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I don't know why everybody bags on fraktur. Once you get used to it it's a perfectly workable font.
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Oct 29, 2016 01:33
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Hogge Wild posted:Nice effort post! I have a Soviet era book that goes into this, they discuss how the Americans refused to sell high volume smelting furnaces, so the Soviets just overloaded the lovely small ones they did sell like no big deal because of the high quality of Soviet construction and skilled Soviet workers.
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Oct 29, 2016 01:37
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Ensign Expendable posted:I have a Soviet era book that goes into this, they discuss how the Americans refused to sell high volume smelting furnaces, so the Soviets just overloaded the lovely small ones they did sell like no big deal because of the high quality of Soviet construction and skilled Soviet workers. Marxism fuel can melt steel beams.
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Oct 29, 2016 01:48
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Fat Samurai posted:At this point, isn't it better to just rename the thing to fool the crew, or stave off bad luck or whatever? Provided you don't scrap the drat thing given its track record, of course. Worked for the Me-410 
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Oct 29, 2016 03:12
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Worked for the Me-210 
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Oct 29, 2016 03:17
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Any recommendations on a book about Queen Elizabeth II? I just watched the netflix trailer with my girlfriend and it sort of sparked my interest. She's a head of state (or figurehead of state) that has been alive through alot of poo poo.... Seems like she'd be an interesting historical figure to read about unless I'm mistaken...any recommendations? Also, looking for good Grant or Sherman books if you guys got anything. Blowing my bonus on some reading
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Oct 29, 2016 05:11
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Have you read Grants biography? It has strategy, reminiscing, and bitching about lost causers 130 years before it was popular.
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Oct 29, 2016 05:54
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Yeah grants bio is pretty much stop one. The best part is that he knew he was dying when he wrote it so he straight dgaf about the politics of it all.
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Oct 29, 2016 08:28
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Waroduce posted:Any recommendations on a book about Queen Elizabeth II? https://books.google.fi/books?id=j3QVOW9EpikC&lpg=PP1&hl=fi&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false
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Oct 29, 2016 12:23
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chitoryu12 posted:What happens when someone decides to introduce the semi-automatic revolution to a concept from HEY GAL's time period?  holy shiiiiiiit
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Oct 29, 2016 12:50
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Nenonen posted:Here you go: lol
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Oct 29, 2016 13:35
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Has anyone read Hornfischer's new book yet, The Fleet at Flood Tide? Strongly considering picking it up for Christmas since my extended family complains every year that I never want anything for Christmas.
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Oct 29, 2016 15:19
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Polyakov posted:Concluding remarks. Cool! A good post. I think I agree with your conclusions, too. It's one hell of an unfriendly org chart, though, when you have prison design bureaus. The Petlyakov Pe-2 was a twin engine light bomber/fighter the Soviets had in WW2, and is kinda like the Ju 88, DH Mosquito etc in that it was this great all rounder aircraft. It was designed by a prison bureau.
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Oct 29, 2016 17:07
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Nebakenezzer posted:It's one hell of an unfriendly org chart, though, when you have prison design bureaus. I've spent a large part of my afternoon reading about the sale of grain during the 1932 famines in order to pay for imported equipment from America, i fear it only gets grimmer from here.
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Oct 29, 2016 19:06
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Hypothetical question time: 1. If D-Day failed and the Allies switched their focus to Italy, could they have actually pushed past the Alps into Austria? Would air superiority sufficiently slow down the German's ability to supply and move around that the defencive advantages of Mountains would've been neutralized? 2. If the Berlin airlift never happened and someone else was in command in Korea who stopped at the parallel would the Cold War still happened? I think Khrushchev had wanted detente and Eisenhower was friendly with Zhukov but McCarthyism and the Korean war/Berlin airlift kept that from happening. Was the Cold War an inevitable result of the Soviet system or a result of them picking fights?
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Oct 29, 2016 19:23
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Is it the complete personal memories of grant?
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Oct 29, 2016 19:26
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Raenir Salazar posted:Hypothetical question time: If the Nazis were really Jewish wizards and Chang Kai Shek had 3 war dragons that he raised from eggs found on the Tibetan Plateau, would the A-Bombs have been necessary? Hypotheticals are really, really, really pointless. We have no way to know. You could argue any conclusion with no real way to disprove it. Historical hypotheticals are basically masturbation - fun for a while but ultimately pointless and if you do it too much it chafes like you wouldn't believe.
