Military History Mk. III: One that I know of is an archaic word for dick, another is

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HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

i would be legit interested in histories of nazi germany from before the war though

# ? Sep 26, 2016 07:02

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# ? May 11, 2024 14:19

Endman: May 18, 2010; That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even anime may die

HEY GAL posted:

i would be legit interested in histories of nazi germany from before the war though

The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard Evans is apparently very good. It's still sitting on my to-read pile though; I should really get around to reading it.

# ? Sep 26, 2016 07:45

Power Khan: Aug 20, 2011; by Fritz the Horse

JcDent posted:

Did they run the whole party on Croatian Dirlevangers? Because we know that gas chambers et al were made because even hardcore nazis couldn't bear killing so much people directly (by shooting), so how come these guys got even closer and dirtier, and didn't have any issues?

You cannot expect these people not to have the same issues. The difference might be that the german leadership actually cared in one way or the other for the wellbeing of their men, even if it's in terms that you can't carry out the task with them being raving alcoholics, going insane or killing themselves in unacceptable numbers. The decision to move to other methods than shooting came after Himmler visited the Mogilev area in fall '41, he pulled the strings pretty fast after that to make other methods of extermination happen.

# ? Sep 26, 2016 07:46

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Endman posted:

The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard Evans is apparently very good. It's still sitting on my to-read pile though; I should really get around to reading it.

that is a history of the prewar period written after the fact, i'm talking about what an informed observer in 1935 thinks is going on

# ? Sep 26, 2016 07:47

Jack2142: Jul 17, 2014; Shitposting in Seattle

HEY GAL posted:

that is a history of the prewar period written after the fact, i'm talking about what an informed observer in 1935 thinks is going on

Sorry I didn't grab all the books I mentioned (I just took the WWI book and Grant's Memoirs), although when I got back I will get some pictures of them and probably grab them

# ? Sep 26, 2016 07:57

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Fangz posted:

What do people make of this article?

"High Hitler: how Nazi drug abuse steered the course of history"

http://www.theguardian.com/books/20...py_to_clipboard

what i said earlier, but also that the editor who failed to title that article "myth of the clean wehrmacht" is a goddamn criminal

# ? Sep 26, 2016 08:02

JcDent: May 13, 2013; Give me a rifle, one round, and point me at Berlin!

JaucheCharly posted:

You cannot expect these people not to have the same issues. The difference might be that the german leadership actually cared in one way or the other for the wellbeing of their men, even if it's in terms that you can't carry out the task with them being raving alcoholics, going insane or killing themselves in unacceptable numbers. The decision to move to other methods than shooting came after Himmler visited the Mogilev area in fall '41, he pulled the strings pretty fast after that to make other methods of extermination happen.

On the other hand, having a special knife to kill Serbs faster...

# ? Sep 26, 2016 08:04

lenoon: Jan 7, 2010

HEY GAL posted:

that is a history of the prewar period written after the fact, i'm talking about what an informed observer in 1935 thinks is going on

My grandmother somehow picked up a 1938 German tourist brochure in a jumble sale of all things. Lots of pictures of gymnastics and mountains. It's all very much in the predictable vein, even advertises Zeppelin rides, but pretty interesting. I'll see if I can dig it out next time I'm down there.

# ? Sep 26, 2016 08:19

System Metternich: Feb 28, 2010; But what did he mean by that?

I just remembered that I did a D&D effort post years ago about a MilHist topic, but I'm not sure if I even knew that this thread was a thing back then, so I'm reposting it here because maybe you'll be interested and maybe you'll tell me the myriad ways in which I got it wrong :v:

quote:

This is the old harbour of Heraklion, Crete's largest city and a popular destination for thousands of tourists every year. What many of them don't know however is that this city was victim to one of history's most brutal and certainly longest sieges: for 21 (!) years, it was continually under attack by the Ottomans.

What happened? In 1644, Crete had been under Venetian rule for more than four centuries; during the last decades, however, Venice had lost much of its once great influence throughout the eastern Mediterranean to the Ottoman Empire, which had cast its eyes on Crete already for a long time. Greece, Rhodes and Cyprus had already fallen, and so everybody knew that it wasn't a question of if the Ottomans attacked, but when. In 1644, a fleet of the Knights of Malta (who had been driven out of their original stronghold of Rhodes a century before) attacked an Ottoman convoy on its way from Alexandria to Constantinople. Amongst the captives brought to Candia (as Heraklion was called back then) were members of the Sultan's personal harem who had been returning from their pilgrimage to Mecca. Enraged, Sultan Ibrahim (he would later on be called "the Mad") ordered the execution of all Christians in his Empire but thankfully got convinced by his ministers to drop the idea. Instead, he gathered a strike force of 60,000 men, sending them towards Crete in an attempt to finally add the island to his possessions. In June 1645, the troops landed in the west of Crete and slowly made their way to the already strongly fortified capital city of Candia. On May 1st, 1648, all of Crete save its capital had been conquered by the Ottomans, and the siege of Candia began.

