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The thought occurs that the League of Nations might have been slightly more effective had the Senate allowed Wilson to play in his own sandpit.
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May 19, 2015 02:15
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Fangz posted:From a realpolitik viewpoint, US participation in WWI benefited the US enormously. The fact that all those European powers destroyed each other (for the US 100k was pretty cheap) left the US as the sole superpower. Of course, we know now that Versailles and The League didn't bring peace, but some of the better sentiments of those were ground-breaking in their time. The League was an important precursor to the international organisations of today.
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May 19, 2015 02:15
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Disinterested posted:Really would not have been that bad then. Plus, you know, the SPD was totally opposed to any land annexations. Evans is always pointing out in the press that it's just a terrible mistake to equate Nazi Germany with Imperial Germany. Imperial Germany was somewhat democratic and never reached the full on low ebbs of Nazism. Why does Kaiser Billy remind me of that family member you never invite to any sort of gathering, but he shows up anyway drunk off his gourd with a hooker as his date and bringing up every minor grievance and grudge he can recall? Mind you, this sort of behavior is slightly more disturbing when you're in a position to influence the policy of one of Europe's great powers.
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May 19, 2015 02:17
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Of course a counterpoint is that US troops probably brought the 1918 'Spanish' flu to Eurasia, probably killing between 50-100 million people.
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May 19, 2015 02:23
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The League of Nations did some amazing things, like resolving the Aland Crisis and the establishment of the Nansen passport. The League of Nations' successes weren't flashy or dramatic, which is why it's considered an overall failure.
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May 19, 2015 03:50
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cheerfullydrab posted:The League of Nations' successes weren't flashy or dramatic, which is why it's considered an overall failure. Ethiopia and China disagree with you.
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May 19, 2015 03:51
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:It was only "no reason" if you get your First World War history from Blackadder Goes Forth. Also I like the insinuation here that only those 100,000 dead Americans actually mattered, not the millions of dead Europeans. It was certainly no reason for the US. Why should we care whether it's the UK or Germany that ends up as the dominant European power? Hell, arguably it ended up being Germany anyway. Even if the UK winning was very, very important for the US, they would have won anyway. Fangz posted:From a realpolitik viewpoint, US participation in WWI benefited the US enormously. The fact that all those European powers destroyed each other (for the US 100k was pretty cheap) left the US as the sole superpower. Of course, we know now that Versailles and The League didn't bring peace, but some of the better sentiments of those were ground-breaking in their time. The League was an important precursor to the international organisations of today. They had already destroyed each other by the time the US got involved anyway. They probably would have destroyed each other even more if we hadn't joined in because the war would have lasted longer. quote:Adding onto this an Entente defeat would be disaster for the US seeing as they pretty much funded France and Britain post-1915 Yeah that's true. On the other hand, our economy collapsed on its own 10 years later anyway.
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May 19, 2015 04:31
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:Ethiopia and China disagree with you. Imagine if the racial equality clause had been added to the LoN charter instead of giving Japan the German mandate in Shandong. Butterflies galore obviously, but I suspect things would have gone better in East Asia than they did. Of course, that would require non-racist Wilson and/or non-racist Australians, and I can't decide which of those is the gayer, blacker, Hitler.
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May 19, 2015 04:37
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How important was official U.S. intervention in WWI? I was under the impression that the German offensive (barely) failed before the U.S. troops had the numbers and experience to really affect the outcome. You can't hold the treaty at the end of the war against the decision to go to war. Nobody had a crystal ball.
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May 19, 2015 04:53
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BurningStone posted:How important was official U.S. intervention in WWI? I was under the impression that the German offensive (barely) failed before the U.S. troops had the numbers and experience to really affect the outcome. If I was to guess it probably added to the strain against the German people. They were already starving thanks to total war. You add in what was supposed to be a super power with millions of troops ready you gotta figure the civilians had enough of it. Granted USA only had a few divisions and it would take years to actually effect the outcome on the war. That's my understanding though. I'm sure the professors in here are better at it than me.
