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I think it's kind of naive to say the US should have provided humanitarian aid and taken in refugees because I'm honestly not sure by what means they would have been able to carry out those measures on a scale large enough to substantially ease the human suffering caused by WWII.
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May 18, 2015 16:18
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mastervj posted:Just so you know, an ethical analysis of military history is pretty dumb. Depends what you mean by that. An entirely sensible way of doing any kind of history is to examine a given choice where a person appears to have deviated from societally accepted norms or reasoning. When we look at Nazi atrocities of conspicuous brutality, we can ask ourselves (1) Were these regarded as legitimate in their time? (2) Were these regarded as moral in their time? (3) Were these normal for their time? (4) To the extent to which the answer to 1-3 is no, what special circumstances existed that lead to this breakage. That is a kind of ethical approach to history that applies across historical specialisations as a way of looking for the meat in the historical sandwich and is totally legitimate as a historical method.
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May 18, 2015 16:19
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cheerfullydrab posted:2. The USA did not enter into the war to help peoples oppressed by fascism or to stop the mass killings being carried out by the Axis powers. However, USA entering the war did help people oppressed by fascism and did (to some extent) stop the mass killings. And we, as in a bunch of people that wouldn't be alive now or would live in terrible conditions, are thankful to USA for that. USA entering the war was a good thing.
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May 18, 2015 16:20
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LowellDND posted:This is back a few pages, but Ill toss you my ideas. This is also a few pages back; I tried to make my own post echoing these thoughts but...didn't get very far. Your description was more honest and eloquent than mine would've been in any case. There is a thought I'd like to add though. I'll be a bit hyperbolic, and call it the duplicity of the American public. I think this starts with a very basic pillar of modern American society: we are the reluctant warriors. This identity is pretty central to American politics and to our national psyche in general. We are a peace loving people, we only fight when there's no other alternative, and when we do fight we uphold the American ideal of justice and fairness and mercy. Many of our most prominent military heroes fit nicely into this mold: Washington, Sherman, Lee, Chamberlain, Alvin York, Audie Murphy, Schwarzkopf, etc. This narrative is particularly evident when rah-America civilians and politicans talk about America's military history: America don't start fights but by god she finishes them and then you're drat lucky you lost to America because we're the most morally straight of all. There's...some historical background for this "reluctant warrior" archetype (our sitting out the world wars for a while?), but in general it is, in my opinion, a bullshit narrative...particularly since the end of WWII. We are more than ready to deploy our military when we feel our strategic positions are threatened, and we'll stick with missions long after their underlying reasoning is corrupted. We also certainly don't (and never had) a position of unimpeachable moral conduct; while we didn't have a Unit 731 or Holocaust or Katyn Forest, our hands are of course far from clean. Whatever our moral or ethical or criminal afforts have been, however, are largely whitewashed by the "reluctant warrior": when bad things happened, generally speaking, we didn't WANT to do it, "we did what we had to do". The other part of this is the increasing distance between the military and non-military in American society. I think i posted this brilliant article about it that says it all better than it has ever been said before, but I'll post it again, and you should read if you haven't, especially if you're American. The main point of the article is that the cordon around the military, which I once thought was a good thing, is having significant political and strategic consequences; of particular relevance to my thoughts here is that very few Americans now have experienced military service and/or combat and as a result the military seems like a distant, strange, unfamiliar thing to the vast majority of people. So finally, I get to my point: Americans are willing and usually pretty enthusiastic to send our military off to do what militaries do, but are completely uncomfortable and very closed off from the consequences of these decisions. One of the biggest aspects of this is our complete and utter discomfort with the fact that our military kills people....lots of people, quite effectively. When I say "uncomfortable", I don't mean that Americans in general feel bad about killing large numbers of arabic muslims in Iraq (we don't), but that we feel bad that our soldiers had to do that. You see, that's a central part of the "reluctant warrior" narrative: serving and fighting is perfectly honorable and good, but you can't like war, you can't like killing. You have to be tortured by it, feel guilty, feel conflicted. The truth is though that there's always been a cohort of soldiers/fighters, in