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Epicurius posted:Kevin McAleer drew the conclusion that Mensur was a coopting by the middle class of aristocratic and militaristic values and a way to gain acceptance by the ruling class. You may not have a von in front of your name, you may not be part of the military elite and your father might be a lawyer or businessman, but by participating in Mensur, you're saying that you accept the culture of weapons, you embrace a code of honor, that you're willing to take pain without flinching, and all that. McAleer probably takes it too far, throwing in Sonderweg theory and all that, but... That's interesting. Dueling was much more popular among the newly-Protestant gentry in Ireland in the 18th c than it was in England. Could be something similar.
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Jun 28, 2018 13:13
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Siivola posted:I stumbled on an essay that pointed out Prussia had a huge reserve officers' corps at the time. I read Frevert's take on the matter about a year back and I faintly recall her arguing that dueling was a way for the reservists to gain some respect in the eyes of the aristocratic career officers. Then they'd have kids and pass on their manly ideal, and that's how dueling spread to universities. What? I've never heard about naval officers dueling on ships.
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Jun 28, 2018 14:42
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modern office duelling https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShUbD82tmHw
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Jun 28, 2018 14:49
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The History of Egypt guy had recommended a podcast about the history of Vikings which sounded neat. However one of the more recent episodes on lore/mythology had a guest who started dropping Jordan Peterson references 
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Jun 28, 2018 14:51
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Academic dueling and bourbons dueling are certainly not functions of poverty. Of course not, my point being that you don't really need a clueless warrior aristocracy for schools to fight.
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Jun 28, 2018 14:51
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FAUXTON posted:The History of Egypt guy had recommended a podcast about the history of Vikings which sounded neat. May I recommend Saga Thing? Two profs discuss the Icelandic sagas in a very engaging manner.
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Jun 28, 2018 15:20
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One thing that always stuck with me about German academic duelling is that dudes used to pry apart healing wounds and/or cram horsehair into the wound to make the scar bigger upon healing. Why horse hair specifically is good for making scars worse I dunno but it sounds like it probably hurts like a bitch.
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Jun 28, 2018 15:38
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Tias posted:My dad grew up in the sixties, and they spent free days and holidays fighting with the school the next street over, using clubs and knives... he was twelve. It's a function of poverty and frustration as well, I think. Bashing other kids in the face with snowballs that have icicles inside. Not as dangerous, but hella easier to conceal from adults. 
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Jun 28, 2018 16:01
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zoux posted:but it sounds like it probably hurts like a bitch. I imagine that's half the point, really. If there was a painless way of making your scars bigger the fellows who had the horsehair treatment would feel entitled to sneer at the pansies afraid of a little pain.
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Jun 28, 2018 16:07
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Oh yeah well I crammed stinging goddamn nettles in there because I am the Chad Teuton and you are the Virgin Frank
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Jun 28, 2018 16:16
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There's an excellent description of a Mensur in 1898 by Jerome K Jerome in Three Men on the Bummel, one of the first comedic travelogue books, in chapter 13. He doesn't say exactly where it was, but he does explicitly rule out a couple of the more obvious candidates.quote:...In aristocratic Bonn, where style is considered, and in Heidelberg, where visitors from other nations are more common, the affair is perhaps more formal. I am told that there the contests take place in handsome rooms; that grey-haired doctors wait upon the wounded, and liveried servants upon the hungry, and that the affair is conducted throughout with a certain amount of picturesque ceremony. In the more essentially German Universities, where strangers are rare and not much encouraged, the simple essentials are the only things kept in view, and these are not of an inviting nature. He claims to be seriously morally offended by the whole thing and spends a lot of time intellectually justifying this judgement. As a Victorian of relatively humble origins who is desperate to think himself and be thought genteel, he knows he is expected to keep a stiff upper lip and not get too emotional or worked up about anything, much less a blood sport. To find himself enjoying this sort of thing could easily have been a shock to the core of his identity.
