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I thought the claim that it was by far the best was probably exaggerated and figured the answer would be based on effectiveness per soldier. But I didn't state that at the outset, didn't want to move the goal post, and also know I don't care enough about the answer to debate it.
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Mar 19, 2024 16:56
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Watching Replacements for Band of Brothers and there's a scene where the infantry are watching the bombers flying back and they muse,"I wonder if they hit anything?" - basically all they know is that the bombers flew out there, none of them saw the actual bombing mission they undertook, they they all flew back. The people who made Masters of the Air clearly took this scene as a show bible. Replacements is, you'll be shocked to hear, ANOTHER great episode! You have the titular replacements (including a babby James McAvoy!) who are in awe and feeling deeply overshadowed by the men who fought in Normandy while they were training, and the feeling they don't belong: great scenes like them watching the other men on the airfield and stripping down their kits to match, the unease Miller feels when Cobb calls him out for wearing a Unit citation etc, all leading through to their eventual bonding with the unit (at least those who survive) after the debacle of Operation: Market Garden. But there's also guys like Cobb, who similarly feel like outsiders because they went through all the same training/bonding etc with the original soldiers but due to circumstances outside of their control ended up not being involved in the fighting. Cobb got injured on the plane flying in to Normandy, and it's clear that he WANTS to be considered the same as the other soldiers but feels like he stands apart now, but he also can't fit in with the replacements. All throughout the episode you see him struggling to figure out how to approach matters, he freezes up during the firefight in the village, he forces himself to join the search for Bull and he seems desperate for approval in a way the others don't when they're reunited. Cobb stands in contrast to Popeye, who made the Normandy landing but got shot in the rear end right at the very opening seconds of the assault on Brecourt Manor and thus never actually took part in any of the fighting. But his return is greeted with excitement and approval from the other men, because he WAS there with them, and now he's gone AWOL from the hospital and given up a potential chance to go home to rejoin them (hell, even Sobel appears to approve, encountering him on the road on his way to his new role as supply officer and actually giving him a lift!). That has to make Cobb feel even more like an outsider, because technically speaking almost nothing separates the two of them. Both were originals, both got injured immediately before they could actually do any fighting, but the guy who made the jump feels like part of the unit while the guy who didn't feels like a fraud. Also, just an interesting thing I always forget - the first time we see Buck Compton in the show, Winters is warning him that betting with the men is a problem because if he wins, it puts him in a position where he has to "take" from them. So it kind of stands out that Buck is openly betting (only cigarettes, but still) and hustling men under his command playing darts at the start of this episode. The liberation of Eindhoven is fantastic for a lot of reasons, but I'm always haunted by the thought of what happened to the city after the pushback by the Germans. My understanding is that the allies kept control of the city but that it was heavily bombed by the Luftwaffe, and there's a line from Winters about how he doesn't expect a repeat of the rapturous ovation they got when they initially arrived. All those poor people who survived Nazi occupation (the pure hatred on the faces of the townspeople towards the women collaborators is something to behold) and thought all their dreams had come true when the British and Americans arrived only to see the bulk of the allies have to pull back and face heavy bombing almost immediately afterwards. Also it's one thing to know thanks to cultural osmosis and various war films/documentaries that Market Garden was a debacle, but my mind is still boggled by the text at the end of the episode that notes the British Airforce lost EIGHT THOUSAND TROOPS in the operation  - "A bridge too far" indeed.
Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 17:39 on Mar 19, 2024 |
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Mar 19, 2024 17:30
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If you watch the Eindhoven scene the real life Babe Heffron has a cameo as one of the celebrating dutchmen
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Mar 19, 2024 18:06
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Lot of Ambrose level takes ITT. While the Russian Army was by no means bad, they were not all that great in 1945 either. There were a lot of records destroyed or rewritten in the postwar years in order to make the USSR appear stronger than it was, in the same vein of the political purges. Historical truth was not valued and the propaganda was practically cranked up to Helldivers level. The great Georgy Zhukov himself and Operation Mars is a pretty solid example. While the push to retake Stalingrad was beginning to succeed Zhukov led the red army into bloody losses in the Rzhev. Over 14 months they lost 350,000, nearly 7:1 against the entrenched Germans. Stuff like that was conveniently left out of the post war recollection and skewed academic review for decades after. The Soviet Army's sprint west was hardly well organized or efficient. They left a trail of pillaged towns in Poland and East Germany and were recordably warcriming their asses off against both the German armed forces and the populace in general. They had mass and momentum, more troops, more tanks, and a lot of rage to work out. They were fighting a Germany on the backheel, having expended the majority of its manpower and resources maintaining the war as long as they had. The Soviet Army did not have enough food, or organization, or logistical backbone to be called "the best" at all.
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Mar 19, 2024 18:41
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When is the collection of comrades show? Rising orchestral music over slo mo shots of Russians machine gunning their own retreating soldiers.
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Mar 19, 2024 18:55
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The biggest American world history fault is massively underselling the scope of the Eastern front. The cost to both sides was astronomical and American media doesn't like the facts because its not flashy or patriotic, and Soviet media didn't like it because... it wasn't flashy or patriotic!
M_Gargantua fucked around with this message at 19:19 on Mar 19, 2024 |
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Mar 19, 2024 18:59
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Cojawfee posted:When is the collection of comrades show? Rising orchestral music over slo mo shots of Russians machine gunning their own retreating soldiers. Would you prefer Hollywood Swiss Cheese https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8fWp-i-BGA Or Russian Char Broiled? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ap-bGyTI4_I
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Mar 19, 2024 19:03
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M_Gargantua posted:Lot of Ambrose level takes ITT. While the Russian Army was by no means bad, they were not all that great in 1945 either. So the question remains: February of 1945 , which was the most effective and organized fighting force in ww2?
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Mar 19, 2024 23:32
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Still so dumb that they spoiled major plot points in the intro montage.. Just started BoB again, and the banter in the troop ship about the flamingos and naked native girls always gives me a chuckle. “Really, it’s hot in Africa?”
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Mar 19, 2024 23:40
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paih1Cax3a8
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Mar 19, 2024 23:45
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mllaneza posted:A big part of the Red Army's success in 1944-45 was that they'd built up a strong leadership corps out of officers who'd survived 1941-1943. They had much more experience at large-scale combat than the Americans did. Montgomery had good experience with 8th Army, but the Soviets had officers with a year of two of successfully running army groups. It does beg the question about how much better the Soviet Union would've done in WW2 had Stalin not  ed all the Generals whom he thought he couldn't trust, or who could conceivably outshine and potentially overthrow him.Darth Brooks posted:The interesting question is the Russian air force vs. US Air Force. US Navy was the best in the world by a large margin in 1945. The Russian army was better than the US and British combined. In a hypothetical post war (and non nuclear) fight the battles in the air would have a big impact on events too. The persistent problem(s) with the Russian/Soviet Air Force have always been lack of training, lack of spare parts and veteran maintenance personnel, inefficient and lovely engines, lack of prompt logistics (when you can elephant walk C-17s in a row that stretches farther than the eye can see, you win), and only until VERY recently with the Su-3x series and MiG-31 variants which have very respectable radars, an over-reliance on Ground Controlled Interception that's still paying bloody dividends in the sense that you almost had a nugget Russian pilot shoot down a UK Rivet Joint because he "misheard" his orders (the missile didn't track). No other air force in the world can do this, and it's been the same since post-WW2, the airplanes have just gotten faster and fly higher: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCbCv3T1HJM&t=124s Even in the first real direct match between the Americans and Soviets over Korea, the MiG-15 wasn't suited for dogfighting and air superiority - it was a ground-controlled interceptor designed to knock the poo poo out of heavy bombers. Even in the most *even* of matchups, where veteran WW2 pilots went up against each other in their respective side's best jets, I think the kill ratio was still ~1.5:1 in favor of the US, and nearer to 6:1 when less experienced pilots faced off against *any* American pilot. I'm also reasonably sure that even in the heyday of the post-Barbarossa Soviet Air Force, they never pulled off a B-17-style heavy bomber formation with Pe-8s and TB-3s, given that they built less than 100 Pe-8s, and, uh, Stalin did not really use the Pe-8 very well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petlyakov_Pe-8#Wartime_use BIG HEADLINE fucked around with this message at 03:41 on Mar 20, 2024 |
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Mar 19, 2024 23:51
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5yUhbaWeOE Watching BoB enough times to understand what the brit is saying while not processing anything he's actually said.
