PYF Historical Fun Fact: (USER LOSETH POSTYNG PRIVILYGES FOR FOUR AND TWENTY HOURS)

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Duodecimal: Dec 28, 2012; Still stupid

I'm almost positive Pratchett had a similar joke about an important virtue with a similarly made up name that no one knew what it was supposed to be. I wonder if it was a reference to these unknown sins.

# ? May 29, 2021 05:38

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# ? May 14, 2024 07:29

The North Tower: Aug 20, 2007; You should throw it in the ocean.

Edgar Allen Ho posted:

The Juggalos are committed antifa these days, they are very well organized

Handshake from Predator meme
::poor white people::
::being harassed by the police::
::most black people::

# ? May 29, 2021 07:09

Ghost Leviathan: Mar 2, 2017; Exploration is ill-advised.

Duodecimal posted:

I'm almost positive Pratchett had a similar joke about an important virtue with a similarly made up name that no one knew what it was supposed to be. I wonder if it was a reference to these unknown sins.

Bissonomy and Tubso.

Actually probably not without IRL precedent for ideas of virtues and proper behaviour that have been totally forgotten in practice as both language and belief systems change to the point where all that remains is cryptic references.

# ? May 29, 2021 07:58

Zopotantor: Feb 24, 2013; ...und ist er drin dann lassen wir ihn niemals wieder raus...

Alhazred posted:

Cause of death for roman emperors:
20 died of natural causes.
23 was assassinated.
9 died in battle.
8 was probably assassinated.
5 committed suicide.
1 died in captivity.

Does "dying of a stroke caused by rage over some Quadi not showing Proper Respect" count as natural causes?

# ? May 29, 2021 12:05

CharlestheHammer: Jun 26, 2011; YOU SAY MY POSTS ARE THE RAVINGS OF THE DUMBEST PERSON ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH BUT YOU YOURSELF ARE READING THEM. CURIOUS!

Zopotantor posted:

Does "dying of a stroke caused by rage over some Quadi not showing Proper Respect" count as natural causes?

Val was an angry boy so that was going to happen eventually

# ? May 29, 2021 12:18

ChubbyChecker: Mar 25, 2018

3D Megadoodoo posted:

Yeah when dictionary searches and Bing^TM give you nothing, you do some corpus searches and if the only hit is the text you're reading, it's a decent bet that the author made the words up. It's one of the things I really loving hate about fantasy writers.

don't give in to your golarice

# ? May 29, 2021 14:46

3D Megadoodoo: Nov 25, 2010

ChubbyChecker posted:

don't give in to your golarice

But it's so tasty

# ? May 29, 2021 15:12

barbecue at the folks: Jul 20, 2007

Alhazred posted:

Cause of death for roman emperors:
20 died of natural causes.
23 was assassinated.
9 died in battle.
8 was probably assassinated.
5 committed suicide.
1 died in captivity.

I want a similar list compiled of famous philosophers. Everyone knows that Athenians murdered Socrates for speaking his mind, but I just learned that the famous Stoic Chrysippos is said to have made his exit by laughing himself to death while watching a drunk donkey try to eat some figs. :allears:

# ? May 29, 2021 15:27

vyelkin: Jan 2, 2011

Here's a fun historical fact that is also a really interesting lesson in how popular culture and cultural history trickle down through the ages.

The New York Knicks basketball team's full name is the New York Knickerbockers, which is a really weird and anachronistic term that, today, basically survives only through this sports team name. If you look it up, you'll learn that it used to be a nickname for people from Manhattan, and through that association also gave its name to a style of pants, a magazine, a group of writers who wrote for that magazine, and a few other miscellaneous things. But all those things were building off the original nickname, Knickerbocker to mean a New Yorker, so where did the nickname come from in the first place?

It turns out that there was a family of people named Knickerbocker who had lived in New York and the New York area since the late 17th century, originating in Dutch immigration to New Amsterdam. The name was actually made up by Jansen van Wijhe, a Dutch immigrant who migrated to the United States in 1674 and signed a contract under the name "van Wyekycback," which over time became Knickerbacker and then Knickerbocker, and became the family name for his descendants.