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May 19, 2015 05:09
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I think the big point to US intervention is that it really made it crystal clear that Germany was hosed. Once it was proved that the US was in fact capable of training and shipping a combat-capable army over to France and that France couldn't be knocked out before the US Army was fighting fit, even the most optimistic of German generals would have realized that they had no chance of taking on a totally fresh Great Power given then-current conditions, and it was time to negotiate surrender terms. Absent US intervention it's all Gay Black Corporal Hitler, but it's not inconceivable that the Germans would have kept trying to push forwards for a time to try and secure better terms.
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May 19, 2015 05:14
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The impact that the United States had on World War One is honestly not the issue you should be focusing on. What you should focus on is how World War 1 impacted the United States. The Creel Commission created a propaganda engine unlike anything the United States had ever seen. The alliance between Hollywood and Washington would become as American as apple pie. It nearly eliminated the idea of the fourth estate as a separate entity from the state itself. The Espionage Act crushed the emerging labor movement and the predominant views of what right wingers think today about socialism comes from how the espionage act was used primarily against socialists and communists. unemployed Immigrants like Olli Kinkonen, suspected of being a socialist, were lynched in the streets. World War One was the literal nap of the Sorcerer's apprentice. When he woke up, what we think of today as the Military Industrial Complex was born. Then you've got the influx of Spanish Flu at the end of the war that galvanized the American medical industry and proved to be a testing ground for government funding of science and health. It's arguable of course that Spanish Flu would have hit the United States whether they entered the war or not, it wasn't necessarily the masses of troops coming home that was the only vector of infection for the disease. But the massive influx of infected persons returning from Europe combined with the fact that many doctors and medical professionals were away in Europe treating the wounded meant that nurses and medical students had to play a larger part in treatment and take on more responsibility of patient treatment and care. The empowerment of the largely female nurse population fed into the feminist movement in a huge way. The list goes on. Rodnik fucked around with this message at 05:29 on May 19, 2015 |
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May 19, 2015 05:23
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Rodnik posted:The impact that the United States had on World War One is honestly not the issue you should be focusing on. What you should focus on is how World War 1 impacted the United States. Vote Ron Paul!
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May 19, 2015 05:33
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:Vote Ron Paul!
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May 19, 2015 05:39
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Didn't Wilson have a debilitating stroke after the Treaty of Versailles that would've mostly precluded him doing anything useful even if congress let him?
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May 19, 2015 05:39
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HEY GAL posted:Wallenstein 2016: At Least You Know What You're In For Seriously, what's with the influx of Pat Buchananish paleoconservative isolationist talking points ITT over the last few days?
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May 19, 2015 05:41
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People are sick of being mired in expensive unwinnable wars? Honestly I don't know, but withdrawing from the world stage is a fools choice.
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May 19, 2015 05:49
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T___A posted:
Kaliningrad was created after the war? What's the joke here?
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May 19, 2015 06:01
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Throatwarbler posted:Kaliningrad was created after the war? What's the joke here? Soviet apologists aren't very smart. That's the joke.
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May 19, 2015 06:15
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Klaus88 posted:People are sick of being mired in expensive unwinnable wars? The brave nation of Wakanda needs neither aid nor trade.