Candia in 1651

Venice had no possibility of defending Crete against such a powerful force on its own, and so its last � well, only resort was the heavy recruitment of mercenaries, mostly German veterans of the Thirty Years' War. About 30,000 of them got drafted (not always voluntarily) into the Cretan defence force; many of them found themselves eventually within Candia, where the city's water supply had been cut off by the Ottomans. The city would have been lost quickly if it hadn't been for the yet unbroken Venetian naval power: Venice's fleets somehow managed to successfully blockade the Dardanelles, a narrow strait in what is today's NW Turkey connecting Constantinople to the Mediterranean. The constant and for the most part successful naval war there greatly impeded the supply of the Ottoman troops on Crete and gave Venice the possibility to keep up the supply line to Candia. What followed was an absurd war that never left the immediate surroundings of Candia: When Venice managed to successfully block the Dardanelles and ship enough fresh troops to Candia, the Ottomans had to retreat; when it went the other way round, the Venetians lost their ground again and saw the Turks approaching the city. During the winter, when heavy storms made the Mediterannean impassable, no new supplies reached either party, and every year many would starve. Every couple of years, the plague would rage across Crete and kill many. Princes and powers all over Europe sent a continual stream of mercenaries towards Candia, but other than that few cared about this seemingly never-ending war, neither in the Ottoman Empire nor in Europe.

The Siege of Candia, date unknown

After 18 years, the Ottomans finally had enough. After reassuming control over the Dardanelles and ending the war against Austria that had bound a lot of troops, soldiers were shipped en masse to the island. In 1666, the offensive against Candia began. But the Venetians hadn't been idle during all these years as well: in the meantime, the city had been turned into possibly the best fortified spot on the planet. It was protected by seven forts, corresponding walls, trenches and sheltered pathways, subterranean tunnels connecting the sites and countless entrenchments, bastions, strongholds, casemattes, caponiers, hornworks and ravelins. Candia had become a masterwork of modern fortifications and an inspiration for countless military architects of its time (one of the survivors of the siege, the mercenary Georg Rimpler, later went on the become one of Europe's leading experts on the field, being hired by the Austrian emperor in 1682 to reorganise Vienna's defences. A year later, Vienna was attacked and besieged by the Ottomans and only managed to hold out until its relief because of his work. Rimpler himself died in Vienna during the siege. Poor guy had some really bad luck.). The Ottomans got nowhere with their offensive, losing almost 20,000 men in the process. They soon recognised that conventional warfare would lead them nowhere, so they went underground.

Never before a mining war of such extent had been seen, and it wouldn't be surpassed until WWI 250 years later. An army of slaves and soldiers dug trenches, tunnels and mining ducts. On the besieged side, thousands of inhabitants and galley slaves dug tunnels as listening posts, for counter mines or to reconnect to isolated outposts. The technical achievements of the miners on both sides were remarkable: to avoid suffocation by mine gas or too much CO2, enormous bellows were constructed and spread throughout the tunnel complex in order to ensure a supply of fresh air. A network of pumps and tubes was to combat the constant ingress of ground water. Orientation was only possible by compass. Beneath the ground, a ghostly subterranean war commenced; the miners died by the thousands. When the Ottomans had reached a part of the city's fortifications, they would then try to destroy it by detonating up to 170 tons of powder underneath it. The Venetian troops on the other hand would try to destroy those mines with their own counter mines beforehand. Sometimes they were lucky enough to get their hands on an Ottoman mine before its detonation; they would then construct new tunnels and fill up their own, so that the blast of the explosion would be deflected towards the Ottomans. Below some especially contested sectors, multiple �stories� of tunnels would zigzag through the earth. When two tunnels met, bloody fighting ensued. The miners suffocated, got buried, crushed or burned alive, got shot, stabbed or blown up, or they drowned.

Ottoman forces attacking one of Candia's fortresses

The fighting didn't cease above ground, either. Both Ottomans and Venetians invented or improved a multitude of new weapons. The constant mine explosions and bombardment from outside had turned the entire area into a hellish landscape of ruins and cratres. Fires burned everywhere, and the stench of sulphur and burnt or rotting meat was nearly unbearable, as was the noise of the constant barrage of shots and explosions. Both sides had snipers continually watching the area, their victims dotting the landscape. The mercenaries slept in foxholes and shot-up ruins. Inflation and Venetian greed had diminished their salary to almost nothing. As a consequence, many hungered or even starved. Scurvy or the plague killed countless soldiers. The situation in the military hospitals was so terrible that even slight injuries could end in a painful death. Some desperate soldiers defected to the Ottomans, but had to realise that their enemies didn't have it any better. Even firewood was unattainable, as it was used for tunnel support. We know of an officer who was sentenced to death for stealing one plank of wood. Rats and mice were highly sought after delicacies, and after a while even cannibalism ran rampant. The body fat of dead Ottomans was used as ointments for aching feet, and many Venetian soldiers collected skin parts as trophies. By now, most of the mercenaries had been pressed into service; thousands of soldiers from all over Europe were captured and sent to Candia, never to return.