One of those descendants, Herman Knickerbocker, was friends with the famous writer Washington Irving (most famous for his short stories Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow) before he was famous, in the early 1800s. In 1809 Irving wrote his first novel, a satire of early 19th-century politics and history books, which he titled A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, by Diedrich Knickerbocker, naming the fake author of his book after his friend Herman. As a marketing gimmick, Irving then started a hoax where he contacted various New York newspapers to inform them that the well-known Dutch historian Diedrich Knickerbocker had gone missing, but that he had left this manuscript in Irving's possession and if Knickerbocker didn't return then Irving would publish it on his behalf. This hoax actually worked to drum up publicity for the book, and when Irving revealed it was a trick and he had written it himself, the book became enough of a rapid success to launch his literary career.

All the later uses of the term--the nickname for Dutch descendants, the magazine, the literary group surrounding it (which included Irving himself), the pants, the nickname for people from Manhattan--supposedly stem from Irving borrowing his friend's name for this character in his novel, and then widely popularizing it by pretending his character was a real person. Then, when a basketball team was being set up in New York in 1946, the founder (who wanted a name linked to the city) held a vote among his staff, and they voted to name the team the Knickerbockers. And that's how the New York Knicks got their name, derived from a marketing campaign for a piece of popular culture written over two centuries ago.

# ? May 29, 2021 15:30

3D Megadoodoo: Nov 25, 2010

barbecue at the folks posted:

I want a similar list compiled of famous philosophers. Everyone knows that Athenians murdered Socrates for speaking his mind, but I just learned that the famous Stoic Chrysippos is said to have made his exit by laughing himself to death while watching a drunk donkey try to eat some figs.

Who was it that fell down a well and died?

# ? May 29, 2021 15:30

Platystemon: Feb 13, 2012; BREADS

Wikipedia�s list of unusual deaths has many more entries at least as funny as Chrysippos�.

# ? May 29, 2021 15:32

Platystemon: Feb 13, 2012; BREADS

vyelkin posted:

And that's how the New York Knicks got their name, derived from a marketing campaign for a piece of popular culture written over two centuries ago.

�Gotham� has a similar history.

quote:

Writer Bill Finger, on the naming of the city and the reason for changing Batman's locale from New York to a fictional city, said, "Originally I was going to call Gotham City 'Civic City.' Then I tried 'Capital City,' then 'Coast City.' Then I flipped through the New York City phone book and spotted the name 'Gotham Jewelers' and said, 'That's it,' Gotham City. We didn't call it New York because we wanted anybody in any city to identify with it."[19]

"Gotham" has been a nickname for New York City that first became popular in the nineteenth century; Washington Irving had first attached it to New York in the November 11, 1807 edition of his Salmagundi,[20] a periodical which lampooned New York culture and politics. Irving took the name from the village of Gotham, Nottinghamshire, England: a place inhabited, according to folklore, by fools.[21][22]

# ? May 29, 2021 15:37

Trabant: Nov 26, 2011; All systems nominal.

3D Megadoodoo posted:

Who was it that fell down a well and died?

Truth, but she got better.

# ? May 29, 2021 15:37

Platystemon: Feb 13, 2012; BREADS

She got better, but now she�s unwell.

# ? May 29, 2021 15:39

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Alhazred posted:

20 died of natural causes.
23 was assassinated.
9 died in battle.
8 was probably assassinated.
5 committed suicide.
1 died in captivity.

*nodding slowly in agreement until you realize he's not talking about SA mods*

# ? May 29, 2021 18:40

rodbeard: Jul 21, 2005

exquisite tea posted:

*nodding slowly in agreement until you realize he's not talking about SA mods*

I mean I guess we can call Benghazi a battle.

# ? May 29, 2021 18:49

Trabant: Nov 26, 2011; All systems nominal.