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Oct 29, 2016 19:42
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Raenir Salazar posted:Hypothetical question time: depends on who's black and gay
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Oct 29, 2016 19:44
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Cyrano4747 posted:If the Nazis were really Jewish wizards and Chang Kai Shek had 3 war dragons that he raised from eggs found on the Tibetan Plateau, would the A-Bombs have been necessary? Hypotheticals do offer a good opportunity to look at what lead to an outcome and what merely supported it. I think poo poo like "could the Japanese have actually taken Midway in a contested landing if they had won the naval battle" is a good hypothetical where you can discuss the major issues pretty well.
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Oct 29, 2016 20:05
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please make a new thread for hypotheticals
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Oct 29, 2016 20:06
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I dunno, I think both questions are reasonable if ill phrased. How much have mountains/hills mattered to the might of the US military on one hand and was the Cold War at all plausibly avoidable on the other?
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Oct 29, 2016 20:07
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Keep em in the d&d thread imo
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Oct 29, 2016 20:09
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Khrushchev actually visited the US and there were plans that Eisenhower would return the favor, but then the whole U-2 thing happened. My understanding is that the relationship significantly thawed after Khrushchev visited before that catastrophe. He toured IBM or something and was bored by the factory ("they had computers in the Soviet Union too") but was blown away by the cafeteria. He also bonded with a corn farmer they visited which was charming.
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Oct 29, 2016 20:49
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What is a good introduction to the Napoleonic era? A good biography of Bonaparte would be great too!
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Oct 29, 2016 20:54
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good grief i took a look at the dd thread, why would anyone want to discuss or debate anything in that kind of atmosphere? well at least effectronica is banned and probated for a month
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Oct 29, 2016 21:24
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Cythereal posted:Has anyone read Hornfischer's new book yet, The Fleet at Flood Tide? Strongly considering picking it up for Christmas since my extended family complains every year that I never want anything for Christmas. I'm about halfway through and it's been excellent, I highly recommend. Very readable and tells exciting individual-level stories, but still rigorous history. If there's a weakness it's that it's told almost exclusively from the American viewpoint - clearly his sourcing was a lot stronger there, which is perhaps understandable considering how many Japanese participants in the events in the Marianas didn't survive the war so they could write their war memoirs or be interviewed by historians like Hornfischer.
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Oct 29, 2016 21:36
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Raenir Salazar posted:Hypothetical question time: Had D-Day somehow failed, the alternative wasn't focusing on Italy, but instead pouring more resources into the already-planned Operation Dragoon. Italy itself was basically a dead-end; going through the Alps would have severely eroded the Western Allies' advantage in manpower and logistics.
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Oct 29, 2016 21:44
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This is going to be about American and other foreign involvement in the industrialising of Russia, this is going to turn out to be a little longer than I anticipated but I managed to find more information than I thought I would on the matter. I’m also going to show you lots of pictures of factories because I think factories are neat. There are 3 major historical figures involved in a greater way than all others in American assistance for Russian industrialisation, these people are: Albert Kahn of Albert Kahn Associates, the most significant American industrial architectural firm in history, Henry Ford of the Ford Motor Company, and Saul G Bron, chairman of the Amtorg (Russian state trade organisation in the US), all of them were involved in the process to a great degree, but mostly speaking only one of them has ever really been heard of. Early Context and efforts. Russia was a very poor and backward nation coming out of the Communist Revolution, in 1924 before he was anywhere near power Hitler had the following to say when he contemplated a German-Russian war against the Capitalist powers: “Russia would completely drop out of this war as a technical factor. . . The universal motorization of the world, which will be overwhelmingly decisive in the next war, could hardly be met by us. For not only has Germany itself remained shamefully far behind in this most important field, but with the little it has, it would have to support Russia, which even today cannot call its own a single factory in which can be manufactured a motor vehicle that really runs.” He was largely right in this assessment, until 1930 or so the USSR had no tank factories, they had very few tractor factories, their designs indeed all came from reverse engineering (read stealing) foreign tractor designs (from Ford), Indeed they held an assessment of lots of foreign tractors to decide which they wanted to build and they selected the Ford model. When Fords head of production (Charles Sorensen) came to visit the USSR in 1929 he was taken to see the Krasny Putilovets plant in Leningrad and immediately recognised that the tractor they were building was the Fordson tractor.  