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who could even know if the czar's army would have supported some sort of authoritarian rule under a single powerful figure with unchecked authority? I'll never forgive the villain Lenin for denying us the chance to learn what they would rule like.
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Oct 10, 2022 13:57
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https://twitter.com/TrumanBurrbank/status/1579166647109439488 a friend told me today about Hama in 1982 and how Hafez al-Assad managed to stop this kind of nonsense from spreading into Syria and it's a fascinating backdrop as to why that country is still standing in the face of all the other troubles that's befallen the rest of the Middle East (and recognizing that Syria has still suffered tremendously besides)
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Oct 10, 2022 14:15
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If you're President of the United States for 4 years and a month and 2% of all Americans die during that time and there's not like a germ or an earthquake or a solar flare or a foreign invasion involved in that, you kinda hosed up, at least a little, right?? I mean the prevailing narrative is that Lincoln was amazing but he was failed by traitors and incompetents and weak subordinates, but he's gotta be accountable for at least a little of the blame, right? Like just take Richmond in 1861, hang a few traitors, bam. No Shiloh, no Gettysburg, no Cold Harbor. It seems to me that the Lincoln administration was way more decisive with the jailing of journalists and pistol whippings of judges then actually doing things to end the rebellion.
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Oct 14, 2022 07:13
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:If you're President of the United States for 4 years and a month and 2% of all Americans die during that time and there's not like a germ or an earthquake or a solar flare or a foreign invasion involved in that, you kinda hosed up, at least a little, right?? I don't know if you're trying to make an allegory for something or just talking about Lincoln, period, but... yeah? I don't think Lincoln was without wrong decisions, and that the Union won the war was as much about him figuring out the right decisions from the wrong before running out of time and space and second chances.
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Oct 14, 2022 07:20
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:Like just take Richmond in 1861, hang a few traitors, bam. No Shiloh, no Gettysburg, no Cold Harbor. It seems to me that the Lincoln administration was way more decisive with the jailing of journalists and pistol whippings of judges then actually doing things to end the rebellion. the first radio war nerd episode on the civil war is about gurowski, a polish count exiled to america, making that exact point and how noone else near power was interested in it
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Oct 14, 2022 10:16
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the US state pre-civil war had a completely disproportionate amount of southern slaveholders in its elite, and sympathy was very high for the southern cause. in addition to this, before lincoln took office the military readiness of the Union was facing outright sabotage by southern sympathisers. lincoln no doubt made some mistakes and bad calls, but his general strategy seems to have been mostly limited by the actual power of his position, not incompetence or malice. seconding the recommendation of the radio war nerd US civil war series, as far as i can tell it's very very good
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Oct 14, 2022 10:35
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:If you're President of the United States for 4 years and a month and 2% of all Americans die during that time and there's not like a germ or an earthquake or a solar flare or a foreign invasion involved in that, you kinda hosed up, at least a little, right?? I'm certainly not an expert in the US Civil War, but I think this falls a little too close to great man history by attributing the secessionist cause to a few traitors in Richmond instead of to an entire socioeconomic system dependent on slavery and run by a landowning elite who thought they were facing an existential threat to that system in the form of Lincoln and the northern abolitionists. My hunch is taking Richmond and hanging a few traitors would have just galvanized the Southern cause and you'd end up with pretty much the same war, just with somebody else's name as president of the Confederacy. It's like the old question, what if Hitler had died in WW1? Interwar Germany might have looked a little different, but the material and historical conditions that led to the rise of the Nazis don't magically disappear just because you remove one leadership figure. The first point is also interesting to think about a little further, because any president is going to preside over a ton of deaths just by virtue of running the country for four years. The US death rate in 2019 was 8.782 deaths per 1,000 people, or about 1.1% of the population. Setting aside births or immigration and therefore population growth, you would expect any 4-year presidential term to preside over the deaths of upwards of 4% of the American people. Excess deaths is another story, of course.
