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dokmo posted:Hey, thanks for this, it was a really good read. I'm glad you liked it!
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Aug 30, 2022 11:20
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vyelkin posted:In history academia, biographies have fallen out of favour as we've moved away from Great Man history, but there are still some excellent examples of how they can be well done by exploring a person in their context. My favourite recent example is a more academic biography, Willard Sunderland's The Baron's Cloak which is a biography of Roman von Ungern-Sternberg, the crazy guy who's famous for trying to revive the Mongol Empire during the Russian Civil War. Sunderland explores Ungern-Sternberg's life but also uses him and his travels and activities as a way to explore the Russian Empire and the broader world of empires and imperial noble politics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It's incredibly well done and manages to be an interesting biography and an academic exploration of empire at the same time, without ever claiming that Ungern-Sternberg was a great man who changed the world. James Palmer's Bloody White Baron is also excellent.
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Aug 30, 2022 15:38
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Hyrax Attack! posted:Thank you for recommending that era is a big gap in my knowledge, just checked out the first book to get started. Glad there is a well regarded series. One reason I find almost all ww2 alt-history uninteresting is that basically nothing really matters because the Axis was so incredibly outclassed.
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Aug 31, 2022 17:41
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Anyways because of recent events I'm gonna check out Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union since I'm looking for some fresh takes on it. https://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Soviet-Vladislav-M-Zubok/dp/0300257309
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Aug 31, 2022 17:44
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If you're also a podcast kind of guy, the author was recently interviewed on the SRB Podcast: https://srbpodcast.org/2022/05/03/the-collapse-of-the-soviet-union/ Alternatively, spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2TzHrbmxECKBxObcASlrOO?si=f1bf727a27a24d25
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Aug 31, 2022 18:11
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Lawman 0 posted:One reason I find almost all ww2 alt-history uninteresting is that basically nothing really matters because the Axis was so incredibly outclassed.
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Aug 31, 2022 18:15
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FMguru posted:Yeah, no matter what wartime decisions you change or military outcomes you reverse, the Manhattan Project wraps up its work in mid-1945 and the war ends with a total Allied victory shortly thereafter. Or if you're Germany you eventually end up in a situation where in the length of time it takes one of your wunderwaffe tanks to crawl a quarter mile, it has a) destroyed its transmission, and b) American factories have produced an entire platoon of Shermans. Canned sunshine is nice and all, but it's absolutely not the biggest problem facing any hypothetical Axis victory scenario.
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Aug 31, 2022 23:43
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Yeah while I never like to never say never about things like morale failing or whatever it was basically impossible for the Axis to actually defend these conquests and make them work before the Americans/reconstituted Soviets steamrolled them. Just total madness after you read something like The Wages of Destruction and really get a good picture of Axis economic dysfunction.
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Aug 31, 2022 23:53
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People making these alt histories always lack imagination. It's always one or two things changed. Go all the way if your going to do it. The US and Britain get in a shooting war in the thirties that drags both them out of the European war, Japan joins Britain in attacking the US but far earlier. Italy and Germany go to war. Stalin has a heart attack right as Barbarossa is launched leading to either a succession crisis or a much more competent defense depending on what you want to write. Get weird with it.
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Sep 1, 2022 00:55
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Gaius Marius posted:People making these alt histories always lack imagination. It's always one or two things changed. Go all the way if your going to do it. The US and Britain get in a shooting war in the thirties that drags both them out of the European war, Japan joins Britain in attacking the US but far earlier. Italy and Germany go to war. Stalin has a heart attack right as Barbarossa is launched leading to either a succession crisis or a much more competent defense depending on what you want to write. Get weird with it. Right on honestly like zero imagination is so often shown with it.
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Sep 1, 2022 01:47
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Gaius Marius posted:People making these alt histories always lack imagination. It's always one or two things changed. Go all the way if your going to do it. The US and Britain get in a shooting war in the thirties that drags both them out of the European war, Japan joins Britain in attacking the US but far earlier. Italy and Germany go to war. Stalin has a heart attack right as Barbarossa is launched leading to either a succession crisis or a much more competent defense depending on what you want to write. Get weird with it. My favorite alt history is Stalin living for a few years longer past 1953
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Sep 1, 2022 04:09
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I do have to point out that the US spent quite a while on the backfoot when it came to fleet carriers available.
