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I agree with your broad points but I think you're undervaluing Moscow. It was vital as the bureaucratic and administrative hub fir a highly centralized state. Would taking it end the war? No but at the very least there would be a lot of very unhelpful chaos as everything and everyone was evacuated to the rear.
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Aug 25, 2016 16:34
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spectralent posted:What kind of scale-ratio should I be inserting for the diagrams? How many tanks are those figures standing in for? Is it pretty much as-is or should I be expecting a company wherever there's a team stand or whatever? I have no idea since the guy mixed in various organizations from various parts of the war, but I can tell you what this should have been like. Here is an organization of a combined arms army attacking along a 5 km wide front, roughly one infantry division and 30 tanks per 1 km not counting reserves. This is a pretty compressed offensive, a division with this many tanks backing it can usually be expected to cover a 2.5-3 km wide front by itself.
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Aug 25, 2016 16:44
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Cyrano4747 posted:I agree with your broad points but I think you're undervaluing Moscow. It was vital as the bureaucratic and administrative hub fir a highly centralized state. Would taking it end the war? No but at the very least there would be a lot of very unhelpful chaos as everything and everyone was evacuated to the rear. Yeah, but the entire narrative is that the Germans were this close to taking Moscow and winning the war. Which they weren't, on two counts. That means that starting the campaign earlier, even if it were possible, doesn't mean the Germans win, unless they somehow manage to drive the Soviets beyond the Ural in one campaign, which is just not physically possible.
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Aug 25, 2016 16:55
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Ice Fist posted:This is so disappointing. According to the ever reliable wikipedia, Soviet troops being inoculated against tank shock (in preparation for Kursk) by having tanks drive over them in trenches over and over referred to it as being "Ironed" which is pretty cool, at least. e; also as to the discussion above, taking Moscow would definitely have been a blow to morale and a logistical nightmare but the Soviets were already readying... Kuybyshev I think as a fall back capital by moving ministries and poo poo east. Fuligin fucked around with this message at 17:13 on Aug 25, 2016 |
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Aug 25, 2016 17:10
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Yes I agree with that. Really I think any hypothetical capture of Moscow comes into questioning how well they handle the 1942 offensives. Again, this is presuming they take it in 41 without destroying their army in the process. The inability to take Leningrad during that same period and the meat grinder of Stalingrad both argue against that ever happening.
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Aug 25, 2016 17:13
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Really if you want to play what if games with Moscow the more interesting question is how much a nuke air burst over the Kremlin fucks things up in a Berlin Blockade gone hit scenario.
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Aug 25, 2016 17:14
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Fuligin posted:According to the ever reliable wikipedia, Soviet troops being inoculated against tank shock (in preparation for Kursk) by having tanks drive over them in trenches over and over referred to it as being "Ironed" which is pretty cool, at least. Again, that's a very liberal translation. The term was "obkatka", literally "rolling over"
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Aug 25, 2016 17:17
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Cyrano4747 posted:Yes I agree with that. Really I think any hypothetical capture of Moscow comes into questioning how well they handle the 1942 offensives. You could also make an argument for this going much worse for the Germans than reality, if the Germans get sucked into Moscow wholesale in the same way they did at Stalingrad, only to be encircled in the city by the Soviet winter counteroffensive instead of slipping away as they did historically.
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Aug 25, 2016 17:29
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Ensign Expendable posted:Again, that's a very liberal translation. The term was "obkatka", literally "rolling over" Are there any cool/funny Russian soldier terms for things?
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Aug 25, 2016 17:32
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Ensign Expendable posted:Again, that's a very liberal translation. The term was "obkatka", literally "rolling over" drat. I was so hoping there was some twirly mustached, vodka drinking officer somewhere going 'Give them... the Treatment!' and then all of their artillery opening fire.
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Aug 25, 2016 17:37
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ArchangeI posted:Much better. An attack in Mid-May runs straight into the tail end of the spring thaw, meaning that the Panzers never get the kind of breakthroughs and wide ranging encirclements they did in reality. The Soviets wouldn't have felt under intense pressure to counterattack at every opportunity and would have been able to mobilize fully before committing forces to battle, simply because they weren't losing units at such a fast pace. There would have been a real chance that the Soviets hold onto the really important industrial areas in the western part of Russia and don't suffer the disruption of production that came with the evacuation. All that would have shortened the war by at least a year, if not more, and probably would have saved millions of lives. Wasn't one of the reasons for a "late" attack that Germans were building airfields for the bombers? And these bombers helped to destroy most of the Soviet Airforces on their airfields?