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Oct 14, 2022 12:13
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lol take Richmond in 61, what do you think bull run was
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Oct 14, 2022 12:26
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The big "what ifs" around Lincoln I tend to think of are his top brass. Like if Garibaldi had been made commander of the Union army and allowed to prosecute the war as an anti-slavery guerrilla war from the start, would all the fussy West Pointers have resigned in droves? Would you have seen enlistments plummet similarly to when the provisional emancipation proclamation was made public? Probably yes to both of those, but it's interesting to think about. Obviously keeping McClellan around was a disaster and there were a few instances of Lincoln brushing up on basic tactics and trying to get him to be more aggressive against Jackson's troops, but McClellan was basically a copperhead so it was useless. Otherwise it's obvious to me that he totally underestimated the revanchism taking shape in the south when the war was nearly over. At a minimum all of the Confederate political and military leaders should have been hanged but really all the officers too. Mary Todd and Andrew Johnson both told him to hang Davis at bare minimum but he didn't, and ofc had he been more cognizant of just how entrenched the sense of entitlement was among the planter class he would have beefed up his security detail when going out in public. MeatwadIsGod has issued a correction as of 12:57 on Oct 14, 2022 |
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Oct 14, 2022 12:53
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Fun fact. Lincoln signed off on one of the biggest official American genocides of native Americans the same month he signed the emancipation proclamation. Lincoln got what was coming to him too.
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Oct 14, 2022 12:59
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Throb Robinson posted:Fun fact. Lincoln signed off on one of the biggest official American genocides of native Americans the same month he signed the emancipation proclamation. Lincoln got what was coming to him too. Lincoln was the luckiest motherfucker to get got when he did. his plan for reconstruction was absolutely terrible and because he was Lincoln, the radical republicans would have had a much worse chance of implanting radical reconstruction over him like they did to Johnson
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Oct 14, 2022 13:04
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I'm reading a biography of Oliver Morton, the Republican war governor of Indiana (who suspended the House when antiwar Dems won in 1862 and ran the state off personal loans and federal money until the end of the war), and one interesting wrinkle in this is that there were a fair number of Republicans who were initially for a limited Reconstruction but then radicalized when they saw that Johnson's kid-glove treatment was still met with resistance and terrorism. So who knows what could have happened if a still lenient but less obviously stupid Reconstruction was attempted early on.
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Oct 14, 2022 13:22
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When mass executions during the war years are reserved only for the Sioux you know not to expect much in terms of decisive action against the planter class. Other than some of the radical Republicans nobody in power had much interest in real political or much less social equality with newly freed slaves. You would have needed collectivization and redistribution of plantation land to southern blacks along with forming them into armed militias to protect their new holdings for Reconstruction to succeed, and the industrial capitalist contingent that was supercharged by wartime production would not have allowed it even if you had a party in power willing to pursue that course.
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Oct 14, 2022 13:25
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Raskolnikov38 posted:Lincoln was the luckiest motherfucker to get got when he did. his plan for reconstruction was absolutely terrible and because he was Lincoln, the radical republicans would have had a much worse chance of implanting radical reconstruction over him like they did to Johnson Also the guy who replaced him was such an obvious malicious, incompetent fuckup that he was going to look incredible by comparison
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Oct 14, 2022 13:49
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Raskolnikov38 posted:Lincoln was the luckiest motherfucker to get got when he did. his plan for reconstruction was absolutely terrible and because he was Lincoln, the radical republicans would have had a much worse chance of implanting radical reconstruction over him like they did to Johnson on that note, was Hamlin's plan for reconstruction any better, considering he was a radical? If he was in Johnson's position, what would early reconstruction look like?
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Oct 14, 2022 13:51
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Venomous posted:on that note, was Hamlin's plan for reconstruction any better, considering he was a radical? If he was in Johnson's position, what would early reconstruction look like? if I remember right not really. He was radical in the sense that he wanted punishment for the south which would have been better than Johnson's 'maybe we just say 'alright mister man, this is your last warning, no more civil wars' and let them go' but I think he pretty much stopped short of the needed 'all your leaders are going to prison, anyone who tries to keep their slaves gets shot, sucks to suck doesn't it you losers?' so it'd more or less be a wash in the grand scheme I think.
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Oct 14, 2022 14:25
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MeatwadIsGod posted:When mass executions during the war years are reserved only for the Sioux you know not to expect much in terms of decisive action against the planter class. Other than some of the radical Republicans nobody in power had much interest in real political or much less social equality with newly freed slaves. You would have needed collectivization and redistribution of plantation land to southern blacks along with forming them into armed militias to protect their new holdings for Reconstruction to succeed, and the industrial capitalist contingent that was supercharged by wartime production would not have allowed it even if you had a party in power willing to pursue that course. I drive by the monument to the largest mass hanging in American history quite frequently and that part of our history is just not taught. For those who don't know, the war was caused by the government taking their land and forcing them onto reservations that could not produce enough food to support the existing Native population. The government promised to send food but surprise surprise they did not. So when Minnesota Winter set in, they were faced with literal starvation. This caused them surprise surprise again to go to war to try to reclaim their land because it was either that or starve slowly begging the government to feed them. For this their leaders were hanged. All while Confederate leaders spent the rest of their lives palling around with high society.
