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I've understood warfare in Italy at the time was mostly about sweet maneuvering and not so much actual pitched battles, to the point that some mercenary band got loving wrecked because they played too rough and everyone else involved decided that poo poo wasn't cricket. Is this one of those pop-hist things again? 
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Aug 18, 2016 22:35
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Siivola posted:I've understood warfare in Italy at the time was mostly about sweet maneuvering and not so much actual pitched battles, to the point that some mercenary band got loving wrecked because they played too rough and everyone else involved decided that poo poo wasn't cricket. Is this one of those pop-hist things again?
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Aug 18, 2016 22:36
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Cyrano4747 posted:The best part of that panther video is that the speedometer goes up to 100 loving KPH. Dude's accent is driving me mad. I can't quite place it and he pronounces some stuff in a really familiar wrong way.
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Aug 18, 2016 22:37
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I enjoyed the synchronized azimuth indicator on the tank which is somehow superior to the "use mk 1 eyeball to look at obviously visible part of hull to see which direction hull is pointing" germans, man.
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Aug 18, 2016 22:43
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Cyrano4747 posted:The best part of that panther video is that the speedometer goes up to 100 loving KPH. If you push it down a really steep hill...
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Aug 18, 2016 22:43
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HEY GAL posted:did nobody think to write up a new contract, withhold their back pay but add the amount owed to the new accounts, give them their delivery-money in hand and promise the rest later, and make them swear new oaths? who's running the expedition, have they never been to war before? The experienced commander who was running the show went back to the capital to participate in political intrigue.
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Aug 18, 2016 22:43
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Ensign Expendable posted:The experienced commander who was running the show went back to the capital to participate in political intrigue.
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Aug 18, 2016 22:46
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Arquinsiel posted:TBH I can see there being a little windmill on the top of the tank connected to the speedometer which will tell you how fast the tank is falling after you've driven it off a cliff. Greco-irish.
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Aug 18, 2016 22:48
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Arquinsiel posted:TBH I can see there being a little windmill on the top of the tank connected to the speedometer which will tell you how fast the tank is falling after you've driven it off a cliff. He's an Irish soldier who moved to the US and served in the Nevada Army National Guard (two tours in the Middle East) as a tank commander. He's qualified on both the M1 Abrams and M2 Bradley for gunnery. This is why he's able to speak so well on the ergonomics of armored vehicles: he knows it firsthand.
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Aug 18, 2016 22:49
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chitoryu12 posted:He's an Irish soldier who moved to the US and served in the Nevada Army National Guard (two tours in the Middle East) as a tank commander. He's qualified on both the M1 Abrams and M2 Bradley for gunnery. This is why he's able to speak so well on the ergonomics of armored vehicles: he knows it firsthand. Also one of his parents was greek.
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Aug 18, 2016 22:51
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spectralent posted:Also one of his parents was greek. So he's also qualified to speak about hoplites and triremes. Neat!
