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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

Yvonmukluk posted:

I like how this guide describes the lend-lease tanks as 'similar' to their American counterparts, as if the British just happened to possess tanks that were identical to ones the US army was using. Because the US is neutral, you see.
The weird thing is that because of the sheer scale of US industry there were entire variants of tanks that only saw service with other nations. The "medium" there had a totally different turret for example.

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Jamwad Hilder
Apr 18, 2007

surfin usa
how is it that we have a new thread and I already have 4 pages to catch up on

my dad
Oct 17, 2012

this shall be humorous

Jamwad Hilder posted:

how is it that we have a new thread and I already have 4 pages to catch up on

military-industrial complex

spectralent
Oct 1, 2014

Me and the boys poppin' down to the shops

Grey Hunter posted:

I'm thinking of running a game of Black Powder that has all the divisions commanded by Goons (on both sides) - with everything going through emails and messages moving via riders. I want to recreate as much of the fog of war as possible - I'm not sure HOW often to make the messengers get lost, or how fast to make them move yet, but the planning stage is there.

This sounds awesome.

System Metternich
Feb 28, 2010

But what did he mean by that?

Comstar posted:

Why did the 30 years war go on for so long?

It helps when you don't think of it as s single war with clear-cut war goals and opponents and whatnot, but instead of a hilarious clusterfuck of several wars at once that just happened to coincide. Sometimes it's also like a TV show that tries to draw out its running time as much as possible with hilarious twists and turns thrown into the mix (looking at you, Restitutionsedikt).

Hey Gal posted this once already I think, but look at it:

JcDent
May 13, 2013

Give me a rifle, one round, and point me at Berlin!
Was there a year at the start when nobody was working against the emperor? Cos the graph makes it look like that.

Lol @ transylvania, the cat of 30yw

Tekopo
Oct 24, 2008

When you see it, you'll shit yourself.


JcDent posted:

Was there a year at the start when nobody was working against the emperor? Cos the graph makes it look like that.
Oh wait I see what you mean...

Tekopo fucked around with this message at 14:19 on Aug 2, 2016

xthetenth
Dec 30, 2012

Mario wasn't sure if this Jeb guy was a good influence on Yoshi.

Part of the problem was that the intersection between times the emperor was willing to back down enough to get a peace treaty and times the emperor was winning was empty.

KYOON GRIFFEY JR
Apr 12, 2010



Runner-up, TRP Sack Race 2021/22

simplefish posted:

I have a couple of questions about Napoleonics

The big one is about musketry, namely how effective it was and the tactics involved. However, I've lost the site I was going to query some information about right now, so I'll start with the smaller question

How were battles coordinated?
Was it all planned in advance and everyone had to stick to it (like making plans with friends before mobile phones) until they went their own way and took initiative in a situation? Or could things be change in the heat of battle with coordination?
I guess runners with messages but were they sent between Duke This and Duke That?
Or between Duke This and Duke That but via General Whatever for approval?
Or did only the general issue runners with messages during battle to avoid confusion?
Did messengers often get lost?

I appreciate full answers if you have them, and online links you think might be likely if you don't!

Musketry was very effective at least compared to the modern perception of its effectiveness. A lot of guys were killed by it. When fighting in line, the first rank kneels, the second rank is standing, and the third (optional, the British and Portuguese did away with this) rank is standing offset slightly behind the second rank. It's the job of the corporals to keep guys in place and dress the ranks.

The Prussians famously conducted a neat musketry experiment. They built a wickerwork frame approximately the size of a battalion formed in a three deep line of companies, and then had battalions shoot at it from varying distances. Once you get down to 75 yards, about 60% of rounds fired will strike the battalion frontage. Of course in true battle conditions, this would likely be a bit lower, but being 100 yards front of a battalion drawn in line firing platoon volleys would be a really miserable experience.

