Ukraine War: Berth El Buk

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(Thread IKs: weg, Toxic Mental)

HonorableTB: Dec 22, 2006

tiaz posted:

while we're claiming credit for things I think this got lost in the noise of the coup Or Whatever That Was

no news is, uh, something? I wonder if Chef Boyar P is going to make it to hide out in Africa.

this owns

# ? Jun 27, 2023 03:40

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# ? May 30, 2024 14:08

zone: Dec 6, 2016

https://twitter.com/Maks_NAFO_FELLA/status/1673458234563207171
:troll:

# ? Jun 27, 2023 03:50

Randarkman: Jul 18, 2011

Toxic Mental posted:

lol As if he knows that's Chamberlain, or who Chamberlain even is.

I'd say more like the other way around. "Prepared England for WW2" by giving Germany enough time and slack to take over most of Europe, completely spin up the war machine and railway system, and become the war crimes gold standard instead of actually standing up to fascists. The lack of military aid from America and Britain early on was pretty shameful. There's been some talk about getting enough fighter planes ready and stuff, but what won the war in the end was boots on the ground.

It is much more complicated than you are portraying it as here though. Britain and France were absolutely not politically ready to go to war in 1938 and had not started rearming in a serious manner. After Hitler broke the Munich agreement and outright annexed Czechoslovakia these attitudes began to change. Chamberlain did not attempt to stick to his earlier appeasement policy and began seriously ramping up military production and spending as well as war preparations for Britain.

e: Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze actually looks into this quite a bit and one thing emphasized there is just how much this British military buildup was for one outdoing Germany and would overtake Germany given time and that this was viewed with great concern by German industrial and military leaders who realized the implications of it. Hitler framed it as a betrayal by Chamberlain, British warmongering that was masterminded by Roosevelt the "puppet of Wall street bankers and international jewry"

Randarkman fucked around with this message at 03:54 on Jun 27, 2023

# ? Jun 27, 2023 03:50

SirPhoebos: Dec 10, 2007; WELL THAT JUST HAPPENED!

Randarkman posted:

e: Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze actually looks into this quite a bit and one thing emphasized there is just how much this British military buildup was for one outdoing Germany and would overtake Germany given time and that this was viewed with great concern by German industrial and military leaders who realized the implications of it. Hitler framed it as a betrayal by Chamberlain, British warmongering that was masterminded by Roosevelt the "puppet of Wall street bankers and international jewry"

This sounds familiar but I can't say why... :thunk:

# ? Jun 27, 2023 04:09

Hyrax Attack!: Jan 13, 2009; We demand to be taken seriously

Comstar posted:

Germany was vastly weaker and would have been fighting through fortifications and without the Chech arms industry. So err no.

I think Turtledove did a series on it happening but I think everything goes * worse* somehow.

Yeah The War That Came Early. Premise is Germany invades Czechoslovakia in 1938, and Germany�s weaker state means France isn�t knocked out. Some interesting ideas like Spanish Civil War continuing, the Holocaust not happening, but overall a bad series that goes way too long and feels padded. Some chapters are just a generic Russian pilot going on a bombing mission then returning home, no plot impact or interesting things happening.

Randarkman posted:

It is much more complicated than you are portraying it as here though. Britain and France were absolutely not politically ready to go to war in 1938 and had not started rearming in a serious manner. After Hitler broke the Munich agreement and outright annexed Czechoslovakia these attitudes began to decisively change and Chamberlain did not attempt to stick to his earlier appeasement policy and began seriously ramping up military production and spending as well as war preparations for Britain.

Yeah that�s a good summary. In retrospect yes UK, France, Poland, & Czechs should have dogpiled Germany but public opinion was very against the idea of committing themselves to another war when losses in WWI had been appalling for almost no gain. They weren�t receptive to pleas from leaders that war was necessary when that had been such a lie last time.

# ? Jun 27, 2023 04:11

HonorableTB: Dec 22, 2006

The War That Came Early ended with general atomic warfare that wasn't advanced enough to be a MAD scenario. Basically the belligerents use nukes like regular bombs and by the end of the war a bunch of cities were nuked even in the US. It's a fun series and I recommend Turtledove highly because he fills a niche which is "what if a professional historian that also is a professional author had to write a 12 year old's idea of X" and it's insanely fun. It's not GOOD but it is very very fun. He spends his days now being a very angry leftist old man on Twitter and trolling nazis.

My favorite Turtledove series is the alternate history WW2 where the confederacy is nazi Germany and it just goes off the rails crazy but in a way which is insistently logical to its universe's own rules and canon.

