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cheerfullydrab posted:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Army_Balloon_Corps ... if he wasn't too busy thinking about how weird it is to even be reading your posts.
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Jul 18, 2016 17:03
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:The HYW ended with England completely ousted from the continent except for Calais and the Valois fully in control of the French crown. That is not war weariness, the French achieved their territorial and political aims. Yes, but it also ended in no sense with the English militarily crushed with soldiers in London. The English could have chosen to continue escalating the conflict. But the reality was that they couldn't afford to. The French's aims were to get the English to accept the situation, not to merely momentarily occupy most of the contested territory, and it was weariness and financial hardship that did that. The map at the war's end was not so militarily different from how the map looked at several points during the war.
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Jul 18, 2016 17:08
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I think the problem here is that you're using the term "war weariness" to describe two separate things: The lack of the sovereign's/government's will to keep fighting being one meaing, and the lack of the general population's will to keep fighting being the other meaning. They're pretty different in nature and how relevant they are at any particular moment. Might be worth pointing out which one of these you're specifically talking about.bewbies posted:Exports of manufactured goods actually weren't a big deal, there was something of a trade war between the two sides when the US raised tariffs early on in order to help pay for the war. That's why transatlantic trade on manufactured goods drop so sharply. That's interesting to know. Thanks.
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Jul 18, 2016 17:14
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If you're interested in actual military history around foreign involvement in the Civil War, you might be interested in the saga of the French/Danish/Confederate/Spanish/American/Japanese ship, Kotetsu. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_ironclad_K%C5%8Dtetsu Short version: French slyly get around their own restrictions on not messing with the Civil War by selling an advanced warship to the Confederates by way of pretending to sell the ship to the Danes. Ship arrives in North America conveniently in time for the war to end. Confederate captain sells ship to the Spanish in Cuba, who sell it to the Americans, who end up selling it to the Japanese. Funnily enough, it gets sold to the shogun's government right before they get overthrown by the new Meiji people, then used by Meiji forces against the last bits of the old regime in the Boshin War. Mostly though the history of the ship is getting sold and resold and causing lots of diplomatic arguments.
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Jul 18, 2016 17:14
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Cyrano4747 posted:Second men at war would be well aware of the stuff that DID indicate the guy you captured was into killing people like you. Strings of ears, bags of teeth, belts festooned with buttons from dead guys uniforms, all these say "kill me" a lot more than a piece of standard issue gear. Huh was this actually very common?
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Jul 18, 2016 17:26
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my dad posted:The opposite would be far, far more likely, considering it would change the narrative of the war from "Let's fight fellow Americans because reasons (admittedly pretty good and valid reasons)" to "Holy poo poo, foreign invaders!" Also holy poo poo British invasion would likely make a big change for the Irish, who were one of the groups least enthused about the war.
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Jul 18, 2016 17:31
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WW2 Data It's time for another Italian Explosive update. Today's update is the last of the Italian bombs, which includes some flares and non-HE examples. What 160kg bomb did they have to combat an underwater threat? What makes the 160kg H.E. bomb's tail unit different? What filling do Italian "Anti-Aircraft" bombs use? What bombs could be used with the 'Bomb Container'? Why did one type of flare use corrugated cardboard? All that and more at the blog!
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Jul 18, 2016 17:51
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Koramei posted:Huh was this actually very common? You hear odd tidbits here and there but I'm sure not as much as, say, ww2 pacific. I probably shouldn't have emphasized that as much but my larger point about these bring people very accustomed to brutality and violence stands. Something I should have mentioned though: all the well documented "trench clubs" and the like. Why would an engineers bayo be a totem of unconscionable brutality worthy of killing its owner on sight but a spiked mace not be?