A hypothetical battalion on battalion engagement in a flat field, with a defending force drawn up in three deep ranks, and an attacking force advancing in column of companies. (Ragingly unrealistic, as in the modern battlefield Combined Arms operations between infantry, cavalry and artillery was critically important and effective). The defending force pushes out its Light company, which is tasked to fight in "open" or skirmish order. (Everyone eventually also used complete battalions of skirmish ordered troops - Jaegers, Rifles, Light Infantry, Voltigeurs, Cazadores etc). These guys hang out about 60-150 yds in front of the line, and work in pairs using cover and terrain to try to cause casualties for the enemy. The attacking battalion pushes out its light company, and they fight until someone gets bored, or the attacking force advances to approximately 100yds, maybe a bit further out. Then the defending light company will fall back on the left of the defending battalion and add to the length of the line. The attacking light company will fall back on the left of the attacking battalion and add to the length of the line, as the rest of the attacking battalion evolves in to line from column. The line advances on the enemy. Up to a certain distance, probably anything over 75 yds, whoever fires first has probably made a mistake. The defender has an advantage because the attacker has to issue commands to halt, prepare, take aim, fire, so the defender can probably get an effective volley in first. Usually for infantry drawn up in line, the first volley would be by battalion, in an effort to create the most casualties as rapidly as possible, and then fire could either be maintained by battalion or switched to by company or by platoon to maintain a constant volume of fire. Once it appeared that one formation was wavering, the other formation would order fixed bayonets and advance on the enemy. The smallest effective and reasonable unit of action was the company (or squadron, for cavalry), although in anything Corps-sized or up the smallest unit of action was the Battalion.

The "ideal" in all warfare of the era was to soften with artillery, pin the enemy in line with infantry, and attack from a flank with heavy cavalry to start a rout. The relationship between infantry, cavalry and artillery is a bit like rock paper scissors. Infantry in square is not vulnerable to cavalry, which eventually just goes away, but it's extremely vulnerable to infantry in line or artillery. Infantry in line is somewhat vulnerable to artillery and extremely vulnerable to cavalry. Infantry in columns is vulnerable to everything but has substantial mass. Cavalry is not vulnerable to infantry, but unsupported it can't actually do anything against infantry, and it's fairly vulnerable to artillery. Artillery is very vulnerable to cavalry if unsupported, less so to infantry. A single arm can't do that much on its own against another single arm - for instance, cavalry vs infantry is a bunch of guys telling each other how retarded their uniforms look after then infantry forms square. Add a half battery of horse artillery and the infantry are shot to death at leisure by cannon fire until the square disintegrates and the cavalry comes in. If you were to add a troop of horse to the infantry side of things, and you end up with a cavalry skirmish where nothing really happens.

Napoleonic era was still quite aristocratic in that a lot of guys on the non-French side were called Duke of Something, but it's not Dukes in the traditional feudal sense where their troops are personally raised. There were regiments, especially in English service, that were raised by private citizens, but they were still subordinate to the overall army structure. The title had very little to do with the level of responsibility, although good soldiers were frequently titled. For instance, Robert Craufurd as a common-born major general in charge of a brigade would still exercise tight control over his subordinates even if they were titled, and many of them would be.

Chain of command was very important. You would not have a battalion commander request aid directly from another battalion commander in his brigade or outside of his brigade unless things had gotten very hosed up and the brigade commander was dead, incapacitated, or unavailable. Frequently, battles turned on the fact that the correct guy wasn't able to gather information and issue orders in time. This is why task-oriented orders were much more effective - ie 1st brigade to hold village X, 2nd brigade in reserve, 3rd brigade to hold ridge line to East with artillery park. If you're in charge of 1st brigade, and you get thrown out of village X, unless you get orders to the contrary via a messenger you're getting your guys back in that village come hell or high water, and if it looks like it's impossible you better have already sent a messenger the minute you got thrown out. It's an interesting balance between detail of orders and flexibility. 1st brigade may be tasked to hold Village X, but the Corps commander won't say "keep 4eme de la ligne in the village firing from loopholes and blockhouses, blockade the streets in a grid pattern, use your Voltigeur regiment separated by companies to skirmish from the broken ground to the south of the village, keep your brigade level artillery in reserve, and keep the 21eme de la ligne in reserve at location Y." You'd just kind of assume the Corps guy was decent enough to do a good job. Most of these guys had been fighting together or in various wars for decades, so there was a lot of competence.

