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Hogge Wild posted:Pohjolan Leijona by Mirkka Lappalainen. It's about how G2A and Axel Oxenstierna turned Sweden from a poor Feudal backwater to an efficient Early Modern country. drat good read. I got "Jumalan vihan ruoska" on my to-get list, which is about the great famine in Finland in the 17th century. Apparently pretty good. Pohjolan leijona has some bad analysis in parts, which I had the opportunity to discuss with Nils-Erik Villstrand in class. Basically Lappalainen presents some nation-building projects like the mining industry as huge ego projects and doomed to fail, while the people were a: working on a basis of not very well understood geological information b: getting your hands on silver was totally worth it even if you couldn't make a huge profit mining it.
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Aug 10, 2015 16:15
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Have there been any really good books written or translated to English about the French Indochina War? A Vietcong Memoir by Trương Như Tảng is really good. It's the autobiography of the top ranking defector from Vietnam. He left after the war ended and the politics turned to poo poo - his family was one of the boat refugees. It deals a lot with the war against the Americans, but it also goes into great depth in what life was like in Vietnam when he was a kid and student (sooo... roughly 1900 on) and naturally goes into the war with the French. It's one of my favorite single volume books for helping people understand Vietnam's 19th and 20th century history on a level other than "a place America fought a war in."
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Aug 10, 2015 17:38
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Kemper Boyd posted:Strongly agreed, he's buried in the cathedral here in Turku and his tomb is p fantastic though there's no good photos of it online apparently: Is it this guy?  Dumb confession: I've been reading old Life Magazine for the past few years and clipping images from it. I've actually learned quite a bit of history doing this - seeing how people at the time saw, say World War 2 is really interesting. (In the buildup to the Nazis attacking the Soviet Union, for example, all the experts are unanimous that Germany's next move is to secure oil in the middle east, possibly by invading Turkey.) Also good "gently caress you, Hitler!" images:    The eternal struggle:  People were giving watches to the Soviet Union (watches were extremely rare there, and were handy in the military:  Speaking of the Soviets, once they become allies, they get a positive treatment in Life - one one case, possibly a little too positive:  Things I learned from Life - the Pacific War had some racist overtones:  And there's a bunch of stuff that makes you feel ashamed about the direction the West has gone since the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks:    
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Aug 10, 2015 17:43
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That "The NKVD is basically the same as the WW2 era FBI" might be the funniest piece of unintentional near-truth I've seen in a long time. (no the FBI was never as brutal as the NKVD but they did a lot of really lovely stuff that runs against the Hoover-era grain of them being a beacon of justice and safety)
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Aug 10, 2015 17:48
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WW2 Data The penultimate 76mm projectiles post! How hot does a 76mm incendiary round reach? What kind of gas round could be used by tanks, among other weapons, and what colours were its bands? All this and more await you!
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Aug 10, 2015 17:50
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Cyrano4747 posted:That "The NKVD is basically the same as the WW2 era FBI" might be the funniest piece of unintentional near-truth I've seen in a long time. Specifically in World War 2? Or in the Hoover era generally?
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Aug 10, 2015 17:55
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Nebakenezzer posted:Specifically in World War 2? Or in the Hoover era generally? Eh, I'd say the Hoover era in general was pretty slimy, but I wasn't exactly making a nuanced argument with my glib observation.
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Aug 10, 2015 17:58
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Cyrano4747 posted:Eh, I'd say the Hoover era in general was pretty slimy, but I wasn't exactly making a nuanced argument with my glib observation. No worries. I just thought I might be missing out on the FBI doing some extra-crazy poo poo.
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Aug 10, 2015 18:07
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Cyrano4747 posted:That "The NKVD is basically the same as the WW2 era FBI" might be the funniest piece of unintentional near-truth I've seen in a long time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vI0S1K6RE2Q Wikipedia posted:The Federal Bureau of Investigation had great influence over the production, with J. Edgar Hoover acting as a co-producer of sorts. Hoover even forced LeRoy to re-shoot several scenes he didn't think portrayed the FBI in an appropriate light, and played a pivotal role in the casting for the film. Hoover and LeRoy were personal friends, but Hoover only approved the film after he had a file of "dirt" created on LeRoy. Hoover had to approve every frame of the film and also had two special agents with LeRoy for the duration of filming. Hoover himself appears briefly in the film. Surprisingly it was first screened in Finland in 1960 despite being in the midst of cold war, but it looks like there was no film censorship law until 1965. Eg. screening of One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich (1970) was forbidden from being publicly screened due to foreign policy reasons.
