Let's Talk About Idiots! We can't stop here, this is Ba'ath country!

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

MA-Horus posted:

OK FINE gently caress they work but the B is still a garbage pile for a trillion loving dollars.

Agreed. And we can put 95% of the blame for that on Congress. The other 5% goes to the Marines for thinking they need goddamned airplanes at all.

CainFortea posted:

If by "work" you mean "Usually don't kill their drivers and can sometimes hit what they're supposed to" then sure.

I mean "work" as in "it does hella good poo poo in large force exercises when F-16s are getting their lunch stolen by the adversary aircraft and SAMs." These are not scenarios designed to be easily won.

# ? Dec 5, 2018 17:31

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# ? May 31, 2024 09:13

Midjack: Dec 24, 2007

Proud Christian Mom posted:

The F-35 works in that it makes Lockheed money while giving jingoistic shitheads something to brag about while people literally die from not being able to afford insulin.

it's a good punchline that the last new warplane the united states of america will field before its collapse is the loving f-35.

# ? Dec 5, 2018 18:23

CommieGIR: Aug 22, 2006; The blue glow is a feature, not a bug; Pillbug

MA-Horus posted:

That's barely even the point. With the Manhattan project, man's understanding of the laws of physics and chemistry were changed in a dramatic and terrifying way. Los Alamos, Oak Ridge and Hanford were all built. Gigantic Calutron plants and Gaseous Diffusion and liquid thermal diffusion plants had to be built, each one of those with it's own technological difficulties to overcome (gaseous diffusion especially). They had to build nuclear reactors based on a pile of graphite bricks and uranium ore that Fermi had built in a goddamn squash court, and have them scaled way the gently caress up. They had to figure out how to separate plutonium from uranium using robots so the workers wouldn't glow in the dark. Then they had to experiment on an element that had never been seen on Earth before, and then they had to figure out how to make it go bang which required an effort so big it nearly made Oppenheimer quit the project. They had to figure out how to turn explosives into a precision instrument, how to make the explosive lenses fire at the same time, how to keep the physics package together long enough for the chain reaction to develop, and how to make the whole thing deliverable in a neat tidy package.

Fission was discovered in 1938. It was controlled for the first time in 1942. It was released in 1945. For all the technological developments that had to be made in order to bring about the bomb, the time scale is staggeringly short and was only really possible because 1) There was a concerted national effort under the direct control of the president with zero oversight 2) fear of a german atomic bomb 3) A project manager (Groves) and project lead (Oppenheimer) who were once-in-a-generation phenoms at project management 3) the combined efforts of the greatest scientific minds in human history working towards a common goal.

Yeah, the Manhattan project achievements was not about its cost, but how completely and decisively it changed our understand of almost the entirety of atomic physics.

# ? Dec 5, 2018 18:56

Carth Dookie: Jan 28, 2013

Also had to figure out how to extract the entire planets worth of experimental plutonium from that scientist who accidentally ate it all that one time.

# ? Dec 5, 2018 21:07

CommieGIR: Aug 22, 2006; The blue glow is a feature, not a bug; Pillbug

Carth Dookie posted:

Also had to figure out how to extract the entire planets worth of experimental plutonium from that scientist who accidentally ate it all that one time.

https://warisboring.com/the-scientists-who-pee-plutonium/

There was a club at Los Alamos called the UPPU club.

# ? Dec 5, 2018 23:02

Icon Of Sin: Dec 26, 2008

Let�s not forget about �tickling the dragon�s tail�, aka the story of the Demon Core (which killed 2 scientists).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core

# ? Dec 5, 2018 23:14

Cythereal: Nov 8, 2009; I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

One lesser known element of Operation Downfall was a plan presented to Truman's desk to employ the US chemical weapons arsenal, in its entirety, to Japan. To quote the US Naval Institute:

quote:

During the summer of 1945, as millions of U.S. servicemen planned for two massive invasions of Japan and several thousand others were engaged in the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb, a handful of Army officers had another plan to end the war.

