WW2 thread

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buglord: Jul 31, 2010; Cheating at a raffle? I sentence you to 1 year in jail! No! Two years! Three! Four! Five years! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!; Buglord

China is an interesting country during WW2 because they're fighting the Japanese, the communists, and trying to corral the local warlords into helping all while doing so. A lot of countries in WW2 are facing internal strife while fighting war of extinction, but I think the amount of internal chaos that the Chinas have to manage takes the cake. That country is a pretty tragic tale because all the human suffering started well before Hitler invaded Poland and started the European theater, and then once the Japanese surrendered in 1945 they went back to finishing their civil war with the communists for another 4 years. It's unsurprisingly horrible for the civilians, who are trying to be neutral enough not to be considered a traitor by any of the murderous factions/countries occupying their homes.

A very good but upsetting book is Forgotten Ally by Rana Mitter. It starts off with a decent primer to get you up to speed on the Sino-Japanese situation and explains why both countries were so dissimilar on an industrial level.

# ¿ Jul 17, 2020 18:48

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 17:21

buglord: Jul 31, 2010; Cheating at a raffle? I sentence you to 1 year in jail! No! Two years! Three! Four! Five years! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!; Buglord

WW2 Week by Week by Indie Neidell is a pretty great and accessible series on Youtube currently that still manages to be deep enough that people well acquainted with WW2 will learn something new (or at least get a different perspective on events). Lot of production value in these, with plenty of footage and diagrams. They can also be listened to in the background, as i've done while driving or playing games.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b7GY4BSUmU
What is especially notable about this series is that Indie does a fantastic job calling out atrocities by any country as "murder". He's especially aware of how WW2 brings out holocaust deniers/holomodor deniers/nanjing deniers/tankies and he goes out of his way to make sure his vids aren't providing ammunition for them. And while the videos are entertaining, he reminds folks periodically that wars aren't spectator sports even if they were 80 years ago.

BBC/Thames' The World at War is a 26 episode documentary series from 1973 which is something I think anyone who is interested in WW2 must watch. As you can guess from the release year, it got a handful of things wrong for a variety of reasons, such as proximity to the war years, the cold war, latent sinophobia/japanphobia, classified documents not being released yet. Despite all that, it shines because of the metric ton of footage and firsthand interviews they got from participants/victims of the war. They got plenty of high profile people on there before they died, such as one of the japanese generals who lead the attack on pearl harbor, or admiral d�nitz, or hitler's valets and bodyguards. They also get a fair amount of folks like russian housewives or berliners explaining how they attempted to ignore the holocaust at the time. Again, because of the time this was made the accuracy isn't stellar, but there's no denying the value of the war footage or seeing the interviews from the people who were actually there. You really need to watch it by any means possible.

I know nobody asked for effortposts but I just had to share~

# ¿ Jul 17, 2020 19:19

buglord: Jul 31, 2010; Cheating at a raffle? I sentence you to 1 year in jail! No! Two years! Three! Four! Five years! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!; Buglord

Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:

gently caress this guy. I enjoyed his videos for a while. I didn't watch them religiously but found the ones I saw to be reasonably evenhanded and well put together.

His episode on Prince Paul of Yugoslavia was straight bullshit British propaganda. He said that Yugoslavia's signing of the Tripartite Pact was going to allow German troops to move through the country, when they were very specifically forbidden from doing that by the agreement. He also presented the removal of Prince Paul from power as an entirely organic uprising and failed to mention British involvement.

The UK was loving evil as hell in WW2 and listening to people defend them or Churchill is nauseating.

Maybe reach out to him on it? He seems to genuinely want to do better and redoes episodes if he thinks he did a poor job of explaining something. It could be malice but he�s one of the few folks I�d give the benefit of the doubt to.

# ¿ Jul 17, 2020 20:06

buglord: Jul 31, 2010; Cheating at a raffle? I sentence you to 1 year in jail! No! Two years! Three! Four! Five years! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!; Buglord

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6xLMUifbxQ
This vid tends to come up whenever tanks are discussed, but it broadly explains the US/Soviet/German way of designing tanks in accessible language, so you don't have to be some armor grognard to understand the vid. The discussion of armor design starts at 26 minutes if you want to skip the Kursk battle itself. I tried writing some tidbits about the video, but it doesn't do it justice to post the figures out of context.