Platystemon posted:

She got better, but now she’s unwell.

# ? May 29, 2021 20:13

Alhazred: Feb 16, 2011

Platystemon posted:

Wikipedia�s list of unusual deaths has many more entries at least as funny as Chrysippos�.

Cause of death in antiquity: Being a philosopher.

# ? May 29, 2021 20:43

Unkempt: May 24, 2003; ...perfect spiral, scientists are still figuring it out...

The Beardmore W.B. IV

To quote wikipedia,

quote:

The design was dominated by the demands for the aircraft to be able to be safely ditching and remain afloat. A large permanent flotation chamber was built into the fuselage under the nose and the pilot was in a watertight cockpit. The entire undercarriage could be released from the plane for water landings. The wing tips were fitted with additional floats, while the aircraft's two-bay wings could fold for storage on board ship.

...

The sole prototype was lost when it sank during ditching.

It had one job.

# ? May 31, 2021 16:16

Philippe: Aug 9, 2013; (she/her)

It was known among the lads, who never lacked for irony, as the Unsinkable.

# ? May 31, 2021 17:33

Vincent: Nov 25, 2005

Platystemon posted:

�Gotham� has a similar history.

Well, you'd have to be a fool to live in gotham.

# ? May 31, 2021 22:29

girl dick energy: Sep 30, 2009; You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?

Platystemon posted:

Wikipedia�s list of unusual deaths has many more entries at least as funny as Chrysippos�.

The "See also" has some real winners, including the surprisingly long list of inventors killed by their own inventions.

# ? Jun 1, 2021 11:55

barbecue at the folks: Jul 20, 2007

girl dick energy posted:

The "See also" has some real winners, including the surprisingly long list of inventors killed by their own inventions.

This was a good one. Many here might be aware that Thomas Midgley Jr. was the man who invented both adding lead to fuel and CFCs, making him possibly the single most environmentally destructive person in history. What at least I didn't know is that he contracted polio later in life and after becoming disabled, invented an elaborate setup of ropes and pulleys to help him get up from bed. He got tangled in the wires and accidentally strangled himself to death. Dude couldn't catch a break!

# ? Jun 1, 2021 12:20

girl dick energy: Sep 30, 2009; You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4og8wG8VQWM

There was a Citation Needed about him, too.

# ? Jun 1, 2021 12:34

the holy poopacy: May 16, 2009; hey! check this out; Fun Shoe

girl dick energy posted:

The "See also" has some real winners, including the surprisingly long list of inventors killed by their own inventions.

Shameful, they don't even have the bludgeoning death of Sir William Blunt-Instrument listed.

# ? Jun 1, 2021 13:34

Edgar Allen Ho: Apr 3, 2017; by sebmojo

girl dick energy posted:

The "See also" has some real winners, including the surprisingly long list of inventors killed by their own inventions.

I was gonna mention the Eiffel Tower "parachutist" and lo and behold, he crowns the page, as is his right.

# ? Jun 1, 2021 14:02

Platystemon: Feb 13, 2012; BREADS

I�m partial to the guy who invented the brazen bull being told �wtf that�s hosed up, man� and executed with his own invention.

# ? Jun 1, 2021 14:09

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Edgar Allen Ho posted:

I was gonna mention the Eiffel Tower "parachutist" and lo and behold, he crowns the page, as is his right.

If someone opens their coat and says "hey guys check this out" you're well advised to look away.

# ? Jun 1, 2021 14:10

fartknocker: Oct 28, 2012; Damn it, this always happens. I think I'm gonna score, and then I never score. It's not fair.; Wedge Regret

zedprime posted:

If someone opens their coat and says "hey guys check this out" you're well advised to look away.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2BVh66XORU

# ? Jun 1, 2021 15:34

Platystemon: Feb 13, 2012; BREADS

zedprime posted:

If someone opens their coat and says "hey guys check this out" you're well advised to look away.

Maybe they want to sell me replica watches.

