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Pryor on Fire posted:Yeah there are so many silly British stories in WW2, my favorite is how in September of 44 when Germany was in full retreat Monty managed to convince Eisenhower to launch Market Garden, which ended with nearly two full airborne divisions wiped out for nothing. None of the British radios even worked at Arhhem, they had to use the Dutch home landlines. The worst part about this is that they postponed the Battle of the Scheldt for this. At the time a number of German divisions were basically trapped on the south bank and could've been wiped out had they kept pushing. Instead divisions were diverted to assist Market Garden. Those very same German division were evacuated into Holland and then put on rest & recovery... near Arnhem. They end up being the guys wrecking the paras. This all means the port in Antwerp takes longer to come online, as well. Which like, even if Market Garden had succeeded and you force the Rhine crossing, you still don't have a goddamn port to supply your breakthrough because you didn't clear the Scheldt, so you're still Red Ball Expressing your way from Le Havre and goddamn Cherbourg.
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Sep 12, 2022 11:31
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gradenko_2000 posted:everything I've read about the Battle of Britain that touched on this respect said over and over that it was Britain that had the distinct advantage because all of their pilots that bailed out would just land in England, but all of the Luftwaffe pilots that bailed out would be captured This was a huge advantage because most planes had very low range in the early years of the war. If you flew all the way across the channel then you only had a few minutes of fighting or bombing time before you had to turn back and couldn't do much maneuvering on the way out they just run out of gas. The British were able to time out the interception missions with their good radar coverage and with more fuel in the tank the Luftwaffe took massive losses every time they crossed over https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34KxPpoq7iU
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Sep 12, 2022 16:01
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John Charity Spring posted:it's a novel rather than a non-fiction book but I really recommend Piece of Cake by Derek Robinson as an insight into what RAF fighter squadrons were like in the first year of WW2. it's a fantastic book and meticulously researched on top of being well-written, and it sparked outrage in the UK when it was published in the 1970s because people said it was an insult to the heroes of the Battle of Britain lol It was unpopular, and still is, because it is all about whacking the reader over the head with how deeply stupid British leadership and institutions were in WWII. Specifically, the book is of the point of view that the Battle of Britain and the early raids on Germany were pointless. There was no way the Germans could actually invade and conquer the island of Britain. There was no way the UK could beat the Reich without troops on the European continent. Robinson is of the opinion that the whole thing was essentially a public relations campaign designed to show friends, enemies, potential allies, and the people of the United Kingdom that the British military was doing SOMETHING. Just because the something didn't actually have a point or accomplish anything was moot. There was a war, so war stuff had to happen. This is so absolutely loving counter to the traditional entrenched rah rah plucky Britain stood alone Spitfires and shelters bullshit that somehow gets stronger and stronger with every passing year, never weaker, that Piece of Cake is never not going to be controversial
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Sep 12, 2022 19:07
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:I loving love Piece of Cake. it's probably one of my favourite works of fiction ever, it absolutely rules a highly cspam book too, what with the bits about Plucky Little Poland etc
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Sep 12, 2022 20:02
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wrong thread
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Sep 13, 2022 02:21
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Now that one of the ogs, Elisabeth II has passed way, can someone recommend good books about British imperialism?
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Sep 13, 2022 20:12
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Given that her first book (Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya) was really good for that but was specific to one atrocity (the suppression of the Mau Mau Uprising), I imagine that Caroline Elkins's new book Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire is going to be even better, but I haven't read it to say firsthand.
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Sep 13, 2022 20:21
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Fish of hemp posted:Now that one of the ogs, Elisabeth II has passed way, can someone recommend good books about British imperialism? Late Victorian Holocausts by Mike Davis
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Sep 13, 2022 21:04
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Britain's Empire by Richard Gott is another good one https://www.versobooks.com/books/1017-britains-empire
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Sep 13, 2022 21:13
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A Polish pilot parachuted onto a tennis court and won a doubles match while waiting for the RAF to pick him up.
