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Jastiger posted:Iowa is responsible for the allies ending wwii as quickly as it did. You're welcome goons. Next thursday is liberation day, at least in the Netherlands. On that day, we celebrate our freedom... and that Canada  freed us from the german occupation. I suppose the USA helped a little bit, but it was mostly Canadian forces.
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May 2, 2016 19:43
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Carbon dioxide posted:Next thursday is liberation day, at least in the Netherlands. Didnt I read somewhere that Canadian divisions were mostly 50% british?
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May 2, 2016 20:53
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The Dutch mostly like Canada because they took in the Prince and Princess or something.
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May 2, 2016 20:56
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Nuclear War posted:Didnt I read somewhere that Canadian divisions were mostly 50% british? Technically speaking Canada is 100% British.
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May 2, 2016 21:13
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duckmaster posted:Germanys air defence capabilities were so much more advanced than Japans that it was never going to be a viable target. Germanys policy on hostile aircraft was to scramble fighters and intercept immediately, and if that failed to use ground based air defences to down the aircraft. They wanted any sort of information or equipment (in the form of captured pilots/aircraft) that might give them an 'edge' and were prepared to do anything to obtain it. If they hadn't been at war with the Soviet Union those air defences would have been even stronger. Wow you know so much more than the guys planning things did about what they'd do.
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May 2, 2016 21:28
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The only thing that stopped Germany from getting a temporary new sun or two is that they rolled over too fast to conventional weapons.
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May 2, 2016 21:36
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Platystemon posted:The only thing that stopped Germany from getting a temporary new sun or two is that they rolled over too fast to conventional weapons. 
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May 2, 2016 21:38
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Please continue to quote a 6-paragraph post in its entirety so you can share your one sentence retort.
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May 2, 2016 21:41
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The B29 could fly at 9000 meters, and generally did not do so so that the payload could be accurately delivered. No german or japanese fighter could operate that high, so they'd have to rely on flak guns. For a nuclear warhead, accuracy is less important, so if fighter screen was too heavy the allies would have just dropped the bombs from too high for the Germans to reach.
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May 2, 2016 21:42
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Aphrodite posted:The Dutch mostly like Canada because they took in the Prince and Princess or something. Well, another thing is, you know how people in the Netherlands and Belgium dress up in blackface for Sinterklaas, the local equivalent of santa claus? The blackface thing had been a tradition before the war, but only in a limited amount, usually Sinterklaas had one blackfaced assistant, in rare cases a couple of them, but no more than that. So, after the country was liberated in 1945, the Canadian forces noticed the holiday season was coming and decided to throw a party for the liberated Dutch. They looked up Dutch traditions and apparently thought that if Santa having one assistant is cool, having hundreds of them doing acrobatics and stuff in the street is even better. So they got loads of people dressed up in blackface and threw the biggest Sinterklaas party ever. It's been a tradition ever since to have hundreds of blackface characters with the yearly Sinterklaas parade. So, while we can't blame Canada for introducing blackface, it's because of them that the tradition got as big as it is today. And by now people are like "it's been like this for centuries" and we're having the biggest trouble trying to get rid of it.
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May 2, 2016 21:54
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DStecks posted:Please continue to quote a 6-paragraph post in its entirety so you can share your one sentence retort. dsyp
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May 2, 2016 23:39
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Platystemon posted:The only thing that stopped Germany from getting a temporary new sun or two is that they rolled over too fast to conventional weapons. Nah. The science behind their nuclear weapons programme was fundamentally flawed, and would never have produced a viable bomb design without going back to first principles.
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May 2, 2016 23:55
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I think the implication was that they'd be given a viable bomb free of charge by the allies from a great height (and that they collapsed before that happened), not that they'd develop it themselves.
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May 2, 2016 23:58
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Plucky Brit posted:Nah. The science behind their nuclear weapons programme was fundamentally flawed, and would never have produced a viable bomb design without going back to first principles. He's saying regular bombs wrecked them so hard nukes weren't necessary, not that they would have developed one.
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May 2, 2016 23:58
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Plucky Brit posted:Nah. The science behind their nuclear weapons programme was fundamentally flawed, and would never have produced a viable bomb design without going back to first principles. New suns over Germany would've been courtesy of the US. Hey look it's a formation!
