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Nebakenezzer posted:OK, dumb question about the salt trade thing: did people not know they could evaporate seawater and have all the salt they could ever need? A. not everyone lives by the sea and B. maintaining the monopoly on salt was a Big Fricken Deal, waaaaaaaay back to... Tang, IIRC, how to best oversee the Salt and Iron Monopolies was one of the great Confucian debates. So it's kind of like asking 'why doesn't everyone just photocopy dollar bills, don't they know ink and paper is cheap?' One of Gandhi's famous acts of civil disobedience was a march to the sea to get some salt, violating the Raj's monopoly and thus breaking the law. e: and as the post point out, there was plenty of smuggling going on precisely because, yes, it was easy to get on the coasts and the bandits could make money by moving it up river. the JJ fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Jul 22, 2015 |
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Jul 22, 2015 19:22
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Slightly smarter question: back when I was spergin' 'bout the Ju 290, I did a post on the rumors that the Germans had made a flight or flights to Manchuria during World War 2. (TL;DR: these flights didn't happen because despite the Germans at one point having aircraft all ready to start these flights the Japanese would not agree to them. It comes down to us today because these rumors were repeated in some very reputable sources, including Albert Speer's Inside the Third Reich.) Anyway, a little while later a goon sent me a PM about a part of the story I'd missed:StandardVC10 posted:So yeah I thought of your posts about supposed flights between Germany and Japan in World War II when reading a book (Japanese Aircraft of the Pacific War, by René J Francillon) I just got, because it mentions an airplane called the Tachikawa Ki-77, originally created so a newspaper could make a record flight from Tokyo to New York, but later apparently used to attempt a flight from Singapore to Germany. However it was lost over the Indian Ocean. I was just wondering if you came across this aircraft while researching those posts. I guess it's possible that there's some bullshit in the book I'm reading too - but Wikipedia does back it up, for what that's worth (nothing.) Wikipedia posted:In response to a flight made by an Italian Savoia-Marchetti S.M.75GA which flew to Japan in July 1942 with stops in Russia and China, the Japanese decided to forge a link with Europe, but wished to avoid Russian-controlled airspace and development work was restarted. The first of two prototypes flew on 18 November 1942. The Ki-77 suffered from persistent oil cooling problems which required many changes before being solved, delaying any flight into July 1943. While working on the problem, Tachikawa built a second aircraft. The easiest route was that taken by the Italians, following the great circle route, but General Tojo opposed this because it implied a violation of Soviet airspace. Japan was not at war with the Russians and Tojo wished to avoid either provoking them or asking their permission. Anyway, googling about gave further bits of the story: that this Ki-77 was shot down by RAF Spitfires off of Burma. People talking about this have a specific Allied message decrypt as well: ULTRA CX/MSS 2867/T8. So, does anybody know how to confirm this though the ULTRA intel archives? Is this true? It seems plausible in a way that lots of flights to the east rumors just are not (IE it is sedate and was a failure.)
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Jul 22, 2015 19:33
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ArchangeI posted:Actually I heard that duel happened while Tycho Brahe was a student at the University of Rostock. They even have a plaque to commemorate that event. Local legend has it that it was actually over a woman and Brahe later claimed it was over maths because it made him sound less stupid. It was. They got into an argument at a wedding dance, and lacking the means to settle their differences, they agreed to duel. Even though they reconciled, honor demanded that they carried through with it, and so Brahe was pwned  Also, let me have my dream of mathematician swashbuckling.. It is all I have 
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Jul 22, 2015 19:34
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Nebakenezzer posted:OK, dumb question about the salt trade thing: did people not know they could evaporate seawater and have all the salt they could ever need? Britain did a similar thing in India up until 1930. You can do a lot with some government muscle.
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Jul 22, 2015 19:39
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Nebakenezzer posted:OK, dumb question about the salt trade thing: did people not know they could evaporate seawater and have all the salt they could ever need? The government was doing the evaporating. They did this in the best places for it, the flat coasts in North and East China. The biggest market for salt was obviously going to be inland populations with no other access to salt.
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Jul 22, 2015 19:49
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It also takes a lot of seawater and time to get an appreciable amount of salt. Far easier to do your day job of banditry or peasanting, and then purchase salt with the money you earned.
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Jul 22, 2015 20:22
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I remember hearing two WWII things. First, I heard there was proof both Germany and the USSR had been planning to betray each other before the ink had even dried on the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. Is there actually proof? Second, someone on here (Cyrano?) said that some people believe the maginot line actually did its job in forcing Germany to go through the more difficult terrain between Belgium and France. Are there any articles or names I should be looking for? Is that just an out-there idea, or does it have some credibility?