all of history's wars, who excelled at the killing aspect of combat, and in a lot of cases, relished in it. SLA Marshall, for all the questionable conclusions he draws elsewhere, nailed this one in my opinion: combat just makes sense for some people. They might be utterly worthless soldiers otherwise, might be shiftless or lazy or incompetent people in civilian life, but when the time comes to fight the fight, they just...get it. They don't have the moral conflicts and hesitation that the rest of us do; they fight until they win, and a lot of the time, they love it. These people exist, and always have, and always will, but in modern America, this sort of mentality, this behavior, is completely unacceptable. The Chris Kyle movie is the perfect example of this. By all accounts I'm familiar with, Kyle loved what he did in the combat zone. He excelled at it, he wasn't much troubled by any of it, to him, his task was clear and he performed it. In America today, I think we call that personality type a "psychopath": one who acts without empathy and without remorse, who doesn't subscribe to normal ideals of right and wrong. That isn't to say Chris Kyle was a bad citizen or a criminal: he shot people in a way that was at least ostensibly legal and sanctioned, and as far as I know, didn't ever exceed this mandate. Still, though, America is completely unable to deal with this reality. Case in point: I didn't see the movie about him and never will, but based on what I've seen and read, it portrays him not as he was, but as the perfect example of the reluctant warrior. He was very sad to kill all those Iraqis because you have to be sad when you do things like that. In American films, you have to say a quick prayer before you snipe somebody and then immediately ask forgiveness for your act of moral terpitude. American audiences, by and large, would have been horrified by an accurate biopic of Chris Kyle. For better or for worse, militaries need guys like Chris Kyle. And Ernst Junger, and John Basilone, and Jack Churchill, and Simo Hayha. If we're not comfortable with what these guys do, and how they do it, and how they feel about it, then we're not comfortable with war. America today though, is perfectly happy sending soldiers off to do what soldiers do, but is unwilling to acknowledge what happened after it has happened....at least not without heavy Hollywood filtering in place. It is a small component of the very messed up environment today's combat vets are having to adjust to, not to mention the assortment of other negative consequences that the article above discusses in detail. You may now return to debating whether or not the US should have fought in WWII, lol.
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May 18, 2015 16:23
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HEY GAL posted:what do you do, as a head of state, when it becomes clear diplomacy isn't working? Hire mercenaries, quarter them in villages just outside your borders. Repeat when said village is destroyed.
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May 18, 2015 16:26
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cheerfullydrab posted:1. The government of the USA engaged in certain policies and actions that brought them closer and closer to all-out war with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. The events of 12/41 are at least partially a result of these policies and actions. Isolationism at home aside, the administration of FDR had some desire for involvement in the war. The thing is, neither of Japan and Germany actually wanted the United States to join the war. Although American policies and practices were detrimental to their respective goals, both still felt it was in their best interest to keep the Americans nominally neutral because American industrial power and potential military strength would be overwhelming. The oil embargo against Japan was an attempt to get them to stop their expansionist wars, and it's standard practice. Putting economic pressure on a country to stop doing something is not uncommon at all and we still do it today. It was a firm stance against Japanese aggression but I doubt they expected to be attacked because of it. The Japanese attack was a poor, almost desperate, attempt to intimidate America in to giving into their demands. They sincerely believed the US would give up the embargo immediately. Lend-lease to the Soviets and British happened only after the Germans started attacking those countries and it became obvious that Nazi Germany was bent on world domination. Wanting one side to win and supplying them with the means to do so is not the same thing as wanting to get involved in the war to the point where you actually put men into combat. Yes, German U-Boats sank ships, but there's a reason they didn't formally declare war on the US until after Pearl Harbor, and it's because Hitler wanted to avoid war with the US as much as possible. The Nazis were evil but they weren't stupid, they knew that the US entering the war on the side of the Soviets and British would be disastrous. quote:2. The USA did not enter into the war to help peoples oppressed by fascism or to stop the mass killings being carried out by the Axis powers. They entered the war in the Pacific because they were attacked by an oppressive facist power, and they entered the war in Europe to halt the spread of an oppressive and genocidal facist power. They absolutely did fight to stop these things, even if it wasn't an explicitly stated goal.