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Mar 20, 2024 05:05
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joepinetree posted:So the question remains: February of 1945 , which was the most effective and organized fighting force in ww2? The arguments are always a little pointless because the Allies depended on each other in so many ways. But, they are interesting to think about. On the ground, probably the Soviets, but wars aren't just fought on the ground. It's fun to talk about, but there really is no objective way to measure which army is 'better' even among opponents because everyone had other commitments or assistance from allies and so on. They were interdependent. The Soviets were very strong in 1945, but they were really feeling the loving hurt after taking astronomical losses and having their country devastated. They would not be able to replace manpower so effectively in a hot war, while the Americans barely suffered in comparison and had a lot more loyal allies than the Soviets with their forced puppet-states. The Soviet war machine was dependent on Western Allied supplies, while the Western Allies did not need stuff from the Soviets. The US shipped the Soviets over 400,000 trucks and jeeps. This is more than the Germans even produced in the entire war for themselves. Half the Soviet aviation fuel came from the US. So, right away, without that, we just cancel half the Red Air sorties. The Soviets made their big endgame advances with American supplies while being only intermittently harried by a diminished Luftwaffe that was largely deployed/destroyed against the West. In some sort of fantasy slap fight all this supply instantly stops. Soviets could probably push back Western Allied ground forces to an extent, then run out of steam completely as their supply lines get absolutely massacred by the Allies. The Soviet Navy maybe can hide in their ports but any serious fleet is gonna be scrap metal if it tries to do anything. In a serious WW3 apocalypse situation the Germans, millions of trained troops whom are sitting in Allied PoW camps, are gonna get armed up and sent against the Soviets, and the USSR is gonna be dealing with a massive partisan problem as all of their conquered territory resistance groups get supplied by the Allies, and their lovely puppet government 'allies' look for an exit route because Romania does not want to lose WW2 twice. It all becomes moot when Moscow goes radioactive. Mr. Grapes! fucked around with this message at 09:38 on Mar 20, 2024 |
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Mar 20, 2024 09:28
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a dingus posted:I've never heard this before. Is there any evidence for it or is this just goon stupids? Goons LOVE communism, comrade!
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Mar 20, 2024 11:00
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Bulky Bartokomous posted:Goons LOVE communism, comrade! I was hoping to escape this engagement, just like Hitler did in 1945 when he fled to Argentina.
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Mar 20, 2024 12:12
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Cojawfee posted:What's that sound? IT'S AN F-22 GET OFF THE ROAD! We would have won ww2 much faster
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Mar 20, 2024 13:59
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[BIG HEADLINE posted:It does beg the question about how much better the Soviet Union would've done in WW2 had Stalin not The Russians never found a problem they couldn't throw a squadron of IL2's at. They did their best work at low altitude.
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Mar 20, 2024 16:50
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Skyl3lazer posted:We would have won ww2 much faster I love the war thunder videos of what would happen on dday with various modern planes. It basically becomes what if a b-17 was also a fighter jet
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Mar 20, 2024 16:56
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Also by 1945 everyone was just sick of this poo poo and just wanted it to end. Except Patton, he just loving looooved war. No one wanted to keep fighting, starting a war with the Soviets. I love that in BoB when they get the news the war in Europe is over, they're just standing around, and I think Nixon comes up and says "hey guys, Hitler ended himself, wars over" and everyones just "okay" because as I said, they're just tired.
