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deservingness of this snipe up for question snipe  I imagine all the mass murderers chatting in a convenient metaphysical space and everybody just shutting up when the vendee guys walk in the room e: aside from that katyn dude, who is standing in a bad rear end pose doing something bad rear end like lighting a hand rolled cigarette or something also where does that Finnish sniper who supposedly killed like 600 people fall in this? clearly, deep essential questions are raised here oystertoadfish fucked around with this message at 06:02 on Jan 15, 2019 |
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mllaneza posted:"The Perfect War: Technowar in Vietnam" by James William Gibson should leave anyone with even a passing acquaintance on the subject frothing at the mouth, throwing furniture, and smashing lamps angry. I recommend it highly for an insight into just how hosed up and backwards American strategy in Vietnam was. I'm only up to the introduction and I'm already furious:  
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Jan 15, 2019 05:42
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LatwPIAT posted:The people who used to campaign for such "left-wing" things as more individual freedoms during the days of the empire, and continue to do so, but now think that those godforsaken socialists are a threat to their Protestant values ("Centre", establishment) I know what you're trying to say here, but I'm just twinging a little bit when I read that sentence. I think I agree with you, though, generally. I read an interesting book...Benjamin Carter Hett's "The Death of Democracy: Hitler's Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic" (He's a history professor at CUNY), and his argument is that, even though we tend to look at the Weimar politics as left vs right or democratic vs non democratic, German politics in the Weimar period was confessional, and divided up into three general camps. Each camp was made up of democratic and non-democratic elements, and membership in each camp stayed pretty stable. You had the socialist camp (primarily the Socialist and Communist Parties), which was about 35-40 percent of the vote, the Catholic camp (Centre Party and Bavarian People's Party), about 15 percent of the vote, and the Protestant middle class (German National Party, German Democratic Party, German People's Party, and fringe groups like the Small Business Party), which together had support in the high 30s-low 40s. The Nazis came to power by basically taking over that third camp, and weren't very successful in attracting voters from the socialist or Catholic camps. What that stability throughout the Weimar period carries with it, though, is the suggestion that party choice in Weimar Germany was less a matter of ideology than it was socialization. Catholics voted for the Centre Party because that was what it meant to be a Catholic, for instance. And he goes more into this...how the backbone of the "Protestant parties" were the small towns and the farms, and the hatred of the rest of Germany for Berlin, which was seen as libertine, Communist, Jewish, and industrial, and the way that antisemitism played a role in Weimar politics, and so on. But it's worth a read, and I think it's a useful way to conceptualize Weimar politics.
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Jan 15, 2019 06:05
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oystertoadfish posted:deservingness of this snipe up for question snipe Supposedly there was a Turkish executioner who strangled hundreds of people with his hands, I assume that guy is in this metaphysical space trying to strangle the Katyn dude for the high crime of being Russian
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Jan 15, 2019 06:09
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The thing about Blokhin is you'd think he'd get tired. Putting aside the horror and moral bankruptcy of it all, that must be exhausting.
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Jan 15, 2019 06:12
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Epicurius posted:Benjamin Carter Hett's "The Death of Democracy: Hitler's Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic"...[the] argument is that, even though we tend to look at the Weimar politics as left vs right or democratic vs non democratic, German politics in the Weimar period was confessional
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Jan 15, 2019 06:21
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Epicurius posted:The thing about Blokhin is you'd think he'd get tired. Putting aside the horror and moral bankruptcy of it all, that must be exhausting.
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Jan 15, 2019 06:21
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how many Weimar parties had street armies? I read about the Nazis and Communists fighting, but I thought I saw something once about the center party having their own paramilitary wing. is that true? false? how about all the other groups listed in the good post? did they all have thugs on retainer?
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Jan 15, 2019 06:28
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Hi thread, longtime lurker here. Just wanted to pop in and say thanks for the inspiration- I have my first class for a Public History certificate (and maybe an M.A. after that) tomorrow afternoon. This thread definitely gets a lot credit for reminding me just how much I wanted to grow up to be a historian. Now it kinda-sorta could happen, assuming I can handle going back to school 12 years after my undergrad. Much appreciated goons.
