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SeanBeansShako posted:Can Cyrano just post that excellent post about how media no matter how sincere or authentic will always feel slightly off so it can just be enshrined in the OP forever? that was a good post. The one where I forgot the term ludonarriative dissonance? http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/tampabaytimes/obituary.aspx?pid=150669534
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Oct 24, 2018 03:19
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ughhhh posted:A bar i regular was playing this on the TV and i thought this thread would appreciate it. Those are some comically tall shako and other head gear. Cyrano4747 posted:The one where I forgot the term ludonarriative dissonance? Yep that is the one.
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Oct 24, 2018 03:25
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From one of the Japanese militaria otaku I follow: context: https://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/07/world/maastricht-journal-dutch-want-back-the-fossil-napoleon-took-away.html quote:Ms. Rompen said that in 1780 quarry workers found the fossil embedded in a dark recess of St. Peter's mountain near Maastricht and lugged it to the home of the landowner, Theodorus Godding, who was a canon at a local church. pthighs posted:I'm no expert but I know Patton designed a cavalry sword for the US Army in the interwar period. Presumably he was selected for to his long experience and social standing. I'm guessing his getting and cavalry experience informed whatever changes he made to the design. Patton's design was a departure from traditional sabers though. IIRC it was a straight-bladed sword with a pistol-grip that was perfectly balanced for thrusting and would have been more familiar to a fencing student, as Patton had gone and studied under some French cavalry masters at Samur who told him that slashing from horseback is less likely to kill than a stabbing attack.
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Oct 24, 2018 03:33
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Koramei posted:Relatedly, can we get the last thread goldmined too? There's a lot of posts that it'd suck to lose. Would be nice to have links to them in the OP like last time too: It's in there. You know, you guys can PM Grand Fromage too. He's a cool dude. Reads his PMs. Tends to take suggestions.
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Oct 24, 2018 03:37
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It's hilarious (and by hilarious I mean infuriating) when leftist Nazi-haters somehow swallow Soviet propaganda and start screaming how Poland got what it deserved for being Nazi collaborators. Like, my duds, do you not know where the Warsaw Ghetto got their weapons from? It was the Home Army.
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Oct 24, 2018 04:32
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:It's hilarious (and by hilarious I mean infuriating) when leftist Nazi-haters somehow swallow Soviet propaganda and start screaming how Poland got what it deserved for being Nazi collaborators. The soviets also halted deliberately till the uprising was finished, and helpfully arrested the british mission. You know, the mission of the only country that actually tried to help. But that was For The People. Never mind how the uprising began because The People were prepared for the Red Army to advance and liberate and that’s why the drat thing happened.
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Oct 24, 2018 05:39
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SeanBeansShako posted:Can Cyrano just post that excellent post about how media no matter how sincere or authentic will always feel slightly off so it can just be enshrined in the OP forever? that was a good post. Cyrano4747 posted:With regard to war in video games in general there is a key problem that comes from the media itself, namely the clash between narrative and gameplay. There’s a fancy word for this that I’m blanking on, but basically you frequently get dissonance between what the overt message of the story is - as indicated by cutscenes and in-game events - and what the gameplay itself is telling you.
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Oct 24, 2018 05:50
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in an action movie sense, then right after the final battle we have comically extended emotional “looking in anguish across the battlefield” schmaltz. There’s a level of discord between what the film outright tells us we should think (genocide is bad, Rambo is a hosed up vet, violence is awful) and what it shows us ( 
holy poo poo he just decapitated a guy with his bare hands OMFG THIS IS AWESOME 
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Yay my thread back. I was hoping the next iteration would have a couple reserved posts so that effortposts from the previous thread(s?) could have a home at the top of the thread and maybe one for the upcoming effortposts too but I don't care too much. What I am currently hoping is if someone remembered that medieval or maybe early modern battle where they drove huge spikes into the beach to stop the fleet like giant abatis? There was an amazing painting of it. I think it involved the Spanish, or maybe french.
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Oct 24, 2018 07:36
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Crazycryodude posted:I'm wary of giving Best specifically credit because he was an utter piece of poo poo who was a major Gestapo member, oversaw the Night of the Long Knives, and rounded up a fuckton of French Jews even if he let the Danish ones off the hook for purely pragmatic reasons. He was an avid believer in all the racial theories of the Nazis. He was a real lovely person even by the standards of his time, whereas someone like Lincoln who might look bad today at least has the excuse of being born and raised in a world that pushed poo poo ideology onto them and still managed to be a progressive compared to contemporaries. Best doesn't. Yes, it is good that he let the Danes off. But I just don't feel comfortable praising one of Reinhard Heydrich's deputies for pretty much anything. Yeah the thing about Best's story is that it's a reminder that Nazi Germany was in a constant struggle between the ideological drivers and competition between the hardcore Nazis, and the people who wanted an efficient functioning country. Understanding that contrast is important to understanding the inner tensions between the elites an an authoritarian regime, but it's important not to forget that Best's objective was an efficient functioning country that could murder millions of people. His eye might have been on the ball but it was still an evil ball.