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May 18, 2015 16:28
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cheerfullydrab posted:1. The government of the USA engaged in certain policies and actions that brought them closer and closer to all-out war with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. The events of 12/41 are at least partially a result of these policies and actions. Isolationism at home aside, the administration of FDR had some desire for involvement in the war. To some extent that's true, but these were also totally logical steps for FDR to have taken, and the ultimate effect is to throw blame where it doesn't honestly belong. All of the arguments you are making could be made literally just as easily about the UK and the British Empire. The UK did not have to give war guarantees to Poland or to issue an ultimatum to the Nazi leadership. It could have accepted a devil's pact of peace with the Nazi's in exchange for being left unmolested in the near future. All that would have done is defer the problem for later - and in any event, giving an oath to protect Poland was the moral course. If anything, it is quite clear that the best way to have avoided the carnage of WW2 was not for people to have resisted war, but rather to have been forceful with Germany much sooner. Furthermore: Japan did not have a right to access to American oil. Denial of it is not a legitimate cassus belli by any stretch of the imagination. However, wars of aggressive conquest against other nations are an extremely good cause for the denial of access to major strategic resources. cheerfullydrab posted:2. The USA did not enter into the war to help peoples oppressed by fascism or to stop the mass killings being carried out by the Axis powers. This is only to some extent true, these things did enter the mental calculations of many people involved. In any event, the chauvinism of fascism overseas cannot be easily divorced from the chauvinism of fascism abroad - the two things are intrinsically linked.
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May 18, 2015 16:29
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:That was mostly my the point. I'm surprised it wasn't a thing until the latter half of the 20th century. Is that even something that could have been developed in a time period before firearms dominated? Would it have actually been useful? I remember JaucheCharly talking about the draw-weights of crossbows - that in order to impart useful kinetic energy to the bolt using the tiny short length of arm available, you had to make those arms absurdly stiff and powerful, leading to all those cranequins and similar mechanical advantage loading devices. Anyway, where I'm going with this is that I suspect the cam action wouldn't have been useful unless you lengthened the arms of the bow, at the cost of whatever manuvering benefit you get out of having the crossbow arms be short. (I bet catching your neighbor in the cheek with the arm while firing would break his jaw!)
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May 18, 2015 16:31
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It's hard to really judge wars as being good or bad, since all of them are the result of political machinations and any which way a whole lot of people die. WW2 tends to be the easiest to apply that sort of judgment to in retrospect, what with the holocaust and the thing Japan was doing in China, even if those weren't the motivating factors to leaders at the time. For better or worse, US involvement of WW2 made it so that the US couldn't play isolationist and ignore world politics. When it was all over, the Marshall Plan helped Europe recover, and there was now a power block to deter Soviet expansion. I have no idea what the world would look like if imperial Japan was still A Thing.
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May 18, 2015 16:39
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SlothfulCobra posted:I have no idea what the world would look like if imperial Japan was still A Thing. I can give you some idea and it's Not Good. Also people really need to learn to allow for the possibility that motivations change and grow over time. Even if WW2 began as a great power scrap, it did not end as one.
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May 18, 2015 16:42
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bewbies posted:The Chris Kyle movie is the perfect example of this. By all accounts I'm familiar with, Kyle loved what he did in the combat zone. He excelled at it, he wasn't much troubled by any of it, to him, his task was clear and he performed it. In America today, I think we call that personality type a "psychopath": one who acts without empathy and without remorse, who doesn't subscribe to normal ideals of right and wrong. That isn't to say Chris Kyle was a bad citizen or a criminal: he shot people in a way that was at least ostensibly legal and sanctioned, and as far as I know, didn't ever exceed this mandate. Still, though, America is completely unable to deal with this reality. Case in point: I didn't see the movie about him and never will, but based on what I've seen and read, it portrays him not as he was, but as the perfect example of the reluctant warrior. He was very sad to kill all those Iraqis because you have to be sad when you do things like that. In American films, you have to say a quick prayer before you snipe somebody and then immediately ask forgiveness for your act of moral terpitude. American audiences, by and large, would have been horrified by an accurate biopic of Chris Kyle. Actually American Sniper doesn't humanise the Iraqis at all. Kyle describes the people he's fighting as inhuman monsters and he's happy killing them. I don't actually think the film's flawed or blind in that sense - the very brief shots we get of the antagonist sniper are actually pretty humanising; we see a family, political posters implying some sort of beliefs etc. The film just isn't about that, it's a story of how war damages even the most enthusiastic soldier purely through proximity. Kyle's depicted as someone suffering from PTSD from seeing people dying he couldn't save and struggling to acknowledge that about himself. Clint Eastwood is a crazy old guy, but he's extremely good at making films like this and Flags of our Fathers/Letters from Iwo Jima that completely cut out the political context of a war in order to convey an extremely tight focus on the individual experience.
