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HEY GAL posted:If anyone has anything on the non-Prussian military experience, pass it on to me, I've always wondered how people who often weren't even all that ok with getting unified under Prussia would have dealt with serving under them. FSVO 'unified' in World War 1, militarily speaking; there wasn't a German Army, there was a Prussian, Bavarian, Saxon and Wurttemburg one. Presumably that helped. 
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Feb 24, 2016 19:18
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feedmegin posted:FSVO 'unified' in World War 1, militarily speaking; there wasn't a German Army, there was a Prussian, Bavarian, Saxon and Wurttemburg one. Presumably that helped.
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Feb 24, 2016 19:29
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On the topic of women's social contribution to the war, it reminds me of a radio documentary promo I heard, I think about WW2, where women (presumably Canadian, possibly American) were under a fair bit of pressure to start up relationships with guys who were about to be shipped overseas, write them letters once they did, and work to keep up their morale while they were off fighting. The clip in the promo was one woman who said she was engaged to 5 different privates. Anyone know more about it from this angle, or catch the documentary, which would have aired on CBC in the last two weeks or so?WoodrowSkillson posted:i am a total liberal gun control guy but i love this dudes videos and they are endlessly fascinating Same. I don't think there's a compelling reason why people should be allowed to own firearms, but guns sure are cool, and this guys video's are probably the best gun vids on youtube.
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Feb 24, 2016 19:48
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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I've heard anecdotes of white feathers leading to a spike in teenage male suicides from them being given white feathers, but I doubt this, since there's a huge number of under 16s signing up in WW1. And before I forget, I want to thank this thread for giving me plenty of short stories to tell about the Thirty Years War when I do a presentation on it next Monday.
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Feb 24, 2016 22:07
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Hazzard posted:I've heard anecdotes of white feathers leading to a spike in teenage male suicides from them being given white feathers, but I doubt this, since there's a huge number of under 16s signing up in WW1. remember to put something awful goons as your source
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Feb 24, 2016 22:12
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xthetenth posted:The 75 was good but if I remember right France relied on it and let development of heavier pieces lapse, which wasn't great. The problem there wasn't so much lack of heavy artillery as it was lack of any kind of mortars. A soixante-quinze with a maximum elevation of 18 degrees (and which requires a team of horses to move it, and proper emplacements, and ideally an observation post so it can fire from a safe distance) is much less useful in trench warfare than, say, a Stokes mortar with the same maximum rate of fire, which has a minimum elevation of 45 degrees and which can be carried around and fired from most anywhere by two idiots.
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Feb 24, 2016 22:21
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How efficient were the flamethrowers? I've read the Wikipedia article, but not really much more. Could someone elaborate.
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Feb 24, 2016 22:31
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Trin Tragula posted:The problem there wasn't so much lack of heavy artillery as it was lack of any kind of mortars. A soixante-quinze with a maximum elevation of 18 degrees (and which requires a team of horses to move it, and proper emplacements, and ideally an observation post so it can fire from a safe distance) is much less useful in trench warfare than, say, a Stokes mortar with the same maximum rate of fire, which has a minimum elevation of 45 degrees and which can be carried around and fired from most anywhere by two idiots.
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Feb 24, 2016 22:53
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Arquinsiel posted:Motion for the thread to henceforth describe all artillery operations in units of "idiots per gun". WHAT? WHY ARE WE GOING TO PERDUN???
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Feb 24, 2016 23:02
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Trin Tragula posted:The problem there wasn't so much lack of heavy artillery as it was lack of any kind of mortars. A soixante-quinze with a maximum elevation of 18 degrees (and which requires a team of horses to move it, and proper emplacements, and ideally an observation post so it can fire from a safe distance) is much less useful in trench warfare than, say, a Stokes mortar with the same maximum rate of fire, which has a minimum elevation of 45 degrees and which can be carried around and fired from most anywhere by two idiots. Didn't *nobody* have any mortars at the outset of the war though, because why would you need them? I'm pretty sure Battle Tactics of the Western Front covers the struggle of the trench mortar to gain adoption in the British military and I don't remember the British being unusual in the fact that they didn't have personal mortars at that time. I would not be surprised if the French resisted adoption of both heavy artillery and trench mortars because *Red Pantaloons* though 
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Feb 24, 2016 23:19
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Trin Tragula posted:The problem there wasn't so much lack of heavy artillery as it was lack of any kind of mortars. A soixante-quinze with a maximum elevation of 18 degrees (and which requires a team of horses to move it, and proper emplacements, and ideally an observation post so it can fire from a safe distance) is much less useful in trench warfare than, say, a Stokes mortar with the same maximum rate of fire, which has a minimum elevation of 45 degrees and which can be carried around and fired from most anywhere by two idiots. Well, the Stokes didn't enter service until late '15, and the LMW didn't enter service until early '15 (although the heavier variants were in service). Everyone was behind the curve on mortars.