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Jul 18, 2016 18:26
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:People for some reason like to claim that this is a thing but how many wars have been actually ended due to civilian casualties and weariness? Maybe you can make an argument that it was a factor in WWI after four years of constant blockade of a non-self sufficient nation, but the claim of civilians forcing the war to end is oft repeated with little evidence. Germany was bombed to rubble in WWII, as was Japan, and Russia. None of those countries surrendered. Similarly, military collapse forced the Confederacy's surrender, not popular weariness from the very effective blockade and shortages. Off the top of my head modern wars that stopped due to war weariness i would go for the Eastern front of WW1, the Russo-Japanese War, Vietnam and the Italian front of WW2, in those wars the countries weren't really defeated but the people ran out of patience for it. The italian one is a little more suspect because it was the King and some of the higher ups in the government rather than a popular uprising but had Mussolini been able to command the support of the people at large then I dont think that peace would have happened without the Allies standing in Rome.
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Jul 18, 2016 18:28
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It's important to remember that the Union army was built with a great cost, and the Union's economy was in the shitter for a significant stretch of the war and the value of the dollar was dropping like a rock at times, enough for Lincoln to be massively concerned about it. The huge army was unsustainable in the long run. Of course, the blockade of the Confederacy and eventually losing control of the Mississippi meant that the South was even more in the shitter than the Union, economically, but they were in a completely different kind of war than the Union was, existence-wise.
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Jul 18, 2016 18:38
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Cyrano4747 posted:Something I should have mentioned though: all the well documented "trench clubs" and the like. Why would an engineers bayo be a totem of unconscionable brutality worthy of killing its owner on sight but a spiked mace not be? I seem to remember the saw bayonet thing being in All quiet on the Western Front. The old guys take them from some replacements and say that some guy was caught with one and they found him with his eyes cut out, so the idea would be relatively old. I can't find it flipping through my physical copy and I can't find a free searchable version, does someone have one? Remarque seems to have gotten only one month of actual frontline service under his belt so this might be REMF scuttlebutt / something he heard from a friend of a friend who knew a guy who totally etc. I agree that between gas and trench clubs and whatnot being shocked and appalled by a bayonet seems strange.
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Jul 18, 2016 19:00
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aphid_licker posted:I seem to remember the saw bayonet thing being in All quiet on the Western Front. The old guys take them from some replacements and say that some guy was caught with one and they found him with his eyes cut out, so the idea would be relatively old. I can't find it flipping through my physical copy and I can't find a free searchable version, does someone have one? Remarque seems to have gotten only one month of actual frontline service under his belt so this might be REMF scuttlebutt / something he heard from a friend of a friend who knew a guy who totally etc. I agree that between gas and trench clubs and whatnot being shocked and appalled by a bayonet seems strange. quote:During the day we loaf about and make war on the rats. Ammunition and hand-grenades become more plentiful. We overhaul the bayonets--that is to say, the ones that have a saw on the blunt edge. If the fellows over there catch a man with one of those he's killed at sight. In the next sector some of our men were found whose noses were cut off and their eyes poked out with their own saw-bayonets. Their mouths and noses were stuffed with sawdust so that they suffocated.
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Jul 18, 2016 19:10
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Jul 18, 2016 19:46
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Honestly surprised that I remembered that that well, it's been over a decade that I last read that. It's interesting that even in that quote it's something that happens "the next sector" over, ie hearsay. Wonder if there's scholarship on Remarque's sources. I sort of was under the impression that he had substantial military service but quote:During World War I, Remarque was conscripted into the German Army at the age of 18. On 12 June 1917, he was transferred to the Western Front, 2nd Company, Reserves, Field Depot of the 2nd Guards Reserve Division at Hem-Lenglet. On 26 June, he was posted to the 15th Reserve Infantry Regiment, 2nd Company, Engineer Platoon Bethe, and was stationed between Torhout and Houthulst. On 31 July, he was wounded by shrapnel in the left leg, right arm and neck, and was repatriated to an army hospital in Germany where he spent the rest of the war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Maria_Remarque#Military_and_civilian_work
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Jul 18, 2016 20:09
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P-Mack posted:Also, a hundred loving years is a lot of weariness. There were several peace treaties during that time, which resets the war weariness counter.
