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Tias posted:Dude did a LOT of LSD in his later years, I imagine that helped jazz up the old memories a bit. how did i not know i could have gotten high with juenger, holky poo poo
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Sep 21, 2017 19:03
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De Wiart enjoyed WWI, which is more than you can say about anyone else alive during 1914-1918. And I think it was the war that cost him an eye, an arm and some fingers. Frankly, being shot by an unseen foe or bombed (by arty or planes) terrifies the gently caress out of me, so I wouldn't enjoy war at all. I'll leave it to tiny plastic men to do it in my stead.
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Sep 21, 2017 19:07
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Hitler also a notably pretty big fan of war.
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Sep 21, 2017 19:13
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Yeah I think you have to accept that a not insignificant number of people go through a war and have a great time. See also Teddy Roosevelt.
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Sep 21, 2017 19:27
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I imagine it was just one of those things until advances in technology increased the suffering and destruction and peoples attitude towards war.
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Sep 21, 2017 19:32
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Churchill as well pretty much loved war from front end to back.
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Sep 21, 2017 19:33
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A lot of people have enjoyed and will continue to enjoy war for a variety of different reasons, but it has become uncouth in our society to acknowledge this. I blame Remarque.
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Sep 21, 2017 19:43
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Skorzeny probably had a great old time.
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Sep 21, 2017 19:51
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Disinterested posted:Hitler also a notably pretty big fan of war. also the List Regiment was a bit poo poo, which is good because ever since I've started studying the Mansfeld Regiment I have loved and cherished regiments that kinda sucked. Just a bunch of Bavarians, Austrians, and dudes from the Tyrol who were trying to get enough beer and not die. Except Adolf Hrdlr, incel HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Sep 21, 2017 |
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Sep 21, 2017 19:54
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Didn't Hitler win an actual bravery medal by serving as a runner and got gassed though? I didn't think he was a POG
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Sep 21, 2017 20:16
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HEY GAIL posted:Hitler's First War An excellent source; wanted to make much more use of it but there was never enough time to pick out the days. Full Hitlerpost to follow when I'm not doing a comparative evaluation of pizza options.
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Sep 21, 2017 20:19
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Hitler only lost one ball in it, though. But yeah, he doesn't even have the decency to go into war, get maimed, get into an another war and only then tell people how awesome it was while wildly gesticulating with an arm. I think you can tell whether or not the guy is full of poo poo by seeing if they're glorifying death. The happy war survivors are like that because they weren't thinking about the best ways to die (though it's hard to tell sometimes).
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Sep 21, 2017 20:20
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HEY GAIL posted:so i read Hitler's First War on Trin's advice, it's a history of his regiment. And get this: he rode a desk for four years in safety and was a huge brownnoser with no friends. Yeah, I thought Hitler was a message runner who was brave He did get the Iron Cross first class, I thought that was kinda unusual for enlisted Do I have to downgrade my opinion of a Nazi again?!?
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Sep 21, 2017 20:29
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juenger glorified the individual encounter with death though. you know who got more wounded? loving wittgenstein's brother, *a poncy concert pianist*. also wittgenstein wrote a war diary, which is the funniest loving thing and i'm still mad at trin for not using it HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 20:32 on Sep 21, 2017 |
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Sep 21, 2017 20:30
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SeanBeansShako posted:I imagine it was just one of those things until advances in technology increased the suffering and destruction and peoples attitude towards war.
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Sep 21, 2017 20:34
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JcDent posted:Now that we're talking about Japan, would anyone care to go into more detail about the changing role of ashigaru over the years? But the Onin war changed a lot of things. It was almost entirely fought in Kyoto itself. In this situation, where fighting is happening over the burned-out ruins of mansions and palaces, mounted archery took a backseat to mass infantry. It's in the Onin war that the capabilities of mass formation fighting are seen by daimyo, who take the lessons to their provinces and start warring with each other in the Sengoku period. At first the ashigaru are spearmen for the most part, though there are records of massed archers. The big change in how the ashigaru fight is the introduction of firearms. They are quickly spread, and by the 1570s Oda Nobunaga is defeating the veteran Takeda cavalry force with his gunners. The pattern Nobunaga sets is pretty much how Japan will fight for the next 80 or so years, with the Shimabara rebellion being the last major disturbance before the Tokugawa shogunate starts to totter 200 years later.
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Sep 21, 2017 20:38
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Nebakenezzer posted:Yeah, I thought Hitler was a message runner who was brave im starting to think this hitler guy is bad?
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Sep 21, 2017 20:40
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Well the interesting thing is, the people who have the worst time at war aren't really capable of telling the story of how much it sucks to be shot dead. You'll only ever hear stories of people who survived against all odds. And then with the way people's brains work, they'll normally come to accept the harshness of their past situation and learn to look on the brighter side of things, trying to put it all into a narrative where there was a reason for it all. You have to be fairly stubborn to hold onto your resentment throughout the years.