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Aug 18, 2016 22:57
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So, I said I would post about the book I was reading and have been quoting from here and there. The book is Operation Typhoon: Hitler’s March On Moscow, October 1941, written in 2013 by David Stahel. Stahel is an AUS/NZ Historian. He has also written about Barbarossa and the Campaign to take Ukraine in early 41, and he’s writing presently about Nov.-Dec. 1941. He’s a self-proclaimed Glantz follower, and Glantz appears to like his work. Some general observations: Structurally the book is more or less chronological. It’s functionally but not attractively written. Its focus is fairly overwhelmingly on the German strategic perspective on the war, particularly amongst the senior officers of Army Group Centre. Hitler and various figures on the home front, particularly Goebbels and Halder, also feature; the Soviets and the common German soldiery feature intermittently, though are fleshed out a little more in the conclusion. A lot of this is going to be very familiar but hey ho why not. There are probably three main themes the book really hits on consistently: 1) The Germans were totally unprepared for the reality of the conflict they would be fighting 2) The Germans were borrowing all the time from their own feature, with reckless abandon 3) Huge problems, such as an overwhelming focus on the operational rather than the strategic level, distrust amongst high level commanders, and a strange flow of information prevented the Germans from learning well enough to deal with these problems. So that the overall picture you get is that the German defeat is all the time being sewn in the manner and shape even of their biggest victories. Big take-aways re: those themes. 1) Unprepared for reality. We all know German intel re: the USSR was a joke. Canaris was regarded as a useless nepotist. But he wasn’t any worse than his precedessors, and indeed the French and Poles were just as bad at infiltrating the USSR. This was compounded by the fact that Jodl, who was head of the operational department, told Canaris not to bother with infiltrating deep in to the USSR or with getting information on the Red Army. As a result, once the border moved rapidly eastward, his agents became redundant, and it became even harder for him to place new ones because (a) the Germans were bad at it and kept producing agents with fake papers (b) the NKVD good at stopping them but was ridiculously over the top about the threat of infiltrators and summarily executed 10’s of thousands of Russians fleeing eastward to prevent it. The Wehrmacht’s own head of intelligence, Col Eberhard Kinzel (later a highly decorated commander ominously replaced by Reinhard Gehlen), was appointed despite having no intelligence training, not speaking Russian, and not knowing the USSR. His primary source was radio intercepts of Russian forces. This made his efforts range limited, but also limited by the relative scarcity of radios compared to Germany. As a result he gave his commanders a fairly good picture of the frontline units for Barbarossa forward but painted no picture at all of the reserves at the USSR’s disposal, which, obviously, were vast. This is probably one reason that the Germans kept on assuming that, in vast encirclements, they had destroyed ‘the last good units’ the USSR had, and everything left would be rabble. Moreover, although a lot of the commanders who fought in Typhoon professed to have been well versed in the classics, and to have read about Napoleon’s 1812 campaign in particular, it seems to have emerged that most of them were lying – many only began to read furiously after problems had already presented themselves. Most had absolutely no clue about the type of logistical, terrain and weather challenges that would be present in Russia; almost all of them consistently expected a snap victory after their initial operational successes, and their frames of reference were as bizarre as Konnigratz. This naturally fed in to logistics problems. Sometimes a problem was anticipated, but only halfway: the Germans knew the Soviet rail gauge was higher, so they had teams dedicated to relaying the track for German locomotives. They didn’t factor that the larger Soviet locomotives on that gauge could pull more weight twice as far, meaning the existing halts the Soviets had for coaling + water were twice as far apart as German ones, and new ones could not be built quickly. Almost all the panzer and motorised units could not repair their own vehicles and frequently abandoned their vehicles to preserve their pool of fuel in order to continue offensive operations. By late October the 600,000 trucks that the Germans had for Typhoon was reduced to approximately 70,000, and the number of horses declined similarly. Horses are another good example: German draught horses are larger than Soviet draught horses. Resultantly, when they died, the Soviet captures couldn’t replace them for some of their most important duties of moving guns and heavy equipment; and, meanwhile, the mud multiplied the number of horses needed to move a gun, so that Bock himself personally records seeing 18 draught horses being needed to move a single gun. Everyone just had no idea what to expect, and the resulting logistics problems essentially demechanised the Wehrmacht irreperably – Stahel talks