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Jan 15, 2019 06:30
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Nebakenezzer posted:I would **love** to hear more about this I've followed this movement for several years and I don't think the right/left crossover interest in environmentalism is driven primarily by shared ideological assumptions. The primary interests of Greens on both sides are overwhelmingly practical. You don't need any reason to care about global warming besides a concern for the effect on long-run gdp. The difference rather, is how they interpret what environmental problems mean. The socialist looks at the increase in urban smog and sees the rapacious influence of unconstrained capitalism. The Green-right looks at the same increase and sees how the so called "progress" of the liberals has literally and spiritually polluted the earth. The essential problem is the same for everyone, its the nasty smoke that gives your kids asthma. The debate is rather over what it means to you, why it happened, and what we're going to do about it. LatwPIAT posted:"Right-wing" and "left-wing" are somewhat distressing terms to me (even tough I often fall into the trap of using them myself) because they're an abstraction that frankly belongs in middle school. It's like... Lethe, I don't know, trying to accurately describe the nuances of chemistry using only the electron shell model. They barely work in an extremely strict parlimentarian setting, let alone something as chaotic as Interwar Germany. This was a good post and I often feel the same way. The problem is trying to categorize something as left/right almost always involves projecting your current political coalitions, issues, and framing back onto the past. Even when we're talking about a past where they already used the terms left and rightwing! As a result it's frequently nonsensical.
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Jan 15, 2019 06:34
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oystertoadfish posted:how many Weimar parties had street armies? I read about the Nazis and Communists fighting, but I thought I saw something once about the center party having their own paramilitary wing. is that true? false? how about all the other groups listed in the good post? did they all have thugs on retainer? The Nazis had the SA, the Communists had the Red Front Fighters League, and a few other smaller ones. The German State Party had thr Young German Order, the Herman National People's Party had the Steel Helmets, and the SPD, and DDP had the Reichsbanner, Red, White, Gold. The SPD briefly merged the Reichsbanner with some Socialist youth organizations and labor organizations to form a new paramilitary, the Iron Front. This was done to counter the merger of the SA and Steel Helmets into what was called the Harzberg Front.
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Jan 15, 2019 06:51
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Schadenboner posted:But even that has to be seen in the context of being the cheaper solution for Hitler’s factory owner-backers, cheaper than the actual unions if the Social Democrats were in power and certainly cheaper than if the Communists took over. Cool your jets. Nazis had many socialist policies. And 1984 was about Stalinism. SlothfulCobra posted:I think what it really shows is that it's hard to maintain a hard philosophical taxonomy, and far beyond horseshoe theory, there's just a whole lot of interaction between opposite sides of a bifurcated spectrum on every level. Or at the very least it's easier than you'd think to flit between camps when you're still in the abstract stages of understanding your own personal takes on philosophies. HEY GUNS posted:i also think that the same kind of person can switch among different movements whether or not their explicit beliefs are opposed. we all know the dude who's a militant atheist one day and a militant fundementalist the next Yeah, and eg. Mussolini and Roland Freisler, the chief Nazi judge, were both former far leftits. LatwPIAT posted:"Right-wing" and "left-wing" are somewhat distressing terms to me (even tough I often fall into the trap of using them myself) because they're an abstraction that frankly belongs in middle school. It's like... Lethe, I don't know, trying to accurately describe the nuances of chemistry using only the electron shell model. They barely work in an extremely strict parlimentarian setting, let alone something as chaotic as Interwar Germany. A drat fine post.
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Jan 15, 2019 08:39
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Epicurius posted:The thing about Blokhin is you'd think he'd get tired. Putting aside the horror and moral bankruptcy of it all, that must be exhausting. I've understood that it took a heavy mental toll on him. HEY GUNS posted:small caliber? Walther Model 2 .25 ACP pistol.  This is a slightly different model, but they are about the same size.