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Sep 21, 2017 20:45
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It's my brother's 18th birthday and he's apparently interested in solid reading on the world wars (as one is when interested in proper study but still a high school student) and I've already gotten him Neptune's Inferno, Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, Shattered Sword, and Castles of Steel. I'll be handing him down the copy of Guns of August I have floating around, but I'm wondering if there's go-to recommendations on a similarly reputable and similarly-narrative-styled book on something like Kursk/Battle of Britain/Dunkirk/Khalkin Gol/Stalingrad or any other particular event that isn't a naval battle.
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Sep 21, 2017 20:52
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I liked The Defense of Moscow 1941: The Northern Flank.
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Sep 21, 2017 21:02
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Nebakenezzer posted:Yeah, I thought Hitler was a message runner who was brave rdlf hrdlr
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Sep 21, 2017 21:16
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If your brother's interested in the diplomacy and politics that lead to WW1 - the book ends with the first declaration of war - I highly recommend The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 by Christopher Clark. It's a dense read, but it's more recent scholarship than Guns of August and in my opinion a very interesting read.
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Sep 21, 2017 21:25
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HEY GAIL posted:juenger glorified the individual encounter with death though. Say what Wittgenstien's war diary Mind blown
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Sep 21, 2017 21:32
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Nebakenezzer posted:Say what  
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Sep 21, 2017 21:36
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lol Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus ftw Squalid fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Sep 21, 2017 |
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Sep 21, 2017 21:56
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What webcomic is that? Hark A Vagrant is sadly on hold.
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Sep 21, 2017 22:47
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SeanBeansShako posted:What webcomic is that? Hark A Vagrant is sadly on hold. http://existentialcomics.com/
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Sep 21, 2017 22:54
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that bugs me cause he was a loving austrian wrote the tractatus in an italian prison camp too, always wondered if he met a proto-HEGEL there
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Sep 21, 2017 23:03
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Well that was a huge letdown.
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Sep 21, 2017 23:03
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Please tell me the diary is online somewhere
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Sep 21, 2017 23:06
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Marxist-Jezzinist posted:Well that was a huge letdown.  I like philosophy jokes.
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Sep 21, 2017 23:44
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FAUXTON posted:It's my brother's 18th birthday and he's apparently interested in solid reading on the world wars (as one is when interested in proper study but still a high school student) and I've already gotten him Neptune's Inferno, Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, Shattered Sword, and Castles of Steel. I'll be handing him down the copy of Guns of August I have floating around, but I'm wondering if there's go-to recommendations on a similarly reputable and similarly-narrative-styled book on something like Kursk/Battle of Britain/Dunkirk/Khalkin Gol/Stalingrad or any other particular event that isn't a naval battle.
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Sep 22, 2017 00:10
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Seriously, you should all head out right this minute and buy a copy of Hitler's First War, by Thomas Weber; working entirely from the original records of the List Regiment in the Bavarian archives, he reconstructs exactly what Hitler and his comrades were doing for those four years, and then goes on to put Hitler's service (and that of his comrades) in the context of what he (and they) did next. Available from all good bookshops, and some rubbish ones as well. To summarise what Hitler did during the war: Hitler officially belonged to the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment (usually known as the List Regiment after its first colonel), which recruited mostly from Munich. He genuinely does seem to have done the German equivalent of leap-frogging down to the Cambridge recruiting-office and playing tiddlywinks in the queue, as a war volunteer; although he likely would have been conscripted by somebody at some point had he not volunteered. In Hitler's telling of the story, of course, he told quite a few porkies. One of them was the idea that, as an Austrian, he had to apply for special dispensation from the King of Bavaria; in fact the authorities either didn't notice or didn't object to taking Austrians who preferred to get their brains blown out for the German Kaiser. Weber also agrees that there is strong evidence to suggest that in 1913, Hitler had left Munich for Vienna in order to dodge being conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian army. (Without which, I like to imagine, he was sent south and was shot in Serbia on the banks of the Drina by my dad's dad's dad.) One more point; this particular regiment was far from bursting at the seams with rosy-cheeked supple-bodied Lederhosen-clad Tiddlerwinkenspielen paragons of young German manhood. It was very much a second-line unit; it was mostly made up of men who were, for some reason or another, unfit for peacetime conscription, but still subject to call-up in the event of war (which is perhaps why