# ? Jun 1, 2021 15:37

Mister Mind: Mar 20, 2009; I'm not a real doctor,
But I am a real worm;
I am an actual worm

Platystemon posted:

Maybe they want to sell me replica watches.

Or eights.
https://youtu.be/rfelvI_ikf4

# ? Jun 2, 2021 01:31

A Worrying Warlock: Sep 21, 2009

Platystemon posted:

Maybe they want to sell me replica watches.

See anything you like, stranger?

# ? Jun 3, 2021 15:41

Edgar Allen Ho: Apr 3, 2017; by sebmojo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WE6mnPmztoQ

I assume people reading this thread know about the Hitler-Mannerheim recording but lmfao if it doesn't feel good sometimes to hear five minutes of candid Hitler going "gently caress how do these people make so many tanks"

# ? Jun 5, 2021 13:14

Ghost Leviathan: Mar 2, 2017; Exploration is ill-advised.

Any more good stories of dysfunctional Nazi 'efficiency'?

# ? Jun 5, 2021 14:03

Chamale: Jul 11, 2010; I'm helping!

Ghost Leviathan posted:

Any more good stories of dysfunctional Nazi 'efficiency'?

This series of posts about their uniforms from the Military History thread is incredible.

Cessna posted:

It's a baggy cotton duck (Edit: with increasing rayon/synthetic content as the war goes on) smock with elastic at the waist and wrists.

It's reversible. One side has "Spring" colors (brown, green, black) and the other has "Fall" colors (brown, orange/brown, black).

The reversibility is silly. The smock has built-in pockets which turn inside-out to reverse with fully sewn flaps and buttons on both sides - but the pockets are situated under the Y-strap suspenders and gear so it's hard to get to them.

Best of all, the smock goes on OVER the regular wool feldgrau (field grey) uniform. Remember how I talked about the internal suspenders and aluminum hooks earlier? That's just part of it. A Wehrmacht feldbluse is a ridiculously complex garment. For comparison, a modern men's suit has about 20-25 pieces of cloth cut and sewn together. A feldbluse has over 80 - yes, 80 - pieces of cloth cut to pattern and sewn together, and that does not count the insignia. Every feldbluse - EVERY ONE - was tailored to the individual wearer. Yes, tailored.

Check out the chest pockets, for example. This is an early-war feldbluse:

Look at how the pockets have that curved scallop flap and the folded bellows design. That's not easy to make. By 1943 they had simplified the design to a simple patch-pocket, like this:

But here's the thing - they put all of that work into sewing MILLIONS of those pockets. Cutting the wool, folding it, sewing it on, attaching the pebbled metal buttons... But when you put on that camouflage smock you can't get to the pockets. They're useless. Put on the smock and you can't get to the internal suspenders and hooks either.

They sewed millions and millions of those complex pockets - and millions of the complex internal suspenders, and internal linings, and made hooks - and all of that was useless, wasted cloth and labor.

And, again, the answer is "because Nazis."

Cessna posted:

I've had my hands on originals, and they're sooooo bad. The smock is that canvas-y duck material. It does NOT breathe at all; it's like a canvas trash bag. So your Nazi soldier is wearing:

- a ribbed sleeveless ("wife beater") undershirt.
- a "service shirt." This is sort of like a cotton men's dress shirt, but thicker and longer - that is, it hangs down well below the waist.
- a wool "feldbluse." Scratchy thick wool.
- that canvas-duck smock.
- leather field gear and equipment.

It's a mess - way too hot in the summer, nowhere near enough to stay warm in the winter. Nothing is waterproof. It all smells like wet dog.* The WWII gear I'm most familiar with is US, and it is a generation ahead of the German crap.

* Sometimes you can read WWII memoirs where they talk about going out on patrol and finding Germans by smelling them. "I could just smell the Nazis." Before I did reenacting I thought this was an exaggeration, a soldier's hyperbole. Having done reenacting, it's totally legit. Get that wool uniform and leather field gear wet and it smells like wet dog. It's a really distinctive smell. I can easily imagine if you get a company of troopers wet, and add in tobacco and maybe a cooking fire and you could smell them hundreds of yards away.