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Jan 15, 2019 08:46
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Veritek83 posted:Hi thread, longtime lurker here. Just wanted to pop in and say thanks for the inspiration- I have my first class for a Public History certificate (and maybe an M.A. after that) tomorrow afternoon. This thread definitely gets a lot credit for reminding me just how much I wanted to grow up to be a historian. Now it kinda-sorta could happen, assuming I can handle going back to school 12 years after my undergrad. Yeah, this is a great thread. Would you mind making a post about something cool that you've learned here?
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Jan 15, 2019 08:48
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gradenko_2000 posted:I'm only up to the introduction and I'm already furious: Now I have to dig up my highlights. I highlighted a LOT going through that book.
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Jan 15, 2019 09:14
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Phanatic posted:Can we give this a break, please? The last thread got killed after 1216 pages because of this, and we're only 146 pages into this one. At this point, tank destroyers would be better. Discussion > Ask/Tell > The Milhist Thread: Tankie Destroyer Doctrine
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Jan 15, 2019 10:23
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Cessna posted:Yeah, and some of their push-back is excellent: Oh man, American "Odinists" are the funniest/worst. I'm stretching the limits of my English vocabulary here, but I'll try to explain: Basically, these are, to a man, just dumb racist assholes who know literally nothing about ancient Norse paganism except what they've absorbed through pop culture, and all of that is basically garbage. (This is the bit where my vocabulary gets stretched) - What is amusing about them is that they are all very antagonistic to Christianity, which is their "native religion" - I.e the religion where they get all of their ideas about religion from. However, because they have no real understanding of the ancient paganism that they claim to follow, the end result is that they create a kind of Christianity with a skin-deep layer of "Viking" paint. For instance, these dumbasses pray to the Norse gods, particularly Óđinn. Praying to gods, and supplicating to them is absolutely not a part of Norse paganism - At least not until after contact with Christianity, where the practice may have been absorbed by some people (polytheistic religions are notoriously malleable and absorbent). Ancient Norse people simply did not conceive of their gods in the same terms as the Abrahamic religions do - The gods did not hold dominion over people's lives, and they did not demand that they conform to any specific codes of behavior, like Abrahamic religions. They would not intervene in your life if you supplicated to them. They were not omnipotent and everpresent - They were more akin to characters in a body of semi-religious and semi-entertaining storytelling. Basically, to 6th century Scandinavian, praying to Thor would probably seem a little like praying to Darth Vader would seem to a modern person. So the "Odinists" do not fundamentally alter the "systems" of religion they've inherited from their Christian upbringing - The gods are now capital G Gods, they have a code of behavior that they demand you follow, and you pray to them. They've changed the particulars of the God(s), and they've changed the code of behavior, but for all their antagonism towards Christianity they've imposed a very Christian "system" on the ancient Norse religion. This is, to people with a passing knowledge of ancient Norse paganism, extremely ironic and amusing. That's why they're funny - They're the worst because their goddamn Nazis, obviously. Geisladisk fucked around with this message at 10:50 on Jan 15, 2019 |
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Jan 15, 2019 10:42
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How were postern gates used? I recently wandered around tbt part of Caesarea from the mid 1200s, and there's a postern that you can wall down there. I know that the idea was that the defenders could sally out to harass the attackers, but there were some things about it I didn't get. - The gate opens out into the moat. I don't know whether Caesarea's was wet or dry, but even if it was dry the defenders would still need to get up the other side somehow. Did they bring ladders with them down the postern or something? - The gate is pretty narrow, wide enough for maybe two of me. I know people were generally smaller then, but it seems like it might be difficult to bring more than their basic gear down, let alone something like a ladder? I guess they could go down single file - How large could a raiding party have been? Was it just like, send 10 guys to snipe some sentries and make the defenders nervous, or would you see more ambitious attacks out of them, like trying to burn seige machinery or whatever? Are there any cases of walls being breached by a (counter)attack through the postern? Elyv fucked around with this message at 11:30 on Jan 15, 2019 |
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Jan 15, 2019 11:00
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Geisladisk posted:Oh man, American "Odinists" are the funniest/worst. Thank you for this post, I was trying to find a way to say some of the same things when that image was posted, but I couldn't articulate it anywhere near as well as you did. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 11:42 on Jan 15, 2019 |
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Jan 15, 2019 11:37
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Geisladisk posted:Oh man, American "Odinists" are the funniest/worst. Elector_Nerdlingen posted:Thank you for this post, I was trying to find a way to say some of the same things when that image was posted, but I couldn't articulate it anywhere near as well as you did. Seconded, this was really interesting. In order not to further derail the Milhist thread, could you recommend any further reading? Books are fine, but anything available online would be a more useful because that'd make it somewhat easier to dunk on shitfucks who want to preserve the ~Ancient Nordic Traditions~ of praying to Odin and hating brown people.