about a process of ‘demotorisation’. The same effect, mutatis mutandis, applies also to the outstanding professionalism of the army. There’s a lot more said about 1), in terms of specifics. As for 2) ‘borrowing from the future’ - to begin with, Germany in October of 1941 was already fielding over 80% of all of its prime male youth in its army. Production was strongly effected and they simply could not be replaced if they became casualties: the German replacement army before Typhoon consisted of only 350,000 or so men, or just over half of the German losses in the operation. The operation also massed the single largest force ever under one commander, with 1.9 million men under Bock, and approx 1,500 tanks and 1000 aircraft. Yet the tanks (and aforementioned trucks and horses) were irreparably wasted away by Typhoon. From October-December, 1,229 tanks were lost while in the same period a little more than 1,000 were constructed in total (and for that time, that number was not increasing; indeed, Hitler had planned to cancel new Ostheer orders for replacement vehicles after approximately January/February 1942 and to focus on other priorities like ship construction). A large number of crack panzer divisions reported by the end of October as having low double-digit numbers of tanks left in their divisions. Moreover, their strength was dissipated: because of immediate operational success, Hitler insisted the Panzer forces continue to roll the front back on a wider and wider basis, preventing their effective concentration; moreover, because they had already outpaced the infantry to create the two big pockets at Viaz’ma and Briansk, they wound up having to split their strength to keep the pockets somewhat closed to the east. And, ever outpacing supply, they kept gaining ground while haemoragging the bulk of their vehicles to keep enough fuel and parts to remain moving. A single division was described by one commander, on seeing it, as being little more than ‘a strengthened armoured reconnaisance regiment’ by late October. Yet, even though the strategic aim was to achieve a sudden victory and cessation of hostilities by the swift capture of Moscow and the shattering of remaining regular red army units, in actuality this was only sometimes reflected in planning. For example, Hitler withheld a large number of replacement tanks from the front in order to preserve them for future operations at an unspecified later date. Once early operational success was achieved, Hitler (and a number of his commanders) then drew up increasingly fanciful plans for his units (such as directing one of his Panzer units 200km north to Yaroslavl when it was notionally supposed to capture Moscow) before the units could consolidate the gains they had only just taken. The OKW/OKH were both utterly terrible at stopping this: it’s clear Halder in particular had basically just decided he was just going to forward orders from Hitler and wash his hands of them. On one occasion, however, Bock did outright refuse to retask Guderian’s Panzer ‘army’ in its offensive to take Tula and sent heated telegrams expressly refusing to pass on Hitler’s direct order, because it was total madness. He instructed Halder that Hitler could pass the order on to the army commanders directly if he wanted it done. This only, later, created further mistrust between Hitler and his field commanders, even though Bock won out on this occasion. Hitler would later insist Kluge come to him from the front to tell him the truth about whether conditions were as bad as written reports suggested, or if the army was being insufficiently wilful and sandbagging. Bock wryly noted: ‘He probably refused to believe the written reports, which is not surprising, for anyone who has not seen this filth doesn’t’ think it’s possible’. Having thrown the Javelin as far as they could they still didn’t get close to Moscow, and the idea they were even close to investing it was fanciful – the units closest to it were utterly depleted. Instead, shattered units were sitting with no winter clothing and quarters in a desperate situation. Even in October the chief Quartermasters of the Wehrmacht were not just refusing requests for winter equipment but sending demands back to Bock that he stop his commanders sending new ones because making logistical plans for the future indicated you were insufficiently zealous about achieving a victory any day soon. 3) Terrible positive feedback loops. Focus on operational success over strategic factors is a big one. The German command from top to bottom is overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of its tactical victories to the point that they keep on not realising their operations haven’t achieved the desired tactical outcomes. To the Germans, the fact that they destroy almost all of the Soviet 1.2 million men on the Moscow front in October in pockets at Briansk and Viaz’ma makes them blind to the fact that the time and resources closing those pockets is consuming isn’t just costing them time to get to Moscow before winter but buying Zhukov and Konev time to reinforce and prepare the defence of the city proper. Vasilevsky says: ‘In appraising the outcome of the events in October it should be said that it was very unfavourable to us. The Soviet army had suffered severe losses. The enemy had advanced nearly 100 miles. But the aims of Operation Typhoon had not been achieved. One of Bock’s groupings had become hopelessly bogged down near Tula, another beyond Mozhaisk, and yet another in the upper reaches of the Volga [Kalinin]. The stauncheness and courage of the defenders of the Soviet capital stopped the Nazi hordes.’ Meanwhile, the victories also encourage triumphalism at home. Goebbels and Hitler indicate to the German public the war’s outcome has been determined by the collapse of the aforementioned pockets, which the German people believe to indicate the war is won in all but formality. When this turns out not to be so, it is a giant and unrecoverable loss of face for the Nazi part from which it does not recover (this is when listening to British radio suddenly spikes), particularly since the letters home all indicate that the war is extremely hard even when they are optimistic, as many are. What’s more, Goebbels seems to be the person in Germany with the best grip on the difficulties of the eastern front, but it doesn’t translate in to his propaganda, for obvious reasons. But not even Hitler seems to grasp that Goebbels is gambling by presenting such an optimistic picture – there’s a suggestion here by Stahel that Goebbels widely optimistic accounts of progress in the east are actually being believed as entirely true even by high ranking figures in the German government and command, further encouraging all of the people who should be treating the logistical challenges of the front as an emergency to take it rather lightly. And, the thing is, all of these issues of logistics – if not weather – had been thoroughly exposed by barbarossa, and nobody had made a major issue of them yet either – because everything was such a big operational success. Wedded to the operational obsession was also an offensive obsession: ‘the notion of calling a halt ran contrary to everything this officer corps believed: the importance of will and aggression, and especially the importance of finishing a war in a single campaign.’ This is especially a Panzer commander problem: they’re always being accused of wanting to start new fights before the old ones are finished, while infantry commanders (and von Kluge) complain. Even in late October, with the panzer troops more or less flaming wreckage, Bock and others are still mostly asking for a pause in operations until the ground freezes in November, rather than prepping static positions and trying to find winter quarters. There were other associated psychological phenomena, particularly this concept of ‘will’: people who complained too much about logistical issues or the need for their men to rest for coming fighting were regarded as defeatist (inasmuch as victory was assumed to be imminent) and also insufficiently lacking the will to victory: ‘will’ is taken to be capable of overcoming any obstacle or difficulty, and people who grumbled about difficulties or realities on the ground were regarded as lacking this crucial quality. Anyway, that’s all very general, but I’ve decided to get better at writing down what I take from the non-fiction I read and this is like diarising for me. I’ll hopefully do a post where I note down some of the interesting specifics from the book, though, as well as some of the observations re: the Soviets, and the historiographical balance of the book.
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Aug 18, 2016 23:01
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I'm kind of giggling at the National Guard guy who wears his Stetson apparently regularly outside of formal military events
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Aug 18, 2016 23:01
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But preview for the specifics post: it's loving astonishing how few tanks units have by October 31st. I seem to recall one Panzer division has only 24.
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Aug 18, 2016 23:04
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By the by, milhist related since we end up on a "what is fascism" digression every 50 pages or so. Ernst Nolte died yesterday.
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Aug 18, 2016 23:13
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Cyrano4747 posted:By the by, milhist related since we end up on a "what is fascism" digression every 50 pages or so. Did you see that there's a film coming up that appears to be a longform weird interview with Goebbels' secretary? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvLL6LP41YY Also I respect anyone who tries to do comparative history. It's hard. RIP. Even if he wasn't my cup of tea.
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Aug 18, 2016 23:15
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Disinterested posted:Did you see that there's a film coming up that appears to be a longform weird interview with Goebbels' secretary? Yeah, I caught wind of it. I was mostly shocked that she was still alive. Frankly I'm glad that someone's getting all that on tape. Unreliability of testiomony, take with a sack of salt, etc but it's still a very unique view on a rather important actor in the early 20th.
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Aug 18, 2016 23:17
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Cyrano4747 posted:Yeah, I caught wind of it. I was mostly shocked that she was still alive. That was my first reaction as well, compounded by how old the shots make her look.