Hitler ended up there; his medical records show his physical condition was far from A1). A unit of whinging old crocks, hailing from a place far from their empire's capital, speaking a strange and often unintelligible dialect... quote:We left [CENSORED] on Saturday. We were on our feet from 6:30am until 5pm, and during the march we took part in a major exercise, all in pouring rain. We were quartered in [CENSORED]. I was put in the stables and I was wet through. Needless to say, I could not sleep a wink. This sort of moaning is not a million miles away from reigning world champion (and world raining champion) Louis Barthas, is it? That's a private letter sent by Hitler in late August 1914. Weber's done absolutely first-class work digging out reams of public and private correspondence; it really shows when he begins challenging some of the myths about the quality of Hitler's service in the hitherto-unknown words of people who served with him. They left home on the 21st of October and were taken by train to Lille and then on foot towards Ypres, complaining loudly about the incompetent performance of their own field-kitchens. They ended up in the Battle of Gheluvelt, one of the more important moments of the war. On the 29th the List Regiment went over the top; the 30th they spent trying to stay alive; the 31st saw some of them going over again. Colonel List died in action; Hitler's battalion was detailed to hold a quiet trench and he spent the day keeping his head down. They then fell back with everyone else after the counter-attack of the 1st of November; by the 3rd they were back in reserve and reorganising, and a few days later they were sent to Messines, still dangerous, but away from the worst areas of the Ypres salient. (Of course, this is one important way in which Hitler's regiment's experience differed from Barthas's: he was present at several important battles, but they never went over the top.) In this reorganisation Hitler was promoted. Exactly what his rank was is, for English speakers, a Matter of Some Debate. He became a Gefreiter, which in my experience is usually translated into English (including by our questionably-informed friend Mr Wikipedia) as "Corporal". However, it also came with his reassignment to regimental HQ as a despatch runner. Importantly, it was a role that involved no command over other soldiers and he was not considered an NCO. Weber therefore refers to him as "Private Hitler" throughout the book, which I think is perhaps slightly unfair; "Private first class" may be more appropriate, but I do agree that calling him a corporal is wrong because it implies he was an NCO, which he wasn't. (In today's unified NATO rank structure, a German Gefreiter is placed at OR-2, equivalent to a British or American private; OR-3 is where the American private first class and the British lance-corporal live.) In December he was given the Iron Cross 2nd Class. Exactly what he did for it is, of course, disputed; as Weber tells it, Hitler and three comrades came out of cover (but were not under fire at the time) to protect the new colonel, who had stupidly wandered out of cover for a moment, and see him back to safety. Nazi propaganda, of course, tells a rather more heroic tale. Weber also points out that Iron Crosses (like many other awards for bravery throughout time), had a mysterious habit of falling to soldiers whose duties (like Hitler's) put them in close and frequent contact with the officers who were responsible for recommending people for medals. Hitler did did also have a bog-standard lucky escape a couple of days later, when a shell destroyed a hut which he spent a lot of time in and may have left only a few minutes beforehand. The regiment settled down into trench warfare. In 1915 the regiment was pulled away from Ypres to take part in the counter-attack at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle, and then went to Fromelles, on top of the Aubers Ridge. They were up the line on the 9th of May and retook their trenches overnight without needing reinforcements, although at the cost of heavy casualties; a couple of companies were also sent to Loos as reinforcements at the end of the year, with similar results. There's a lot of Nazi propaganda about Hitler's bravery during this time; most of it neatly transposes the experience of a battalion runner with that of a regimental runner. The battalion runners lived at battalion HQ (in the trenches, they would have been about a kilometre, if not further, behind the front trenches) and would have had the job of taking messages directly to junior officers at the sharp end. Regimental runners rarely went directly to the sharp end. In accordance with the chain of command, their messages went forward only as far as battalion HQ and then back out to regimental HQ (or sometimes sideways between different RHQs). There's a massive yawning gap in the amount of danger involved in being a battalion runner and being a regimental runner. They weren't quite in the rear with the gear, but they would have been in a similar position to our old friend Herbert Sulzbach of the artillery; mostly safe, with a few moments of moderate danger during an attack (when communications trenches further back would have been targeted, or when battlefield conditions became uncertain), and without the mitigating excuse that at least the gunners were shooting at the enemy. Hitler may not have been far back enough to send his laundry forward, but a man in his position had a far more cushy life than the blokes in the trenches and was deservedly resented for it. The List Regiment continued with its important military tasks of going on working parties, getting drunk, and contracting venereal diseases well into 1916. Hitler acquired a dog and kept it at RHQ. The Battle of the Somme began; the Australians launched a major diversionary attack while the List Regiment was up the line; and their number was called to go south at the end of September. By the 2nd of October the blokes were on top of the Butte de Warlencourt, and on the 5th Hitler was wounded in the leg by shrapnel while in a dugout a couple of kilometres to the rear. Not serious enough to be permanently disabling, serious enough for him to be sent home; the equivalent of a good Blighty one. In his absence, the regiment was whittled down to a skeleton state until it was withdrawn and sent to Vimy to be