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Sep 14, 2022 10:00
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https://mobile.twitter.com/JimBarrett/status/1570481993908981765 the more u know
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Sep 15, 2022 22:13
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Some Guy TT posted:https://mobile.twitter.com/JimBarrett/status/1570481993908981765 So thankful this horror does not happen any longer.
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Sep 15, 2022 22:19
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https://twitter.com/ArmstrongHouse/status/1571121980849688577
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Sep 17, 2022 21:13
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https://twitter.com/AndreasShrugged/status/1571090456372727810
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Sep 17, 2022 21:16
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Fish of hemp posted:Now that one of the ogs, Elisabeth II has passed way, can someone recommend good books about British imperialism? The Blood Never Dried: A People's History of the British Empire by John Newsinger is a reasonably short and readable polemic-history about British imperial atrocities and resistance to them, starting with slave revolts in the 18th century and covering up to the present day. It's a great book.
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Sep 17, 2022 21:26
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Some Guy TT posted:https://mobile.twitter.com/JimBarrett/status/1570481993908981765 It's an old book now but Wedgewood's A Coffin For King Charles is a great read.
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Sep 17, 2022 21:33
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https://twitter.com/dbessner/status/1571216570353078273 https://twitter.com/Aaron_Good_/status/1571223856496484352?t=6vB8l4xCP8H_eMdfvS8dhA&s=19
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Sep 18, 2022 05:22
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For a long time there was a trend in historiography that treated the Cold War as "cold" because Europeans weren't fighting other Europeans. WW1 and WW2 counted as bad because it was white on white violence and the Cold War averted that version of WW3 so it was really peaceful. You could read entire books on the Cold War that basically just talked about Europe and Kremlin-White House diplomacy and pretended 90% of the world didn't exist. You'd get whole chapters on this nuclear summit or that nuclear summit but look up Guatemala or Iran or Chile in the index and there are no entries. Not coincidentally those books also made it really easy to demonize the USSR - look, they're crushing democracy in Hungary and Czechoslovakia and Poland! Feel bad for the poor Europeans! - while ignoring the US's crimes because they all happened to poor people in other parts of the world. The impression you walk away from is the noble United States defending plucky European democracy against the evil empire, end of story. That's changed now thankfully, over the last 20 years there's been a huge explosion of books looking at the Cold War in global context and emphasizing the extreme levels of violence used to impose ideological conformity on the Third World, but decades of that previous historiography doesn't fade into irrelevance overnight unfortunately.
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Sep 18, 2022 12:29
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been traveling around Busan for the past week or so and i fuckin’ love this city. it’s bizarre to me, a dumbass american raised without an ounce of class consciousness, to stumble into an art museum and see some pretty cool stuff grappling with class and labor issues, what might happen to workers going forward, etc. the contemporary art museum had a work that just absolutely demolished web3, meanwhile back in america every art thing ive has had an nft section. anyway - i was wondering if anybody had any recommendations for books on south korea’s labor movement, especially in 1987. just wanted to check this thread before striking out on my own
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Sep 18, 2022 16:35
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Sep 20, 2022 05:18
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Wait until this motherfucker learns about Africa.
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Sep 20, 2022 08:27
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"Why did the chicken cross the road?" "I don't know, why?" "To get to the other side." I'm annoyed by the claim that the 'other side' means death and this is a joke about suicide. So I looked into the history of the chicken crossing the road, and it turns out it's originally a racist joke. According to Ken Burns' Jazz, it was popularized by minstrel shows, as a sketch where someone in blackface would be too stupid to solve the simple riddle "why did the chicken cross the road".
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Sep 21, 2022 09:03
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gradenko_2000 posted:everything I've read about the Battle of Britain that touched on this respect said over and over that it was Britain that had the distinct advantage because all of their pilots that bailed out would just land in England, but all of the Luftwaffe pilots that bailed out would be captured https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fDnSQoneiE
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Sep 21, 2022 20:29
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Using a highlighter on a dead-tree book that you're reading for leisure: yes or no?