The siege, 1667/68

What's especially horrid is that during all that time, the supply line to Venice never was broken. It would have been no problem to deliver enough food or medicine for everyone; instead, the officers lived in luxury while their subordinates were starving. Large banquets were held regularly, musicians played to roast and wine, and the generals and admirals payed more attention to their personal intrigues than to the war. Many of Venice's noblemen had decided to make Candia part of their Grand Tour, but weren't ready to do without their usual luxuries even there. The ongoing fight for Candia had been stylised as a heroic last stand of the good Christian Venetians against the abominable pagan Turks; in some parts of Europes, even something like a �crusader spirit� became en vogue, even if those romantic sentiments were utterly unsuited for the brutality of the trenches and tunnels. At one point, 600 French noblemen under the leadership of a duke landed in Candia together with their entourage; inspired by medieval stories of knights and courageous battle, they threw themselves into the fight to impress their lovers and rebuke the Ottomans; some of them stormed into the trenches wearing laced shirts instead of proper armour. The soldiers only called them the �600 fools�. It turned into a fiasco, of course; the Ottomans slaughtered half of them and almost all of their entourage. The rest of the noblemen then sailed back to France. Amongst the killed was the duke; when the Ottoman commander was asked to give back his corpse, he sent five bags full of heads to Candia, telling the messengers to find the right one. It turned out to be a lie; the duke's head wasn't in there.

This painting depicts Dutch and French ships battling an Ottoman fleet off the coast of Smyrna, 1649

In June and July 1669, a French fleet comprising 58 warships and 17 transport ships with 6,000 soldiers arrived in Candia. The plan was to start a massive naval bombardment with the fleet's 1,100 cannons aiming at the Ottoman camps; the fresh troops would then lead the excursion and repel the enemy forces. On 24 July, the French ships bombarded the Ottomans continuously for three hours, when suddenly the powder magazine of the fleet's vice-flagship La Th�rese caught fire and exploded immediately, utterly destroying the ship. In the ensuing confusion, the French commander ordered the bombardment to cease and sailed to the nearby island of Dia. The excursion never got anywhere as a result, and so the French leadership opted to withdraw from the city, having suffered more than 2,000 casualties in only a couple of days. The leadership of the allied forces in Candia begged them to stay, but to no avail: when the French set sail in August, they left behind an utterly exhausted force of 3,600 men against an overwhelming force of 60,000 Ottoman soldiers. The miners mutinied, and the mercenaries threatened to turn on their officers if this war wouldn't end at once. When the generals got word of additional Ottoman forces being transported towards Crete, they finally decided to surrender the city after 21 years and 128 days of constant fighting. The military operations during the last three years of the siege numbered 60 assaults, 90 excursions, 5000 mine detonations and 45 larger subterranean battles. 30,000 European Christians and 120,000 Ottomans had died. Candia had become the symbol of Christian resistance against the Ottoman juggernaut, and its defeat led to great fear and confusion in Europe. Pope Clement IX is said to have fallen ill immediately after hearing news of the city's fall, dying shortly afterwards. The Ottomans held Crete until 1898.

Also re: Nazis trippin' balls:

Fangz posted:

What do people make of this article?

"High Hitler: how Nazi drug abuse steered the course of history"

http://www.theguardian.com/books/20...py_to_clipboard

I skimmed the book this article is based on, and I wasn't exactly impressed tbh. While Ohler to my knowledge doesn't present anything factually wrong, he not only says nothing that wasn't known to experts beforehand but chooses to present it in a very sensationalistic way, complete with long more-or-less fictional passages thrown into the mix and bad puns like "Sieg High" and "High Hitler" aplenty. This isn't my main problem, though (trying to present historical stuff in a manner more accessible to non-historians is always good imo, even though in this case the book's become too "flippant" for my tastes) - instead it's his fixation on drugs being the main driving force behind pretty much everything the Nazis did that bothers me. He even claims that Hitler committed suicide because he couldn't cope with his drug supply being cut off, lol. But maybe I'm just too tainted by academia to enjoy any book with less than 5 footnotes per page, who knows

