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This is why reddit is so poo poo for history, you have these absolute dopes who feel they're right about all these things just because they can bury any dissenting opinions.
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Apr 3, 2015 11:36
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Rabhadh posted:This is why reddit is so poo poo , you have these absolute dopes who feel they're right about all these things just because they can bury any dissenting opinions. ftfy
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Apr 3, 2015 11:37
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Fangz posted:I was really thinking of Deadliest Warriors, really, which exemplifies the very worst of that sort of nonsense. I just saw an episode where they concluded that Ghengis Khan would defeat Hannibal because the Mongols had better helmets. Better bows on the other hand....
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Apr 3, 2015 11:44
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Kanine posted:I know this is a really broad question, but what are some really common misconceptions with military history in general. More specifically, like what do people generally get wrong about stuff like the World Wars, The Cold War, various 19th century wars, etc. Everyone in the 18th century was a moron who stood in lines shooting muskets at each other because of stupidity or Honour. Nobody thought of the idea that they could spread out or take cover on the ground to avoid getting hit. Only the plucky revolutionary Americans, who also invented guerilla warfare, were smart enough to spread out and shoot down those dumb redcoats where they stood in their neat lines. In reality, of course, the firepower of the musket or rifle of that era wasn't enough to prevent a determined mass of infantry or cavalry to simply overrun you unless you massed in dense formations yourself; furthermore, spreading everyone out would have made it impossible for the officers to maintain control of the battle. Alekanderu fucked around with this message at 11:52 on Apr 3, 2015 |
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Apr 3, 2015 11:49
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Disinterested posted:Better bows on the other hand.... The mongols would've won if they'd only used rocks due to their strategic mobility. Unfortunately you can't test that on TV
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Apr 3, 2015 12:05
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Alekanderu posted:Everyone in the 18th century was a moron who stood in lines shooting muskets at each other because of stupidity or Honour. Nobody thought of the idea that they could spread out or take cover on the ground to avoid getting hit. Only the plucky revolutionary Americans, who also invented guerilla warfare, were smart enough to spread out and shoot down those dumb redcoats where they stood in their neat lines. Also, light infantry tactics did exist, as did advanced skirmish tactics, but you can't fight your whole war that way.
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Apr 3, 2015 12:13
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I think the best bit about Germany being a "genius operation" is how if you really look into it, Nazi Germany was basically what would happen if you let the Mafia run a country. It was so hilariously corrupt and stupid.
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Apr 3, 2015 12:36
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Taerkar posted:It's a really great insight into just how brainwashed people are about Dem Darn Lying Commies! I found it interesting that the BAOR exercises seem to have consistently produced fatalities because that's one of the main lines of "lol the Soviet Army was garbage" criticism I've seen in reference to the ZAPAD exercises. I mean, it stands to reason that large-scale exercises across private land rather than military ranges and with... shall we say, not the most professional conduct will cause deaths, but it's just interesting to see it in writing from the other side of things too. Endman posted:I think the best bit about Germany being a "genius operation" is how if you really look into it, Nazi Germany was basically what would happen if you let the Mafia run a country. It was so hilariously corrupt and stupid. I like to term it "fractal retardation". At every resolution, some new and incredible form of gross incompetence appears. Also before I disappear back into the aether, I'd like to thank Slavvy for making my week. As soon as I read your post I nearly fell off my loving chair because the root cause of so many of the Chieftan's problems was indeed the Leyland L60 multifuel engine. 90% initial failure rates whee!
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Apr 3, 2015 12:40
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Biggest misconception: that guerilla warfare consists of teams of basically ninjas striking from the forest/jungle to ambush and kill the hapless soldiers of the enemy stuck in their unimaginative conventional tactics and won the American Revolutionary War/Vietnam War/whatever. It's a mix of simply not knowing how much conventional warfare was actually responsible for deciding those wars, and that guerilla warfare is always far more costly for the people in the jungle than the people they are fighting, but also an inability to make the logical connection that people only adopt guerilla warfare if they literally have no other choice.
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Apr 3, 2015 12:44
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Kanine posted:I know this is a really broad question, but what are some really common misconceptions with military history in general. More specifically, like what do people generally get wrong about stuff like the World Wars, The Cold War, various 19th century wars, etc. People fall over dead if you stab or shovel them. They don't.
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Apr 3, 2015 12:52
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Did any kamikaze desert? The conventional way, or hopping into their plane and 
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Apr 3, 2015 12:56
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Rockopolis posted:Did any kamikaze desert? The conventional way, or hopping into their plane and There were apparently a suspicious number who would develop convenient 'engine trouble' and have to return to base soon after launch.
