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I'm still reading up on opioid use in and out of war, and it's mindblowing how early opioids were adopted for pain! Like, people were injecting morphine prior to the year 1900 :o I remember reading about working class men 'hitting the spike' around 1914, but the fact that the hypodermic and morphine were both invented before 1860 is crazy. Does anyone know when opiates and opioids( of any sort) were common issue for army medics? I recall something about proper battlefield medicine being codified around WW1, but I could be wrong.
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Nov 25, 2017 18:19
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Kemper Boyd posted:Weren't the draftees a minority among those who fought in Vietnam? I’ve been wondering about Korea. I’m currently reading the coldest winter and from the sounds of it, even with US intervention, South Korea was a ball hair away from being overrun until Inchon. If America hadn’t showed up at all, would Korea not be full on juche now? The war was a fiasco of the highest order in a lot of ways, but I feel like there was still some type of result (compared to Vietnam, where the north completely won after we left). I don’t know that you can call it completely unproductive. Like, it ended in the status quo, but one that’s arguably a real improvement over the alternatives, given what we know about the North Korean leadership today (I don’t know enough modern Vietnam to compare, but they seem like they’re doing......fine, relatively, I say hesitantly?)
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Nov 25, 2017 18:22
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Ainsley McTree posted:I’ve been wondering about Korea. I’m currently reading the coldest winter and from the sounds of it, even with US intervention, South Korea was a ball hair away from being overrun until Inchon. If America hadn’t showed up at all, would Korea not be full on juche now? Without US/UN intervention there is no way South Korea could have resisted the northern invasion no. But if the North was successful at taking over the South, it may well have become less of a pariah state as well.
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Nov 25, 2017 18:32
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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PittTheElder posted:Without US/UN intervention there is no way South Korea could have resisted the northern invasion no. But if the North was successful at taking over the South, it may well have become less of a pariah state as well. Perhaps, but there's still no plausible outcome for that situation that doesn't leave the average South Korean vastly worse off than they are today.
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Nov 25, 2017 18:34
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Vietnam and Korea really don't share a whole lot in common other than both being ostensible anti-Communist actions in Asian countries. in related news I've been reading quite a bit about the Korean War lately and the initial phase of the war really wasn't as close run as I had thought it was. The North Koreans were in absolutely terrible shape by the time they got deep into the south, and it isn't terribly likely they would have been able to close the deal without Chinese or Russian help, US presence or not. edit: should clarify, US ground presence. the air interdiction campaign early in the war was an absolute necessity though bewbies fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Nov 25, 2017 |
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Nov 25, 2017 18:52
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Tias posted:I'm still reading up on opioid use in and out of war, and it's mindblowing how early opioids were adopted for pain! Like, people were injecting morphine prior to the year 1900 :o Laudanum was invented in like the 17th century or so, oral not injected but still medicinal opium, and it was prescribed for basically everything up until the 20th century I think. You can still get it on prescription in some places as a diarrhoea suppressant, cos it gives you opium constipation. But initially it was used for everything cos I think it does basically just give you a mild opium hit which makes you feel better. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Nov 25, 2017 |
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Nov 25, 2017 18:56
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PittTheElder posted:Without US/UN intervention there is no way South Korea could have resisted the northern invasion no. But if the North was successful at taking over the South, it may well have become less of a pariah state as well. What still interests me about the Korea war is how even Turkish soldiers ended up fighting in the war, but because the German Bundeswehr was just founded a little bit too late, we got off scot-free.
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Nov 25, 2017 19:11
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A Fully communist Korea would've probably resulted in Japan needing a larger military or an increased US presence than it already has; simply from the ability to sabre rattle Japan directly. It also probably wouldn't been less affected by famines at least.
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Nov 25, 2017 19:28
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I know this is Gay Caucasian Kim Il-Sung territory, but I wonder if a victorious DPRK would eventually have had to defend itself against China like Vietnam did? Korea as is was a useful buffer against US hegemony but if the peninsula was united it might fall victim to the Sino-Soviet power struggle.