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Oct 24, 2018 07:58
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JcDent posted:Gonna make a tachanka/technical tshirt someday. Just make it a black one, okay? Leninists can't Tachanka. In fact, make that the slogan!
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Oct 24, 2018 08:05
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:The soviets also halted deliberately till the uprising was finished, and helpfully arrested the british mission. You know, the mission of the only country that actually tried to help. Hasn't this been basically been proven to be false? The Soviets were at the end of their supply lines after Bagration and they learned really early in the war the problem with getting over aggressive and pushing offensives too far. They had the option of mounting a risky offensive towards Warsaw to help an army that didn't particularly like them very much or they could secure their bridgeheads over the Bug River, which was facing German resistance at the time. Not really a hard choice
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Oct 24, 2018 08:21
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Milo and POTUS posted:Yay my thread back. I was hoping the next iteration would have a couple reserved posts so that effortposts from the previous thread(s?) could have a home at the top of the thread and maybe one for the upcoming effortposts too but I don't care too much. edit: the painting is 19th c HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 09:10 on Oct 24, 2018 |
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Oct 24, 2018 08:48
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ninjewtsu posted:I have a kind of general question: how did new swords get developed? Like obviously when it's time to actually make them a blacksmith does it, but who's the guy that figures out "if the sword is curved more it'll be more effective at slashing and against the armor and weapons in this time period this width and length would best" and how does that guy go about figuring it out? Did the roman empire have a military R&D department? When a dude had a new idea about how a sword should be shaped, how would that guy go about convincing an army to manufacture enough of those swords to outfit a bunch of soldiers and use an unproven weapon in battle to see if it works? Were there mock fights to help test different blade shapes? Some noble or chieftain wanted more length, curve, or thickness and told his smith to craft him a new one.
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Oct 24, 2018 09:26
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HEY GUNS posted:siege of la rochelle, french royalists and the dutch v huguenots and the english, 1627/28  A great painting. Click the gray square for bigger size.
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Oct 24, 2018 09:29
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Alchenar posted:Yeah the thing about Best's story is that it's a reminder that Nazi Germany was in a constant struggle between the ideological drivers and competition between the hardcore Nazis, and the people who wanted an efficient functioning country.  ) is the belief that you can overcome any obstacle by wanting to really hard
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Oct 24, 2018 09:30
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A Typical Goon posted:Hasn't this been basically been proven to be false? The Soviets were at the end of their supply lines after Bagration and they learned really early in the war the problem with getting over aggressive and pushing offensives too far. Yep, it was all a bug coincidence that the soviet advance halted and then waited to take the v important city till after anyone who could stop them was dead and the whole city razed by nazis, and besides the Home Army was ~anti-soviet~ and all the soviets did was invade them alongside the nazis then immediately occupy the whole country for 45 years. As a french I’m glad that the anglo-american response to the Paris rising and de Gaulle charging in was “well ok” and not “but what if that might lead to them contesting NATO” Edgar Allen Ho fucked around with this message at 10:07 on Oct 24, 2018 |
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Oct 24, 2018 10:03
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https://www.cbsnews.com/news/plane-crash-on-101-freeway-california-today-2018-10-23-live-updates/ This is somewhat amusing. (No one got hurt)
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Oct 24, 2018 10:23
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:Yep, it was all a bug coincidence that the soviet advance halted and then waited to take the v important city till after anyone who could stop them was dead and the whole city razed by nazis, and besides the Home Army was ~anti-soviet~ and all the soviets did was invade them alongside the nazis then immediately occupy the whole country for 45 years. The Red Army began airlifting supplies and communications equipment to the uprising forces as soon as representatives crossed the river and established contact. Not just token scraps, either, significant amounts of weapons and ammunition. This effort continued for two weeks and cost the Red Army a number of aircraft. http://tankarchives.blogspot.com/2018/10/supply-drop.html Seems like a pretty big commitment for a ruse.