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Apr 3, 2015 12:59
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Gross generalisations about national and ethnic groups are still more permissible in casual military history as well. Even in relatively modern accounts of WW1 you will read offhand remarks about the French national character being made totally unironically as if being born within a set perimeter of Europe innately makes you want to charge repeatedly and blindly in to machine gun fire. Or how certain nationalities are somehow basically unsuited to some kind of strategy or warfare. These are remarks that require careful unpacking if they're going to be made, and require connection to concrete historical evidence.
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Apr 3, 2015 13:35
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Alchenar posted:There were apparently a suspicious number who would develop convenient 'engine trouble' and have to return to base soon after launch. What strikes me as interesting about the whole affair is just how defeatist the mentality was. The Japanese had several opportunities around the Phillipines that their navy failed to seize because they thought it was doomed anyway. Taffy 3 doesn't survive if the Japanese actually believe in the operation. Just because the Japanese rarely surrendered doesn't mean their morale didn't matter.
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Apr 3, 2015 13:39
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Fangz posted:I was really thinking of Deadliest Warriors, really, which exemplifies the very worst of that sort of nonsense. I just saw an episode where they concluded that Ghengis Khan would defeat Hannibal because the Mongols had better helmets. hahaha is this real? We're closer chronologically to Charlemagne than Genghis Khan was to Hannibal. Also I say this a lot but the ongoing backlash against German industrial and scientific prowess during the war is amusing. I get that it is in response to the years of mythologizing the overwhelming Teutonic military genius and whatnot but I'll be damned if all of the Allies were at least as poorly run if not worse, let alone Italy or Japan. Also I feel like about 90% of these misconceptions are due to video games.
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Apr 3, 2015 13:44
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Panzeh posted:What strikes me as interesting about the whole affair is just how defeatist the mentality was. The Japanese had several opportunities around the Phillipines that their navy failed to seize because they thought it was doomed anyway. Taffy 3 doesn't survive if the Japanese actually believe in the operation. Wasn't it more like the Japanese really did believe in the operation which is why Kurita doubled-back despite very heavy air attack during the Battle of the Sibuyan Sea on Oct 24?
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Apr 3, 2015 13:46
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bewbies posted:hahaha is this real? We're closer chronologically to Charlemagne than Genghis Khan was to Hannibal. With the current generation it's video games, the one before film. But it was felt strongly even at the time by a lot of people. Bigging up the Germans is an emotional coping mechanism for having our poo poo pushed in by them so badly, and a way of patting ourselves on the back for beating them.
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Apr 3, 2015 13:48
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Great stuff! Not the first time that I've read some pretty scathing remarks on British tank/mech doctrine either. During the 1970s and early 80s, internal debates tended to lean more towards a paradoxical command rigidity/organizational looseness on the operational scale of things, but those difficulties were IIRC largely the same: too little cohesion between units coupled with a generally unimaginative approach to defense in depth. The gist of it was that British forces could have too easily been defeated in detail because, individual excellence notwithstanding, the aggregate performance at their Battalion/Brigade/Divisional level was too rigid and transparant in both tempo and order. If I remember it right, observers claimed that they used highly standardized unit spacings over very recognizable terrain, with little in the way of interlocking or combined-arms support. Even worse, according to contemporaries, was that since BAOR command had the wartime responsibility over NORTHAG - i.e. the entire northern half of West-Germany - Dutch, German, Belgian, and reinforcing American commanders had to defer to overall UK operational planning and tempo. This didn't really suit, say, the large size spoiling actions and even counterstrokes that the reserve Panzerdivision and especially US III Corps might have been able to pull off. Supposedly it was only when Bagnall became COMNORTHAG that NATO's general plans could be described as somewhat approaching flexibility. Now I don't want to take too much of a narrative turn towards bashing the Brits, since pretty much all first-rate Cold War armies faced massive organizational challenges, but some problems seem to have festered on all levels of command for quite some time. The end result was the fear that a relatively high quality, but very set-piece British force would have been rolled over by a lower quality, but five times bigger Soviet set-piece, executed at a much higher tempo, wrapped in an enigma. Those company-sized defensive actions described by the Swedes don't feel like they'd have worked well against a Red Army Regiment or even a reinforced Battalion. Scale it up to the Divisional level, and you get a loose string of Brigades succesfully defeated by reinforced Tank Divisions. After the latter have spent themselves, they get replaced by the second strategic echelon, but the Brits will only have light infantry left. TheFluff posted:Not really, sorry. The paragraph continues with mentioning how the Scorpion is supposed to replace various armored cars in some places but there's nothing more about the vehicle itself. I guess that reflects on the planned introduction of the Scorpion in all Corps level Recce Regiments and Battalion level Recce Troops. Those armored cars eventually got cascaded down into Territorial Army (TA, functionally the British Army's mobilisable component) Yeomanry Regiments. Lastly, from most I've read BAOR is like NASA: it doesn't need an article. And they were chronically underfunded in the 70s and 80s too, of course 
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Apr 3, 2015 13:50
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bewbies posted:hahaha is this real? We're closer chronologically to Charlemagne than Genghis Khan was to Hannibal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ME3gfLLQcWQ Panzeh posted:What strikes me as interesting about the whole affair is just how defeatist the mentality was. The Japanese had several opportunities around the Phillipines that their navy failed to seize because they thought it was doomed anyway. Taffy 3 doesn't survive if the Japanese actually believe in the operation. Didn't the Japanese think they sunk a fleet carrier and numerous cruisers at Samar? It seems to me that they figured the battle was their Midway already, and decided not to press their luck and wait for the inevitable US counterattack.