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Aug 10, 2015 18:10
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Nebakenezzer posted:Is it this guy? This dude: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%85ke_Henriksson_Tott
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Aug 10, 2015 18:14
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still not sure about your theory though, since these guys are so freaking thin-skinned about looking good in public. Why would Salvius badmouth Tott to spare him physical hardship, when he could just say he was sick? Edit: and it's not like they need excuses to insult one another
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Aug 10, 2015 18:21
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Hell, what are some good milhist books y'all have picked up lately? http://www.amazon.com/The-Wages-Destruction-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208
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Aug 10, 2015 18:40
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Comstar posted:We briefly studied the US civil war, but I'm amazed I knew/know practically nothing about a conflict happening at the same time that was 1000 times bloodier and probably had just as big an impact in the scheme of things. 40 times, to be precise. 20 million dead.
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Aug 10, 2015 18:46
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Chamale posted:40 times, to be precise. 20 million dead. Even that number is basically just a wild guess. God knows what figure you get if you roll the half a dozen other rebellions going on into it.
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Aug 10, 2015 18:52
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Loved the "eternal struggle" part.Nebakenezzer posted:And there's a bunch of stuff that makes you feel ashamed about the direction the West has gone since the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks: What do you mean by that? Is it something on the lines "America isn't war. The Marines are at war, and America is at the Mall"?
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Aug 10, 2015 19:18
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Hell, what are some good milhist books y'all have picked up lately? Not milhist per sé, but Rhodes' 'Dark Sun', the sequel to his 'The making of the the Atomic Bomb', was a great refresher on early Cold War politics for me. I like the original better for its history of science approach though.
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Aug 10, 2015 19:35
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HEY GAL posted:still not sure about your theory though, since these guys are so freaking thin-skinned about looking good in public. Why would Salvius badmouth Tott to spare him physical hardship, when he could just say he was sick?  The Regent Duke Charles (later King Charles IX) insulting the corpse of Clas Eriksson Fleming in presence of the Dowager-Governor of Åbo, Ebba Stenbock. Albert Edelfelt’s painting, 1878. The usurper Charles had conquered Åbo Castle that had been defended by Fleming's widow Stenbock. Fleming had been a supporter of the rightful King of Sweden Sigismund Vasa. The painting is based on a story where Charles had Fleming's coffin brought to him and had it opened. He then pulled Fleming's beard and said “Hadst thou now been alive, thy neck would not have held thy head fast for long.” Then Fleming’s widow Ebba Stenbock is said to have approached the Duke and responded: “If my late husband had been alive, Your Grace would never have entered herein.” Hogge Wild fucked around with this message at 19:38 on Aug 10, 2015 |
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Aug 10, 2015 19:36
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HEY GAL posted:still not sure about your theory though, since these guys are so freaking thin-skinned about looking good in public. Why would Salvius badmouth Tott to spare him physical hardship, when he could just say he was sick? He describes Tott roughly as "he cannot lead, because all he does is sleep, eat and tend to his horses", which, considering he was writing to Oxenstierna who was familiar with Tott since they spent time both on the council in Stockholm and had been in the field together in Poland, was probably aware of Tott being all gouty. Some swedish and finnish historiography says that this is Salvius telling Oxenstierna that Tott's poo poo at his job, but when you consider that the dude had a pretty great career earlier and was one of those dudes that Gustavus really relied on in his wars, it seems an odd conclusion to make. Then again, Tott was known for being a complete rear end in a top hat and Gustavus kinda threatened to hang him once because he wanted to duel Herman Wrangel, so it's sorta possible that Salvius just hated the guy.