[Considering what 1940s industrial tailoring was like, do you know how much of this was finished by hand?]

The smock wasn't. The feldbluse was. I have never seen a WWII German feldbluse (the solid green/gray wool jackets) without some sort of tailoring.

If it means anything, they had unit tailors assigned as a section at the battalion level. Yes, this is insane.

(I always picture a battalion being overrun by T-34s while their sewing section commander yells "Sew faster, Hans! Faster!")

[How did the same people who tailored every feldgrau jacket to every grunt not realize it's impossible to not look like bill clinton c. 1993 in a windbreaker]

All of their stuff looks weird.

[Does this mean that if you were wearing an ss smock over a standard-issue feldgrau jacket you had to take off literally every piece of gear you had to take a poo poo, or do the pants go up and down without engaging with the hook assemblage?]

And the trousers - regular uniform trousers - were held up by their own suspenders, which needed unbuttoned as well.

Hey, if it means anything, their early-war paratroopers had it worse. Their Fallschirmjagers (paratroopers, and I'm too lazy to put the umlaut over the "a") were set up to jump from low altitudes. They wore a distinctive jumper-outfit over their gear, the idea being that it would keep their gear from snagging on anything parachute-related when they jumped.

Guess what? There's sort of a fly opening, but if you want to poop, you have to take off your entire uniform:

Cessna posted:

[what dye and mordant did they use, i might be able to tell if that would have happened]

I don't know the exact dye or color-fasting process off-hand, but I have reference books I can check when I get home tonight.

I DO know that:

- they were manually screen-printed early in the war. Later in the war they switched to machine printing. Some variants had some colors (i.e., the black sections) applied by rollers after the cloth was already dyed. Not all do this, but it is interesting when you catch it.

When you've looked at this stuff for a long time you start seeing where the camouflage pattern repeats itself. In some patterns the green/brown "repeats" at a different rate/in different places than the black. They dyed the cloth with the green and brown, then applied the black in a separate process.

- There were many different varieties of this camouflage. Some used three colors of dye, with areas overlapping to produce the effect of having more colors. On this smock, for example, you can see where the green and light brown overlap at the edges to give a dark brown effect:

- The priority item they made was a thing called a "zeltbahn." This is a triangular section of cloth that is sort of like a half-tent; lace two together and you have a tent. You can also use a single section as a poncho. You can also lace multiple sections together to make even bigger tents.

Here's the crazy part. Some variants of the camouflage were numbered. 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, etc. The idea was that if you lace together the appropriate matches, number-wise, the camouflage pattern on the tent will be continuous, without any breaks or places where the camouflage doesn't line up perfectly.

Like so. This is a reproduction, but you can see the join:

(You can find period photos of this, but in black-and-white you can't see it as well.)

But here's the thing. Say the camouflage doesn't line up perfectly. So what? No one will notice. It's not like an enemy is going to suddenly see your tent because the camouflage lines up 6" off. This is a nightmare of unnecessary complication.

- The pieces of cloth that were left over were stitched together to make the smocks and helmet covers. Sometimes you can find odd numbers stamped in odd places, like so:

This doesn't mean that the guy with this helmet is "Number 6," rather, the cloth was cut from a roll of the #6 cloth I described above. The smocks and helmet covers were made from scraps, and it shows. I have never seen a single one that didn't have some sort of sewing "error" on it - where the camouflage pattern lines up wrong, where there's a bit of "spring" cloth on the "fall" side or vice-versa, where the sewing is just awful, etc. This stuff was made by people who were starved and working at gunpoint, and it shows.

Cessna posted:

[holy loving hell! i'm remembering all those holocaust survivor testimonies where the old hands sneak up behind the author during intake and whisper to them "tell them you're a tailor" and it saves their life! i thought just yeah, useful skills, pretend to have useful skills, but there was a specific reason the SS wanted tailors]

The SS was, in many ways, a self-contained empire.