They had bought one, took it to bits and tried to reconstrruct the production line, unfortunately manufacturing engineering is not that easy, they were running at a capacity of around 20 tractors a month, (This being a flagship factory they were proud enough of to show an important foreign dignitary who they were entering into trade negotiations with. But yet in 3 years from that date they would have up and running the second biggest car factory in the world and the three biggest tank factories in the world, not to mention the various other power plants, plane factories, hydroelectric dams and other industrial facilities. The first attempt of the Soviet government was in 1926, where having realised that they did not have the domestic expertise they approached Ford to build a planned factory outside Stalingrad with a capacity of 20’000 tractors a year. They were desperate enough that they offered Ford the place as a Concession (Where Ford would hold sovereignty over the land, a common arrangement in the poorer countries of the world in the early to mid 1900’s). However Ford were not interested because of an action taken by the Revolution. Russia had nationalised all previous concessions and foreign factories which had incurred significant losses for foreign companies, they were not confident they wouldn’t be ripped off again, this combined with the Soviets desire for a credit line from Ford to build the planned plant meant that they were shown the door. The nationalisation of company assets was one of the large reasons behind the US not recognising the Soviet government and it would bite the Russian’s relatively hard, companies were not forbidden from doing business with Russia but they were told that they were to do so at their own risk. To attempt to secure American company assistance the Russians dispatched a trade delegation in 1926, this is what would become the Amtorg trading group, it was not yet headed by Bron, in what was typical of Russian approaches at the time they sent 8 people to the US to negotiate of whom non could speak English. They bumbled around for 6 months getting nowhere until Bron was appointed as chairman of Amtorg and set off for America in May 1927. This coincided with an important event, Scotland Yard raided the All Russian Co-Operative Society (ARCOS) in London for Espionage activities and had the place shut down, this caused a break in Soviet UK relationships and a halt in trade activity, so Russia was desperately looking for a new place from which it could buy advanced machinery. Bron would waste no time in setting to work and between 1927 and 1928 the value of American trade with Russia would rise from $34 million to $80 million, I will cover his activities more later along with companies like General Electric, Newport News and DuPont among others, I’m going to stick to the activities of Albert Kahn Associates first, as they were the most vital to the whole effort. Albert Kahn and Kahn associates enter the scene. I’m going to start by detailing who this man was, and why he was so important. He was born in Germany in 1869 and like many like him his family emigrated to Detroit in 1880, he started out as the office boy for the architects of John Scott & Co where he worked until he apprenticed at Mason and Rice architectural firm and rose to become their chief designer. He left their firm in 1895 and started his own company with two other designers, he stayed there for 7 years then left that to found his own company Albert Kahn Associates. What he did was he pioneered the concept of standardized and modular architecture, before Kahn factory design wasn’t really what Architects did, he would observe in the year before his death in 1942: “When I began, the real architects would design only museums, cathedrals, capitols, monuments. The office boy was considered good enough to do factory buildings. I’m still that office boy designing factories. I have no dignity to be impaired.” He was essentially a man who designed factories as an engineer, he looked at what production lines need: space, light, modularity and flexibility and made buildings like that, there are a few features of factories that emerged from Khan that are recognisable today.   Part of Chelyabinsk showing the toothed roof arangement.  The first picture shows the glass siding of the River Rouge plant of Ford (Largest automobile plant in the world, the second and third show what is called a sawtooth roof truss, both of these features were popularised by Albert Kahn, they are designed to let the maximum amount of light into a building, his use of steel framework allowed this to take place and also allowed the removal of large pillars that would impede workable space on the factory flaw, the sawtooth roof is so synonymous with factories that it is used in factory images like the third one in that sequence and anyone immediately understands it to be a factory. Kahn built factories for: Chevrolet, Oldsmobile, Cadillac, Packard, Hudson, Chrysler, DeSoto and most famously for Ford, where he designed all the major Ford plants, especially at River Rouge. He also built hospitals, banks and churches and other things. Roughly 20% of all major industrial buildings built in the US throughout the 1930’s were designed by Kahn associates.  