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Jul 18, 2016 20:15
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Fangz posted:Yes, but it also ended in no sense with the English militarily crushed with soldiers in London. The English could have chosen to continue escalating the conflict. But the reality was that they couldn't afford to. The French's aims were to get the English to accept the situation, not to merely momentarily occupy most of the contested territory, and it was weariness and financial hardship that did that. The map at the war's end was not so militarily different from how the map looked at several points during the war. England was quite simply incapable of invading France until the reign of Henry VII due to the madness of Henry VI and the subsequent Wars of the Roses. The question of English "acceptance" is not the issue. The Kings and Queens of England did not relinquish claim to the crown of France until 1802, but it would be ridiculous to suggest the timeline of the Hundred Years War be adjusted correspondingly. Unless you wish to suggest that "war weariness" caused Henry's madness, I don't think you can make this argument. I also agree with my dad.
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Jul 18, 2016 20:25
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hogmartin posted:This will probably answer your original question: Do Navy destroyers really have vending machines? In the S3 division. http://fas.org/man/dod-101/navy/unit/dept-ddg-58.htm#SUPPLY Why are S2 & S5 separate if they both serve the exact same food? 
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Jul 18, 2016 20:43
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:England was quite simply incapable of invading France until the reign of Henry VII due to the madness of Henry VI and the subsequent Wars of the Roses. The question of English "acceptance" is not the issue. The Kings and Queens of England did not relinquish claim to the crown of France until 1802, but it would be ridiculous to suggest the timeline of the Hundred Years War be adjusted correspondingly. Unless you wish to suggest that "war weariness" caused Henry's madness, I don't think you can make this argument. During the reign of Edward IV, England did land at Calais again but quickly made peace with France after the Burgundians failed to show up to support them.
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Jul 18, 2016 20:47
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bewbies posted:Also just for reference most of the time when historians talk about British or French intervention it is in the context of economic sanctions and brokering a peace on be half of the south, not sending large formations of troops onto American soil. I'm actually reading about the origins of the Zulu War, the British Government at the time wasn't exactly thrilled at the thought of even sending men overseas to prop up crude attempts at colonial politics or intervention for their own stuff and the Imperial colonial overseers half the time crossed their fingers and usually attempted it anyway because by the time they'd learn about it in the UK a continent away they'd either gently caress up horribly or succeed. So the idea of the Victorian British doing anything military intervention wise like joining with either side in the US Civil War just seems adorable and silly. The Indian Mutiny caught them on the hop and the Crimean War was a slogfest now. I can't imagine they'd have anyone that insane or title hungry enough to do such a thing. At least in our own history.
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Jul 18, 2016 21:20
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aphid_licker posted:Honestly surprised that I remembered that that well, it's been over a decade that I last read that. It's interesting that even in that quote it's something that happens "the next sector" over, ie hearsay. Wonder if there's scholarship on Remarque's sources. I sort of was under the impression that he had substantial military service but All Quiet On The Western Front is a novel, it doesn't need sources and doesn't need to be substantiated by scholarship. The sawtooth bayonet thing could easily be a retarded enlisted rumor, or it could be real, but for the novel it serves a literary purpos and that's all it needs
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Jul 18, 2016 22:53
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SeanBeansShako posted:I'm actually reading about the origins of the Zulu War, the British Government at the time wasn't exactly thrilled at the thought of even sending men overseas to prop up crude attempts at colonial politics or intervention for their own stuff and the Imperial colonial overseers half the time crossed their fingers and usually attempted it anyway because by the time they'd learn about it in the UK a continent away they'd either gently caress up horribly or succeed. What was the army doing around then? Constantly in transit?