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Aug 25, 2016 17:50
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Aside from the big names like Clausewitz and Jomini, are there any other writers of military theory that are worth looking into (preferably authors whose texts have already been translated)?
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Aug 25, 2016 17:57
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hard counter posted:Aside from the big names like Clausewitz and Jomini, are there any other writers of military theory that are worth looking into (preferably authors whose texts have already been translated)? Read Sun Tzu and then quote from him during powerpoint presentations about your company's third quarter marketing budget.
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Aug 25, 2016 18:01
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hard counter posted:Aside from the big names like Clausewitz and Jomini, are there any other writers of military theory that are worth looking into (preferably authors whose texts have already been translated)? basta moritz of nassau and j.j. wallhausen if you must read a Protestant justus lipsius if you want something more theoretical (it's not even about armies at all, it's about controlling your emotions in a time when the world sucks. and everyone read it.)
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Aug 25, 2016 18:03
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SlothfulCobra posted:If WW2 happened 20 years later, would all the belligerents be close enough to the atomic bomb for it to end in a nuclear hellstorm? I'm about half-way through Rhodes' excellent The Making of the Atomic Bomb right now, and as always with these counterfactuals, my answer is maybe. Currently I'm in the winter of '40-'41, and there's some interesting stuff going on. Fission has been discovered (and explained, which took a surprisingly long time) by 1940, and public articles have gone out about it. German, British and American scientists are all actively involved. A Japanese team is aware of the goings on in the physics world and has estimated that they do have access to enough Uranium to build a bomb, assuming it's possible. Soviets aren't really doing much beyond small lab studies. Assuming that the Soviets would have gotten wind immediately, that does suggest they all would have figured it out. But there's loads of stuff happening that's extremely grounded in the political situation of the day (Nazi's are jerks, scientists do not like them); Leo Szilard (who has had secret British patents on matters related to nuclear reactions going back to the damned 30s, inspired by Orson Welles) is trying to convince everyone fission chain reactions are totally going to be a huge deal, that the American government needs to start funding this poo poo pronto, and everyone needs to stop loving publishing about it lest the Germans learn about it and beat them to a bomb. Interestingly enough, a lot of the American powers that be are convinced that all this Uranium talk is a waste of time, and that a bomb will never be possible. This is due to an oversight about neutron absorption in 235U vs 238U, and the fact that most people are convinced isotope separation is a fools errand anyway. Plutonium has only just been created in the last few weeks, so nobody important thinks much about it yet. Conversely the British have basically everything figured out by March of 41. They know a bomb is possible, that they need about 12 pounds of 235U to build a bomb, and they have identified the correct method to sufficiently enrich the Uranium. Currently they're trying to agitate the Americans to build the facility (it'll be big, and presumably they're trying to avoid it being in range of German bombers), but that's getting lost in bureaucratic infighting. The Germans are pursuing their own program, but have made a critical error about the neutron absorption cross section of carbon, meaning that they believe Heavy Water is the only moderator useful for further fission research. A hydroelectric plant in Norway is the only place capable of producing it in any quantity, but the French, aware of its potential, managed to procure all of the existing stocks immediately before the invasion of Norway, and then dumped it all during the Fall of France. I don't know the whole story of the plant, but if memory serves, Brits and Norwegians manage to gently caress with the plant to sufficient degree that it doesn't produce much. If we're talking about a world where Nazi Germany exists, but there's no war, it's very doubtful that they manage to produce or procure enough heavy water for their research. Maybe they correct their estimates about using Carbon as a moderator, but that's anybodies guess. Ultimately all of this is so intertwined with the political realm that no bomb is getting built without wartime funding considerations. If you avoid the war by deleting the Nazis from history somehow (the time travelling Albert Einstein hypothesis), then my guess is the physicists continue their open publishing ways, and the knowledge that a bomb is possible and the requirements for it would be known by '45-'50 or so. But that is still a long rear end way from having a functional bomb; isotope separation and plutonium production (in quantity) are such massive undertakings that I doubt governments would be looking to fund it. Even when you have the core material, actually building a reliable bomb is a whole other task. But we're also talking about a world with a completely unknown political and economic situation, so who the gently caress knows? --- Semirelated: I watched The Pity of War on Netflix the other day, and man Niall Ferguson is such a tool. A whole 90 minute special about how the British Empire (and preserving the Empire is clearly his key motivation) would have been better off if Britain had stayed out of WWI, presumably resulting in a fast German victory in '14-'15. He offers no arguments for this other than "the western front suuuucked", and assuming that a victorious Germany would have promptly created an EU that Britain totally would have been allowed into on equal terms. When he turns to the panel of good historians, pretty much everyone tells him that none of his counterfactuals make any sense. Even the audience is against him; I guess that part was pretty excellent. PittTheElder fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Aug 25, 2016 |
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Aug 25, 2016 18:11
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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HEY GAL posted:justus lipsius if you want something more theoretical (it's not even about armies at all, it's about controlling your emotions in a time when the world sucks. and everyone read it.) Is this the author or the title?