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Sep 1, 2022 04:24
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Gaius Marius posted:People making these alt histories always lack imagination. It's always one or two things changed. Go all the way if your going to do it. The US and Britain get in a shooting war in the thirties that drags both them out of the European war, Japan joins Britain in attacking the US but far earlier. Italy and Germany go to war. Stalin has a heart attack right as Barbarossa is launched leading to either a succession crisis or a much more competent defense depending on what you want to write. Get weird with it. Turtledove's the War that Came Early attempted that with war kicking off in 1938 over Czechoslovakia so there are Mark I tanks rolling around, France doesn't get knocked out, Spanish Civil War is ongoing, etc. Unfortunately it's late career Turtledove long fiction so not worth your time although interesting to read plot summaries. The Man in the High Castle tv show was wildly inconsistent about quality but the premise was more plausible than most, with FDR dying in 1933 and the US being more isolationist with a more prolonged Depression. The show was intentionally vague about how the war progressed but definitely no lend-lease or Manhattan Project, although there was still a successful Japanese invasion of San Francisco so it was stretching things. Although I guess if the US is fighting alone after losing DC to nuclear attack against an east coast invasion, west coast garrisons probably wouldn't be at full strength.
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Sep 1, 2022 15:00
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Turtledove books were always at their best when they are the most wacky, so when Stalin fights lizard aliens when he tries to do "less wacky" alt-history and said series drags on oh boy does the writing quality fall to cringe levels the southern series gets really really bad the longer it goes on for both plausibility reasons AND writing quality even if you suspend disbelief like he basically just "find-replace" wiki article where Confederacy is a substitute for Nazi Germany and African-Americans for Jews. But like how the gently caress is the CSA fighting and at times winning a war against the US which has superior population/industry while actively genociding 1/3 of their own population? German Jews were a really small part of the German population in 1933 and the vast majority of Jews killed in the holocaust were not German Jews but Jews in occupied Eastern territories like Poland and the USSR. So they could carry it out without insta-losing the war. But if Germany was trying to kill 1/3 of the population of 1939 Germany during the war they would have just collapsed in like 6 months lol. Typo fucked around with this message at 15:07 on Sep 1, 2022 |
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Sep 1, 2022 15:01
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Typo posted:Turtledove books were always at their best when they are the most wacky, so when Stalin fights lizard aliens Not gonna dispute that, he's admitted to quantity over quality problems as he had two in college at the same time. I've avoided most of his recent long form work as it's not worth the time, like the Hot War series about how the US being wiped out at the Chosin Reservoir leads to nuclear war is an interesting premise but there is so so much filler to get it to three books. By the end there are two perspective characters driving around LA delivering refrigerators. Some of his shorter works are still worthwhile, I especially liked Vilcabamba (https://www.tor.com/2010/02/03/vilcabamba/) where it has the premise of a weakened US on an mostly alien conquered Earth barely keeping it together, with the story being a parallel of the last remnants of the Incan empire only holding out until the Spanish got around to annihilating them.
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Sep 1, 2022 16:02
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Hyrax Attack! posted:Not gonna dispute that, he's admitted to quantity over quality problems as he had two in college at the same time. I've avoided most of his recent long form work as it's not worth the time, like the Hot War series about how the US being wiped out at the Chosin Reservoir leads to nuclear war is an interesting premise but there is so so much filler to get it to three books. By the end there are two perspective characters driving around LA delivering refrigerators. I'll give it a read thnx
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Sep 1, 2022 16:23
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Lawman 0 posted:One reason I find almost all ww2 alt-history uninteresting is that basically nothing really matters because the Axis was so incredibly outclassed. Economic dominance is not the only variable which determines a war's outcome. There are many examples of wars in which a military and economic superpower loses to a smaller power - the US involvement in Vietnam, for example. No, I don't think there's any way for the Axis to win a WW2, as they tried to fight on the grounds that the Allies would win on, putting their own poor production against that of powers that could out-build them at every turn. But maybe someone could write an alternate history in which the way things diverge is having the war in question - WWII, the US Civil War, whatever - never happen, and see how things go from there? I.e., "The Ostler plot kills Hitler in September 1938, now what?"