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Feb 24, 2016 23:21
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One of the big German takeaways from the Russo-Japanese War was "poo poo, this trench warfare thing sucks, we'd better get ourselves some modern grenades and mortars PDQ". In August 1914 they had about 250 Minenwerfers available, which is fair enough for an unproven weapon; they proved themselves to be absolute murder machines and highly effective at dropping bombs into trenches and onto barbed wire; by the end of the year they were in full mass production and closing in on a thousand trench mortars while the British and French were still going "mortars? really? 1815 called and it wants its weapons back, Fritz".
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Feb 24, 2016 23:31
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Trin Tragula posted:One of the big German takeaways from the Russo-Japanese War was "poo poo, this trench warfare thing sucks, we'd better get ourselves some modern grenades and mortars PDQ". In August 1914 they had about 250 Minenwerfers available, which is fair enough for an unproven weapon; they proved themselves to be absolute murder machines and highly effective at dropping bombs into trenches and onto barbed wire; by the end of the year they were in full mass production and closing in on a thousand trench mortars while the British and French were still going "mortars? really? 1815 called and it wants its weapons back, Fritz". Like most sarcastic comments they made in 1914 and 15, the British and French would rue their words
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Feb 24, 2016 23:47
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Nebakenezzer posted:Like most sarcastic comments they made in 1914 and 15, the British and French would rue their words War of the wrongs.
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Feb 25, 2016 00:03
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MikeCrotch posted:Didn't *nobody* have any mortars at the outset of the war though, because why would you need them? I'm pretty sure Battle Tactics of the Western Front covers the struggle of the trench mortar to gain adoption in the British military and I don't remember the British being unusual in the fact that they didn't have personal mortars at that time. Mortars did exist at the start of the war, but the Stokes was the first to have the modern form: small, lightweight tube on a baseplate and bipod that fired automatically by dropping the shell down the barrel. The mortars they had were much older, heavier designs. A good example was the 7.58 cm Minenwerfer used by the Germans:  The British Expeditionary Force wasn't outfitted with any mortars when they arrived in the war, though. You're right on that account. The Stokes was one of the examples of mortars hastily concocted to try and account for the lack of mortars to counter the German designs. Another was the 2-inch Medium Trench Mortar, also called the Toffee Apple or Plum Pudding. The bore was 2 inches, but the warhead was actually a 42 pound sphere of 9 inch diameter on a shaft:  They also issued 4-inch mortars similar to the Minenwerfer, and others were improvised. But they only had something like 40 of them before the Stokes came and replaced them.
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Feb 25, 2016 00:54
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Cyrano4747 posted:POke around TFR's archives a bit and you'll also find a bunch of effort posts on French weapons by a guy named Mishaco. I swear I've read that the musselmann term just came because people remembered some Middle East famine they'd seen pictures of the victims in the newspapers between the wars. Just like kanada being the spoils warehouse because people had heard Canada was an awesome country full of stuff. These were mostly Central Europeans who hadn't traveled a lot in their lives.
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Feb 25, 2016 06:04
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cheerfullydrab posted:I swear I've read that the musselmann term just came because people remembered some Middle East famine they'd seen pictures of the victims in the newspapers between the wars. Just like kanada being the spoils warehouse because people had heard Canada was an awesome country full of stuff. Yes but they were also Central Europeans who had a specific cultural view with stereotypes of how people in those far away lands acted. On a phone so not looking it up now but there is an old German rhyme about not drinking too much coffee or it will wreck your nerves and make you weak like a Moslem. Edit: Google to the rescue here is a German wiki article that talks specifically about this. Sorry if you can't read German, skim for the poem and google translate it. https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muselmann_(KZ) Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 07:53 on Feb 25, 2016 |
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Feb 25, 2016 07:48
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Trin Tragula posted:One of the big German takeaways from the Russo-Japanese War was "poo poo, this trench warfare thing sucks, we'd better get ourselves some modern grenades and mortars PDQ". In August 1914 they had about 250 Minenwerfers available, which is fair enough for an unproven weapon; they proved themselves to be absolute murder machines and highly effective at dropping bombs into trenches and onto barbed wire; by the end of the year they were in full mass production and closing in on a thousand trench mortars while the British and French were still going "mortars? really? 1815 called and it wants its weapons back, Fritz". I like how everyone seems to have sent Zapp Brannigan as observers to the Russo-Japanese war for the siege of Port Arthur. "It's simple your majesty, the Japanese have proved that we can take any fortified position by sending wave after wave of our men at the enemy  "Edit: Is Cadorna the real life Zapp Brannigan or is that an insult to Zapp because he actually had a plan that worked at some point
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Feb 25, 2016 11:09
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It's hard to describe Cadorna and arsehole-in-chief D'Annunzio as anything other than total cunts to be honest. If anyone is looking for a good introductory text on the Italian front, I'd check out "the white war" by Mark Thompson, which is a well written and frequently scathing history, including some pretty excellent Italian war poetry which you don't often see in the great anthologies of First World War literature.