Those camouflage smocks were sewn by the inmates of concentration camps. If you could use a sewing machine you might survive a bit longer.

Ever see photos of the Warsaw uprising of 1944?

These are Polish fighters. They are wearing Waffen-SS camouflage smocks and helmet covers.

When the Warsaw Uprising started one of the first things they did was liberate the nearby Gęsiówka concentration camp. That camp used inmates to, among other things, make the camouflage cloth and sew it into shelter-sections, smocks, and helmet covers.

The Polish Home Army liberated the camouflage and used it themselves.

Cessna posted:

[germans! ]

They had bellows-sewn buttoned pockets on a shirt inside a tunic which had bellows-sewn buttoned pockets that was itself inside a smock that made all those pockets unreachable, and that smock itself had reversible buttoned pockets that were stuffed under the field gear.

The Aristocrats!

Cessna posted:

No, sorry...

Here's how [Stahlhelms] were bad.

First and foremost, they weren't adjustable. No, really - you had to get one that was the right size for your head, like a hat. They came with 52, 54, 56, 58, 60, or 62 cm liners and corresponding shell sizes. You could not swap a different sized liner into a non-corresponding shell. Think that makes logistics easier?

Helmets were made in multiple stages with multiple mechanical presses. It took multiple individual presses to give the helmet its shape. These are WWI helmets, but the same process was followed in WWII:

There was no real assembly line - a worker would make one press, then put it on a pile. After the pile was high enough the next worker would take the helmets and carry them to the next press. This is confirmed by multiple photos of factories:

The edges were then press rolled by hand. They were also heat-tempered on the front of the helmet. This wasn't done with a huge industrial oven - there are photos of workers grabbing individual helmets with a big steel set of tongs and sticking them in an open furnace. Rivets for ventilation, the liner, and the chin strap were pressed in by hand. They were also spray-painted by hand, not on an assembly line.

After the helmets were painted they were given an individual paper wrapper to make sure the paint wasn't scuffed before it was issued. Think about that for a minute. Here are helmets being wrapped:

Each helmet had two decals (until 1940), again, applied by hand. If you've ever built a model airplane, imagine having to apply thousands of decals all day long:

The liner consisted of five leaf-springs wrapped with a leather liner which was, yes, sewn in by hand. This took a LOT of specialized labor. Here's a photo of a helmet liner. (Not my helmet, but I can take a photo of one of mine if anyone is interested.) You can see the rolled rim pretty well. See that stitching on the seam in the back? Done by hand.

Here's a Fallschirmjager/paratrooper's helmet. See that stitching across the liner? Hand sewn.

In contrast, an American/British/Russian helmet was hot-stamped. This made the helmet in one step and tempered it. Each step after that was automated, done by assembly line. And helmets had adjustable liners, so any soldier could wear them.

By 1942/3 the Germans stopped rolling the edges, dropped the decals, and simplified the manufacturing. Too little, too late.

Cessna posted:

[this is the most German poo poo of all time]

Right up there with the Battalion level tailors are the helmet wrappers.

"What did you do in the war, daddy?"

"I was a helmet wrapping supervisor, I made sure that all helmets were wrapped properly in individual paper wrappers and that all of the corners were folded properly before they were shipped to the supply depots."

Cessna posted:

The stahlhelm - and so help me, now I prefer the term "naughty German helmet" - WAS a bad way to go. It required vastly more labor to produce, and it wasn't really that much better than comparable helmets of the time.

So, you're in charge of allocating resources and manpower. Would you rather employ:

- One soldier with a really good helmet (that still won't stop a rifle bullet) and a helmet-wrapper-supervisor.

- Two soldiers with good helmets.