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Oct 14, 2022 15:23
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Raskolnikov38 posted:lol take Richmond in 61, what do you think bull run was I think it was some weak stuff. Lincoln was the Commander in Chief. His wing of the Republican Party, of which he was the leader, held an overwhelming majority in both houses of the national legislature. He had suspended civil liberties and told the Supreme Court to go gently caress themselves. He was the de facto head of a military dictatorship, entirely unaccountable to anyone. The Washington government had the guns, the men, and the resources/tools to keep their armies supplied in the field. Just. Take. Richmond. Andrew Jackson might have been a murdering bastard of a monsterperson but he would have gotten that done. Teriyaki Hairpiece has issued a correction as of 16:10 on Oct 14, 2022 |
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Oct 14, 2022 15:45
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Dumpmaster General posted:if I remember right not really. He was radical in the sense that he wanted punishment for the south which would have been better than Johnson's 'maybe we just say 'alright mister man, this is your last warning, no more civil wars' and let them go' but I think he pretty much stopped short of the needed 'all your leaders are going to prison, anyone who tries to keep their slaves gets shot, sucks to suck doesn't it you losers?' so it'd more or less be a wash in the grand scheme I think. well that's some liberal bullshit, but considering the GOP was iirc founded on free market capitalism, that just goes without saying lmao e: it is increasingly obvious to me that no matter how radical the reconstruction, Black people were always going to be hosed over in the postbellum south, just as they were being hosed over in the ante- and postbellum north in conclusion, the United States of America is and always has been a white supremacist settler colonialist nation lmao Venomous has issued a correction as of 16:29 on Oct 14, 2022 |
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Oct 14, 2022 16:21
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:I think it was some weak stuff. the confederate army had and did say some things about just taking richmond
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Oct 14, 2022 16:25
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not technically a mass shooting but lol nonetheless https://twitter.com/wapplehouse/status/1581054699046043648
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Oct 15, 2022 19:42
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jesus christ
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Oct 15, 2022 20:00
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I guess four days ago is technically history
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Oct 15, 2022 20:04
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oops wrong thread that tweet was meant for the Mass Shooting thread I'll leave it here as a testament to my laziness
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Oct 15, 2022 21:26
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https://twitter.com/VillageMagIRE/status/1581567884706226179?s=20&t=mXVxmLstXyV4rzFxyGBU5Q
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Oct 16, 2022 15:12
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Southpaugh posted:https://twitter.com/VillageMagIRE/status/1581567884706226179?s=20&t=mXVxmLstXyV4rzFxyGBU5Q Are we talking Matt Smith here or Charles Dance
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Oct 16, 2022 15:34
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HootTheOwl posted:Are we talking Matt Smith here or Charles Dance
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Oct 16, 2022 15:48
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Southpaugh posted:https://twitter.com/VillageMagIRE/status/1581567884706226179?s=20&t=mXVxmLstXyV4rzFxyGBU5Q is this the same Lord Mountbatten who basically raised Prince Charles after his dad died and then got assassinated by the IRA
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Oct 16, 2022 17:33
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Filthy Hans posted:is this the same Lord Mountbatten who basically raised Prince Charles after his dad died and then got assassinated by the IRA he taught both princes to be nonces
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Oct 16, 2022 20:42
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Filthy Hans posted:is this the same Lord Mountbatten who basically raised Prince Charles after his dad died and then got assassinated by the IRA Charles dad died last year
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Oct 16, 2022 20:58
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Filthy Hans posted:is this the same Lord Mountbatten who basically raised Prince Charles after his dad died and then got assassinated by the IRA i know he was an influential figure in chucks life, but yeah thats the guy.
