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I'd say it depends more on the background of the person and where they live with an extremely complicated and hard to predict series of variables.
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Nov 25, 2016 19:58
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Tias posted:Not really going to argue that it wasn't, but this really depends on who you are and where you were located. The eastern front solidified Stalins brutal dictatorship, and you could just as well say that it was well the Germans fought them Ummm given the Nazis' plans for the East if they won, I would really, really dispute that. Your average Russian had the choice of a pretty lovely dictatorship that was at least his country's dictatorship, for about the next decade before the Krushchev thaw, or literal intentional starvation/annihilation/enslavement under a thousand year reich. It's a lovely choice but one side is still clearly better than the other.
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Nov 25, 2016 19:59
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my dad posted:No, not really. If anything, chickenhawk ratings go up fairly quickly with moderate levels of knowledge about war. where are you getting this from?
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Nov 25, 2016 20:03
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feedmegin posted:Ummm given the Nazis' plans for the East if they won, I would really, really dispute that. Your average Russian had the choice of a pretty lovely dictatorship that was at least his country's dictatorship, for about the next decade before the Krushchev thaw, or literal intentional starvation/annihilation/enslavement under a thousand year reich. It's a lovely choice but one side is still clearly better than the other. Sure, but the soviet union falling and Germany losing as well would be even better. Also, that doesn't address China, betraying Poland etc.
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Nov 25, 2016 20:03
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OwlFancier posted:The best way to fight in an aircraft is to shoot your service revolver out of the cockpit like some kind of aerial drive by. No, the best way to fight in an aircraft is to fly it above something else and then drop big metal lawn darts over the side
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Nov 25, 2016 20:05
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No one posted the best angle of the Canadian bi-plane. It looks just like a late 30s mono-plane just with an extra wing bolted on!
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Nov 25, 2016 20:06
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feedmegin posted:Ummm given the Nazis' plans for the East if they won, I would really, really dispute that. Your average Russian had the choice of a pretty lovely dictatorship that was at least his country's dictatorship, for about the next decade before the Krushchev thaw, or literal intentional starvation/annihilation/enslavement under a thousand year reich. It's a lovely choice but one side is still clearly better than the other. No matter how bad Stalin got, he was just an extremely ruthless and powerful dictator over a large population. While this is bad, what Hitler would have done if given the chance would have been so much worse. It is this distinction that is important when it comes to World War II. The Allies were mostly in it for self preservation and did many morally questionable and worse acts in the course of the war, the Axis powers were just so much worse.
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Nov 25, 2016 20:09
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bewbies posted:where are you getting this from? I guess I phrased it like it was some kind of statistic, but it was just a joking way of talking about personal experience with people who know something, but not much about war. The most jingoistic non-military people I've met are dudes who amateurishly nerd out about military stuff. (the most jingoistic military people I've met are desk-job officers)
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Nov 25, 2016 20:09
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Tias posted:Sure, but the soviet union falling and Germany losing as well would be even better. Also, that doesn't address China, betraying Poland etc. I am specifically talking about the Soviet Union, sure, but 'the Soviet Union falls because alien space bats and then Germany loses' isn't really an option. A Germany that rules Europe from Brest to the Urals has won and night falls across the continent. D-Day was hard enough in real life, and that was with 2/3rds of the German army in the East. There is no good option for Poland in either scenario, because just like Russia was going to have a real bad time if things had gone the other way, so was the General Government. Sorry, what happened historically is the least bad even vaguely realistically available option for that part of the world. As for China, not really my field, but I would at least question whether a Kuomintang dictatorship and/or a reversion to the warlord period would exactly be wine and roses, either.