# ¿ Jul 20, 2020 01:14

buglord: Jul 31, 2010; Cheating at a raffle? I sentence you to 1 year in jail! No! Two years! Three! Four! Five years! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!; Buglord

twistedmentat posted:

Lots of kids get into Nazi poo poo, because it's so childish.

For what its worth, a lot of popular media out there tends to paint the Third Reich as some super state with super advanced armor with meticulously vetted and rigorously trained men. I watched a lot of History/Discovery Channel growing up, and they certainly give way more airtime to "look at this impenetrable tank" over " this tank was used to defend a country with genocidal policy". Me being brown made that weird mainstream fascination of nazis even weirder. It's also why I don't play the Germans in any WW2 themed game if I have to: if they win, I lose.

# ¿ Jul 20, 2020 02:20

buglord: Jul 31, 2010; Cheating at a raffle? I sentence you to 1 year in jail! No! Two years! Three! Four! Five years! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!; Buglord

Babyland is Poland because it suffered as a result of mommyland and daddyland fighting over who takes weekend custody of it :smith:

# ¿ Jul 20, 2020 04:25

buglord: Jul 31, 2010; Cheating at a raffle? I sentence you to 1 year in jail! No! Two years! Three! Four! Five years! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!; Buglord

Julius CSAR posted:

Ghosts of the Ostfront and Supernova In The East sound really dumb, like embarrassing.

Isnt that guy basically Joe Rogan but for tanks and roman legions

Maybe like in manner of of speaking and broad appeal. Like I can see either catering to the SpikeTV dad crowd. Dan Carlin doesnt seem to do with Joe Rogan does and invite alt right defenders on to his podcasts though.

# ¿ Jul 22, 2020 01:51

buglord: Jul 31, 2010; Cheating at a raffle? I sentence you to 1 year in jail! No! Two years! Three! Four! Five years! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!; Buglord

Was there any point during WW2 where the Nazis and UK could have settled for peace if the evacuation of Dunkirk failed? Was there a point in time where Nazi Germany was closest to winning the war in the west? I know counterfactuals are lowbrow, but I heard the statement come up in one of those WW2 forum speeches where old geezers talk about a bit of the war for 2 hours.

Edgar Allen Ho posted:

Individually they weren't more dangerous than being anywhere else in a combat role in WW2. For both the US and USSR, most tanks got hit and killed without any crew dying. (which contributes to the nazi myth- a Sherman or T-34 that gets hit, and then the crew bails out, and then the crew get back in it a week later, is dead. One tank and one crew get counted as killed many times. Meanwhile a nazi tank isn't recorded as killed until it's a rusting hulk 100 kilometres from the front.)
When tanks actually did go sour, it was extremely bad though. Total nightmare is right. Something like more than half of KIA Sherman crewman died in tanks that were on fire. (Not because the Sherman was prone to catching on fire, just when it did, it's bad to be in one. It wasn't a "ronson"

Someone please correct me if im wrong, but I also read that a shot fired at a tank doesn't have to even penetrate to kill a crew inside either. Apparently the blast from outside the cabin can transfer enough force to cause the metal walls inside the cabin to spall out towards the crew.

# ¿ Jul 22, 2020 01:59

buglord: Jul 31, 2010; Cheating at a raffle? I sentence you to 1 year in jail! No! Two years! Three! Four! Five years! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!; Buglord

Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:

No, never. No. Not with that political climate, not with the war as it was.

I'd like more about this. Not that I disagree with your statement or anything, but why would the political climate prevent that from happening? My impression was that Britain wanted to avoid war at all costs much like France did, and they sold out Czechoslovakia in their attempt to do so, and then when Nazi Germany declared on Poland they didn't really bother helping the Poles either. With those assumptions it seems reasonable to guess they would take an easy way out when presented.

Edgar Allen Ho posted:

This Panther was hit by a soviet 152mm HE shell. Again, something designed to fight infantry. You clearly wouldn't want to be in the turret there.

the more i learn about tanks the less i'd ever want to be in one during a ground war. even a danger-free day still means you're probably smelling poo the whole time and baking in a little oven

e2: the reason why I like counterfactuals is because they're a sorta fun way to learn things in the process of debunking them. like how the nazis could probably never get the nuke first because the industrial power and resources available to them were laughably small compared to the US. I remember in the WW2 D&D thread a goon made a pretty nice effortpost on how massive the Manhattan Project was and how wartime Germany couldn't replicate that project because their economy/industry was so comparatively tiny.

buglord fucked around with this message at 02:50 on Jul 22, 2020

# ¿ Jul 22, 2020 02:38

buglord: Jul 31, 2010; Cheating at a raffle? I sentence you to 1 year in jail! No! Two years! Three! Four! Five years! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!; Buglord

Torquemada posted:

This thread is definitely going to turn into a place where people re-litigate unpopular opinions from other threads.