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Aug 18, 2016 23:18
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Disinterested posted:So, I said I would post about the book I was reading and have been quoting from here and there. The book is Operation Typhoon: Hitler’s March On Moscow, October 1941, written in 2013 by David Stahel. Stahel is an AUS/NZ Historian. He has also written about Barbarossa and the Campaign to take Ukraine in early 41, and he’s writing presently about Nov.-Dec. 1941. He’s a self-proclaimed Glantz follower, and Glantz appears to like his work. This is a good post, thank you. Disinterested posted:Almost all the panzer and motorised units could not repair their own vehicles and frequently abandoned their vehicles to preserve their pool of fuel in order to continue offensive operations. By late October the 600,000 trucks that the Germans had for Typhoon was reduced to approximately 70,000, and the number of horses declined similarly. Holy poo poo. I know you go on to talk about Panzer Divisions with 20 tanks remaining but the loss of all those trucks should have been a huge sign things were very bad Disinterested posted:There were other associated psychological phenomena, particularly this concept of ‘will’: people who complained too much about logistical issues or the need for their men to rest for coming fighting were regarded as defeatist (inasmuch as victory was assumed to be imminent) and also insufficiently lacking the will to victory: ‘will’ is taken to be capable of overcoming any obstacle or difficulty, and people who grumbled about difficulties or realities on the ground were regarded as lacking this crucial quality. Strength of will being magically causal is I think a major factor as to why fascism went down in World War 2. Of course, it's still with us: when faced with questions on how to rebuild Iraq the free market became the magic word that bridged any and all difficulties.
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Aug 18, 2016 23:56
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Nebakenezzer posted:Holy poo poo. I know you go on to talk about Panzer Divisions with 20 tanks remaining but the loss of all those trucks should have been a huge sign things were very bad Consider: 1) Almost no spare parts 2) No antifreeze for the engines 3) Motorised and Armoured Divisions are the ones closing about 1,000,000 Soviet soldiers in pockets and trying to stop them running east. 4) Terrible conditions for trucks, particularly in terms of mud and poo poo roads. 5) Constant impetus to advance with limited fuel. 6) Loads of Partisans 1+5 means you just ditch your trucks, cannibalise for parts, then use the supply of fuel on fewer vehicles. They do the same with the tanks (which don't have wide enough tracks to really manage the conditions either). It did mean that closing pockets on the Soviets yielded a mass of equipment to cannibalize, and fuel. In some cases even tanks; they also stripped winter clothing from Soviet POWs (who they then shoot because they'll freeze anyway) and small arms. Sometimes they siphon fuel from Soviet tanks, other times they ride them until their fuel runs out, but they even get good at using some of their parts in various ways. They suddenly learn to improvise in ways Soviet troops already understood well. Friendly fire suddenly goes way up, resultantly. And this attrition isn't just on the frontline: there's huge attrition of supply columns just trying to get up and help fix these supply issues, both from conditions and partisans, so that even when enough gear sets off to satisfy operational needs not that much of it ever makes it to the end.
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Aug 19, 2016 00:03
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Disinterested posted:There were other associated psychological phenomena, particularly this concept of ‘will’: people who complained too much about logistical issues or the need for their men to rest for coming fighting were regarded as defeatist (inasmuch as victory was assumed to be imminent) and also insufficiently lacking the will to victory: ‘will’ is taken to be capable of overcoming any obstacle or difficulty, and people who grumbled about difficulties or realities on the ground were regarded as lacking this crucial quality. What's fascinating is that Soldaten indicates that "will" was principally a faith principle of senior nazi figures and the SS; the POWs spied on make very few references to it and seem to ignore (at best) or mock (at worst) the nazi virtue of "fanaticism". Conversely, "courage" is lauded, but it seems to be taken for granted that courage does not also require ignorance of practicalities.
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Aug 19, 2016 00:54
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Jesus those truck losses  However this has just made me realized that honestly speaking, I don't know poo poo about trucks. I really should fix that hole in my knowledge...