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Jul 22, 2015 20:53
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MikeCrotch posted:God, can you imagine if Isaac Newton and Leibniz had access to the internet. That would have a been a troll war worth watching. There was a French member of the Academie who tried to prove in late XIX century that Newton stole everything from Pascal. The entire thing went on for a few months (if not an entire year) until the letters he based that claim on were revealed to be forgeries, and poor ones at that.
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Jul 22, 2015 21:38
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Nebakenezzer posted:OK, dumb question about the salt trade thing: did people not know they could evaporate seawater and have all the salt they could ever need? But the Romans and the ancient Chinese did know that, and in fact used them all the time. The fact is that there's actually a limited number of places that have high salinity saltwater as well as low humidity, the two things that are required for productive salt ponds.
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Jul 22, 2015 21:40
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It was the explicit, declared intent of the line and all military planning was based on it diverting forces north into the Low Countries. There are a great many north=south waterways there and the idea was to use them as a staggered belt of defenses. I'm on my phone so I'm not going to search sources but I'm pretty sure the Wikipedia article on either the line or the fall of France mentions it. I'm pretty sure I saw an account of it in one of Paxton's books.
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Jul 22, 2015 21:45
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Thanks. I guess it's just the popular narrative that the line was a failure. Maybe Americans just want any chance they get to ridicule the French.
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Jul 22, 2015 22:02
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22 Eargesplitten posted:Maybe Americans just want any chance they get to ridicule the French.
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Jul 22, 2015 22:05
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22 Eargesplitten posted:Thanks. I guess it's just the popular narrative that the line was a failure. Maybe Americans just want any chance they get to ridicule the French. I don't know how you call it a success when they spent all that money on defense and still got overrun in the end. The only problem is that people hear the story and think, "Stupid French built a line and the Germans went around it," when the narrative should be, "Stupid French kicked Germany half to death after WWI and then proceeded to act as though Great Powers are incapable of holding grudges." Well, that, and the problem was not with the average French soldier, who has always fought bravely, but with their military and political leadership.
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Jul 22, 2015 22:23
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HEY GAL posted:that is the lamest loving idiot meme I say this as an American. I see it all the time. So maybe calm down? E: I also see people mocking French jokes, but the two are not mutually exclusive. 22 Eargesplitten fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Jul 22, 2015 |
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Jul 22, 2015 22:26
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22 Eargesplitten posted:Americans just want any chance they get to ridicule the French. Truly the greatest irony, given that their entire country is predicated on the successful military intervention of the French.
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Jul 22, 2015 22:29
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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22 Eargesplitten posted:I remember hearing two WWII things. In the long term, it's deeply unlikely that a stable peace would have lasted between the USSR and Nazi Germany. But all indications are that Stalin was utterly suckered in by Hitler, and made multiple stupid, stupid moves that only really make sense from that perspective.
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Jul 22, 2015 22:29
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Zorak of Michigan posted:I don't know how you call it a success when they spent all that money on defense and still got overrun in the end. The only problem is that people hear the story and think, "Stupid French built a line and the Germans went around it," when the narrative should be, "Stupid French kicked Germany half to death after WWI and then proceeded to act as though Great Powers are incapable of holding grudges." Well, that, and the problem was not with the average French soldier, who has always fought bravely, but with their military and political leadership. It was successful in that it limited the German advance to a short stretch of front, where the French had to make further mistakes to lose. If something causes a disadvantage to the enemy that you fail to capitalize on, it still caused that disadvantage.
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Jul 22, 2015 22:49
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Zorak of Michigan posted:I don't know how you call it a success when they spent all that money on defense and still got overrun in the end. The only problem is that people hear the story and think, "Stupid French built a line and the Germans went around it," when the narrative should be, "Stupid French kicked Germany half to death after WWI and then proceeded to act as though Great Powers are incapable of holding grudges." Well, that, and the problem was not with the average French soldier, who has always fought bravely, but with their military and political leadership. The line accomplished its intended aim. You can say that the overall strategic plan of the French was poo poo (not totally convinced, it was more operationally poo poo in my opinion), but the Maginot line part worked exactly as intended as one component of that strategic plan.