Messengers frequently got lost or killed. They were usually young lieutenants with decent families mounted on very good horses, and the headquarters staff would have a pool of them at brigade, corps and army level getting successively larger. Send two at a time usually. Once the battle gets going, you better hope that your initial assigned tasks were reasonable and that your brigade generals and colonels can react to situations effectively. Everyone issues messengers in both directions - could be a battalion asking permission to withdraw, or counterattack, against issued orders, could be a brigade asking to move up in support, or an army requesting a brigade in reserve to detach a battalion or two, or a corps telling a brigade that they were on their own. Commanders had to be fairly confident in their subordinates, because things change more rapidly on the field than the ability of commanders to acquire information, issue orders, have those orders be received, understood and executed. Plus, messengers could get out of order, or pass each other, or have all kinds of things happen that made the orders or requests difficult to interpret. As a result, commanders tended to sit fairly still in a decent observational position so that they could see with their own eyes, and so that messengers could easily find them. The battalion commander sits on a horse behind his battalion so he can see what's going on with his battalion and the others in his brigade. The brigade commander sits on a horse at a higher point so that he can see all of the battalions in his brigade. The corps commander, etc, etc. Of course, battlefields got smoky pretty fast, so there were issues in observing who was where and doing what - hence the brightly colored uniforms, the specialized headgear, and the elaborate regimental standards.

If you're lucky, you scout the ground and can plan the fight in advance, and the fight goes roughly to plan. If things don't go to plan, you're reliant on your subordinates to understand the operational plan, adapt to the changing situation, and execute effectively with limited oversight. If you're unlucky, you get surprised in an area you don't expect to fight, and your chain of command is disrupted early in the battle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Salamanca

Salamanca is kind of interesting and shows some of the limitations and successes of Napoleonic command control and communications - the French are initially disrupted and part of their force effectively destroyed in part due to a rupture in the chain of command of the army, but recover somewhat effectively because a division commander (Clausel) of an unaffected division is smart enough to see that the Allied line is likely vulnerable and acts on his own initiative to force his division and another in to a counter-attack, and assumes command of the army. However, since time has been lost and much of the force destroyed or scattered, it's unlikely that the situation was actually reversible - losing your two most senior leaders in the early going is a recipe for disaster, since nobody knows where orders should come from. Clausel's attack is repulsed by a divisional commander reacting to the local situation on his own initiative, and the army commander allocating central reserves to meet the threat, the latter acting essentially to plan. It also shows the importance of literal visibility to enemy movements, since the fact that the French didn't see the allies deployment left them at a disadvantage.

edit: pre-battle drawings are a lot less common than for Hey Gal's people, I think because most armies at this point had an engineering group which was tasked with providing maps and scouting to create maps. So in that sense, there are pre-battle drawings, but they're a little less ad-hoc. In the Peninsular war, you'd have maps for every likely fortified position on the Portuguese frontier.

KYOON GRIFFEY JR fucked around with this message at 14:29 on Aug 2, 2016

Sulphagnist
Oct 10, 2006

WARNING! INTRUDERS DETECTED

System Metternich posted:

It helps when you don't think of it as s single war with clear-cut war goals and opponents and whatnot, but instead of a hilarious clusterfuck of several wars at once that just happened to coincide. Sometimes it's also like a TV show that tries to draw out its running time as much as possible with hilarious twists and turns thrown into the mix (looking at you, Restitutionsedikt).

Hey Gal posted this once already I think, but look at it:



Half expected the Emperor to be at least indirectly involved against the Emperor.

sullat
Jan 9, 2012

Tree Bucket posted:

A question- how do submariners avoid going insane? How do navies decide which people will be able to cope with hours crammed inside a boat designed to sink, and do they ever get it wrong...?

They give you a shrink test and put you in a closet for 15 minutes.

Siivola
Dec 23, 2012

From the historical minis thread:

DiHK posted:

https://m.thevintagenews.com/2016/07/30/priority-see-surviving-images-veterans-napoleonic-wars-hd-color-2/

I'm just gonna leave these colorized photos of Napoleonic soldiers right here.

sullat
Jan 9, 2012

JcDent posted:

Was there a year at the start when nobody was working against the emperor? Cos the graph makes it look like that.