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Nov 25, 2017 20:34
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Jeb Bush 2012 posted:Perhaps, but there's still no plausible outcome for that situation that doesn't leave the average South Korean vastly worse off than they are today. Maybe. But if you're going to take the utilitarian view, you probably have to consider the North Koreans as well. If the North had reunified the peninsula, maybe South Koreans are worse off than today, but the North Koreans might be far better off. Our scenario back loads a lot of conflict and suffering too. So if the North reunites the peninsula in the 50s, there's probably some hard decades ahead. If the North collapses sometime in the future and the South reunifies the peninsula, there's going to be some very hard decades ahead there too. Which is better? It's unknowable! Nenonen posted:I know this is Gay Caucasian Kim Il-Sung territory, but I wonder if a victorious DPRK would eventually have had to defend itself against China like Vietnam did? Korea as is was a useful buffer against US hegemony but if the peninsula was united it might fall victim to the Sino-Soviet power struggle. I'm given to understand that the Chinese attack on Vietnam was all to ensure that the governments of Laos and Cambodia would be Chinese aligned rather than Vietnam aligned. There's geographically no way the same sort of thing could come up in Korea. PittTheElder fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Nov 25, 2017 |
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Nov 25, 2017 20:58
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Korea also has a history of being helped out by China while Vietnam's relationship with China was more contentious. That Chinese Admiral who got his rear end saved by Yi, while Yi was grateful for the Chinese intervention has got to count for something.
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Nov 25, 2017 21:07
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The USSR also has a land border with both NK and China and huge armies in the vicinity, while they couldn't realy do much to interfere in a war with Vietnam.
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Nov 25, 2017 21:12
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Don Gato posted:And even in WWII, just with Russian soldiers entering Germany. It is a surprisingly common story with a lot of variations. I'd read this in Ivan's War, which I had thought was meant to be recommended.
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Nov 25, 2017 22:48
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There was even a variation in some book I can't remember the title of: in an underground industrial facility in Wien, some soviets found a tank full of alcohol. It was supposedly treated with some poisonous additive that wasn't immediately obvious, so they did their thing, and several people died and even more had to be admitted to hospitals.
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Nov 25, 2017 22:54
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spectralent posted:I'd read this in Ivan's War, which I had thought was meant to be recommended. I don’t remember any part of IW quite that on point. There were stories of soldiers drinking themselves to oblivion, but not literally being drowned in the cellar as a trap. At least not that I remember; most of my brainpower has dedicated itself to remembering the shocking sexual violence of those chapters
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Nov 25, 2017 22:58
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I swear I've heard somewhere that the Nazis apparently deliberately left easily-found stockpiles of booze in the hope the Russians would find it and render themselves combat ineffective through drinking it. It feels like bullshit though.
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Nov 25, 2017 23:23
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Didn't someone mention earlier that the bombing campaign killed a stupidly large portion of the North Korean population? That probably also has to be taken into account for the humble gay MacArthur non-intervention timeline. Or does it, since how do you juggle the current South Koreans vs worse off potential South Koreans + children of non-exploded North Koreans? How do the military governments fit in?
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Nov 25, 2017 23:28
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spectralent posted:I'd read this in Ivan's War, which I had thought was meant to be recommended. Ivan's War is good, but it is heavy on anecdotes for obvious reasons.
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Nov 25, 2017 23:38
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GotLag posted:I swear I've heard somewhere that the Nazis apparently deliberately left easily-found stockpiles of booze in the hope the Russians would find it and render themselves combat ineffective through drinking it. It feels like bullshit though. In a book, Red Road From Stalingrad, Mansuer Abdulin recounts the Germans doing just this in Ukraine, and then coming back with flamethrowers at night 
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Nov 25, 2017 23:49
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Xerxes17 posted:In a book, Red Road From Stalingrad, Mansuer Abdulin recounts the Germans doing just this in Ukraine, and then coming back with flamethrowers at night Oh god.
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Nov 25, 2017 23:53
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13th KRRC War Diary, 2nd Nov 1917 posted:A portion of the Battalion front to the northwards, (comprising North Farm and some posts) was taken over by the 13th. R.B. The Battalion Sector was re-arranged and a further post established in Belgian Wood. Much work was done in reconnoitering and salving Potsdam Dugouts as Platoon Head Quarters, and also dugouts at the Clusters, for Front Line Company Head Quarters. They were brought into use before the Battalion was relieved. Special attention was paid to salvage and large quantities were taken back to Transport Lines and Dumps.