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May 2, 2016 23:58
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New Suns Over Germany is a really good name for a band
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May 3, 2016 00:04
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My mistake, read it wrong.
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May 3, 2016 00:05
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Plucky Brit posted:My mistake, read it wrong. You're right about the rest though, the Nazis weren't really close to a bomb. Something like the Manhattan Project was out of Germany's reach and the first practical power-generating reactors didn't come into service until a decade after the war.
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May 3, 2016 00:14
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The Nazis’ rejection of “Jewish” science isn’t exactly what doomed Uranprojekt (they didn’t have the resources anyway), but there’s a great irony in it. I believe that’s what Plucky Brit meant by they would have had to go “back to first principles” (and accept the work of Jewish scientists, or at least their conclusions).
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May 3, 2016 00:30
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Platystemon posted:The Nazis’ rejection of “Jewish” science isn’t exactly what doomed Uranprojekt (they didn’t have the resources anyway), but there’s a great irony in it. Sort of, it's to do with the fundamentals of nuclear physics in fission. There are broadly two types of neutron released by fission: slow and fast. Slow neutrons are easier for atoms to capture, which means a chain reaction occurs. These are the ones used in reactors. As well as this, there are fast neutrons. These are much harder for a nucleus to absorb; in a reactor they're wasted and need to be avoided. The Nazis deemed the slow neutrons to be the best idea for a bomb design, as they couldn't see a way to get fast neutrons to sustain a supercritical reaction. They were hamstrung by this, as it proved impossible to get slow neutrons to chain react with sufficient speed and energy. In fairness, of all the competing nuclear programmes it was only the Manhattan Project that came up with the correct solution. This was especially entertaining when the Nazi nuclear team heard about Hiroshima and Nagasaki while they were detained in England on their way to the US; they began speculating on the bomb's design and were incorrect in everything except that the bomb used fission. That's what I mean by going back to first principles: All their theoretical work was based around the wrong method so when they realised it they would have to start pretty much from scratch. Of course, the loss of all Jewish and Jewish sympathising scientists didn't help matters. I raised the original point because I've heard a few alt-history fans say something along the lines of: 'If the Nazis had nuclear bombs, they could've put them on V2 rockets and become invincible.' This is technically true, however not only were they were never close to a viable nuclear bomb (blamed on lack of resources), they weren't even close to a viable theoretical design.
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May 3, 2016 02:45
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Not as much a student of history as much as I'd like, but it always blows my mind when I read about how lovely the Nazis were about... well, practically everything. There's this weird dichotomy to thinking about them: evil incarnate, but stupid ad poo poo at the same time.
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May 3, 2016 04:40
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Plucky Brit posted:I raised the original point because I've heard a few alt-history fans say something along the lines of: 'If the Nazis had nuclear bombs, they could've put them on V2 rockets and become invincible.' This is technically true, however not only were they were never close to a viable nuclear bomb (blamed on lack of resources), they weren't even close to a viable theoretical design. Comparing the weight of a V2's payload and a nuke is illuminating. Also I'm pretty sure the Germans managed to disqualify graphite as a potential neutron moderator and then lose a huge amount of heavy water to sabotage.
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May 3, 2016 05:28
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MisterBibs posted:Not as much a student of history as much as I'd like, but it always blows my mind when I read about how lovely the Nazis were about... well, practically everything. There's this weird dichotomy to thinking about them: evil incarnate, but stupid ad poo poo at the same time. 'I'd rather be lucky than good'? Yeah, the Nazis were very lucky for about 9 years (1933-1941) and then things started sliding downhill. I'd say that Nazis incredible success was due largely to being in the right place at the right time, ie having daring young commanders who choose to punch through in exactly the place the French never expected them to, or attacking the Soviets just after they got done completely gutting their command structure. Really, WW2 in Europe is one giant comedy of errors from 1938 to 1945.
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May 3, 2016 05:32
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A White Guy posted:'I'd rather be lucky than good'? Yeah, the Nazis were very lucky for about 9 years (1933-1941) and then things started sliding downhill. I'd say that Nazis incredible success was due largely to being in the right place at the right time, ie having daring young commanders who choose to punch through in exactly the place the French never expected them to, or attacking the Soviets just after they got done completely gutting their command structure. Getting going earlier and having the lead in rearmament was a big help in the early years. Having the experience from big war games helped win Poland, experience from Poland helped win France, and experience from France helped them get a long way into Russia.