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May 19, 2015 06:26
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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 thought I made this clear :| 1. Not without ahistorical metallurgy and precision manufacture. 2. No. Because: HEY GAL posted:would it have been better than crossbows, because we already had those before handheld firearms became a huge thing The modern compound hunting bow is a brilliant tool, because it permits people to wield heavy(60-80lb) bows without training with them all year. Accuracy is very good and power is excellent. This only matters because in most places in the world archery hunting season is separate from gun season, and crossbows are forbidden. JaucheCharly posted:I'm quite sure that the main reason why this design didn't appear earlier is the limitations of available string material. Everybody forgets the strings. I don't think you can make a compound design work with a string of natural materials like hemp or ramie. Strings of raw silk have very similar properties to Dacron though. Sinew strung into a flemish twist is probably strong enough for the job. But its not like you are going to make the rest of the bow anyways. Anyways, as I am sure most of the TFR bow thread can tell you, the advantage of a compound bow is not more power, its the let-off. Thats what the cams are for, they let you hold the bow at a high weight without tiring your arms. With a recurve bow I draw and aim at the same time, then release more or less as soon as I complete my draw. With a compound bow I can take more time to aim and stabilize. Just about any crossbow is going to be superior to a bow of the same draw weight for reasons that are obvious to any archer. bewbies posted: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. Here's something fascinating!  Psychopathy is more like a spectrum then a mental disorder (many people convincingly argue that this is true for most mental disorders). This is not the thread for this discussion, but lets just say it is complicated and you will get different answers from a policeman, a therapist, and a psychopath.
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May 19, 2015 08:01
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JaucheCharly posted:The people in the various department were quite capable of assessing the situation and drawing rational conclusions in absence of perfect information. What exactly do you mean by planned badly? The framework within they made their decision in is another story, but there's less fumbling than what seems to be the popular claim atm. I don't know if you read parts of the original documents, but they're definitely not the work of amateurs or irrational. Bureaucracy produced paper. They sent people into war in Russia without loving winter clothes. In the winter. Against a mobilizing Red Army. At what point does that not strike you as bad planning? I realize now that it is more bad planning from a strategic than a logistical standpoint, but somewhere along the way there were fundamental screw ups. E: sorry, I can see that I'm moving the goalposts, you're right  Say what you will about the Germans, but they're planners.
Tias fucked around with this message at 08:34 on May 19, 2015 |
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May 19, 2015 08:25
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Tias posted:They sent people into war in Russia without loving winter clothes. In the winter. Against a mobilizing Red Army. At what point does that not strike you as bad planning? I realize now that it is more bad planning from a strategic than a logistical standpoint, but somewhere along the way there were fundamental screw ups. Tsarist Russia was a basket case, but what mistakes did Imperial Germany avoid that kept their eastern front from turning into a debacle of their own creation? What specifically did they do right without the enemy's help?
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May 19, 2015 09:31
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Tias posted:They sent people into war in Russia without loving winter clothes. In the winter. Against a mobilizing Red Army. At what point does that not strike you as bad planning? I realize now that it is more bad planning from a strategic than a logistical standpoint, but somewhere along the way there were fundamental screw ups. They did have winter clothes, they just couldn't deliver them to the troops. Remember, USSR had a railroad system that the Reich's trains couldn't use.
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May 19, 2015 09:52
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Yeah they had lots of winter clothes in warehouses in Greater Germany, but all the rail capacity was devoted to men, replacements, beans, bullets and gas
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May 19, 2015 10:06
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A Europe controlled by Imperial Germany would have been infinitely preferable to one controlled by Nazi Germany. At least the 2nd Reich wasn't the complete opposite of everything we today consider moral and human. To return to the question about what makes people turn into murderers and criminals during war, I believe that, yes, desensitization plays a definite role when you've been in a warzone for long enough. But there are things that happen before you reach that stage. Now, I've never seen actual combat, but I've served in the military and I'm a member of the National Guard (in Sweden), and I've seen how people adapt to the military. People tend to solve the problems facing them with the tools they have at their disposal, and within the context they are used to operate. The process of turning a civilian into a soldier involves giving him a gun and training him to shoot people and destroy things. This is the context in which soldiers operate. In the NG we've trained pretty extensively for the last decade in so-called "twilight scenarios" - not quite peace, not quite war. Terrorism, sabotage, infiltration etc. The soldiers are instructed that there will be civilians present, that they have to be careful, to only use a minimum of violence. But the only tool they have at their disposal - the only tool they're actually trained to use - is a gun. The second things heat up, and they're not sure what to do, what will they fall back on? The gun. We train people to kill other people, send them into situations where they have to kill in order to survive, and then we act surprised when they kill people who weren't the ones we wanted them to kill.