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Mar 20, 2024 18:12
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He should have done it a long time ago, would have saved us all this trouble. Or something like that! god band of brothers is so good. why couldn't MotA be that good  i know pacific had mixed reception when it aired but has now been reappraised better. i wonder if, somethow, MotA will also be seen as better in years to come. ahh i'm just trying to keep a false hope alive.
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Mar 20, 2024 18:29
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MOTA will get a reappraisal down the road when we compare it to how dire TV will be 10 years from now.
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Mar 20, 2024 18:41
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Mr. Grapes! posted:The arguments are always a little pointless because the Allies depended on each other in so many ways. But, they are interesting to think about. But the statement that started this whole thing wasn't "who'd win in a war," "who'd win ww3" or "how important was lend lease." A goon complained that they made Rosie land in the middle of rando russian soldiers walking around and shooting people because the red army was actually a massive and efficient force at that point, certainly the most efficient one. And said goon is right. First week February 1945 the red army has just finished the vistula-oder offensive in which over 2 million red army troops advanced 500km in 3 weeks, destroying or pushing back almost 40 german divisions. For comparison, on the western front the allies were just recovering from the battle of bulge in which problems with the allied line allowed the 21 german divisions to encircle allied troops in bastogne (portrayed in an episode of the same name in BoB). Like, real world Rosie landed behind Russian lines because when he bailed out the red army was already at the oder, amassing millions of people for the battle of berlin. I don't know how that is controversial and how it elicits all these "ah, but the navy" stuff.
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Mar 20, 2024 18:56
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Arc Hammer posted:MOTA will get a reappraisal down the road when we compare it to how dire TV will be 10 years from now. When we get the My Tank is Fight miniseries from a dementia addled Tom Hanks and it's nothing but French and Dutch people cheering as M1 Abrams roll down the street, demolishing tigers and panthers.
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Mar 20, 2024 19:33
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The historicity of Rosie dropping on top of Soviets and getting to see death camps firsthand aside, the scene where the POWs cross paths with a cattle car was legitimately horrifying and got the point across a lot harder.
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Mar 20, 2024 20:18
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a dingus posted:Cool. I know Americans and probably folks in western Europe under appreciate the contributions of the red army. I know they were a powerhouse but to say they were by far the most organized and effective seems just as wrong as going "USA, USA #1 #1 WHOAAAYEAHH!!!! Had Churchill got his way and convinced the Americans to rearm the surviving Nazis and declare war on the USSR, we'd have archival footage of Zhukov parading through Paris, and the awareness that the US absolutely could not have won a conventional war in Europe against the USSR at the time shaped American defense policy for the rest of the Cold War. It's one of the main reasons US policy for use of nuclear weapons in the European theatre in the event of war was 'early and often'. Particularly given that the French Forces of the Interior and the Yugoslavian, Italian, and Greek resistance movements all had massive communist presence and Tito hadn't fallen out with Stalin yet; France would have almost certainly imploded into a civil war instantly (it almost did), Italy probably not far behind (the Communists came in a very close third place in the 1946 elections, behind Proletarian Unity in second place), and Greece actually did implode into a civil war basically the instant WW2 ended. This is more than just hypothetical, too, people on both sides did actually put quite a bit of thought into the possibility and Allied assessments of their chances were very much not good. The British drew up plans for it and determined that they would need to achieve complete surprise in order for the plan to have any chance of success, that they'd need to win quickly and decisively (the war would need to be concluded within a couple of months), and that if it dragged out into a protracted war they would almost certainly lose, with the planning staff calling Allied chances of victory in a total war scenario 'fanciful'. The whole plan ended up getting tossed in the trash without any serious effort put into its implementation. Notably the planning that was done called for both France and Italy to be pretty much abandoned as unreliable and for the British, Americans, and rearmed German troops to instead attempt a fighting withdrawal to the Low Countries. To bring it back to the subject of this show, one of the few areas the US and Brits did have a decisive superiority over the Soviets in at the time was in strategic bombing, with the American strategic bomber force alone massively outnumbering the Soviet one before you even take the RAF into account - but it wouldn't have mattered much because of distance; they couldn't have meaningfully scratched Soviet industry or resource production even if they had ten times as many bombers, it was just too far away from any possible basing location. Mister Bates fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Mar 20, 2024 |
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Mar 20, 2024 20:53
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Mister Bates posted:it was just too far away from any possible basing location. B-29's out of Iraq and Iran. Could have probably pushed Aircraft carriers into the Black Sea and Barents Sea as well.
