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Tias posted:What is the Soldaten you're referring to? A book? Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing and Dying: The Secret Second World War Tapes of German POWs Its a good book, I just wish they'd put more recording to paper. Maybe they'll make a 2nd volume? 
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Jan 9, 2017 10:11
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I think if Hitler wanted to win he should have just found the Numidium and used it to crush all resistance in
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Jan 9, 2017 10:18
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Tias posted:What is the Soldaten you're referring to? A book? Yes.
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Jan 9, 2017 11:19
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spectralent posted:Yeah, Soldaten has a big segment on how readily german soldiers took to brutality. And even if it's only 1% of the enemy, it rapidly spirals because of reprisals and "if we don't do it to them/send a message they'll do it to us first" logic. A tradition dating all the way back to the Franco Prussian War when they began to boogie on down to Paris. Oh Napoleon(s) you card(s)!
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Jan 9, 2017 12:14
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SeanBeansShako posted:A tradition dating all the way back to the Franco Prussian War when they began to boogie on down to Paris. Oh Napoleon(s) you card(s)! Raise high the black flags, children. No prisoners. No pity. I will shoot any man I see with pity in him. Vincent Van Goatse fucked around with this message at 14:24 on Jan 9, 2017 |
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Jan 9, 2017 14:21
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my dad posted:a great post lenoon posted:Thanks for the post. Sincerely.
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Jan 9, 2017 17:09
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Raise high the black flags, children. No prisoners. No pity. I will shoot any man I see with pity in him. A quote from a man who thought a french soldier had impregnated him with an elephant. Or was it the other way round?
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Jan 9, 2017 17:12
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JcDent posted:Good enough for me! I'd recommend "The Wages of Destruction" for properly sourced info on inefficiencies of the German economy. I'd look at the Luftwaffe if you want concrete examples of overtaxed manufacturing. The German tank thing is a little complex - the Cat tanks are generally overrated, the Panzer series of III and IV were alright. Not quite sure what you mean about German technological superiority?
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Jan 9, 2017 17:36
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I just read that after WW1 Britain wanted to abolish submarines altogether, seeing how effective they were against her supply lines, but others, especially France, opposed this. In the end only Germany was prohibited from having subs. It's interesting because if it had gone through then Germans couldn't have started their submarine program in secrecy using a Dutch engineering company as cover up. What I don't understand about these naval treaties is how the tonnage limits work in practise. Why would anyone trust an enemy when they say that their new battle cruiser will fit within the tonnage limitations, fingers crossed?
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Jan 9, 2017 17:44
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Wow! It makes you wonder how the Nazis did so much conquering if they were a plucky state with so many disadvantages.
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Jan 9, 2017 17:45
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I would also note that you don't want to swing the pendulum too far the other way. It's easy to respond to idiotic hyperbole with the same. This thread alone veers pretty sharply in the direction of the Nazis being incompetent buffoons due mostly to the fact that it's a long-form response to the wherabooism you see on many other message boards.