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Jul 22, 2015 22:55
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:The line accomplished its intended aim. You can say that the overall strategic plan of the French was poo poo (not totally convinced, it was more operationally poo poo in my opinion), but the Maginot line part worked exactly as intended as one component of that strategic plan. It would've been fine, in, say, 1942 when infantry divisions were better at dealing with armor, but in 1940, most people didn't quite understand that anti-tank guns had to be concentrated to be of much effect, so the French infantry that should've stopped the sickle cut cold in the Ardennes did not prove to be much of an obstacle. They probably wouldn't of been able to hang on anyway, but a more significant delay would've given the French mobile forces a chance to respond in force. The first couple years were wild times when you could just drive a big column of tanks down a road and punch through the front line of an infantry division. The progress of the war kind of causes tanks to revert as that kind of attack becomes ineffective- the Allied ability to have enough tanks to parcel out proved invaluable to their infantry's performance in offensive operations.
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Jul 22, 2015 23:03
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22 Eargesplitten posted:I remember hearing two WWII things. I think most of the "proof" comes from what the Nazi intel guys said after the war, which is not an entirely credible source. That we believed it was because we wanted to believe, since now we know that Uncle Joe really wants to seize control of all of Europe, better keep spending all that money on defense and espionage.
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Jul 22, 2015 23:08
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What do you guys think about the "scholagladatoria" guy on youtube? his vids seem pretty neat
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Jul 22, 2015 23:33
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Panzeh posted:It would've been fine, in, say, 1942 when infantry divisions were better at dealing with armor, but in 1940, most people didn't quite understand that anti-tank guns had to be concentrated to be of much effect, so the French infantry that should've stopped the sickle cut cold in the Ardennes did not prove to be much of an obstacle. They probably wouldn't of been able to hang on anyway, but a more significant delay would've given the French mobile forces a chance to respond in force. I don't fully agree with the premise because I think a lot of the French problems came from an operational and tactical misuse of their armored reserves. Sending two divisions of armor to Hannut, which was misidentified as the main effort, was a massive mistake, and made sure that the remnants of 2e DLM and 3e DLM had to retreat to the Channel and were pretty beat up when the Germans broke through the Ardennes. Hannut was also not fought according to French armored doctrine, which might have helped (failure to concentrate forces, contrary to doctrine for employing a DLM was a big issue). Plus, the misuse of 1er DLM was tragicomedy of the highest possible proportions.
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Jul 22, 2015 23:34
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Kanine posted:What do you guys think about the "scholagladatoria" guy on youtube? his vids seem pretty neat I enjoy his poo poo, its cool to come home from work and learn about some cool old sword stuff
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Jul 22, 2015 23:35
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22 Eargesplitten posted:I remember hearing two WWII things. If anything, the French probably didn't trust the Maginot line enough. I had a professor who suggested that the French were unsure if it was secure enough and commited too much forces to the line itself that would have been somewhat more helpful further North of the line.
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Jul 22, 2015 23:41
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Nine of Eight posted:If anything, the French probably didn't trust the Maginot line enough. I had a professor who suggested that the French were unsure if it was secure enough and commited too much forces to the line itself that would have been somewhat more helpful further North of the line. The German breakout happened at the edge of the line anyways, most of the French forces were way too far north to stop it.
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Jul 22, 2015 23:55
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:I don't fully agree with the premise because I think a lot of the French problems came from an operational and tactical misuse of their armored reserves. Sending two divisions of armor to Hannut, which was misidentified as the main effort, was a massive mistake, and made sure that the remnants of 2e DLM and 3e DLM had to retreat to the Channel and were pretty beat up when the Germans broke through the Ardennes. Hannut was also not fought according to French armored doctrine, which might have helped (failure to concentrate forces, contrary to doctrine for employing a DLM was a big issue). Plus, the misuse of 1er DLM was tragicomedy of the highest possible proportions. Could you elaborate on that misuse? The DLMs are some of my favourite WW2 units. There's something about the 1940 french army with their fireman hats and chubby comic-book camo tanks. They look so cool.