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Mar 20, 2024 21:05
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I assume that Europe would just be completely hosed because the US industry was untouchable as well.
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Mar 20, 2024 21:07
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Even in an Allied best-case scenario, where they achieve complete strategic surprise and the Soviets do not suspect the war is about to break out until the instant they start shooting (which the British planners determined was completely necessary for the plan to succeed), it would have absolutely left Europe even more of a complete ruin than it already was, led to millions more dead on both sides, and would have probably been very bad for American political ambitions in Europe even if they had somehow won. The US were greeted as liberators in real life, but that goodwill would run out real quick if they immediately kicked off the next war before the fires from the last one had finished burning, even completely discounting the fact that the communists in a bunch of the territory they'd just liberated were both legitimately popular and also armed and organized. Even if they won, I don't really see how you manage to hold that territory long-term. The Marshall Plan was brilliant and worked beyond anyone's wildest dreams in real life, but in real life they were assisting the rebuilding of countries that were broadly supportive and willing recipients of the rebuilding, they weren't having to also fight a continent-wide insurgency at the same time. The Soviets could also definitely not reach out across the ocean and touch the US, but it's not like they would need to in that scenario, they aren't under any time pressure and a war of attrition favors them, they could afford to wait it out in a way the Japanese or Germans could not. This is all pretty much in line with British assessments in reality, which was that even the unrealistic, pie-in-the-sky best-case scenario was just a miserable and bloody stalemate that the West gets no particular benefit from. Nukes would later completely change this calculus, of course, but at the time there weren't a ton of those to throw around and delivery options were limited. WW2 was really, really, truly, incomprehensibly big, and by the end every side involved was exhausted, and every resource expended, to a degree that's hard to comprehend today. Only the most rabid, mouth-frothing anticommunists - Patton, etc. - actually wanted to keep going, everyone else understood that total war just wasn't sustainable for much longer, even if that meant ceding a bunch of ground to the Soviets. (also the Brits did not realize it at the time, but their intelligence services had been really, thoroughly infiltrated by communists, and the Soviets were definitely aware the Brits were considering the possibility and even some of the specifics of the plans being thrown around, so surprise would not have been on their side) Mister Bates fucked around with this message at 21:56 on Mar 20, 2024 |
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Mar 20, 2024 21:52
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Wasn't the "We should attack the Soviets right now" thing mostly Churchill a few others and and not something mainstream that the overall Western Command was seriously thinking of? Its like pretending Operation Northwoods was something that totally was going to happen. Like the chances of it actually happening was pretty much zero, because as I said, people were just sick and tired of war. Something that always bothered me in BoB, what was Bull chowing down on when he was stuck in that Dutch stable? He opened up the butt of his rifle, and where the tube of oil is meant to be, he pulls out something and bites into it. I figure its meant to be a cigar, but a cigar is not chewing tobacco, it would be awful to chew on. Some kind of breadstick or ration thingy?
