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Fangz
Jul 5, 2007

Oh I see! This must be the Bad Opinion Zone!
There was a recent movie dramatising Lipstadt's book about the trial, Denial. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial_(2016_film) ) I recommend it.

When the film came out some one put a leaflet on the windscreen of my car denouncing the film as part of the Global Zionist Conspiracy. Copies of that leaflet subsequently appeared pinned up on noticeboards inside the university I work at. So, Fun Times.

To expand the film is interesting as a movie because kinda a key point in the plot is about how they worked to avoid the sort of dramatic moment that might be the climax of an ordinary legal movie because they thought Irving would have planned around it, and the very shady lawyer guy (played by the guy who plays Moriarty in Sherlock) turns out to be perfectly competent, and there's a lot of "and they told Lipstadt to avoid speaking to the press while the trial was happening, so she didn't."

Fangz fucked around with this message at 00:08 on Aug 12, 2017

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Nebakenezzer
Sep 13, 2005

The Mote in God's Eye

EggsAisle posted:

Agreed, the trial was incredibly interesting. I haven't gotten around to reading those books, but I have read a pretty decent account of it somewhere. My personal "favorite" is one of Irving's witnesses, a guy named Leuchter. Dude went to Auschwitz, took a piece of the wall from a gas chamber (without the museum's permission, no less,) did a bunch of tests, and put together a whole report about how the building couldn't have been a gas chamber. Irving & co are all delighted that now they finally have scientific proof, right? Except it turns out that Leuchter isn't remotely qualified as a scientist. Not in chemistry, not in toxicology, nothing. The defense called up actual experts, who proceeded to utterly wreck his arguments and credibility. If you like seeing takedowns of pseudoscience, it's a pretty great moment.

I think Leuchter had a documentary made about him by no less than Errol Morris. Or am I thinking of someone else?

e:yep

Nebakenezzer fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Aug 12, 2017

Disinterested
Jun 29, 2011

You look like you're still raking it in. Still killing 'em?
What I posted was an excerpt from Evans book. It just methodically addresses all of his many gently caress ups.

GotLag
Jul 17, 2005

食べちゃダメだよ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergeant_Reckless

Reckless had a gentle disposition and soon developed such a rapport with the troops that she was allowed to freely roam about the camp and entered tents at will, sometimes sleeping inside with the troops, and even lying down next to Latham's warm tent stove on cold nights.
She was wounded in combat twice, given the battlefield rank of corporal in 1953, and then a battlefield promotion to sergeant in 1954, several months after the war ended.
Her most significant accomplishment came during the Battle of Panmunjom-Vegas (also known as the Battle of Outpost Vegas/Vegas Hill) over the period March 26–28, 1953, when she made 51 solo trips in a single day, carrying a total of 386 recoilless rounds (over 9,000 pounds, carrying 4 to 8 24-pound shells on each trip) covering over 35 miles that day.

:horse:

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy
did the Germans ever consider any other point of the Eastern Front besides Kursk to launch their 1943 offensive?

I ask because it always struck me as misguided that they wanted to attack into the teeth of well prepared Soviet defenses, when Blitzkrieg doctrine suggests that you should aim the schwerpunkt at the weakest point of the enemy's line. Even if that point isn't where you want to go from a strategic / political perspective, you'll get to where you want to anyway once the enemy dislodges their own lines in response to your breakthrough (or they don't and you outflank their lines anyway)

My original question was "was there any other place along the Eastern Front where they could have launched their offensive", but that sounded too counterfactual, so I'm asking if the Germans themselves ever thought of anywhere else at the time.

Fangz
Jul 5, 2007

Oh I see! This must be the Bad Opinion Zone!

gradenko_2000 posted:

did the Germans ever consider any other point of the Eastern Front besides Kursk to launch their 1943 offensive?

