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Nebakenezzer posted:Really? drat, I have to read that book.  etc...
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May 10, 2016 18:18
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Calvin Johnson Jr. posted: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? I have no resources but it's more due to the Soviet command being absolutely poo poo/negligent to begin with, than any particular tactics of the Finns.
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May 10, 2016 18:19
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I think people tend to really look at things the wrong way. It's not 'what could all these invading armies do to succeed at taking out Russia', it's actually 'what did the successful Russian armies/leaders do right to be neigh on undefeatable'. This generally boils down to maintaining the unity and morale of the country despite multiple heavy setbacks, and never ever giving up and going to the negotiating table no matter how grim things look. That's a pretty strong combination.
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May 10, 2016 18:24
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Ignoring Kievan Rus, think the closest Russia came to being conquered from its west was by Poland-Lithuania during its Time of Troubles.
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May 10, 2016 18:33
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Xerxes17 posted:I have no resources but it's more due to the Soviet command being absolutely poo poo/negligent to begin with, than any particular tactics of the Finns. The idea was that the Red Army would march in and the workers and peasants of Finland would overthrow their oppressors and everything would be over quickly. And then the opposite happened. The Red Army had no experience with such large operations in terrain like that, it's pretty interesting to read about reports from commanders writing how they would rather have no tank support at all than a battalion that clogs up their roads and makes it impossible to supply infantry.
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May 10, 2016 18:42
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For whoever wanted a book on it I remember Trotter's "frozen hell" being good. Disclaimer: I read it as an undergrad a decade ago.
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May 10, 2016 18:47
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Did the Nazis ever seriously consider invading Sweden? My currently poorly backed-up understanding is that Sweden stayed "neutral" because it allowed some under-the-table shenanigans like secret Nazi rail troop transports through the country and it was happy to sell the Germans steel.
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May 10, 2016 18:54
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Fangz posted:I think people tend to really look at things the wrong way. It's not 'what could all these invading armies do to succeed at taking out Russia', it's actually 'what did the successful Russian armies/leaders do right to be neigh on undefeatable'. This generally boils down to maintaining the unity and morale of the country despite multiple heavy setbacks, and never ever giving up and going to the negotiating table no matter how grim things look. That's a pretty strong combination. So some sort of inhuman creatures that can endure not only Russian winters, but also Russian leadership?
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May 10, 2016 19:03
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david_a posted:Did the Nazis ever seriously consider invading Sweden? My currently poorly backed-up understanding is that Sweden stayed "neutral" because it allowed some under-the-table shenanigans like secret Nazi rail troop transports through the country and it was happy to sell the Germans steel. Well, they could see what had happened to, y'know, the entire rest of the Nordic world when they got in the way of the big boys. Given they were therefore willing not to give the Nazis a hard time, why invade them?
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May 10, 2016 19:27
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Ensign Expendable posted:The idea was that the Red Army would march in and the workers and peasants of Finland would overthrow their oppressors and everything would be over quickly. Hmm, now why does that sound familiar... 
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May 10, 2016 20:04
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pthighs posted:Hmm, now why does that sound familiar... https://gifsound.com/?gif=i.imgur.com/eSOTXo1.jpg&v=F4LYes4fH4Y
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May 10, 2016 20:12
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david_a posted:Did the Nazis ever seriously consider invading Sweden? My currently poorly backed-up understanding is that Sweden stayed "neutral" because it allowed some under-the-table shenanigans like secret Nazi rail troop transports through the country and it was happy to sell the Germans steel. They did at several times, last serious plans were made around 1943. I have a book somewhere in my apartment about the subject, if you want more detail I can look it up.
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May 10, 2016 20:16
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david_a posted:Did the Nazis ever seriously consider invading Sweden? My currently poorly backed-up understanding is that Sweden stayed "neutral" because it allowed some under-the-table shenanigans like secret Nazi rail troop transports through the country and it was happy to sell the Germans steel. Didn't Churchill want to invade Sweden?
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May 10, 2016 20:17
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sullat posted:Didn't Churchill want to invade Sweden? Where didn't he?
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May 10, 2016 20:21
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I like to think back during the 2nd World War when he was having meetings there was a map carried by an annoyed army staff officer with clearly marked places he couldn't invade, Turkey of course having the biggest red cross over it. Also, I just discovered dynamite guns. What. Why?!
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May 10, 2016 20:27
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SeanBeansShako posted:Also, I just discovered dynamite guns. What. Why?! Because the 19th century was a weird, weird time for military technology.