Major General William N. Porter, chief of the Army's Chemical Warfare Service, orchestrated a scheme to kill an estimated five million Japanese with poison gas. A document kept under wraps for five decades, the 29-page, "A Study of the Possible Use of Toxic Gas in Operation Olympic," details the ultimate attack.

Strategic bombers (B-29s and B-24s) would drop 56,583 tons of poison-gas bombs in the first 15 days of what the document called the "initial gas blitz." And they were to drop another 23,935 tons of gas bombs every month that the war dragged on or until all targets had been hit.

When landings began in November, tactical fighters and attack planes were to drop another 8,971 tons in the first 15 days, followed by 4,984 tons of bombs every 30 days. Other planes would swoop low, using spray tanks to spread thousands of tons of liquid gas over Japanese defenders. During the landings, U.S. troops would bring ashore 67 Army battalions of 105-mm and 155-mm howitzers and 4.2-inch mortars that were to fire about 1,400 tons of gas shells every 30 days.

Against unprotected troops�or civilians�these weapons would have been devastating. Against protected troops they would have caused casualties and, equally important, forced defenders to fight in restrictive gas masks and protective capes. Thus far in the Pacific War, neither side had used chemical weapons.

This proposal was the culmination of more than a year and a half of intensive planning by the Army's Chemical Warfare Service. Senior military leaders first considered the concept in November 1943, after almost 1,000 U.S. Marines were killed taking Tarawa Atoll from determined and fanatical defenders . A month later, General Porter wrote: "The initiative in gas warfare is of the greatest importance. We have an overwhelming advantage [over the Japanese] in the use of gas. Properly used gas could shorten the war in the Pacific and prevent loss of many American lives." 1 The core rationale of U.S. military commanders was simple; they perceived the use of chemical�and also biological�weapons as a way to save lives. And the option remained on their minds as Allied assaults moved closer and closer to the Japanese home islands.

In April 1944, U.S. Army chemical warfare and air intelligence officers prepared "Selected Aerial Objectives for Retaliatory Gas Attack on Japan," highly detailed studies of Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, Yawata, and adjacent cities and suburban areas. This analysis examined the climatic conditions, construction characteristics, street layout, and other features of Japanese cities to determine vulnerability to gas attacks.

The secret 1944 report noted, for example, "The gas attack program is aimed primarily at causing the maximum number of casualties, crippling transportation and public services, complicating and delaying the repair of HE [high explosive] bomb damage and making targets more vulnerable to incendiary attack."

Japanese cities were particularly vulnerable to gas attack, notably because residential areas were constructed almost entirely of wood, and "Liquid mustard [gas] is readily absorbed by wood which is almost impractical to decontaminate."

Meanwhile, U.S. forces were pushing relentlessly toward the Japanese home islands, using conventional weapons and methods for amphibious landings on Peleliu, the Marianas, the Philippines, Iwo Jima, and, on 1 April 1945, Okinawa. The landings were becoming more costly, however; tenacious Japanese defenders ashore were being aided by kamikaze attacks against U.S. warships and transports.

The U.S. death toll was inciting strong reactions. "You can cook them with Gas," read an editorial headline in The Chicago Tribune on 11 March 1945, as U.S. troops were fighting on Luzon and Iwo Jima with heavy losses. The editorial declared the charge that poison gas "is inhumane" as "both false and irrelevant. ... The use of gas might save the lives of many hundreds of Americans and of some of the Japanese as well."

In May 1945, General Joseph Stilwell, soon to take command of the Tenth Army on Okinawa, wrote to General of the Anny George C. Marshall, Anny Chief of Staff, about the pending invasion of Japan. His suggestions concluded: "Consideration should be given to the use of gas. We are not bound in any way not to use it, and the stigma of using it on the civilian population can be avoided by restricting it to attack on military targets."