I ask because it always struck me as misguided that they wanted to attack into the teeth of well prepared Soviet defenses, when Blitzkrieg doctrine suggests that you should aim the schwerpunkt at the weakest point of the enemy's line. Even if that point isn't where you want to go from a strategic / political perspective, you'll get to where you want to anyway once the enemy dislodges their own lines in response to your breakthrough (or they don't and you outflank their lines anyway)

My original question was "was there any other place along the Eastern Front where they could have launched their offensive", but that sounded too counterfactual, so I'm asking if the Germans themselves ever thought of anywhere else at the time.

It wasn't 'the teeth of well prepared Soviet defenses' when they started planning the attack.

EDIT: Ultimately the problem with Kursk is that the Soviets could build up faster than the Germans could at that point in the war. The attack kept getting delayed so that the Germans could move in whatever new force that they hoped would be decisive, but the soviets would just build another layer of defenses and get in more reserves in preparation. Eventually you hit the point where the only option for the Germans was to not attack in 1943 and squander months of preparation or to go with a roll of the dice.

Despite 'blitzkrieg' and all that, the successful German attack in Case Blue and Barbarossa was far more due to the Soviets loving up and misreading the German intentions than the Germans accurately identifying Soviet weaknesses. At Kursk the Soviets didn't make that mistake.

Fangz fucked around with this message at 17:35 on Aug 12, 2017

GotLag
Jul 17, 2005

食べちゃダメだよ
How aware were the Germans of Soviet defensive preparations at Kursk?

Fangz
Jul 5, 2007

Oh I see! This must be the Bad Opinion Zone!

GotLag posted:

How aware were the Germans of Soviet defensive preparations at Kursk?

German military intelligence was terrible in WWII.

https://www.nsa.gov/news-features/declassified-documents/cryptologic-spectrum/assets/files/critica_analysis_II.pdf

For Kursk specifically they made big errors.

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id...20kursk&f=false

Add this up, and the Germans thought they were facing 75 rifle units and 66 mobile units. They actually faced 134 rifle units and 96 mobile units (+9 cavalry). Against the central front they underestimated the number of soviet infantry forces by a factor of four.

EDIT: Here is also an article about the Soviet intelligence effort at Kursk http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a216373.pdf

Fangz fucked around with this message at 18:11 on Aug 12, 2017

Cyrano4747
Sep 25, 2006

Yes, I know I'm old, get off my fucking lawn so I can yell at these clouds.

The Soviets also were aware the attack was coming. It was a total clusterfuck of one side thinking they were launching a surprise attack all while the other is setting up hundreds of miles of defense in depth.

Arquinsiel
Jun 1, 2006

"There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

HEY GAIL posted:

the thing that makes the hair go up on the back of my neck is this: the gauleiter of dresden didn't spend the money for air raid shelters so the people in this city cut holes in their basements so they could walk around from basement to basement. so when the bombing happened people were down there, in that maze that they created...and, hypoxic, they crawled through it, got lost, and smothered. Every time i take something down to the basement I wonder "how many people died in this room"
Just ask next time you're down there, I'm sure they'll tell you.

ArchangeI
Jul 15, 2010

Cyrano4747 posted:

The Soviets also were aware the attack was coming. It was a total clusterfuck of one side thinking they were launching a surprise attack all while the other is setting up hundreds of miles of defense in depth.

It was the most obvious place to launch an attack, a guy with 20 hours in Hearts of Iron can look at that and see the possible encirclement. How on earth do you convince yourself that the enemy won't ever see it coming?

Acebuckeye13
Nov 2, 2010
Ultra Carp

ArchangeI posted:

It was the most obvious place to launch an attack, a guy with 20 hours in Hearts of Iron can look at that and see the possible encirclement. How on earth do you convince yourself that the enemy won't ever see it coming?

Don't forget that the Germans even delayed the attack so that they would have time to bring in newly-introduced (and in the battle itself, completely ineffectual) Panthers, giving the Soviets even more time to prepare.

