AIRPOWER/Cold War - Its literally the first two lines of their hymn

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SgtMongoose: Feb 10, 2007

The only time I foresee serious fully autonomous engagements without serious consequences for the humans asleep at the wheel happening in the near future would be something ridiculous like Chinese/Iranian saturation attacks against US carrier AEGIS defenders. And even that has humans watching the computers duke it out in real time.

# ? Jun 4, 2017 18:39

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# ? May 25, 2024 16:18

Cat Mattress: Jul 14, 2012; by Cyrano4747

JcDent posted:

I guess a game LP isn't a realistic depiction of modern air warfare. Consider me corrected.

And here I was, playing Wolfenstein, and wondering why the USA bothered to send so many GIs when obviously a single guy was enough.

# ? Jun 4, 2017 18:55

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

Cat Mattress posted:

And here I was, playing Wolfenstein, and wondering why the USA bothered to send so many GIs when obviously a single guy was enough.

Hey, CMANO is a grog a game, which means it looks like it came from 1995 and costs 80 bux.

# ? Jun 4, 2017 20:37

Somebody Awful: Nov 27, 2011; BORN TO DIE
HAIG IS A FUCK
Kill Em All 1917
I am trench man
410,757,864,530 SHELLS FIRED

Memento posted:

I thought they took advantage of the conflict to seize Germany's Micronesian territories, knowing there would be no backlash.

They did. Then they got to keep them under a League of Nations mandate and we did a bunch of fighting there in the next war.

# ? Jun 4, 2017 21:00

INTJ Mastermind: Dec 30, 2004; It's a radial!

JcDent posted:

Hey, CMANO is a grog a game, which means it looks like it came from 1995 and costs 80 bux.

Someone got a link to the CMANO LP?

# ? Jun 4, 2017 21:25

Gervasius: Nov 2, 2010; Grimey Drawer

INTJ Mastermind posted:

Someone got a link to the CMANO LP?

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3815107&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1

# ? Jun 4, 2017 21:47

BIG HEADLINE: Jun 13, 2006; "Stand back, Ottawan ruffian, or face my lumens!"

All CMANO has taught me is that virtual AMRAAMs are poo poo in virtual battle conditions. :mad:

# ? Jun 4, 2017 21:58

Dandywalken: Feb 11, 2014

It stressed the importance of / helped visualize alot of concepts like the importance of remaining undetected in naval combat, weapon expenditure rates in near peer engagement, the functional differences and merits to NATO and Soviet anti ship design philosophy, etc to me.

Its great, but it's a game first and a cool learning tool as a secondary effect. I've embarrassed myself talking out of my league using it as some sort of source for authority when it isn't.

Definitely worth the cash though.

Dandywalken fucked around with this message at 22:21 on Jun 4, 2017

# ? Jun 4, 2017 22:15

B4Ctom1: Oct 5, 2003; OVERWORKED COCK; Slippery Tilde

quote:

They can travel faster than any other missile on the planet, up to 4,600mph, which is almost 66 times the speed of sound and enough to practically guarantee they cannot be targeted or intercepted.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/russia-claims-successfully-tested-hypersonic-104547548.html

# ? Jun 5, 2017 01:52

Alaan: May 24, 2005

drat what comes after hypersonic? Mach 66!

# ? Jun 5, 2017 02:00

J33uk: Oct 24, 2005

B4Ctom1 posted:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/russia-claims-successfully-tested-hypersonic-104547548.html

Sounds like a missile gap to me!

# ? Jun 5, 2017 02:00

Lake of Methane: Oct 29, 2011

4,600 mph is more like Mach 6.

Mach 66 would be a streak of plasma blasting out xrays � :doink:

# ? Jun 5, 2017 02:51

Gnoman: Feb 12, 2014; Come, all you fair and tender maids
Who flourish in your pri-ime
Beware, take care, keep your garden fair
Let Gnoman steal your thy-y-me
Le-et Gnoman steal your thyme

Indeed- that's also what every other source on the Russian claim is saying. As expected, the Yahoo news editors are incompetent.