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Jul 23, 2015 00:03
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Well, since France would not violate Belgium's territorial integrity, 1er DLM chilled on the French side of the border. It's assignment when the Germans violated Belgian and Dutch territory was to floor it up to southern Holland (Breda, I think) and maintain contact with the Dutch army. This meant putting a couple hundred kilometers on the tanks and armored vehicles in a few days. By the time they got to Breda, it was clear the Dutch were turbo hosed and that their services were needed elsewhere, so they were ordered to pull back to France. By the time they finished this process, they had depleted something like 80% of their strength to operational losses. 1er and 2e DLM were probably the two best French divisions in 1940. One of them was rendered combat ineffective by driving around a bunch. edit: in fairness, driving 500km in a week would have badly depleted any armored force in 1940 KYOON GRIFFEY JR fucked around with this message at 01:01 on Jul 23, 2015 |
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Jul 23, 2015 00:10
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Panzeh posted:It would've been fine, in, say, 1942 when infantry divisions were better at dealing with armor, but in 1940, most people didn't quite understand that anti-tank guns had to be concentrated to be of much effect, so the French infantry that should've stopped the sickle cut cold in the Ardennes did not prove to be much of an obstacle. They probably wouldn't of been able to hang on anyway, but a more significant delay would've given the French mobile forces a chance to respond in force. Armor was plenty vulnerable in 1940. This is an era when anti-tank rifles could still kill vehicles at somewhat reasonable distances. Plus, AT guns could be much, much ligher and handier. A couple of guys ins't going to tactically redeploy an 88, but two dudes can certainly wheel a 37mm around. poo poo, just look at the losses for the French campaign: out of 2400 vehicles almost 800 were destroyed. A force that is unstoppable and nigh-immune to current weapons does not lose a third of its strength. KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:edit: in fairness, driving 500km in a week would have badly depleted any armored force in 1940 Which is what made it so inexcusably loving moronic.
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Jul 23, 2015 01:14
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Cyrano4747 posted:inexcusably loving moronic. frenchhighcommand.txt
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Jul 23, 2015 01:40
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Would someone mind going into what the French have done instead of the Dyle Plan, then? Was it ever feasible to expect to defend a significant slice of Belgium with them insisting on "lalalala absolute neutrality gently caress off out of it" right up until the Nazis invaded?
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Jul 23, 2015 02:00
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My understanding of it is that the Dyle Plan wasn't even all that bad, it was just the French insistence that nobody would ever attack at Sedan, look how impassable that poo poo is! Nevermind that a recent wargame showed that it is totally passable, and attack there would roll up all our defenses, totally impassable! That decision got compounded by a bunch of other things, most notably overwhelming German air superiority. It was the Luftwaffe that enabled the breakthrough of the attack there. If British fighters weren't being held back, that might have made the difference right there, as would more effective French generalship. Sending the reserve forces North was also a not so clever move, but it would have been possible to enact the Dyle plan while not doing that. PittTheElder fucked around with this message at 02:38 on Jul 23, 2015 |
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Jul 23, 2015 02:33
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Trin Tragula posted:Would someone mind going into what the French have done instead of the Dyle Plan, then? Was it ever feasible to expect to defend a significant slice of Belgium with them insisting on "lalalala absolute neutrality gently caress off out of it" right up until the Nazis invaded? If they hadn't so badly underestimated the speed of advance I think they would have been OK with the Dyle plan (in that the whole thing would have bogged down into a slightly faster moving high tech Western Front) provided they punted on all of the Netherlands except Zeeland. The BEF expected about two weeks for the Germans to reach the Dyle, and it took four days. I think the French actually committed their armor too early and generally suffered from the problem of committing assets piecemeal (the Narvik campaign, the air campaign over France, armor, reserve formations, etc). Gamelin was also a Grade A Fuckup Moron.
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Jul 23, 2015 02:40
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Cyrano4747 posted:Armor was plenty vulnerable in 1940. This is an era when anti-tank rifles could still kill vehicles at somewhat reasonable distances. Penetrate, not kill. For an ATR to kill a tank would require it to disable something vital, like a crewman or the tank's engine, and that would require a lucky shot given the size of the things.
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Jul 23, 2015 03:38
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Nenonen posted:Penetrate, not kill. For an ATR to kill a tank would require it to disable something vital, like a crewman or the tank's engine, and that would require a lucky shot given the size of the things. We're also talking about weapons with rates of fire similar to bolt action rifles, that are man portable, and aim roughly the same as a rifle. Hitting crew wouldn't exactly be an amazing stroke of luck. You're also significantly underestimating just how much fragile poo poo there is inside a tank's armor. There's a lot of stuff in there that will drastically decrease its effectiveness if you put a half inch hole through it. Any penetrating hit in an armored vehicle is a bad one. That said, my larger point still stands: if armor was such an invincible weapon in 1940 then why the gently caress did the Wehrmacht lose 1/3rd of all vehicles they deployed? 1940 was a clusterfuck because of all of the usual reasons (poo poo planning, bad generals, broken lines, etc) - not because armor was a new terrible thing that revolutionized warfare between 1935 and 1940 such that generals trained before then were at a total loss.