# ? Sep 26, 2016 09:49

MikeCrotch: Nov 5, 2011; I AM UNJUSTIFIABLY PROUD OF MY SPAGHETTI BOLOGNESE RECIPE

YES, IT IS AN INCREDIBLY SIMPLE DISH

NO, IT IS NOT NORMAL TO USE A PEPPERAMI INSTEAD OF MINCED MEAT

YES, THERE IS TOO MUCH SALT IN MY RECIPE

NO, I WON'T STOP SHARING IT

more like BOLLOCKnese

aphid_licker posted:

I remember bewbies' armyposting. And Laissez Faire was loving magical. I had no idea what was going on most all of the time. Plenty of primo weirdos, wonder what dudes like Toblerone Triangular and Infrateal are doing now. A lot of dudes developed a highly specialized communications/worldview package in that forum that I don't think really translates into anything but yelling at passersby to stop gangstalking you.

e: it wasn't communism, it was maoism-third-worldism with a shitload of modern theory gobbledegook thrown in. Deleuze/Guattari etc. Rhizomes everywhere.

A few pages back, but Toblerone Triangular admitted they were a long con troll and not actually libertarian, and were giving up on that posting schtick because it was beginning to seep into their real life and affecting the way they thought in a bad way.

# ? Sep 26, 2016 10:06

Jobbo_Fett: Mar 7, 2014; Slava Ukrayini; Clapping Larry

StashAugustine posted:

Probably a controversial question, but how hard did the Axis minors (Hungary, Romania, Finland etc) buy into Nazism?

Not very, iirc. Finland didn't give a poo poo about it at all.

# ? Sep 26, 2016 10:07

feedmegin: Jul 30, 2008

HEY GAL posted:

that is a history of the prewar period written after the fact, i'm talking about what an informed observer in 1935 thinks is going on

You can find William Shirer's edited diaries online, I think. He published them shortly after America entered the war, and no doubt they were shaded with that in mind, but they're based on stuff he wrote down as a journalist in Berlin before the war.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Diary

# ? Sep 26, 2016 10:06

JcDent: May 13, 2013; Give me a rifle, one round, and point me at Berlin!

MikeCrotch posted:

A few pages back, but Toblerone Triangular admitted they were a long con troll and not actually libertarian, and were giving up on that posting schtick because it was beginning to seep into their real life and affecting the way they thought in a bad way.

He who fights monsters etc

# ? Sep 26, 2016 10:13

champagne posting: Apr 5, 2006; YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

Jobbo_Fett posted:

Not very, iirc. Finland didn't give a poo poo about it at all.

But as posted above they were uniquely awful. Except possibly for Finland. Is there nothing bad to say about Finland? Clean Finn-magt?

# ? Sep 26, 2016 10:29

echopapa: Jun 2, 2005; El Presidente smiles upon this thread.

HEY GAL posted:

that is a history of the prewar period written after the fact, i'm talking about what an informed observer in 1935 thinks is going on

I�ve read John Gunther�s Inside Europe, from 1936, which is full of reports and gossip.

# ? Sep 26, 2016 10:39

Thanqol: Feb 15, 2012; because our character has the 'poet' trait, this update shall be told in the format of a rap battle.

So when ironclads and dreadnoughts started to take over from wooden battleships, what happened to all the wooden battleships? We must be talking thousands and thousands of ships. Scrapped for parts? How? Sunk for target practice?

# ? Sep 26, 2016 10:51

Tias: May 25, 2008; Pictured: the patron saint of internet political arguments (probably)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund

Boiled Water posted:

But as posted above they were uniquely awful. Except possibly for Finland. Is there nothing bad to say about Finland? Clean Finn-magt?

I guess it depends on what you consider bad. Every third soviet POW in Finnish camps died of malnutrition and disease, which could be neglect or willful assholery, depending on circumstances. That said, they did execute around 1,000 of them.

They had a bunch of governmental officials killed in show trials for crimes against soviet citizens, but that happened at the behest of the soviets and were likely kangaroo courts.

# ? Sep 26, 2016 11:00

JcDent: May 13, 2013; Give me a rifle, one round, and point me at Berlin!

Boiled Water posted:

But as posted above they were uniquely awful. Except possibly for Finland. Is there nothing bad to say about Finland? Clean Finn-magt?

Swamp mongols?

# ? Sep 26, 2016 11:15

Tias: May 25, 2008; Pictured: the patron saint of internet political arguments (probably)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund

JcDent posted:

Swamp mongols?

Are we making fun of finns now? As a Finnish dude told me in alcohol recovery:

Once, I use to sit in hole in forest, with my knife and my vodka.

Now, I sit in hole in forest, with my knife

# ? Sep 26, 2016 11:27

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Depressingly Swede-Adjacent

# ? Sep 26, 2016 11:31

Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Enjoy every sandwich.; Smellrose

Thanqol posted:

So when ironclads and dreadnoughts started to take over from wooden battleships, what happened to all the wooden battleships? We must be talking thousands and thousands of ships. Scrapped for parts? How? Sunk for target practice?