Even if we assume that this deploys when they claim it will and performs as well as they claim it will (both rather dubious prospects given the rather limited Russian military budget and the scope of existing weapons procurement plans), it is hardly the threat that it is presented as. Mach 6 is slower than targets that have already been engaged by existing defensive systems, and is also high enough to severely limit terminal mobility (and thus evasive capacity). It is also likely to be very limited in launch platforms (the only confirmed ships capable of carrying one are their "Aviation Cruiser" and the Kirov-class battlecruisers), which will limit the threat it poses. A potentially nasty weapon and a new wrinkle for defense planners, but not game-changing.

# ? Jun 5, 2017 03:02

Raenir Salazar: Nov 5, 2010; College Slice

Also the Russians probably don't want to deploy anything too game changing anyways for risk of inviting a first strike. Incremental improvements that keeps them a step ahead of US interception capabilities forcing the US to spend 10x what they do is the sweet spot.

# ? Jun 5, 2017 03:19

Mortabis: Jul 8, 2010; I am stupid

So, uh Bahrain and Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic ties with Qatar and closed land/sea/air routes. The UAE and Egypt may be doing the same thing? I am assuming this is more of the Saudi-Iranian proxy war poo poo going on but wow.

Mortabis fucked around with this message at 04:18 on Jun 5, 2017

# ? Jun 5, 2017 04:15

Raenir Salazar: Nov 5, 2010; College Slice

Mortabis posted:

So, uh Bahrain and Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic ties with Qatar and closed land/sea/air routes. The UAE and Egypt may be doing the same thing? I am assuming this is more of the Saudi-Iranian proxy war poo poo going on but wow.

I checked CNN and didn't spot anything, links?

# ? Jun 5, 2017 04:25

Memento: Aug 25, 2009; Bleak Gremlin

Raenir Salazar posted:

I checked CNN and didn't spot anything, links?

BBC News story that will be updated as it develops. It's literally last-half-hour stuff.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-40155829

edit: isn't there a CENTCOM base in Qatar?

# ? Jun 5, 2017 04:26

priznat: Jul 7, 2009; Let's get drunk and kiss each other all night.

Qatar has a big USAF base, with Bahrain having the big USN base..

Awkwarrrrrd!

# ? Jun 5, 2017 04:36

Somebody Awful: Nov 27, 2011; BORN TO DIE
HAIG IS A FUCK
Kill Em All 1917
I am trench man
410,757,864,530 SHELLS FIRED

Fifty years ago, war broke out between Israel and its neighbours. The conflict lasted just six days but its effect would last to the present day.

# ? Jun 5, 2017 04:42

Suicide Watch: Sep 8, 2009

Sperglord Actual posted:

Fifty years ago, war broke out between Israel and its neighbours. The conflict lasted just six days but its effect would last to the present day.

Magnum put together a pretty cool feature from the pictures their photographers took during the war
https://www.magnumphotos.com/newsroom/conflict/the-six-day-war/

# ? Jun 5, 2017 04:56

Rotacixe: Oct 21, 2008

MrYenko posted:

Can you imagine the twisting loads that get transmitted through that center wing box? Holy gently caress.

I would think that fly-by-wire load limits and oscillation damping are basically a requirement for that plane. Otherwise it would be too easy to destroy it with pilot input.

# ? Jun 5, 2017 06:18

Godholio: Aug 28, 2002; Does a bear split in the woods near Zheleznogorsk?

Memento posted:

edit: isn't there a CENTCOM base in Qatar?

The CENTCOM base. Yeah. This is going to be interesting.

# ? Jun 5, 2017 06:35

BIG HEADLINE: Jun 13, 2006; "Stand back, Ottawan ruffian, or face my lumens!"