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Nov 26, 2017 00:17
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Apparently there's a war movie about random Japanese and Koreans Red Army conscripts in some sort of penal battalion is this based on anything factual?
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Nov 26, 2017 00:55
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Raenir Salazar posted:Apparently there's a war movie about random Japanese and Koreans Red Army conscripts in some sort of penal battalion is this based on anything factual? I mean, there was that edge case where four Koreans in Wermacht uniforms were captured at the atlantic wall. I think there were like four of them, and they'd been conscripted by the Japanese, captured by the soviets, conscripted by the Soviets, then captured and conscripted by the Nazis. Not sure if service records survive to show how and where they'd been captured. Also, some Japanese soldier from WWII made a comic or something about his POW experience in Siberia after the war.
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Nov 26, 2017 01:58
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Rockopolis posted:Didn't someone mention earlier that the bombing campaign killed a stupidly large portion of the North Korean population? That probably also has to be taken into account for the humble gay MacArthur non-intervention timeline. Yeah, it was pretty bad. The U.S. dropped 635,000 tons of bombs, of which 32,557 tons were napalm, on Korea - which, in comparison, is more than was dropped during the entire pacific campaign of WW2. It's estimated 600,000 civilians died, which amounts to around 10% of the pre-war population of (northern) Korea.
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Nov 26, 2017 02:15
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Raenir Salazar posted:Apparently there's a war movie about random Japanese and Koreans Red Army conscripts in some sort of penal battalion is this based on anything factual? I don't know anything about this movie but at the outset of WWII there were many thousands of Koreans living in the Soviet far East. Once hostilities commenced Stalin deemed them a liability near Vladivostok and deported the entire community to Central Asia. I'm sure lots of them ended up in the Soviet military if only to avoid starving to death. I know this because I went to a Russian-Kazakh restaurant and had to ask why it had a bunch of Korean dishes like Bulgogi beef on the menu.
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Nov 26, 2017 02:37
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Raenir Salazar posted:Apparently there's a war movie about random Japanese and Koreans Red Army conscripts in some sort of penal battalion is this based on anything factual? I remembering watching it on youtube somewhere and it's actually very, very loosely based on those korean dudes Grand Prize Winner is taking about.
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Nov 26, 2017 02:41
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Tias posted:Yeah, it was pretty bad. The U.S. dropped 635,000 tons of bombs, of which 32,557 tons were napalm, on Korea - which, in comparison, is more than was dropped during the entire pacific campaign of WW2. It's estimated 600,000 civilians died, which amounts to around 10% of the pre-war population of (northern) Korea. What sort of casualties were inflicted via damage to the rice crop caused by bombing the North's irrigation dams? I've both heard that it caused significant starvation and that it didn't really impact the rice crop at all.
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Nov 26, 2017 02:46
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Xerxes17 posted:In a book, Red Road From Stalingrad, Mansuer Abdulin recounts the Germans doing just this in Ukraine, and then coming back with flamethrowers at night Not only are they incapacitated, but the blood ethanol makes them even more flammable!
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Nov 26, 2017 04:00
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GreyjoyBastard posted:Not only are they incapacitated, but the blood ethanol makes them even more flammable! And then this bit comes to mind from 1993 Stalingrad.
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Nov 26, 2017 04:05
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OSS annotated translation of a German newsreel about D-Day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLJ-3T7K9rE "The film shows the considerable German coastal defenses at Normandy, and the organized, efficient, and effective resistance they offered on the beaches at 2:00. At 2:29, the pre-dawn aerial attacks by the Allies are met with heavy gunfire. At 3:20, Allied ships encounter barrage mines and light German naval units enter the battle. At 4:48, heavy German artillery enters the battle and makes direct strikes on the invasion fleet. At 5:30 coastal defense are seen including pillboxes and anti-personnel barbed wire and emplacements. At 6:00, SS troops oppose a landing with flame throwing weapons. At 6:22, wrecked landing craft are shown. At 8:11, U.S. Airborne troops who are now prisoner are shown. At 9:20, wrecked WACO gliders are shown as well as Canadian prisoners. At 10:30 the battle continues at Cairns, with heavy bombing by aircraft opposed by railroad-mounted AA guns. At 12:00, civilians are shown fleeing the Allied invasion, as German armored divisions with tanks move forward. A wrecked Canadian Sherman tank is seen at 13:40. In short, the "German version of Invasion" portrays the German Army in the aftermath of D-Day, apparently winning many battles and turning the tide of war in favor of the Wehrmacht."
