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100 Years Ago The Russians attempt to stop the rot in the Caucasus with a battle in the Eleskirt Valley. Captain the Hon. Thomas Agar-Robartes MP's weaponised band hits its mark, and we're reviewing in painful detail exactly how the plans for Suvla were bungled. By the way, today's update was due to include a map of Suvla Bay, but MSPaint is consistently crashing on any attempt to save. Google's unhelpful, any ideas?
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# ? Aug 5, 2015 13:04 |
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# ? May 27, 2024 12:00 |
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Rabhadh posted:Why are you so salty that some guy didn't want to waste his time in the military? I know an Israeli guy who faked a mental illness to get out of it. Everybody wants to dodge the draft. I know a Korean guy who went to study in Japan just so he could get away from it. Volunteer rules, draft drools!
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# ? Aug 5, 2015 13:05 |
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I avoided having to join the Italian military by a couple of months thanks to a change in law: my previous passport stated that if I reached 21 and hadn't done the service I would not have been able to renew my Italian passport. Even after they changed the law I still had to fill out a few forms so that they could check that I actually was exempt from service, but that's just Italian bureaucracy. My swiss side doesn't require military service for Swiss abroad but if I decide to stay in Switzerland for a certain amount of time I would need to be drafted as well.
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# ? Aug 5, 2015 13:45 |
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I heard that swiss official service was just training to use those big rear end MGs that every swiss is required by law to have? Also while this might be because Brazilian standards are really lax and they send away everyone who's not into doing obligatory service, I got off service by going on the local military base with some others and saying "I don't wanna serve" when they asked me to and they just wrote me off without me needing to bring out my flat foot.
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# ? Aug 5, 2015 13:54 |
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:I heard that swiss official service was just training to use those big rear end MGs that every swiss is required by law to have? They get to choose whether or not to store the weapon at home IIRC, and it doesn't come with ammo anymore. Also, they're just standard military issue rifles - SG550s.
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# ? Aug 5, 2015 14:23 |
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Nuclear War posted:Well, its not hardcore academic history, but Sandy Mitchell wrote some fairly well researched fiction books on the life of a commissar in some fairly hot-water situations. I'd say they give you a feel for how a commissar lived I read a book about a Polish Jewish person who served in the Red Army during WWII and it was interesting so I'd be interested in Sandy's stuff.
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# ? Aug 5, 2015 14:27 |
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Yep, that's right, it's just an SIG assault rifle: when I went to visit my cousins they brought down their gun from the attic to show me. They don't have any ammo for it at home either. The way it works in Switzerland is that you do a 4 months or so of training and then need refreshers every year until you are out of the eligible age (depends on rank). My uncle was an officer so he had to stay for longer, for example. I am approaching the age now that even if I went to live in Switzerland permanently I wouldn't be conscripted.
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# ? Aug 5, 2015 14:32 |
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JcDent posted:Everybody wants to dodge the draft. I know a Korean guy who went to study in Japan just so he could get away from it. By the end Germany had a draft in name only. It was basically mandatory to state whether you wanted to volunteer or not. No one who didn't want to had to serve or even do the civil service. Pretty much every German man has dozens of anecdotes about people getting exempted from military service for the dumbest poo poo imaginable. One of my friends got out of it because he had had a broken arm five years before he showed up for the draft examination. Another one got out because he ran a really high fever when he was a child. I got out because I'm colorblind. Hiding your German citizenship to escape the draft is the literal equivalent of a US college student in TYOOL 2015 moving to Canada to escape the Selective Service registration.
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# ? Aug 5, 2015 14:51 |
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Raenir Salazar posted:I read a book about a Polish Jewish person who served in the Red Army during WWII and it was interesting so I'd be interested in Sandy's stuff. Sandy Mitchell writes Warhammer 40,000 books
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# ? Aug 5, 2015 14:53 |
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Pornographic Memory posted:Sandy Mitchell writes Warhammer 40,000 books
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# ? Aug 5, 2015 14:54 |
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ArchangeI posted:By the end Germany had a draft in name only. It was basically mandatory to state whether you wanted to volunteer or not. No one who didn't want to had to serve or even do the civil service. Pretty much every German man has dozens of anecdotes about people getting exempted from military service for the dumbest poo poo imaginable. One of my friends got out of it because he had had a broken arm five years before he showed up for the draft examination. Another one got out because he ran a really high fever when he was a child. I got out because I'm colorblind. Wouldn't mind serving in Germany or someplace. It's just that our proximity to Russia makes me uneasy about getting drafted. Granted, I'm getting too old for it (yay ), but if they did draft me, I'd go. EDIT: that's way too close to current politics. Em... er... uh... what can you tell me about hungarians in WWII?