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Mar 21, 2024 00:01
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twistedmentat posted:Something that always bothered me in BoB, what was Bull chowing down on when he was stuck in that Dutch stable? He opened up the butt of his rifle, and where the tube of oil is meant to be, he pulls out something and bites into it. I figure its meant to be a cigar, but a cigar is not chewing tobacco, it would be awful to chew on. Some kind of breadstick or ration thingy? It's a bit of cigar, dude is jonesing for some nicotine and can't light up. That or a plug of chewing tobacco
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Mar 21, 2024 01:06
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jisforjosh posted:It's a bit of cigar, dude is jonesing for some nicotine and can't light up. I hope it was a plug, because biting on a chunk of cigar and chewing on it would be like having a mouthful of sawdust. Someone above mentioned the scene with the replacements where Guarnere comes up to the new guys, and we know he's the biggest rear end in a top hat in the regiment from his behavior in episode 1 and 2, but the second he finds out that Babe is from South Philly and they grew up very near each other is great. Oh this guy the real bastard, the guy who's going to treat everyone like poo poo, though that gets taken by Cobb as was mentioned, but still, its great seeing him tell the new guys the story about the plane named Doris and that to listen to Bull. The episode of BoB i like the least is the last patrol, and that's almost entirely because when I had cable with TMN (what shows HBO stuff on Canadian TV at the time), BoB was in pretty constant rotation, but every time i turned it on, it was that episode. I do not need to see them be lovely to Webster for the 100th time.
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Mar 21, 2024 03:05
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I actually like The Last Patrol a lot. It's some much needed downtime (while being bombarded and taking night missions) after the utter hell in Bastogne and The Breaking Point.
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Mar 21, 2024 03:11
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I don't like it either because they treat Webster like poo poo.
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Mar 21, 2024 03:18
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God I remember The Movie Network before it turned into Crave. Pretty sure it got some films before their home release which was pretty cool.
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Mar 21, 2024 03:26
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Bulky Bartokomous posted:Goons LOVE communism, comrade! Goons love the traditional view of history, no matter what the subject. I've read all these posts and I don't even know who to reply to. It's all the most traditional view it's all stuff that was discredited 30 years ago like holy poo poo it's loving breathtaking how little you guys know about WW2 like I literally took a breath and said holy poo poo
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Mar 21, 2024 04:02
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Tom Hanks would love you loving people
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Mar 21, 2024 04:03
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Just finished the finale, and gently caress it: I loved that episode and enjoyed the show overall.
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Mar 21, 2024 04:23
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twistedmentat posted:I hope it was a plug, because biting on a chunk of cigar and chewing on it would be like having a mouthful of sawdust. Yeah every time I watch my first thought is cigar, except it would be suicide to light that up, but then he starts chewing on it like food which confuses me (you can probably tell I don't chew tobacco or have any idea what the gently caress a "plug" is!). Though it does remind there is another scene earlier where you see the troops hanging out waiting for the next mission, and they're trying out the German rations and they find them disgusting... but when one of them complains about how hard the bread is another is quick to snatch it off of him because goddammit, food is food and they're hungry!
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Mar 21, 2024 04:25
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Jerusalem posted:Yeah every time I watch my first thought is cigar, except it would be suicide to light that up, but then he starts chewing on it like food which confuses me (you can probably tell I don't chew tobacco or have any idea what the gently caress a "plug" is!). Yea I always wondered if the tube was actually spreadable cheese or he was accidentally eating boot polish. Actually, I've always wondered about nazi rations. Steven1989 has not reviewed any Heer rations, just some stuka chocolate so I have no idea what the Germans were given to eat when in the field. Or Soviet food, though I think the Soviets were as good as the Americans in trying to make sure there were field kitchens set up to supply the troops with hot meals as much as possible. That might of been propaganda photos though.
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Mar 21, 2024 05:32
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weren't nazi rations basically meth + crackers
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Mar 21, 2024 06:26
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