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Jan 15, 2019 12:06
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http://www.atimes.com/article/russia-honors-greatest-land-weapon-of-world-war-ii/ reading about the new Russian MBT T14 Armata and came across them buying back T-34s from Asian countries they sold it to originally. Other than parades/museums and props for movies, are there any actual practical applications? Like if someone had told me they were retrofitting "very best tank" T-34's with reactive armor and a new engine I would have believed it edit: typed some bullshit about great patriotic war movies being pumped out faster than piss tapes, lost it from mouse button I know this isn't the thread for it but how the gently caress do you disable side mouse buttons on a browser Alan Smithee fucked around with this message at 13:27 on Jan 15, 2019 |
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Jan 15, 2019 13:23
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Alan Smithee posted:http://www.atimes.com/article/russia-honors-greatest-land-weapon-of-world-war-ii/ You need to be a bit less gullible.
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Jan 15, 2019 13:26
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Alan Smithee posted:http://www.atimes.com/article/russia-honors-greatest-land-weapon-of-world-war-ii/ There isnt really a compelling reason anyone would use the T34 for fighting if they had anything else available.
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Jan 15, 2019 13:37
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Would reactive armour work against WWII anti-tank guns? I'm wondering how effective an AFV you can make by souping up my car and sending it back in time to fight in WWII...
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Jan 15, 2019 13:39
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HEY GUNS posted:i also think that the same kind of person can switch among different movements whether or not their explicit beliefs are opposed. we all know the dude who's a militant atheist one day and a militant fundementalist the next From Socialist Jesus to alt-right CHUD, in my case Thanks to this thread I'm reading Neptune's Inferno. I know when we talk about Imperial Japan, we're all  at just how vicious the IJA vs IJN rivalry was, and it crops up as soon as the Japanese side is introduced at GuadalcanalThe IJA knew the USA had compromised the IJN's code ciphers but didn't bother to tell them
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Jan 15, 2019 14:20
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Geisladisk posted:Oh man, American "Odinists" are the funniest/worst. I take issue with parts of this post to be honest. Likening praying to Thor with praying to Darth Vader, is to me extremely disingenious. Unless the modern person is a total wackjob, the two are not the same as I see it. To a person in a traditional religious society, the important thing about the Gods are as far as I can see it that 1) they are present, and 2) they have power, power over people, and nature in accordance with their station. So you absolutely do pray to the Gods, just perhaps not in the Christian sense of praying, what you are doing is asking the gods to use their power to help you, though devotion and faith alone is not enough, they want physical gifts, sacrifice. That's really mostly what "religion" in traditionally religious societies encompassed a system of rituals to offer sacrifice and appeasing the gods. Though that doesn't mean they thought that gods and the divine ended there and they held no impact on society and its norms and laws. A key point to remember is that these people did not really conceive of our world as being fundamentally separated from the divine like we do (having mostly grown up in societies with both a legal separation of public life and religion and the concept of sin in Christianity, separating mankind from God), generally speaking following the laws and norms of society is unambigiously good and society also honors the gods, the two are not realy separate thing, you'll even see in the stories about the gods that they essentially have the same norms and legal structures as what societies at the time had, indicating that it was something more than simply man-made. In the end the fact of the matter is that we know much less about Norse religion (such as it was, it should also be remembered that the gods aren't specifically Norse really, they are the