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May 3, 2016 05:41
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MisterBibs posted:Not as much a student of history as much as I'd like, but it always blows my mind when I read about how lovely the Nazis were about... well, practically everything. There's this weird dichotomy to thinking about them: evil incarnate, but stupid ad poo poo at the same time. Historical Fun Fact: The Nazis spent more on their V‐weapons than the U.S. spent on the Manhattan Project. You decide: Which had a better return on investment?
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May 3, 2016 05:54
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I dunno. Our entire space program is basically a legacy of the rocketry development that the Nazi's first started (and we continued, with essentially the same people). In the long run, you could almost say that humanity as a whole had a better ROI on the V2 project than it will from the Manhattan Project. provided we don't nuke ourselves to death before that whole space colonization thing
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May 3, 2016 05:58
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Nuclear weapons have a great ROI as a deterrent to major wars. Then Armageddon happens and they go max negative.
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May 3, 2016 06:08
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Jaramin posted:The B29 could fly at 9000 meters, and generally did not do so so that the payload could be accurately delivered. No german or japanese fighter could operate that high, so they'd have to rely on flak guns. For a nuclear warhead, accuracy is less important, so if fighter screen was too heavy the allies would have just dropped the bombs from too high for the Germans to reach. Uh the fighters could just shoot the bomb. Duh!
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May 3, 2016 12:37
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Platystemon posted:Nuclear weapons have a great ROI as a deterrent to major wars. This is known as the "Gandhi Effect."
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May 3, 2016 13:14
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xthetenth posted:Getting going earlier and having the lead in rearmament was a big help in the early years. Having the experience from big war games helped win Poland, experience from Poland helped win France, and experience from France helped them get a long way into Russia. They used the invasion of Czechoslovakia to test their new secret weapon (shaped charge grenades) against fortifications, to see how they would have fared against the Maginot line Another myth we got from the endless stream of media about WWII: when you think Nazi Germany, you can probably hear the roar of heavy trucks and massive panzers in your head, because they "invented" modern, mechanized warfare, right? The reality is that their logistics were largely based on horse drawn carriages Shai-Hulud posted:Uh the fighters could just shoot the bomb. Duh! I know you're joking (there was no way back then to even aim weapons at such a small target as a single bomb, and if there was any chance they might have, the Americans would have just dropped a lot of inert decoys), but any kind of serious damage to a nuclear bomb completely disables it. They're precision mechanisms tuned to millionths of a second, anything that sends them out of sync or alignment can turn a doomsday device into a minor toxic spill
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May 3, 2016 13:38
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None of this dub-dubya too chat is fun, and most of it is speculation, which is not fact. I've always been intrigued by the biography of Ivar the Boneless. By all accounts a capable warrior, he founded the Uí Ímair dynasty and by most accounts killed a bunch of dudes. Why is he called "boneless?" Nobody knows for sure! Maybe it was a metaphor for his agility in combat. Maybe it was a snake reference, as one of his brothers was named Sigurd Snake-in-the-eye. Maybe he had some sort of birth defect or genetic disorder that made him floppy-boned. Maybe he had withered legs, or no legs at all. The history of the Vikings tends to be very poorly recorded. Lots of authors were biased, as they were usually the raidees to the Vikings' raiders. The Vikings themselves didn't write a whole lot, and often embellished their stories to include superhuman and supernatural elements. It's very difficult to sort out the facts, and so the best history we have about these very influential people who almost certainly actually existed is still often only about as "real" as your average Greek myth.
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May 3, 2016 14:34
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FreudianSlippers posted:Technically speaking Canada is 100% British. I think I can hear René Lévesque spinning in his grave.
