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i love world war 1 aviation so bad, some of my earliest memories involve reading about it as a child
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May 10, 2016 06:21
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I really liked Biggles but in terms of actual reading around the subject I've done very little - can you recommend some books?
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May 10, 2016 07:31
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since i was literally six, my recommendation would be "whatever books from the literal 1920s you can find in the library of a decently-sized Catholic elementary school," thanks and god bless
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May 10, 2016 08:04
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Deteriorata posted:They had sights, quadrants, levels, trig tables and lots of other stuff for aiming them. Artillery had been around for hundreds of years by then, so it was a pretty sophisticated operation. Here's the handbook of artillery from 1863:
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May 10, 2016 08:20
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HEY GAL posted:since i was literally six, my recommendation would be "whatever books from the literal 1920s you can find in the library of a decently-sized Catholic elementary school," thanks and god bless That's weirdly identical to my exposure to it as well. Edit: 10 Beers posted:Currently catching up on the final entry, but I just wanted to say thank you very much for all of this. This has been one of my favorite reads from this thread. Thanks man. I enjoyed writing them. Currently hunting through likely sources for his opinions on the Second World War (which I suspect were not so pacifist), but that will be a long process, there's only so many issues of peace news I can read in a day before I lose the will to live. lenoon fucked around with this message at 08:31 on May 10, 2016 |
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May 10, 2016 08:27
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lenoon posted:That's weirdly identical to my exposure to it as well
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May 10, 2016 08:30
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HEY GAL posted:since i was literally six, my recommendation would be "whatever books from the literal 1920s you can find in the library of a decently-sized Catholic elementary school," thanks and god bless There are a few of these at Project Gutenberg.
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May 10, 2016 08:46
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echopapa posted:There are a few of these at Project Gutenberg.
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May 10, 2016 09:31
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There was a recent movie about Allied fighter pilots in WWI where every single German plane was a red-painted triple decker and I'm still angry about it. How stupid do they think people are?
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May 10, 2016 09:34
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:This isn't actually true. The problem was that there just weren't enough Germans to meet the manpower demands of the armed forces and the industries needed to keep the armed forces going. From 1941 onwards, apart from some rationalizations, most of the expansion of Germany's industrial capacity came from either exploiting the industrial output of occupied Europe, or from an ever increasing slave labor force. Thank you for calling me out on this; I was misinformed. xthetenth posted:I mentioned this earlier but I strongly doubt the Germans could have rolled over Moscow in its entirety, a city like that is very hard to totally take even in the face of relatively light opposition, as Stalingrad shows. This is true. Even if they had, in some implausibly amazing way, done so, Russia would never have surrendered. In a country so vast, with its industrial capacity safely tucked away beyond the Urals, I don't think Moscow would have mattered as much as the Nazis thought. Paris will always be the point at which you can strike France in coup de grace fashion because it has an immense cultural association with everything it means to be French. On the other hand, Moscow burnt when Napoleon arrived while the army retreated into Russia's infinite space, leading him to give up and go home. Hitler probably would have found it to be another Stalingrad or Leningrad. Speaking of, has anyone successfully invaded Russia?
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May 10, 2016 09:49
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Endman posted:Thank you for calling me out on this; I was misinformed. The weird thing about looking at alternatives to what the Nazis did is that a great many of the alternate plans that could have worked out better for them for totally ruled out by the ideology of Nazism itself. For example, one of the biggest things they could have done in the East would have been to treat the populations of Ukraine and other recently occupied parts of the USSR with decency, as there was certainly an undercurrent of anti-Soviet sentiment in these areas that could be tapped. Of course [ulr=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost]Generalplan Ost[/url] made it abundantly clear what was in store for anyone who did not resist, and the Germans are having to deal with partisans in their rear for the remainder of the war. And the entire reason they went East is to enact Generalplan Ost, so you end up back at the situation where there are very few avenues the Germans could have gone down that actually took into account the reasons they went to war in the first place. As for taking Moscow it would have been a much bigger deal if the Nazis could have taken it than it was for Napoleon, since Moscow wasn't even the capital in Napoleon's day, St Petersburg was. Moscow in WWII was the transportation hub for pretty much the entire Soviet railway network, and Stalin had decided to continue ruling from the city and not flee, so it might have been possible to decapitate the Soviet government. But of course this all ignores the fact that there was no way the Germans could have taken the city with the military they had left at that point. Best case they manage to get a bit further into the city before pulling back in the face of Zhukov's counteroffensive. Worst case, a significant portion of Army Group Centre is surrounded there and then if von Kluge did what Paulus did at Stalingrad, and pour his reserves and flank protection into taking the city. Endman posted:Speaking of, has anyone successfully invaded Russia? Russia has been militarily defeated plenty of times in its history - WWI and the Mongols are two examples that spring to mind. MikeCrotch fucked around with this message at 10:15 on May 10, 2016 |
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May 10, 2016 10:10
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HEY GAL posted:since i was literally six, my recommendation would be "whatever books from the literal 1920s you can find in the library of a decently-sized Catholic elementary school," thanks and god bless I read a tonne of Sherlock Holmes at about that age (or a little older), it did very strange things to grade school me's vocabulary.