There's also the Turtledove series where WW2 stops because aliens invade and humanity united to fight off the alien menace and it has Erwin Rommel commanding troops while riding as cavalry

HonorableTB fucked around with this message at 04:19 on Jun 27, 2023

# ? Jun 27, 2023 04:14

Hyrax Attack!: Jan 13, 2009; We demand to be taken seriously

HonorableTB posted:

The War That Came Early ended with general atomic warfare that wasn't advanced enough to be a MAD scenario. Basically the belligerents use nukes like regular bombs and by the end of the war a bunch of cities were nuked even in the US. It's a fun series and I recommend Turtledove highly. He spends his days now being a very angry leftist old man on Twitter and trolling nazis

I believe you�re thinking of a different series, The Hot War.

# ? Jun 27, 2023 04:16

HonorableTB: Dec 22, 2006

Hyrax Attack! posted:

I believe you’re thinking of a different series, The Hot War.

Ah crap you're right! My mistake

# ? Jun 27, 2023 04:18

Elden Lord Godfrey: Mar 4, 2022

Coolguye posted:

this entire situation so surreal it's starting to feel like one of those "time travelers are real" jokes to me.

like, there are so many ways this could have gone. if the point here was to get his boys and his people out of the line of fire and away from the incompetence, he could have, for example, seized an airfield, stolen a bunch of planes, and hosed back off to africa. that would've been bad, but ultimately the russian regime probably would've been able to spin and control that internally, calling prig a coward and his boys deserters. prig also would've been (generally) fine. wagner would have continued to exist and they could still kick other petty warlords around for diamonds in africa.

instead, he chose to go full armed mutiny. that itself is bonkers. it amplified the damage to the regime by like 10x by showing that internal security was a complete tire fire and internal unity is a pipe dream. it provided... actually very little in terms of overall benefit to wagner and prig unless he was interested in fully seizing the reigns of government, which he made pretty clear from the first word that he wasn't super interested in doing.

then, instead of sacking moscow and at LEAST securing his own safety and position, he STOPPED. not WAS STOPPED, he simply STOPPED. this amplified the damage to wagner by like 10x by keeping them firmly at the mercy of the regime, and again provided... basically nothing as far as we can tell. ok, sure, families were threatened. well tbh if they had just seized an airfield and a bunch of cargo planes to gtfo, they could've used the extra time and energy to help get families to ground. or just NOT DONE ANYTHING for another week or two while they moved assets and prepared for the correct time to strike, denying the regime this pressure point. even then, the regime also has its image further deflated because it did not, in fact, defeat the enemy. it even loses much of the benefit of its plan of absorbing the professional soldiers from wagner, because those dogs have already bitten them once.

like folks in the thread were pointing out while this was going on, there was basically no way this ended "well". putin is a piece of poo poo and if he had his position bolstered by a victory, that is bad. prig is a piece of poo poo and if he gains anything, that is also bad. them fighting puts innocents in the direct line of fire, which is yet more bad.

but the way this turned out, literally nobody won. putin has lost an immense amount, both in ""prestige"" and also materially by missing out on the opportunity to get actual soldiers back into ukraine. wagner has lost everything, and its lustily neo-nazi upper crust is pretty much all persona non grata in one of the only power structures that tolerated them. and, critically, almost nobody had to die in the crossfire. some russian aviators got vaporized when they were just confused grunts following orders, and each one of those are tragedies, but we could have had hundreds or thousands of unarmed civilians get fragged here. instead it was about a dozen soldiers.

this entire thing is like Jigsaw giving you two terrible choices on a coin flip, but when it flips the coin, it lands on its side. then the doll gets pissed off, reflips, and it happens again. then the doll goes to pure on wordless fury, and it happens a third time. it finally just bursts into flames and the door to its trap room unlocks without further comment.

there's a FEW historical events i can think of as crazy as this but this post is long enough as is.

Pretty much. I had alot of misgivings about the viability of the 2023 Ukrainian Spring Offensives, they're giving the Russian lines of defense way too much time to prepare. At best, it was going to be ugly. At it was, it's going to be slow and grinding and only achieve limited objectives. But in a Just Defensive War, with Russia sanctioned and unable to import complex components, and Ukraine being fed millions of dollars of old milsurp and fully mobilizing its population, Ukraine

But the collapse of Wagner as a coherent fighting force, and the chaos this is going to render to Russian regulars, is an enormous opportunity for Ukraine and makes their odds far more optimistic. And the more decisive a Ukrainian victory, the less room there is for future political revanchism.

# ? Jun 27, 2023 04:22

HonorableTB: Dec 22, 2006

If someone is going to read anything Turtledove they should start with The Guns of the South, because if they don't find it entertaining to read about time traveling racist south Africans bringing AK-47s to the Confederacy then they really won't like anything he's written

HonorableTB fucked around with this message at 06:14 on Jun 27, 2023

# ? Jun 27, 2023 04:23

Elden Lord Godfrey: Mar 4, 2022