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Aug 19, 2016 00:55
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spectralent posted:What's fascinating is that Soldaten indicates that "will" was principally a faith principle of senior nazi figures and the SS; the POWs spied on make very few references to it and seem to ignore (at best) or mock (at worst) the nazi virtue of "fanaticism". Conversely, "courage" is lauded, but it seems to be taken for granted that courage does not also require ignorance of practicalities. Yeah. There are a bunch of quotes from letters home, very few ever mention the idea. Most are pretty optimistic, though, that they'll succeed in October 1941, even the ones complaining of unbelievable hardship: they're consistently destroying huge formations of Soviet troops, often against bad numerical odds and despite equipment disadvantages. They, like their commanders, don't see how the Soviets can keep going on. A number grow to admire the tenacity of the Soviet troops, but you see already a distinct splintering of them that sees the unreal bravery of Soviet troops as not true courage, but animalistically savage disregard for one's own life. They are all disenchanted by the propaganda at home saying that everything is easy going in the east though; Goebbels loses the trust of the soldiery as well as the German homefront by declaring the war over before it really ends. Bad for morale.
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Aug 19, 2016 00:59
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HEY GAL posted:it's a stereotype. these guys played to kill. The Italian Condotierri loving ruled the 15th and 16th centuries.
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Aug 19, 2016 01:03
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chitoryu12 posted:He's an Irish soldier who moved to the US and served in the Nevada Army National Guard (two tours in the Middle East) as a tank commander. He's qualified on both the M1 Abrams and M2 Bradley for gunnery. This is why he's able to speak so well on the ergonomics of armored vehicles: he knows it firsthand. Well I more mean how he pronounces "traverse" like he's saying "Travers'" etc. It's an Irish accent trait I've heard before, but I can't remember where from. I'm really enjoying the actual tank talk, because he's got a good rules of thumb to evaluate them with.
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Aug 19, 2016 01:14
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Arquinsiel posted:Well I more mean how he pronounces "traverse" like he's saying "Travers'" etc. It's an Irish accent trait I've heard before, but I can't remember where from. I'm really enjoying the actual tank talk, because he's got a good rules of thumb to evaluate them with. It's also a great series because "How well does this tank do in a white room" and "How well does this tank do as an operational asset" are all pretty heavily covered, but "How much would I like to be sat in this given seat" is, I think, pretty unique to that show.
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Aug 19, 2016 01:31
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Xerxes17 posted:Jesus those truck losses Somebody was covering the history of trucks and general motorised logistics in the younger days of the old thread, he started but then got distracted and didn't get very far  .
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Aug 19, 2016 01:45
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Ithle01 posted:To elaborate on what HEY GAL said, Machiavelli was mostly full of poo poo and had a hard-on for proving that an army of citizen soldiers could beat professional mercenaries because of their civic patriotism or something like that. HEY GAL posted:he had a hardon for rome, rome had no mercenaries, and a bunch of civic participation poo poo, etc qed I'm not qualified to speak on the military side of things, but if you read the History of Florence, Machiavelli is really committed to a notion of cyclical time, with the idea that a new classical state (preferably Florence) will arise and emulate Rome. So he's got a vested interest in suggesting that that a Roman-style army (as he imagined it) will emerge as the dominant force. I've only skimmed The Art of War but I'd be cautious about taking anything by Machiavelli at face value, because he was a person who thought he knew which way history was going, as he was keen to get ahead of it.
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Aug 19, 2016 02:22
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spectralent posted:It's also a great series because "How well does this tank do in a white room" and "How well does this tank do as an operational asset" are all pretty heavily covered, but "How much would I like to be sat in this given seat" is, I think, pretty unique to that show.
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Aug 19, 2016 02:48
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Some of the recent chat about 'horses' used in WW2 made me wonder if the noble mule was being lumped in with its flashier relative. A mule is a superior pack animal compared to a horse for a number of reasons (hardier, more endurance, eats less, etc) and it seems like the better choice for dragging your gear around. From a quick search it seems that most countries used a mix of the two (the US used mules in some of the awful terrain in Italy, for example). However, the German army seemed to use primarily horses from what I can tell. Is this just a case of equine racism with the articles I skimmed or did the Germans actually prefer Equus ferus caballus? If so, why? david_a fucked around with this message at 05:33 on Aug 19, 2016 |
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Aug 19, 2016 05:21
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david_a posted:Some of the recent chat about 'horses' used in WW2 made me wonder if the noble mule was being lumped in with its flashier relative. A mule is a superior pack animal compared to a horse for a number of reasons (hardier, more endurance, eats less, etc) and it seems like the better choice for dragging your gear around. From a quick search it seems that most countries used a mix of the two (the US used mules in some of the awful terrain in Italy, for example). Mules are inadequately strong to drag the big pieces of kit the Germans have. Even the Russian draught horses are, as I mentioned - you need a big, specially bred, large draught horse to drag the larger German equipment, and in numbers.