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Jul 18, 2016 22:54
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:What was the army doing around then? Constantly in transit? Spread out all over the place. It was a very very big Empire now. A lot of low level grunt work was done by raised militia in some Imperial dominions and colonies but there always was a small amount of British soldiers and officers doing all sorts with them.
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Jul 18, 2016 23:13
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:All Quiet On The Western Front is a novel, it doesn't need sources and doesn't need to be substantiated by scholarship. It's still interesting from history POV: concepts from fiction occasionally show up in memoirs and such and from time to time get entrenched as Things That Actually Happened. A pretty good example is fragging in Vietnam. There's a shitload of stories of how some disgruntled enlisted killed an officer for some reason or another, but turns out that when you look at the actual fragging casualties, a vast majority of the victims are NCO's and victims above the rank of Lt are rare as hen's teeth.
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Jul 18, 2016 23:19
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SeanBeansShako posted:Spread out all over the place. It was a very very big Empire now. A lot of low level grunt work was done by raised militia in some Imperial dominions and colonies but there always was a small amount of British soldiers and officers doing all sorts with them. This train of thought got me thinking about the empire commitments. How big of a drain was the aftermath of "The Mutiny" in India on the British?
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Jul 19, 2016 00:01
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Watch as the US Navy tries to answer the question: How many missiles and torpedoes does it take to get to the center of a decommissioned US frigate?
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Jul 19, 2016 01:31
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SeanBeansShako posted:So the idea of the Victorian British doing anything military intervention wise like joining with either side in the US Civil War just seems adorable and silly. During the Trent Affair the British believed there was a significant risk that the Union was about to invade Canada, and they spent a little while frantically scraping together regulars to send across before the crisis was resolved diplomatically. I found (via wikipedia, obviously) a Canadian armed forces publication (PDF from a third party website here) with a Canadian view on it. Apparently the British expected to send not more than 25,000 of their own troops altogether to join the couple thousand already in theater. Also, since the Trent Affair played out over the winter they were limited in how quickly they could ship men overseas and I think only half of them had made it to Canada by the time the crisis was over. The article doesn't give any numbers on the Canadian Colonial Militia, but I don't think they were very successful raising them--at least not in anything like the numbers or professionalism the British felt they needed. Evidently the plan was to forestall an invasion by preemptively invading Maine to off-balance the Union, which probably wouldn't have worked but might have the been the best among many bad options (e.g. waiting for the Union to assemble an army and invade at a time and place of their choosing). Rather more importantly, Britain was a massive importer of basic foodstuffs and European grain harvests were poor through 1861-1862. At that juncture Britain was even more reliant than usual on American grain exports, so going to war with the Union just then actually posed a very serious problem for the British economy and possibly a major threat to basic socio-political stability. Here's a contemporary NYT article about the 1861 harvest.
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Jul 19, 2016 03:10
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The British would simply never have intervened on behalf of the confederacy. Nobody in cabinet seriously entertained the idea. Once the emancipation proclamation happened the entire cabinet was more or less pro-union. The only way conflict could have started was the Union starting something over the British building ships for the south.
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Jul 19, 2016 03:15
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Disinterested posted:The British would simply never have intervened on behalf of the confederacy. Nobody in cabinet seriously entertained the idea. Once the emancipation proclamation happened the entire cabinet was more or less pro-union. The only way conflict could have started was the Union starting something over the British building ships for the south. In fact, the aspect of this topic that I find most interesting is the attitude of the Confederacy. You are correct that the British government had no interest whatsoever, and the French followed the British lead. But at the same time, the leadership of the Confederacy believed that European recognition or even intervention was not just possible but likely inevitable. I think it's a great example of propaganda and confirmation bias. Antebellum pro-slavery apologists developed a whole ideology of Southern exceptionalism, and part of that was an insistence on the central importance of cotton and therefore of the South on world economic and political affairs. So they believed that, naturally, once the war cut off the cotton supply to Europe the great powers would fall over themselves rushing to the South's aid. Having this idea, that was so completely at odds with the reality, is pretty interesting.
