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Centurium posted:The psychological impact of dealing with the enormity of human evil is not a trivial matter. I know a professor at American University who works extensively on the bomb. He has a preemptive talk with graduate students doing archival research on the subject after several students felt suicidal after spending days in small archives reading rooms examining the calculations around ending the world. Apparently the papers considering countervalue targeting (screw military units, command structures, and missiles, just explicitly try to annihilate as many population centers as you can) are particularly noxious to mental health. There's a goon in Goons in Platoons that talked about his time spent on a military position in Western Germany that was considered to be destroyed in less than half an hour if the cold war went hot. They were considered to be mere objects because who the gently caress cares about the well being of a unit that is meant to die, yet they were forced to be the cream of the crop in pretty much every single aspect, from military to administrative and technical work. Can't remember the name of the goon but the thread is still alive i think, i'll try to fish it up if a GiPer doesn't do it first. If his tales are strong enough to read then i imagine what an entire platoon could say about their experience, much less what they'd say in case of an active war. 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. Can't imagine what a memory from a French soldier during the Napoleonic wars would be like. "Dear diary, i went from Vendee to Italy, back to Austria , then to Egypt and Spain. My life is corpses." Godholio posted:Everybody stole from everybody. There are a billion times more examples of tech spreading than indigenous development of the same concept. 
Mans fucked around with this message at 08:10 on Nov 14, 2013 |
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Nov 14, 2013 08:02
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| # ¿ May 2, 2024 12:36 |
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The Spanish Civil War had some amazing songs and i'll post them here Long live the Fifth Brigade! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QnH5i4EROw The Army of the Ebro, song about one of the most decisive battles of the civil war and certainly the bloodiest defeat of the Republicans https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bG4a4OB1AW0 Canto nocturno en las trincheras (The nightly song in the trenches) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WM4KPMx-Pxs Marcha de las Brigadas Internacionales (The march of the International Brigades https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y72wj5c2wkM No passaran was the war cry of the Republic against the fascist attack on Madrid. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwLLdqR5BFE Si Me Quieres Escribir. "If you want to write me you'll find me on the front-lines, if you want to eat well and cheaply just come here, the moors will offer you grenades and shrapnel you'll never forget  "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1Ug0nZ1pRY A German anthem to the brigades https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT7CvLJx_Ek There's more songs, if there's one thing that's not lacking is war songs of the Spanish Civil War.
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Nov 15, 2013 07:03
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I never quite understood how planes could fit cannons and machine guns right next or even behind the blades of the engines without blowing said blades to hell. I guess there's a delaying mechanism that stops the blades when you shoot, but how do you make sure the blades don't stop in front of the guns and wouldn't said delay cause the plane to lose speed and energy?Pornographic Memory posted:I forget if this was posted in the last milhist thread or a different one, but this guy was mentioned in relation to this topic, as a lot of Panzerjagers were his "designs", to the extent that you can really call an improvised vehicle mating wildly disparate parts that. 
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Nov 16, 2013 02:03
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a travelling HEGEL posted:
What were their characteristics? I know the Germans tended to make deep, angled trenches and tended to make them as comfortable as possible, since they knew their soldiers would tend to hang around them or a while.
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Nov 16, 2013 15:53
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I don't know in which tread to post anymore  How was mental trauma dealt with before the 20th century? I assume it's somewhere between "gently caress that grunt" and "a farmer doesn't need a psychiatrist" but there must be at least some novels about how people dealt with their traumas afterwards. I assume that months of marching desperate for food coupled with the occasional stabbing and shooting must upset your brain on a somewhat equal term as modern day warfare. a travelling HEGEL posted:I know. And anything I say to this conversation will probably be an outlier anyway, since I believe that nationalism is mental poison while exchanging services for cash is a sensible idea. Make sure, however, that you'll actually be paid for your services before joining on a foreign adventure http://www.interpretermag.com/the-last-battle-of-the-slavonic-corps/
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Nov 26, 2013 05:00
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The only video i saw of him was the one about hoplites and how silly it is to think they fought with pushing matches, since that's a wonderful way of killing your frontline and making spears useless. He seemed pretty sensible.
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Nov 26, 2013 16:23
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I know about idiot commanders being given responsibility that they should never receive in a million years in Nazi Germany. What about the allies? In the Soviet side you have at the very least Lev Mekhlis and Budyonny while i never fully understood why Patton was allowed to command anything. Fyodor Tolbukhin and Timoshenko seem like really under-rated Soviet commanders. Post your favorite underrated commanders too  There was this work done, i think by someone connected to the U.S. Army, about Operation August Storm. It was extremely detailed and it explained academically why it was such an amazing operation. A goon linked it in the previous thread. Anyone knows what i'm talking about? Also, to the people talking about being depressed while reading about military history, here's the last memoir from Tatsuguchi's diary: quote:Today at 2 o'clock we assembled at Headquarters, the field hospital took also part. The last assault is to be carried out. All the patients in the hospital were made to commit suicide. I am only 33 years old and I am to die. Have no regrets. Banzai to the Emperor. I took care of all patients with a grenade. Goodbye Taeko, my beloved wife, who loved me to the last. Until we meet again grant you God-speed Misaka , who just became four years old, will grow up unhindered. If I feel sorry for you Takiko born February this year and gone before without seeing your father. Well goodbye Mitsue, Brothers Hocan, Sukoshan, Masachan, Mitichan, goodbye. The number participating in this attack is a little over a thousand. Will try to take enemy artillery position. It seems the enemy will probably make an all out attack tomorrow. Mans fucked around with this message at 09:07 on Nov 28, 2013 |
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Nov 28, 2013 09:04
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Ferrosol posted:
quote:During the night 19th Brigade HQ attempted to negotiate a ceasefire with the commander of the Italian XXII Corps and garrison in Tobruk. It was hoped they would succeed, but a telephone call from the Italian supreme command put paid to their efforts. Mussolini himself had spoken personally to General Manella, forbidding him to surrender, and informing him that squadrons of Italian bombers were on their way as reinforcements. Later that night Italian SM.79s carried out a surprise low-level attack, which bombed some 8,000 prisoners who had been gathered inside a fenced enclosure, killing and wounding hundreds of their men. This bombing broke the will of many among those still prepared to fight. A lighting strike and daring bombing raid...against the Italian POWs followed by a general surrendering himself but not his troops.