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Nov 25, 2016 20:11
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my dad posted:I guess I phrased it like it was some kind of statistic, but it was just a joking way of talking about personal experience with people who know something, but not much about war. The most jingoistic non-military people I've met are dudes who amateurishly nerd out about military stuff. Yeah this tallies well with my experience also. Every military game is filled with usernames like SSKampfFuhrer. Tank forums are full of breathless speculation about what tanks the Abrams can beat in a fight. Even stuff like Dan Carlin's forums were, when I was there, populated with threads like "hey China is like Nazi Germany, we should attack pre-emptively before it's too late!" Indeed I totally think that Trump (favourite generals: Macarthur and Patton, lover of the Surprise Attack) is one of these guys. Fangz fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Nov 25, 2016 |
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Nov 25, 2016 20:14
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Tias posted:Sure, but the soviet union falling and Germany losing as well would be even better. Also, that doesn't address China, betraying Poland etc. And? The betrayal of Poland was disgusting, but what could the Western powers have done about it? The aftermath of the fighting of WWII and the deals required to have it end in an an Allied victory could be quite horrifying, but an Axis victory would have been worse. This thread as a whole generally agrees that the Axis had very little chance of actually winning, but that is only because the Allied powers did everything they could to achieve victory.
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Nov 25, 2016 20:16
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my dad posted:No, not really. If anything, chickenhawk ratings go up fairly quickly with moderate levels of knowledge about war. A little learning is a dangerous thing
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Nov 25, 2016 20:17
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Tias posted:Sure, but the soviet union falling and Germany losing as well would be even better. Also, that doesn't address China, betraying Poland etc. Once the Soviet Union falls in your scenario, the Germans begin (or rather just up the scale) of their extermination programs. Tens of millions will die before the Western Allies will be able to land in Europe, tens more will die before Germany is defeated. There is no way in which your scenario is better.
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Nov 25, 2016 20:25
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The pacifist perspective on the Second World War is (and was) pretty interesting. People often talk about war fatigue in Vietnam or even now, but Christ almighty - that alone explains between the war pacifism and appeasement. At the time, another war against just another bad guy, especially when it *seems* that he just wants to restore Germany to pre Versailles status - maybe that war seems pointless to fight. In the early and mid thirties a lot of people had heard that before. Heard worse, in fact - the Hun rapes babies, so what's a little broken glass? The reality of the situation was unknown or even unknowable to people for a while - and by the time all those signs that seem so clear to us had aligned, it was too late for pacifism. Even if that was all it ever was it's still a difficult argument to put forward, saying "we can sacrifice X to save us because war would be worse". It's a difficult one unless you're the generation after a hugely horrifically destructive and pointless war. For all that you can (wrongly) argue that the First World War maybe had some kind of point, I don't think it mattered to the people of 1939. If you've just lived through the war to end all wars and then smacked into a period of economic depression, what would you do to avoid that happening again? What would you do to stop your kids going through the same privations you did? Knowing truly that every promise had been broken and that the land fit for heroes had turned into dole queues and a pittance of a pension, Or to avoid your son having to slog through the western front again, when you know by god you were lucky to come back, and there's no way that luck strikes twice and sometimes in the middle of the night you still see Bob swinging in the breeze on the line and you can taste the gas again.... But still, retroactively it is the quintessential anti-pacifist argument. Every single time I talked about conscientious objection, and I must have given that talk more than 100 times all over Britain, someone would ask "what would you do about hitler". Not a difficult question to answer when you've just been talking about the First World War - guy was just another soldier - but largely I'll talk about that post-war retrospective argument, and the fact that the hardcore pacifists would argue that "wars will cease when men refuse to fight" - pacifist action doesn't come in the last few days before the war, but in the months and years preceding it. Anyway - I'm not sure i believe any of that at all anymore. Maybe it's just going to happen and all we can do is refuse.
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Nov 25, 2016 20:36
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Ensign Expendable posted:Once the Soviet Union falls in your scenario, the Germans begin (or rather just up the scale) of their extermination programs. Tens of millions will die before the Western Allies will be able to land in Europe, tens more will die before Germany is defeated. There is no way in which your scenario is better. You're also assuming Russia doesn't just relapse into USSR v2 or worse, Nazi Russia a few years later, on the slogan of 'make Russia strong so this never happens again'.
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Nov 25, 2016 20:36
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Ensign Expendable posted:Get the kid Armoured Champion. Schwerpunkt is pretty dry for a teenager. That was the title I was trying to remember in the back of my head as I was reading through the thread. Seconding this.