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May 19, 2015 10:24
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Mr. Sunshine posted:A Europe controlled by Imperial Germany would have been infinitely preferable to one controlled by Nazi Germany. At least the 2nd Reich wasn't the complete opposite of everything we today consider moral and human. But Serbia controlled by AH/Bulgaria and Armenia controlled by the Ottomans would be in a situation about as bad. The number of Serbs who were victims of genocide in WW1 was about the same as the number of Serbs who were genocided in WW2. (though the total number of deaths is higher in WW1 due to stuff like open warfare and epidemics) And I don't think I need to explain the Armenian issue. Now imagine what happens if the result of WW1 is different. my dad fucked around with this message at 10:39 on May 19, 2015 |
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May 19, 2015 10:32
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Arbite posted:Tsarist Russia was a basket case, but what mistakes did Imperial Germany avoid that kept their eastern front from turning into a debacle of their own creation? What specifically did they do right without the enemy's help? 1. In WWI the Russians initially attacked the Germans. In WWII the reverse is true. 2. Due to the Western Front in WWI taking up the majority of the German army's resources, they couldn't field the numbers against the Russians in WWI that they did in WWII 3. The war against the Russians in WWI was not ideologically driven and they were never interested in conquering the entire Russian landmass for Liebensraum 4. The Germans had the Austro-Hungarians as an ally who often needed to be rescued What this all meant was that the Germans in the First World War were never trying to attempt a Barbarossa style invasion of the whole of Russia, and stayed close to Germany for pretty much the entire war. As they were sticking close to their railheads (either in Germany or formerly Russian Poland) they didn't encounter the sort of logistical problems that the Wehrmacht did in WWII - indeed the situation was reversed, with the Russian logistical system completely breaking down due to a lack of railways, corruption and incompetence. There are many stories of Russian soldiers in WWI lacking food, weapons and ammunition despite the fact that it existed and was sitting 20 miles behind the lines - just the logistics network had totally broken down people either didn't know where to move materiel or were lacking the means to do so. Staying close to the railheads meant that they could transfer troops in between the Western and Eastern fronts relatively easily, and could transfer whole corps of troops from one part of the battlefield to the other as long as they were close to Germany - both happened in the initial engagement at Tannenberg. The Germans also had massive advantages in equipment, particularly in the fields of communications and artillery. The Germans were perfectly capable of sending encrypted messages via whatever method required and were able to have close cooperation between army units, something that cannot be said about the Russians who famously broadcasted their marching orders in the open over wireless, to the amazement of the Germans. They were convinced for a while that it had to be a trick - no-one could be that stupid right. As for artillery the Russians had really not kept up to date with modern advances in artillery pieces and ammunition and were often stuck with mid 19th century era pieces. The Germans were also constantly learning lessons in the use of artillery on the Western front and applying it in the East. It should be pointed out at this point that while Russia's population was bigger than Germany's unlike WWII they were much less industrialized, so had a big problem in coming up with enough war material for the front, especially in the realm of things like sophisticated artillery pieces and shells. Finally the Germans had a big advantage in leadership and the officer corps. The Germans had the most effective officer training system and general staff at the start of the war, with commands being given on a merit based system and poor performing officers being swiftly removed (see Prittwitz at the very start of the war of the Eastern Front). By contrast the Russians had one of the worst leadership situations. Officers were badly trained, did not care for their troops and were generally given rank and commands thanks to corruption and nepotism.