same gods worshipped by most other pre-Christian Germanic peoples) than we popularly think we do. Norse society for an example was not a literate society* and left few records of itself, much of what we have are either outside description, inferences from archaelogy and descriptions of past Germanic societies (which are also outside descriptions), and accounts from after Norse societies became Christian. The fact that Christianity, with the Church organization, kind of came pre-packaged with a literate society and people capable of writing, reading and keeping accounts (bishops and such) was very important for the formation of effective kingdoms in Scandinavia, it's not a coincidence that the adoption of Christianity and the establishment of more powerful kingdoms in Scandinavia seem to coincide. *People often bring up the runes as a writing system, but this did not make a literate society, the runes were not used to write books, accounts and to keep records, they were mostly used as personal marks to indicate property and such. This if I recall, was the downfall of that hoax with the runestones in North America supposedly from Norse explorers, because the guys who made them assumed that people would just write down accounts using runes.
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Jan 15, 2019 14:26
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feedmegin posted:There is a certain 'conservative Green' strain that is all about back to the soil, back to our peasant food growing roots, industrialisation is bad, tradition is good, etc. Given that ethnic minorities in western Europe are not traditional and tend to reside in cities this cross pollinates super well with the strain of Nazism (and conservatism before it) that is all about Blood and Soil (emphasis on both) and the heroic Aryan farmer. Chaps like this - There was this one guy I read about who was considered a quack and a scoundrel even by the standards of Nazi pseudoscientists, who lost his position and was eventually disciplined for selling bogus racial purity certificates. Can't find the name, though. Hogge Wild posted:Cool your jets. Nazis had many socialist policies. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 15:07 on Jan 15, 2019 |
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Jan 15, 2019 14:31
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Geisladisk posted:Basically, to 6th century Scandinavian, praying to Thor would probably seem a little like praying to Darth Vader would seem to a modern person. A good post, thank you!
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Jan 15, 2019 14:32
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HEY GUNS posted:i also think that the same kind of person can switch among different movements whether or not their explicit beliefs are opposed. we all know the dude who's a militant atheist one day and a militant fundementalist the next I've seen the opposite plenty of times but never that.
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Jan 15, 2019 14:37
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khwarezm posted:I've seen the opposite plenty of times but never that. For some people, the psychological underpinnings for beliefs that are complete opposites of each other are so similar that the switch is easy
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Jan 15, 2019 14:42
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Disclaimer: I'm no kind of scholar on the subject, all of my knowledge is based on hanging out with two no-poo poo scholars on the subject, who are heavily involved in the Ásatrú organization in Iceland. Randarkman posted:I take issue with parts of this post to be honest. Likening praying to Thor with praying to Darth Vader, is to me extremely disingenious. Unless the modern person is a total wackjob, the two are not the same as I see it. To a person in a traditional religious society, the important thing about the Gods are as far as I can see it that 1) they are present, and 2) they have power, power over people, and nature in accordance with their station. So you absolutely do pray to the Gods, just perhaps not in the Christian sense of praying, what you are doing is asking the gods to use their power to help you, though devotion and faith alone is not enough, they want physical gifts, sacrifice. No, obviously there's a difference - But the primary difference is that nobody believes that Darth Vader exists, whereas a ancient Norse would probably have believed that