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Smoking Crow posted:I'm trying to remember the name of a particular tactic done by the Tokugawa army that was later done by the British army. It's where musketeers fire and then move back behind a line while they reload. This is done over and over so that you can have continuous musket fire. The Counter March, although the British probably got that from the Dutch, who developed it independently.
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Nov 14, 2013 00:07
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a travelling HEGEL posted:(The Japanese were observed using it a little bit earlier than it shows up in Dutch military theory, and I would poo poo myself and die if I ever found proof that the Dutch got it from them.) Seriously, that would be a PhD right there, maybe even tenure.
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Nov 14, 2013 00:15
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:The pre-1940 US Army was a complete poo poo show. In a 'would lose a land war to Romania' kind of way. Roosevelt spent the next two years desperately trying to bring it up to speed and it was still way behind when the US finally went to war. That they entered the war with the M3 as their primary tank really tells you all you need to know. Mans posted:How common are memories of wars that are not made by the upper echelons of militaries pre-WWI? Hegel might awnser me this. I wonder just how much the common peasant\mercenary\condottieri registed about their military days. Well, for the longest time the peasants/enlisted soldiers couldn't really write. This starts to improve by the 18th century, but you still have to remember that even well into the 20th century, there was little reason for peasants to actually write letters or diaries. I've heard from researchers working on letters written during WWI that these letters were probably the first time these soldiers had written anything since school. There are exceptions, of course, like Hagedorf in the 30YW.
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Nov 14, 2013 11:31
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Naming a ship Invincible is just asking for it.Hob_Gadling posted:Pictured: T-72 and M1 Abrams side by side. That's not what that picture shows :sperg:
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Nov 14, 2013 16:14
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Note that Keegan has never read Clausewitz and it shows. While his point that war is also cultural is well made, he makes too sharp a distinction between ritualized warfare and political warfare (or primitive and civilized, as he calls them) and ignores that even his cherished jungle natives, on occasion, fight wars of extermination that would be very familiar to Clausewitz. Also warfare isn't, and hasn't been for some time, an entirely masculine activity.
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Nov 14, 2013 17:03
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Koramei posted:Whoah can someone elaborate on this? I was only thinking of the female aviation regiments and snipers employed by the Red Army in WWII, and obviously modern day female soldiers, but HEGEL reminded me of the female camp followers in earlier armies. There can be no doubt that masculinity and warfare are closely connected - both cultural concepts influence each other heavily - but the idea that women only took part in war as victims is wrong, period. At the highest level, women have successfully led their countries through war in Israel and Great Britian. At the lowest, they have served in nearly every position armies have to offer. I still want to see those  people explain why women can't fight in wars to a veteran Russian woman sniper.
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Nov 14, 2013 19:43
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Unluckyimmortal posted:I've always thought it remarkable how ineffective most late battleships were at sinking each other. By my count, only 6 total were destroyed by naval gunfire during and after WWI, and only 2, the Kirishima and the HMS Hood after Jutland. Also, the British seem to be really bad at building battleships that won't explode more or less at random. Was Fuso or Yamashiro sunk by gunfire in Leyte Gulf?
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Nov 14, 2013 19:50
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:This was my Ph.D advisor's take on Keegan too, but especially whenever he talked about naval warfare. Someone else I think described Keegan as a man who had never read a primary source in his life. Oh, that. He had a part in his book on WWI where he claimed the Royal Navy had an overly romantic view of modern warfare and was still attached to a "culture of the signal flag", as opposed to embracing the radio. It really is a shame, because Face of Battle is an awesome book and absolutely worth the read. Six Armies in Normandy is also good and gets his point on cultures of warfare across in a less in-your-face way.
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Nov 15, 2013 00:45
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I think Beevor pointed out that Last Letters From Stalingrad was mostly made up.
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Nov 15, 2013 12:32
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MassivelyBuckNegro posted:That was my point of contention with your post. There was a distinct possibility that the Russians deliberately withheld aid in order to install their own government in Poland. Premature implies some screw-up on the part of the Polish Nationalists. I suppose in some sense there was. In that, they expected the same sort assistance from the Russians that the French Resistance got in Paris and/or misjudged the ability of the Red Army to continue its advance. There is no "distinct posibility" about it. If you read the messages exchanged between the Western Allies and the Soviets during the uprising, the Soviets flat out say that the nationalist leadership is illegitimate and pro-german. They also refuse Allied transport planes the right to land on Soviet airfields. The question is if they actually went one step further and refused to advance when they could have.