Godholio posted:

The CENTCOM base. Yeah. This is going to be interesting.

Don't worry, I'm sure some guy who's currently being paid to hang out in the State Dept. cafeteria is an expert on this sort of thing and will be *elated* that he'll have some actual substantive *work* to do this week.

# ? Jun 5, 2017 06:37

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

Big fuckin' woop, the Sprint ABM could do zero to mach 10 in five seconds, fifty years ago.

E: regarding missiles, not Crisis At The Deid

# ? Jun 5, 2017 06:41

Sulphagnist: Oct 10, 2006; WARNING! INTRUDERS DETECTED

BIG HEADLINE posted:

Don't worry, I'm sure some guy who's currently being paid to hang out in the State Dept. cafeteria is an expert on this sort of thing and will be *elated* that he'll have some actual substantive *work* to do this week.

Unless this is the sort of job that's supposed to be done by one of the people whose positions have been totally vacant for months. :v:

At the very least stopping this sort of thing from getting out of hand in the first place might have been the job of that phantom person.

# ? Jun 5, 2017 07:20

aphid_licker: Jan 7, 2009

Lake of Methane posted:

4,600 mph is more like Mach 6.

Mach 66 would be a streak of plasma blasting out xrays �

Mach 666 or gtfo :getin:

# ? Jun 5, 2017 12:01

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Get your kicks at Mach sixty-six

# ? Jun 5, 2017 12:29

Murgos: Oct 21, 2010

shame on an IGA posted:

Big fuckin' woop, the Sprint ABM could do zero to mach 10 in five seconds, fifty years ago.

E: regarding missiles, not Crisis At The Deid

Yeah, I was going to say that I was sure the US had been doing tests with similar hypersonic missiles back in the 50's.

People are also aware that Prompt Global Strike is hypersonic yeah?

Anyway, a hypersonic launch vehicle that's limited to one or two platforms that can't effectively sortie out of the range of land based air, or even more than a few 100 km from it's home port, in an actual time of need is of dubious usefulness.

# ? Jun 5, 2017 18:20

Mazz: Dec 12, 2012; Orion, this is Sperglord Actual.
Come on home.

Can't say I'm super worried about a Kirov since I'm sure there's probably a Virginia or 688i keeping it company in blue water. Those things probably have an acoustic signature as inconspicuous as a Thunderscreech.

# ? Jun 5, 2017 19:04

SimonCat: Aug 12, 2016; by Nyc_Tattoo; College Slice

Cyrano4747 posted:

He's ok for grandpas stories of kicking Hitler in the nads especially if it's your intro to history. His historical arguments are poo poo though. I'll dig up my Ambrose rant later.

Cyrano4747 posted:

Eh, it's not just that one book, it's the whole "Ambrose phenominon" although the book is certainly emblematic of it.

Basically it comes down to three key issues:

1) issues with Ambrose as a historian and what he actually accomplished.

2) issues with the book itself and its relationship to Citizen Soldiers

3) the idiotic way that it�s been integrated in popular culture

Ambrose as a historian - Let me start off by saying that all of that BS about how he may or may not have plagiarized is more or less moot for most academic historians. While certainly unfortunate, none of it appears to have been done maliciously or through any attempt to deceive. Rather than the giant "dude copied his homework" gotcha that it was reported as, it's at best an academic faux pas. It's worth noting that even the guy who was allegedly plagiarized didn't think it was a big deal. If anything it's indicative more of either an editorial process where he didn't keep his footnotes tied to the main text as well as he should have or some sloppy note taking.