Lol @ transylvania, the cat of 30yw

I think the first year or so was putting down a revolt in Bohemia, which isn't on that list because it was put down very thoroughly and so becomes part of the Empire. (Under Wallenstein, eventually, so there is some debate as to whether it was against the empire or for him by the end).

xthetenth
Dec 30, 2012

Mario wasn't sure if this Jeb guy was a good influence on Yoshi.

Antti posted:

Half expected the Emperor to be at least indirectly involved against the Emperor.

That's an uncharitable but not inaccurate description of how he kept winning and then immediately doubling down with something so outrageous that the Protestants were guaranteed to keep fighting.

KYOON GRIFFEY JR
Apr 12, 2010



Runner-up, TRP Sack Race 2021/22

Siivola posted:

From the historical minis thread:

These are really good but guys would mostly not have looked like that at any point in time unless they were in barracks. Uniforms were a mishmash of looted poo poo that you liked better. You probably kept your headgear, the coat, and that's about it. Stuff wears out fast.

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

FOPTIMUS PRIME

JcDent posted:

Was there a year at the start when nobody was working against the emperor? Cos the graph makes it look like that.

Lol @ transylvania, the cat of 30yw
that break in the very end for bavaria was when their entire army--yes, the whole thing--committed treason along with their Elector

edit: also saxony's involvement for the emperor at the beginning of the war needs to end in '25, not the teens, since that was when the war in their corner of the Empire ended, also also they forgot hesse-darmstadt

Siivola
Dec 23, 2012

KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:

These are really good but guys would mostly not have looked like that at any point in time unless they were in barracks. Uniforms were a mishmash of looted poo poo that you liked better. You probably kept your headgear, the coat, and that's about it. Stuff wears out fast.
Like the article says, these were taken during a memorial parade for Napoleon.

This dude is cool as hell, can someone tell me more about Napoleon's mamelukes?

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

FOPTIMUS PRIME

KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:

edit: pre-battle drawings are a lot less common than for Hey Gal's people, I think because most armies at this point had an engineering group which was tasked with providing maps and scouting to create maps. So in that sense, there are pre-battle drawings, but they're a little less ad-hoc. In the Peninsular war, you'd have maps for every likely fortified position on the Portuguese frontier.
Some other reasons for that difference:

in your time, the guy in command of the entire army is not expected to take personal command of his own regiment and fight like a colonel would in addition to floating around to keep an eye on things in general

while there's still a whole lot of luck involved in a pitched battle, my guys seem to believe that once the fight starts it's almost all out of the commander-in-chief's hands so more depends on the initial deployment

pretty sure your guys had more dudes running messages back and forth, per capita

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 15:11 on Aug 2, 2016

Jobbo_Fett
Mar 7, 2014

Slava Ukrayini

Clapping Larry

spectralent posted:

KV-2 is so cute.

It was also the tank that stopped a german column on it's lonesome near Raisenai, though I think I remember on EE's blog that the original source doesn't mention if it's a KV-1 or KV-2 so maybe that's wrong.

Well, when you have one road through a marsh and a giant column of vehicles, any tank that could reliably penetrate any of the tank therein would've been successful at that. I remember it ran out of ammo, which is why the crew ended up abandoning it and withdrawing.


Also, the KV-2 did not like any terrain that wasn't flat.

Jobbo_Fett
Mar 7, 2014

Slava Ukrayini

Clapping Larry

Yvonmukluk posted:

Obviously these scans are not the best, unfortunately, but hopefully they're a bit helpful. I'm sure EnsignExpendable has links to better guides.

There's also this, but I think it's made by a contemporary Wehraboo, so take some of the descriptions with a pinch of salt.

"The Panzer II's main combat drawback was a poor anti-tank performance" or, you know, the fact that it was obsolete by the time WW2 started, and the armor on it was almost worthless...


His description of the Panther tank makes me assume he was jerking off as he wrote it.

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

FOPTIMUS PRIME

JcDent posted:

Lol @ transylvania, the cat of 30yw
yeah, "is bethlen gabor/rakoczi going to do a thing" is a running minor theme throughout. the answer is always "maybe, if he feels like it"

System Metternich
Feb 28, 2010

But what did he mean by that?