the gods exist. But the comparison to Darth Vader is apt - He's a very powerful individual who is way more powerful and wise than your ordinary person and embodies certain qualities, but he is not a capital-g God in the modern sense of the word. Ancient norse would not pray to the gods, because they probably did not believe that the gods would either have any capacity to hear them, and if they did they would probably be indifferent, or just as likely to act maliciously. Again, the gods were more akin to superheroes today - Characters who embody certain traits and flaws, in a storytelling tradition that wasn't religious in the modern sense of the word, but about equal parts spiritual, folklore, and entertainment. quote:That's really mostly what "religion" in traditionally religious societies encompassed a system of rituals to offer sacrifice and appeasing the gods. Though that doesn't mean they thought that gods and the divine ended there and they held no impact on society and its norms and laws. A key point to remember is that these people did not really conceive of our world as being fundamentally separated from the divine like we do (having mostly grown up in societies with both a legal separation of public life and religion and the concept of sin in Christianity, separating mankind from God), generally speaking following the laws and norms of society is unambigiously good and society also honors the gods, the two are not realy separate thing, you'll even see in the stories about the gods that they essentially have the same norms and legal structures as what societies at the time had, indicating that it was something more than simply man-made. As far as I understand it the ancient Norse did not offer sacrifice or appeasement to the gods - The gods were honored with feasts (blót), but these were basically just parties with a mildly spiritual element. The food was sacrificed in the sense that it was eaten, not that they'd slaughter a calf and then burn it or whatever. quote:In the end the fact of the matter is that we know much less about Norse religion (such as it was, it should also be remembered that the gods aren't specifically Norse really, they are the same gods worshipped by most other pre-Christian Germanic peoples) than we popularly think we do. Norse society for an example was not a literate society* and left few records of itself, much of what we have are either outside description, inferences from archaelogy and descriptions of past Germanic societies (which are also outside descriptions), and accounts from after Norse societies became Christian. The fact that Christianity, with the Church organization, kind of came pre-packaged with a literate society and people capable of writing, reading and keeping accounts (bishops and such) was very important for the formation of effective kingdoms in Scandinavia, it's not a coincidence that the adoption of Christianity and the establishment of more powerful kingdoms in Scandinavia seem to coincide. This is very true. The only significant written account that we have of pre-Christian norse religion is by a Christian who wrote it down almost three hundred years after the official abolition of the old religion in Iceland. (Imagine someone today writing an account of the Napoleonic wars based solely on folklore and hearsay). The rest is based on conjecture from artifacts and the limited written accounts the runestones provide. It's not entirely accurate that runes were not a system of writing - pre-Christian Scandinavia was not a literate society in any sense of the word, but there were people who could read or write - But chiseling runes into rock is an extremely labour-intensive and expensive way of writing, so most of those runetexts are extremely short and to the point, and usually just say poo poo like "I'm Olav, I erected this stone in memory of my father, Knut, who was really great".
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Jan 15, 2019 14:52
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Geisladisk posted:.As far as I understand it the ancient Norse did not offer sacrifice or appeasement to the gods - The gods were honored with feasts (blót), but these were basically just parties. The food was sacrificed in the sense that it was eaten, not that they'd slaughter a calf and then burn it or whatever. That's true of most animal sacrifices everywhere, though. The meat from animal sacrificed is usually distributed between the sacrificers. You're not going to waste good meat on gods.