On 29 May 1945, General Marshall told Secretary of War Henry Stimson:

... of gas and the possibility of using it in a limited degree, say on the outlying islands where operations were now going on or were about to take place. [Marshall] spoke of the type of gas that might be employed. It did not need to be our newest and most potent�just drench them and sicken them so that the fight would be taken out of them�saturate an area, possibly with mustard, and just stand off. ... The character of the weapon was no less humane than phosphorous [sic] and flame throwers and need not be used against dense populations or civilians-merely against those last pockets of resistance that had to be wiped out but had no other military significance." 2

On 9 June 1945, three officers of the Army's Chemical Warfare Service submitted the ultimate, top-secret gas attack plan to General Porter, who approved it.

The Army planners had chosen 50 "profitable urban and industrial targets," with 25 cities listed as "especially suitable for gas attacks." The report declared, "Gas attacks of the size and intensity recommended on these 250 square miles of urban population ... might easily kill 5,000,000 people and injure that many more."

The use of gas was to begin 15 days before the landings�starting with a drenching of much of Tokyo, because an "attack of this size against an urban city of large population should be used to initiate gas warfare." Planners targeted 17.5 square miles directly north of the Imperial Palace and west of the Sumida River. Almost a million people would be in that area at the time of the first strike. Within two miles of the target area were 776,000 more Japanese; they probably would be in the path of wind-carried gas. (Ironically, the size of the targeted area was almost exactly the same as the area of Tokyo burned out by the B-29 firebombing on the night of 9-10 March 1945. But the chemical warfare planners made no reference to bombing damage to cities on the target list.)

The attack on Tokyo was to begin at 0800, when the greatest number of people would be concentrated in the city. Four-engine B-29 and B-24 bombers would drop either 21 ,680 gas bombs weighing 500 pounds or 5,420 bombs weighing 1,000 pounds, depending upon their availability. All would be filled with a gas known as phosgene.

During subsequent attacks on other Japanese targets�both by U.S. aircraft and artillery�three additional types of gas�hydrogen cyanide, cyanogen chloride, and mustard�were set to be used. (Phosgene and mustard gas had caused many thousands of casualties in World War I.)

Mustard gas would be used against Yawata and the nearby cities of Tobata, Wakamatsu, and Kokura, a highly industrialized area. The objective was to "hamper operations and produce mustard gas vapor casualties" among the 279,200 people in the gas attack zones. "Refresher attacks" would launch every six days until the first frost.

In direct support of the invasion of Kyushu, cyanogen chloride bombs were to be dropped on Japanese troop units around Goshima, the chief city on Kyushu. Raids on reserve troops, however, would likely "produce large numbers of casualties among the unprotected urban population of Kagoshima." Gas attacks, the report continued, "should be coordinated with the 'softening up' bombardment of the beaches prior to landing."

Extremely detailed analyses of city layouts even paid attention to the width of streets and the location of parks. Discussing one gas-attack zone in Yokohama, for example, the report said: "Zone I covers the center of the city proper, a triangular area congested with residential and mercantile structures. This is the most densely populated region in the city. Dense clusters of low residences, broken only by narrow streets, extend inward. The northern and western parts of this district are covered with cheap native shops and theaters. There are no large factories in this zone and comparatively few household shops."

Army planners believed that Japanese officials would not evacuate cities, even after the first wave of poison-gas attacks, because of the strain that mass evacuation would place on the transportation system and because workers were needed to keep factories operating.

Target selection was based on the thesis that "... most Japanese cities of over 100,000 population are located on or very near the coast, a fact of significance for gas attack because it aids identification and exposes them to daily land-sea winds .... There are few open spaces in most Japanese cities. There are a number of parks in Tokyo but few elsewhere ...." Noting that about 70% to 80% of the roofs in typical cities were tiled and the rest sheet metal, the report says that both types "are easily penetrated by gas bombs."

Cities were "studied in considerable detail for the purpose of preparing gas zone maps," depending upon the density of population. The greater the concentration of people, the better the gas target.