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Aug 10, 2015 20:02
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Kemper Boyd posted:Then again, Tott was known for being a complete rear end in a top hat and Gustavus kinda threatened to hang him once because he wanted to duel Herman Wrangel, so it's sorta possible that Salvius just hated the guy. Edit: These people have friends and enemies like everyone does, but the idea that you should all pull together because you happen to be officers in the same dude's army rather than undermining some guy's career, dueling him, or (if he really pissed you off) hiring assassins after him, is a later development. Oh, or joining the enemy in a fit of injured pride, that's a good one. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 20:15 on Aug 10, 2015 |
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Aug 10, 2015 20:08
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Alchenar posted:Slim exploited the tendency of Japanese generals to treat the first threat they see as the main one and to leave no administrative margin of error in their operations plans to draw out their Burma armies and then destroy them. Alchenar posted:Burma is all mountains and jungle. You just need enough space not to have to make frontal attacks against fortified positions.   That big plain in Burma is roughly the size of Kyushu. Kyushu itself is a big rock. I don't think Burma and Kyushu are comparable. At the very least, Burma was the rear end-end of vanishing logistics tail, not the home islands. The Japanese had already proven at Okinawa and Iwo Jima that they could park themselves in any defensible terrain and withstand enormous amounts of firepower. The debate around Downfall wasn't centered on the possibility of success, it was about whether or not the cost was acceptable. Wikipedia tells me that Slim's casualties were pretty similar to those taken at the island garrison battles.
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Aug 10, 2015 20:16
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Once again I offer the excuse given to Major Chater Jack in Tunisia. A bloke needs a stiff drink after writing 10,000-odd words about the shambles on Gallipoli and knowing he's barely scratching the surface, ya know? 100 Years Ago: Triple Weekend Hangover Update 8th August: Hold onto your hats and gird your loins good and tight, because the MEF has finally achieved something on Gallipoli, after six months of trying! Of course, they still have to hold Chunuk Bair, but that's for tomorrow. Meanwhile, Sir Ian Hamilton can barely even get himself down to Suvla Bay to see the horrendous pig's ear that General Stopford and his merry band of idiots are making of his orders. Elsewhere, the Battle in the Eleskirt Valley finishes in favour of the Russians; and General Cadorna is making unconvincing excuses about why he's achieved gently caress-all on the Isonzo except breeding flies. 9th August: Today's palate-cleansers are another diary entry from Kenneth Best, now convalescing on Cyprus, and General Joffre's attempts to reorganise the situation at Verdun. At the main event, Kitchener's Army is unfashionably late to the party on Tekke Tepe, and their names most certainly aren't down, so they're not coming in; and events at Sari Bair swing wildly from tragedy to farce and back again (but at least I managed to shoe-horn them into an oblique Lord of the Rings reference). Today: General Joffre and Sir John French are squabbling about the Battle of Loos and what exactly the BEF is going to be doing. Generals Stopford and Hammersley swing from cautious timidity to outright panic at Suvla Bay, and some obscure colonel called Mustafa Kemal leads the bailiffs up Chunuk Bair to evict their recently-arrived British squatters, thus changing the gains achieved at the Battle of Sari Bair from "marginal" to "absolutely gently caress-all". edit: since people were talking about people bowling grenades, the technique was used as the approved way of throwing first the No. 15 Ball Grenade (yes, it looks like a cartoon bomb) and then the Mills bomb because it naturally produces a high-angle looping trajectory that gives it a better chance of dropping into a trench than a flat bent-arm throw (the same reason why mortars were feared far more than field-guns by the PBI); for this reason the standard range for throwing a bomb was set at 22 yards, the length of a cricket pitch. Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 20:34 on Aug 10, 2015 |
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Aug 10, 2015 20:22
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HEY GAL posted:they're all douchebags to one another, even the cool ones. they fight one another like it's a biological function and every now and then one of their superiors wades into the scrum and threatens to hang a bitch. wallenstein has the same problems with his immediate subordinates, and the french hate combining more than one small regiment into a single battalion for combat because they know for a fact that the commanders will start bitching at each other about who's got precedence. I still enjoy the fact that one of the things that led to Wallenstein getting got was the fact that he had pissed off basically everyone in the Holy Roman Empire by having bad manners.
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Aug 10, 2015 20:26
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Kemper Boyd posted:I still enjoy the fact that one of the things that led to Wallenstein getting got was the fact that he had pissed off basically everyone in the Holy Roman Empire by having bad manners. This is the main hall:  Do you see those rondels or lozenges or whatever the hell you call those decorative elements, there on the ceiling? They're pretty too, baroque dudes loved putting elaborate decorative poo poo on everything. Scrolls, flowers, fruit. But check them out in closeup:  They're made out of weapons.
