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my dad posted:Huh. If that's how it works, I wonder who stole ours. Poland sacrificed theirs to try and spell a Slavic language in the good Catholic alphabet rather than the borderline heretical Orthodox one.  My favorite Polish word is probably zdzbla. Except there are also accents on three letters. It means a blade of grass. Multiple blades are zdzbli. Edit: pronounced, uh, Z J as in jerk B Wah. Also I guess this means there are only accents on two letters, I am out of practice. And in my terrible accent it comes out more like izz-jib-wah, for three actual syllables.  I do not have the moral character to do Polish good.
Goatse James Bond fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Oct 19, 2016 |
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Oct 19, 2016 20:53
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MikeCrotch posted:Isn't this just classic authoritarian states making sure the army is loyal instead of competent so they don't start a coup? Considering what happened later during the war this doesn't seem like a stupid move on Diem (and the leaders that followed on from him)'s part. One part I liked in A Bright Shining Lie was finding out the ARVN used US Intelligence reports of VM/VC troop locations as ways of avoiding those areas to avoid taking casualties.
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Oct 19, 2016 21:02
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spectralent posted:This reminds me, why was Italy "one tough gut"? Was the Axis resistance much stronger than expected or was the Allied planning too idealistic? In general, while it's rarely talked about, when it is I always get the impression Italy was far more of a meatgrinder than western europe. Invading a rugged peninsula without what you would consider world class infrastructure in the 40s that was the home territory for one of the senior Axis members was a big issue. It's not like they were just going to write off Italy the way they could North Africa. It was also a rather narrow front to advance up. The geography of fighting a land campaign south to north in Italy just sucks. There were also problems with establishing air superiority. All the nightmares about the Lufwaffe hitting the Normandy beachheads that led to the insane air defenses and air superiority campaign were very justified in light of the Italian campaign. We're talking luftwaffe air raids on ships supporting the Salerno landings that sank a bunch of cargo ships and released a gently caress load of mustard gas that the Allies brought along just in case. Also when I said Anzio earlier as a "nearly failed landing" I meant Salerno although in retrospect they both were pretty loving rough.
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Oct 19, 2016 21:03
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spectralent posted:This reminds me, why was Italy "one tough gut"? 
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Oct 19, 2016 21:40
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Looks deliciously flaky
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Oct 19, 2016 22:06
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For some weird reason I REALLY want a croissant after looking at that map. Edit: Beaten, damnit.
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Oct 19, 2016 22:07
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Say... what if we sail at full steam up the Adriatic and unload near Venice, then advance along the Po valley cutting all of Italy off? No way they would see that coming! Whoops sorry, I accidentally connected my ouija board to my PC and seem to have contacted Churchill. Disregard.
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Oct 19, 2016 22:16
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I was going to say "was the terrain bad?" but I remembered the bocage and assumed they were about equally bad. I'm guessing mountains are, in fact, even shittier than really narrow and borderline impassable hedgerow lanes though?
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Oct 19, 2016 22:27
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spectralent posted:I was going to say "was the terrain bad?" but I remembered the bocage and assumed they were about equally bad. I'm guessing mountains are, in fact, even shittier than really narrow and borderline impassable hedgerow lanes though? Imagine if the bocage extended from Normandy to the Rhine. Once they got out they got out, but it's not like you're going to break through those mountains and into better terrain. Also the bocage was a surprise. They thought they were waist high hedges, not the hell walls they really were. Everyone knew full loving well that Apennine Mountains were a thing. edit: actually, that's another good notch on why invasions are so loving difficult. That was the largest, most well organized, intensively planned for invasion in history with total naval and air superiority. They built their own loving harbors and TOWED THEM ACROSS THE CHANNEL. Insane poo poo. And it got stalled for months because of loving hedges. Oh, and let's not forget that the Wehrmacht was kind of busy getting destroyed in Poland. Can you imagine June '44 if 80% of the German Army wasn't stuck dealing with Bagration? edit x2: look up some of the insane advantages in terms of troops, aircraft, and naval support that were involved in the Pacific island invasions, and look at how bloody some of those were despite all that. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 22:44 on Oct 19, 2016 |
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Oct 19, 2016 22:41
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Cyrano4747 posted:Imagine if the bocage extended from Normandy to the Rhine. Once they got out they got out, but it's not like you're going to break through those mountains and into better terrain. Also, the infrastructure of Italy was very skewed toward the part that remained German for almost the entire war and gave them a high level of operational/strategic mobility in the terrain. The Germans were also much more prepared for the Italian armistice than the Allies and a bunch of potentially useful Italian soldiers ended up in German labor/POW camps. The Allies were also very reluctant to make use of the Italians they had.