HEY GAL posted:

that break in the very end for bavaria was when their entire army--yes, the whole thing--committed treason along with their Elector

Yeah, after Swedish and French troops were utterly destroying Bavaria and torching Bavarian cities left and right and the elector's good buddy Ferdinand II had died while his son and successor expressed no interest at all in finally negotiating a drat peace :mad:

Also we entered the war like half a year later again, so the treason wasn't too bad I think

INinja132
Aug 7, 2015

Grey Hunter posted:

I'm thinking of running a game of Black Powder that has all the divisions commanded by Goons (on both sides) - with everything going through emails and messages moving via riders. I want to recreate as much of the fog of war as possible - I'm not sure HOW often to make the messengers get lost, or how fast to make them move yet, but the planning stage is there.

Yeah that sounds totally baller. Make sure you link in here when you do it :D

KYOON GRIFFEY JR
Apr 12, 2010



Runner-up, TRP Sack Race 2021/22

HEY GAL posted:

Some other reasons for that difference:

in your time, the guy in command of the entire army is not expected to take personal command of his own regiment and fight like a colonel would in addition to floating around to keep an eye on things in general

while there's still a whole lot of luck involved in a pitched battle, my guys seem to believe that once the fight starts it's almost all out of the commander-in-chief's hands so more depends on the initial deployment

pretty sure your guys had more dudes running messages back and forth, per capita

for sure, personal command is no longer a thing, the highest rank that is expected to take serious personal risk is a colonel. and messengers are everywhere, you have to find something for all those loving useless rear end third sons to do

my dudes definitely think in terms of a more dynamic battle than yours do

Plutonis
Mar 25, 2011

Yo no one answered my question on las thread: Where can I find good sources and articles about the Yugoslav wars of independence? Specifically the Bosnian and Croatian ones

Kemper Boyd
Aug 6, 2007

no kings, no gods, no masters but a comfy chair and no socks

HEY GAL posted:

yeah, "is bethlen gabor/rakoczi going to do a thing" is a running minor theme throughout. the answer is always "maybe, if he feels like it"

If the 30 YW was a WWE pay-per-view event you'd have something like six or eight or ten instances where Jim Ross goes BAH GAWD IS THAT BETHLEN GÁBOR'S MUSIC, Bethlen runs in and smacks Ferdinand in the back with a steel chair and takes off again.

shallowj
Dec 18, 2006

HEY GAL, is honor the reason commanders in your period are expected to fight personally in battle?

i have some other questions about honor in the early modern period, too:

is there any connection between medieval codes of chivalry and early modern soldier's honor? do early modern duels share any similarities with judicial combats of earlier periods? did duels of honor also exist alongside judicial duels?

do your soldiers recognize any differences in honor between different regiments? i.e., can an entire regiment be seen as more or less honorable based on its performance? you mentioned that entire professions can be seen as honorable, so I'm curious how much honor can become a collective thing. also, how far did honor matter on the battlefield? is there any recognition of difference in demands of honor between combat on a "battlefield" and the kind of ambush based combat that the raiding parties would engage in?

finally, what are the differences between a more formal duel and the kind of fight over honor a non-elite soldier would get into? you've mentioned brawling with civilians and things like that. i assume duels would be reserved more for one's relative equal; is that the case?

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

FOPTIMUS PRIME

System Metternich posted:

Yeah, after Swedish and French troops were utterly destroying Bavaria and torching Bavarian cities left and right and the elector's good buddy Ferdinand II had died while his son and successor expressed no interest at all in finally negotiating a drat peace :mad:

Also we entered the war like half a year later again, so the treason wasn't too bad I think
still though, you're just fine and nice while if some people i won't name try to negotiate a ceasefire with Saxony they get halberded to death, i see how it is

bigotry pure and simple

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

FOPTIMUS PRIME

KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:

and messengers are everywhere, you have to find something for all those loving useless rear end third sons to do
do your generals and colonels have personal bodyguards? because my high officers are loving surrounded by otherwise redundant dudes in really spiffy outfits, sometimes entire companies of them


shallowj posted:

HEY GAL, is honor the reason commanders in your period are expected to fight personally in battle?
I don't think it's as simplistic as that, but this is definitely part of it. They really really want to, part of it is definitely to obtain honor and renown through brave deeds. Part of it might be that if you've been brought up to think of battles as more or less out of your control once everything starts, you might want to have a lot of control over what you can control, which is the extent to which you can shiv a motherfucker right in the eyes.