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May 10, 2016 20:30
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SeanBeansShako posted:I like to think back during the 2nd World War when he was having meetings there was a map carried by an annoyed army staff officer with clearly marked places he couldn't invade, Turkey of course having the biggest red cross over it. Explains why dynamite is a preq for artillery.
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May 10, 2016 20:32
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SeanBeansShako posted:I like to think back during the 2nd World War when he was having meetings there was a map carried by an annoyed army staff officer with clearly marked places he couldn't invade, Turkey of course having the biggest red cross over it. Y'know, in the spring of 1941, Life magazine was trying to predict where the Nazis would invade next. All the military experts agreed: Turkey was gonna get invaded/co-opted, so German forces would have a direct route to Iraq and mideast oil. (I know the Soviets guaranteed Turkish neutrality; I just reports 'em.)
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May 10, 2016 20:37
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Calvin Johnson Jr. posted: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? Here's a lecture on the subject that I remember as being pretty good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUl4C0VvN5k
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May 10, 2016 20:56
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So why have countries like Sweden and Switzerland been able to maintain their neutrality, even being in the middle of two massive World Wars? Are there other countries that have managed this? It seems weird that you can just be like "Nope, I'm not interested" and you wont' get invaded at some point.
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May 10, 2016 20:59
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pthighs posted:So why have countries like Sweden and Switzerland been able to maintain their neutrality, even being in the middle of two massive World Wars? Are there other countries that have managed this? It seems weird that you can just be like "Nope, I'm not interested" and you wont' get invaded at some point. Switzerland would be a gigantic pain in the arse to invade, geographically speaking. That and the Nazis needed someone to take care of all their NAZI GOOOOOOOOOOOOOLD
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May 10, 2016 21:04
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And why invade Spain? It has fascist government already!
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May 10, 2016 21:10
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MikeCrotch posted: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. Actually I have a question. Most of us i this thread know in pretty good detail about the Nazi plan for Eastern Europe due to General Plan Ost. What was the German Empire's plan for Eastern Europe after WWI? Like, let's say the managed to win or enter into a peace treaty with the allies after the Brent-Litovsk treaty. What then? A bunch of states ruled by German princes? What of Russia? I can't imagine the German Empire would allow the Communists to rule for very long.
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May 10, 2016 21:10
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pthighs posted:So why have countries like Sweden and Switzerland been able to maintain their neutrality, even being in the middle of two massive World Wars? Are there other countries that have managed this? It seems weird that you can just be like "Nope, I'm not interested" and you wont' get invaded at some point. As for WWII, I believe it was somehow implied that if we didn't sell the Nazis the iron ore they desperately wanted, they'd invade and take it by force. If that were to happen, the mines would most likely be completely destroyed by Allied bombing raids (British diplomats made this very clear as early as '39). I guess it didn't seem like much of a choice for the government back then.
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May 10, 2016 21:15
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Neutral countries provided valuable trading partners given the Allied domination of the sea. It was the same for Holland in WW1 and the British did their best to try to squeeze them for that.
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May 10, 2016 21:18
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Cyrano4747 posted:For whoever wanted a book on it I remember Trotter's "frozen hell" being good. I read it in high school two decades ago and thought it was good, so I'll give it my even more questionable endorsement.
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May 10, 2016 21:23
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SeanBeansShako posted:And why invade Spain? It has fascist government already! That didn't stop greece getting invaded, though. EDIT: Though I guess that's Italy being insane rather than Germany.
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May 10, 2016 21:24
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pthighs posted:So why have countries like Sweden and Switzerland been able to maintain their neutrality, even being in the middle of two massive World Wars? Are there other countries that have managed this? It seems weird that you can just be like "Nope, I'm not interested" and you wont' get invaded at some point. Sweden and Switzerland have had multi-generational self-esteem problems because nobody cared enough about them to invade them.
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May 10, 2016 21:30
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sullat posted:Didn't Churchill want to invade Sweden? Yes, he supported invading Narvik, Norway and Kiruna, Sweden. But he wasn't alone in this, the British and French governments really wanted to capture Kiruna to stop iron deliveries to Germany, oh and I suppose also send some support to Finland. For some reason the Allies thought Norway and Sweden would not have resisted such action. Most likely they would have, however, and crossing mountains during winter against willing defenders who are trained for that kind of terrain and climate is never a winning prospect. Finnish government however refused to invite the help, seeing that it wouldn't have helped a bit against Soviets. Still the threat of an Allied intervention was helpful in itself, as Stalin felt that it was time to wrap the campaign and open diplomatic channels with Finland again.