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Nov 25, 2016 20:53
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When you get into the idea of making war on people who are already making war in an attempt to mitigate the damage that they're causing with their war, you start getting into this calculus of lives wherein all variables are hidden so you can only speculate on what they could be. It's way easier to focus on literally anything else, from the high-minded philosophy of what reason the people die for to the practicals of diplomatic obligations and economic opportunities. It's why most people prefer to pave over all the politics of WW2 with "the holocaust was bad."
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Nov 25, 2016 21:02
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Crazycryodude posted:Yeah it's pretty ironic that that one of the most horrible wars mankind has ever fought is also one of the few that I think were completely justified. This doesn't quite make sense to me. How can a war be "justified" when a war has at least two sides in it? Or were they all justified in everything that they did? You cannot possibly mean that, but then what does it mean?
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Nov 25, 2016 21:08
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SlothfulCobra posted:When you get into the idea of making war on people who are already making war in an attempt to mitigate the damage that they're causing with their war, you start getting into this calculus of lives wherein all variables are hidden so you can only speculate on what they could be. It's way easier to focus on literally anything else, from the high-minded philosophy of what reason the people die for to the practicals of diplomatic obligations and economic opportunities. I mean, the thing is we do have 20-20 hindsight that the holocaust was bad. But, I think Lenoon is also right that pacifism is a long-term process, rather than a singular decision on a given war.
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Nov 25, 2016 21:09
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Fangz posted:Indeed I totally think that Trump (favourite generals: Macarthur and Patton, lover of the Surprise Attack) is one of these guys. Patton would've totally skullfucked Trump if they ever met.
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Nov 25, 2016 21:20
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I think the point I would make regarding WWII is that the way it is presented is typically the least useful and relevant one. It is almost entirely impossible that the US would find itself in the same position as WWII America or Britain in the near future. Yet both the media and politicians continue to portray minor states like Iran or North Korea as the Next Hitler and themselves - ludicrously - as Churchill. Any near future conflict would really really not look like that. And those who would argue that the country engage in ever greater military build-ups, or to purge various 'weaknesses' to prepare for the retread of 1939-1945 never stop to wonder what prevents the US from being the bad guys the next time round.
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Nov 25, 2016 21:27
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Ensign Expendable posted:Once the Soviet Union falls in your scenario, the Germans begin (or rather just up the scale) of their extermination programs. Tens of millions will die before the Western Allies will be able to land in Europe, tens more will die before Germany is defeated. There is no way in which your scenario is better. I am not positing a scenario, so that makes no sense. I am just saying that world war 2 was not stopping the holodomor and shoah and freeing the philipines and giving everybody wine and roses - it was a lot of horrible, hinky poo poo, and not only done by axis powers. Saying the war is just rings too much of justifying what was done in it to me.
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Nov 25, 2016 21:28
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Well What Now posted:Patton would've totally skullfucked Trump if they ever met. Really? Trump is a homeless veteran?
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Nov 25, 2016 21:29
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Tias posted:I am not positing a scenario, so that makes no sense. I am just saying that world war 2 was not stopping the holodomor and shoah and freeing the philipines and giving everybody wine and roses - it was a lot of horrible, hinky poo poo, and not only done by axis powers. Saying the war is just rings too much of justifying what was done in it to me. Given that the holodomor happened a decade prior, I don't exactly see what your point is.
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Nov 25, 2016 21:35
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Tias posted:I am not positing a scenario, so that makes no sense. I am just saying that world war 2 was not stopping the holodomor and shoah and freeing the philipines and giving everybody wine and roses - it was a lot of horrible, hinky poo poo, and not only done by axis powers. Saying the war is just rings too much of justifying what was done in it to me. Saying a war is just or justified does not endorse everything that was done in it, and you will never ever have a war in which you can be completely morally fine with everything that happened it, doesn't stop the war itself from being justified in being fought. You cannot apply judgement to the people that fought to defeat Hitler just because in doing so they enabled Stalin to remain in power (in itself a questionable point), they don't share culpability in what he did because of that.