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Oct 24, 2018 10:27
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:Yep, it was all a bug coincidence that the soviet advance halted and then waited to take the v important city till after anyone who could stop them was dead and the whole city razed by nazis, and besides the Home Army was ~anti-soviet~ and all the soviets did was invade them alongside the nazis then immediately occupy the whole country for 45 years. In When Titans Clashed, David Glantz is of the opinion that the Soviets couldn't reasonably have saved the Warsaw Uprising even if they wanted to (which they didn't). The same view is expressed in Russia's War by Richard Overy. Overy uses Titans as a source extensively though, so he may have gotten it from Glantz. Both of these authors are critical of the Soviet regime, so it's not as if these views are motivated by tankie ideologism. It's a simplistic mistake to view this in terms of a binary "they let the uprising be crushed" and "they were completely incapable of stopping it". The RA was exhausted after Bagration, which had seen them advance hundreds of kilometers - They needed time to consolidate and recuperate. They probably could have stormed Warsaw, but because of their depleted state the cost would have been huge. So as far as Uncle Joe is concerned, he can either a) Take Warsaw now with way bigger casualties than necessary in order to save rebels he's not terribly sorry to see crushed anyway or b) Take Warsaw later with less casualties. It's not a case of the RA halting their advance in order for the Nazis to crush the uprising, it's a case of the RA being unwilling to overextend and alter their plans in order to save the uprising, because they just didn't care a whole bunch if that particular brand of partisan was killed.
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Oct 24, 2018 10:38
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:and helpfully arrested the british mission. You know, the mission of the only country that actually tried to help. Can you give me some more information about this ?
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Oct 24, 2018 11:40
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ChubbyChecker posted:
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Oct 24, 2018 11:40
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Arban posted:Can you give me some more information about this ? https://books.google.co.uk/books?id...ecember&f=false The Brits sent a special forces team to spy on the situation in December, way after everything was over, and the team was captured when the Soviets restarted their advance. In terms of the overall situation it's probably reasonable to say that the Soviets were pretty happy to see the uprising fail, and certainly weren't gonna stick their neck out to have it succeed. But it's too much of a conspiracy theory to declare the entire situation was a plot to get rid of the opposition. That would require the cooperation of not just the Soviets but also the Poles and the Germans. I mean, whatever the Poles thought when they launched the uprising, the Germans certainly didn't think Warsaw was about to fall in a matter of days. It does not make sense for them to invest substantial force into crushing the rebellion otherwise.
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Oct 24, 2018 11:59
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It's a really good painting but I might have misremembered it. I thought the spikes were much further in the background. Also was it part of the wider 30 yw or was its own separate poo poo? If the latter was the whole of the continent just primed to go off in the early c17th or what.
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Oct 24, 2018 12:13
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Milo and POTUS posted:Also was it part of the wider 30 yw or was its own separate poo poo? If the latter was the whole of the continent just primed to go off in the early c17th or what. edit: it wasn't hobsbawm! it was a russian, it was slightly before hobsbawm used the phrase, and i cannot remember her loving name HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 13:47 on Oct 24, 2018 |
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Oct 24, 2018 12:27
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HEY GUNS posted:several threads ago someone described richelieu in this painting as "some kind of catholic darth vader" I love this painting of du Tremblay. https://imgur.com/a/uwFuDEy
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Oct 24, 2018 13:26
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Fangz posted:
Hitler didn't think anywhere was about to fall in a matter of days. It's really important for the history of WW2 not to forget how much of a disaster August 1944 was for the German army - Bagration has just destroyed AGS and taken the Soviets all the way to the edges of Warsaw in one leap, in the West COBRA has just started and German forces there are about to collapse. It really did look to many (possibly most) observers that the regime was on the brink of total collapse. Germany was only able to hold on to Warsaw because reinforcements arrived 5 days after the uprising started as part of the general counter-attack to restore the line - but they can't have known the Soviets were stopping at the Vistula or that they'd be successful at counter attacking if they didn't.
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Oct 24, 2018 13:39
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Alchenar posted:Hitler didn't think anywhere was about to fall in a matter of days. They had a plan for evacuating and demolishing Paris. The security unit in charge of garrisoning the city got no reinforcements. Prague was in a similar situation where the Germans saw that holding the city was untenable and evacuated. Warsaw was planned to be fortified, however and had been in the process of being fortified for a while at the time. Those reinforcements didn't come from nowhere, the Russians were never gonna be able to just saunter in there absent the uprising. Basically my assertion here is that the Polish misread the strategic situation. It's not a crazy mistake to make, as you say, but it's not a situation the Soviets specifically manufactured to gently caress them over. Fangz fucked around with this message at 14:11 on Oct 24, 2018 |
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Oct 24, 2018 14:09
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Alchenar posted:Bagration has just destroyed AGS AGC  (south from Center at that time were Army Groups North Ukraine and South Ukraine)
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Oct 24, 2018 14:30
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Nenonen posted:AGC Although in fairness the Soviets also destroyed army groups South that month in a separate offensive. As the previous poster said, summer of 1944 was a bloodbath for axis forces everywhere. Rome was lost, the elite Panzer divisions in France were chewed up and mostly destroyed, the Combine Fleet in the Pacific was sent to the bottom, and the whole German front in the east basically dissolved.
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Oct 24, 2018 15:13
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Reading old newspapers from those months is just great. It’s headline after headline about the axis getting their teeth kicked in.