Only five copies of the top-secret report of 9 June were made. On 14 June, other documents show, Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King, Commander in Chief, U.S. Fleet, received a secret report on the use of poison gas from General Marshall.

The timing of the discussion between King and Marshall strongly suggests that poison gas was discussed at the 18 June 1945 meeting in the White House on the invasion of Japan. The minutes of that meeting refer to other, undisclosed topics. One was revealed later to be the atomic bomb.

The newly available report of 9 June strongly indicates that another object of discussion at the White House on 14 June was the massive use of poison gas.

On 21 June, according to one of the documents, orders went out to step up production of several poison-gas types so that stockpiles could satisfy the massive amounts urged in the plan.

The Army's Edgewood (Maryland) Arsenal and civilian laboratories already were researching toxic gases extensively, and factories were producing toxic materials as well as weapons. The first poison-gas plant was at Warners in New York state, which opened in April 1944. Initially, it produced 15 tons of cyanogen chloride per day, later increasing to 60 tons per day. By mid-1945 several additional plants were producing toxic gases, and several more remote areas were being used to test them. In 1942 a chemical test area had been set up in the desert wasteland of Utah, including part of the Dugway Valley, and at Fort Sibert in Alabama. Other chemical test sites, with more tropical conditions, were at Bushnell, Florida, and San Jose Island in Panama. Toxic U.S. weapons were also tested on Brook Island in the Australian state of Queensland, as well as at smaller test facilities in Canada and India. (Massive numbers of U.S. toxic weapons were also stored in Australia.)

Weapons intended to destroy tanks, planes, or even buildings could be tested against inanimate objects. But toxic gases were meant for human targets. Thus, volunteers�thousands of U.S. and Australian servicemen�were experimentally exposed. The precise number of men on whom gases were tested may never be known, but the U.S. Navy alone had at least 65,000 test volunteers from the Great Lakes training station near Chicago. 3

The Army and the Navy conducted several research projects, and the Navy had a 1O-by-15-by-17-foot chemical weapon test chamber at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., across the Potomac River from the suburb of Alexandria, a few miles from the Capitol. Several men could be exposed to gases for up to an hour to test the effectiveness of gas as well as protective clothing, masks, and ointments. The volunteers were alternately exposed to the gas wearing ordinary and protective clothing, plus gas masks. Although the volunteers were monitored closely and examined before and after the tests, many suffered injuries. 4 In Australia, volunteers wearing normal clothing and gas masks worked moving sandbags in the gas chambers. Many were hospitalized, often with the skin around the scrotum and underarm burned raw. 5

By 1945, almost 51 million chemical artillery shells, more than 1,000,000 chemical bombs, and more than 100,000 aircraft spray tanks were available. 6 Also in the new arsenal were mustard-gas land mines made from rectangular, one-gallon tin cans, commonly used for varnish or syrup. The ten pounds of mustard in the can were detonated by a slow-burning fuse or electrical current, and the gas would spread over a considerable area. They were intended as booby traps or for contaminating fields, roads, or buildings. By April 1945 more than 43,000 such mines reposed in Pacific stockpiles. 7 Other chemicals were mass-produced but were not used in specific weapons.

This huge U.S. chemical arsenal was intended for a multi-front war, supporting U.S. combat operations in Europe and the Mediterranean as well as the Pacific and Southwest Pacific areas. In 1945, it was proposed, all of this arsenal of toxic gases would be used to drench the Japanese home islands�creating some 5,000,000 Japanese casualties while saving countless U.S. lives.

The exchange between General Marshall and Admiral King on 14 June 1945 addressed the fanatical Japanese resistance being encountered in the Pacific. Marshall's memorandum to King stated: "Gas is the one single weapon hitherto unused which we can have readily available which assuredly can greatly decrease the cost in American lives and should materially shorten the war." 8

Only 50-odd years later has the scope of the plan for that weapon's ultimate use come to light.