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Jan 9, 2017 17:46
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Plutonis posted:Wow! It makes you wonder how the Nazis did so much conquering if they were a plucky state with so many disadvantages. By being the least bad early on mostly. Inertia's a hell of a thing to overcome in warfare. The issue is that most of the Wehrabooism isn't about the early years of the war, it's all about 1943 and later when all of the big hardware starts to show up. The cats, the jets, the rockets. When the Nazis were sinking deep into both desperation for that wunderwaffe and the later stages of craziness, denial, and wackiness that have been building up in the various parts of their leadership and industry. Taerkar fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Jan 9, 2017 |
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Jan 9, 2017 17:55
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Nenonen posted:I just read that after WW1 Britain wanted to abolish submarines altogether, seeing how effective they were against her supply lines, but others, especially France, opposed this. In the end only Germany was prohibited from having subs. It's interesting because if it had gone through then Germans couldn't have started their submarine program in secrecy using a Dutch engineering company as cover up. It is the same sort of prisoner's dilemma thing that is the main dynamic of just about any such international agreement....we recognize that it is better for everyone if no one reneges, but it is better for ME if I do, etc etc. The general solution to this is to build in a series of ways to invoke the "honest broker"; UN weapons inspectors is one such example we're all familiar with. Within the Washington Treaty I'm really not sure what if any mechanisms they had in place. I feel like I read at some point that there really was none as such and that was a major flaw and lesson learned from said treaty but I could be misremembering. Cyrano4747 posted:I would also note that you don't want to swing the pendulum too far the other way. It's easy to respond to idiotic hyperbole with the same. This thread alone veers pretty sharply in the direction of the Nazis being incompetent buffoons due mostly to the fact that it's a long-form response to the wherabooism you see on many other message boards. This sounds like wheraboo talk to me, let's get him
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Jan 9, 2017 17:59
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Taerkar posted:By being the least bad early on mostly. Inertia's a hell of a thing to overcome in warfare. The issue is that most of the Wehrabooism isn't about the early years of the war, it's all about 1943 and later when all of the big hardware starts to show up. The cats, the jets, the rockets. When the Nazis were sinking deep into both desperation for that wunderwaffe and the later stages of craziness, denial, and wackiness that have been building up in the various parts of their leadership and industry. Being least bad was a big part of why their successes were so over the top (especially when you look at France and Russia) but they also had a real baseline of competency in a lot of core areas. T
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Jan 9, 2017 18:00
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Nenonen posted:I just read that after WW1 Britain wanted to abolish submarines altogether, seeing how effective they were against her supply lines, but others, especially France, opposed this. In the end only Germany was prohibited from having subs. It's interesting because if it had gone through then Germans couldn't have started their submarine program in secrecy using a Dutch engineering company as cover up. In the end these treaties generally worked: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...905_onwards.png Part of the reason is that states did not in general actually want to keep building these ships. They were ruinously expensive, and increased tonnages did not actually made dramatic differences. So having these treaties in place gave the powers that be sufficient assurance to end the arms race.
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Jan 9, 2017 18:14
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SeanBeansShako posted:A quote from a man who thought a french soldier had impregnated him with an elephant. Per Wikipedia comment section (  the worst citation I've ever made ) that was a misunderstanding of a Prussian expression. "Making me pregnant with an elephant" meant "giving me a huge goddamned headache". I don't know if that's actually true but it's too amazing for me to disbelieve.
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Jan 9, 2017 18:24
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Per Wikipedia comment section ( Does the guy say how that's supposed to go in German?
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Jan 9, 2017 19:00
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Knowing German probably some compound noun like Elefantschwanger or something.
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Jan 9, 2017 19:10
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Per Wikipedia comment section ( I don't know that specific expression, but it wouldn't surprise me at all. Their version of "I've had it up to here with X" is "My nose is full from X"
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Jan 9, 2017 19:15
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Nebakenezzer posted:Not quite sure what you mean about German technological superiority? Lots of people jerk off about Krupp steel being impenetrable, superior German science inventing everything, etc. The reality that German engineering and industry has (crippling) issues, just like everyone else, is impossible to them.
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Jan 9, 2017 19:23
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Ensign Expendable posted:Lots of people jerk off about Krupp steel being impenetrable, superior German science inventing everything, etc. The reality that German engineering and industry has (crippling) issues, just like everyone else, is impossible to them. Also ignoring parallel achievements on the Allied side. Like extolling Fritz X, an MCLOS glide bomb while ignoring the more advanced US ASM-N-2 Bat, which was a goddamn active radar guided glide bomb deployed in combat in 1945. Admittedly "combat" was beating the dead horse that was the IJN in late '45 but its not the weapons fault that the Axis didn't have a navy left.
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Jan 9, 2017 20:15
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Like the Germans did develop a lot of cool stuff and there is a certain appeal to German militerism, the pioneering of the General Staff and so on; but yeah the incompetence displayed when you dig into it just gets hilarious when compared to what Wehrabo's think.