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May 10, 2016 10:35
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:This isn't actually true. The problem was that there just weren't enough Germans to meet the manpower demands of the armed forces and the industries needed to keep the armed forces going. From 1941 onwards, apart from some rationalizations, most of the expansion of Germany's industrial capacity came from either exploiting the industrial output of occupied Europe, or from an ever increasing slave labor force. Hmm...it was the case that they were more reluctant than the Allies at first to put women to work, though, wasn't it, because kinder kuche kirche etc? I don't recall a Nazi equivalent to Rosie the Riveter.
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May 10, 2016 10:48
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MikeCrotch posted:Russia has been militarily defeated plenty of times in its history - WWI and the Mongols are two examples that spring to mind. Militarily defeated, sure, but actually invaded successfully relatively few times. The Mongols are a good example though. I guess the key to success is to come from the other direction 
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May 10, 2016 10:55
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The Mongols invaded before what we would now consider Russia existed.
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May 10, 2016 11:06
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Endman posted:Militarily defeated, sure, but actually invaded successfully relatively few times. The Mongols are a good example though. I think you're meaning "conquered", not "invaded". There are plenty of invasions of Russia at the end of which Russia was defeated: we do tend to forget that Russia didn't win the Crimean War, for example.
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May 10, 2016 11:06
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Endman posted:Militarily defeated, sure, but actually invaded successfully relatively few times. The Mongols are a good example though. Be careful with your definitions. What is a successful invasion? Mongols didn't occupy all of Russia, for example the vast Novgorod Republic in the north was left alone because of distance. Novgorod still paid tributes to Mongols. German success in WW1 east front isn't far off, they got to define their own very harsh terms in the treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Had Central Powers also achieved peace in the west, they could have had hegemony over eastern Europe just like the Mongols.
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May 10, 2016 11:14
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Polyakov posted:There are a few odd things about how the nazi economy worked that would have made it difficult to amp up production earlier in the war, while it certainly would have helped I don't think they had the potential to make a huge difference. This was a really interesting post. Were these numbers from the Wages of Destruction?
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May 10, 2016 11:16
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Cyrano4747 posted:While we're on the subject of music the party song of the East German socialist party might be the best thing ever. It is SOOO wonderfully blunt. The chorus is "the Party, the Party, it is always right" One verse is, I poo poo you not, "Given spirit by Lenin, welded together by Stalin, the party, the party, the party!"
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May 10, 2016 11:16
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Nude Bog Lurker posted:I think you're meaning "conquered", not "invaded". There are plenty of invasions of Russia at the end of which Russia was defeated: we do tend to forget that Russia didn't win the Crimean War, for example. Nenonen posted:Be careful with your definitions. What is a successful invasion? Mongols didn't occupy all of Russia, for example the vast Novgorod Republic in the north was left alone because of distance. Novgorod still paid tributes to Mongols. German success in WW1 east front isn't far off, they got to define their own very harsh terms in the treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Had Central Powers also achieved peace in the west, they could have had hegemony over eastern Europe just like the Mongols. Excellent points. I suppose I do mean conquered rather than invaded.
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May 10, 2016 11:28
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The Russian Empire was partially or wholly ruled by a German noblewoman at least twice.
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May 10, 2016 11:50
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cheerfullydrab posted:The Russian Empire was partially or wholly ruled by a German noblewoman at least twice. Roman empire was partially ruled by a horse once.
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May 10, 2016 11:53
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Nenonen posted:Roman empire was partially ruled by a horse once. Only if you believe Suetonius, and even then he wasn't actually made a senator.
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May 10, 2016 11:54
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Nenonen posted:Roman empire was partially ruled by a horse once. Funnily enough, your sentence and the one you quoted have a certain intersection.