River Rouge The reason I harp on River Rouge so much is partly because it is a huge factory, but it was the thing that really got him noticed by the Russians. It was the model of what the Soviets wanted a factory to be and the model of the factories that would form cities around them in the Second World War. It took a big pile of raw materials in at one end, and then across four miles of factory would churn out cars at the other end, it was a fully vertically integrated factory. The Soviets saw that his designs were focused around the mass production line which they greatly wanted to emulate, he based the design of his factories around the Taylorist theory of Scientific management, (where workflows are designed and studied) and Fordist mass production, both of these ideologies were considered at that time to be Politically Neutral by the soviets, capable of use to forward Capitalism or Communism, Indeed Fordism would enter the Russian lexicon as Fordizatsia, used frequently in soviet propaganda of the time as slang for technological progress, and Scientific Management would become a cornerstone of the soviet system for the entirety of the Cold War. They were especially attracted by his focus on: Practicality, cost and speed, Russian architects at the time were engaged in ideological debates about constructivism and were less interested in actually building something quickly. Kahn was offered in 1929 a contract for the design and build of the Stalingrad Tractor Plant, the one that would later be involved in heavy street fighting during the battle of Stalingrad, Kahn’s design guided by the Russians would prove a great aid to that fight but we will come to that later. After some agonising about it he accepted the contract, it was heavily implied in the negotiations that if things went well they would become more heavily involved in Soviet industrialisation. Indeed Kahn associates would become consulting architects for all Soviet industrial construction in a contract signed in 1930. Reflecting on his decision later Kahn said: “The Russian people—regardless of their form of government—were entitled to help after all their generations of suffering under the czars. It was the right thing to do.” Which reflected a fairly common view of the time, it is also probable that when offered the chance to essentially shape an entire countries industrial landscape that he would have found it impossible to refuse, (I know I would).  The Kahn headed Design Bureau. The contract for the STP was a comprehensive affair, where they would prepare designs and assist in procurement of American construction materials and equipment for the $4 million new plant while providing all the construction supervisors and installation specialists (Russia at the time just did not have the people experienced enough to do these jobs), they would also train Soviet personnel in American methods of architecture and design. For this work they would be paid $130’000 plus four percent of the cost of any additional buildings. Henry Ford also makes a small appearance, perhaps feeling left out of this grand new project that he rejected in 1926, offering significant technical and patent assistance to the Russians now that they had his favourite architect on board with the following: “No matter where industry prospers, whether in India or China, or Russia, the more profit there will be for everyone, including us. All the world is bound to catch some good from it.” In Russia this was announced to great fanfare in the Trade and Industry Newspaper (Torgovo-pro-myshlennaia gazeta), where it was written that Albert Kahn’s assistance: “Would guarantee that the plant would be built on schedule and benefit from all American modern technical achievements.” This was during a period where accepted writing in public in Russia involved Self-Criticism, broadly on the basis of “look how good we are we can criticise ourselves” (It wouldn’t last). Two months after the signing of the contract two senior engineers arrived in Moscow with preliminary drawings, and six weeks after that four more arrived with complete plans. Stalin was already planning for more factories to be built by Kahn associates and crucially a new design Bureau was set up in Moscow which would be equipped by Kahn associates under their direct control that would supervise industrial construction and train Russian engineers and architects, this was the design bureau through which Kahn associates became the consulting architects for all industrial construction in the Soviet Union. At the time the plan envisaged: “$2 billion dollars in 1930 alone and including the erection of four large car, truck, and motorcycle factories; nine tractor and farm machinery plants; and over 500 other plants and factories for light and heavy industry.” The Soviets saw the highly standardised plans produced by Kahn and saw that they were veryu compatible with centralised planning, all factories could be built on a set of standardised principles which could be used to catapult industry rapidly forward. The design bureau of which Kahn associates was the head was the Gosroektstroi (State design and Construction), it