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Jan 15, 2019 14:56
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Geisladisk posted:As far as I understand it the ancient Norse did not offer sacrifice or appeasement to the gods - The gods were honored with feasts (blót), but these were basically just parties with a mildly spiritual element. The food was sacrificed in the sense that it was eaten, not that they'd slaughter a calf and then burn it or whatever. The Norse most definitely did offer sacrifice. In fact the feasts where the meat of the sacrificed animal is eaten, is not at all unique to them. That is pretty much the norm for religious festivals, you sacrifice the animal the worshippers then eat the meat. The feast is held to honor the gods. Also what we know of some early Viking age societies seem to suggest that the main responsibilities of many chiefs or leaders was to offer sacrifice, particularly to Tyr, who seems to have been a very popular deity associated with rulers, especially in the Baltic regions of Scandinavia. Thor for instance as thunder god (and therefore also association with weather), was popular with farmers and was frequently beseeched, it is believed, to help with harvests. There are even archaelogical findings that imply that human sacrifice may have been prevalent, and earlier accounts of the Saxons also seem to indicate this was the case (particularly to Odin, who sacrificed himself by hanging himself from the world oak, the Saxons seems to have duplicated this by sacrificing captives and criminals by hanging them from oak trees for example). Also remember that in these traditional pre-Christian societies the line between festival and sacrifice and even execution and sacrifice can seem blurry to us, in many cases because the line simply wasn't there in the sense that it was not conceived of by these people. Calling anything in these societies "mildly religious" kind of misses the point I believe and gives an air of secularism to a society, which didn't even possess the concept of there being anything like the secular and the spiritual and a difference between the two. Geisladisk posted:It's not entirely accurate that runes were not a system of writing - pre-Christian Scandinavia was not a literate society in any sense of the word, but there were people who could read or write - But chiseling runes into rock is an extremely labour-intensive and expensive way of writing, so most of those runetexts are extremely short and to the point, and usually just say poo poo like "I'm Olav, I erected this stone in memory of my father, Knut, who was really great". Yeah. What I was trying to say that even though the runes represent a writing system, their presence did not create a literate society.
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Jan 15, 2019 15:05
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Comrade Koba posted:Seconded, this was really interesting. In order not to further derail the Milhist thread, could you recommend any further reading? Books are fine, but anything available online would be a more useful because that'd make it somewhat easier to dunk on shitfucks who want to preserve the ~Ancient Nordic Traditions~ of praying to Odin and hating brown people. Can I recommend a podcast? Saga Thing: Putting the Sagas of the Icelanders on Trial. It's two Literature profs sitting around drinking beer and talking about the Sagas. It isn't mythology specific, but given the subject matter it discusses the mythology and its affect on the peoples of Iceland indirectly. It's very interesting and entertaining.
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Jan 15, 2019 15:25
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Fangz posted:Would reactive armour work against WWII anti-tank guns? I'm wondering how effective an AFV you can make by souping up my car and sending it back in time to fight in WWII... Depends but for the most part, at least in the context of protecting a car, not really. Most ERA is designed to work against HEAT jets by disrupting the plasma flow more than anything else. While they add mass to work through your car made out of fiberglass and sheet metal is still going to be loving ruined by anything in decent caliber, as the vast majority of WW2 ammo is just big chunks of steel or slightly smaller chunks of tungsten. Stuff like K5 or Relikt(sp?) which was designed to feed more plate/sheering force in front of a APFSDS dart might have more luck, but in the context of your car, not much. In a more generalized look, throwing even semi-modern ERA on something like a Sherman would be effective against Panzerfausts and the like though, or at least far moreso than the lumber and concrete you see them use. There’s also the fact that most ERA is just explosive sandwiched between two plates so that additional plate might make a good amount of difference itself. 30mm of additional front armor on a Sherman makes it decently comparable to the Panther in glacis protection. So the answer is very much dependent on the details of what ERA, what tank and what anti-tank gun. Mazz fucked around with this message at 15:55 on Jan 15, 2019 |
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Jan 15, 2019 15:27
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Fangz posted:Would reactive armour work against WWII anti-tank guns? I'm wondering how effective an AFV you can make by souping up my car and sending it back in time to fight in WWII... Reactive armor wouldn't do much, but some of the latest and greatest composite armors would stand a chance. Don't ask me how it works because I'm not smart, but they're engineered to do bizarre and wonderful things to metal penetrators that keep them from...penetrating. I've no idea how much armor your car could support and still move, but I'd guess a light modern composite scheme could resist all but the biggest WWII-era guns at combat ranges. Your problem is if they hit you with an HE round. That wouldn't go well. edit - on further thought your big problem isn't going to be penetration, it is going to be having the frame of your car deformed by the impact of a non-penetrating hit.