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Jun 28, 2018 16:20
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Cyrano4747 posted:Fraggings also weren’t nearly as common as portrayed in popular culture. Tias posted:I haven't heard about fragging anywhere other than Matterhorn, and it seems to have been dramatized on purpose, so agreed. Hope you don't mind me reviving this... No, fragging wasn't as common as popular culture seems to think it was. quote:In addition to thousands of threats that were never carried out, there were confirmed reports of at least 800 fraggings or attempted fraggings in the Army and Marine Corps, with 86 men killed and an estimated 700 wounded. Source, a HuffPo article. But that doesn't mean it didn't have a huge impact on the culture of the military at the time. Anecdote: My uncle was in Vietnam, with the 1st Cav in 1971-72. He's spoken about the fact that when it came to patrols they often just didn't patrol. They'd leave the base, walk about a 1/2 mile to a spot where the base couldn't see them - a spot they'd used before - and just sit for a few days. Then they'd walk back and make a (false) report about the patrol. Junior officers would go along with this because making the soldiers do something more dangerous - like make a real patrol - would result in threats of fragging. They'd wake up and find a grenade pin in their bunk, a clear message that they were to "back off" and stop endangering the troops. Even if no one got fragged - no one died, and that probably doesn't even make the list of "attempted fraggings" - you can see what an effect that would have on a military unit and its effectiveness. No, my anecdote isn't hard data, and I can't find numbers or surveys on the subject of the number of threats made. But I think it is reasonable to think that even though there weren't as many fraggings as popular culture portrays, it still had an impact. Cessna fucked around with this message at 17:45 on Jun 28, 2018 |
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Jun 28, 2018 16:25
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zoux posted:One thing that always stuck with me about German academic duelling is that dudes used to pry apart healing wounds and/or cram horsehair into the wound to make the scar bigger upon healing. Why horse hair specifically is good for making scars worse I dunno but it sounds like it probably hurts like a bitch. Considering that this is pre-antibiotics, intentionally keeping a wound open and shoving debris into it is wonderfully Darwinian lunacy. I wonder how many of these guys died from terrible infections. In the face. 
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Jun 28, 2018 16:43
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Only those lacking the Will. Watching a thing on "Top 10 Most Disastrous Campaigns" and Gettysburg is #2. The criteria is not only a military defeat but leading to a change in policy or behavior for the belligerents. For example, after Teutoborg forest, Romans halted expansion east of the Rhine. My question is: does Gettysburg belong that high on an all-time worst list? I know they lost but I didn't think they got blown out. Other campaigns on the list include Crassus vs the Parthians and the Spanish Armada. Obviously ranking things into Top Tens is subjective, but would Gettysburg make your personal top 10? zoux fucked around with this message at 16:56 on Jun 28, 2018 |
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Jun 28, 2018 16:47
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zoux posted:Only those lacking the Will. Losing Vicksburg the next day is what really slammed the door shut on the Confederacy. Gettysburg was a mistake sure but I don't know what changes if Lee doesn't invade the north. The armies fight somewhere else, maybe the south does better with home field advantage, but the big picture looks similar to me.
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Jun 28, 2018 17:37
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zoux posted:Only those lacking the Will. No, this is awfully US-centric.
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Jun 28, 2018 17:39
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zoux posted:Only those lacking the Will. imo no. the campaign and battle were both kinda botched by lee so it was a fuckup for sure but as far as a turning point goes it was mostly public perception in making lee eat a solid unequivocal defeat. by mid 1863 the south had lost the war from a military perspective, the question was really if the north was going to get too tired of beating the south and call the war early or see it through to a total victory the gettysburg campaign was a not totally great idea that ended poorly but it's probably on that top 10 list due to name recognition. compared to something like the push into north korea in the winter of 1950-51 it's not even close in the scale of bad decisions. and depending on how you categorize disaster i'd say hood's defense of atlanta was way worse if we stick to just bad outcomes of civil war campaigns
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Jun 28, 2018 17:42
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Fangz posted:No, this is awfully US-centric. The guy was Russian so 
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Jun 28, 2018 17:44
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zoux posted:Only those lacking the Will. Gettysburg ended major CSA offensive operations in the east, that's about it. So, in that sense it changed the policy of the ANV, but it didn't change a whole hell of a lot for the CSA in general. Atlanta was the thing that fundamentally changed the war from being possibly winnable to being a lost cause, but it didn't really change anyone's behavior all that much. If picking a Civil War battle that really changed behavior of both sides it was Seven Days - the ANV completely reorganized itself afterwards, and the Army of the Potomac gave up trying to do anything other than charge straight down the middle for the rest of the war.