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Sep 1, 2022 17:55
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WWII alt-history can be good because even if the allies win, the journey getting there is still interesting
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Sep 1, 2022 18:01
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Typo posted:WWII alt-history can be good because even if the allies win, the journey getting there is still interesting That's true, there are some interesting ones that include the Allies winning but Germany having prepped an underground resistance for years that makes the occupation a nightmare or for the US Civil War having the Union win but Lee never surrenders and commits his army to bushwhacking from the hills so the South goes under permanent military occupation that is terrible for both sides. To not abandon real-history chat, I'm two chapters into Parting the Waters and it is excellent. I appreciate the author taking his time and it's interesting to get details of the types of theology taught in the 1940s and what the controversies were.
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Sep 1, 2022 18:41
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Hyrax Attack! posted:To not abandon real-history chat, I'm two chapters into Parting the Waters and it is excellent. I appreciate the author taking his time and it's interesting to get details of the types of theology taught in the 1940s and what the controversies were. I've been reading it too because of this thread (alongside other books). It's very good, although at times a bit too detailed. When its intense the book is absolutely harrowing, but then there are long chunks that can be harder to stay interested in. Regardless, I love it, and its almost as good as Robert Caro.
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Sep 1, 2022 19:55
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Does anyone have a recommendation for a one volume work on the Chinese warlord era of the early 20c?
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Sep 1, 2022 22:38
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Elyv posted:Does anyone have a recommendation for a one volume work on the Chinese warlord era of the early 20c? You might have to be the one to write it.
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Sep 1, 2022 23:51
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Hyrax Attack! posted:That's true, there are some interesting ones that include the Allies winning but Germany having prepped an underground resistance for years that makes the occupation a nightmare or for the US Civil War having the Union win but Lee never surrenders and commits his army to bushwhacking from the hills so the South goes under permanent military occupation that is terrible for both sides. I feel like this is a Gay Black Hitler thing. My understanding is that while the Nazis took some steps in that direction towards the end of the war, it never got very far in part because "partisans bad" was so deeply baked into their own propaganda.
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Sep 2, 2022 01:02
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Silver2195 posted:I feel like this is a Gay Black Hitler thing. My understanding is that while the Nazis took some steps in that direction towards the end of the war, it never got very far in part because "partisans bad" was so deeply baked into their own propaganda. Yeah it gets handwaved a bit by Turtledove. Premise is Reinhard Heydrich survives his 1942 assassination, and post Stalingrad he meets with Himmler and gets the a-ok for a secret plan to build bunkers in the alps and begin stockpiling weapons and training men for resistance. It’s mostly a what if Iraq after 2003 were in postwar Germany, not terrible but not one of his better books. A more interesting short story he did was Ready for the Fatherland where in early 1943 Manstein gets enraged enough at hitler to shoot him during a meeting on the eastern front and then get a separate peace with the USSR so they can move enough resources to throw back the Italy and France landings, and I think end the war with a stalemate before A bombs are available. Story is set in late 1970s with the Cold War having three sides. Pretty well done especially as you don’t see many alt-WWII works where neither side totally wins.
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Sep 2, 2022 15:56
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Punkin Spunkin posted:
Any preface on an order to read these? Either in a chronological order or what book is going to make me want to read the rest?
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Sep 3, 2022 01:00
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Digital Jedi posted:Any preface on an order to read these? Either in a chronological order or what book is going to make me want to read the rest? I picked up the Battle for Moscow and now want to read the the rest. Already have the Retreat from Moscow on my bookshelf ready rack. As mentioned above he does a great job demolishing the clean Wehrmact, the 'Germans could have pulled it off' myth, and the general competency of the German high command (in comparison to the much maligned Stavka) all while writing a great operational history. The German command was absolutely ordering just as many pointless poorly executed frontal assaults in November 1941 as the Soviets were in early July. Anyway, absolutely recommend.
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Sep 3, 2022 01:53
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In my books (pun intended) David Stahel is second only to Glantz as the authority on the 1941 campaign in the USSR. He just published the book closing out those first 7 months covering the Soviet winter counter offensive and I’m not sure if he plans to research and write about the 1942 campaigns or begin an entirely different thing as those battles are more well trodden ground in the literature. But it’s important to note that Stahel, as of now, only covers the opening of Barbarossa to the culmination of the winter counter offensive and he uses 5 books to do it because the material is so vast and dense. If you’re not already pretty well versed in the Eastern Front I wouldn’t recommend him being your intro.