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Apr 3, 2015 13:50
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bewbies posted:hahaha is this real? Oh it is real alright. Part of their research involves white dudes jabbing gel torsos with weapons and somehow working with 'specialists', spreadsheets and imagination to spin us the most accurate of historical simulations.
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Apr 3, 2015 13:51
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Disinterested posted:Gross generalisations about national and ethnic groups are still more permissible in casual military history as well. Even in relatively modern accounts of WW1 you will read offhand remarks about the French national character being made totally unironically as if being born within a set perimeter of Europe innately makes you want to charge repeatedly and blindly in to machine gun fire. Or how certain nationalities are somehow basically unsuited to some kind of strategy or warfare. It's not so much being born within a set perimeter of Europe but growing up and being educated in it. If you are told every day in school that the loss of Alsace-Lorraine was the greatest humiliation for the nation and you personally, you end up being quite willing to believe that. Culture isn't something that is just window dressing in history, it is quite near the core of it. It's not a one size fits all explanation of behavior of historic personalities, of course, but I would argue that there was a uniquely French approach to warfare during WWI (just like there was a uniquely German approach etc.) that was not completely based on hard scientific facts (to say nothing of the fact that "concrete historical evidence" is a problematic term in and of itself, but we had that conversation before and it was dumb).
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Apr 3, 2015 13:51
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bewbies posted:hahaha is this real? We're closer chronologically to Charlemagne than Genghis Khan was to Hannibal. Search for Deadliest Warrior on youtube. Crazy Horse vs. Pancho Villa. I don't care if that's even comedy. Just don't want to waste electrons by clicking that poo poo. Somewhere, trees die for this.
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Apr 3, 2015 13:53
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ArchangeI posted:It's not so much being born within a set perimeter of Europe but growing up and being educated in it. If you are told every day in school that the loss of Alsace-Lorraine was the greatest humiliation for the nation and you personally, you end up being quite willing to believe that. Culture isn't something that is just window dressing in history, it is quite near the core of it. It's not a one size fits all explanation of behavior of historic personalities, of course, but I would argue that there was a uniquely French approach to warfare during WWI (just like there was a uniquely German approach etc.) that was not completely based on hard scientific facts (to say nothing of the fact that "concrete historical evidence" is a problematic term in and of itself, but we had that conversation before and it was dumb). Yes, and that's all fine. But when historians write 'The french national character lent itself to attack' and then don't go on to explain the exact circumstances in which officers were educated toward the offensive, and explain how this came about, you are basically just being an inept 19th century ethnographer. And you see this poo poo all the time, still, in bad military history.
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Apr 3, 2015 13:55
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My favourite misconception uniform wise, the coat/cloak/greatcoat/cape of <insert solder here> was dyed red to hide the colour of them bleeding. So loving hilariously dumb on so many levels.
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Apr 3, 2015 13:57
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Addendum: Looking up that video, apparently Deadliest Warriors did a KGB vs CIA episode. http://deadliestwarrior.wikia.com/wiki/CIA quote:According to the experts, the main reason for the CIA's victory, despite the brutality of the KGB, was the reliabilty of their firearms in the MAC-10 (which was a bigger caliber and had a faster rate of fire than the Scorpion) and breifcase gun. I cannot facepalm hard enough.
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Apr 3, 2015 13:58
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Wasn't there a TV series that used the Total War games to play out Ancient Age what-if scenarios? Maybe they could try that again with contemporary graphics and games. Arnhem in Combat Mission, Gettysburg in Ultimate General, etc.
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Apr 3, 2015 13:58
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SeanBeansShako posted:My favourite misconception uniform wise, the coat/cloak/greatcoat/cape of <insert solder here> was dyed red to hide the colour of them bleeding. Also the red dye used was notoriously lovely and ran in washing really badly.
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Apr 3, 2015 13:58
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Fangz posted:Yes this is real. I assume Theodore Roosevelt vs Lawrence of Arabia was an extended contest witty rejoinders followed by a spirited boxing match
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Apr 3, 2015 13:58
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gradenko_2000 posted:Wasn't there a TV series that used the Total War games to play out Ancient Age what-if scenarios? You are thinking Time Commanders, and it was glorious to watch. Disinterested posted:Also the red dye used was notoriously lovely and ran in washing really badly. Redcoats? more like maroon coats wearing some dudes cheap trousers and a dead soldiers boots on campaign. Still, better than white uniforms ugh.