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May 19, 2015 10:42
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MikeCrotch posted:There were a couple of major difference between the nature of the fighting between Germany and Russia in WWI and WWII that led to the outcomes being very different: It's quite telling that with the best general they had and massive preparations, the Brussilov offensive still racked up about a million casualties, even though they badly smashed the Austrians. Entire Austrian units either surrendered or changed sides and the Russians still took that many casualties. Even sillier, the "success" of the Brussilov-offensive weakened the Russian army severly and at the same time impressed Romania so much they entered the war on the Entente's side. And then Romania got smashed by Germany and the Russian forces got even weaker. Libluini fucked around with this message at 11:19 on May 19, 2015 |
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May 19, 2015 11:15
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100 Years Ago The dictator of Portugal is overthrown. Meanwhile, at Gallipoli, Mustafa Kemal unbolts his kitchen sink and has it catapulted into the trenches at ANZAC Cove. Two solid hours of human wave attacks with fixed bayonets result only in a vast carpet of corpses in No Man's Land, ANZAC rifles too hot to hold onto, a few sundry medals for bravery, and one Australian lance-corporal's bright idea to use a periscope to shoot blind over the parapet in safety. The attack of May 19th has no proper name, and perhaps it would now be wrong to dignify it with one.
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May 19, 2015 11:49
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Whew, I was 1500 posts behind and I finally catched up. I'm going to ask something here and that I should probably ask in the Medieval History thread but I'm like 500 posts behind on that one so  Was there any point in what you could consider medieval european history where armies were mostly peasants led by nobles with a small group of elite knights? I remember, uh, maybe Rodrigo Diaz? mention that armies of the period were at least semi-professional. I'm sure I'm making an absurd simplification of this big and encompassing period of time, and I'm sorry about that! But the reason I'm asking is that I keep seeing this particular idea (peasants being forced to fight and die for the good of the nobility) come up in not only my classes, but also a couple of my friends' who are studying related stuff. It made my "wait, I heard something else entirely somewhere" sense flare up and I'd love if anyone could recommend me some books on the subject for further reading. I'm currently going through "Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader", and it's good stuff. Thanks to bewbies for the recommendation. (I think it was him, at least). Also the whole chat about the USA not joining WW2 reminds me of a acquaintance of mine quoting his professor's words: "The US joined WW2 when it was already won, through a false flag attack on Pearl Harbor, with the intent of stealing Japanese and German natural resources, such as oil and steel."  x5 Talk about bias.
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May 19, 2015 13:24
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Azran posted:Whew, I was 1500 posts behind and I finally catched up. I'm going to ask something here and that I should probably ask in the Medieval History thread but I'm like 500 posts behind on that one so  What mad, hippy, new-age professor taught your friend? Japan and Germany don't have any natural oil resources. 
Klaus88 fucked around with this message at 13:32 on May 19, 2015 |
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May 19, 2015 13:29
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Klaus88 posted:
There are a lot of canola fields today in Germany, producing canola oil. Maybe he heard about that and confused it with mineral oil? If he confused it with mineral oil, maybe he thought Germany already extracted oil back in WWII? Oh wait, Germany was using strange alchemy to turn coal into oil, because there wasn't much natural oil to be found. Maybe he heard about synthetic oil and confused that with natural mineral oil?
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May 19, 2015 13:45
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Klaus88 posted:
Argentina's relationship with truth in terms of history and political relations is... tenuous.
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May 19, 2015 13:47
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Klaus88 posted:
I've talked in this thread about the wonders of Argentinian university professors every now and then. On that note, here's something of a more specific question completely unrelated to the previous one: I like watch John Green's Crash Course series because it's a handy way to get some basic info on stuff I don't know if I'll ever be able to read at length about, either because it doesn't really grab me or I simply don't have time for it. I saw the Israel-Palestinian episode and the idea that the conflict isn't something old and untraceable but instead relatively recent (post-WW1) and linked to land instead of faith is an interesting point I had never heard before. I have next to no knowledge on Israel or Palestine proper, and I've only begun to properly learn about the Middle East thanks to the ISIS debacle over there. I'm kind of paying more attention to Saudi Arabia because I love to read about weird hosed up places like North Korea and Eritrea, and stuff like this leads me to believe they are right up my alley. Is his point of view on this right, wrong or a little from column A and a little from column B? As an actual contribution to the thread, here's a little story I had no knowledge about till yesterday, that ocurred in 1968 in the Korean Peninsula: it involves the only ship of the U.S Navy still on the commisioned roster currently being held captive. The wiki page mentions it only in passing, but some of the "confessions" by the crew, according to Bradley K. Martin, are particularly amusing. Like name-dropping Maxwell Smart as an intelligence agent behind their actions, or admitting they had entered North Korean territorial waters by using a dictionary definition of rape (  ). Of course that backfired with the finger gesture later on but oh well, you got to have balls to outright troll a regime like that.