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Oct 19, 2016 22:47
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Panzeh posted:Also, the infrastructure of Italy was very skewed toward the part that remained German for almost the entire war and gave them a high level of operational/strategic mobility in the terrain. The Germans were also much more prepared for the Italian armistice than the Allies and a bunch of potentially useful Italian soldiers ended up in German labor/POW camps. The Allies were also very reluctant to make use of the Italians they had. Don't forget the continued presence of Italian fascist loyalists. Imagine if Vichy France showed up in the field in numbers.
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Oct 19, 2016 22:51
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Cyrano4747 posted:Don't forget the continued presence of Italian fascist loyalists. Imagine if Vichy France showed up in the field in numbers. Vichy France was seen in some extent as the continuation of France, which is why it had a significant armed force, and also why it had significant defections when the Allies started to look like they were winning. The RSI was never seen as anything but a German creation and failed to inspire any serious kind of loyalty. The Vichy forces showed up in numbers.. and then Vichy France was occupied when they defected in North Africa en masse. The RSI never really fielded significant numbers of front-line troops, though they did take part in many anti-partisan operations.
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Oct 19, 2016 22:56
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This seems apropos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXl_xzqIRgk
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Oct 19, 2016 23:07
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Anzio:
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Oct 19, 2016 23:14
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I've got Bill Mauldin's 1945 book and one of the things his later cartoons complain about is how once D-Day happened everyone stopped paying attention to Italy and assumed the war was won there.
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Oct 20, 2016 00:09
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Also he drew cartoons under fire at Anzio with stamp ink.
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Oct 20, 2016 00:11
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SeanBeansShako posted:Also, I thought fall was only a term Americans used to describe Autumn until I started seeing it pop up in Napoleonic memoirs for British soldiers. Let this be a reminder that just because someone is English doesn't mean they know the language.
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Oct 20, 2016 00:43
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Let this be a reminder that just because someone is English doesn't mean they know the language.
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Oct 20, 2016 01:16
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I would still really appreciate any direction the thread could give on finding a good book on or about Von Steuben. I'm also looking to read something on T.E. Lawrence. I've looked at some biographies but quite a few have poor reviews on amazon. He's usually romanticized and viewed as a folk hero (which I understand), and I'd like a definitive starting point on where to start reading on him. Someone has to have written something of quality by now. Probably easier, I'd also take a good book covering Grant and/or Sherman.
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Oct 20, 2016 01:46
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HEY GAL posted:the opposite in fact; the person i'm seeing used the word "bantz" the other day Waroduce posted:I'm also looking to read something on T.E. Lawrence. I've looked at some biographies but quite a few have poor reviews on amazon. He's usually romanticized and viewed as a folk hero (which I understand), and I'd like a definitive starting point on where to start reading on him. Someone has to have written something of quality by now.
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Oct 20, 2016 03:56
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The Mint which I personally like better.
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Oct 20, 2016 04:29
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HEY GAL posted:the opposite in fact; the person i'm seeing used the word "bantz" the other day Arquinsiel posted:Sever.
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Oct 20, 2016 04:30
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Lawrence in Arabia by Scott Anderson is good. But Seven pillars I think kind of tells you everything you need to know about him really.
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Oct 20, 2016 08:31
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GreyjoyBastard posted:Poland sacrificed theirs to try and spell a Slavic language in the good Catholic alphabet rather than the borderline heretical Orthodox one. Untrue on pretty much all counts. First: when Poland adopted Catholicism in mid-10th century1, nobody really concerned themselves with what alphabet they're going to use to write in Polish, since no-one had plans to do that yet. The first written record of the Polish language comes in 1136 when the papal Bull of Gniezno (Ex commisso nobis a Deo) lists a number of names of people and places in Poland in Polish. Now, the claim that any alphabet "reads as it is written and is written the way it is heard" is false on linguistic grounds, and while it has to be said that some alphabets are probably closer to that ideal than others (e.g. the Latin alphabet tends to be far off since it has originally been designed for, well, Latin), the Cyrilic script was created in the 9th century by a Greek to reflect a Slavic dialect from the Saloniki area. Assuming it would be any accurate for, say, Polish phonology of the 12th century would be wrong. Second: we can track the development of Polish orthography throughout the centuries with little difficulty, and we can see that many attempts have been made to integrate Polish phonology more completely into the Latin alphabet, and they devote plenty of attention to the matter of vowels as well. However, by the 16th century Polish pretty much discards the entire phenomenon of vowel length, with some former long vowels reducing to their short versions (e.g. a: -> a) and others even completely changing their pronunciation (e.g. o: -> u, although it did go through some intermediate stages), rendering most of those attempts moot. So, the reason most Polish vowels disappeared was because nobody could be arsed to bother with the "long vowel" bullshit. Third: if we only count the vowels which appear as discrete graphic signs, Poland still has a leg up on English because of the nasalized vowels ą and ę (yes it is cheating). Fourth: Polish appears to have very few vowels relative to consonants due to using "z" for most digraphs, but this is only a visual thing. Fifth: it's actually źdźbło (sing.) and źdźbła (pl.). 1I shall disregard the Lechite Empire hypothesis and the "My wooden plank proves they didn't!!!" hypothesis for the purposes of this post.