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May 18, 2015 16:44
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HEY GAL posted:would it have been better than crossbows, because we already had those before handheld firearms became a huge thing I would assume the pulleys on a modern compound bow would expedite reloading over a crossbow. However, I think everybody else has responded well enough about the issues. The lack of a strong string in particular comes to mind.
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May 18, 2015 16:50
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Jamwad Hilder posted:
 I apologize in advance if this feels like I'm trying to score points off of you, but you are aware of Nazis Germany awesome mismanagement of their industrial and labor? Reading about Germany during the war makes me feel that the Nazis worst enemy was their own ideology.
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May 18, 2015 16:51
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Alchenar posted:Clint Eastwood is a crazy old guy, but he's extremely good at making films like this and Flags of our Fathers/Letters from Iwo Jima that completely cut out the political context of a war in order to convey an extremely tight focus on the individual experience. Yeah I think he intended for the film to be taken as anti-war but he also admitted maybe some of the critics' problems were right about the film I believe.
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May 18, 2015 16:51
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WW2 Data We take our first look at Russian munitions, starting off with the 2 available examples of the 37mm round. One fragmentation, one armor-piercing, both used in AA guns. It's mentioned in the blog, but the rounds we look at today are incompatible with the 37mm Anti-Tank Gun M1930 (1-K) used by the Russians due to different case/cartridge lengths. We also take a look back at an SA update, with added image regarding Japanese 12.7mm ammunition and the beginning of the IJA 20mm examples.
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May 18, 2015 16:52
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I admit that I don't know much about compound bows and crossbows. The powerstroke is important, as is the size and weight of limbs and string. If you add more steel, that's not doing any good, and with the thick string, this is going to be pretty large cams, you also need a much longer string.
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May 18, 2015 16:58
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cheerfullydrab posted:I've said it before, but I really hate those people who unload a crazy controversial statement on a thread and then slink off without replying. It's what trolls and idiots do, and I'm trying not to be that person. That said, I feel like some sort of Jack Lemmon character. I don't even know where to start. A few of you seem to be running off entirely different assumptions about WW2 than I am. Two important points: Except those claims are inconsistent. Those policies and actions that brought the US closer and closer to an all-out war was exactly those actions that were helping people oppressed by fascism or to stop mass killings. The embargo against Japan was because of their genocidal campaign in China. The lend lease of armaments and food to Britain and the USSR was again to support them in their struggle. So yeah. This is classic apologist nonsense. You're writing as if FDR was mindlessly mean towards Germany and Japan and kept calling them names and just wanted war no matter what because [insert reason that is not 'because they were busy invading and murdering millions']. When actually US peacetime policy was pretty simple and consistent - we're gonna make it increasingly difficult for you fuckers to keep invading and murdering people, until you stop. They didn't. EDIT: I mean, what was the alternative? Carry on selling the Japanese oil and so make a tidy secondary profit out of their atrocities. Force the USSR and British to pay normal prices up front, and/or stop trading when the Germans ask them to? Trade equally with the nazis? Yup, sounds reaaal moral. Fangz fucked around with this message at 17:16 on May 18, 2015 |
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May 18, 2015 17:03
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Klaus88 posted:
Yeah, maybe stupid was the wrong choice of word there. My point was they didn't accomplish the (horrible) things they did by luck or accident. I guess I meant they were pragmatic enough to realize that the Americans entering the war would not have been a good thing for them.