Cessna posted:

In 1939 the Iron and Steel Specialty Division of the Third Reich Research Council (don't make me type it out in German) tested a bunch of helmets from other countries, some captured, some purchased pre-war. They found that none of the helmets were ideal for protection or ease of manufacture. In 1942 they designed a new helmet that had really good ballistic protection and was easy to make. This was initially designed "on the down low," but the design was so good that they decided to show off the results to Hitler. Hitler liked it, but vetoed production because it didn't look German enough.

This was the helmet that post-war became the standard East German helmet. It looks a bit funny, but it was just as good at being a helmet - maybe even a bit better than the "naughty German" helmet - and it was vastly easier to produce. Check it out, it is one hot-stamped piece of steel, essentially a "naughty German" helmet adapted to be built using American or Soviet manufacturing techniques:

But, again, it was not put into production because it didn't look German enough.

Cessna posted:

[https://www.tankarchives.ca/2017/08/whose-helmet-was-better.html]

[Obvious caveats apply, of course.]

From that report:

"When shooting with a rifle at 800 meters using a mod. 1908 bullet (counting all hits), Soviet helmets were penetrated 7.7-10% of the time, and German helmets were penetrated 34.5% of the time. The PPSh penetrated German helmets 41.4% of the time, but Soviet helmets only 11.5-11.7% of the time. The TT could penetrate German helmets 38.8% of the time, compared to 12.4-13% for Soviet helmets. Even the Nagant could penetrate German helmets 29% of the time..."

Okay, let me revise my question above.

So, you're in charge of allocating resources and manpower. Would you rather employ:

- One soldier with a mediocre helmet and a helmet-wrapper-supervisor.

- Two soldiers with good helmets.

Cessna posted:

The rationale was that they didn't want the "little guy/big helmet" look, so their soldiers wouldn't end up looking like Dark Helmet from Spaceballs. And it goes back to the "tailored" mentality behind uniforms.

Look at those SS smocks - remember how I said that the actual manufacturing of the smocks was pretty crappy, while the wool uniforms were tailored? That's because those weren't viewed as the real uniforms. They were something that you put on over a uniform, but took off when you were marching in front of the cameras on a parade. You went to war in your dress uniform, but covered it with a camouflage smock. Once the fighting was over you took off the smock, prettied up your uniform, and stomped around in parades. That was the ideal.

That's great if you know you can count on victories like 1938/1939/1940. You want a quick campaign, maybe even one without a fight (1938), followed by a snappy-looking parade in front of the cameras for propaganda. Your soldiers will look good in the newsreels.

But in a serious war, like what they faced against the UK/USA/USSR? Forget it.

Cessna posted:

[honestly my takeaway from this all this uniform chat is that fashion considerations play a larger role in military uniform design than most people realize]

YES. Fashion is HUGE. It's all about sending a message.

The Nazis "focus grouped" their uniform designs in 1935/36. They brought in groups of young women and had them evaluate potential uniforms for attractiveness.

Like I said above, think about what a Wehrmacht uniform is designed for - to look good in propaganda films. Combat effectiveness was not a consideration until 1941 or so, and ease of production didn't come into play until after that. Compare a 1918 uniform to a 1940 uniform:

1918:

1940:

The 1940 uniform is tighter. It is more tailored. This makes it look sharper and cleaner - again, it looks better on parades, more streamlined and modern - but the fact is that a baggy uniform is more practical in combat.

The 1940 uniform has much more complex insignia. Look at the collar - they all have "Litzen," those little bars on the collar. In WWI these were only for "Guards" - that is, elites. In WWII all soldiers had them, the message being "you're all elites now."

(As an aside, sewing that litzen is horrible. You have to fold the cloth, sew it to a backing, then sew that to the collar. It's miserable.)

The 1940 buttons are shinier, there are complex pockets. Again, this is to look good, not for combat practicality or ease of manufacture.

It's all about sending a message - these soldiers are going to fight a fast, decisive, modern war, then look good in the victory parade.

# ? Jun 5, 2021 19:40

Alhazred: Feb 16, 2011

Ghost Leviathan posted:

Any more good stories of dysfunctional Nazi 'efficiency'?