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Aug 25, 2016 18:12
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Nebakenezzer posted:Is this the author or the title? that's the dude. google Neo-Stoicism if you want the ideas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justus_Lipsius Mr. Enderby and System Metternich might know enough about this to talk with more eloquence on it, they're more about the cultural products/literature/art of the 17th c than I am. Or Disinterested, who's a real philosophy-head. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Aug 25, 2016 |
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Aug 25, 2016 18:13
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hard counter posted:Aside from the big names like Clausewitz and Jomini, are there any other writers of military theory that are worth looking into (preferably authors whose texts have already been translated)? Mahan and his The Influence of Seapower was hugely influential on early 20th century naval thinking.
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Aug 25, 2016 18:26
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spectralent posted:Are there any cool/funny Russian soldier terms for things? Every conjugation, literal use, figurative use and rhetorical use that you can think of for "сука".
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Aug 25, 2016 18:31
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spectralent posted:Are there any cool/funny Russian soldier terms for things? Soldiers with gas masks are called elephants. That's kind of funny I guess.
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Aug 25, 2016 18:32
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P-Mack posted:Read Sun Tzu and then quote from him during powerpoint presentations about your company's third quarter marketing budget. i already do this when playing board-games (monopoly) HEY GAL posted:montecuccoli, which is available in an english volume that's half translation of his work and half bio of him, calle d the military intellectual and battle Raimondo was next on my list so it's good to know I'm on the right track.
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Aug 25, 2016 18:32
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Ensign Expendable posted:Soldiers with gas masks are called elephants. That's kind of funny I guess. Didn't you mention a funny soldier explanation for what LaGG stands for in the previous thread?
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Aug 25, 2016 18:33
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my dad posted:Didn't you mention a funny soldier explanation for what LaGG stands for in the previous thread? Lakirovanniy Grob Garantirovan (Lacquered Coffin is Guaranteed). That's not a wartime nickname though, much like "Ronson" it became popularized a long time after the war.
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Aug 25, 2016 18:36
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hard counter posted:Raimondo was next on my list so it's good to know I'm on the right track. HEY GAL posted:is it OK to Montecuccoli?
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Aug 25, 2016 18:37
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spectralent posted:Are there any cool/funny Russian soldier terms for things? As I discovered earlier, apparently "tankodesantniki" is a word. Also nicknaming a machinegun "sweetie" because degtyaryova shpagina krupnokaliberny shortens to DShK or "dushka" OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 18:43 on Aug 25, 2016 |
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Aug 25, 2016 18:37
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hard counter posted:i already do this when playing board-games (monopoly) Don't forget Command of the Air by Giulio Douhet to get in the heads of interbellum air forces.
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Aug 25, 2016 18:48
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Cyrano4747 posted:I agree with your broad points but I think you're undervaluing Moscow. It was vital as the bureaucratic and administrative hub fir a highly centralized state. Would taking it end the war? No but at the very least there would be a lot of very unhelpful chaos as everything and everyone was evacuated to the rear. I wonder how a Russian underground resistance would have gone, had there been a proper occupation a la France.