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May 18, 2015 17:09
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cheerfullydrab posted:I mean without those two assumptions about American involvement in the war, we're coming at things from very different viewpoints. I think there are two more important assumptions that are causing a hang-up here. You seem to value the moral integrity of the actors involved above all, and are basing your judgements on WWII around that - moral people should act in moral ways for moral motives, otherwise they're cynical at best or evil at worst. Immoral methods should be avoided, and immoral motivations should not be acted on. Not being a good, moral actor seems to be reason enough for you to condemn their actions as being immoral. Do I have that right? Most of us here, on the other hand, value the actual impact of the actions taken more than the morality of the actors involved. It would not matter particularly much to us if FDR tried to get the US into WWII solely because he was being paid huge bribes by the "We're Racist Against Germans, So What?" Party, so long as the actual things he did produced an overall net good for the world. And on the whole, American actions in WWII CAN fairly objectively be said to have produced a better outcome for the world at large at the whole, if not a perfect outcome or even the ideal outcome (especially for those of us who wouldn't be alive if the Americans hadn't intervened). So long as that holds true, American intervention will seem like a pretty good idea. In order to convince us that US intervention was a bad idea, you're going to need to either convince us that American intervention produced worse results for the world on the whole, that there was a realistic alternative course they could have taken that would have led to a measurably better outcome, or that moral purity is more important than results.
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May 18, 2015 17:14
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SeanBeansShako posted:Insert the clip of Hitler losing his poo poo from Downfall/Die Untergang here. To be fair (to a guy that got half of his own nation killed to satisfy his ego) it wasn't quite the nutty gamble it would be today. Paraguay was densely populated and militaristic (like, say, Prussia) while Brazil was kind of a loose mess of slave revolts, barely loyal caudillos, and isolationist to boot. Argentina, while bigger, and enjoying an influx of European immigration and capital, was still mostly populated by penguins and cowboys and cowboy penguins. Who would predict they would go all in to protect Uruguay? While it was a nice buffer state between them, and each perceived it as "their" client state, a skilled diplomat might have pulled it off. It is a challenging, but doable scenario in Vicky 2.
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May 18, 2015 17:35
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bewbies posted:The other part of this is the increasing distance between the military and non-military in American society. I think i posted this brilliant article about it that says it all better than it has ever been said before, but I'll post it again, and you should read if you haven't, especially if you're American. The main point of the article is that the cordon around the military, which I once thought was a good thing, is having significant political and strategic consequences; of particular relevance to my thoughts here is that very few Americans now have experienced military service and/or combat and as a result the military seems like a distant, strange, unfamiliar thing to the vast majority of people. Yes, the reason is very much that the US abandoned the citizen army when you dropped the draft. A professional (mercenary) military force can be sent wherever without causing much problems in the country because you don't really have to justify it to the people. Plus, I have gotten the impression most of the people singing up are from the South, making half of the country not care by default. Jamwad Hilder posted:Lend-lease to the Soviets and British happened only after the Germans started attacking those countries and it became obvious that Nazi Germany was bent on world domination. The claim Germany wanted to dominate the world is a result of propaganda. Germany wanted control over Europe, not the world. They were not that crazy. quote:
Claims that the US entered the war to stop genocide was added afterwards to shape the post-war narrative. Said genocide after all, was not known and did not even start in a systematic way until after the US entry. quote:I guess I meant they were pragmatic enough to realize that the Americans entering the war would not have been a good thing for them. Some people did, most didn't. They thought the American society soft and decadent because black people or something. I am not going to bother looking up the silly dismissals.
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May 18, 2015 17:41
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Riso posted:The claim Germany wanted to dominate the world is a result of propaganda. Germany wanted control over Europe, not the world. They were not that crazy. quote:Claims that the US entered the war to stop genocide was added afterwards to shape the post-war narrative. Said genocide after all, was not known and did not even start in a systematic way until after the US entry.
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May 18, 2015 17:55
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Yvonmukluk posted:I think that was hyperbole. I didn't realise that invasion & occupation of an entire continent is apparently A-OK, though. Actually the plans were/are mostly economic domination and the policy was originally conceived by a German liberal politician decades earlier. In short: Germany succeeded, we call it the EU. quote:
A declaration or war is the best reason, but from a German point of view the US was already at war with Germany and they just formalised it. There's lend-lease on one hand and the US navy fighting submarines on the other.