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Jun 28, 2018 17:49
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Personal top 10 is: WWII eastern front Napoleon in Russia Persian invasion of Greece Second Punic war Taiping Rebellion Khalkhin Gol Japan's war against the US WWI submarine warfare Soviet occupation of Afghanistan Invasion of Iraq (lol) zoux posted:The guy was Russian so I actually looked up his list: 1. Invasions of Russia by Napoleon, Hitler and Charles XII lol
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Jun 28, 2018 17:55
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zoux posted:The guy was Russian so Youtube search results in a Kings and Generals video, I assume it's that one. Yup, guy has an accent, but it's not one I can place, are you sure he's Russian? OK, let's check out their other videos. Wait... Wait... That other narrator on their latest videos, he sounds familiar, I've heard that voice before, sounds like the guy who did that ridiculously homoerotic Sigvald let's play of Total War: Warhammer that people talked about in the game thread about a year ago... *checks related and "friend" channels* Ahahahaha, OfficiallyDevin, yeah, that's the guy. The internet is small, I guess. 
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Jun 28, 2018 18:04
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So where's he from
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Jun 28, 2018 18:08
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"The object of the victim is to show his comrades that he can stand still while his head is half sliced from his skull" Jesus
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Jun 28, 2018 18:41
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Agreed. I think Vicksburg literally the next day was the nail in the CSA coffin, but losing control of the Mississippi before that was more impactful. Gettysburg *could* have been a turning point on the international stage and domestically if the CSA had won a major victory, but regardless of the military outcome Lee was going to have to slip back across the Potomac afterwards. It also could have been a legit turning point if Meade had used his fresh troops to aggressively press Lee during the retreat, he was running out of food and was already essentially out of ammo. But as it was, no, Gettysburg probably doesn't even belong in the top 10 US military turning points.
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Jun 28, 2018 18:48
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Corsair Pool Boy posted:Agreed. I think Vicksburg literally the next day was the nail in the CSA coffin, but losing control of the Mississippi before that was more impactful. Gettysburg *could* have been a turning point on the international stage and domestically if the CSA had won a major victory, but regardless of the military outcome Lee was going to have to slip back across the Potomac afterwards. After New Orleans fell the entirety of the Trans-Mississippi was really pretty irrelevant to the outcome of the war. Losing the Mississippi didn't affect cotton shipments out of the west much at all (they were actually more successful running blockades out of Texas than they were anywhere else), and Missouri was really more of a gang war than any kind of proper military confrontation. The fulcrums of the war were the two big Confederate field armies, very little else that happened outside of those two formations had a major impact on the viability of the CSA, or on the north's interest in finishing the war off.
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Jun 28, 2018 18:58
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MrMojok posted:"The object of the victim is to show his comrades that he can stand still while his head is half sliced from his skull" I think there's an element of Victorian hyperbole.
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Jun 28, 2018 18:58
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Continuing my series of questions raised by me watching youtubes: I watched a blow-by-blow of the Battle of the Coral Sea and also one for the Battle of Issus in 333BC and the level of detail made me wonder: how do we know so much about actual in-battle maneuvers? For more modern battles, how is the level of detail achieved? From the wiki on Coral Sea:quote:The Japanese attack began at 11:13 as the carriers, stationed 3,000 yd (2,700 m) apart, and their escorts opened fire with anti-aircraft guns. The four torpedo planes which attacked Yorktown all missed. The remaining torpedo planes successfully employed a pincer attack on Lexington, which had a much larger turning radius than Yorktown, and, at 11:20, hit her with two Type 91 torpedoes. The first torpedo buckled the port aviation gasoline stowage tanks. Undetected, gasoline vapors spread into surrounding compartments. The second torpedo ruptured the port water main, reducing water pressure to the three forward firerooms and forcing the associated boilers to be shut down. The ship could still make 24 kn (28 mph; 44 km/h) with her remaining boilers. Four of the Japanese torpedo planes were shot down by anti-aircraft fire.[77] Is someone writing down the exact times for when things happen, are they going by their recollections, are these things actually recorded by instruments? When the Yorktown is hit at 11:27, is some bridge officer looking at his wrist watch? For ancient battles, order of battle and disposition on the field I can understand, but who is recording field tactics? Who is noting that this particular unit led by this commander assaulted this element of the opposing force at this time, and so on? Broad strokes I get, but how accurate can these tactical recreations of 2000 year old battle be? How reliable can the sources be?