Tias
May 25, 2008

Pictured: the patron saint of internet political arguments (probably)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund

GotLag posted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergeant_Reckless

Reckless had a gentle disposition and soon developed such a rapport with the troops that she was allowed to freely roam about the camp and entered tents at will, sometimes sleeping inside with the troops, and even lying down next to Latham's warm tent stove on cold nights.
She was wounded in combat twice, given the battlefield rank of corporal in 1953, and then a battlefield promotion to sergeant in 1954, several months after the war ended.
Her most significant accomplishment came during the Battle of Panmunjom-Vegas (also known as the Battle of Outpost Vegas/Vegas Hill) over the period March 26–28, 1953, when she made 51 solo trips in a single day, carrying a total of 386 recoilless rounds (over 9,000 pounds, carrying 4 to 8 24-pound shells on each trip) covering over 35 miles that day.

:horse:

That horse is my new hero:

quote:

Reckless's baptism under fire came at a place called Hedy's Crotch, near the villages of Changdan and Kwakchan.[22] Though loaded down with six recoilless rifle shells, she initially "went straight up" and all four feet left the ground the first time the Recoilless Rifle was fired. When she landed she started shaking, but Coleman, her handler, calmed her down. The second time the gun fired she merely snorted, and by the end of the mission that day appeared calm and was seen trying to eat a discarded helmet liner.

That nag has more balls than most human marines, and it's a mare!

FAUXTON
Jun 2, 2005

spero che tu stia bene

Tias posted:

That horse is my new hero:


That nag has more balls than most human marines, and it's a mare!


quote:

The Marines, especially Latham, taught Reckless battlefield survival skills such as how not to become entangled in barbed wire and to lie down when under fire. She learned to run for a bunker upon hearing the cry, "incoming!" The platoon called it her "hoof training" and "hoof camp". The horse was initially kept in a pasture near the encampment. Reckless had a gentle disposition and soon developed such a rapport with the troops that she was allowed to freely roam about the camp and entered tents at will,sometimes sleeping inside with the troops, and even lying down next to Latham's warm tent stove on cold nights. She was fond of a wide variety of foodstuffs, entertaining the platoon by eating scrambled eggs and drinking Coca-Cola and beer. Food could not be left unattended around her. She was known to eat bacon, buttered toast, chocolate bars, hard candy, shredded wheat, peanut butter sandwiches and mashed potatoes. However, Mitchell advised the platoon that she not be given more than two bottles of Coke a day. Her tastes were not confined to foodstuffs; she once ate her horse blanket, and on another occasion ate $30 worth of Latham's winning poker chips.

THIS HORSE loving OWNED

Cyrano4747
Sep 25, 2006

Yes, I know I'm old, get off my fucking lawn so I can yell at these clouds.

quote:

Reckless's entry into the United States was not without its challenges. The Customs Bureau was not much of a problem but the United States Department of Agriculture insisted a medical check and lab tests be completed before she disembarked from the ship once it reached San Francisco, which would make her late for the Marine banquet where she was to be the guest of honor. The Marines contacted Agriculture Department officials in Washington, D.C. who agreed to allow her off the ship after her blood was drawn for lab tests, with the understanding that if she had glanders or dourine, she would be destroyed or sent back to Japan. Many of the Marines who actually knew her were incensed at what they considered an affront to her honor when they learned that dourine was an equine sexually transmitted disease

DO NOT INSULT MY HORSES HONOR.

edit: lol, of course the Marines named one of her foals Chesty.

edit 2: I have a feeling Hey Gail's guys would have nodded sagely at marines incensed that the honor of their horse had been besmirched.

Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 21:44 on Aug 12, 2017

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

Do corporals and below have to salute the horse when it wanders into the tent?