1 Memorandum from MGEN William N. Porter to LGEN Joseph McNamey, 17 Dec 1943; War Department file OPD 385.

2 Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy, Memorandum of Conversation with GEN Marshall, "Objectives towards Japan and Methods of Concluding the War with Minimum Casualties," 29 May 1945.

3 Rexmond C. Cochrane, "Medical Research in Chemical Warfare" (Aberdeen, MD: Aberdeen Proving Ground, U.S. Army [n .d.; 1946]), Monograph, 163, 167.

4 See, for example, Naval Research Laboratory, "Chamber Tests with Human Subjects, IX. Basic Tests with H Vapor," in Constance M. Pechura and David P. Rail (ed.), Veterans at Risk: The Effects of Mustard Gas and Lewisite (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1993), p. 361.

5 Karen Freeman, "The Unfought Chemical War," The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (December 199 1), p. 32.

6 A detailed breakdown of chemical munitions is provided in Leo P. Brophy, et. al., The Chemical Warfare Service: From Laboratory to Field (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, U.S. Army, 1988), p. 65.

7 Ben R. Baldwin, et. al., Readiness for Gas Warfare in the Theaters of Operations (manuscript in National Archives), pp. 449, 454.

8 Memorandum from GEN Marshall to ADM King, 14 June 1945, enclosing "Memorandum entitled U.S. Chemical Warfare Policy."

Mr. Polmar and Mr. Allen are coauthors of Codename Downfall: The Secret Plan to Invade Japan and Why Truman Used the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995). Their Proceedings article "Invasion Most Costly" (August 1995) won them the Naval Historical Center's Rear Admiral Ernest M. Eller Award.

# ? Dec 6, 2018 01:28

Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Enjoy every sandwich.; Smellrose

If the atomic bombs hadn't been used and the invasion had gone ahead, we'd be having these same arguments except they would be "why did Truman not drop the bombs to end the war sooner?"

# ? Dec 6, 2018 02:02

Milo and POTUS: Sep 3, 2017; I will not shut up about the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. I talk about them all the time and work them into every conversation I have. I built a shrine in my room for the yellow one who died because sadly no one noticed because she died around 9/11. Wanna see it?

They'd have probably diverted their already meager supplies to troops at that point so the starvation among civilians would have been even worse than they were. Which was dire.

# ? Dec 6, 2018 04:07

MA-Horus: Dec 3, 2006; I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am.

Milo and POTUS posted:

They'd have probably diverted their already meager supplies to troops at that point so the starvation among civilians would have been even worse than they were. Which was dire.

Considering the Japanese war plan for Olympic involved giving the populace bamboo spears and expecting 20 million casualties, you're probably not wrong.

I am a little interested to see what would have happened if they had just surrendered after their peace overtures to Russia were rejected so...overtly. That must have been pretty shocking for the Japanese ambassador to the Soviets, thinking there was a hope for the Russians to lead a peace negotiation only to be told "Nah we're at war now and we just obliterated your forces in Manchuria".

# ? Dec 6, 2018 14:07

PookBear: Nov 1, 2008

if we hadn't dropped the nukes and scarred generations with their horror the world might have been more willing to use them in the cold war

# ? Dec 6, 2018 21:13

CainFortea: Oct 15, 2004

McCarthur was all on board nukeing North Korea and/or China. He also didn't understand about fallout.

# ? Dec 6, 2018 21:17

PookBear: Nov 1, 2008

CainFortea posted:

McCarthur was all on board nukeing North Korea and/or China. He also didn't understand about fallout.

yeah but because the public was scared of nukes there was political pressure not to use them. The civilian population might not have found out about the existance of nukes for a decade if not more. Imagine a cold war with atomic weapons the public doesn't even know exist

# ? Dec 6, 2018 21:19

Beepity Boop: Nov 21, 2012; yay

To a certain extent, WWI happened because Europe suddenly had all these fancy toys and wanted to play a nice game of industrialized warfare with them. If WWII didn't happen exactly when it did, then whatever country first figured out how to open a can of sunshine would probably have done the same thing, but bigger.