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Sep 3, 2022 03:05
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Does anyone have any books about the area that's now Bangladesh when it was part of Pakistan? I've read 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh by Srinath Raghavan but I'd like to know more about what was going on between Partition and Bangladeshi independence.
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Sep 3, 2022 05:29
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:In my books (pun intended) David Stahel is second only to Glantz as the authority on the 1941 campaign in the USSR. He just published the book closing out those first 7 months covering the Soviet winter counter offensive and I’m not sure if he plans to research and write about the 1942 campaigns or begin an entirely different thing as those battles are more well trodden ground in the literature. Is there a book you'd recommend as a jumping off point? My knowledge of this part of the war is mostly just that episode of Lions Led By Donkeys about the Battle of Kursk, which is two years later. But, it was a trip to hear about, so I'd love to read more.
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Sep 3, 2022 11:31
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Jedi425 posted:Is there a book you'd recommend as a jumping off point? My knowledge of this part of the war is mostly just that episode of Lions Led By Donkeys about the Battle of Kursk, which is two years later. But, it was a trip to hear about, so I'd love to read more. Stahel himself has written a list on recommended books. https://shepherd.com/best-books/operation-barbarossa
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Sep 3, 2022 13:04
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Jedi425 posted:Is there a book you'd recommend as a jumping off point? My knowledge of this part of the war is mostly just that episode of Lions Led By Donkeys about the Battle of Kursk, which is two years later. But, it was a trip to hear about, so I'd love to read more. There’s a great short video on this. And just in case, yes I know very well that Tik has some disagreeable issues. They are not relevant to discuss here. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KQWyAez9mCA&list=PLNSNgGzaledj3dqv8iE_prGOkRINo7wRt&index=4
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Sep 3, 2022 13:55
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Terribly confusing that The Search for Modern China shares a title with its companion book, which is a much shorter compilation of primary sources.
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Sep 9, 2022 05:21
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FPyat posted:Terribly confusing that The Search for Modern China shares a title with its companion book, which is a much shorter compilation of primary sources. Yeah and also it’s not available in e-book form which is bullshit.
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Sep 9, 2022 23:02
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Does anyone have recommendations for books about the officially allowed non-SED political parties in East Germany? Maybe something like interviews with members about their motivations for joining them, etc.
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Sep 13, 2022 22:30
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I have a lack of books about modern Japan that aren't narrowly focused on the years 1941-45, other than Embracing Defeat.
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Sep 16, 2022 20:52
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FPyat posted:I have a lack of books about modern Japan that aren't narrowly focused on the years 1941-45, other than Embracing Defeat. So does the entire academic field unfortunately. Best I can recommend are biographies of the Meiji Emperor and Hirohito.
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Sep 16, 2022 21:05
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FPyat posted:I have a lack of books about modern Japan that aren't narrowly focused on the years 1941-45, other than Embracing Defeat. Any particular period/subject? I have a bunch I can rec if you can narrow it down. I'm taking "modern" here to mean Meiji restoration to today. Or I can just list all the ones I liked if you want.
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Sep 16, 2022 21:09
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Anything that gives me more understanding of the local differentiation of particular islands, regions, and cities would be of particular interest. Another question that captures my curiosity is why Japanese politics went so terribly wrong in the 1920s.
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Sep 16, 2022 21:17
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It's not an obscure pick but Bix's Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan spends a lot of time on the 1940's but also spends a lot on the Taisho Emperor and the rise of Hirohito in the 1930's leading up to the Pacific War.
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Sep 17, 2022 14:50
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FPyat posted:Anything that gives me more understanding of the local differentiation of particular islands, regions, and cities would be of particular interest. Another question that captures my curiosity is why Japanese politics went so terribly wrong in the 1920s. Ruffians, Yakuza, Nationalists: The Violent Politics of Modern Japan, 1860–1960 by Eiko Maruko Siniawer sounds like a book you would like. It's not exclusively about the 1920s, but you need to cover a lot more ground than just the 1920s themselves to answer that question.
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Sep 17, 2022 20:22
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