That said, as a historian he did absolutely nothing of any serious interest. Look through all of his books on WW2 and you'll find that his argument basically boils down to two points - first, that small unit cohesion was key to the success of allied armies, and that the men on the ground were fighting as much for each other and due to the social bonds between them (the "can't let down your buddy" line of thinking) as for any kind of higher ideal. THis point is so old and trite that it's almost embarrassing to make it the cornerstone of a book in the modern era. poo poo, S.L.A. Marshall wrote about it in Men Under Fire right after WW2, and even then he was more or less just codifying for Pentagon command culture something that was military old wive's wisdom going back hundreds, if not thousands, of years. This also isn't anything unique to American, Allied, or Western militaries. You see Germans writing about and behaving in more or less the same ways, and Russians too.

Second, his arguments about small unit leadership being absolutely crucial to the over-all success of the Allied war effort is beyond lazy, and just as well-worn as his small unit cohesion argument. According to this argument American and British commanders were given objectives rather than specific, rote orders and had the flexibility to respond to situations on the ground as they developed. Given the hypothetical example of an emplaced MG in a hedgerow and American junior officer could decide, on his own initiative, to call in a suppressing company level mortar barrage, flank the emplacement, and keep the advance moving without having to discuss matters with higher command. Again, Marshall wrote about this in the mid-40s, in almost exactly the same terms.

What's even more egregious, however, is that he tried to make the argument that this was a somehow uniquely American (and British) innovation and held it against a completely imaginary straw man of German, Soviet, and Japanese soldiers who blindly followed precisely the orders given to them and no more or no less. The argument runs that since they didn't have the flexibility to decide things on the ground and constantly had to seek higher authority, that they were consistently out-performed by Americans and Brits who didn't have those strictures and could think for themselves. The really embarrassing part is that he self-consciously ties this supposed freedom of command to democratic traditions and educational systems, and straight out states that World War 2 was proof of the ultimate superiority of Democracy over all other political structures. He casts the conflict as a trial of the fruits of the two systems (represented by the children raised and educated in 1920s-30s USA and Germany) against each other, with the innate strengths of democracy winning out over the illusory benefits of fascism. This, however, is total bullshit and any second year grad student who works in military history should know better, much less a PhD with an endowed chair. What we call "Mission-type tactics" the Germans called "Auftragstaktik" and were thinking and writing about as early as the Prussian military reforms following their initial, catastrophic defeats to Napoleon in the early 19th century. Scharnhorst, Clausewitz, and von Moltke the Elder were all major proponents of it and responsible for instituting it on a systematic basis in first the mid-century Prussian and, later, the early Imperial German army. Far from being subservient worshippers of authority who couldn't do the simplest things without say-so from above, German soldiers in WW2 were trained from day one to exercise maximum individual autonomy and major tactical-level decisions could be made by NCOs and junior officers. In this instance he is quite simply arguing counter to well established reality for the sake of making a really sappy patriotic argument.

All that said, though, as much as I think his actual argument is horse-poo poo, I have a lot of respect for his skill at finding and telling a good story and the actual use that he put those skills to. Basically, the man was a popular historian ("popular" here in the sense "intended for use by the general public") and a damned good one. He wrote in a way that non-academics could really sink their teeth into and produced works that made history something that people actually wanted to read. This is something that I feel VERY strongly about and admire him greatly for. Simply put, I think the academy needs to get its head out of its own rear end and that far, FAR more popular histories need to be written in order to get your average non-historian interested in and informed about poo poo that happened before they were born. The approach that Ambrose took in most of his books - narrative history backed up by either interviews or (in the case of his book on Lewis and Clark) diaries - is incredibly well suited to this. Unlike other writers of popular history he didn't shy away from the academic apparatus while doing so, and wasn't condescending enough to think readers would be scared away by footnotes or having a rigorous bibliography at the end. Reading Ambrose's books was my own entry point into historical literature that went beyond memoirs or high school textbooks, and they really do a great job at introducing people to the basic structure that an academic monograph will have.

Of course that is tempered by the fact that every history book has to have an argument, and his is problematic enough that it has become really unfortunately utilized in popular culture, which I'll get into in a moment.