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Nov 18, 2013 02:39
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VikingSkull posted:Yeah, there's some mitigating factors on both sides when you start reading a detailed history of the battle, but it's one of those things where you first read about it and can't believe that history progressed down that path. Wars are generally long stretches of armies loving up before one side wins. That side is often, but not always, the side with less fuckups.
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Nov 18, 2013 17:27
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He just liked the Absolutism part of enlightened Absolutism, no need to jump down his throat or anything.
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Nov 18, 2013 19:55
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Actually, if you consider Battleships to be the decisive weapon in a sea battle - and nothing until December 7th, 1941 seriously put that into doubt - then pouring your limited ressources into the biggest and best battleships human ingenuity can build makes sense. Japan could never win a war of attrition, so they went for a limited number of ships that could hope to stand up to two or three enemy ships.
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Nov 18, 2013 20:02
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Raskolnikov38 posted:Man thank christ we had Ike, Marshall and Nimitz, I shudder to think of the alt histories without them. King hated the Brits and did everything he could to get more ressources into the pacific, which was very much the secondary theater. Not exactly the most rational of leaders. He did send the Yorktown to assist the Brits though, no doubt sniggering at the burn. People should also remember that pretty much everyone in these stories operates on maybe 4-6 hours of sleep a night plus the enormous pressure that high-level command brings with it. I mean I don't know I would have reacted if I was running a battle against three enemy forces at once and had to conduct an amphibious landing and then suddenly get a message from my CO going "Hey man where are your battleships, the world wonders!  ".
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Nov 18, 2013 22:28
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zoux posted:What was a commander's role during the actual battle in the pre-modern era? Did they participate in the actual battle or did they stay way behind the lines? How did they direct maneuvers, or were lower level commanders mostly autonomous? Guys like Richard III and Harold II died during the battle, so I assume some commanders at least got involved in the actual fighting, but it seems to me like if you are fighting for your life, you can't really issue commands. So was it more a situation where you just pointed your armies at each other, told your subordinates what to do, and then just let it play out? Keep in mind that during the Middle Ages, armies fought because of a personal relationship between Lord and Vassal. If you wanted to keep your army in the field, you had to be there because that was part of the deal. But for most of history, Command & Control weren't really things that happened during the battle. You deployed your army, made sure that everyone had a basic idea of what you wanted to do, and then you let it play out.
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Nov 21, 2013 17:50
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Raskolnikov38 posted:Why was the idea of a permanently neutral Belgium not repudiated after the First World War? Belgium not being able to coordinate with the allies until after a declaration of war against her was a major hindrance so why not remove it when the Germans are incapable of preventing it? Why would you do that? The Germans have an army limited to 100.000 soldiers and no airforce.
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Nov 22, 2013 22:51
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Ron Jeremy posted:What was the advantage to the uk in guaranteeing the neutrality of Belgium or Poland? British strategy in Europe has always been to a) maintain the balance of power and b) keep the channel coast neutral or friendly. Poland was because of the former, Belgium because of the latter.
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Nov 23, 2013 00:13
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a travelling HEGEL posted:I've been in Dresden for a month and a half, and in that time I have been able to read and completely record about ten muster rolls. I've improved my speed from one roll a week to one roll a day, which is a big step for me, but I have not yet gone through a single bound volume of records. And I don't know if any of this work will be relevant to the final form of my dissertation. And there are probably a lot more surviving Soviet documents than there are Early Modern Saxon ones.
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Nov 23, 2013 14:27
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Godholio posted:Ugh. The one on the left reminds me of a now-retired USAF Lt Col's flight suit. Must be very ineffcient to wear so much metal when you fly a plane. At least it isn't trying to strangle you like the F-22 suit 
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Nov 23, 2013 22:45
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bewbies posted:
This was swiftly done away with after everyone realized that letting the enemy know when you are about to run out of ammo is a terrible idea.
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Nov 24, 2013 17:25
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Lamadrid posted:Some comments about the general command of the british and french on WWI because these guys look like they had no idead what they were doing . They were at the heightof military knowledge of the time, and the Germans didn't do that much better when they did attack. Plus until tanks arrived there wasn't really much they could do. In trench warfare, the attacker is at a distinct disadvantage. But so long as the enemy sits on your own or allied soil, you can't just sit around and wait until he gets bored of it, so attacks had to be made.