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May 10, 2016 21:47
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pthighs posted:So why have countries like Sweden and Switzerland been able to maintain their neutrality, even being in the middle of two massive World Wars? Are there other countries that have managed this? It seems weird that you can just be like "Nope, I'm not interested" and you wont' get invaded at some point. A combination of luck and not being strategically important enough that the benefits of invading outweighed the costs, in the eyes of potential invaders. It also helps if neither side believes the other side is going to take you over anyway, which might otherwise prompt a preemptive invasion (Iceland by the Allies, Norway by Germany). In WW2 Europe, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and Belgium all attempted to remain neutral until invaded by the Germans in 1940, and Finland did the same before the Soviet invasion in 1939. In the case of the Low Countries they were basically in the way of the German armies invading France (for Belgium this was the case in WW1 as well), whereas Norway wasn't on the way to anything but was instead deemed strategically important for giving the Germans better access to the Atlantic. Additionally the Germans wanted to preempt the Western Allies establishing their own presence there, which from the German perspective seemed pretty likely - they knew the Allies would like to cut off the supply of Swedish iron ore coming through Narvik, and there had been Allied incursions into Norwegian territorial waters and other incidents that made it seem like the Norwegians were unwilling and/or unable to stop this from happening. Denmark was invaded as part of the Norwegian invasion, more or less as an afterthought. There wasn't really any reason for the Germans to invade Sweden as well at that point; if nothing else it would have tied up more manpower and other resources that were needed to fight the French and British on the continent, and it would certainly have disrupted the iron ore trade for quite some time. The invasion of Norway was itself a pretty big gamble on the part of the Germans and one that quite possibly could have ended in disaster for them if they had been less lucky. After the fall of France, Sweden acquiesced to most important German demands anyway, and wasn't in a position to do anything, so why bother invading? Even then there were plans made for invading in 1943 that were scrapped only after the assigned units had to be diverted to the East. As for Switzerland, going through it to get to France would have been pretty stupid compared to the alternative options, and once France had fallen, why would you bother invading when it's completely surrounded by either you or your closest ally? Alekanderu fucked around with this message at 22:03 on May 10, 2016 |
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May 10, 2016 21:53
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Cyrano4747 posted:For whoever wanted a book on it I remember Trotter's "frozen hell" being good. That book is filled of errors, and it's very one sided. Finland at War: The Winter War 1939-40 is newer, written by Finns and published by Osprey. I have't read it, but it also looks one sided. Though I think that it at least has fewer errors than the Frozen Hell. Those same authors are also writing another book that's about the Continuation War and the Lapland War, ie. what Finland did in the WWII after the Winter War. Ha, looks like that it's been published already: Finland at War: the Continuation and Lapland Wars 1941-45 Hogge Wild fucked around with this message at 22:07 on May 10, 2016 |
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May 10, 2016 21:59
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pthighs posted:So why have countries like Sweden and Switzerland been able to maintain their neutrality, even being in the middle of two massive World Wars? Are there other countries that have managed this? It seems weird that you can just be like "Nope, I'm not interested" and you wont' get invaded at some point. Geography. Also stability and political unity - Switzerland might not be ethnically united but they have a pretty long history of sticking together so outsiders couldn't take advantage of their internal differences. Denmark and Norway managed to stay out of WW1 but didn't do as well in WW2, perhaps because Germans thought that Norway being a 'neutral ally' played a large role in allowing the blockade in WW1 to happen, but also because they were alarmed by Allied plans to invade Narvik and Kiruna.
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May 10, 2016 21:59
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iirc Switzerland has had a draft for a long time, the country is all mountains, and they have a national policy of neutrality. No one invades Switzerland because it would be difficult and pointless.