The book itself

Remember where I said that all that plagiarism stuff leveled at him is overblown a bit? There is a far greater academic crime that he's guilty of which goes largely unrecognized, mostly because it isn't a high crime like actual straight up plagiarism.

What is this crime? He blatantly recycled previous work when producing new books. For a field that's as dependent on publication lists this sort of thing is seen as CV padding at best (which is pretty loving bad). Simply put, if you publish something as your own original work you're not supposed to take part or all of it and re-publish it and try to claim that it's new, original work. Like everything in academia there are shades of gray in this. If I publish a chapter from my dissertation as an article with a bit of revision, no one's going to get out the torches and pitchforks, but I should probably expand on that chapter/article if and when the dissertation becomes a book in its own right. For a young academic trying to establish themselves it's seen as more or less permissible, but by the time you're into publishing your 2nd or 3rd book it's seen as lovely at best.

All that said, if you go and read Ambrose's Citizen Soldiers he basically reproduces BoB in it, in its entirety. By "reproduces" I mean entire 20-30 page swaths are identical, word for word. He also does the same thing with Pegasus Bridge and D-Day. Hell, major chunks of BoB are in both Citizen Soldiers AND D-Day. If you read his books in the order he wrote them (PB, BoB, D-Day, CS) you get some MAJOR loving deja vu towards the end.

This is one of the biggest issues I have with him as an academic. It's just lovely practice - even if you want to re-use the research you did in another project because it's pertinent to your current one, you really need to revisit it and rethink it. If you can't find a way to revise the previous work and make it better, why the gently caress do you need to rehash it in this other book? What other reason is there for even doing that 2nd project than to stretch out your publication list?

Ambrose and popular culture. As I've said before, I get that he wasn't writing books for the academy. I really, really get this and admire him greatly for it. That said, if you're writing for a non-academic audience you need to be extremely careful with what kind of argument you present, precisely because you are automatically becoming an Authoritative Source and Expert on the subject and what you write will probably be taken fairly uncritically. Unfortunately for Ambrose he chose to cheap out and go for a really obnoxious democracy rocks and, in its Anglo-American form is the best thing EVER thesis for his most popular works. This leads directly to self-identified patriotic Americans holding him up as a great example of how we're just the best country EVER, and the second you try to point out that his argument was flawed and WW2 didn't really work like that you immediately become just another of those commie, pinko, america-hating intellectuals. Rather than being an argument that can be argued like any other, it them becomes enshrined as some kind of secret Truth that Ambrose, as apparently the only America-loving historian on the planet, chose to share with the masses with the rest of the Academic Establishment cast as just trying to silence this patriotic message. Think of it as the historian version of those really obnoxious cults of mindless patriotism surrounding the 1911 and M14 which make them out to be the final word in firearms design, period.

Then of course you have the miniseries and the whole awkward and bizarre cult of hero worship that rose up around Easy Company of the 506th as a result of all that. The kind of poo poo that leads people to want guns signed by octogenarian war vets, scammers claiming to be selling Dick Winters's personal bringback K98k, and 14 year olds playing online shooters with screen names like ShiftyPowersSniper[101]. As much as I bag on Ambrose's actual argument in BoB and Citizen Soldiers (they're largely the same), at the end it comes down to celebrating the ordinary infantryman. Of course this is really problematic when you're dealing with the 101st, which was as close to an Elite or Guard unit as the US military got at the time, but let's just ignore that for now. When you have books that are making the entire point of "these guys were just ordinary dudes and we won the war precisely because this is the material that our entire army was made of" the cult of patriotic hero worship that was generated around a few specific guys 50 years after they did what they did is just bizarre.

Basically, ask yourself this: would a gun (or anything else) signed by Dick Winters or any of the other "major characters" from BoB probably earn more on Gunbroker than one signed by some random guy who was in Easy Company but didn't get featured in a big way in the book or in the miniseries?