# ? Dec 7, 2018 04:51

Memento: Aug 25, 2009; Bleak Gremlin

I will never get sick of the term "canned sunshine". It's so very apt.

# ? Dec 7, 2018 05:09

LtCol J. Krusinski: May 7, 2013; by Fluffdaddy

Memento posted:

I will never get sick of the term "canned sunshine". It's so very apt.

# ? Dec 7, 2018 05:40

Absurd Alhazred: Mar 27, 2010; by Athanatos

https://twitter.com/pareene/status/1070888936522899456

"We invaded some Afghanistan".

# ? Dec 7, 2018 05:41

Proud Christian Mom: Dec 20, 2006; READING COMPREHENSION IS HARD

We're never leaving Afghanistan because it'd mean we might have to accept that we lost Vietnam 2.0 and created another generation of people mad that they didn't get an easy win because of liberals and the media, promptly sending more people to their death to make up for it.

# ? Dec 9, 2018 01:52

Burt: Sep 23, 2007; Poke.

Hremsfeld posted:

To a certain extent, WWI happened because Europe suddenly had all these fancy toys and wanted to play a nice game of industrialized warfare with them. If WWII didn't happen exactly when it did, then whatever country first figured out how to open a can of sunshine would probably have done the same thing, but bigger.

That's... ermm, well, just wrong. On every level that's wrong. WWII happened for a lot of reasons but your's is wrong. This is the best thread to post that opinion.

# ? Dec 9, 2018 18:22

McNally: Sep 13, 2007; Ask me about Proposition 305

Do you like muskets?

Burt posted:

That's... ermm, well, just wrong. On every level that's wrong. WWII happened for a lot of reasons but your's is wrong. This is the best thread to post that opinion.

I think he was talking about WWI.

# ? Dec 9, 2018 19:08

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

McNally posted:

I think he was talking about WWI.

It's still wrong.

# ? Dec 9, 2018 19:11

McNally: Sep 13, 2007; Ask me about Proposition 305

Do you like muskets?

Godholio posted:

It's still wrong.

I know. Everybody knows WWI happened because a guy named Archie Duke shot an ostrich because he was hungry.

# ? Dec 9, 2018 19:15

Beepity Boop: Nov 21, 2012; yay

Direct cause, yeah, but everyone else was so drat eager to honor the web of alliances because they wanted to 1) kill a bunch of the people they knew they'd be up against and 2) test out their new toys.

# ? Dec 9, 2018 19:45

Kawasaki Nun: Jul 16, 2001; by Reene

Hremsfeld posted:

Direct cause, yeah, but everyone else was so drat eager to honor the web of alliances because they wanted to 1) kill a bunch of the people they knew they'd be up against and 2) test out their new toys.

You don't think the expansion of checkboard diplomacy naturally led to a broad, multi factional conflict as a consequence of it's myopic strategic analysis and dependence on counterbalancing regional competitors?

# ? Dec 9, 2018 20:03

CainFortea: Oct 15, 2004

And why was it myopic?

Oh, right. "We've got the best tank in the world, nothing can stand in our way".

# ? Dec 9, 2018 20:08

Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

There was also the universal assumption that any war would be over quickly. It was widely believed that in an age of global commerce, prolonged war would be untenable economically. The diplomats saw the inevitable war as just the lead-in to the next Congress of Vienna, where they would sort out the real balance of power in Europe.

# ? Dec 9, 2018 20:50

Munin: Nov 14, 2004

Also, we'd all been regularly killing each other for centuries. Wars depopulating parts of Europe were a regular thing. Even after going "Egads we got far too good at that. Let's call it a day." we couldn't resist another go round.

# ? Dec 10, 2018 00:29

Vindolanda: Feb 13, 2012; It's just like him too, y'know?

CainFortea posted:

And why was it myopic?

Oh, right. "We've got the best tank in the world, nothing can stand in our way".

I can guarantee nobody thought this in 1914.