was the largest design bureau of any kind in Russia at the time, and was exactly what the state planners of the USSR needed to focus design for their central planning, it could in their words provide: “One powerful organization which would employ American expertise in its work and at the same time pass on this expertise to as many construction organizations and young Soviet specialists as possible.” Gosroektstroi was housed in the heart of Moscow at 2/10 Cherkassy pereulok in a 5 story building, the street in question is just off the Lubyanka square, in a little bit of a tragic historical coincidence for many of the Russians who would pass through its classrooms that we will get too in due course. Around 2’500 Soviets would be trained in what was termed the Russian American System (russko-amerikanskaia sistema), Russian architectural methods were developed here and then distributed throughout the countries, throughout Russia. Kahn engineers would supervise over 3000 soviet engineers and tens of thousands of soviet draftsmen and architects, this became the single largest architectural organisation in the world. It was a stunning achievement really given that when they arrived in Moscow there was only one blueprinting machine in the whole of Moscow, there were no drafting boards, no drafing paper and even no pencils to be found when Gosroekstroi was first established, there was no heat for much of the day even in winter and food was often hard to come by. It’s a testament to the efficiency of Kahn associates and the intelligence and enthusiasm of the Russians who came in untrained and inexperienced in projects of this scale that it worked as well as it did. There was also a parallel organisation in Detroit which hosted Russian trainees on a much smaller scale, it worked with the main Kahn associates office and produced several of the designs for the most important plants, these include: Stalingrad and Chelyabinsk tractor plants, Moscow and Nizhy Novgorod Avtostroi truck assembly plants, Gospodshipnik bearing plant in Moscow and the Stalmost structural steel plant in Verkhnyaya Salda (this plant being particularly important as it supplied the structural steel to build the rest.) Stalingrad Tractor Plant.  One thing that will become apparent is that the factories from the air all look very similar, this is because they are, the three great tractor factories especially were built to very similar specifications, bear this picture in mind when the aerial shot of Chelyabinsk appears later. This factory was designed in Detroit, due to tool limitations and training limitations among soviet builders they were very careful to get the plans right so that no adjustments needed to be carried out on the fly, there was also a need for speed as the steel needed to be fabricated in the US, shipped to Stalingrad and assembled there before the winter months hit. (While a great problem here they would be even greater at Chelyabinsk). The projected capacity increased from 10’000 to 50’000 over its design, twice the capacity of the plant it was based on, The International Harvester Milwaukee plant also designed by Kahn.  Note the similar long production halls that would have held a chain drive production line.  In this construction there was one American to oversee every 20-30 workers, 780 americans and their families came over and formed the largest American colony in the USSR, Russia evened opened a Traktorstroi recruiting office in Detroit at 255 West Congress street, right next to where the Tucson convention centre lies today. The slogan “To catch up with and surpass America” was plastered all over the works with calls to “Maintain American Tempo” at the time the newspaper of VSNKh (Supreme soviet of the National economy, superior soviet of the peoples economy) wrote in public: “It is very important to note that the American specialists are not just doing consulting; they are actually supervising the entire construction. The shortage of our own qualified workers has forced us to increase as much as possible the number of American technical specialists invited to work at the Stalingrad Plant.” This being part of the campaign of self-criticism (samokritika) popular at the time, many people would come to regret passages like that when Stalin begun his campaign against cosmopolitanism, but at the time the Russians were very glad to speak of American assistance. The buildings were constructed concurrently, far more efficient than the usual Russian practice of sequential building, the plant itself consisting of a 1300 by 300 foot assembly hall, a 500 by 450 foot forge, and a 700 by 500 foot foundry as its major features. It was completed in 6 months, ahead of the 18 months forecast, and upon its completion stalin sent the following messages: To the Russian workers: “Greetings and congratulations on their victory to the workers and leaders of the first giant tractor plant in the U.S.S.R. The fifty thousand tractors which you are to give our country every year are fifty thousand shells shattering the old bourgeois world.” To the Americans: “Thank you to our technical teachers, the American specialists and technicians who aided us in construction of this plant.” It is also amusing to note that the chain drive production line that was housed in the Stalingrad tractor factory was once described by Lenin as the Quintessence of capitalist exploitation. A chain drive production like moves the workpiece along the line at a given rate so the worker has however long the workpiece is at his station to do