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Jun 28, 2018 19:09
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zoux posted:Is someone writing down the exact times for when things happen, are they going by their recollections, are these things actually recorded by instruments? When the Yorktown is hit at 11:27, is some bridge officer looking at his wrist watch? Someone is writing this stuff down, yes. For example https://text-message.blogs.archives.gov/2016/02/09/the-death-of-a-lady-the-uss-lexington-part-i-the-log/
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Jun 28, 2018 19:15
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Fangz posted:Someone is writing this stuff down, yes. For example Well that explains that. Which officer or crewman is typically responsible for this during a battle?
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Jun 28, 2018 19:16
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zoux posted:Continuing my series of questions raised by me watching youtubes: I watched a blow-by-blow of the Battle of the Coral Sea and also one for the Battle of Issus in 333BC and the level of detail made me wonder: how do we know so much about actual in-battle maneuvers? For more modern battles, how is the level of detail achieved? From the wiki on Coral Sea: Radio communication, after action reports, and investigations. As for older battles, historians rely on their predecessors, using whatever source is most trusted, and trying to supplement it with additional documents/items found that may depict the battle or talk about it in some fashion.
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Jun 28, 2018 19:16
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zoux posted:Is someone writing down the exact times for when things happen, are they going by their recollections, are these things actually recorded by instruments? When the Yorktown is hit at 11:27, is some bridge officer looking at his wrist watch? Yes. Maybe not an officer, but a Yeoman. (Admin types who keep the ship's log.) Edit: Googling "Navy Yeoman WW2" to try to find a picture led to this Osprey-style illustration of a Yeoman, who is apparently keeping a log of everything. Everything.  1530: Ensign Smith observed inappropriately gawking at Lt. (j.g.) Jones. Cessna fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Jun 28, 2018 |
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Jun 28, 2018 19:24
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Cessna posted:Yes. Maybe not an officer, but a Yeoman. (Admin types who keep the ship's log.) 
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Jun 28, 2018 19:42
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Fangz posted:Personal top 10 is: AH deciding to go to the mat against Serbia (despite the broad acceptance of demands!) has to be high on the list considering it led to the destruction of the entire political entity.
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Jun 28, 2018 20:05
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I have to be honest, the concept of making top 10 lists about horrific events which cost thousands of lives in the same way someone else might rank their favourite movies strikes me as incredibly crass.
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Jun 28, 2018 20:11
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I dunno, I don't think it's in the top 10 of things people shouldn't make lists about
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Jun 28, 2018 20:31
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The Shattered Sword authors show off a bit of their methodology - if you know when a carrier was performing launch/recovery ops then you know when it was travelling into the wind at full speed.
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Jun 28, 2018 20:34
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Samuel Clemens posted:I have to be honest, the concept of making top 10 lists about horrific events which cost You have be a little more ambitious to make it to the top ten.
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Jun 28, 2018 20:38
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Samuel Clemens posted:I have to be honest, the concept of making top 10 lists about horrific events which cost thousands of lives in the same way someone else might rank their favourite movies strikes me as incredibly crass. Yeah, you need to limit it to top 5 to make the cool ones pop
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Jun 28, 2018 21:02
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Cessna posted:Yes. Maybe not an officer, but a Yeoman. (Admin types who keep the ship's log.) Lol bless you sir e: WW2 Life does a photo-essay on logistics: https://books.google.ca/books?id=KFAEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PA65#v=onepage&q&f=true e2: "Laundry platoons" sounds like a Simpsons joke Nebakenezzer fucked around with this message at 21:44 on Jun 28, 2018 |
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Jun 28, 2018 21:39
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steinrokkan posted:Yeah, you need to limit it to top 5 to make the cool ones pop Top 20 is better, the more pages you get people to click the more ads you serve. 5 is almost worthless!
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Jun 28, 2018 21:59
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