# ? Dec 10, 2018 00:36

CommieGIR: Aug 22, 2006; The blue glow is a feature, not a bug; Pillbug

Vindolanda posted:

I can guarantee nobody thought this in 1914.

And even if they had in 1939, the French had the heaviest and more powerful tank on the field at the time, for all the good that did.

# ? Dec 10, 2018 00:52

Memento: Aug 25, 2009; Bleak Gremlin

Kawasaki Nun posted:

You don't think the expansion of checkboard diplomacy naturally led to a broad, multi factional conflict as a consequence of it's myopic strategic analysis and dependence on counterbalancing regional competitors?

Wasn't there some dude who was great at all that 13-dimensional chess poo poo and had the continent on lockdown, where no one was willing to fight because they'd end up fighting themselves through treaty agreements? And then he retired and the whole house of cards fell apart.

# ? Dec 10, 2018 01:03

Carth Dookie: Jan 28, 2013

Memento posted:

Wasn't there some dude who was great at all that 13-dimensional chess poo poo and had the continent on lockdown, where no one was willing to fight because they'd end up fighting themselves through treaty agreements? And then he retired and the whole house of cards fell apart.

You might be thinking of Bismarck.

# ? Dec 10, 2018 01:10

Kawasaki Nun: Jul 16, 2001; by Reene

CainFortea posted:

And why was it myopic?

Oh, right. "We've got the best tank in the world, nothing can stand in our way".

It's myopic because "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" is a truism only with respect to your common enemy and not all nation States. It has literally 0 to do with tanks

# ? Dec 10, 2018 01:22

MA-Horus: Dec 3, 2006; I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am.

Carth Dookie posted:

You might be thinking of Bismarck.

Who Kaiser gimparm fired because he knew Bismark was smarter than him.

Wilhelm and Trump have some shocking similarities.

# ? Dec 10, 2018 02:08

Malachite_Dragon: Mar 31, 2010; Weaving Merry Christmas magic

also tanks weren't even loving invented until halfway through the war, the hell are you on about.

# ? Dec 10, 2018 02:28

CommieGIR: Aug 22, 2006; The blue glow is a feature, not a bug; Pillbug

Malachite_Dragon posted:

also tanks weren't even loving invented until halfway through the war, the hell are you on about.

And, boy, what a mess that was.

# ? Dec 10, 2018 02:42

Milo and POTUS: Sep 3, 2017; I will not shut up about the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. I talk about them all the time and work them into every conversation I have. I built a shrine in my room for the yellow one who died because sadly no one noticed because she died around 9/11. Wanna see it?

They got all muddy

# ? Dec 10, 2018 02:49

CoffeeQaddaffi: Mar 20, 2009

Milo and POTUS posted:

They got all muddy

The absolute worst thing a tank can be.

# ? Dec 10, 2018 02:50

CainFortea: Oct 15, 2004

Malachite_Dragon posted:

also tanks weren't even loving invented until halfway through the war, the hell are you on about.

It's almost like I pulled a random example of it out of my rear end. Tank, plane, new bolt action, new chemical weapon. What the gently caress ever.

The point is people thought the war would be super easy to win and were wrong.

# ? Dec 10, 2018 03:11

mods changed my name: Oct 30, 2017

WWI cracks me up, like poo poo when you name it WORLD WAR I you're pretty much begging for there to be a World War II and who knows how many more after that like, c'mon guys

# ? Dec 10, 2018 03:31

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 31, 2024 09:13

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

CainFortea posted:

It's almost like I pulled a random example of it out of my rear end. Tank, plane, new bolt action, new chemical weapon. What the gently caress ever.

The point is people thought the war would be super easy to win and were wrong.

You kind of picked one of the biggest points of historical debate about one of the biggest wars in history, and used it as the centerpiece of your argument. In a military subforum. With several people who have graduate degrees in history, and a whole lot more who actually read quality books on history out of personal interest.

# ? Dec 10, 2018 03:33

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > Let's Talk About Idiots! We can't stop here, this is Ba'ath country!

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