum, but for another, they don't exactly have "governance" over a lot of that. Eastern Russia doesn't necessarily have much connection to the laws of the federal government of Russia, and there are areas that have been run the same since the Czar. In the distant, hard-to-contact areas, the government doesn't collect taxes, provide services, or generally interfere with the way things are run on a daily basis. It's a lot of territory that is nearly impossible to invade because of the weather and remoteness, and since it's been settled by Russian-speaking peoples (sometimes with ethnic cleansing of other groups there) the Russian government historically has had the best claim to it.
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Jan 19, 2015 03:59
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I have a bit of knowledge about the general Cold War world-ending weapon capabilities of the USA and USSR, from the first h-bombs to the end of the thing, and I've kept up on how the scholarship seems to have changed some in the last 20 years, but I still am not sure if I can answer this question. So I'm asking it here. In an apocalyptic full nuclear exchange between the two powers, there are definitely some parts of the world, some countries, that would have been totally fine, correct?
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Jan 19, 2015 05:56
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cheerfullydrab posted:I have a bit of knowledge about the general Cold War world-ending weapon capabilities of the USA and USSR, from the first h-bombs to the end of the thing, and I've kept up on how the scholarship seems to have changed some in the last 20 years, but I still am not sure if I can answer this question. So I'm asking it here. Incorrect. The Sentinel Islanders, and Kalahari Bushmen may have been unaffected, but every country would have been badly impacted. The initial nuclear exchange would have been between NATO and Warsaw Pact members, and the other nuclear powers would almost certainly get involved as well, and most likely some opportunistic targeting of third parties like the U.S. nuking Vietnam and the Soviets nuking Australia. Some countries would get by without being bombed - I doubt either side would waste a nuclear weapon on Swaziland, for example - but all countries had so much trade with one side or the other that a nuclear attack would put them in a serious recession at best and probably would lead to widespread famine. That's assuming a lack of nuclear winter, and some scholars predict a drop of several degrees that would cause crop failures and major famines.
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Jan 19, 2015 06:12
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Phobophilia posted:Can anyone explain just how Russia, the easternmost settled European polity that bordered the steppe nomads, came about to own pretty much all of Siberia, and push up to the borders of China? Was it a case of a power vacuum that came about once the Mongol empire fell apart, as well as modern communication allowing governance from somewhere as far flung west as Moscow? A combination of power vacuum, western military innovation, adventurism, and good luck. Kazan was the only real power between Moscow and Siberia, although it should be noted that Kazan was never really Moscow's primary foe, that honor goes to Poland-Lithuania. Nor was Moscow ever Kazan's primary concern, that was the Nogai Horde. But Moscow and Kazan went back and forth for close to a century, with conflict primarily driven by the Volga river trade. The increasing autocracy of the Grand Duchy meant they could raise crazy gigantic armies that Kazan eventually just couldn't match. The spread of firearms helped a lot too. Moscow eventually toppled Kazan, and started trying to spread it's influence down the Volga. Meanwhile a lot of adventurer types (including the Strogonovs, the richest family in Russia) spot an opportunity, and start raiding further up the river networks, and into the Siberian Khanate. This new Khanate was nowhere near as organized or powerful as Kazan had been, and handfuls of Cossacks (~1000 men) managed to topple the Khan and gradually subdue the local tribes. Then they just kept going as far as the rivers would carry them. The local tribesmen probably didn't care much either way, the only thing the Russians were really after was tribute in furs, which were then sold for enormous sums in Europe. Beyond Kazan, the Russian advance through Siberia is a very haphazard and improvised affair, with Moscow having very little control or even interest in what was happening beyond the customs revenues. The greatest tragedy of it all was that the routine appearance of European traders in Siberia played out just like it did in the Americas; despite the fact that the various Siberian peoples had had indirect contact with China since forever, the southern tribes had done a good job of isolating the northern ones from the diseases of the settled peoples, and the more remote peoples had no real immunity.
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Jan 19, 2015 06:20
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Rhymenoserous posted:The US has pretty strict gear control. A single rifle going missing can be enough to cause an entire battalion to be locked down until it's found. It's a bit of a different place than say the army in the 80's where a crate of grenades could fall of a truck and someone would just write it off. In 1977 or 76 an armory in Denver was looted. About 100 M-16s and 6 M-60s were taken. The got put in the pipeline of a guy named George Harrison who was an IRA veteran and they end up over in Ireland. I think 200 or so more M-16s end up over there, most of them coming from US military weapons that walked off. Harrison eventually gets caught trying to buy SAMs and a major weapons stockpile during an FBI sting. Thomamelas fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Jan 19, 2015 |
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Jan 19, 2015 08:32
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I remember a British army report stated the IRA could continue the war "indefinitely" with the amount of equipment they got from Libya.
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Jan 19, 2015 09:28
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Ensign Expendable posted:It's also pretty interesting how the Ferdinand spurred the design of huge 152 mm guns with hilariously high shell velocities, since the Soviets were afraid the Germans would manufacture lots of them, even though most Ferdinands fell to mines and infantry at Kursk.
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Jan 19, 2015 10:28
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PittTheElder posted:While wondering this same thing, I found this little gem of a line on Lee's wikipedia page. It's from a letter written by an ally of his, endorsing Grant's Democratic opponent in some election. Lee had endorsed it with a signature. There was a genuine belief that most plantation owners took care of their slaves, in a paternal kind of way, and needed to because black people were childlike and couldn't take care of themselves (see also the White Man's Burden for the British imperialist take on this). They also argued that slaves were better off on the plantation than as free poor people, because look how bad poor people had it in the mills in the North and Britain (and, disturbingly, in some cases they might even have been right about that - life as a working class white person was pretty poo poo in the Victoria era, let alone being black and dealing with worldwide casual racism on top of that).
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Jan 19, 2015 11:06
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