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Nov 26, 2013 23:47
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Lamadrid posted:Well by what I see and read they look like they were unable to come up with a different set of rules for infantry attacks for example, having continous repetitions of the same mistakes and being callous to the loss of life. Would you consider the leadership of the Red Army, from Stalin down, to be incompetent? Because the same could be said about them.
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Nov 27, 2013 00:15
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Panzeh posted:While there were better ways to conduct infantry assaults in World War I, it's important to understand that half the reason no one could make serious movements is that the rail network in Western Europe was extremely good which allowed for very quick reinforcements in any sector. By comparison, in Russia, for example, the railroads were nowhere near as good so when someone won a battle locally, they could actually make moves before reinforcements appeared to plug any gap. Was there ever any attempt to sever the raillines by means of air attack or long range artillery?
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Nov 27, 2013 00:28
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If you are 70 and still in the job of stabbing dudes in the face with a pike you did something fundamentally wrong along the way.
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Nov 27, 2013 22:19
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:The Spanish at the advent of the Tercio liked to put dudes in their pike blocks armed with bucklers and swords. These guys disappeared realll early on. Get on his knees and crawl. Someone post the video again. a travelling HEGEL posted:There are old guys who joined someone's army when they were young men (I found one yesterday who had first enlisted in 1635--the document with his CV on it was produced in '81. Wallenstein was still alive when this man was young Just because they are on the muster rolls doesn't mean they have to fight in the frontlines, experienced soldiers make good NCOs. Or being on the rolls just means they are still getting paid s part of the pension scheme (such as it was). As for the midlife crisis, I believe I've already told the story of the established Latin professor who joined the military because he just couldn't pay the bills.
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Nov 27, 2013 23:23
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) but the guy I found today was 70 and had enlisted in his forties, and he's not the only one who did. And I have no idea why. Can you have a middle age crisis in the middle ages?
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Patton literally critisized commanders because they weren't taking enough casualties. Admittedly, he probably meant it as a way of saying that you won't win the war if you are unwilling to take risks, but still.
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Nov 29, 2013 03:13
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Rent-A-Cop posted:AirForce.txt That must suck for people at McMurdo.
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Dec 2, 2013 18:06
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Koramei posted:Not really military history, but All Quiet on the Western Front should pretty much be required reading. Contrast it with Jünger's Storms of Steel. It reads like someone made a Call of Duty WWI game and did a novelization of it.
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Dec 3, 2013 03:42
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Alchenar posted:He cared about getting his logistics right. That isn't sexy and it doesn't get him the propaganda love that the traditionally overrated generals get but it means he wins battles. He's slow and deliberate, but given the allied armies were made up of people who weren't generally willing to risk their necks that much he makes the best of what he's given. He's fighting an industrial war where his side has all the advantages, so he fights in a way that low-risk and leverages his material advantages to the full. The one time he doesn't do that it's a failure. For most of the war, the allied tactic was basically: 1. Attack and get beaten back, 2. attack again and get beaten back again, 3. assemble an overwhelming advantage in material and attack, then go back to step one. Monty skipped steps one and two and focused on step three. And frankly his ego wasn't that much worse than, say, Patton. Compared to MacArthur, he was probably downright humble.
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Dec 4, 2013 18:18
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DerLeo posted:Slightly tangential to military history, but why is it that all the diplomatic accounts of WWI have an ambassador requesting for his passport? Is it standard practice for an ambassador to have his passport impounded by the host nation until he gets expelled or recalled? No, they have diplomatic immunity so they don't need a normal passport to travel in and out of the country. But diplomatic immunity is something granted to an ambassador by the host state, so in the event of a war, they'd be in the same situation as any citizen of the hostile nation: welcome to the internment camp. Asking for "the" passport is really asking for a document granting the holder safe passage out of the country.
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Dec 4, 2013 20:34
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Flesnolk posted:I know I keep sort of dropping one-note questions in here then running off, but are there any good sources/interesting factoids on Britain's involvement in Korea, or that of other members of the UN coalition aside from the US? A lot of stuff that comes up on Google makes it look like MacArthur did almost literally everything, and while the Incheon landing was impressive as hell I've been hoping to read up on what other countries did in the fighting. Tanks work pretty well. Also Hasting's The Korean War goes into detail on the British in Korea.
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Dec 4, 2013 21:06
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Slavvy posted:On a broader WW2 note, why did the germans just...not give up? It seems that when the advantage is so overwhelming and you're being pressed from both sides, why not just surrender unconditionally to the western allies so the soviets don't end up with half your country? Why bother fighting right to the very end? They assumed "unconditional surrender" to mean the same thing they presented the Poles with.