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Feb 25, 2016 11:50
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100 Years Ago It's a two-post day. First, to Verdun. General Petain does his bit to make the war more French; he gets his orders to go to Verdun while he's having it off in a Paris hotel with his mistress. At the sharp end, the Germans do their bit to make the war more silly, by capturing the strongest fort in France with one independently-minded sapper and one glory-seeking officer. The news just gets better from there, really. Grigoris Balakian is being deported from Cankiri, and we'll be following him on his march to nowhere. General Haig is planning...an amphibious attack on Ostend, and even better, he's gone and dragged out that berk Hunter-Weston from his sickbed as the (try not to laugh derisively) man with the most experience at leading amphibious landings. Edward Mousley is slowly going bonkers at the Siege of Kut; Malcolm White is ill in hospital. Clifford Wells does try his best to save us from the depression all round when an exercise turns into a 250-man snowball fight, but even that fantastic story can barely register against the unremitting miserableness of everything else. MikeCrotch posted:I like how everyone seems to have sent Zapp Brannigan as observers to the Russo-Japanese war for the siege of Port Arthur. "It's simple your majesty, the Japanese have proved that we can take any fortified position by sending wave after wave of our men at the enemy The British observer was Sir Ian Hamilton, who spent the next ten years trying to tell everyone what it meant and seemingly got so worn down by nobody listening to him that he couldn't even take his own advice on Gallipoli, and resorted to blind faith in
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Feb 25, 2016 14:02
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Trin Tragula posted:The British observer was Sir Ian Hamilton, who spent the next ten years trying to tell everyone what it meant and seemingly got so worn down by nobody listening to him that he couldn't even take his own advice on Gallipoli, and resorted to blind faith in Jesus Christ fate has a cruel sense of irony. I guess that sheds some light on all them depressed diary entries.
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Feb 25, 2016 17:32
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Trin Tragula posted:100 Years Ago There's an anecdote that he reported that the only use for cavalry during the Russo-Japanese war was to cook rice for the infantry and that the British army was on the verge of having him committed to an insane asylum for his views and persistence is spreading them. I don't know if it's true but it's a cute story.
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Feb 25, 2016 19:37
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So America's grundle has decided it is high time for Confederate Heritage Month to be a thing. This is not an onion article.
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Feb 25, 2016 20:08
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bewbies posted:So America's grundle has decided it is high time for Confederate Heritage Month to be a thing. This is not an onion article. Celebrate Confederate heritage Month by getting the everloving poo poo kicked out of you by the US Army! Watch as Atlanta gets burned down again via the magic of widespread napalm bombardment! Reflect on the lives of your ancestors as you watch US soldiers march through your capital to install a military government!
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Feb 25, 2016 20:13
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In my birth month no less. Motherfucker, I will gather my fellow statesmen and give you round 2 if you don't pick a shittier month that no one likes, like march.
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Feb 25, 2016 20:24
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Hogge Wild posted:How efficient were the flamethrowers? I've read the Wikipedia article, but not really much more. Could someone elaborate. There's these Medal of Honor recipients telling stories on youtube and one dude got his for clearing lots of pillboxes with a flamer and stuff. He said that dudes charged out of one that he thought was previously cleared and he sprayed them. Stopped them dead in their tracks, as the flame sucked out all the oxygen out of their lungs and they collapsed.
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Feb 25, 2016 20:42
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Perhaps an appropriate end to confederate history month would be a full reenactment of the march to the Sea?
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Feb 25, 2016 21:07
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bewbies posted:So America's grundle has decided it is high time for Confederate Heritage Month to be a thing. This is not an onion article. My fiancée is from Mississippi. She's also black, so, uh, she is less than impressed. Apparently the dude has a habit of doing this, though.