Mycroft Holmes
Mar 26, 2010

by Azathoth
the memes return




Ensign Expendable
Nov 11, 2008

Lager beer is proof that god loves us
Pillbug
PzII Ausf. F

Queue: PzII Ausf. F, PzII trials in the USSR, Marder II, Field modifications to American tanks, Israeli improvised armoured cars, Trials of the TKS and C2P in the USSR, Polish 37 mm anti-tank gun, T-37 with ShKAS, Wartime modifications of the T-37 and T-38, Tank destroyers on the T-30 and T-40 chassis, 45 mm M-42 gun, SU-76 prototype, ZIK-7 and other light SPG designs, SU-26/T-26-6, SU-122 precursors, SU-122 competitors, Light Tank M5, Medium Tank M3, Tankbuchse 41, s.FH. 18, PzVII Lowe, Tiger #114, Chrysler K, A1E1 Independent, Valentine I-IV, Swedish tanks 1928–1934, Strv 81 and Strv 101, Pak 97/38, 7.5 cm Pak 41, Czechoslovakian post-war prototypes, Praga AH-IV, KV-1S, KV-13, Bazooka, Super Bazooka, Matilda, 76 mm gun mod of the Matilda, Renault FT, Somua, SU-122, SU-122M, KV-13 to IS, T-60 factory #37, D.W. and VK 30.01(H), Wespe and other PzII SPGs, Pz38(t) in the USSR

Available for request:

:ussr:
IM-1 squeezebore cannon
GAZ-71 and GAZ-72

:britain:
25-pounder
Churchill II-IVNEW

:911:
105 mm howitzer M2A1 NEW

:godwin:
Pz.Sfl.V Sturer Emil
PzII Ausf. G-H NEW

:sweden:
L-10 and L-30
Strv m/40
Strv m/42
Landsverk prototypes 1943-1951
Strv m/21
Strv m/41
pvkv m/43

Nebakenezzer
Sep 13, 2005

The Mote in God's Eye

ArchangeI posted:

It was the most obvious place to launch an attack, a guy with 20 hours in Hearts of Iron can look at that and see the possible encirclement. How on earth do you convince yourself that the enemy won't ever see it coming?

Weirdly, the guy who worried about this was Hitler. While the German General Staff succumbed to groupthink, Hitler was thinking more or less what you just asked.

The Lone Badger
Sep 24, 2007

Fangz posted:

German military intelligence was terrible in WWII.

Did the Soviets clown on them as badly as the UK did, or was it all self-inflicted?

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

The Lone Badger posted:

Did the Soviets clown on them as badly as the UK did, or was it all self-inflicted?

The Soviets created an entire fictional German unit as a psy-ops campaign and even got captured Germans to help them convincingly fake messages, tricking the Germans into wasting time and supplies on helping them "escape".

For nearly a whole year.

Schenck v. U.S.
Sep 8, 2010

gradenko_2000 posted:

did the Germans ever consider any other point of the Eastern Front besides Kursk to launch their 1943 offensive?

Glantz & House "The Battle of Kursk" is the book for any questions relating to the Big Tank Fight.

From '41-'43 the German Army had taken severe losses in men and materiel, to the point that they no longer had the resources to launch a general offensive as they had in the two summers preceding. Making matters worse, it was clear that although the Soviets had taken severe losses of their own, they were rebuilding and expanding their capabilities month by month. The Germans were fairly certain that the Soviets had spent the operational pause during the spring of 1943 preparing something very unpleasant. It was therefore imperative to strike first and inflict sufficiently serious damage that it would spoil the Soviet summer offensive before it began.

However, as I said, the Germans didn't have the strength for a strategic offensive. They were in fact struggling to find enough men to cover the length of the front. They needed an objective small enough to handle with the forces they had available, but still large enough that it would bloody the Soviets and abort their strategic offensive. The Germans considered the problem very carefully, but the Soviet salient around Kursk was the only possibility. By attacking the shoulders of the salient, the Germans could encircle a large Soviet formation and hopefully liquidate the pocket. This would be a significant defeat for the Soviets, and it would actually shorten the German front line such that they would probably come out ahead even after accounting for losses during the offensive. Even if the Soviets came to the relief of the pocket and the formations inside escaped, they would still have been forced to divert forces away from their offensive plans, and they would have to abandon Kursk, so the lines would still be shortened. A win-win as far as the Germans were concerned.