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May 18, 2015 18:06
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Riso posted:The claim Germany wanted to dominate the world is a result of propaganda. Germany wanted control over Europe, not the world. They were not that crazy. Heute gehört uns Deutschland und morgen die ganze Welt. Riso posted:Claims that the US entered the war to stop genocide was added afterwards to shape the post-war narrative. Said genocide after all, was not known and did not even start in a systematic way until after the US entry. I don't know from where you got your information, but you could start by reading about a subject before you make such claims. By December 1941, you're already counting about 2 mio russian POWs that died from systematic mistreatment and starvation and the EKs were already highly active since summer. In fall 1941, Himmler was already in Mogilev and decided after this visit that they will move to another, more controllable setting and form of killing. By fall, the holocaust by bullets had already peaked and picked up again in December and January. The killings were systematic from the start of Barbarossa, the masses of people that they wanted to exterminate proved to be more elusive than expected, and they expanded their group of targets succesively. e: Einsatzgruppe B & C send their regards and suggest that you learn to read before posting poo poo. Power Khan fucked around with this message at 18:25 on May 18, 2015 |
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May 18, 2015 18:11
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Trin Tragula posted:100 Years Ago I love this stupid thing, and want to see an alternate history where a major war is fought entirely with contraptions like it.
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May 18, 2015 18:19
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sullat posted:To be fair (to a guy that got half of his own nation killed to satisfy his ego) it wasn't quite the nutty gamble it would be today. Paraguay was densely populated and militaristic (like, say, Prussia) while Brazil was kind of a loose mess of slave revolts, barely loyal caudillos, and isolationist to boot. Argentina, while bigger, and enjoying an influx of European immigration and capital, was still mostly populated by penguins and cowboys and cowboy penguins. Who would predict they would go all in to protect Uruguay? While it was a nice buffer state between them, and each perceived it as "their" client state, a skilled diplomat might have pulled it off. It is a challenging, but doable scenario in Vicky 2. The big issue is that the allies refused to settle for anything less than regime change, and Lopez was far too much of an egomaniac to ever step down. Its not so much starting the war that was crazy, it was continuing it long after it was effectively lost. Lopez is that guy in StarCraft who won't gg and forces you to hunt down every last supply depot.
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May 18, 2015 18:26
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JaucheCharly posted:Heute gehört uns Deutschland und morgen die ganze Welt. Also on the Japanese side Rape of Nanking was 1937. The Japanese were doing mass murder since 1931. US begun trade restrictions vs the Japanese in 1938.
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May 18, 2015 18:32
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Riso posted:A declaration or war is the best reason, but from a German point of view the US was already at war with Germany and they just formalised it. There's lend-lease on one hand and the US navy fighting submarines on the other. While calling them "neutrality patrols" is certainly somewhat Orwellian, trying to protect American trade is certainly a legitimate use of American naval power. Just because the British were offering better terms doesn't justify the Germans from trying to shut that trade down and then act miffed when the Americans try and stop them.
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May 18, 2015 18:49
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JaucheCharly posted:
I was only thinking about the Holocaust there. I did completely forget the Soviet POWs, but there was still no information at the time to make the claim that the US was out to stop that. quote:While calling them "neutrality patrols" is certainly somewhat Orwellian, trying to protect American trade is certainly a legitimate use of American naval power. Just because the British were offering better terms doesn't justify the Germans from trying to shut that trade down and then act miffed when the Americans try and stop them. American flagged ships were not attacked according to the rules of war.
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May 18, 2015 18:53
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I'm absolutely sure I wouldn't be alive right now without American intervention in the Pacific, so thanks, duders. === Yesterday I attended a ceremony laying to rest a veteran of the 10th Battalion Combat Team of the Philippine Expeditionary Forces to Korea. What's the origin of the 21-gun salute? Those rounds had to be blanks, right?
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May 18, 2015 19:04
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Riso posted:American flagged ships were not attacked according to the rules of war. Tell that to the crew of the USS Reuben James
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May 18, 2015 19:05
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Riso posted:I was only thinking about the Holocaust there. I did completely forget the Soviet POWs, but there was still no information at the time to make the claim that the US was out to stop that. Do you consider taking a ship and its crew captive to be an act of war?
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May 18, 2015 19:12
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gradenko_2000 posted:What's the origin of the 21-gun salute? Those rounds had to be blanks, right? Ships would fire their cannons with no ball to show that they were no longer armed. Abraham Lincoln was once almost killed by one of those salutes when he was in a rowboat next to the ship. Despite being a blank, the cannon had enough force that it could have killed him if he were any closer to it. Eventually, it became a general sign of respect and used at funerals, but I'm not sure how and when that happened.