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May 3, 2016 15:12
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dobbymoodge posted:None of this dub-dubya too chat is fun, and most of it is speculation, which is not fact. Very well, here are some fun facts about the V-rocket programme and how the Brits dealt with them. The V-1 rockets were basically just simple cruise missiles, and could be shoot down though not with 100% success. The RAF devised a different countermeasure. Their solution was for particularly insane pilots to fly alongside them and use their plane's wings to flip them over, at which point the V-1's internal guidance system would go haywire and it would crash. The V-2 rockets were more difficult; as they were parabolic it was virtually impossible to intercept them. So the solution? Leak information to the Nazis that they were overshooting London, so that they erroneously fix their guidance systems and most of them land in the countryside. This wasn't too difficult, as by that point every single Nazi agent in Britain had become a double-agent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-Cross_System Also, have a song about Werner von Braun. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro
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May 3, 2016 15:33
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I think the guy who got a boner whenever a V2 launched probably helped too.
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May 3, 2016 15:55
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A Fancy 400 lbs posted:I think the guy who got a boner whenever a V2 launched probably helped too. Nicely done! Speaking of Thomas Pynchon, the man's a notorious recluse. No one outside of his social circle really knows what he looks like anymore. His only three confirmed public appearances have been on The Simpsons, where he's drawn with a bag over his head. He even rewrote sections of the script for one of the episodes he was in because he considers Homer his role model and couldn't speak ill of him.
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May 3, 2016 18:12
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Josef bugman posted:On the subject of Mongol Chat, we have to remember that some of the "Mongols" who sacked Baghdad had most likely never actually seen Mongolia. It was the succesor states to Ghengis and his immediate heirs who tried to expand to such a ludicrous degree that "universal conquest" seemed like more of a prediction and less of a goal. It's kinda hard to overstate how much the Mongols hated the Chinese. The legal system in the Mongol Empire looked not only at the crime itself but the difference in station between the victim and the criminal (not uncommon but here it was written into the laws themselves) and the Chinese were a little above goats and sheep. So stepping on the threshold of a khan's yurt could get you executed but killing a Chinese farmer would get you a fine at most.
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May 3, 2016 20:43
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FreudianSlippers posted:Technically speaking Canada is 100% British. In what way? There are a lot of events you could point to as Canadian independence. The last legal link to Britain was removed with the patriation of the constitution in 1982. Canada and a number of other Commonwealth countries stopped having Britain involved in their legislative process with the Statute of Winchester in 1931. The British North America Act (this was the primary constitutional document at the time) was the last piece of legislation that required British assent. Canada and it's provinces couldn't get their poo poo together and agree on how to manage amendments of the BNA, so they left a requirement for British consent with regards to just that legislation. The constitution was renegotiated between Canada and the provinces in 1982. The new constitution included a domestic system for amendment. British institutions stopped being the final courts of appeal in the thirties and forties. The statute also effectively created separate national monarchies. While Elizabeth II is Queen of Canada and the Queen of the United Kingdom, they are distinct offices. Canadian citizenship was pretty hand-wavey until the 40s
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May 3, 2016 20:56
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Fact: this is loving adorable and  quote:In 1929, 75-year-old Prince Franz I succeeded to the throne [of Liechenstein]. Franz had just married Elisabeth von Gutmann, a woman from Vienna, who was wealthy because her father was a Jewish businessman from Moravia. Although Liechtenstein had no official Nazi party, a Nazi sympathy movement arose within its National Union party. Local Liechtenstein Nazis identified Elisabeth as their Jewish "problem". It's like an Onion article. "Liechenstein Nazis agitate over country's singular 'Jewish problem'".
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May 3, 2016 21:05
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:Fact: this is loving adorable and "The Lichtenstein branch of the Global Jewish Conspiracy is that person right over there!"
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May 4, 2016 09:04
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Plucky Brit posted:Very well, here are some fun facts about the V-rocket programme and how the Brits dealt with them. I feel like this deserves a bit of expansion: V-2s would land vertically at 3 times the speed of sound. They weren't just impossible to intercept, they were impossible to detect. I was saying earlier that it was impossible to aim weapons at such a small and fast target, back then. Well it turns out they actually calculated the odds!   The book later reports a story of a B-24 gunner shooting down a V-2 that had just taken off, but the Smithsonian's Air&Space Magazine looked into it, and it's probably a tall tale, an exaggeration of the poorly documented but plausible downing of a V-1 by a B-24 gunner
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May 4, 2016 10:24
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