It varies. It took a few decades for steam and iron to completely supplant wooden hulls and the large majority of wooden ships were simply broken up when they reached the end of their useful lives. Others got turned into floating accommodation or storage hulks. A half-dozen or so of the most famous were preserved as relics.

In any case there were never thousands and thousands of wooden warships in existence at any one time. They constantly wore out and were replaced, so it wasn't as if there was a huge collection of 17th century ships of the line in reserve in the middle of the 1800s.

# ? Sep 26, 2016 11:47

Fangz: Jul 5, 2007; Oh I see! This must be the Bad Opinion Zone!

Thanqol posted:

So when ironclads and dreadnoughts started to take over from wooden battleships, what happened to all the wooden battleships? We must be talking thousands and thousands of ships. Scrapped for parts? How? Sunk for target practice?

The vast majority of warships that were ever built were not destroyed in battle, but eventually broken up.

http://www.naval-history.net/WW1NavyBritish-Shipbreak.htm

quote:

Shipbreaking as an industry does not appear until a later date, but in Tudor days it was the regular practice to break up worn-out warships in the dockyards and to work all the material that was still serviceable into new hulls. The frequent shortages of seasoned timber, especially in wartime, made this practice necessary and it saved infinite trouble and labour with primitive tools in the making of new parts. Many of the ships so built, however, showed weakness from the first.

When there was no shortage of material, and the ships could be carefully and leisurely built, it was not as a rule worth while breaking up a wooden ship. She was generally taken to some quiet spot and left to fall to pieces with the minimum of trouble to her owners. Even naval ships were sometimes treated in that way and to the present day small vessels and barges which have no sale value will often be carefully �lost� in some out-of-the-way corner. Harbour masters and conservancy authorities are careful to check this practice wherever possible; but even the Port of London Authority, responsible for the best-controlled port, in the world, often has trouble in stopping it.

As a rule, however, even the oldest ship has some value - in Great Britain, at least. There are many old-established businesses engaged solely in shipbreaking and the disposal of the material. This latter part of the business calls for great ingenuity. One of the pioneers was the firm of Castle, which started its shipbreaking business at the Baltic Wharf at Millbank on the Thames in 1838. The firm specialized in the breaking up of wooden warships there and as the size of ships increased, farther downstream. Turner's famous picture �The Fighting T�m�raire" shows that ship being towed to Castle's yard. The timber of old, wooden warships, especially hard oak and teak, makes excellent material for garden furniture. It has wonderful weathering properties and is almost everlasting, needing neither paint nor varnish. It can be put to other purposes as well, as it was in 1922 when Liberty's, of London, rebuilt their premises and made excellent use of the oak from the old training ships Impregnable and Hindostan which had been broken up on the Thames.

Fangz fucked around with this message at 11:51 on Sep 26, 2016

# ? Sep 26, 2016 11:49

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

Boiled Water posted:

But as posted above they were uniquely awful. Except possibly for Finland. Is there nothing bad to say about Finland? Clean Finn-magt?

Paging Kemper Boyd to the thread. I bet he has some quality dirt.

# ? Sep 26, 2016 11:56

Kemper Boyd: Aug 6, 2007; no kings, no gods, no masters but a comfy chair and no socks

Siivola posted:

Paging Kemper Boyd to the thread. I bet he has some quality dirt.

Oula Silvennoinen discovered about ten years back that there was something called Einsatzgruppe Finnland and the Finnish authorities and military turned over unknown amounts of POW's to them, mostly Jewish ones. Finland also ran concentration camps for Soviet civilians in Eastern Karelia which had a terrible survival rate.

# ? Sep 26, 2016 12:01

MikeCrotch: Nov 5, 2011; I AM UNJUSTIFIABLY PROUD OF MY SPAGHETTI BOLOGNESE RECIPE

YES, IT IS AN INCREDIBLY SIMPLE DISH

NO, IT IS NOT NORMAL TO USE A PEPPERAMI INSTEAD OF MINCED MEAT

YES, THERE IS TOO MUCH SALT IN MY RECIPE

NO, I WON'T STOP SHARING IT

more like BOLLOCKnese

Kemper Boyd posted:

Oula Silvennoinen discovered about ten years back that there was something called Einsatzgruppe Finnland and the Finnish authorities and military turned over unknown amounts of POW's to them, mostly Jewish ones. Finland also ran concentration camps for Soviet civilians in Eastern Karelia which had a terrible survival rate.

Wasn't the Finnish government at the time generally a shitshow as well, and there were all sorts of privations and hardships for the ordinary people and soldiers (I mean, more so than usual in war). Or am I totally misremembering that?