I think a good rule for this thread is to assume people saying incorrect things isn't some intentional revisionism or something. This part of history has its share of tankies/denialists that come out of the wordwork and write books on the matter, and then you get mainstream History Channel grossly overstating Nazi Supersoldier myths. Given that it was posted in the gbs forum I think we can give eachother some more leniency :shobon:

Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:

The UK wasn't actually doing that bad after Dunkirk. They had lost the best of their army in Europe and all of its equipment and in no way could they resist an invasion of the island of Britain, but that wasn't going to happen. The Navy made it impossible. They had all the people and resources of India, Canada, Australia, huge swathes of Africa, all the oil in the Middle East, a blank check from the USA, and supposedly the moral high ground. Also it wasn't a democratic society. Churchill didn't get elected PM. There was a massive blanket of propaganda and oppressive laws against dissent. Every aspect of society was systemized and militarized. A groundswell of public opinion would have had to have been giant indeed.

Thanks for opening up on this. Come to think of it none of the WW2 media I consume talks about the British Navy as much. Its only about wolfpack subs, lend-lease ships, then the Americans in the pacific. Are there any other major British faults during WW2 that don't get brought up enough, in your opinion? Its only because of this website that I learned that Churchill was kind of a jackass and did some incredibly heinous stuff, but whenever I look up specifics online its usually explained by werhaboos.

Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:

The main thing to understand is that even at the worst time immediately post Dunkirk the British Empire was not the underdog. It never was. Never. Ever. Ever. The Third Reich was not a juggernaut.

I mean wasn't The Third Reich using training-tier tanks at the start of the war too? IIRC even Czechoslovakia had better armored tanks.

# ¿ Jul 22, 2020 07:58

buglord: Jul 31, 2010; Cheating at a raffle? I sentence you to 1 year in jail! No! Two years! Three! Four! Five years! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!; Buglord

Yellow Yoshi posted:

this is such a clear and simple point i'm amazed i never encountered it in school. everything was leveraged on the outcome of the war

Wait so fiscal policy by the Germans was based on �when we win the war against the soviets/uk�?
If so that�s wild lol

# ¿ Jul 23, 2020 03:21

buglord: Jul 31, 2010; Cheating at a raffle? I sentence you to 1 year in jail! No! Two years! Three! Four! Five years! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!; Buglord

Books/media on Churchill you�d recommend? Stuff I find online is either valiantly defending him or attacking him because the person has an axe to grind. Looks like he was a legitimately awful dude but it�s hard to find reputable looking information on him.

# ¿ Jul 28, 2020 18:22

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 17:21

buglord: Jul 31, 2010; Cheating at a raffle? I sentence you to 1 year in jail! No! Two years! Three! Four! Five years! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!; Buglord

Chicken Butt posted:

Trying to divide historical figures into �awful� and �ok� is a difficult and usually pointless exercise. IMO, Churchill was legitimately the best possible wartime leader for the UK, from the available choices. This was especially true in the early going, because he had unimpeachable Conservative credentials and yet hated the Nazis with a white-hot fury, at a time when many Tories were like, �Well yes Hitler is a crude little man, but we can�t have *Communism* now can we? Let�s let him do his thing and scold him severely when he goes too far.�

The UK public wisely booted him from power after the war and began building their welfare state, before he could proto-Thatcher the place up too much.

The Guardian has an interesting list of books about him: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/apr/11/top10s.churchill

Yeah i'm not trying to pin churchill or anyone into a single camp (though hitler and stalin and suck my dang balls) but it was just hard to find info on Churchill, warts and all, without there being an agenda.

Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:

Churchill's Secret War is absolutely reputable.

It's honest, thoroughly researched, and is non polemical.

I'll check this out too, thanks homie.

# ¿ Jul 28, 2020 23:50

The Something Awful Forums > Main > General Bullshit > WW2 thread