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Dec 4, 2013 23:04
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Panzeh posted:It's also important to understand that the Seven Years War happened, and despite being attacked on all sides, Frederick managed to persevere and a miracle happened which saved Prussia. This inspired many, many men to come, from Napoleon(who had a very good chance to make it out with territorial gains in 1813) to Hitler. Ever since, many leaders have tried to fight to the end in the hope that alliances against them will fall apart for one reason or another. To be entirely fair to Hitler, the alliance against him fell apart within weeks after his death. He just underestimated how much people hate him, personally.
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Dec 5, 2013 00:12
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Guildencrantz posted:A question mostly for HEGEL: The first thing you must understand is that the modern idea of peace as the normal state of being and war as the exception is not at all true for Early Modernity. I think Parker makes the point in The Military Revolution that between 1450 and 1750, there were only a handful of years (like, less than 5) when all of Europe was really at peace. For much of the Early Modern times, war in Europe was a given. So there is always employment to be found. But unemployed mercenaries were a huge problem, mostly because they tended to band together, and suddenly you have 300 well armed veteran soldiers running through your country, getting drunk and starting poo poo. There is a reason why virtually all city ordinances I researched for my MA had laws against what was called gartende Landsknechte, which were unemployed mercenaries travelling through the area. Basically nip it in the bud before they become too big. Some areas ordered the millers to put the blades of their windmills in certain positions if they spotted travelling mercenaries as an early warning system.
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Dec 6, 2013 15:00
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SeanBeansShako posted:Pretty a single M1 would take out over a hundred Sherman tanks with only minor surface damage and the cost of a huge rear end amount of shells. One would assume that at least one Sherman would get a shot at the side or rear while the M1 is busy murdering all the others, but these kind of contests always devolve into MIC fetishists masturbating about the latest weapon technology. The real question is: stone age warriors vs. battlemechs, who wins? Exhibit a: Return of the Jedi.
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Dec 6, 2013 19:42
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a travelling HEGEL posted:I think we've already established that the Swedish human rights record is Extremely Problematic Please no 16th century war crimes chat. a travelling HEGEL posted:Yeah, every other word out of Wallhausen's mouth when he's talking about pikes is some variant on "precise." "Fine," "delicate," "graceful," "orderly." ("Fein ordentlich," which I'm not even sure how to translate since it would sound like gibberish in English. "Delicate-orderly") It's not a shoving match. "well ordered" probably comes closest. Order is a funny thing in Early Modern Times, because it is basically what Freedom is today, namely the core principle on which everything else is supposed to rest.
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Dec 7, 2013 15:53
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InspectorBloor posted:I don't know what kind of german you speak, but "bequem" is still "comfortable". It just doesn't mean lazy. The old translation for zierlich is simply "looking good" or "looking sharp" It can mean "lazy", for example in the construct "Er könnte Moskau einnehmen, aber dazu war er zu bequem!" "Sich bequemen" also means taking your sweet time doing something.
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Dec 7, 2013 18:23
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Raenir Salazar posted:How true is the claim(s) that the IDF was actually incredibly incompetent during the various A-I wars and only won because the Arabs were worse? Well, from one perspective this is true for every organized war ever.
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Dec 8, 2013 03:15
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:Are there any accounts of German soldiers, having broken through the Allied lines during the Spring Offensive in 1918, marveling at the seemingly limitless supply of artillery shells, food, and other provisions and then for the first time coming to the conclusion of "yeah, we're hosed"? I seem to recall reading ones before but I might be confusing it with something else. Maybe when the Germans broke through during the Battle of the Bulge. Pretty sure All Quiet on the Western Front has a scene where the narrator cuts off a bloody slice of bread taken from a killed American. And I distinctly recall such an account from a soldier during the Battle of the Bulge. Might have been in Ambrose's Citizen Soldiers.
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Dec 9, 2013 07:44
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gradenko_2000 posted:How did the Germans in WWII manage to run their war economy for so long? My WWI books talk of the starvation in Germany imposed by the British naval blockade, but then also that they couldn't really build effective trucks and armored cars by 1917 because they were all out of rubber - forcing them to construct vehicles with road-destroying steel wheels. Synthetic rubber was developed at some point during the 1930ies (it was actually developed in the 1890ies, but only really took off during WWII). Plus until 1941 they could just import it via the USSR.
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Dec 10, 2013 11:56
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