This also has to do with discussion among the staff on both sides about the merits of offensive versus defensive operations for 1943. Some in the German command, like Manstein, advocated for suspending offensive operations to save resources for an elastic defense. Instead of attacking and trying to destroy Soviet formations in an encirclement battle, parry their attacks and try to drain them with attrition. This idea didn't go anywhere but I think I should say there's a danger of overestimating its wisdom and thinking, "clearly Hitler should've listened to the great military genius Manstein," although that is what Manstein thought about it. For the Germans there are serious risks to a defensive posture as well. The Soviets, after all, were clearly building forces much more quickly than the Germans. Given that, ceding the initiative to the Soviets and then trying to beat them in attrition warfare is a strategy for losing more slowly. They were also pretty successful concealing their offensive intentions, so there's reason to suppose they would have caught the Germans with their pants down and beat the hell out of them anyway.

Meanwhile on the Soviet side, there was support for an offensive on the theory that the Germans had been critically weakened by the defeat in the Stalingrad Campaign, and that this would open up opportunities for offensives. Say, an effort to lift the siege of Leningrad, or to pinch off the matching German salient around Orel, facing Kursk. The Soviets instead determined that the Germans were definitely going to attack, and they were obviously going to do it at Kursk, the only logical place. This created an opportunity to contain and exhaust the German offensive, crippling their mobile forces and exhausting their reserves in advance of a counterattack.

It is notable that the German command understood that the Soviets saw them coming. Hitler is recorded as being continuously anxious and depressed over the risky nature of the operation, the fact that it was obvious, and his feeling that he had no alternative but to just go for it and hope for the best. This is in fact why they delayed the attack several times to wait for new secret weapons to come online. The Germans knew that the Soviets knew where the attack was going to fall, so they wanted to have some kind of edge the Soviets wouldn't see coming.

C.M. Kruger
Oct 28, 2013

Mycroft Holmes posted:

the memes return


spectralent
Oct 1, 2014

Me and the boys poppin' down to the shops

gradenko_2000 posted:

did the Germans ever consider any other point of the Eastern Front besides Kursk to launch their 1943 offensive?

I ask because it always struck me as misguided that they wanted to attack into the teeth of well prepared Soviet defenses, when Blitzkrieg doctrine suggests that you should aim the schwerpunkt at the weakest point of the enemy's line. Even if that point isn't where you want to go from a strategic / political perspective, you'll get to where you want to anyway once the enemy dislodges their own lines in response to your breakthrough (or they don't and you outflank their lines anyway)

My original question was "was there any other place along the Eastern Front where they could have launched their offensive", but that sounded too counterfactual, so I'm asking if the Germans themselves ever thought of anywhere else at the time.

A major reason fof Kursk was that it was a nice, juicy salient that'd let them capture a load of dudes and ground and show everyone they were on top of things again after the confidence of their allies was shaken by Stalingrad. Nowhere else was as tempting a target for your heroic reversal of fortunes.

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

FOPTIMUS PRIME

The Lone Badger posted:

Did the Soviets clown on them as badly as the UK did, or was it all self-inflicted?

bruh, german intelligence clowned on german intelligence routinely

GotLag
Jul 17, 2005

食べちゃダメだよ
Abwehr more like Absent

StashAugustine
Mar 24, 2013

Do not trust in hope- it will betray you! Only faith and hatred sustain.

Malcolm Muggeridge (who worked for MI6 in the war) joked in his autobiography that the Abwehr probably got more useful intelligence out of England after they were all turned as double agents and fed useless information to keep the Germans happy

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy

Mycroft Holmes posted:

the memes return

Libluini
May 18, 2012

I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...
Grimey Drawer

Knowing that ultimately, the Soviet Union did win the Winter War, drains all the humor from this

sullat
Jan 9, 2012

StashAugustine posted:

Malcolm Muggeridge (who worked for MI6 in the war) joked in his autobiography that the Abwehr probably got more useful intelligence out of England after they were all turned as double agents and fed useless information to keep the Germans happy

It was pretty funny when Pujol was allowed to leak news of the D-day landings, nobody picked up the transmission because the Abwehr was closed on Sundays.