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May 10, 2016 11:59
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Endman posted:Excellent points. I suppose I do mean conquered rather than invaded. I'm getting the impression that you're basing a lot of military history knowledge on WWII, which is a big outlier in terms of a lot of things and a poor example for how wars are generally fought. Most wars are and have not been fought with the aim of physically conquering an entire country and totally destroying it - there are a bunch of factors like the huge industrialised armies used in WWII, ideological factors and the call for unconditional surrender that led to Germany attemping total conquest of the USSR and then the Allies being forced to fully occupy Germany. In the vast majority of cases wars are fought for a specific aim, with one side calling for peace when they feel like they have had enough. Exactly when this point is depends on the war in question, the time period and the nation fighting it, but you almost never see one country fighting another to the death in the way I think you are describing. Even in your description of Napoleon failing to conquer Russia, he wasn't trying to occupy the entire country - he wanted Russia to capitulate and stop flaunting the Continental System, but could not win a victory over the Russian army and force them to terms before weather and logistics forced his withdrawal. At no point was he trying to conquer the entire country like Germany was in 1941.
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May 10, 2016 11:59
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feedmegin posted:Only if you believe Suetonius, and even then he wasn't actually made a senator. drat glass staircase! 
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May 10, 2016 12:03
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MikeCrotch posted:In the vast majority of cases wars are fought for a specific aim, with one side calling for peace when they feel like they have had enough. Exactly when this point is depends on the war in question, the time period and the nation fighting it, but you almost never see one country fighting another to the death in the way I think you are describing. Except for Hearts of Iron
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May 10, 2016 12:17
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Hogge Wild posted:This was a really interesting post. Were these numbers from the Wages of Destruction? Mostly so yes, its a fantastic book, i did pull some from The Economics of World War II as well.
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May 10, 2016 14:20
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Polyakov posted:Mostly so yes, its a fantastic book, i did pull some from The Economics of World War II as well. I really need to read it.
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May 10, 2016 14:23
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It's worth mentioning that Muscovy's conquest of what we now call Russia took hundreds of years. Expecting it all to be taken in one fell swoop is a stretch to say the least. There were plenty of successful invasions of Russia (let's say starting with Ivan IV). The long series of wars against the Polish (Nobody cares about Lithuania after the union sorry) saw Pskov change hands a number of times, plus the wars against the Swedish saw Russian territory transfer to their hands, like in the Ingrian War.
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May 10, 2016 14:33
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feedmegin posted:Hmm...it was the case that they were more reluctant than the Allies at first to put women to work, though, wasn't it, because kinder kuche kirche etc? I don't recall a Nazi equivalent to Rosie the Riveter. Yeah, Nazi ideology actually forbade it. Germany might be the only country that didn't extensively use (German) women in the workforce in World War 2.
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May 10, 2016 15:23
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cheerfullydrab posted:There was a recent movie about Allied fighter pilots in WWI where every single German plane was a red-painted triple decker and I'm still angry about it. How stupid do they think people are? Ah yes, Flyboys. The Red Tails of WW1.
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May 10, 2016 15:36
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Thanqol posted:How did people accurately aim ACW era cannons? Were there sights? Did they whip out protractors and do some envelope math? Were they just really used to how their cannons worked? If we're talking about field artillery (eg, the wheeled guns towed about by horses), it was sort of a mix of all of these. The basic unit of action was a battery which was anywhere from 4 to 10 guns; within a battery you had sections which were usually 2-4 guns. The battery commander took fire direction orders either from the artillery battalion/brigade, or from the maneuver commander he was supporting, and he'd then pass targets down to his respective sections. An artillery lieutenant was in charge of the section, and he was basically responsible for directing the fire of his guns. The biggest issue then as now with artillery was determining range. Guns at this time were almost always used for direct fire, which mean that the gunners could see their targets, so rangefinding was almost always done visually. There were a handful of telescopic ranged sights but these were fragile and had poor optics; the vast majority of rangefinding was done with simple leaf sights like this one:  You'd put it on an even surface like the top of a gun or an ammo box on your wagon or a rock or whatever, and then just slide the dealie until it lined up with the top of your target. This was surprisingly accurate if it was done properly, it is basically the same principle used in modern telescopic rifle sights:  (rangefinder in the lower left) Once you had a solid range estimate you'd calculate the kinematics of your shot using pretty much the same parameters we use today: type of ammo, size of the charge, elevation of the barrel. They didn't care too much about humidity, and minimally about wind as they were shooting at such short distances, but factors like visibility were obviously huge as they had to be able to see their targets to engage them. The gunners would have tables available for their respective guns that gave range solutions for a given distance and ammo, then they'd adjust their barrel elevation and choose the correct charge. Deflection was largely at the judgment of the user...it was fairly simply to determine direction as you just pretty much pointed the gun at your target, but windage adjustments were tricky and was pretty much up to individual judgment...they sometimes had windage tables but they were almost impossible to use in a scientific kind of way. You'd then load and shoot; ideally you had a observers stationed some distance away from your guns to watch the shot and see where it splashed, then give adjustments back to the gunners. The art:science ratio for artillery was much, much higher then than it is now. There were big variances between guns, even of the same type, so having a gunner who knew the personality of his particular section of guns was a big help. You also had pretty significant variances in ammunition and powder which you had to account for, so making the judgment calls on adjustments was a real seat-of-pants kind of operation. They also had to operate under fire with some regularity which is a rarity for modern gunners, you can imagine how getting shot at might affect your ability to use your rangefinding widget accurately.