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# ? Aug 5, 2015 15:00 |
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Koesj posted:They get to choose whether or not to store the weapon at home IIRC, and it doesn't come with ammo anymore. Also, they're just standard military issue rifles - SG550s. Dude, the nation of switzerland is the BEST nation on earth. EVERYONE is packing at ALL times with PLENTIFUL ammo. This is WHY they have NEVER been CONQUERED and why CRIME is so LOW.
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# ? Aug 5, 2015 15:32 |
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I didn't catch it.
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# ? Aug 5, 2015 15:32 |
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Frostwerks posted:Dude, the nation of switzerland is the BEST nation on earth. EVERYONE is packing at ALL times with PLENTIFUL ammo. This is WHY they have NEVER been CONQUERED and why CRIME is so LOW. Lacks the right coloring, but I give it an A for AMERICA and and F for FREEDOM.
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# ? Aug 5, 2015 15:40 |
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Things I have literally heard for 200 alex.
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# ? Aug 5, 2015 15:44 |
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Yeah, I did always find it funny that lots of people like to quote % ownership of guns in Switzerland when discussing gun control but omit to mention how conscription in Switzerland works.
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# ? Aug 5, 2015 15:47 |
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Raenir Salazar posted:I didn't catch it. Commissars are a thing in the insane war-themed sci-fi universe of Warhammer 40.000, and all they do is basically explode soldiers who won't fight. So Sandy Mitchell hasn't written anything about soviet commissars, he's written a fiction series about a goofy science fiction dude who does kind of the same job that soviet ones did, but in space.
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# ? Aug 5, 2015 15:48 |
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Tias posted:Commissars are a thing in the insane war-themed sci-fi universe of Warhammer 40.000, and all they do is basically explode soldiers who won't fight. So Sandy Mitchell hasn't written anything about soviet commissars, he's written a fiction series about a goofy science fiction dude who does kind of the same job that soviet ones did, but in space. This is an entirely silly derail, but Commissar Ciaphas Cain's thing is that he doesn't actually do the random execution thing that others do, but instead acts, in the books, as a sort of portable store of first-hand practical knowledge that lets him assist in apparently turning any band of raw conscripts and misfits into a competent fighting force.
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# ? Aug 5, 2015 15:54 |
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Rabhadh posted:Why are you so salty that some guy didn't want to waste his time in the military? I know an Israeli guy who faked a mental illness to get out of it. I'm not salty, just amused about someone who was so misinformed about the German draft he did this: Archangel posted:
It was dumb and senseless. He could just have put in 9 months of civil service and be done with it. Even with AAA+ fitness, he could have avoided the military draft easily. Hell, as others said, you could easily avoid the civil service, too. In my personal opinion, this would make you look like a anti-social rear end in a top hat, but it was an easy way out for many.
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# ? Aug 5, 2015 15:55 |
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Tias posted:Commissars are a thing in the insane war-themed sci-fi universe of Warhammer 40.000, and all they do is basically explode soldiers who won't fight. So Sandy Mitchell hasn't written anything about soviet commissars, he's written a fiction series about a goofy science fiction dude who does kind of the same job that soviet ones did, but in space. Part of the gimmick is that because he was generously endowed with a self-preservation instinct, he ends up much closer to a morale officer than an executioner. His troops get pretty veteran too, it's honestly a better depiction of the WWII Red Army than Enemy at the Gates or Company of Heroes 2. xthetenth fucked around with this message at 15:58 on Aug 5, 2015 |
# ? Aug 5, 2015 15:56 |
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xthetenth posted:Part of the gimmick is that because he was generously endowed with a self-preservation instinct, he ends up much closer to a morale officer than an executioner. As long as you ignore the whole fighting the Zerg on Meth amphetamines and fighting hand to hand duels with super-human berserkers in power-armor with swords and axes that are also chainsaws. Warhammer has always been a silly setting.