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Aug 10, 2015 20:43
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HEY GAL posted:they're all douchebags to one another, even the cool ones. they fight one another like it's a biological function and every now and then one of their superiors wades into the scrum and threatens to hang a bitch. wallenstein has the same problems with his immediate subordinates, and the french hate combining more than one small regiment into a single battalion for combat because they know for a fact that the commanders will start bitching at each other about who's got precedence. Would these guys have had proper ranks in the Swedish army or would they have just brought along their soldiers and only officially have authority over what they brought along? I'm also looking for the afore mentioned letter. I'm just taking random notes at this point to write something more collected later.
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Aug 10, 2015 20:44
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Finished Silent Victory, by Clay Blair Jr. Not sure I'd recommend it unless you're really interested in the US submarine campaign against Japan during WW2. It's an extremely dense play by play account of the submarine campaign, naming seemingly every US submarine, submarine skipper, and mentioning every last patrol and reported kill during the entire Pacific war by US subs. Very detailed, very thorough, but a slog to chew through. Writing is very dry and the meat of it is just "This happened then this happened then this happened." The book also has Opinions about the conduct of the submarine war, and almost every chapter ends with a paragraph or two about what the author thinks should have been done. Still, I learned quite a lot. I had no idea that one of the major non-offensive jobs of US subs was "lifeguarding" air strikes throughout the Pacific - rescuing downed aviators in the water. I was also surprised to learn how few fatal friendly fire incidents there were involving US submarines throughout the Pacific war, considering the scope of the conflict, though it seems like just about every US sub got bombed by American airplanes a few times. My favorite incident from the book was the sinking of German submarine U-168 by Dutch submarine Swaardvisch, operating under American strategic command, in October 1944. In the end, a British-built submarine in the Dutch navy under American task force command sank a German submarine in Japanese waters and returned to an Australian base where the feat was celebrated with Canadian booze.        
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Aug 10, 2015 22:49
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JcDent posted:What do you mean by that? Is it something on the lines "America isn't war. The Marines are at war, and America is at the Mall"? Yeah, something like that, though the government is to blame far more than the people - they are the ones who freely invoke WW2, but then ask for nothing - save civil liberties. Imagine if the WOT imposed a 95% tax rate on people who make more than a million dollars a year? Because that happened in the United States in World War 2. Imagine if the government announced today: "OK, because we are at war, and we need rubber badly, you can't buy tires for your car anymore." Or how about "gas rationing means you only get 25L of gasoline every two weeks." Also that last image is of a editorial responding to people who said 'reporting problems aids our enemies' and the leading line is "The soft people want good news, the strong people want truth." Can you imagine how enraged people would get if any media outlet had the balls to write that today? Or for that matter: "These people are dying for you. Are you in fact worth it?
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Aug 11, 2015 01:08
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Have there been any really good books written or translated to English about the French Indochina War? For Dien Bien Phu I'd recommend Bernard Fall's Hell in a Very Small Place.
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Aug 11, 2015 01:14
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Nebakenezzer posted:Yeah, something like that, though the government is to blame far more than the people - they are the ones who freely invoke WW2, but then ask for nothing - save civil liberties. Imagine if the WOT imposed a 95% tax rate on people who make more than a million dollars a year? Because that happened in the United States in World War 2. Imagine if the government announced today: "OK, because we are at war, and we need rubber badly, you can't buy tires for your car anymore." Or how about "gas rationing means you only get 25L of gasoline every two weeks." None of the rationing poo poo would have a material impact on the success or failure of the current US conflicts. In an existential industrialized war, sure, but not in the current low grade optional insurgency bullshit. I'm not sure why you are blaming the government when you say in your next couple sentences that such policies would not fly (precisely because people can clearly tell that the wars we are currently involved in are not existential in nature).
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Aug 11, 2015 01:59
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:For Dien Bien Phu I'd recommend Bernard Fall's Hell in a Very Small Place. Yeah this is on my reading list, I hear it's dope.