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May 10, 2016 15:46
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Nebakenezzer posted:Yeah, Nazi ideology actually forbade it. Germany might be the only country that didn't extensively use (German) women in the workforce in World War 2. I don't have it on me, but Wages of Destruction goes into detail on how this wasn't actually true. IIRC the issues were that German women were involved in agriculture at a much higher rate than other countries (as people pointed out earlier) and thus not as involved in manufacturing, and that raw material shortages were often more of a bottleneck to production than labour was.
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May 10, 2016 16:04
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Endman posted:Militarily defeated, sure, but actually invaded successfully relatively few times. The Mongols are a good example though. I'd say the key to success is to expect it to be a big expensive slog with significant logistical difficulties and plan accordingly, rather than saying "gee, these estimates for the cost of a real war against Russia Iook awful high, can't I cut some corners on these logistical considerations if I just try and win really really fast?" It's not impossible to handle a Russian winter by any means; it's expensive in both manpower and money, logistically difficult, and brings the action to a virtual halt for a few months, but it's not inherently an inevitable destroyer of all non-Russian armies. But when you're also fighting for dominance over basically all of Europe and balancing a fragile political situation back home, spending the time and money necessary to deal with Russia properly is a risky proposition. Both Napoleon and Hitler solved that problem by betting on crushing Russia so quickly that they wouldn't need to bother with winter logistics, and when their grand gambles failed, their armies paid a harsh price for that unpreparedness.
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May 10, 2016 16:41
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JcDent posted:Except for Hearts of Iron But, importantly, not CK/EU/Vicky
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May 10, 2016 16:48
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Main Paineframe posted:I'd say the key to success is to expect it to be a big expensive slog with significant logistical difficulties and plan accordingly, rather than saying "gee, these estimates for the cost of a real war against Russia Iook awful high, can't I cut some corners on these logistical considerations if I just try and win really really fast?" It's not impossible to handle a Russian winter by any means; it's expensive in both manpower and money, logistically difficult, and brings the action to a virtual halt for a few months, but it's not inherently an inevitable destroyer of all non-Russian armies. But when you're also fighting for dominance over basically all of Europe and balancing a fragile political situation back home, spending the time and money necessary to deal with Russia properly is a risky proposition. Both Napoleon and Hitler solved that problem by betting on If there were no preparations that could let an army in Russia survive, that'd be pretty bad for the Russian army as well.
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May 10, 2016 17:55
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xthetenth posted:If there were no preparations that could let an army in Russia survive, that'd be pretty bad for the Russian army as well. Ah but you see Russians aren't actually humans, they're more like brute animals who can withstand conditions that would destroy actual people. (Source: Nazi generals, post-war)
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May 10, 2016 18:02
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MikeCrotch posted:I don't have it on me, but Wages of Destruction goes into detail on how this wasn't actually true. IIRC the issues were that German women were involved in agriculture at a much higher rate than other countries (as people pointed out earlier) and thus not as involved in manufacturing, and that raw material shortages were often more of a bottleneck to production than labour was. Really? drat, I have to read that book.
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May 10, 2016 18:03
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Can you guys give me a link to a good read about how hard the finns owned the russians in ww2? Mainly tactics and such. A decent documentary even?
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May 10, 2016 18:13
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