Tias
May 25, 2008

Pictured: the patron saint of internet political arguments (probably)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund
Also, the union did not commit its combined military strength nor the entire red army to the conflict. Borders to guard and troops to train, after all.

Dead Reckoning
Sep 13, 2011

OwlFancier posted:

Do corporals and below have to salute the horse when it wanders into the tent?

If you're not forcing junior enlisted to salute the animal you made an NCO as a joke, you aren't doing the whole "Military Officer" thing right.

Trin Tragula
Apr 22, 2005

Let's talk about the Third Battle of Ypres.

The Context

For the first time in the war, the commander-in-chief of the French Army lacks the political will and the moral authority to direct the course of the Entente's war effort. Since the end of 1916 they are on their third commander-in-chief (Petain having replaced the vainglorious charlatan Nivelle), and he's quite happy to sit tight for 12-24 months on the Western Front and wait for the Americans to arrive, brought into the war by a piece of German diplomatic bungling so incompetent that it must surely be a candidate for "worst diplomacy anywhere ever". The French government is falling every couple of months as the shockwaves from the total failure of Nivelle's offensive continue rattling around. The Germans are trying desperately to ignore the Western Front as much as possible, in the hope of pressuring the Russian army into total collapse after the February revolution.

This leaves a clear space for the British Empire to finally, after three years of war, fight a battle on the Western Front, for which the analysis will not have to include the caveat, "of course, they were significantly hampered by having to fight on ground not of their choosing, in order to comply with the intentions of the French." New prime minister David Lloyd George doesn't like this much, and would rather fight a major battle in support of Italy, or against the Ottomans in the Middle East, or give the Gardeners of Salonika something useful to do; but the military advice he's receiving is firmly in favour of a Western Front offensive and he still doesn't feel he has the political capital to go directly against it. Especially when Sir Douglas Haig, rewarded for the Battle of the Somme with his promotion to Field Marshal, knows exactly what should be done...

Wipers

Since January 1915, the BEF's staff officers have had a consistent answer for what they should do next, given a free choice: "Do something about the bloody Ypres salient". Although there's not been a major battle there for two years, it's easily the worst place on the front that any British Empire battalion can go and is causing a horrendous amount of what official terminology calls "wastage" every month. On top of that, the tactical situation is still potentially fragile; if the Germans were to attack there, and somehow break through past Ypres, they would have an unimpeded run through on favourable ground to capture all the closest ports to Britain. With the BEF now fielding millions of men, this would seriously poo poo up their supply arrangements. It would also be a major propaganda coup for the Germans to completely occupy Belgium.

So the BEF has been consistently planning for and advocating an offensive to break out of the Ypres salient, and since 1915 the French have been refusing to support it (for good, well-argued reasons). Now French support is neither here nor there. The planning takes on fresh vigour and the brass hats produce a multi-stage plan; first to break out of the salient and drive uphill to the critical rail junction at Roulers; then to secure the rest of the railway line; then to capture Ostend (probably with some sort of amphibious landing); and finally to march on Bruges, Ghent and the Dutch border.

It's a lot more detailed and reasonable than the planning for the Somme! The BEF has learned plenty of lessons from that battle and General Rawlinson's theories of "bite and hold", advancing in small attritional hops with overwhelming artillery support at every stage, have extensively proven themselves over the first six months of 1917. It's probably not going to be a war-winning battle, and Haig's diary is once again blethering disingenously about "the wearing-out phase" and the unlikeliness of "forcing a decision" before next year.

Tanks for the Weather

Flanders is, as many people know, notoriously wet. Much of the ground currently being occupied is so close to the water table that one's defences are not dug into the ground as trenches, but built on top of them as breastworks. Of course, it's not quite as simple as "it rains a lot". Flanders also has summers. Since 1915 the BEF has had a dedicated Meterological Section, which is now predicting that according to recent patterns, June will likely be dry; July will have a short period of intense thunderstorms; August will be dry with occasional showers, but also have plenty of wind and sun to evaporate the water; and then conditions will start becoming really difficult again at some nebulous point in autumn.