quote:

is there any connection between medieval codes of chivalry and early modern soldier's honor?
This is actually a debated question, and the answer is...maybe. Feudal ties and old ways of calling up armies are definitely a thing. I now think there's more continuity between the late middle ages and the early modern period than I used to. But this is complicated by the part where all these guys are reading stories about the middle ages, almost as much as they will in the 19th century.

quote:

do early modern duels share any similarities with judicial combats of earlier periods?
no, there the aim is to establish guilt while these guys are trying to maintain self-respect/the respect of others. duelling is also extra-legal or outright illegal.

quote:

did duels of honor also exist alongside judicial duels?
I don't know.

quote:

do your soldiers recognize any differences in honor between different regiments? i.e., can an entire regiment be seen as more or less honorable based on its performance? you mentioned that entire professions can be seen as honorable, so I'm curious how much honor can become a collective thing.
yes. different regiments and different companies within a regiment will have more or less precedence based on what they've done in the past, how old they are, the seniority of their hauptleute/obersts, etc. Certain regiments like the Green Swedish Brigade or the Alt-Tillys became famous because of being good at poo poo. The oberst's personal company is also the senior company in the regiment (more honored), and its flag has more white in it, which makes it "more beautiful."

They could also gain the privilege to do certain things based on honorable deeds they had performed in the past, like this arquebussier regiment:

RIP austro-hungarian dragoon regt. #8, 1618-1918, like dis if u cry ever time

quote:

also, how far did honor matter on the battlefield? is there any recognition of difference in demands of honor between combat on a "battlefield" and the kind of ambush based combat that the raiding parties would engage in?
deceiving your enemy is fine (Wallenstein at Nassau Bridge), ambushing them or attempting to ambush them (GA at Luetzen) is fine, attacking from the back is fine (Baner at Wittstock), refusing to take prisoners is a little sketch but not unheard of (Frankfurt-Oder, the battle one of Piccolomini's sons died after). You do what you can to win, they're not robots, like the way weebs think about bushido.

quote:

finally, what are the differences between a more formal duel and the kind of fight over honor a non-elite soldier would get into? you've mentioned brawling with civilians and things like that. i assume duels would be reserved more for one's relative equal; is that the case?
In this period it's a spectrum and duels are not only reserved for the elite. Peter Spierenburg writes about lots of non-elite duelling in Amsterdam and I've seen the same thing in my research--everyone follows a code of conduct in their fights, whether implicit or explicit. It's also possible common soldiers duel more than officers because they have less of an opportunity to sue. I think you only fight your equal, which means it's interesting that common soldiers and officers will fight each other--possibly because they're nearer to being equals than they will be in the 18th or 19th centuries.

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Aug 2, 2016

spectralent
Oct 1, 2014

Me and the boys poppin' down to the shops

Jobbo_Fett posted:

Well, when you have one road through a marsh and a giant column of vehicles, any tank that could reliably penetrate any of the tank therein would've been successful at that. I remember it ran out of ammo, which is why the crew ended up abandoning it and withdrawing.

The story I read was that they were attacked at night by pioneers and found dead within the vehicle in the morning.

quote:

Also, the KV-2 did not like any terrain that wasn't flat.

But it's so cute.

Nenonen
Oct 22, 2009

Mulla on aina kolkyt donaa taskussa
So apparently Heinrich Himmler's lost wartime diaries have been found and Bild is publishing excerpts. They will be published in book form next year, but we already know from his notes that:

A) Himmler was having a lunch in Buchenwald when he gave orders to the SS to train dogs to tear Jews into pieces. (What a work ethic he had, most would finish their meal before resuming work.)

B) When Himmler was following a massacre in Minsk he nearly fainted. He almost did the same another time when an executed Jew's brain splattered onto his coat. (Yet people called him insensitive!)

Why would you even keep a diary of your role in carrying out a genocide, down to little details, when at the same time you tried to hide it from the public?

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

FOPTIMUS PRIME
let's hope this doesn't become another Hitler's diaries thing

P-Mack
Nov 10, 2007

So I'm playing HOI4 as France, and this game is making me think that the Maginot line was actually cool and good. Am I wrong?