Azran fucked around with this message at 13:51 on May 19, 2015 |
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May 19, 2015 13:48
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Klaus88 posted:
Well not anymore they don't  quote:On that note, here's something of a more specific question completely unrelated to the previous one: I like watch John Green's Crash Course series because it's a handy way to get some basic info on stuff I don't know if I'll ever be able to read at length about, either because it doesn't really grab me or I simply don't have time for it. I saw the Israel-Palestinian episode and the idea that the conflict isn't something old and untraceable but instead relatively recent (post-WW1) and linked to land instead of faith is an interesting point I had never heard before. I have next to no knowledge on Israel or Palestine proper, and I've only begun to properly learn about the Middle East thanks to the ISIS debacle over there. I'm kind of paying more attention to Saudi Arabia because I love to read about weird hosed up places like North Korea and Eritrea, and stuff like this leads me to believe they are right up my alley. Yeah, that's pretty accurate. The conflict in Palestine is not some ancient feud like some people would have you believe but the continuing fallout from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the various powers mismanagement of Mandated Palestine after WWII (being a Brit we have to take most of the blame there). I was listening to a podcast on the outbreak of WWI recently which posited that the Ottoman Empire was the key factor in both the outbreak and aftermath of the war. The reason being that the taking of the Dardanelles was the major war aim of the Russians who escalated the July crisis by mobilizing their entire army first, and that the entire history of the conflicts in the Middle East since the end of the First World War should be considered "The War of the Ottoman Succession", a conflict to decide what replaces the Ottoman Empire in that part of the world and a conflict which has not yet been resolved. Not sure I totally agree but definitely an interesting viewpoint. MikeCrotch fucked around with this message at 14:03 on May 19, 2015 |
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May 19, 2015 13:49
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Fangz posted:From a realpolitik viewpoint, US participation in WWI benefited the US enormously. The fact that all those European powers destroyed each other (for the US 100k was pretty cheap) left the US as the sole superpower. Of course, we know now that Versailles and The League didn't bring peace, They didn't just not bring peace, they pretty much guaranteed a German do-over.
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May 19, 2015 14:05
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Klaus88 posted:
nazi germany had access to norway's natural resources. norway is one of the richest countries in the world because of it's offshore gas and oil. 1+1=2
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May 19, 2015 14:07
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Phanatic posted:They didn't just not bring peace, they pretty much guaranteed a German do-over. I've said before that I don't agree with the narrative that WWII was inevitable after WWI. I see WWII as the result of individual mismanagement of several crises, and bad decisions being made at key points, which ultimately added up to that result. EDIT: I mean, even just having Wilhelm Marx win election as president over Hindenburg in 1925 would have thrown a pretty big wrench in the progress of history. Fangz fucked around with this message at 14:19 on May 19, 2015 |
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May 19, 2015 14:09
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Phanatic posted:They didn't just not bring peace, they pretty much guaranteed a German do-over. No they didn't. The 20's were pretty good for the world until the Great Depression triggered the rise of extremism. The UK quickly came to the conclusion that Versailles was unfair, which was a principle reason why there wasn't massive opposition to Hitler reoccupying the Rhineland or adjusting Germany's borders to bring the German people back into Germany. Hitler didn't have to go after Poland. If he'd just stopped with the annexation of Czechoslovakia and settled Germany there then things would probably have stabilised on that basis. Obviously Hitler being Hitler that wasn't going to happen, but there's plenty of paths that Germany could have taken after 1918 that wouldn't have resulted in another war.
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May 19, 2015 14:17
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