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Oct 24, 2018 15:15
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Cyrano4747 posted:Reading old newspapers from those months is just great. It’s headline after headline about the axis getting their teeth kicked in. I assume that depends which side's newspapers you read 
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Oct 24, 2018 15:24
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I mean, it’s pretty great reading it from the other end too. Just a lot more “were bravely counterattacking to the rear!” propaganda BS to filter but hey that’s fun too.
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Oct 24, 2018 15:28
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ninjewtsu posted:I have a kind of general question: how did new swords get developed? Like obviously when it's time to actually make them a blacksmith does it, but who's the guy that figures out "if the sword is curved more it'll be more effective at slashing and against the armor and weapons in this time period this width and length would best" and how does that guy go about figuring it out? Did the roman empire have a military R&D department? When a dude had a new idea about how a sword should be shaped, how would that guy go about convincing an army to manufacture enough of those swords to outfit a bunch of soldiers and use an unproven weapon in battle to see if it works? Were there mock fights to help test different blade shapes? Depends on the time period. Once you have "model" types, militaries are developing swords via various means. Be it a recognized expert, general, etc and subject to all of the politics weapons development can involve. Before that, its a combination of trial and error and tradition, with the use of the sword ending up dictating its shape and design. You can look at the development of armor in europe and then look at the blade shape changes and see how guys in armor led to pointier swords since your goal against them was either trying to break mail links with a really hard stab, or sliding the point into joints or the visor or whatever. So more people got swords with points. Before modern militaries with issued weapons, sword styles were dictated by the use, but there was no "model" of a sword, just a general style. That's why classifying swords is hard, because in period, there was normally no hard and fast rule for what sword counted as what, since very often the name we use to describe a sword either just meant "sword" ie "Gladius" or there was no "name" given and inventories just list them as "sword" or "big sword" or "two handed sword." You can find what we call "zweihanders" or "montantes" now that range from like 4lbs to almost 10lbs, with even bigger versions that were likely not intended for real fighting but parade, like earlier bearing swords. You also have a spectrum of swords called "rapiers" that go from what we call "side swords" (pretty much a longsword with a rapier handle), to the fancy super long, super thin, super complex hilted rapiers you think of with The Musketeers. So basically, before modern militaries, people colloquially knew what kind of sword they supposed to muster with, but what they actually brought was dictated by cost, style, and their own preference. Maybe they bring grandpa's old sword because they are poor, or because they think it looks cool. They might buy the fanciest, latest style from a local blacksmith, or maybe they contract one that looks similar to what everyone else has but the blade is weighted different or has a different handle. Possibly they are outfitted by their lord due to being in his personal guard, or a really rich guy outfits a regiment because he can, or you are lucky and its a period of history like under the Romans where the state provided the arms. Countdown to Rodrigo telling me everything I said is wrong and then I learn as much as you do.
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Oct 24, 2018 15:34
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Cyrano4747 posted:Reading old newspapers from those months is just great. It’s headline after headline about the axis getting their teeth kicked in. In the same vein....there's a palpable change in tone in the other direction over the winter of 44/45 as the Bulge and Iwo Jima go down. People were thinking that these represented the first phase of the death throes of the Axis countries, and everyone was convinced that things would get way worse as we got closer and closer to the respective homelands. Okinawa and the assaults on the Siegfried Line in the spring made it seem even more dire. ...then Nazi Germany just sort of dissolved and the atomic bombs happened.
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Oct 24, 2018 15:36
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Can anyone recommend a good book on the Italian army in WWII?
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Oct 24, 2018 16:19
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Cessna posted:Can anyone recommend a good book on the Italian army in WWII? Are you looking more for a book detailing uniforms, tactics, high-ranking officers, and more as a catch-all book, or something more narrative, or something that only focuses on one front/battle/campaign?
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Oct 24, 2018 17:04
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Cyrano4747 posted:Reading old newspapers from those months is just great. It’s headline after headline about the axis getting their teeth kicked in. This reminds me of one of my favourite history tidbits, Paris newspaper headlines as Napoleon returns from Elba quote:March 9
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Oct 24, 2018 20:13
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I smile every time thinking of those newspaper headlines.
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Oct 24, 2018 20:18
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I have got to use 'Anthropophagus' more often.
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Oct 24, 2018 21:03
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Acebuckeye13 posted:I have got to use 'Anthropophagus' more often. I had to google it. Calling people "man-eater" is one hell of a insult. I really enjoy how colourfully openly partisan old newspapers tend to be. The local left-wing newspaper's headline on June 23rd 1941 was "CLIQUE OF BRUTAL, VICIOUS WAR-CRAZED FASCISTS ATTACKS SOVIET UNION  ", which is... not inaccurate. When does the demand that journalists be not only factually accurate but also politically neutral come about?
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Oct 24, 2018 21:13
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