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Nov 28, 2013 10:22
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the man who was doing blitzkriegs in the desert long before anyone had heard of Rommel. He took a force of 36000 men against an Italian army that outnumbered him 5 to 1 and proceeded to utterly demolish them destroying the entire Italian army invading eygpt and conquering half of Libya in the process. Unfortunately then Churchill screwed things up by taking half his army and packing it off to Greece leaving him with an inexperienced force. While personally conducting an inspection of the front lines he was captured by a German patrol and spent the next two years trying to escape from an Italian POW camp. He finally escaped in late 1943 and was given a corps command under Montgomery. He was reasonably competent and did his job ok but didn't get on with Monty so he was shipped out to India where he spent the rest of the war organising supplies for the Burma campaign.
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gradenko_2000 posted:I wouldn't consider Patton a bad commander. On the contrary, he was probably one of the few generals with the aggressiveness and mobile drive to match the likes of Rommel, Guderian, Manstein, et al. It's just that what's acceptable for a general in Nazi Germany isn't going to be acceptable for an army of a democracy. Oh crap, i thought Patton was MacArthur. The pipe addict is the one i never considered that competent. Not that who i thought was MacArthur ever seemed that sane either. Arquinsiel posted:In the end it fell to a cooking fire that got out of hand. Think about that for a while. The powder lit up and naturally found its way to the ammo depot, blowing up the entirety of the deposit with a blast so spectacular that it killed at least 600 soldiers inside the fort and is believed to have also killed and maimed French soldiers outside the fortress. Make sure your soldiers aren't leaving gunpowder all over the place during an artillery bombardment.
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Nov 29, 2013 02:53
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I wonder what was the first "your wifes are screwing your allies soldiers at home" propaganda piece ever made.
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Jan 13, 2014 09:26
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Does anyone know these books? Are they a good read? http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm100-2-1.pdf http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm100-2-2.pdf http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm100-2-3.pdf a travelling HEGEL posted:Tours was a sideshow, more a giant pillaging raid than an attempt at conquest. On balance, most of Western Europe besides Italy and Spain was probably not worth even invading. It is kind of amazing how Tours happened exactly 100 years after the rise of Abu Bakr to power. From small dissidents in southern Arabia to raiding southern France in 100 years, the rise of Islam was an amazing military sucess story. Lamadrid posted:Why the gently caress Greece needs so many tanks ? Are they going to start poo poo in the middle east all on their own Alexander the Great Style?
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Jan 16, 2014 09:30
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Man, why would you just slash a 12 year old in the face repeatedly 
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Jan 18, 2014 19:19
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I wonder why it became so infamous though. Didn't they actually manage to rout the Russian artillery, even if at an heavy cost? Was it that rare for cavalry to suffer heavy casualties or something? I never got the fixation for that particular situation.
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Jan 28, 2014 04:21
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Do we know how much they were involved in war crimes?
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Jan 29, 2014 17:17
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Ensign Expendable posted:Ah yes, horses, critical for a height advantage over the enemy in battle! Wouldn't the horses start fleeing like hell if they heard a shot right in their ears? All the horses i've met seem to panic whenever a slight breeze passes near them.
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Jan 30, 2014 00:56
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| # ¿ May 2, 2024 12:36 |
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The army purges were much less about modernizing the army or giving it a breath of fresh air and more about making sure everyone knew who was in charge. Some really incompetent people were allowed to stay like Budyonny, Voroshilov, Blokhin or that one whose name escapes me who refused to believe in the utility of assault weapons or machine guns, while talented war-proven generals like Tukhachevsky, Blyukher and even Rokossovsky were trialed because at some point in time they embarassed Stalin and his cronies. The purges also shifted the army from an army based on grinding the enemy down in well planned, deep defensive positions and hidden supply stashes for partisan activity to a "standard" army, which was a disastrous shift of plans. Even worse, veterans of the Spanish civil war and engineers trained in sabotage were cowardly purged too, with surviving members being brought back during the war because it turned out they needed them. After the war a butload of soldiers went from Germany to Siberia for god knows what reasons. Stalin was terrified of a Napoleon figure, exemplified best by his determined persecution of Trotsky and Tukhachevsky. Since during the civil war he proved not to be the brightest leader (Lenin praised Stalin for being a terrifying brute but warned the rest of the party that he was a really special kind of terrifying brute) and his actions in Poland pretty much defined who was going to live or die when he reached power. Stalin was a dick. Raskolnikov38 posted:The only pro I can think of for the great purge is that in Hearts of Iron it'll kill off most of your useless 'old guard' generals but even then its not worth it. It's random so sometimes Chuikov and your other near overpowered leaders can bite the bullet. Meanwhile the snotty Americans can just strut around all game with their Pattons, Einsenhowers or Nimitzes like it ain't no thing. Not fair.
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Feb 3, 2014 15:37
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