# ? Sep 26, 2016 12:09

feedmegin: Jul 30, 2008

ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:

It varies. It took a few decades for steam and iron to completely supplant wooden hulls and the large majority of wooden ships were simply broken up when they reached the end of their useful lives. Others got turned into floating accommodation or storage hulks. A half-dozen or so of the most famous were preserved as relics.

HMS Victory is a pro visit if you happen to be near Portsmouth, along these lines. The oldest commissioned warship in the world :sun:

# ? Sep 26, 2016 12:10

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

feedmegin posted:

HMS Victory is a pro visit if you happen to be near Portsmouth, along these lines. The oldest commissioned warship in the world

wait, do none of those rad war galleys survive? hosed up if true

# ? Sep 26, 2016 12:11

Kemper Boyd: Aug 6, 2007; no kings, no gods, no masters but a comfy chair and no socks

MikeCrotch posted:

Wasn't the Finnish government at the time generally a shitshow as well, and there were all sorts of privations and hardships for the ordinary people and soldiers (I mean, more so than usual in war). Or am I totally misremembering that?

Not as much as a shitshow, but the govt mostly ruled by decree during the duration of WW2 and the parliament got entirely sidelined until the peace opposition got big enough. Otherwise, privations and hardships were mostly the same poo poo you'd see anywhere else in Europe, i.e. rationing and all that.

Finnish pre-WW2 govt in general can be characterized by being irresponsible as poo poo when it comes to relations with the Soviets because for all his poo poo, Stalin was absolutely right about Finland being an unreliable neighbor. .

# ? Sep 26, 2016 12:16

aphid_licker: Jan 7, 2009

There's a book on Kennedy's travels in Germany pre- and immediately postwar. It uses/reproduces letters and diary entries but some of the reviews say that it seems padded and short on the actual source material. Haven't read it so idk.

Unter Deutschen: Reisetageb�cher und Briefe 1937-1945 von Prof. Dr. Oliver Lubrich (Herausgeber), John F. Kennedy (Autor)

MikeCrotch posted:

A few pages back, but Toblerone Triangular admitted they were a long con troll and not actually libertarian, and were giving up on that posting schtick because it was beginning to seep into their real life and affecting the way they thought in a bad way.

Yeah he did a post on his technique for making his posts that was pretty amazing. Unless I'm confusing him with someone (entirely possible) the thing wasn't so much the libertarianism but the very convincing insanity. He came up with purestrain gold iirc.

# ? Sep 26, 2016 12:18

JcDent: May 13, 2013; Give me a rifle, one round, and point me at Berlin!

Link to said post pls?

# ? Sep 26, 2016 12:22

Xerxes17: Feb 17, 2011

Empress Theonora posted:

Wait, what?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lSR--KULac

Said band of FRG-boos launched a concerted witchhunt campaign against me because I had math that showed that their infantry was actually way above average. But for them, any thread that was negative about the balance of their beloved kruppsthal, they would come in and threadshit with willful misinformation and accusations of bias and so forth. Even now, they are still salty about me.

What's funny is that all the things that I pointed out as good changes to be made eventually came to pass anyway :grin:

# ? Sep 26, 2016 12:24

spectralent: Oct 1, 2014; Me and the boys poppin' down to the shops

Boiled Water posted:

But as posted above they were uniquely awful. Except possibly for Finland. Is there nothing bad to say about Finland? Clean Finn-magt?

A lot of soviets died in camps but AFAIK the Finns themselves were also starving during the war, so how much of that's malice I'm not sure.

e;fb, post is not refresh

edit: Googling it seems that, even if the famine wasn't intentional, which is quite contested, the Finns were brutal to the prisoners, including women and children.

spectralent fucked around with this message at 12:29 on Sep 26, 2016

# ? Sep 26, 2016 12:26

Teriyaki Hairpiece: Dec 29, 2006; I'm nae the voice o' the darkened thistle, but th' darkened thistle cannae bear the sight o' our Bonnie Prince Bernie nae mair.

The most sad Axis country was Yugoslavia.

Yugoslavia had been ruled by a fellow known as Prince Paul. He was never supposed to be even close to any real power and spent most of his adult life in Britain. He was educated at Oxford and spent most of his time going to parties, collecting art, and just living the life of a pre-WW2 rich British person. Then Yugoslav King Alexander gets assassinated in Marseilles and Paul's whole world changed.

He went back home to run the country as Regent for Alexander's son Peter. This was something he genuinely did not want to do. However, he surprised everybody by not horribly sucking at the job. Actually he pushed forward some real reforms. Even gave most of his artwork to the Yugoslav people.