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Jan 9, 2017 20:25
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Ensign Expendable posted:Lots of people jerk off about Krupp steel being impenetrable, superior German science inventing everything, etc. The reality that German engineering and industry has (crippling) issues, just like everyone else, is impossible to them. Ah, makes sense. Ok party people, what do you think of this rule: the losing side in a major industrial war is always going to be the one driven to greater heights of innovation and deploying stuff more quickly, because that is what you do when you are losing? bewbies posted:This sounds like wheraboo talk to me, let's get him  EXTREMISM IN ATTACKING OTHER EXTREMEISTS IS NO VICE
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Jan 9, 2017 20:35
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Cyrano4747 posted:I don't know that specific expression, but it wouldn't surprise me at all. Their version of "I've had it up to here with X" is "My nose is full from X" If not a Prussian phrase, could it perhaps be an older Swedish phrase crudely translated into Prussian German? the dude was a Swede by birth.
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Jan 9, 2017 20:41
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my dad posted:But before I start, the claims that Yugoslavia was invented by the Versailles, and that the languages are separate, are so incredibly, mind-bogglingly wrong that it kinda set the tone of the rest of your post to me, and caused me to overreact to some degree. To give you a personal language-related experience, it's been kinda hilarious listening to a Croatian linguist on Croatian TV trying to tiptoe around the minefield of nationalism-triggers to explain that, uh, yeah, Serbs and Croats speak the same language but feel free to call it Croatian, just like Serbs are free to call it Serbian, it's not like it's being stolen out of your mouth. Bonus points for watching it replayed on some Serbian TV station with actual subtitles added ( Thanks for the post, it's very informative. To get more into some specific details, you previously mentioned longer-term roots of Yugoslavian national consciousness as a precedent for the post-Versailles Kingdom, specifically originating outside Serbia. I assume that you were referring to the mostly Croatian-based Illyrian movement. I'm aware that movement existed and that it suggested a framework for national consciousness and state formation for South Slavs, but I understood it more in the context of contemporaneous national revival movements in Central Europe, the same as the Germans, Czechs, Hungarians, and so on. In common with those other examples the most important and in this case most successful aim was the creation of a standardized language and its popularization among the intellectual class. However, I have difficulty drawing a line from these movements to the creation of the Yugoslav state, because at any particular time it's difficult to say how widespread or popular was the idea of national unification for all Serbo-Croatian speakers, either in the elite political class or among the population at large. You are rightly critical of hindsight perspective and I have to admit to using it--Yugoslavia "failed," so we want to find the reasons in its prior history. But at the same time I think you have to guard against doing that in the opposite direction. People who believe in a national identity always look to the past for their antecedents, and they are invested in finding it. You have to consider whether you're really drawing a direct connection. For example, Goethe and the Grimms played important roles in creating the intellectual underpinnings of a common German national identity, so you could say that they anticipated the realization of the German national state. On the other hand, a political process overseen by conservative German aristocrats was the proximate cause of unification. It probably would have been unthinkable without the groundwork laid by others, but it didn't rely on the same reasons and justifications. Was Germany in 1871 the realization of the aims of the rebels of 1848? Parts of it, sure. In the same way, standardization of the Shtokavian dialect throughout the area where Serbo-Croatian was spoken was very significant and also probably a necessary step without which later movements would not have been possible, but I'm not sure about the connection between early Yugoslavism in the 1790-1830s and the actually existing Yugoslavian state in 1920, or in 1950 for that matter. And again, we don't know a lot about how much people in general believed, because we don't have that much data. We do have information that should lead us to believe that there were substantial problems from the outset. For example, the Croatian Republican Peasants' Party, which opposed the creation of the kingdom and advocated for an independent Croatian Republic, ordinarily swept the Croatian electoral districts. This is the situation that was eventually brought to a head by the assassination of Radic and the royal dictatorship. I thought the renaming of the state was significant because the name Kingdom of Yugoslavia was adopted as part of a package of initiatives that included the monarch arrogating dictatorial powers, outlawing and forcibly suppressing opposition parties (most importantly the HPSS), radically changing the internal organization of the state, and officially abolishing all nationalities in favor of the Yugoslav identity (article IV of the 1931 constitution). Initiatives that also led opponents of Alexander I to boycott the political process, form paramilitary organizations like the Ustashe, and eventually assassinate him. This all implies to me that whereas some level of identification with Yugoslavian national identity did exist, it was not so strong that it was overcoming competing loyalties. All that said, I want to return to the comparison with Germany for a moment. One of your criticisms is that I was representing Yugoslavia as dis-united or broken in a way that people don't generally say about Germany or Italy, and that is a fair point and one that I should probably clarify. I agree that "failed" states are usually represented as having failed because they were in some way fundamentally deficient compared to "successful" states, and I agree that this is wrong. However, I think the error isn't so much on the side of questioning Yugoslavian national identity, but rather in failing to question German or Italian, or other national identities. What happened in Germany 1933-1945 is not seen as a failure of the national project. Or 1945-1990. Or we don't look at the Kulturkampf as indicating dangerous fissures in the German national project, probably because we know that the Catholics eventually came around. So I did say that Yugoslavia was fragile and there were a lot of factors pulling it apart, but I didn't mean to say it was uniquely fragile or destined to fail. I think most national states are more fragile than people realize. And both times Yugoslavia broke up, it was the result of external pressure--a coup and an invasion in 1941, and as part of a general continent- or world-wide political and economic crisis in the 1990s.