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May 18, 2015 19:24
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Disinterested posted:Depends what you mean by that. An entirely sensible way of doing any kind of history is to examine a given choice where a person appears to have deviated from societally accepted norms or reasoning. When we look at Nazi atrocities of conspicuous brutality, we can ask ourselves Ok, just to clarify I was talking about projecting our own (present) ethical outlook on past events.
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May 18, 2015 19:29
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mastervj posted:Ok, just to clarify I was talking about projecting our own (present) ethical outlook on past events. That has a value too, just not baked in to the analysis.
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May 18, 2015 19:31
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Disinterested posted:That has a value too, just not baked in to the analysis. Yeah I think it's fair to say that, say, Roman treatment of slaves was unethical, but there's a difference between knowing that and having it affect your analysis of the time period.
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May 18, 2015 19:33
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ArchangeI posted:Tell that to the crew of the USS Reuben James https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Reuben_James_%28DD-245%29 quote:Reuben James was hit forward by a torpedo meant for a merchant ship and her entire bow was blown off when a magazine exploded. The bow sank immediately. The aft section floated for five minutes before going down. A supposedly neutral warship put itself into harms way to protect a Commonwealth merchantman and was hit instead. Not a deliberate act. However, a so called neutral country putting its warships into a situation with orders to attack one warring party while protecting another is pretty much a war declaration.
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May 18, 2015 19:43
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This thread is going to be my new best friend. So I've read that the Caracole was basically outmoded by the middle of the 30 years war but I can't find any definite sources on it's first uses. Obviously it's just a modified version of the cantabrian circle which was used all over history but who first used it with firearms? I'm guessing after the invention of the wheel lock? Keeping a matchlock lit would be difficult mid cavalry charge no? But then again I think i've heard about it being used by the Stratioti before 1500?
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May 18, 2015 19:46
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sullat posted:To be fair (to a guy that got half of his own nation killed to satisfy his ego) it wasn't quite the nutty gamble it would be today. Paraguay was densely populated and militaristic (like, say, Prussia) while Brazil was kind of a loose mess of slave revolts, barely loyal caudillos, and isolationist to boot. Argentina, while bigger, and enjoying an influx of European immigration and capital, was still mostly populated by penguins and cowboys and cowboy penguins. Who would predict they would go all in to protect Uruguay? While it was a nice buffer state between them, and each perceived it as "their" client state, a skilled diplomat might have pulled it off. It is a challenging, but doable scenario in Vicky 2. They could have pulled it off but amazingly with their river fleet and some of the earlier actions during their invasion but I guess the combination of not really having a proper established system of officers, the outdated equipment and tactics and letting Lopez micro pretty much run the show knocked the wind out of their sails. Plus I imagine some parts of South America really are hard to travel, let alone fight and resupply in. But from what I've read so far, It seems they put up a bloody fight. Like, to the literal last man. Jesus, the male to female ratio after that war for Paraguay. 4 to 1!
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May 18, 2015 20:08
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Rodnik posted:Hi all, For an actual 15th century map of Italy see the maps from Ptolemy's Geographike, which were re-introduced via Constantinople to the West in the beginning of the 15th century and were probably the state of the art during this period. Of course these show the state of the world in the 2nd century AD, though some of them were updated. See for example here http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Ptolemy_Cosmographia_1467_-_Italy.jpg (version from 1467) or here http://www.e-rara.ch/doi/10.3931/e-rara-12284 (updated version from the 16th century). If you're interested in alpine passes, there's also the map of Switzerland by Conrad Türst in 1495: http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/grosjean_1971/0059 (alpine passes are in the south, i.e. on top of the map). Not being a military historian, I have no idea if these were ever used for any military purposes. Edit: I also found this rather mysterious map of Italy by an unknown author (http://bvmm.irht.cnrs.fr/consult/consult.php?reproductionId=17008). It is estimated to be made in the 15th century and doesn't seem to based on Ptolemy's work. gipskrampf fucked around with this message at 20:41 on May 18, 2015 |
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May 18, 2015 20:23
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