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May 10, 2016 22:05
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Elyv posted:iirc Switzerland has had a draft for a long time, the country is all mountains, and they have a national policy of neutrality. No one invades Switzerland because it would be difficult and pointless. Most of the people and the economic activity etc in Switzerland is (and was) in the northern part of the country, which isn't that mountainous. Sure, attacking the actual Alps would be a nightmare, but the "it's all mountains!" thing is a bit overblown. Although I suppose if you're content to only take over the more easily conquered parts, you'd still have to maintain plenty of active forces just to contain the Swiss army while it's holed up in its National Redoubt. Alekanderu fucked around with this message at 22:16 on May 10, 2016 |
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May 10, 2016 22:10
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100 Years Ago 2nd of May: Two British inventors invent the self-propelled gun, but (spoilers!) little do they realise it's actually going to end up being used as something else; the Brits fend off French attempts to attack at Salonika; we meet our old friend Arthur Agius at Funky Villas, off to the north of the Somme; E.S. Thompson continues to put Jeremy Clarkson to shame in the "driving inappropriate vehicles across Africa" stakes; Robert Pelissier has dinner with a chaplain; and Maximilian Mugge gets a good and proper grognarding lesson from a true expert. 3rd of May: The Belgians invade Ruanda. Well, actually, it's the brutal Force Publique who are doing the actual attacking, but it's funnier to say "The Belgians are coming!" In the air over Verdun, tactics continue evolving at a mile a minute; below them, General Petain is presented with a nice shiny medal in front of (among others) Louis Barthas, who takes it about as well as you'd expect. E.S. Thompson abandons his car (no comedy substitute Reo Speedwagon vehicle, though); Malcolm White is determined to expose himself to his men while in the trenches (chortle chortle); and Maximilian Mugge prepares to face a Travelling Medical Board while also being surprised that soldiers partake in rather odd drinking rituals. Solaris 2.0 posted:Actually I have a question. Most of us i this thread know in pretty good detail about the Nazi plan for Eastern Europe due to General Plan Ost. What was the German Empire's plan for Eastern Europe after WWI? Like, let's say the managed to win or enter into a peace treaty with the allies after the Brent-Litovsk treaty. What then? A bunch of states ruled by German princes? Pretty much what you just said. It never got far enough to see what might have happened next, but I'm assuming fun and games for all the family, as long as you define "fun and games" as "fleeing a partisan uprising". quote:What of Russia? I can't imagine the German Empire would allow the Communists to rule for very long. Assuming that France demobilised (or at least moved the army back home to combat civil unrest) in our Straight Black Kaiser timeline, you might even see German Empire and British Empire forces both supporting the White Russians in the Russian civil war. God only knows how the German Empire would have transitioned back to peace-time government from the wartime undeclared military dictatorship, or whether they'd have even tried to. The really interesting factor at play here that you probably haven't even thought of is what happens off to the south. We'll assume for the moment that the Spring Offensive causes a major Entente collapse and there's an armistice on the Western Front on May 1 1918, and everyone on every other front basically freezes in place a few days later. The situation now is basically that everyone is all up in everyone else's poo poo (spoilers!) At this time, you have the British, French and Belgian Empires controlling all of Germany's colonial holdings in Africa; Germany has presumably overrun all of Belgium and northern France; Austria-Hungary is balls deep into Italy, at the gates of Venice; and, with Bulgaria, is occupying most of Serbia/Albania/Montenegro; Romania is going to regain its independence but on terms that will force it to economically align with the Central Powers; Greece is under the effective control of Eleftherios Venizelos but there's hella unrest brewing over the way in which he took power; the British empire is in Jerusalem; but the Ottoman Empire is in a lot of what used to be Russian Empire holdings in the Caucasus, trying to figure out a political settlement with a lot of people who it may or may not have been trying to genocide for the last three years. Oh, and there's a lot of tooled-up Americans wandering around trying to work out what they should do next and who they can kill to avenge their mates. Both the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires are wobbling ominously, but neither has collapsed. Good luck sorting all that out! I predict, with full optimist's hat on, a major regional conflict within two years and some kind of major kerfuffle within five. But that's a story best told by someone who's doing a Paradox Games LP; it probably ends in about 1939 with the Combined Soviet of France and Iberia facing off against the Union of Central Europe.
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May 11, 2016 00:11
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Elyv posted:Ignoring Kievan Rus, think the closest Russia came to being conquered from its west was by Poland-Lithuania during its Time of Troubles. Just imagine a Commonwealth that could utilize not just a modest pile of expendable Ukrainians, but All The Expendable Russians.  We'd be talking about the Partition of Germany between France and Megapoland.
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May 11, 2016 00:58
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Poland missing its time in the sun is one of the biggest tragedies of Europe. Why must everyone ever poo poo on Poland? I'm looking at you Teutonic Knights, Russia, Prussia, Sweden, Germany, etc.
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May 11, 2016 01:07
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OfficialGBSCaliph posted:Where didn't he? It should be noted that while Churchill was probably a useful "wartime" PM, the country shitcanned him ASAP after the war. Suffice it to say he was the kind of person who got a hard-on reading Kipling.
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May 11, 2016 01:47
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Endman posted:Poland missing its time in the sun is one of the biggest tragedies of Europe. Designing a too-easily gamed political system was probably a mistake. I always enjoy taking Poland on a romp through the middle-ages in CK, just to see what they could have accomplished with an omniscient sociopath running the show.
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May 11, 2016 03:17
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Endman posted:Poland missing its time in the sun is one of the biggest tragedies of Europe.
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