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Jan 9, 2017 20:42
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Nebakenezzer posted:Ah, makes sense. There hasn't been a lot of major industrial wars and I don't think this is broadly true in most cases. Not much innovation in late war Imperial Japan. A lot of projects got killed in the name of 'won't be implemented in time to affect the war' whereas similar projects on the allied side get the go-ahead because they are still important post-war. Fangz fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Jan 9, 2017 |
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Jan 9, 2017 20:46
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Fangz posted:There hasn't been a lot of major industrial wars and I don't think this is broadly true in most cases. Not much innovation in late war Imperial Japan. I think I recall some articles that they may have gotten further than the Germans on the atomic bomb; and I think they had some late war developments in aircraft and jet engines; maybe they had a procurement process that was a little more willing to pull the plug on napkinwaffle?
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Jan 9, 2017 20:50
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Cyrano4747 posted:I don't know that specific expression, but it wouldn't surprise me at all. Their version of "I've had it up to here with X" is "My nose is full from X" SeanBeansShako posted:If not a Prussian phrase, could it perhaps be an older Swedish phrase crudely translated into Prussian German? the dude was a Swede by birth. Even contemporary English has phrases like "pregnant with thoughts" and in Swedish (and also in Finnish) the words for pregnant literally mean 'heavy' (gravid, raskas) which is always a classy way to describe your lady. But what's the specific quote in its original form?
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Jan 9, 2017 20:53
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Fangz posted:There hasn't been a lot of major industrial wars and I don't think this is broadly true in most cases. Not much innovation in late war Imperial Japan. I would disagree. There was certainly a lot of innovation, just not in fields that would become important post-war. As cynic as it sounds, the Japanese were the first to employ guided weapons in massed attacks and placed the Allies in a pretty serious situation. There was never any hope of Japan winning the war by any metric, but there were serious concerns on the allied side whether they would be able to bring the war to a quick and decisive conclusion by the summer of 1945. Raenir Salazar posted:I think I recall some articles that they may have gotten further than the Germans on the atomic bomb; and I think they had some late war developments in aircraft and jet engines; maybe they had a procurement process that was a little more willing to pull the plug on napkinwaffle? Lol the Japanese procurement process was at least as hosed as the Germaan one. When your Navy and your army both operate landbased aircraft with different types and different guns, and your army is also operating aircraft carriers, you know poo poo is hosed.
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Jan 9, 2017 21:00
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Fangz posted:There hasn't been a lot of major industrial wars and I don't think this is broadly true in most cases. Not much innovation in late war Imperial Japan. They revolutionized the science of deep sea exploration in air-dropped manned submersibles. Also the reason there were fewer mind-boggling projects in Japan is mostly due to their much smaller industrial capacity.
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Jan 9, 2017 21:22
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Nebakenezzer posted:Ah, makes sense. Innovation of sorts. The USSR mothballed crazy poo poo like KVs 3-5, the T-50, etc for basic tanks like the T-30 and T-60 that might not be anything special but can be produced in large numbers and immediately.