reconstituted. In March 1917 Hitler returned and they moved again to La Bassee; then returned to Vimy as reinforcements and spent the best part of a month taking a horrible poo poo-kicking. In late June they were moved back to Flanders for rest, and then went back to Gheluvelt in just enough time to eat the preliminary bombardment for Third Ypres; on the first day of the battle they, like many others, were forced to retreat with heavy casualties and were then immediately withdrawn and sent all the way to the other end of the front, to Mulhouse in Alsace (where Hitler's dog either deserted or was stolen). After a couple of months they moved on to the Oise-Aisne Canal in Picardy and had another quiet time, and then were pulled out to take part in the Spring Offensive, where they were used mostly as follow-up units to reinforce and hold ground taken while the spearhead regiments pushed on. They ended up at Soissons in mid-year and then were struck down by Spanish flu; they recovered in enough time to be in the Second Battle of the Marne. Four days before the Battle of Amiens, Hitler was awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class; it's true that the nomination was strongly supported by a Jewish officer, the adjutant Hugo Gutmann, and that his citation says that he was "always prepared to volunteer to deliver messages in the most difficult of situations under great risk to his own life". However, it's also true that "the most difficult of situations" that a RHQ dispatch runner would have to face was generally far less dangerous than what his mates at the sharp end would have been enduring. Weber once again points out that common soldiers stood a far greater chance of being decorated if they were known to the officers who made the recommendations. After the Hundred Days began, the regiment moved back to reserve positions at Le Cateau, and then on to Bapaume for yet another shitkicking, just north of where Hitler was wounded in 1916. Hitler himself did not go to Bapaume; instead he went to Nuremberg for a signals training course, and then on leave. He didn't get back to the regiment until the end of September; he spent two weeks with them before being gassed 28 days before the end of the war. Weber makes a persuasive argument that between his absences and his position at HQ, he missed a lot of the experience of the front-line soldier that might have made him far less prone to believing in the Dolchstoss myth. There's a lot more. Read the book, it's fascinating. There's even a funny story with some cows in. Well, it wasn't very funny for the cows...
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Sep 22, 2017 01:51
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So I was reading that Revolutionary/Napoleonic French armies fought in narrow column formations rather than wide rows and that was one reason why they were so effective. How did that work on the field of battle? Wouldn't the columns be at tremendous risk of being enveloped by the opposing rows? Not to mention that a long row of musketmen could bring a ton more firepower onto a target at once.
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Sep 22, 2017 03:50
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These are large columns, there are lots of them and until 1812 they are filld with a lot of experienced men who will patiently stand. Also, they were supported by experienced screens of light infantry, light artillery, heavy artillery batteries and the cream of French cavalry of that era. Also, the armies that faced these columns changed a lot and learned how to handle them better with time and experince through the Napoleonic Wars.
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Sep 22, 2017 03:55
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What were the dudes further back than the first 4-5 rows doing in those giant columns? They wouldn't be able to fire would they?
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Sep 22, 2017 03:58
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The 'columns' were more like lines stacked one after the other rather than a marching column widened slightly. The French didn't always fight in columns, either.
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Sep 22, 2017 04:53
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:What were the dudes further back than the first 4-5 rows doing in those giant columns? They wouldn't be able to fire would they? They were providing moral momentum and filling in for guys further up who get shot. The impact (sorry) of the French Revolutionary attack column is underestimated. The Revolutionary army had a lot of motivated but loosely trained soldiers. They'd put up with a lot of incoming for the chance to get to grips with the enemies of the Revolution. So. Poorly trained troops have difficulty maneuvering in a line, which is the best formation for applying firepower. What they can do is march one after the other in a big group that is getting shot at. That's your attack column. It's very effective against a thin line frantically trying to reload their muskets. What made the Republican attack columns surprisingly effective was the morale factor. Other armies marched in column but deployed to line to fight. Columns are big fat targets. French columns would stand up to punishment that other armies wouldn't. Then Napoleon added massed artillery and got the rank and file trained up to withstand punishment, but also to fight effectively in line.
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Sep 22, 2017 04:54
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I'm imagining big columns of pantalons-rouges marching into volley after volley, screaming the drat marsellaise to keep everyone from fleeing lol cran, yall
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Sep 22, 2017 04:56
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The idea of the column of French persists because of the British memory of the conflict and their habit of a line two deep by way of contrast, and their relative lack of use of the column. But Austrians and Russians and Prussians of course did more of the fighting and in a more similar style. And that's without getting in to the mass as a formation.
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Sep 22, 2017 05:10
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