The real problem that Yugoslavia had had since independence was Croatia. The Croats wanted independence and were pissed off at being ruled as part of a multi-ethnic state essentially dominated by a Serbian monarchical dictatorship. Paul worked towards a solution for years and finally presided over an historic agreement, his greatest achievement, that kept Yugoslavia together, that probably could have lasted forever, where the Croats got everything they wanted except independence. Unfortunately, this was 1939.

With the coming of the war Paul tried his best to be neutral, even though he really really really loved the UK. What happened between 1939 is complicated, but it boils down to this: Hitler put ever-increasing and unceasing pressure on Prince Paul to sign the Tripartite Pact and become a formal member of the Axis. He just kept putting Hitler off and delaying endlessly while watching Nazi armies crush Europe and all his neighbors join the Axis. Finally, in the spring of 1941, surrounded and with very little choice, Paul gave in. Hitler did this thing where he'd force foreign leaders to come to Berlin and yell at them a lot till they did what he told them to. This was no joke. The Czech Prime Minister had a heart attack during this process and then signed his whole country away, for example.

However, Paul got some pretty decent concessions. Yugoslavia would not declare war on the United Kingdom or anybody else. Yugoslavia would not provide any military support to the other Axis nations. Yugoslavia would not allow any Axis troops to cross through it. Yugoslavia would be a member of the Axis but not really do anything at all. This was a pretty good deal!

Immediately though there were huge protests against Paul for signing the Pact and pretty speedily he was deposed in a coup largely orchestrated by British intelligence. Young King Peter was declared old enough and Prince Paul got dragged away to Kenya by British agents to live out the rest of the war in exiled imprisonment. Even after, he was not allowed to go back to Yugoslavia, or even the UK, and lived out the rest of his life pretty miserable in Paris. Churchill particularly hated the gently caress out of Prince Paul for his supposed betrayal.

10 days after the coup the Germans launch Operation Retribution, a very brutal bombing of Belgrade that starts off their invasion of the country. Yugoslavia falls, then is dismantled and goes through some of the worst miseries of a miserable war. A legend starts even during the war that the invasion of Yugoslavia delayed the invasion of the Soviet Union that summer just enough that it failed, and therefore all of Yugoslavia's agony was worth it for the greater good. This has pretty conclusively proven to be bullshit.

# ? Sep 26, 2016 12:35

Teriyaki Hairpiece: Dec 29, 2006; I'm nae the voice o' the darkened thistle, but th' darkened thistle cannae bear the sight o' our Bonnie Prince Bernie nae mair.

I suppose "not evil" was a little bit of an oversimplification about Finland, but so were all my characterizations in that post, I was summing up some very complicated issues as simply as I possibly could. Finland only cared about FInland. Mainly, staying independent and doing the best for Finnish people. Non-Finnish people or countries that weren't FInland didn't really matter. I'd call the Finnish state in WW2 a "quarereacracy", a word I just made up that means "rule by self-interest".

It's an absolute miracle they survived the first Soviet invasion which everybody knew was wrong. The Western powers almost thought about kind of actually sort of giving them some kind of help but then didn't do anything, which is true. They had one real helping hand extended to them and they took it and they compromised themselves forever with this decision.

They paid for their sins with territorial losses, the Lapland War, endless reparations, and always being known as a willing ally of Nazi Germany. Those are real consequences.

# ? Sep 26, 2016 12:55

BalloonFish: Jun 30, 2013; Fun Shoe

Thanqol posted:

So when ironclads and dreadnoughts started to take over from wooden battleships, what happened to all the wooden battleships? We must be talking thousands and thousands of ships. Scrapped for parts? How? Sunk for target practice?

This is going to be a very Royal Navy-centric post, but the same applied to nearly all the other major navies of the time.

Just to get a handle on the numbers, in 1860 the Royal Navy had 398 ships on its books, of which 163 were in commission. The French Navy at the time had 142 ships on active service.

Of the RN's strength 92 were sailing ships, including 27 ships of the line and 37 frigates. Only one of the frigates is listed as being in active service, with 8 being on 'harbour service' and 28 laid up 'in ordinary'.

As to what happened to the wooden sailing ships as they were rendered obsolete, most were gradually demoted from active service to harbour service, then they were hulked and then they were broken up.

These ships were still very useful long after they were completely obsolete as fighting vessels. The RN in particular had relatively little onshore infrastructure. Partly this was due to funding (the Navy was funded to operate ships, not buildings), partly due to tradition and a lot due to operating practise: Sailors are supposed to be on ships and it's easiest to maintain routine, discipline and security if as much of your personnel are kept on ships rather than ashore. So old and obsolete ships would be maintained on harbour service - still 'operational' but not equipped or intended to ever go to sea. These ships acted as the literal flagship of Port Admirals, squadron commanders-in-chief etc. Others would be hulked (all their masts and rigging removed, and often with a full-length roof built over the deck) and used as barracks, hospitals, prisons, stores and so on; almost anything that would now be carried out in a proper building ashore. Incidentally, this is what had been done with old ships for hundreds of years, not just because of the sail/steam transition. It's just that in this period there were a lot of obsolete ships and at the same time the Navy was growing in the amount of on-shore activity it needed to support itself.