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Nov 26, 2017 05:46
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Nov 26, 2017 06:43
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Whoever colorized that did a lazy job of it because half of it is still black and white
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Nov 26, 2017 07:45
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Phanatic posted:What sort of casualties were inflicted via damage to the rice crop caused by bombing the North's irrigation dams? I've both heard that it caused significant starvation and that it didn't really impact the rice crop at all. I don't know, but considering many urban centres( including Pyongyang!) lost between 50 and 90% of their buildings, it would assume - without knowing - that larger dams would have eaten a bomb or nine.
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Nov 26, 2017 09:58
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canyoneer posted:Whoever colorized that did a lazy job of it because half of it is still black and white 
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Nov 26, 2017 10:13
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P-Mack posted:David Bell's The First Total War may be worth a read, he looks at the Napoleonic wars and tries to explain how perception of war transitioned from bullshit for kings and soldiers best left to professionals into an apocalyptic struggle of citizens for the fate of civilization. And how since then even penny-ante bullshit wars need to get recast in those grandiose terms. cf. British people constantly crowing over their longbows and how they kicked rear end in Agincourt and Crécy.
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Nov 26, 2017 13:22
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Phobophilia posted:cf. British people constantly crowing over their longbows and how they kicked rear end in Agincourt and Crécy. While conveniently forgetting battles like Patay.
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Nov 26, 2017 13:30
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I seem recall someone itt asking about comprehensive info about this subject, so by way of apology for my shitposting in the communism discussion, here is my.. Effortpost about the POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista) Founded in 1935 in Catalonia before the tumultous events of the Spanish Civil War, the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification is a fusion of the Trotskyist Communist Left of Spain (Izquierda Comunista de España, ICE) and the Workers and Peasants' Bloc (BOC, affiliated with the Right Opposition*). The TCLoS broke with Trotsky immediately before joining the POUM, though I'm not sure why. Their position was communist but libertarian, influenced by the Impossibilist ideas of Marx: That fighting for social reform was undesirable, when you could achieve social progress through revolution instead. This endeared them to the anarchists in CNT and FAI, but not so much to the larger reformist left making up the Popular Front government. They organized at least 10,000 men under arms, and also accepted parts of the International Brigades, as most prominently portrayed in Ken Loach's film Land and Freedom and George Orwells book Homage to Catalonia - if you're a colossal nerd and have read the Forever War, you might also have caught the reference there!**. Originally, all militiamen were party members, but eventually POUM realized the strain it put on party activities to send most of your militants to war, and eventually recruited non-members to fight, among these many CNT members. It's membership has been tallied differently at various times. We know they had 30.000 members at the start of the war, which is a pretty big deal for an ideological trot party. In a time where many flocked to socialist organizations, the politically free marxism of the POUM attracted many people because they offered a middle road between the stalinists and the anarchists. They especially won ground in the communist hotbeds of Catalonia and the Valencian Country, where the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSUC) represented the stalinist PCE Unfortunately, their leader at the time, Andrés Nin, had been close with Trotsky, which at this time was enough to earn you the eternal enmity of stalinists, and so it also was with the Spanish Communist Party, that its, PCE - even though the estranged Trotsky and his 4th Internationale repeatedly attacked*** Nin for not being onboard with Trotsky and his awesome plans for the future of communism. Vocal critics of the anarchist union CNTs opposition to a central government in Catalonia, the POUM and especially Nin knew at this time that the stalinists were encroaching. As he'd put it: the size of the communist party matters nothing, when covert entrism and infiltration are the preferred political strategy. (Actually, Nin knew a lot of things, including stuff that just wasn't true. For instance, he claimed that 'everything that is not revolutionary is reactionary' and wanted CNT to help him establish a worker's democracy while criticizing everything the republic did - because he thought the Popular Front govt was secretly conspiring with nationalists in a peculiar mirror of stalinist paranoia. Most contemporaries put it down to his revolutionary fanaticism, but it does seem like he a bit crazy to me. ) Of course, POUMs fears turned out to be a lot more rational with regards to the stalinists themselves, who