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Jan 15, 2019 15:39
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Geisladisk posted:For instance, these dumbasses pray to the Norse gods, particularly Óđinn. Praying to gods, and supplicating to them is absolutely not a part of Norse paganism - At least not until after contact with Christianity, where the practice may have been absorbed by some people (polytheistic religions are notoriously malleable and absorbent). Ancient Norse people simply did not conceive of their gods in the same terms as the Abrahamic religions do - The gods did not hold dominion over people's lives, and they did not demand that they conform to any specific codes of behavior, like Abrahamic religions. They would not intervene in your life if you supplicated to them. They were not omnipotent and everpresent - They were more akin to characters in a body of semi-religious and semi-entertaining storytelling. I'm going to push back a little bit here. The fact is that we don't know much about how the pre-Christian Norse dealt with their gods before Christianity because we have little or no record of this sort of thing before Christianity. As such, I think blanket statements like (paraphrase) "they never did this" are speculation. The vast majority of the information we have about the Norse Myths comes from the Eddas. These were written down by a Christian (Sturluson) over two centuries after Iceland converted - this makes almost everything we know suspect, as it was certainly interpreted through the Christian lens. We have other little snippets of contemporary info. There are carvings that probably represent the gods, for example, or references in the Sagas. But again, they're written after the coming of Christianity, so who knows how much Christianity affected them? It affects our speculation, to be sure, but again - yeah, we're speculating. I can think of one reference to "prayer" (asking the gods for a favor) by a non-Christian in the Sagas offhand, from the Saga of Erik the Red. Erik and company land in Vinland and start to get hungry. The Christians in the group pray to God for food, but Thorhall writes a poem to Thor instead, and gets a whale in return: quote:They gave no heed to anything except to explore the land, and they found large pastures. They remained there during the winter, which happened to be a hard one, with no work doing; and they were badly off for food, and the fishing failed. Then they went out to the island, hoping that something might be got there from fishing or from what was drifted ashore. In that spot there was little, however, to be got for food, but their cattle found good sustenance. After that they called upon God, praying that He would send them some little store of meat, but their prayer was not so soon granted as they were eager that it should be. Thorhall disappeared from sight, and they went to seek him, and sought for three half-days continuously. I love the image of the people eating the whale and hearing Thorall saying "Thor sent it!" after which they do a religious spit-take. Now - this Saga was written well after the official conversion of Iceland. The conversion took place in 1000 AD, the Saga comes from the 1260s and is a transcription of oral tradition that dates the Norse discovery of Vinland to around 980 AD. Is it Christians projecting the idea of "prayer to the gods" onto a pagan character to point to the folly of their ways? Maybe. Or is it a representation of a how a pagan would have interacted with the gods? ("Write a prayer, get a whale.") Again, maybe, we don't know. I'm a little hesitant to say "the pagan Norse NEVER asked the gods for favor" when we don't have solid info one way or the other. We're speculating here. Cessna fucked around with this message at 23:41 on Jan 15, 2019 |
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Jan 15, 2019 15:46
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They may have found the guy who shot down Dag Hammarskjöld, the UN General Secretary: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/12/former-raf-pilot-shot-down-un-chief-dag-hammarskjold-1961-plane The suspect is a late Belgian mercenary Jan van Risseghem who was a RAF veteran. 
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Jan 15, 2019 16:01
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Randarkman posted:Also what we know of some early Viking age societies seem to suggest that the main responsibilities of many chiefs or leaders was to offer sacrifice This was also common amongst other cultures.
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Jan 15, 2019 16:02
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Cessna posted:I'm a little hesitant to say "the pagan Norse NEVER asked the gods for favor" when we don't have solid info one way or the other. We're speculating here. Absolutely - And I think that I may be the victim of a bit of a language barrier here, plus the fact that I'm effectively paraphrasing what I've been told by scholars in the past; Obviously a statement like "they never did this" is untenable - Not only do we lack sources, it is also impossible to prove that nobody ever did such a thing. It's more accurate to say that supplication to the gods is not believed to be common practice, if that makes more sense?
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Jan 15, 2019 16:04
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