his work before it automatically moves to the next station. All along its production the soviets were making sure it was easily convertible to tank production, the Americans were aware of this despite very studiously not having been told it, but largely didn’t care, eventually this factory would produce the T-34/76 tank coming up to WW2, it would continue production right up until the German army stormed it in 1942. Kahn recollected that his soviet customers insisted he build plants “with tremendously heavyu foundations and extra strengthening steel throughout the construction” and when he told them it wasn’t necessary they told him it was for the winter, he thought they were crazy until his brother told him that it was for war production purposes, many of these factories would be ruggedized beyond what was necessary for simple structural reasons I would guess to withstand bomb hits and keep going. Kahn did report on this to the US at the time when he gave a presentation to the Detroit chapter of the American Architectural Institute. Kharkov tractor factory. There isn’t as much to say about Kharkov, but after the completing of Stalingrad the Americans moved on to Kharkov and Chelyabinsk. Kharkov was essentially a copy of Stalingrad, but with changes and improvements made to account for shortages, there was a shortage of steel so much concrete was substituted, the steel in question at Kharkov came from Germany this time due to the fact that the Russians could more easily obtain credit from them. The notable think about Kharkov is the extensive amount of essentially child labor used in its construction and the speed which it was accomplished, its workforce was described by its Superintendant Leon Swaijian (later awarded the Order of Lenin for this work): “Professors, police force, and young bands of pioneers, were brought in by the hundreds every day to do unpaid work on the construction of the plant” Young pioneers being essentially schoolchildren, (What you call child slavery, I call a glorious display of comradeship from all citizens of the motherland), a vast quantity of unpaid labour went into getting the Kharkov plant completed in just over a year, given the difference in working with concrete and working with steel framework this is an even more impressive achievement than the 6 months of Stalingrad. Chelyabinsk Tractor factory (Tankograd)  Note the similarities with Stalingrad, the long production hall holding the chain drive production line and the highly integrated transport via rail leading in and out. Chelyabinsk was designed in Detroit with the Soviet engineer based there, Kahn Associates threw out their original design which was scattered workshops and changed it to three colossal structures housing all the facilities, changed the concrete construction to steel trusses to increase floor space, they intended to make Chelyabinsk as flexible as possible. Below is a picture of the forge shop at Chelyabinsk showing just the scale of the interiors along with the main assembly line building.   The steel construction at Chelyabinsk was a far-sighted move of the Russians to support, the foreman Lovin risked arrest supporting the original design of steel from Kahn as opposed to concrete, the stronger construction of steel allowed heavier loads to be suspended as tanks got fatter in WW2 without new gantry cranes being fitted. Steel at the time was a lot more expensive than concrete and Russia was going through a currency crisis. Chelyabinsk was the first attempt by the Russians to build a plant completely off their own whack, this was not just a matter of national pride, but because speed was of the essence, they broke ground based on telegraphed measurements from Detroit, however quickly the plant was in crisis, construction started in late 1930, and in 1931 a letter was written to Za Industrializatsiiu saying that the project was on the verge of collapse. American engineers rushed to the site along with Leon Swajian from Kharkov and it was completed in just over a year from that point, the first tractors rolled off the line in 1933. The design of the tractors from this factory was achieved with cooperation from Caterpillar engineers, and the design of much of the factory was based on the caterpillar plant in Illinois. Chelyabinsk was unique in that the buildings were linked by four miles of underground tunnel to enable construction to continue during the winters, during which snow had been known to reach up to six feet deep. One very important innovation was achieved at Chelyabinsk, the diesel tractor engine was developed there, they previously ran on Naptha, very volatile and inefficient, but they switched to Diesel, perfecting their manufacturing techniques for the tanks they would build during the war, unlike Germany who failed to perfect a diesel tank and providing one significant advantage to Russian tank designs. Chelyabinsk would construct the SU-152, and the T-34, it would also be the first to construct the KV-1. It would be merged with the Kirov plant from Leningrad and the diesel engine factory from Kharkov to form the Chelyabinsk Kirov plant, leading to the nickname in WW2 of Tankograd.  