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Nov 25, 2016 21:40
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sullat posted:Really? Trump is a homeless veteran? I'm pretty sure MacArthur was the one gleefully eager to kick the poo poo out of WW1 veterans struggling with poverty. Unless Patton was driving one of the armoured cars that did that.
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Nov 25, 2016 21:57
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This reminds me that there's a polish kid at my forum arguing that Hitler's worst mistake was not allying Poland in some sort of bizarro Polandball logic. He also happens to describe the Red Army soldiers in Poland as acting like "beasts" like their savagery stood out in comparison to the Germans, so I'm a little suspicious even if he's critical of the current Polish government.
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Nov 25, 2016 22:02
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SeanBeansShako posted:I'm pretty sure MacArthur was the one gleefully eager to kick the poo poo out of WW1 veterans struggling with poverty. Unless Patton was driving one of the armoured cars that did that. Patton was on his staff at the time and, IIRC, was pretty "uhhh..." about the whole thing.
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Nov 25, 2016 22:02
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I finally finished this thing for new kid: it remains to be seen how much it may or may not influence his chickenhawk jingoistic tendencies
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Nov 25, 2016 22:05
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Well What Now posted:Patton was on his staff at the time and, IIRC, was pretty "uhhh..." about the whole thing. Well the dude was a WW1 veteran himself.
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Nov 25, 2016 22:08
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bewbies posted:I finally finished this thing for new kid: 20 years from now he'll be lying on a psychiatrist's couch complaining of nightmares of being strafed and bombed.
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Nov 25, 2016 22:10
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Well What Now posted:Patton was on his staff at the time and, IIRC, was pretty "uhhh..." about the whole thing. He was there, too. MacArthur, Patton and Eisenhower v. the Bonus army.
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Nov 25, 2016 22:12
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sullat posted:He was there, too. MacArthur, Patton and Eisenhower v. the Bonus army. The most awkward of reunions.
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Nov 25, 2016 22:16
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Well What Now posted:Patton was on his staff at the time and, IIRC, was pretty "uhhh..." about the whole thing. No, that was Eisenhower. Patton was in fact the guy commanding the armored cavalry, and IIRC he was pretty enthusiastic about it.
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Nov 25, 2016 22:27
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Acebuckeye13 posted:No, that was Eisenhower. Patton was in fact the guy commanding the armored cavalry, and IIRC he was pretty enthusiastic about it. Not exactly: quote:Patton was dissatisfied with MacArthur's conduct, as he recognized the legitimacy of the veterans' complaints and had himself earlier refused to issue the order to employ armed force to disperse the veterans. Patton later stated that, though he found the duty "most distasteful", he also felt that putting the marchers down prevented an insurrection and saved lives and property. He personally led the 3rd Cavalry down Pennsylvania Avenue, dispersing the protesters.
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Nov 25, 2016 22:53
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Acebuckeye13 posted:No, that was Eisenhower. Patton was in fact the guy commanding the armored cavalry, and IIRC he was pretty enthusiastic about it. I can't imagine Patton not being enthusiastic about commanding the armored anything e: bewbies posted:I finally finished this thing for new kid: This is lovely
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Nov 25, 2016 23:01
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Tias posted:I am not positing a scenario, so that makes no sense. I am just saying that world war 2 was not stopping the holodomor and shoah and freeing the philipines and giving everybody wine and roses - it was a lot of horrible, hinky poo poo, and not only done by axis powers. Saying the war is just rings too much of justifying what was done in it to me. Then what were you doing when you mentioned the fall of the Soviet Union?
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Nov 25, 2016 23:23
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bewbies posted:I finally finished this thing for new kid: Don't see any German planes so at least you're not setting the kid up to be a Wehraboo.
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Nov 25, 2016 23:38
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married but discreet posted:Don't see any German planes so at least you're not setting the kid up to be a Wehraboo. And really, that's the most important part of anyone's history education.
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Nov 25, 2016 23:48
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married but discreet posted:Don't see any German planes so at least you're not setting the kid up to be a Wehraboo. It's almost like the german planes got shot the gently caress down by the Hurricane and the Lavochkins. Naturally the I-16 is just playing in the clouds 
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Nov 25, 2016 23:55
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