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Oct 17, 2022 03:41
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https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news...c7-fefed64d0000 ‘Place the Material in the Wells’: Docs Point to Israeli Army’s 1948 Biological Warfare For decades, rumors and testimonies swirled about Jewish troops sent to poison wells in Arab villages. Now, researchers have located official documentation of the ‘Cast Thy Bread’ operation On April 1, 1948, David Ben-Gurion wrote in his journal about “the development of science and speeding up its application in warfare.” A month and a half later, he wrote about “biological materials” that were purchased for $2,000. Only now, 74 years later, has a connection between these two entries come to light. The disturbing story behind them was recently uncovered by historian Benny Morris and historian and Israel Prize laureate Benjamin Z. Kedar following extensive archival research. Evidently, the excerpts from the diary of the man who would become Israel’s first prime minister are traces of his involvement in a secret operation to poison the drinking water of Arab communities during the War of Independence. This operation was partially exposed decades ago when rumors and oral testimonies were reported in newspapers and books about an attempt in 1948 by the IDF to poison wells in Acre and Gaza by adding bacteria to the drinking water. However, only now, in Morris and Kedar’s research, has the “smoking gun” been revealed – in the form of official documentation. The newly unearthed documents show that this operation was much broader in scope than earlier believed and that other top military and political figures besides Ben-Gurion were involved. “We uncovered a lot of new information. We deciphered how the operation developed through its various stages; we discovered who authorized, organized and controlled the operation, and how it was carried out in different areas,” Morris says. “We have a much fuller picture now, and one that is based in part on IDF documentation,” Kedar adds. The pair recently published an article in the journal Middle Eastern Studies titled “‘Cast Thy Bread’: Israeli Biological Warfare during the 1948 War.” “Cast Thy Bread” was the operation’s code name. Naturally, most of the material related to the episode is censored, but when Morris searched through the IDF archives for any mention of the operation by name, he was surprised to discover numerous documents. Morris writes in the article that the censor apparently was not aware of what the code name referred to. Dayan – now calling himself, in code, “Moshe Neptune” – cabled Yadin: “Cast Thy Bread will be activated by Nahshon [meaning Operation Nahshon forces, which included the Harel Brigade] on Monday or Tuesday. I will come down mid-week with all the material.” Yadin instructed senior IDF commanders: “There is an immediate need to appoint in your HQ a special officer for Cast Thy Bread matters. The matter is of utmost importance and must be kept in great secrecy by you.” In another cable, Yadin writes: “Place in the wells material of the Cast Thy Bread type.” And in another cable: “Is there authorization to use B [the Hebrew letter Bet] in the areas that will be evacuated by us [i.e., Israel]?”  Moshe Dayan and Yigal Yedin, in 1971. "I will go down in the middle of the week with all the material," wrote Dayan to Yedin in the War of Independence.Credit: Moshe Milner/GPO The operation began in April 1948, when fears of an invasion by Arab armies were mounting. The plan was to poison wells in abandoned Arab villages as well as in Jewish locales that were due to be evacuated by the state-in-the-making. The idea was to prevent Arabs from returning to their villages and from settling in Jewish locales that would fall into their hands. The operation initially focused on the area between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and later expanded to Acre in the north and Gaza in the south. The evidence indicates that it later included – either in planning or in effect – other communities such as Jericho, Be’er Sheva, Ilaboun, Bidu, Beit Suriq, Beit Mahsir and Har-Tuv (after the Jews were evacuated). The possibility of adding targets outside of Israel such as Cairo and Beirut was also proposed, but nothing came of it. The idea behind that was to hinder the Arab armies’ advance.  Arabs in the War of Independence in the Jerusalem area.Credit: The Palmach photo archive Morris found dramatic evidence about the operation in the archives of Kibbutz Na’an, in testimony provided in 1988 by a kibbutz member, the archaeologist Shemarya Guttman, who was a Palmah commander and senior IDF intelligence officer. Guttman told of how General Yohanan Ratner, the senior commander whom Ben-Gurion tagged to head the operation, informed him about sending “two people to the Egyptian border to do this job [concerning] wells.” The two were David Mizrahi and Ezra Horin (Afgin), who set out for the mission in Gaza on May 22, 1948, but were caught and tried in an Egyptian military court for poisoning wells with bacteria, and later executed.  Documents from the Israel Defense Forces archive showing the Israel Defense Forces' use of biological weapons in the War of Independence.Credit: IDF Archives Guttman recounts that he vehemently opposed the operation on moral grounds and also warned that poisoning the water could harm Jews as well. “Look, we may also conquer this area tomorrow and drink from this water, and all our army will also be sick with typhus or dysentery,” he told Ratner. When he asked to be issued the order in writing, his request was refused. “[Ratner] said to me, ‘I will never give such a thing [in writing].’” Guttman goes on to report that he asked “what sort of material were they talking about – ‘liquid or powder … and he then decided it would be powder.’” He also notes that “the two were caught red-handed.” Another testimony located by Morris and Kedar was hidden in an interview given by former ambassador Asher Ben-Natan to historian Nir Mann in 2008. Ben-Natan described another phase of the operation: an attempt to poison wells in Cairo. In the summer of 1948, Ben-Natan was in Paris as part of his position in operational intelligence. Intelligence officer Binyamin Gibli met him there and gave him “a capsule to be used for poisoning wells in Cairo.” But the plan was scrapped and, said Ben-Natan, “I was left with the poison capsule, and in the end, I destroyed it in the sewer.” Morris and Kedar also found evidence of this in the IDF archives, in a document from September 1948, in which Yadin writes: “Please call soon … in regard to activation of Cast Thy Bread abroad.”  