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# ? Aug 5, 2015 16:02 |
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Klaus88 posted:As long as you ignore the whole fighting the Zerg on Meth amphetamines and fighting hand to hand duels with super-human berserkers in power-armor with swords and axes that are also chainsaws. I'm not ignoring that. CoH 2 especially is that bad. At least the Cain books have one side almost rightish.
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# ? Aug 5, 2015 16:10 |
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So I heard a story on the AP US history test and conservatives getting all up in their asses about it not being excessively pro-murka enough so I took a practice exam today and I was genuinely surprised at how valid it was. There were sections on women's suffrage, Brown v BOE (and southern response), postbellum south ugliness, racially based immigration quotas, worker exploitation, conservation (and opposition to conservation), etc and so on. In other words I totally get why this pissed off republicans, it is way too academically honest and based in fact to align with modern conservative politics.
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# ? Aug 5, 2015 16:16 |
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bewbies posted:So I heard a story on the AP US history test and conservatives getting all up in their asses about it not being excessively pro-murka enough so I took a practice exam today and I was genuinely surprised at how valid it was. There were sections on women's suffrage, Brown v BOE (and southern response), postbellum south ugliness, racially based immigration quotas, worker exploitation, conservation (and opposition to conservation), etc and so on. Huh. That's not a new thing. I swear my high school AP US textbook had stuff on the Battle of Blair Mountain and all sort of scurvy anti-minority and anti-socialist stuff.
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# ? Aug 5, 2015 16:20 |
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The Cain books are perfectly accurate accounts of the battles around the Damocles Gulf, but there is not enough focus given on the logistics side of things, 3/5.
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# ? Aug 5, 2015 16:22 |
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bewbies posted:In other words I totally get why this pissed off republicans, it is way too academically honest and based in fact to align with modern conservative politics. It reminds me of this Paul Krugman post on the right's political correctness. TL;DR - the right have gone Soviet
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# ? Aug 5, 2015 16:50 |
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xthetenth posted:I'm not ignoring that. CoH 2 especially is that bad. At least the Cain books have one side almost rightish. CoH 2 almost qualifies as Nazi propaganda it is so bad. I wonder how Ensign feels about it?
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# ? Aug 5, 2015 17:03 |
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I can tell you how mad it made me for ruining what was my favorite RTS. Pretty goddamn mad.
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# ? Aug 5, 2015 17:11 |
I'm not Russian nor eastern european in general and it pisses me off. It pretty much checks multiple boxes of bad. And we're only just talking about the story line here.
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# ? Aug 5, 2015 17:18 |
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Tias posted:Commissars are a thing in the insane war-themed sci-fi universe of Warhammer 40.000, and all they do is basically explode soldiers who won't fight. So Sandy Mitchell hasn't written anything about soviet commissars, he's written a fiction series about a goofy science fiction dude who does kind of the same job that soviet ones did, but in space. I was saying I didn't catch that it was meant to be a reference to War40k, not that I didn't know about War40k. SeanBeansShako posted:I'm not Russian nor eastern european in general and it pisses me off. It pretty much checks multiple boxes of bad. And we're only just talking about the story line here. I played CoH2 what was wrong with it that it almost qualifies as Nazi propaganda? Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Aug 5, 2015 |
# ? Aug 5, 2015 17:26 |
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Considering that first few levels are just nazis rushing your position, it's hard to say what propaganda that is. Though the best early indication of what kind of game it is: "Comrade, burn those field to stop ZE GERMANS" "But Comissar, our troops are there!" "Nyet, there's no time!" *burns fields* *explodes bridge right before rearguard units can cross it* I have no love for soviets, but by God is that game stupid. CoH1 campaign best campaign.