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Jul 19, 2016 03:29
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EvanSchenck posted:In fact, the aspect of this topic that I find most interesting is the attitude of the Confederacy. You are correct that the British government had no interest whatsoever, and the French followed the British lead. But at the same time, the leadership of the Confederacy believed that European recognition or even intervention was not just possible but likely inevitable. I think it's a great example of propaganda and confirmation bias. Antebellum pro-slavery apologists developed a whole ideology of Southern exceptionalism, and part of that was an insistence on the central importance of cotton and therefore of the South on world economic and political affairs. So they believed that, naturally, once the war cut off the cotton supply to Europe the great powers would fall over themselves rushing to the South's aid. Having this idea, that was so completely at odds with the reality, is pretty interesting. Any parallels to the current-day house of Saud?
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Jul 19, 2016 03:45
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EvanSchenck posted:In fact, the aspect of this topic that I find most interesting is the attitude of the Confederacy. You are correct that the British government had no interest whatsoever, and the French followed the British lead. But at the same time, the leadership of the Confederacy believed that European recognition or even intervention was not just possible but likely inevitable. I think it's a great example of propaganda and confirmation bias. Antebellum pro-slavery apologists developed a whole ideology of Southern exceptionalism, and part of that was an insistence on the central importance of cotton and therefore of the South on world economic and political affairs. So they believed that, naturally, once the war cut off the cotton supply to Europe the great powers would fall over themselves rushing to the South's aid. Having this idea, that was so completely at odds with the reality, is pretty interesting. I think just as much of it comes from Union indignation at the British that they, rather unwisely, couldn't keep to themselves and only fueled this ridiculous flame. Sumner and Seward sometimes come off like they want a conflict. Mercifully Sumner was in private correspondence with the most anti-slavery cabinet member who was telling him that there's no chance at all of any UK involvement and to stop inflaming the situation.
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Jul 19, 2016 03:46
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:All Quiet On The Western Front is a novel, it doesn't need sources and doesn't need to be substantiated by scholarship. I understand what fiction is. I'm interested in where he got his imagery etc.
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Jul 19, 2016 05:05
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Cythereal posted:We need a palette cleanser from this gay black Lincoln nonsense. I present to you, tankchat courtesy of GiP. I ain't gonna shame how a bird colonel likes his beer
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Jul 19, 2016 05:40
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Cyrano4747 posted:You hear odd tidbits here and there but I'm sure not as much as, say, ww2 pacific. I probably shouldn't have emphasized that as much but my larger point about these bring people very accustomed to brutality and violence stands. So, what about flame throwers? That seems a lot more plausible, and least from a priority standpoint, dunno if it increased death after capture, though.
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Jul 19, 2016 06:02
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aphid_licker posted:I understand what fiction is. I'm interested in where he got his imagery etc. Probably the same place where grandpa got his war stories. A mix of hearsay and post-fact mythos. There's nothing wrong with the question, but trying to find any evidence by working your way back from All Quiet is the same as using the minutes of former Pfc. cicada_licker's dinner stories. Sorry for being rude, I thought you were dogging on Remarque on grounds of improper sourcing.
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Jul 19, 2016 07:23
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SeanBeansShako posted:I'm actually reading about the origins of the Zulu War, the British Government at the time wasn't exactly thrilled at the thought of even sending men overseas to prop up crude attempts at colonial politics or intervention for their own stuff and the Imperial colonial overseers half the time crossed their fingers and usually attempted it anyway because by the time they'd learn about it in the UK a continent away they'd either gently caress up horribly or succeed. The Colonial Office basically pulled Imperial troops out of New Zealand in the late 1860s once it became apparent that the "defensive wars" against the Maori were more like "smash and grab". The New Zealand government rather adorably got furious about this and seriously debated asking Britain to ensure New Zealand was neutral in any future British wars, until the Russian scare (also insane) reminded New Zealand why they needed Britain.