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Jul 23, 2015 03:42
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Cyrano4747 posted:Armor was plenty vulnerable in 1940. This is an era when anti-tank rifles could still kill vehicles at somewhat reasonable distances. Plus, AT guns could be much, much ligher and handier. A couple of guys ins't going to tactically redeploy an 88, but two dudes can certainly wheel a 37mm around. poo poo, just look at the losses for the French campaign: out of 2400 vehicles almost 800 were destroyed. A force that is unstoppable and nigh-immune to current weapons does not lose a third of its strength. The problem wasn't techincal but tactical- it wasn't unstoppable, and the AT guns available were more than enough(The Germans got the job done with similar guns in 1941 against huge attacks) but deployment tended to be poor- the AT guns were used like machine guns and could be overwhelmed by driving battalion strength units down a road, and they largely got away with it. A lot of tanks were lost, but the attacks broke through anyway- this didn't work later on. The DLMs were criminally wasted, though, that's for sure KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:edit: in fairness, driving 500km in a week would have badly depleted any armored force in 1940 This ended up hurting the Germans a lot, too, both in Poland and France. One of the reasons German tanks got a rep for breaking down in the late war period was that the destruction of the French rail network in 1944 forced the Germans to literally drive tanks all the way through France to reach the front.
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Jul 23, 2015 03:43
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Well, it's hardly a problem if you're winning, then you can drag your wrecked pieces of poo poo back home for repairs.
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Jul 23, 2015 03:59
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Phobophilia posted:Well, it's hardly a problem if you're winning, then you can drag your wrecked pieces of poo poo back home for repairs. Unless home is on the other side of a big fuckoff ocean, in which case it's still better to have reliable stuff that can be repaired either in the field or rear area depots.
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Jul 23, 2015 04:04
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Trin Tragula posted:Would someone mind going into what the French have done instead of the Dyle Plan, then? Was it ever feasible to expect to defend a significant slice of Belgium with them insisting on "lalalala absolute neutrality gently caress off out of it" right up until the Nazis invaded? The reason this question is somewhat hard to answer is that what the French should have done is have commanders at the regiment and division level with initiative and a doctrine more oriented towards quick action. There were several counterattacks planned at Sedan that could have created major problems for the Germans which never went off either 1) because some of the forces were late getting to the start points, causing the whole attack to be called off or 2) because the commanders were demanding precise, written attack orders and the back-and-forth communications to get them took hours. The overall plan was perfectly serviceable, if not exactly inspired, but the French were simply outmatched on an operational level. There's evidence that they were starting to climb the same learning curve as the Russians as seen in the difficulties the Germans encountered with the second half of their offensive, but unlike the Russians they lacked the strategic and population depth to absorb the initial losses. Saying "the French lost because the Dyle Plan was terrible" is the easy pat answer, but the truth is they lost because of doctrinal and leadership issues across the whole chain of command (Pitt mentioned German air superiority - the French actually had more planes than the Germans, but they were reserving over half of them in the south and west of the country so that they would be fresh and available after the first few months of combat were over). It's possible to devise a plan that still probably would have stopped the Germans, but that's only because we have the hindsight of knowing what the attack looked like - any plan devised under the conditions the French actually faced, even a better one than the Dyle plan, probably would have failed (not as catastrophically perhaps) due to the issues ingrained in the French command structure.
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Jul 23, 2015 05:33
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Well, since France would not violate Belgium's territorial integrity, 1er DLM chilled on the French side of the border. It's assignment when the Germans violated Belgian and Dutch territory was to floor it up to southern Holland (Breda, I think) and maintain contact with the Dutch army. This meant putting a couple hundred kilometers on the tanks and armored vehicles in a few days. By the time they got to Breda, it was clear the Dutch were turbo hosed and that their services were needed elsewhere, so they were ordered to pull back to France. By the time they finished this process, they had depleted something like 80% of their strength to operational losses. I'd love a day to day rundown of this with maps and poo poo. I really would. Also, Taiping rebellion guy, you know anything about the Chinese civil war/second sino-japanese war? That seems almost as confusing a clusterfuck as any conflict in history and my god I want an in-depth writeup as well.
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Jul 23, 2015 06:24
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Frostwerks posted:I'd love a day to day rundown of this with maps and poo poo. I really would. More or less confusing than Russian civil war? Because as far as I can understand it, nobody knew what the gently caress happened, but it was important to reorganize military every two months, and shoulder tabs were of extreme importance (drat you, Osprey)
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Jul 23, 2015 07:25
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