The prognosis for using tanks is not good. Production and development has been steadily increasing, but there's a fundamental problem to overcome. They need firm, unshelled ground to preserve their mechanical reliability as much as possible. However, they're still far from being seen as an integral part of an offensive, or a separate combat arm; they're purely infantry support weapons. And there's a lot of artillery doctrine about (extensive days-long artillery barrages, creeping bombardments) that inherently fucks the ground right up. Even better, bite-and-hold principles have been developed without reference to using tanks; they emphasise preceding every infantry attack with a prolonged gently caress-the-ground-up bombardment, not just attacks on the first day...

To follow when I can be bothered: needless delays and hold-ups, the French offer to attack in support of a British operation for once, and one of the biggest-ever non-nuclear explosions.

Fangz
Jul 5, 2007

Oh I see! This must be the Bad Opinion Zone!
What was the process for 'confirming' Hayha's sniper kills? His kill count always sounded like the product of kill claim inflation to me, given how he was shooting through iron sights, and apparently claimed an equal number of submachine gun kills as he did rifle kills, which seems quite unlikely.

Saint Celestine
Dec 17, 2008

Lay a fire within your soul and another between your hands, and let both be your weapons.
For one is faith and the other is victory and neither may ever be put out.

- Saint Sabbat, Lessons
Grimey Drawer

sullat posted:

It was pretty funny when Pujol was allowed to leak news of the D-day landings, nobody picked up the transmission because the Abwehr was closed on Sundays.

This is real? The military intelligence agency was closed on sundays? During WW2? How the F...

:psyduck:

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

FOPTIMUS PRIME

Saint Celestine posted:

This is real? The military intelligence agency was closed on sundays? During WW2? How the F...

:psyduck:
the bundeswehr took sundays off during the cold war, it startled the ossis as gently caress when they learned about it after the whole thing was over

Shark Sandwich
Sep 6, 2010

by R. Guyovich
Between constantly comparing the Gauls to Native Americans and the Hans Delbruck worship I think I'm done with Dan Carlin.

aphid_licker
Jan 7, 2009


HEY GAIL posted:

the bundeswehr took sundays off during the cold war, it startled the ossis as gently caress when they learned about it after the whole thing was over

Excuse you, we took off all weekend and half of Friday as well. And they must've known that, it was impossible to hide. Trains looked like that painting with the cossacks writing the letter to the Sultan every Friday afternoon, minus a letter being in the process of being written and with a lot more olive drab sea bags. It's really funny to read memoirs of people who served in the NVA and spent their weekends getting tortured by Prussian commies while we were going welp, TGIF, time to crack a beer on a train :haw:

Can't help thinking that we kinda half-assed this whole cold war thing.

wdarkk
Oct 26, 2007

Friends: Protected
World: Saved
Crablettes: Eaten

aphid_licker posted:

Excuse you, we took off all weekend and half of Friday as well. And they must've known that, it was impossible to hide. Trains looked like that painting with the cossacks writing the letter to the Sultan every Friday afternoon, minus a letter being in the process of being written and with a lot more olive drab sea bags. It's really funny to read memoirs of people who served in the NVA and spent their weekends getting tortured by Prussian commies while we were going welp, TGIF, time to crack a beer on a train :haw:

Can't help thinking that we kinda half-assed this whole cold war thing.

I feel like that was the correct choice.

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HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

FOPTIMUS PRIME

aphid_licker posted:

Excuse you, we took off all weekend and half of Friday as well. And they must've known that, it was impossible to hide. Trains looked like that painting with the cossacks writing the letter to the Sultan every Friday afternoon, minus a letter being in the process of being written and with a lot more olive drab sea bags. It's really funny to read memoirs of people who served in the NVA and spent their weekends getting tortured by Prussian commies while we were going welp, TGIF, time to crack a beer on a train :haw:

Can't help thinking that we kinda half-assed this whole cold war thing.
well they were the half that got the prussians :v:

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