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Feb 25, 2016 21:27
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What is Confederate heritage, anyways? Some statues, a street or two named after generals, and then just general poverty and illiteracy in Southern states?
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Feb 25, 2016 21:31
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JcDent posted:What is Confederate heritage, anyways? Some statues, a street or two named after generals, and then just general poverty and illiteracy in Southern states? Being really mad about black people?
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Feb 25, 2016 21:34
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bewbies posted:So America's grundle has decided it is high time for Confederate Heritage Month to be a thing. This is not an onion article. Ah yes, the much needed pro slavery aggressor month the world needs.
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Feb 25, 2016 21:35
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JcDent posted:What is Confederate heritage, anyways? Some statues, a street or two named after generals, and then just general poverty and illiteracy in Southern states? Continuing disparities for black communities in income, wealth, educational level, life expectancy, etc.
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Feb 25, 2016 21:38
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Cyrano4747 posted:Continuing disparities for black communities in income, wealth, educational level, life expectancy, etc. Also being murdered by paddyrollers/cops. Fun fact, the origin of the police forces of the South isn't so much British-style peelers as the dudes that would chase down and whip/mutilate/kill escaped slaves.
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Feb 25, 2016 21:41
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SeanBeansShako posted:Ah yes, the much needed pro slavery aggressor month the world needs. I'm in favor of laying siege to Vicksburg for the month.
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Feb 25, 2016 21:41
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JcDent posted:What is Confederate heritage, anyways? Some statues, a street or two named after generals, and then just general poverty and illiteracy in Southern states? It's a good question. Southern Conservatives, either due to their reflexive and completely unthinking celebrating of the past ways of white people (or just racism) feel that the antebellum south is something to be celebrated, as is the civil war. Of course you'd need to view all that (once again, assuming no racist motivations) not so much through rose colored glasses as glasses crafted from hummel figurines, but well, welcome to the worldview of southern Conservatives. I guess this feeling could also come from the childish contrary nature of some conservatives (IE how dare you tell us a culture based on viewing humans as chattel possessions is bad, and what's this about these noble SS men being railroaded and executed by America anyway?!?) Also the Confederate flag was the fuckin' Naval Ensign and its use was introduced by the KKK, I mean c'mon At some point EPG wrote a front page article about "union pride", I endorse it
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Feb 25, 2016 22:49
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Where's Jastiger when you need him?
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Feb 25, 2016 23:21
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From what I remember, the current state of Confederate worship can be tied to a few different causes: 1. The Confederacy was treated with kid gloves, relatively speaking, when the war ended. Most nations have historically responded to territory going rogue and causing a bloody civil war by harshly punishing the traitors and purging any attempt at sympathy. While there were over 1,000 military tribunals after the war investigating war crimes among the Confederacy, many resulted in acquittals and Ulysses S. Grant even blocked the trial of Bradley T. Johnson for negligence at a prison camp and the burning of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. This led to the enduring myth that Henry Wirz was the only one tried and executed for war crimes. It's definitely a fact that these tribunals weren't about treason, which they had all committed. The Union elected to simply sweep the whole mess under the rug, presumably to avoid pissing off the southern states with mass executions or sentences of hard labor for people like Jefferson Davis and General Lee. This allowed for pro-Confederate sentiments to remain strong in the South and allowed for the myth of the Lost Cause to come into existence in the first place. 2. The growing distrust in the federal government provides an easy inroad for racists and right-wing fringe groups (who are almost 100% racist anyway) to start championing the cause of the Confederacy once again. While there are legitimate grievances with the current state of the USA and how it treats both its own citizens and foreigners it doesn't like, they tend to get overridden by racist right-wing rednecks who want to invade Washington DC with AR-15s or occupy federal land to make an independent
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Feb 25, 2016 23:29
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Cyrano4747 posted:Continuing disparities for black communities in income, wealth, educational level, life expectancy, etc. So what you're saying is that every month is Confederate Heritage month in Mississippi?
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Feb 25, 2016 23:49
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sullat posted:So what you're saying is that every month is Confederate Heritage month in Mississippi?  Checks out.
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Feb 25, 2016 23:51
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What is the lost cause of the South? I've had conflicting definitions. Either it's the idea that the South had zero chance of winning the war, no matter what they did, or it's some sort of justification for the breakaway. Edit: I think the CSA flag (The one that isn't actually the flag) looks better than the USA flag.
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Feb 26, 2016 00:30
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