The Messerschmitt Me 262. The first jet-powered fighter aircraft, which might've been devastating if it was used to fight planes. Instead it was used as a light bomber, something it was completely unsuited for because of it's speed.

Luftwaffe started to bomb factories and airstrips in England in june 1940. This tactic actually worked until Hitler decided that they should bomb cities instead as revenge for the RAF bombing german cities.

Unlike USA and Britain, Hitler banned women from working in factories because such work was unsuited for them.

Luftwaffe came up with a tactic where they managed to ambush british bombers by attacking them when they were about to land. Then Hitler decided that every bomber should be shot down in Germany so that people could get a morality boost of seeing the burning wreckage.

F�hrerhauptquartier Wolfsschanze was supposed to be the ultimate military headquarter because it was built in a dense forest which made it almost impossible to spot from the air. Unfortunately this also meant that the lair was shrouded in darkness and fog. It was also plagued by mosquitos. Kerosene was used to kill the mosquitos, this also killed the frogs which amde a sound that Hitler found soothing so new frogs had to be introduced to the area around the lair.

Hitler also wanted to build really big tanks. One of those was Landkreuzer P.1500 Monster. It would've been 42 meters long, fire shells that weighed seven tons and the tank itself would've weighed 1500 tons. Speer stopped it from being built. but he couldn't stop Hitler from building Panzerkampfwagen Maus, weighing in at a mere 188 tons. On it's first testrun it sank into the mud, Hitler then ordered that more should be made. In the end only two was made. One was blown up by it's own crew when they escaped from the soviet troops while the other was simply abandoned.

# ? Jun 5, 2021 23:04

Ensign Expendable: Nov 11, 2008; Lager beer is proof that god loves us; Pillbug

Ghost Leviathan posted:

Any more good stories of dysfunctional Nazi 'efficiency'?

British analysis of captured Panzer IV tanks came to the conclusion that German ball bearing manufacturers had a powerful lobby, since the tank was chock-full of ball bearings in areas where it made no sense to have so many.

Since the Germans never mastered assembly line tank manufacturing, all their welding and fitting was done by hand. This meant that there were more often than not gaps between plates when all was finished. The solution was to hammer a shim in and then weld over it again. This was a very time consuming process that resulted in weak welds.

# ? Jun 5, 2021 23:34

Pook Good Mook: Aug 6, 2013; ENFORCE THE UNITED STATES DRESS CODE AT ALL COSTS!

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Oh the heavy tanks they produced for the Eastern Front had to be transported by train but were so wide they could only go by one main trunk line which was constantly backed up. The other railroads that went east went through tunnels the tanks couldn't fit through.

And if the heavy tank had any problem more serious than could be fixed with a wrench and crane they had to be shipped back to Germany along that same single rail line. But to get them to the train they needed to use massive heavy lift trucks and cranes that were in predictably short supply and would need to travel on solid reliable roads using a lot of fuel, things that were also in short supply.

They were also planning to invade Britain in river barges and boats made out of concrete

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# ? Jun 6, 2021 00:25

Azhais: Feb 5, 2007; Switchblade Switcharoo

Alhazred posted:

the other was simply abandoned.

And now it lives in Kubinka

# ? Jun 6, 2021 00:52

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# ? May 14, 2024 07:29

canyoneer: Sep 13, 2005; I only have canyoneyes for you

Pook Good Mook posted:

They were also planning to invade Britain in river barges and boats made out of concrete

That same hypothetical didn't leave them with enough boats to make one trip, nor even enough life jackets. The solution was that the first wave would leave their life jackets on the beach, and (somebody?) would pack them up and bring them back to the continent to equip the next wave.

Imagine a bunch of infantry pinned down on the beach under machine gun fire, and sergeant Helmut with arms full of life jackets is running around tapping people on the shoulder asking for their life jackets. "Bitte, or I vill get in a lot of trouble. Zee boat captains are very annoyed they are not allowed to leave yet"

# ? Jun 6, 2021 01:17

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