Chelyabinsk on the right, showing Kharkov in Ukraine and Leningrad. Payment and the end. While all this is very nice in theory, Kahn and the many US companies that provided equipment needed to be paid, the Rouble was not worth anything and so they were paid in dollars. The money for this essentially came from starving the Russian people, (Though it is very unlikely that the Americans knew about this.). A mass famine swept Russia caused by widespread collectivisation of the farms and grain confiscation by the state, this grain was sold internationally to get the foreign exchange necessary to pay for industrialisation. The politburo decreed in 1930: “Timely implementation of the mandatory grain collection quota is vital for industrial development in our country and most and foremost for such industrial giants as Magnitostroi and Cheliabstroi.” Stalin wrote to Molotov in 1930: "Each day we are shipping 1–1.5 million poods [16–24 thousand tons] of grain. I think this is not enough. We must immediately raise the daily export quota to 3–4 million poods at a minimum. Otherwise we risk being left without our new metallurgical and machine-building plants. . . . In short, we must accelerate grain export at a mad tempo.” Even with this acceleration the Soviets were running out of money, they jettisoned most foreign workers in 1932 when they stopped paying in hard currency, this included Albert Kahn and his associates, efforts were made to get a new deal but with the harsh conditions of Russia there was no inclination on their part to do the Russians any favours. The Russians went on to secure German credit for steel and machine tools, and returned to the UK for favourable credit terms there for orders along with France. American cooperation essentially ended in 1932 after 3 very productive years. A book was written which credited Kahn and American engineers by VD Tsvetaev, covering the history of industrial design, but when Stalin started to rewrite the history books the book was banned and the author arrested. All mention of Kahn was erased along with other americans which I will cover more later. Kahn Associates achievements. Kahn associates were responsible for the design of the 3 biggest soviet tank factories, the Gorky automobile complex of GAZ and the Moscow factory of AZLK (the Moskovitch factory), the power plant in Yakutsk, Air factories in Tomsk (where the first Russian helicopters were produced) and over 500 other directly identifiable projects (Most other factories followed similar principles to the ones designed by Kahn but were not directly designed by him, the nature of factories were state secrets in the USSR). They set the basic structure of soviet factories that would last throughout the Cold War and trained eventually over 4000 architects, draftsmen and engineers. It is hard to overstate the overwhelming influence Kahn and his associates had on Soviet industry. Next time, Henry Ford, Saul Bron and other American companies. My fingers ache (plus its starting to get excessively long) so I am leaving the rest of this until another time, Kahn was not the only American to aid the Russians, and the overall ending to the people who went through the training of Kahn associates needs to be covered. Though as you may have guessed it wasn’t pleasant. Polyakov fucked around with this message at 22:08 on Oct 29, 2016 |
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Oct 29, 2016 21:51
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Wow. That was a tremendously insightful post into a little known part of Russian history. Thanks for writing that!
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Oct 29, 2016 22:05
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So the D&D thread on the atomic bombs is a clusterfuck, but I'm actually interested in the OP's question. Does anyone have any info about how the press particularly Japanese, German and Soviet covered the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
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Oct 29, 2016 22:14
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Yeah, that's really interesting, thanks!
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Oct 29, 2016 22:20
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Acebuckeye13 posted:Had D-Day somehow failed, the alternative wasn't focusing on Italy, but instead pouring more resources into the already-planned Operation Dragoon. Italy itself was basically a dead-end; going through the Alps would have severely eroded the Western Allies' advantage in manpower and logistics. Huh. I never knew the allies actually did navally invade southern France. I just assumed it all kinda fell after Normandy/Paris fell. Pushing up France from the south only sounds painful though, when the Nazi's actually can defend it at least. Also: great effortpost on Soviet factories, looking forward to more.
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Oct 29, 2016 22:37
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Question for you Cold War-era military stuff experts or aficionados or whatever you call yourself: I've been reading a bunch of stuff (because of Wargame) about how the Soviets did their whole Deep Battle thing (which works excellently in Wargame), how did the US and the rest of NATO intend to defend against something like it? Apart from nuking the poo poo out of Eastern Europe, that is.
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Oct 29, 2016 23:13
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The W. Germans were intending to keep strong tank reserves in the back to defend against those kinds of operations (a couple of tanks divisions at least) but up until the early 80s there were no plans (in northern Germany at least) for any larger scale, multinational counterstrokes. NATO was p much strung out and banking on deterrence first and nuclear warfighting as a distant second.