Misc poo poo Ambrose was a shameless self-promoter, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. Unfortunately it looks like it also led him to stretch the truth about his own career and the relationships he had with some of the key people featured in his writings. The most egregious example of this is the controversy surrounding his relationship with Eisenhower. He did a lot of early work on Eisenhower's wartime decisions and claimed that Ike himself approached him to write his story. He further claimed that he had a close personal relationship with Eisenhower, and met with him frequently at the White House to go over details of his wartime record.

This is, unfortunately, pure BS. There is archival evidence for the fact that he approached Eisenhower rather than the other way around and the interview dates that he claims in one of his key books don't line up with the White House visitation records. Rather than the hundreds of hours that Ambrose claimed it looks like he spent a total of maybe 10 with the man.

tl;dr - Goddamnit you were SO on the ball with the popular history angle, why did you have to taint it with actual arguments that are drat near indefensible.

# ? Jun 5, 2017 20:01

Murgos: Oct 21, 2010

One of the things that you keep hearing in accounts of early WWII German successes is their operational flexibility and willingness to adapt quickly to changing conditions. Though to be fair this is more at the corps/army/army group level and less about company/battalion immediate objectives.

It's one of the key points that as the war drew on and Hitler began to more and more micromanage things that the German defenses became very brittle and had no more of those big successes they had been known for earlier. Not that in the long run they could have changed very much, by 44 losing an Army here or there wasn't really going to slow the Russians down much and other than the landings in Italy I don't think the western forces were ever really in that kind of danger.

# ? Jun 5, 2017 21:16

Herv: Mar 24, 2005; Soiled Meat

Murgos posted:

One of the things that you keep hearing in accounts of early WWII German successes

Step 1, go after the general that insists on using bicycle couriers.

# ? Jun 5, 2017 21:33

Cyrano4747: Sep 25, 2006; Yes, I know I'm old, get off my fucking lawn so I can yell at these clouds.

Murgos posted:

One of the things that you keep hearing in accounts of early WWII German successes is their operational flexibility and willingness to adapt quickly to changing conditions. Though to be fair this is more at the corps/army/army group level and less about company/battalion immediate objectives.

They were EXTREMELY flexible at the tactical level. The motherfuckers invented objective based assignments where you give general orders and let the guys at the ground level hash it out as the situation in the field dictates. We're talking Franco-Prussian war era, here, and the roots of it go back to the reforms after Napoleon kicked Prussia's rear end. Auftragstaktik was a core component of German military culture for almost a century before WW2 got started.

The idea that they were somehow inflexible and required authorization from higher authority in a way that hurt them tactically is one of the huge bones I have to pick with Ambrose.

# ? Jun 5, 2017 21:58

Mortabis: Jul 8, 2010; I am stupid

I never really picked out a historical thesis from Band of Brothers. Do books like that really need one anyway?

# ? Jun 5, 2017 22:00

Cyrano4747: Sep 25, 2006; Yes, I know I'm old, get off my fucking lawn so I can yell at these clouds.

Mortabis posted:

I never really picked out a historical thesis from Band of Brothers. Do books like that really need one anyway?

Well, they do if you want to say it's a work of history rather than just a collection of interviews. Even then I have a really hard time thinking of any books organized like that that don't have at least some larger argument tying things together. It doens't need to be a really strong argument, but if you flip to the intro and conclusion there's just about always the author making a claim.

edit: I mean, this is natural. Your thesis is what ties the entire book together on an organizational level. One without any kind of thesis would be really weird and awkward to read. Just selecting your sources and choosing what to present would get odd. Imagine you were writing a chapter of a book about what it was like eating in a US military canteen in 1920. You read a bunch of guys stories about army food then you have to organize that. That organization is going to imply you're saying something about it.

edit 2: basically it's the difference between just a sack of interviews and a book. It's really, really fundamental to writing history.

Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 22:04 on Jun 5, 2017

# ? Jun 5, 2017 22:02

Force de Fappe: Nov 7, 2008

Cyrano4747 posted:

Auftragstaktik was a core component of German military culture for almost a century before WW2 got started.

That's interesting, it's almost the same term we use here (.no) for basically the same thing: go do this, I don't give a gently caress how but tell me beforehand so I can keep track of poo poo to some extent. There's this other related term, Ver�nderungsfreudigkeit, perhaps translatable as "change boldness", which allegedly was a trait sought after in cadets and cultivated in military schools.

# ? Jun 5, 2017 22:13

Cyrano4747: Sep 25, 2006; Yes, I know I'm old, get off my fucking lawn so I can yell at these clouds.

Force de Fappe posted:

That's interesting, it's almost the same term we use here (.no) for basically the same thing: go do this, I don't give a gently caress how but tell me beforehand so I can keep track of poo poo to some extent. There's this other related term, Ver�nderungsfreudigkeit, perhaps translatable as "change boldness", which allegedly was a trait sought after in cadets and cultivated in military schools.

Well, that word in German would just be readiness/willingness to change which makes total sense for something you would want in a cadet.

I don't know the exact relationship of Norwegian and German militaries in the 19th century, but given how everyone was sending officers around to chill with everyone else I would suspect the basic concept of auftragstaktik migrated north. That said, it was adopted really loving widely and even in the German context it was more an official codification of what a lot of people already understood was best practice. A lot of ACW generals who were good at their job utilized it without expressing it in exactly those terms or giving a poo poo what the Prussian General Staff was up to.

The fact that it was codified at that high level is important, however, because then it becomes doctrine and the sort of thing that is taught in the academies etc. as being expected, good behavior.

# ? Jun 5, 2017 22:21

MohawkSatan: Dec 20, 2008; by Cyrano4747

Cyrano4747 posted:

Well, they do if you want to say it's a work of history rather than just a collection of interviews. Even then I have a really hard time thinking of any books organized like that that don't have at least some larger argument tying things together. It doens't need to be a really strong argument, but if you flip to the intro and conclusion there's just about always the author making a claim.

edit: I mean, this is natural. Your thesis is what ties the entire book together on an organizational level. One without any kind of thesis would be really weird and awkward to read. Just selecting your sources and choosing what to present would get odd. Imagine you were writing a chapter of a book about what it was like eating in a US military canteen in 1920. You read a bunch of guys stories about army food then you have to organize that. That organization is going to imply you're saying something about it.

edit 2: basically it's the difference between just a sack of interviews and a book. It's really, really fundamental to writing history.

Okay, out of curiosity, how would you rank Mark Zuehlke? He's one of the few dudes I've found that covers the Canadian actions during WW2 worth a drat.

# ? Jun 5, 2017 22:22

Cyrano4747: Sep 25, 2006; Yes, I know I'm old, get off my fucking lawn so I can yell at these clouds.

MohawkSatan posted:

Okay, out of curiosity, how would you rank Mark Zuehlke? He's one of the few dudes I've found that covers the Canadian actions during WW2 worth a drat.

Never read him.

# ? Jun 5, 2017 23:58

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# ? May 25, 2024 16:18

Murgos: Oct 21, 2010

Cyrano4747 posted:

A lot of ACW generals who were good at their job utilized it without expressing it in exactly those terms or giving a poo poo what the Prussian General Staff was up to. .

Just to close the circle on this Justus Scheibert followed Lee around during the war and then wrote works that influenced Prussian/German strategy for the next 5 wars.

Obviously one of the things Lee was known for was operational flexibility.

E: also his leadership style was definately objective focused with the details largely left up to subordinates. Great when you have a Jackson or Longstreet. Not so great with say, Early.

Murgos fucked around with this message at 01:45 on Jun 6, 2017

# ? Jun 6, 2017 01:26

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > The Goodmine > AIRPOWER/Cold War - Its literally the first two lines of their hymn

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