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Aug 11, 2015 01:59
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Cythereal posted:Finished Silent Victory, by Clay Blair Jr. Not sure I'd recommend it unless you're really interested in the US submarine campaign against Japan during WW2. It's an extremely dense play by play account of the submarine campaign, naming seemingly every US submarine, submarine skipper, and mentioning every last patrol and reported kill during the entire Pacific war by US subs. Very detailed, very thorough, but a slog to chew through. Writing is very dry and the meat of it is just "This happened then this happened then this happened." The book also has Opinions about the conduct of the submarine war, and almost every chapter ends with a paragraph or two about what the author thinks should have been done. Always take the chicken.
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Aug 11, 2015 02:24
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:For Dien Bien Phu I'd recommend Bernard Fall's Hell in a Very Small Place. Both of his books about the French-Indochina War are good
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Aug 11, 2015 04:14
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:None of the rationing poo poo would have a material impact on the success or failure of the current US conflicts. In an existential industrialized war, sure, but not in the current low grade optional insurgency bullshit. I'm sure some American soldiers circa 2003 would have really appreciated a tax increase to pay for armour on their HMMVs. As you said, it wasn't an existential conflict, but it would have been interesting to see the backlash at home if people were asked to sacrifice at all to protect the lives of troops, instead of just slapping a sticker on the bumper.
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Aug 11, 2015 04:18
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:None of the rationing poo poo would have a material impact on the success or failure of the current US conflicts. In an existential industrialized war, sure, but not in the current low grade optional insurgency bullshit. So you are saying the problem here is people who believe all this WOT "clash of cultures" nonsense, and believe "this is the baby boomer second world war, where we stand up to evil"? and then don't get the vast disjunction between brushfire wars and existential ones? Because let me tell you, I'm down with that
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Aug 11, 2015 04:24
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Chamale posted:I'm sure some American soldiers circa 2003 would have really appreciated a tax increase to pay for armour on their HMMVs. As you said, it wasn't an existential conflict, but it would have been interesting to see the backlash at home if people were asked to sacrifice at all to protect the lives of troops, instead of just slapping a sticker on the bumper. Not having armor on light vehicles was an acquisition decision, not a resourcing decision. The military could have (and eventually was) easily able to afford slapping armor all over everything. Point being, Americans pay a hell of a lot of money to the MIC, maybe not as immediate a sacrifice as going without panty hose or something, but they do sacrifice.
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Aug 11, 2015 14:08
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  I'd like to see more pics itt. Post pics from museums and other milhist places you've visited. This one was from the Artillery, Engineer and Signals Museum of Finland. It wasn't used it combat. How efficient were the super heavy mortars that were used?
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Aug 11, 2015 14:59
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Nebakenezzer posted:So you are saying the problem here is people who believe all this WOT "clash of cultures" nonsense, and believe "this is the baby boomer second world war, where we stand up to evil"? and then don't get the vast disjunction between brushfire wars and existential ones?  Yes, completely.
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Aug 11, 2015 15:20
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[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcy7qV-BGF4] A conservative, southern friend of mine sent me this "Prager University" video about slavery and the Civil War this morning and I was straight up ready to go to battle on it until I watched it and was very pleasantly surprised.
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Aug 11, 2015 15:24
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Chamale posted:I'm sure some American soldiers circa 2003 would have really appreciated a tax increase to pay for armour on their HMMVs. Tankers in WWII stuck railroad logs and sandbags on their tanks as extra armor. Doesn't mean it was a good idea.
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Aug 11, 2015 15:26
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Phanatic posted:Tankers in WWII stuck railroad logs and sandbags on their tanks as extra armor. Doesn't mean it was a good idea. Most of that was crude stand off armor to give some protection against early shaped charge AT rockets and it was a bit effective. It was still hell on the suspension.
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Aug 11, 2015 15:45
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Cyrano4747 posted:Most of that was crude stand off armor to give some protection against early shaped charge AT rockets and it was a bit effective. In some cases. In other cases it probably created shot traps and led to penetrations that otherwise wouldn't have occurred. quote:It was still hell on the suspension. Yep. And so some tanks were broken when they could have been killing Germans. And that's basically my point: deciding how much armor to put on a light wheeled vehicle is based on what you want that vehicle to do, not on whether or not the folks back home are willing to recycle their used cooking grease or soup cans or whatever. "Withstand RPG fire" not was a design goal for the HMMWV, and they weren't unarmored because we couldn't afford armor.
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Aug 11, 2015 15:56
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