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Jul 19, 2016 07:28
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Nude Bog Lurker posted:The Colonial Office basically pulled Imperial troops out of New Zealand in the late 1860s once it became apparent that the "defensive wars" against the Maori were more like "smash and grab". The New Zealand government rather adorably got furious about this and seriously debated asking Britain to ensure New Zealand was neutral in any future British wars, until the Russian scare (also insane) reminded New Zealand why they needed Britain. Russian scare? Was there a fear of Imperial Russia invading New Zealand?
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Jul 19, 2016 07:45
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wdarkk posted:Russian scare? Was there a fear of Imperial Russia invading New Zealand? I don't know about New Zealand, but just next door, the fear of Russian invasion contributed to the Australian states federating. Because clearly Russia was suffering a shortage of mineral-rich, sparsely inhabitated wastelands??
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Jul 19, 2016 09:37
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Fear of the Russians stepping on Imperial British turf was an odd political drive through the latter half of 19th century Imperial politics. Also during all of this as well, they really wanted to ensure they had enough soldiers in the home Islands because tensions in Ireland. It must have been the weirdest balancing routine ever.
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Jul 19, 2016 11:36
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:Probably the same place where grandpa got his war stories. A mix of hearsay and post-fact mythos. Yes and I'm interested in the details on the mythos and hearsay. So I went to the Deutsches Seminar and checked out quote:Erich Maria Remarques Roman "Im Westen nichts Neues" : Text, Edition, Entstehung, Distribution und Rezeption (1928 - 1930). Thomas F. Schneider. Tübingen 2004. which is an impressively anal piece of scholarship. The main surviving source on Remarques active military service is the diary of a guy (Georg Middendorf) he went to school with who ended up in the same unit, and the book reproduces this source in full. They spend their time digging trenches and setting up wire obstacles while under occasional shelling. Multiple scenes, names, and places represented in the diary are recognizable in the novel. The diary is kind of hosed up, oscillating between stuff like "we drank a bottle of sherry and slept for four hours", exhaustive descriptions of what they eat every day, and "Remarque is teaching me how to swim"; and "we lost five guys to shelling". There is no description of any contact to frontline troops and they are unarmed outside occasional rifle range time, so no bayonets. Remarque gets wounded after a month. Schneider proceeds to reproduce and order all surviving notes, manuscript fragments, and full manuscripts in critical edition. Between the sapping and the extensive descriptions of hospitals there's quite a bit of provably or probably autobiographical stuff in the novel that you can see evolve over the various notes, fragments and versions. Remarque decided to write a novel while still reconvalescing and started to write letters to friends asking for anecdotes, and presumably did the same to other soldiers at the hospital. Another major source was Georg Vogt, a guy Remarque started working for and boarding at in 1920, who had frontline experience and spent a lot of time talking to Remarque about his experiences. They apparently had a falling out over money after the book became a success - Vogt felt exploited. The second, very short and terse, bit of notes reproduced by Schneider, after a first, kinda fanfictiony-reading one where a young teacher (Remarque worked as a teacher before getting to Vogt) reminisces in dramatic language about his generic WW1 combat experience, already contains the line "saw bayonet, better throw away". The bit is not datable other than having been written pre-1925. So basically Remarque's source for the bayonet thing is indeed quote:A mix of hearsay and post-fact mythos. so this sure was a waste of time beyond it having been a fun thing to do on my lunch break. It might be cool to see if for example Jünger's diary contains something about bayonets but I think this is where I conclude my "research". Hope this is mildly interesting to someone? aphid_licker fucked around with this message at 13:22 on Jul 19, 2016 |
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Jul 19, 2016 12:10
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aphid_licker posted:Hope this is mildly interesting to someone?  is the name of the game in this thread and I found this very interesting, thank you.
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Jul 19, 2016 13:08
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