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Aug 19, 2016 06:35
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Disinterested posted:Mules are inadequately strong to drag the big pieces of kit the Germans have. Even the Russian draught horses are, as I mentioned - you need a big, specially bred, large draught horse to drag the larger German equipment, and in numbers.
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Aug 19, 2016 07:50
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SeanBeansShako posted:Somebody was covering the history of trucks and general motorised logistics in the younger days of the old thread, he started but then got distracted and didn't get very far If this is what you're thinking of, Jobbo Fett did a series of posts about WWI trucks starting on this page: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3585027&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=912 I'd try to track 'em down further but my internet is poo poo right now so I can't load any more, but look for jobbo fett's posts on that page and pages afterwards.
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Aug 19, 2016 08:12
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david_a posted:However, the German army seemed to use primarily horses from what I can tell. Is this just a case of equine racism with the articles I skimmed or did the Germans actually prefer Equus ferus caballus? If so, why?
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Aug 19, 2016 08:46
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Ensign Expendable posted:Reading some more about mercenaries in Bogdan Khmelnitskiy's uprising. Some guys on the Lithuanian side simply travelled so slowly that they never closed in with the enemy before their contract expired and then disbanded. Slow-downs are still legit. I hope their bosses resigned in disgust and joined the world revolution.
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Aug 19, 2016 08:51
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:I enjoyed the synchronized azimuth indicator on the tank which is somehow superior to the "use mk 1 eyeball to look at obviously visible part of hull to see which direction hull is pointing"
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Aug 19, 2016 08:53
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Why trust weak fleisch when you have robo cohorts of full mathematical perfection at your command 
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Aug 19, 2016 08:57
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Ithle01 posted:To elaborate on what HEY GAL said, Machiavelli was mostly full of poo poo and had a hard-on for proving that an army of citizen soldiers could beat professional mercenaries because of their civic patriotism or something like that. Pretty much everyone who tried this in this time period got wrecked unless their citizen soldiers also happened to be professional mercenaries. This is amusing to me for two reasons. First, reading something written in The Prince and then assuming it must be true because it was written by Machiavelli is some sort of irony. Second, Rome repeatedly endured horrifying losses in stand-up fights against mercenary armies up until they adopted a professional army and at the height of their power - in fact throughout their entire history - Rome was employing large numbers of "allies" who were non-citizens fighting due to a combination of obligation and an expectation of plunder. Well more I figured that it might be true because it's a contemporary source, and also because it's exactly what I would do if I was a mercenary being asked to fight other mercenaries for money.
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Aug 19, 2016 10:23
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david_a posted:Some of the recent chat about 'horses' used in WW2 made me wonder if the noble mule was being lumped in with its flashier relative. A mule is a superior pack animal compared to a horse for a number of reasons (hardier, more endurance, eats less, etc) and it seems like the better choice for dragging your gear around. From a quick search it seems that most countries used a mix of the two (the US used mules in some of the awful terrain in Italy, for example). Gebirgsjägers in Finland at least used them. Maybe it was more of a thing for them, and rest of the troops used draught horses?
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Aug 19, 2016 10:35
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OwlFancier posted:Well more I figured that it might be true because it's a contemporary source, and also because it's exactly what I would do if I was a mercenary being asked to fight other mercenaries for money. I've read the same thing too about the mercs just pretending to fight. I wonder who wrote about it in the first place?
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Aug 19, 2016 10:37
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