Prisoners of war in Ramla, in 1948. Benny Morris: "We deciphered the development of the operation and its stages, we found out who authorized, organized and controlled the operation, and how it was carried out in the field"Credit: The collection of photographs by his son Rothenberg. The documents show that Ben-Gurion was at the top of the pyramid. Below him was Yadin, who oversaw the military side of the operation. The operation was commanded by Yohanan Ratner. Initially, the top man in the field for the group was Dayan, who went on to become the IDF chief of staff and defense minister. The documents indicate that Dayan served as the smuggler who conveyed the bacteria from the Science Corps to different points throughout the country. David Shaltiel, commander of the Etzioni Brigade in Jerusalem, was also involved in the operation. Intelligence officer Ezra Helmer (later Omer, head of the Haganah General Staff Intelligence Department) also joined at a later stage. The identity of another person who was involved in the operation remains uncertain. In cables, he is referred to as “Mizrahi.” In the beginning, it was ordinary soldiers, such as soldiers from the Harel Brigade’s fourth battalion, who did the dirty work of poisoning the wells. Later on, the job was given to members of the Palmach’s Arab division, the “mistarvim,” who specialized in sabotage operations and assassinations in enemy territory.  Documents from the Israel Defense Forces archive showing the Israel Defense Forces' use of biological weapons in the War of Independence.Credit: IDF Archives On the scientific side, the production of the poison, were people from the IDF Science Corps Bet, a subunit in the Science Corps that dealt with biological warfare. It was headed by Alex Keinan, who went on to found the Israel Institute for Biological Research in Nes Tziona. The scientific work was overseen by the Katchalski (Katzir) brothers: biophysicist Ephraim Katzir, the first commander of the Science Corps and later an Israel Prize laureate and the fourth president of Israel; and his older brother, scientist Aharon Katzir of the Weizmann Institute, who was killed in the 1972 terror attack at Lod Airport. “A series of assistants who went on to become professors in Israeli academia were also involved in the operation,” Morris says.  Professor Aharon Katzir at the Weizmann Institute, in 1969.Credit: Moshe Milner/GPO The operation echoed the plan of the “Avengers” led by Abba Kovner to poison water and food sources in Germany after World War II to cause mass killing. The Katzir brothers were also involved in this operation, and supplied the poison to Kovner, but ultimately he, too, threw it into the sea before he was arrested by the British. Morris and Kedar believe that the objective of the IDF operation was not to cause mass killing but rather to disrupt the Arabs’ moves. Ultimately, the operation did not change the face of the war. According to various reports, several dozen Arabs did fall ill, mainly in Acre. The operation drew scathing criticism within the system – both within the IDF and among the Yishuv leadership – in part because it violated the 1925 Geneva Protocol banning “the use of bacteriological methods of warfare.”
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Oct 17, 2022 05:29
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https://twitter.com/YoudThinkSoBut/status/1551605713214099457?s=20&t=M5zlTuU5n22i7PlUnTFA1g
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Oct 18, 2022 18:14
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hey folks, I’m interested in reading about gas attacks in warfare, especially chlorine and related substances like phosgene. any good books? Frosted Flake
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Oct 19, 2022 00:04
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mawarannahr posted:hey folks, I’m interested in reading about gas attacks in warfare, especially chlorine and related substances like phosgene. any good books? Frosted Flake WWI was the heyday, so check out whichever Barbara Tuchman book covers the latter half of the war
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Oct 19, 2022 00:11
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Filthy Hans posted:WWI was the heyday, so check out whichever Barbara Tuchman book covers the latter half of the war Wouldn't that be Iran/Iraq War?
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Oct 19, 2022 01:23
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mawarannahr posted:hey folks, I’m interested in reading about gas attacks in warfare, especially chlorine and related substances like phosgene. any good books? Frosted Flake No Place To Run by Tim Cook covers the Canadian Expeditionary Force experience with gas warfare in WW1, which isn't as niche as it sounds as the Canadians had to become experts in chemicals warfare both on the offense and defense.
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Oct 19, 2022 01:27
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War and Pieces posted:Wouldn't that be Iran/Iraq War? maybe? I'm a shitposter not an historian
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Oct 19, 2022 01:36
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Filthy Hans posted:WWI was the heyday, so check out whichever Barbara Tuchman book covers the latter half of the war Eeeewww don't recommend Barbara Tuchman
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Oct 20, 2022 20:31
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