Grenrow
Apr 11, 2016

HEY GAL posted:


deceiving your enemy is fine (Wallenstein at Nassau Bridge), ambushing them or attempting to ambush them (GA at Luetzen) is fine, attacking from the back is fine (Baner at Wittstock), refusing to take prisoners is a little sketch but not unheard of (Frankfurt-Oder, the battle one of Piccolomini's sons died after). You do what you can to win, they're not robots, like the way weebs think about bushido.


Yeah, this is a big myth about late medieval warfare too. People are somehow under the impression that knights wouldn't utilize missile weapons (why did they spend so much money on all these crossbowmen then?) or that they wouldn't ambush enemies. One big thing I hate is the idea that the custom of capturing people for ransom somehow was a lesser form of warfare. No, a lot of the time, people need to get their asses beaten pretty hard in order to convince them to surrender. There's a lot of guys who get captured just because they're too wounded to keep fighting. Not exactly a bloodless affair.

Plutonis
Mar 25, 2011

P-Mack posted:

So I'm playing HOI4 as France, and this game is making me think that the Maginot line was actually cool and good. Am I wrong?

It definitely served its purpose of stopping the Germans from invading from THAT part of the frontier. Too bad they didn't extend it to the Ardennes and Belgium!

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

FOPTIMUS PRIME
so i specifically looked up the 8th Bohemian Dragoons (Montecuccoli's), and the privileges they received for appearing in that courtyard when they did were huge:

quote:

The regiment may march when on duty to the sound of trumpets and with standards flying through the Imperial and Royal Hofburg Palace and the Imperial capital and Residenz city of Vienna, and may also set up on the imperial palace forecourt (the Franzensplatze) and recruit there for three days. The guard is then to be drawn from the regiment in front of the apartment granted pro forma to the regimental commander in the Hofburg Palace, to where the regimental standards are to be brought, and the respective regimental commander is permitted on such an occasion to appear, unannounced, in full dress before His Majesty the Emperor.

The regiment also has the assurance that it will never be disbanded or reduced, as long as it continues to maintain its current glory, and finally the distinction that no man of the regiment, for a crime punishable by death, shall be executed for the same, but in such cases the culprit will be transferred to another regiment where such penalty may be carried out at any time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8th_Bohemian_Dragoons_(Count_Montecuccoli%27s)
Read the language--glory, privilege, etc. This would be like catnip to the sorts of people who join cavalry regiments. They would have loved this so much.

No doubt various regiments/companies in other armies had similar things going on, based on similar brave deeds, etc.

Edit: When and in what context you take the flags out of their cases ("fly them") is a huge Thing, as is when you may play your trumpets/flutes and drums.

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Aug 2, 2016

Dick Trauma
Nov 30, 2007

God damn it, you've got to be kind.
I've seen a few references to tank destroyers. Did I miss some sort of tank vs. tank destroyer pissing contest in the last thread?

shallowj
Dec 18, 2006

thanks for the great answers Hey Gal.

also, what does " finally the distinction that no man of the regiment, for a crime punishable by death, shall be executed for the same, but in such cases the culprit will be transferred to another regiment where such penalty may be carried out at any time." mean? is that a one-time get-out-of-execution-free card through being transferred out? or does the last bit imply that they will/may be executed for the crime, but in a different regiment where they won't tarnish the 8th Bohemian Dragoons?

Fangz
Jul 5, 2007

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

Dick Trauma posted:

I've seen a few references to tank destroyers. Did I miss some sort of tank vs. tank destroyer pissing contest in the last thread?

Hahaha

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HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

FOPTIMUS PRIME

shallowj posted:

thanks for the great answers Hey Gal.

also, what does " finally the distinction that no man of the regiment, for a crime punishable by death, shall be executed for the same, but in such cases the culprit will be transferred to another regiment where such penalty may be carried out at any time." mean? is that a one-time get-out-of-execution-free card through being transferred out? or does the last bit imply that they will/may be executed for the crime, but in a different regiment where they won't tarnish the 8th Bohemian Dragoons?
i think it's the second but with the caveat that since executions are carried out at the discretion of the oberst you can appeal and get a pardon (and according to some of my friends, many soldiers do). so it's not automatic but can happen "at any time"

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