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Jan 9, 2017 21:23
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Raenir Salazar posted:I think I recall some articles that they may have gotten further than the Germans on the atomic bomb; and I think they had some late war developments in aircraft and jet engines; maybe they had a procurement process that was a little more willing to pull the plug on napkinwaffle? Well, they definitely 'got' the bomb at the end of the war  I'm not sure about Japanese jet engines, but weren't some of their designs bought from Germany during the war? Also we're talking about the country that built the Yamato class and deployed the Fu-Go incendiary balloons from submarines. I wouldn't say they had a better procurement process, but different countries had different capabilities of throwing away resources - the Japanese were good at building superbattleships that they couldn't find good uses for, Germans were good at building hitech ballistic missiles that they couldn't find good uses for. At least the German missile technology eventually led to something useful, the Sputnik and later the satellites that allows me to post this gem of thought on the interweb. Though even this is a bit of a myth - Germans weren't the only ones with an interest in rocketry, but they pursued it the most and immediately after the war were sought after by the occupiers. In a gay black Stalin/Trotsky universe maybe Red Army would have been shooting R-1 missiles at Berlin in 1944.
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Jan 9, 2017 21:28
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The US papercliped a lot of Japanese unit 631
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Jan 9, 2017 21:36
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Man what a the world gay black Trotsky universe would be, eh?
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Jan 9, 2017 21:39
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HEY GAL posted:this is a painting of an auto-da-fe held in Madrid in 1680. The painting was made in 83. Look at the soldiers in the left foreground, way down at the bottom of the painting. Boiled Water posted:Why do all the Spanish civilians wear black if able? Koramei posted:And why was it only if able? Was black dye expensive, or only allowed for certain classes or something? The worst novel I've ever finished, Cathedral of the Sea, was set in 14th century Barcelona, and it said that the only women who were allowed to wear non-black clothes were prostitutes.
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Jan 9, 2017 21:40
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Nenonen posted:Well, they definitely 'got' the bomb at the end of the war Oh that reminds me the Japanese did do a lot of innovation at least prior to the war? The huge super long range submarines that could also carry planes? The long lance torpedo? Also some innovations in ship design to let them build up to the Washington Naval tonnage limits in more efficient ways. But yeah, then you hear about how the Zero prototype was delivered to the testing location in a horse drawn wagon and whelp.
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Jan 9, 2017 21:49
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JcDent posted:Good enough for me! If you're going to compile it, try to avoid making it Wehraboo but in reverse. And please don't use clickbait headlines. Also, what's that about France helping Germany to win?
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Jan 9, 2017 21:57
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I am currently reading Alan Clark's Barbarossa for fun and it's interesting as history in its own right (the book was written in 1965). Although Clark compares the Russians to a "mass," a "huge animal woken from slumber," and he says that they're "wasteful of human lives," etc etc, he does not refer to them as barbarians or a "horde"--and he makes a bunch of sharp little comments when he refers to the German generals who did at the time, as well as the West Germans he's talked to who still invoke images like that. One of the things I found most interesting was that he already comes out strongly against the "Clean Wehrmacht" myth--he discusses German treatment of Russian POWs explicitly, as well as things like (for instance) the plans to kill every person in Leningrad. The point of view mostly hovers over the Germans' shoulders though, probably because of the sources he had available at the time. I'm going to read Glantz and House's When Titans Clashed when I'm done with Barbarossa, and I'm sure that will provide a corrective. I recommend this book, if you want to read a voice from the 1960s. I'm enjoying this quite a bit. edit: the jacket copy also outright states that "it was here, the author contends, that the outcome of the second world war was really decided," and that this needed to be said at all is sixties.txt. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Jan 9, 2017 |
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Jan 9, 2017 22:03
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Raenir Salazar posted:But yeah, then you hear about how the Zero prototype was delivered to the testing location in a horse drawn wagon and whelp. edit: ox or bullock drawn, probably--japanese horses are short and small, not suitable for heavy draft, and i don't know how many heavy draft horses they imported, if any HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 23:02 on Jan 9, 2017 |
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Jan 9, 2017 22:05
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Hogge Wild posted:If you're going to compile it, try to avoid making it Wehraboo but in reverse. And please don't use clickbait headlines. My favourite thing about France is that I the Germans found nothing use whatsoever in their tank factories. Basically every other occupied nation contributed to German tank production, except France.
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Jan 9, 2017 22:07
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