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Oct 20, 2016 10:37
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Sorry about your hosed up language
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Oct 20, 2016 10:53
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:I've got Bill Mauldin's 1945 book and one of the things his later cartoons complain about is how once D-Day happened everyone stopped paying attention to Italy and assumed the war was won there. Plan was for a third amphibious landing after Salerno and Anzio to attempt to outflank the Germans, but all the available boats were commandeered for Normandy.
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Oct 20, 2016 12:01
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Sorry about your hosed up language Yeah what a mess. I don't think that even counts as the Roman alphabet anymore...
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Oct 20, 2016 12:07
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MikeCrotch posted:Plan was for a third amphibious landing after Salerno and Anzio to attempt to outflank the Germans, but all the available boats were commandeered for Normandy. There was a consensus in the US general staff that even if they had gotten into the Po Valley quickly it would still not have resulted in any major threat to Germany because the Alps would be another natural barrier. This is why Churchill's Balkan plans were disregarded by serious military minds.
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Oct 20, 2016 12:31
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Sorry about your hosed up language
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Oct 20, 2016 12:38
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Panzeh posted:There was a consensus in the US general staff that even if they had gotten into the Po Valley quickly it would still not have resulted in any major threat to Germany because the Alps would be another natural barrier. This is why Churchill's Balkan plans were disregarded by serious military minds. The main reason why the Balkans were disregarded was Stalin. Other reasons tend to pale in comparison to that one.
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Oct 20, 2016 12:43
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HEY GAL posted:the opposite in fact; the person i'm seeing used the word "bantz" the other day Arquinsiel posted:Sever. Hang em and flog em, I would, it's the only language they understand
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Oct 20, 2016 13:19
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HEY GAL posted:someone still salty about poland-lithuania The HRE's greatest generals got schooled by an army of teenage conscripts who figured out how to shoot more than one gun at a time.
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Oct 20, 2016 13:21
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Trin Tragula posted:Hang em and flog em, I would, it's the only language they understand No, have them walk through our own angry gauntlet where we twat them with a Dictionary. The old hardbacked ones.
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Oct 20, 2016 14:27
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HEY GAL posted:the opposite in fact; the person i'm seeing used the word "bantz" the other day have you been invited for a cheeky nandos yet? wot a ledge eh
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Oct 20, 2016 14:29
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MikeCrotch posted:have you been invited for a cheeky nandos yet? wot a ledge eh Rodrigo Diaz posted:The HRE's greatest generals got schooled by an army of teenage conscripts who figured out how to shoot more than one gun at a time. ed: unlike poland-lithuania
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Oct 20, 2016 15:03
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HEY GAL posted:i still don't know what that is It's a so-so spicy chicken meal.
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Oct 20, 2016 16:45
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feedmegin posted:It's a so-so spicy chicken meal. I would go with decent rather then so-so for nandos.
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Oct 20, 2016 16:57
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it's what you have instead of greggs when out on the lash, better than maccy d's except your mate Adam takes forever to order which ruins the cheekiness, so you make him order extra spicy and he can't finish it without crying, top bantz mate
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Oct 20, 2016 17:07
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It's eating roast chicken. And feeling daring for doing so. Also as regards languages that are sensible, German is a lot more "speak as it's written" than English is, remarkably so coming from English. E: What do you think Bernard Montogmery would have thought about a cheeky nandos?
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Oct 20, 2016 17:08
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I find Italian is almost spot on in terms of 'speak as written', the only notable exceptions being gh, ch, gn, gl and sc. EDIT: it's always funny hearing english people butchering the pronunciation of gnocchi
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Oct 20, 2016 17:11
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