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# ? Aug 5, 2015 17:52 |
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Rabhadh posted:Why are you so salty that some guy didn't want to waste his time in the military? I know an Israeli guy who faked a mental illness to get out of it. There's every reason to be salty. You don't fake mental illness, because that means they can deprive you of your right to decision, which means that you cannot have a driver's license and you will be put under supervision of a custodian, who will manage your financial affairs. There's almost no way to get out of this. Other places, other rules, here you don't fake mental illness. Some oval office dodges the service for some asinine reason, somebody else with a real disability gets drafted and you and 5 other guys have to carry his heartsick rear end to the infirmary each time he collapses, another goes civil service and drives old farts around all day or sits in the sun, smoking, another goes military and "volunteers" to get sent to the border for the next months without ever being asked if he volunteers, which is a poo poo-tier category of it's own. You don't go civil service if you want to own a gun in the next decade, because they'll slap a ban on you that lasts for 15 something years here in A. If you go military, you'll spend the next 9 months boring yourself to death, looking at the clock and praying that it runs faster. You can forget studying or doing something constructive, because they will try to keep you occupied with some retarded poo poo, because they assume that you are an animal that cannot occupy itself (which is the obvious answer if you look at the guys that share a room with you that just try to light up their farts). The best part about it is, that you are surrounded by chavs, your superiors are village idiots with severe inferiority complexes. The only people that treat you like a human being are officers, when they hear that you're educated. It's horrible. While the civil service guys can sleep in their own beds and go home, you might be stuck in the rear end end of nowhere until you're shifted somewhere else months later. The baracks are total poo poo, there's nothing to do there, and you can pray that they'll let you out into the rural shithole that's next to your place. There's a saying here that they "fold up the pavement at 7pm", which means that everything is closed by then, and you can listen to the crickets. If you're lucky the canteen sells beer in the evening. Some dudes keep booze in their cars, and incidentally, that's one of the best memories that I have from there, drinking rum with Foche and that tall guy at the parking lot, watching the stars and listening to the crickets. To add insult to injury, your pay is a joke and substantially less than what the civil service guys get. What they pay doesn't cover your expenses, even with all the subsidies you lose money each month. Most people end up with some debt after the service, unless they live with their parents. First world military problems. I knew a guy who fled from Iran, who had to do his service there. They handed rifles to him and his fellows and dropped them into some ditch in the desert to watch some spots where smugglers came through. Smugglers with DShKs on their pickups. Lonely cold nights in the desert.
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# ? Aug 5, 2015 18:23 |
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What's the deal with wwii milsurp showing up in global trouble spots well into the 21st century? Was the poo poo that durable, or was there just so much of it that new stocks are continually being unearthed, even ~70 years later?
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# ? Aug 5, 2015 19:30 |
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JaucheCharly posted:There's every reason to be salty. You don't fake mental illness, because that means they can deprive you of your right to decision, which means that you cannot have a driver's license and you will be put under supervision of a custodian, who will manage your financial affairs. There's almost no way to get out of this. Other places, other rules, here you don't fake mental illness. Sounds like 18th century, mostly.
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# ? Aug 5, 2015 19:35 |
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Grand Prize Winner posted:What's the deal with wwii milsurp showing up in global trouble spots well into the 21st century? Was the poo poo that durable, or was there just so much of it that new stocks are continually being unearthed, even ~70 years later? Lots of examples built, plus ammunition. Once 1st world countries made the jump to assault rifles, better support weapons and even more effective heavy guns and tanks there wasn't a need for the WW2 stuff and they quickly became obsolete. Doesn't make the gun unable to shoot, however, and some calibres are common enough to still be used. When you're cash strapped and need guns you get whatever you can, and that generally amounts to old milsurp that most national armies have gotten rid of.
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# ? Aug 5, 2015 19:37 |
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Uh. Apparently my off hand comment on how I didn't renew my German passport for a while to avoid conscription hit a sore spot for some people. Sorry about that! (Also good to know, Libliuni ; none of my cousins back in Germany had to do it either, so I basically learned everything I know about it from my uncles, and that's more them telling stories than actually trying to explain it to me.)
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# ? Aug 5, 2015 20:24 |
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xthetenth posted:Huh. That's not a new thing. I swear my high school AP US textbook had stuff on the Battle of Blair Mountain and all sort of scurvy anti-minority and anti-socialist stuff. I grew up in the South and IIRC my AP US history exam specifically covered Reconstruction, Jim Crow (including how it happened in the first place), and the Civil Rights Movement.
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# ? Aug 5, 2015 20:37 |
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Xiahou Dun posted:
Don't feel bad, Albert Einstein pretty much did the same thing you did.
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# ? Aug 5, 2015 20:42 |
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Grand Prize Winner posted:What's the deal with wwii milsurp showing up in global trouble spots well into the 21st century? Was the poo poo that durable, or was there just so much of it that new stocks are continually being unearthed, even ~70 years later? A tank of any quality is better than no tank at all, and a rifle of any quality is better than no rifle at all.
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# ? Aug 5, 2015 20:58 |
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# ? May 27, 2024 12:00 |
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So, thanks to this thread, a thing happened:
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# ? Aug 5, 2015 20:58 |