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Aug 25, 2016 18:53
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There were effective networks of partisans basically everywhere that wasn't a steppe, so I imagine they could have figured it out.
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Aug 25, 2016 18:55
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FAUXTON posted:I wonder how a Russian underground resistance would have gone, had there been a proper occupation a la France. Well for starters actually literally underground in Moscow given the subway system.
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Aug 25, 2016 18:56
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FAUXTON posted:I wonder how a Russian underground resistance would have gone, had there been a proper occupation a la France. That's pretty much what they did everywhere there were Nazis about. We just did an interesting study on defending lines of communication and we used the Wehrmacht in Russia in WWII as a prime example: a lot of times forward-based maneuver units had to fight backwards to get to their sustainment help. This wasn't as common later on as they were consistently falling back, but during the offensives a typical division commander had to reserve at least a battalion's worth of dudes to first fight back through to the corps support area, and then to escort the goodies back up to the things that needed them (which could sometimes be dozens of kms away). I dunno, kind of blew my mind. Bypass criteria is a crazy thing.
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Aug 25, 2016 18:59
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bewbies posted:That's pretty much what they did everywhere there were Nazis about. Wow. Was that more a function of their mobility doctrine itself, like Russian terrain effectively placing such constraints on Wehrmacht maneuvers that they ended up almost putting themselves in pockets? Or was it more a result of Soviet strategy in retreat?
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Aug 25, 2016 19:09
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The thing about the Germans somehow capturing Moscow in '41 doesn't mean poo poo because they probably couldn't hold it for long anyway.PittTheElder posted:Semirelated: I watched The Pity of War on Netflix the other day, and man Niall Ferguson is such a tool. A whole 90 minute special about how the British Empire (and preserving the Empire is clearly his key motivation) would have been better off if Britain had stayed out of WWI, presumably resulting in a fast German victory in '14-'15. He offers no arguments for this other than "the western front suuuucked", and assuming that a victorious Germany would have promptly created an EU that Britain totally would have been allowed into on equal terms. When he turns to the panel of good historians, pretty much everyone tells him that none of his counterfactuals make any sense. Even the audience is against him; I guess that part was pretty excellent. Grrrrrrrr. This argument annoys me so much I actually effortposted about it in the last thread.
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Aug 25, 2016 19:35
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I'm not sure that "a european union" would be my word for "imperial german rule over europe"
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Aug 25, 2016 20:03
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Cyrano4747 posted:I agree with your broad points but I think you're undervaluing Moscow. It was vital as the bureaucratic and administrative hub fir a highly centralized state. Would taking it end the war? No but at the very least there would be a lot of very unhelpful chaos as everything and everyone was evacuated to the rear. But they did evacuate it and nominate a new capital and the chaos resulting was brought under control within a couple of weeks. Even if they did take it, there would be no industrial equipment there and every major building was mined with explosives; and it would be in danger of just being an early war Stalingrad. It was the rail hub of all of central Russia though, which would have been a big problem for the USSR.
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Aug 25, 2016 20:04
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I've heard people unironically state EU 1950 edition as a silver lining for the Nazis winning WW2.
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Aug 25, 2016 20:04
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HEY GAL posted:that's the dude. google Neo-Stoicism if you want the ideas. I can talk about stoicism but early moderns who aren't Thomas Hobbes are pure mystery to me.
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Aug 25, 2016 20:07
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OwlFancier posted:I'm not sure that "a european union" would be my word for "imperial german rule over europe" Nor is anyone who isn't named Niall Ferguson.
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Aug 25, 2016 20:09
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Would it actually have been worse than what we got, though. Because what we got feels a lot like worst case scenario to me.
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Aug 25, 2016 20:09
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Cyrano4747 posted:I've heard people unironically state EU 1950 edition as a silver lining for the Nazis winning WW2. 
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Aug 25, 2016 20:14
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altright.jpg up thereDisinterested posted:Would it actually have been worse than what we got, though. A weaker Russia could have made things much worse, for values of worse including generalplan ost and the Ruhrplex being one giant nuclear target. I think the Cold War is worth missing out on that.
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Aug 25, 2016 20:20
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