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Apr 3, 2015 13:59
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gradenko_2000 posted:Wasn't there a TV series that used the Total War games to play out Ancient Age what-if scenarios? Yes! Time Commander. It was a pretty fun show actually, IMHO. I mean, it sort of served to illustrate how terrible the general public are at even the most basic notions of strategy or tactics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MQ8gIxBj4Y  Hey lets get surrounded and then form a tetsudo
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Apr 3, 2015 14:01
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bewbies posted:hahaha is this real? We're closer chronologically to Charlemagne than Genghis Khan was to Hannibal. Eh, let's be fair here, a lot of the German industrial practices during WWII at least were utterly atrocious. gradenko_2000 posted:Wasn't there a TV series that used the Total War games to play out Ancient Age what-if scenarios? I think I remember one of the "Ultimate Warrior" shows using it to declare the Franks the the best fighters because of how awesome their axes were.
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Apr 3, 2015 14:02
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SeanBeansShako posted:Redcoats? more like maroon coats wearing some dudes cheap trousers and a dead soldiers boots on campaign. Still, better than white uniforms ugh. Yes, redcoats. White uniforms look cool in theory but in practice lol no. Also a terrible idea: white leather crossbelts. Literally a giant target on your chest.
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Apr 3, 2015 14:04
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Tetsudo guy will always live on in my heart. I've dreamed of Time Commanders coming back with Tony Robison and Brian Blessed as hosts with the same Historians but alas it will never be. Also, dumb uniform misconceptions 19th century soldiers fought on campaign wearing their parade gear (plumes and stocks and shiny gaiters). That poo poo was uncomfortable and expensive to lose. Unless you needed to eat, then bye bye silver thread. Disinterested posted:Also a terrible idea: white leather crossbelts. Literally a giant target on your chest. Eh, they get a pass as you can pretty much carry everything you need in the field on them and not haul your pack everywhere with you. gently caress pipeclaying them though.
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Apr 3, 2015 14:05
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Disinterested posted:Also the red dye used was notoriously lovely and ran in washing really badly. When I tell people the Spartans and Romans conquered in glorious pink they always give me the most disgusted looks
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Apr 3, 2015 14:09
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Time Commanders was amazing and I really really wanted to go on it, and hang on a minute I think I've just worked out why joining that insane Grey Hunter LP was so appealing...moving swiftly on... 100 Years Ago Mostly Gallipoli. The Ottoman fleet has a poke at the Russians who are massing at Odessa and Sevastopol to invade Constantinople, and Sir Ian Hamilton continues emo-ing to his diary. Seriously, this is some 14-year-old's LiveJournal-calibre moping. In happier news, we're looking at the enterprising Henry Edwards, the Lambeth wedding man, who's come up with an excellent scheme to improve his retirement. Guaranteed to contain no accidental death sentences and no surprise corpses!
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Apr 3, 2015 14:10
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Great post! I was hoping you'd show up and elaborate on the bigger picture here, and you certainly didn't disappoint. Your posts in the old Wargame threads was one of the reasons I sought out the archives in the first place. Thanks!Koesj posted:Lastly, from most I've read BAOR is like NASA: it doesn't need an article.
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Apr 3, 2015 14:32
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Taerkar posted:Eh, let's be fair here, a lot of the German industrial practices during WWII at least were utterly atrocious. Agreed, I think my point is that everyone's were.
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Apr 3, 2015 14:35
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bewbies posted:Agreed, I think my point is that everyone's were. Eh, everyone else had a learning curve. Nazi irrationally was ingrained in the ideology and structure and was ineradicable from the inside.
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Apr 3, 2015 14:37
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Eh, most of the issues the US had was with poor decision making, being inexperienced, or being more than a bit optimistic about what they were making (The 76mm is the greatest gun ever!). When you're engaged in a modern industrial total war and you're scaling back production because you made too much poo poo, you don't exactly have a poorly functioning industry.
Taerkar fucked around with this message at 14:43 on Apr 3, 2015 |
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Apr 3, 2015 14:38
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Disinterested posted:Eh, everyone else had a learning curve. Nazi irrationally was ingrained in the ideology and structure and was ineradicable from the inside. Eh, you're quite right, that being said, I'd say the Soviet ideology was very nearly as fanatical and probably as damaging to the war effort as Nazism was. As for the US it is probably right to describe things a learning curve, but the curve for us was about three years behind everyone else and wasn't anywhere near actually efficient as compared to competitors until the war was more or less over. The US had so many resources and so much pre-existing industrial power that they were going to win the industrial battle almost no matter what they did.
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Apr 3, 2015 14:45
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