For instance, it was around this time that the RN began to formalise its training regimes for ratings and officers, rather than it being almost entirely through experience at sea. And harbour-bound ships of the line made ideal training platforms. Old ships were spread around ports and harbours to serve as basic training centres and when the Royal Naval Reserve was formed in 1859 a lot of the local units used an old sailing ship as a drill ship.

Some of these ships lasted many, many times longer in 'retirement' than they did in active service. To take a famous example, HMS Temeraire (subject of the JMW Turner painting) was launched in 1798 and passed into reserve in 1812. She then existed as a prison ship, a receiving ship, flagship of the Medway Reserve Fleet and a training ship until she was broken up in 1838. That was fairly typical but some of the 'wooden walls' lasted a whole lot longer. HMS Nile, launched in 1839, was used by the RN until 1876 (having been converted to auxiliary steam power) and was then loaned to a civilian sea training association who used her until 1953 when she ran aground. HMS Implacable (1809) was hulked in 1850 and used as a training ship until she was scuttled in 1949 (she was the last seventy-four in RN service). HMS Wellesley (a seventy-four launched in 1815) was the port flagship at Chatham from 1854 until 1940, when she became the only ship of the line to be sunk in an air strike. Although not a wooden ship, HMS Warrior (1860) was in RN service until 1978, having been hulked in 1901 and ended her service as a fuel barge before being restored.

The handful of wooden sailing warships that survive are almost entirely due to this habit of keeping them around in some form for decades, rather than any sentimental or historical feeling. As well as Warrior, Trincomalee was used as a training and accomodation ship until 1986 and even Nelson's Victory was scheduled to be broken up in 1831, having been used as a humble depot ship since 1812. After her reprieve she became a signal school and the nominal flagship of the Second Sea Lord. Since being put in dry dock in the 1920s she's still in 'active' comission, now as the flagship of the First Sea Lord.

The RN still operates its shore bases as if they were comissioned ships ('stone frigates') and many of them take their names from the hulked ships of the line that were their original home. The training school at Portsmouth is HMS Excellent, after the original seventy-four which was anchored in the upper reaches of the harbour for gunnery training in the 1830s. The naval college at Dartmouth is HMS Britannia since that's the static ship that was originally moored there in the 1850s. And the RN still uses old warships this way - HMS Bristol, retired in 1987, is 'hulked' at Portsmouth as a training and accomodation ship.

# ? Sep 26, 2016 12:56

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

System Metternich posted:

I just remembered that I did a D&D effort post years ago about a MilHist topic, but I'm not sure if I even knew that this thread was a thing back then, so I'm reposting it here because maybe you'll be interested and maybe you'll tell me the myriad ways in which I got it wrong

Holy poo poo, the siege of Candia was brutal.

# ? Sep 26, 2016 13:00

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

cheerfullydrab posted:

They paid for their sins with . . . always being known as a willing ally of Nazi Germany. Those are real consequences.

Does anybody outside this thread actually care about that? Even Finns go "oh no we waged a totally separate war against the Soviets, honest!"

Basically all I've ever seen people say about Finland in WWII is some variation of "woo Simo H�yh�, rah rah, gently caress the Soviets". Some people even idolize Lauri "Larry Thorne" T�rni without pausing to think about how he volunteered for the SS in the middle of the Lapland War.

# ? Sep 26, 2016 13:13

StashAugustine: Mar 24, 2013; Do not trust in hope- it will betray you! Only faith and hatred sustain.

What was going on with Hungary's peace deal? I'd forgotten about that.

# ? Sep 26, 2016 13:55

feedmegin: Jul 30, 2008

HEY GAL posted:

wait, do none of those rad war galleys survive? hosed up if true

I don't know about that, but I said 'commissioned', i.e. it's still officially in Royal Navy service with a captain and crew and all that.

# ? Sep 26, 2016 14:07

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# ? May 11, 2024 14:19

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

Boiled Water posted:

But as posted above they were uniquely awful. Except possibly for Finland. Is there nothing bad to say about Finland? Clean Finn-magt?

I kind of got the impression that Finland mostly wanted to fight the Soviets and didn't give a poo poo about much else. Or at least they didn't get a lot of chance to care about much else given that fighting the Soviets was what they spent most of the war doing.

# ? Sep 26, 2016 14:11

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > Military History Mk. III: One that I know of is an archaic word for dick, another is

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