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Oct 29, 2016 23:28
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I've been in Flanders fields taking part in the traditional pilgrimage the last few days - effort post on the politicisation of remembrance incoming. With a lot of extra weird mannequins...
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Oct 29, 2016 23:31
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Since we're talking about industrial policy... So, apparently the British in the 1930s (I'm guessing post Munich crisis) decided to look seriously at its ability to manufacture aircraft and decided it was lacking. So they started some sort of comprehensive program, building new factories that would be government owned, and somehow got existing manufacturers to start subcontracting work to other parts of the economy, when possible. Does anybody know more about this program?
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Oct 30, 2016 00:17
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Kemper Boyd posted:Question for you Cold War-era military stuff experts or aficionados or whatever you call yourself: Wasn't that the point of AirLand Battle? Kind of a defence in depth where the depth is projected forward.
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Oct 30, 2016 00:35
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Nebakenezzer posted:Since we're talking about industrial policy... Its on my reading list, ive got the official war histories of british industry on my kindle but it might take me a while to get there, i intend to do a write up when i do.
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Oct 30, 2016 00:46
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Eela6 posted:What is a good introduction to the Napoleonic era? A good biography of Bonaparte would be great too! I got Andrew Roberts Napoleon The Great which is pretty chunky with around 600 pages but it is a good place to start with the man now.
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Oct 30, 2016 00:52
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Nebakenezzer posted:Since we're talking about industrial policy... This is the Shadow Factory Scheme - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_shadow_factories Basically the government realised that the motor industry had the most relevant knowledge when it came to bolting together highly complicated vehicles in large numbers very quickly and struck an agreement with the major domestic motor manufacturers (Austin, Nuffield, Rootes, Standard, Daimler and Rover - the two US-owned firms, Ford and Vauxhall were notably absent despite having the best mass-production facilities. Of the Brit firms only Nuffield was on the same level) to build a bunch of brand new factories. Through grants, loans and various business guarantees the motor companies agreed to begin gaining the skills and knowledge of how to build aircraft and aero engines and agreed to run the 'shadow factories' for the war effort if/when required. The existing car factories would also be turned over for war materiel. The new factories were among the biggest ever built in the UK and tended to be on the outskirts of the major industrial cities as it was expected that the city centres (where most of the car factories build in the early 1900s were) would rapidly be levelled by bombing. Some of the factories stood empty for a couple of years before being called into action but most went straight into production during the rearmament process of the late 1930s. The two most important shadow factories were Castle Bromwich (Birmingham) and Trafford Park (Manchester). Castle Brom built the vast majority of Spitfires as the Supermarine works in Southampton was both very small and in easy range of German bombers - it was destroyed in September 1940. Trafford Park wasn't a true shadow factory, being a derelict plant originally built by Ford to make Model Ts, but turned over to make Merlin engines largely out of range of the worst of the bombing. Factories at Banner Lane in Coventry and Lode Lane in Solihull made the important Bristol Hercules engines. The Austin car factory at Longbridge, Birmingham, wasn't a shadow factory but Sir Herbert Austin was in overall charge of the shadow factory scheme and had already used his factory to make aircraft during WW1. Longbridge built hundreds of Lancaster, Stirling and Wellington bombers. One of the sweeteners for the car industry was that they would be able to move into the shadow factories they managed after the war on very, very generous terms - or for free (with big government grants for redevelopment) if, as seemed likely, their original factory was bombed flat. Before the war the British motor industry was plagued by very outdated and inefficient production facilities and the manufacturers and the government saw the Shadow Factories as a useful way of solving that problem in the peacetime era that would follow. In the event, because Coventry was the epicentre of the motor industry and was one of the most heavily bombed cities, most of the car companies ended up moving into their shadow factories after the war- Ryton, Lode Lane, Castle Bromwich and Speke all became big car production centres. Castle Bromwich is the main factory for Jaguars and Lode Lane is where the vast majority of Land Rovers are made. Both these factories still have their original 1930s structure at their core and large parts of the brickwork still have traces of their camoflague paint visible.
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Oct 30, 2016 01:26
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