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Sep 23, 2022 08:44
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Is the book from a library?
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Sep 23, 2022 09:53
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my dad posted:Is the book from a library? Nope
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Sep 23, 2022 10:32
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that's just creating environmental storytelling for whoever owns it next
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Sep 23, 2022 10:36
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Then not only should you highlight important bits, you should also leave comments on the margins. 
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Sep 23, 2022 11:26
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I just use those little plastic flags to mark important paragraphs of course because I’m an idiot all paragraphs become important so my copy of battlecry of freedom is half plastic by weight
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Sep 23, 2022 11:42
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Chamale posted:"Why did the chicken cross the road?" The chicken understands what you do not: That its entire existence is predicated on the continuation of the joke. It's life, much like yours, is part of a farce. A cosmic jape. Except the chicken's is much more literal to us since we, in the span of seven words, have created it's entire universe. There is only one path for the chicken, and you have already deterministically set it upon this path by your use of the past tense, 'did'. The events of the chicken's not only are predetermined but have already occurred. The completion of the joke is the death of the chicken, even had it survived its crossing the joke would end and so would its existence. Both routes to a single point the chicken, in kind, responds in a superposition of answers. Both of it's singular triumph and of the futility of it all. To get to the other side, sir, I think would like the coleslaw. HootTheOwl has issued a correction as of 13:33 on Sep 23, 2022 |
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Sep 23, 2022 13:31
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The chicken store called, it crossed to get away from YOU
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Sep 23, 2022 19:32
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Q: Why did the chicken- a domesticated animal, whose evolution and persistence as a species is propagated by its masters, a cruel joke of success through failure and pain and so on and so forth, emblematic of the common person whose desires to live and persist serve those who benefit more from their existence than the self- why did this chicken decide to embark on the crossing of a simple country road? A: In this crossing, this chicken is fulfilling an imperative of exploration, but exploration in a misguided and false sense, like a man exploring ideology heedless of the fact that such exploration is not discovery,but rather a rote role laid out by the Great Other. This domestic food animal, much like the human who wanders from book to book, is moving forward in the only manner available to it, to attain something of a breakthrough or perspective on the road from the other side of it. In this crossing, this ideological journey, the chicken finds comfort and so on; but no conclusion save that of death, as we all shall one day experience. --Streetjoke Žižek
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Sep 23, 2022 20:42
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That also works pretty well in Werner Herzog voice too.
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Sep 23, 2022 21:18
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Herzog would never say this about a chicken. He hates them.
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Sep 23, 2022 21:30
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https://twitter.com/ajplus/status/1572994885874958336
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Sep 23, 2022 22:01
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https://twitter.com/HuntClancy/status/1573332870755753984
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Sep 23, 2022 22:07
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quote:The following night, however, Howard disappeared. As he and his wife Mary drove back from a dinner away from their home, Howard leapt from the car as Mary slowed to round a corner. He left a dummy made from stuffed clothes and an old wig stand in his seat to fool the pursuing agents, and fled to Albuquerque, where he took a plane to New York City. Once at home, Mary called a number she knew would reach an answering machine, and played a pre-recorded message from Edward to fool the wiretap and buy her husband more time. From New York, Howard flew to Helsinki, and from there, he walked into the Soviet embassy.
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Sep 23, 2022 23:41
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biafra sucks and was used by france as a wedge to try to get oil-rich african lands through a breakaway ethnostate. funnily enough the brits and soviets were on the same side for very different reasons
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Sep 23, 2022 23:50
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Been reading about the Sikh empire, and the types of Europeans that went to fight for them are absolutely wild. Like this guy was an Italian Jew who fought for Napoleon, served the Shah, and then finally came to serve the Sikhs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Baptiste_Ventura
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Sep 24, 2022 02:07
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There were a few other people like him. Quirked up white boys going to the orient to join the sikhs is very funny. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Gardner_(soldier) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josiah_Harlan
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Sep 24, 2022 02:21
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