more or less owned the entire Republican side with their entrist bullshit in the May Days of 1937. At the end of April, a number of events escalated an already tense situation, leading to what you could call a civil war inside the civil war. The 16th of April president Companys changed his government and gave the position of Justice Minister to Juan Comorera, leader of the communist PSUC. This was a big deal, particularly to the POUM who he had threatened to dissolve if he got the power to do so. The 24th of April, Eusebi Salas was the target of a failed assassination. He was the Catalonian governments Commissar of Public Safety and a leading member of PSUC. The next day, prime minister Negrin sent carabineros to secure the border to the Pyrenees, which until then had been manned by CNT militias. They clashed with anarchist militiamen in Cerdanya and killed several, including a local chairman of a revolutionary committee. In Madrid, a guy named Cazorla closed CNTs newspaper, because he was angry they had said he ran secret prisons. The same day in Barcelona, a leader of the communist labor union UGT named Cortadas was murdered, allegedly by anarchists. PSUC organized a public funeral, planned as a mass protest against the CNT. Fearful of open conflict in the streets of Barcelona, the government got UGT and CNT to agree to call off the May Day parades. The 2nd of May the CNTs paper Solidaridad Obrero( coming out in spite of the ban) urged workers to not let themselves be disarmed under any circumstances. The day after that the government decided to seize all power they had lost from the popular committees since 1936, and take back a telephone central held by the anarchists, as well as UGT and Catalian regional politicans, but was considered under anarchist control( because they could listen to all calls going in and out of Barcelona, including the prime ministers. I won't go into the fight for the telephone central, because it's another long story, but eventually the entire neighborhood got in on the fight, and POUM militiamen fought the government along with the anarchists. After this, CNT decided to take control of the entire town and disarm the governemnt Asaltos who arrived. The communist press went into a hardcore offensive against CNT and POUM after this, sparing no expensive in explaining that they were all trotskyites and traitors to the revolution, eventually fabricating false evidence that the two organizations worked together with both Franco and the Gestapo. Prime Minister Negrin was largely indifferent to Moscow taking over the government at this point, and The POUM was officially banned in June 15, and on June 16th, Andreu Nin was kidnapped by government secret police and tortured for days by the Russian NKVD. When the POUM members who hadn't been kidnapped or killed by now started a campaign asking "to the government of Negrin, where is Nin?", the PCE asked "In Salamanca or Berlin". From then on, POUM was driven below ground and of course subject to persecution after Francos victory. It reformed again in 1977 but is defunct today, with former members running the Andreu Nin foundation to conserve their ideological heritage and the POUMs history. I can heartily reccommend checking out their stuff. * The right opposition was what all "right-wing" currents within the communist movement was called at this time, though it was used like buckshot and everything from nationalist communists, anarcho-communists and social democrats have been hit with the label at one time or another. ** quote:it was a place where "(y)ou obeyed an order only after it had been explained in detail; you could refuse if it didn't make sense." *** The fourth Internationale and Trotsky had a fit over POUM joining not only the Popular Front, but also the anarchists - though this did not stop both foreign conservatives from withholding arms on the basis of their friendship with Trotsky - nor the stalinists from denouncing them as 5th column trotskyite loyalists  ((That's it! I'll answer questions if I can, though trot party militias are not my area of expertise, and Disinterested or anyone else good at this sort of thing are very welcome to add to it! I apologize if my own political bias is showing too much in the text, I really don't like stalinists and I think the PCE are colossal assholes who did a lot to cost the good guys the war.)) Tias fucked around with this message at 16:14 on Nov 26, 2017 |
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Nov 26, 2017 14:52
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Tias posted:I don't know, but considering many urban centres( including Pyongyang!) lost between 50 and 90% of their buildings, it would assume - without knowing - that larger dams would have eaten a bomb or nine. I remember reading that 2nd World War veterans being utterly shaken by the destruction and death that they witnessed in the Korean war. That is just a scary thought the more you think about it.
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Nov 26, 2017 15:43
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We have people of various political stripes in this thread but no actual tankies that I can think of so i wouldnt worry about slagging those guys off. gently caress Stalin.
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Nov 26, 2017 15:50
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has anyone ever been pro-cav because of the hair https://twitter.com/igorbobic/status/934487507269554178/photo/1
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