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For Christmas my father asked for either Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How it Changed the World by Mead, or Albions Seed: Four British Folkways in America by David Hackett Fischer. Are they pretty good in terms of the arguments or are they chuddy/wrong/out-of-date?
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Dec 15, 2020 04:47
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I asked about Wedgewood in the last thread when I was reading through it last year, I thought it was quite readable and helped as a baseline understanding of the conflict.HEY GUNS posted:it's out of date but it's really well written so i still recommend it as an introduction while telling people "and some of her ideas are wrong"
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Jan 28, 2021 21:40
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Also too, my understanding is both Nicholas II and Louis XVI were both the exact wrong person for the moment in that they were very hands on in a micromanagey sort of way and didn't like to make hard choices. So had they been either less interested or more competent things could have turned out differently.
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Jan 29, 2021 03:11
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The Lone Badger posted:Eventually your blast radius is going to have to deal with the curvature of the earth right? Not if it's big enough, then there won't be any curvature to worry about.
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Jan 29, 2021 23:00
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Cessna posted:Yeah, there's no politics or money involved in getting your kid into a service academy. I thought there was a bunch right? It's not just apply and that's it, there's a whole nomination process isn't there?
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Feb 9, 2021 00:52
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ArchangeI posted:There are pretty massive gaps in the U-xxx name lists the Kriegsmarine used, perhaps in order to confuse allied intelligence. Wasn't that the reason given behind naming it Seal Team Six as well?
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Feb 19, 2021 23:07
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xthetenth posted:So, how does this all pan out in practice? Thankfully because we live in the grim darkness of the far future of 2021, unlike Pierre Sprey in the benighted year of 2007, linear time has been invented and we can look back to combat experience in 1991. I don't actually think it's perfectly representative, but 73 Easting is pretty illustrative in my opinion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72XLTfmcaAw Here's a good time-lapse of the thing. At very close range Abrams, and more importantly for my overall point, Bradleys run into a major force of armor. They take return fire, but they do not take killing hits in the very short amount of time they allow the Iraqi opposition. One of the recon troops' fights is 9 abrams and 13 bradleys against 39 Iraqi tanks, 54 armored vehicles and 200 infantry at close range. It's a massacre. After about 22 minutes, all 21 vehicles are intact after destroying a whole battalion. Other formations don't crest a ridge right into an enemy formation, so they are able to pick the Iraqis apart with impunity. I get the feeling that in the analysis when they mentioned minor differences in weapons characteristics, this is at or beyond the magnitude of what they'd count as a major difference in weapons. Fantastic thanks for posting! Two questions I had from the video that may be dumb or you might not know, but at around 6 minutes he says the goal is to have the 7th armored cav regiment find the enemy, but left the 1st infantry division move forward to do the fighting, why would the goal be to have the desired outcome be to have the infantry division fight a tank division rather than the armored or armored cav groups present? Also why are the 7th armored cav regiment advancing first with the Bradleys in front if there's expectation of fighting? Are the optics that much better that it makes sense for the Bradleys to be up front of the Abrams if you're not expecting truly heavy fighting? In the end it seems that both were able to withstand the Iraqi T-72's so maybe it wasn't all that important, but the ordered switch had me thinking about it.
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Mar 3, 2021 07:47
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Panzeh posted:Keep in mind that the 1st infantry division is an infantry division in name only. By this time, the difference between a US infantry division and armored division is somewhat notional. The true blue infantry divisions in the US army were the various 'light' infantry brigades. Oh thanks I didn't know that. Makes more sense to me then! Do you know why they might start with Bradley's in front rather than the Abrams?
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Mar 4, 2021 04:29
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Grenrow posted:Am I misremembering or was there a thing where in each book, there's a little Where's Waldo thing going on in each page. Like in the Man o' War book, it was a stowaway, and in the castle one, it was a spy? You aren't misremembering! I loved those books as a kid as well.
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Mar 6, 2021 07:17
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I was listening to a podcast and was a bit surprised by the following transcribed take: "The USS New Jersey was reactivated to go to Vietnam. Bombardment platform, did very well there. Did so well that the North Vietnamese really didn't like her and thus the US said, ok you don't like that, we'll stop doing it. You wonder why the Vietnam war went the way it did, that is it. Because anytime we did something they didn't like, they'd complain and we'd stop doing it." I didn't know of the USS New Jersey's role in the war, but the rest of it seems like a really hot take to me. I'm far from an expert but have done some reading on Vietnam and that seems like a super crazy take to me about why the US lost the war, like borderline head-in-the-sand revisionist, but maybe I'm missing something. Also does anyone know why the New Jersey only did 1 tour?
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May 28, 2021 07:51
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Makes sense I figured it was some cost/effectiveness reason. It was the first time I'd heard America lost because they bowed down to North Vietnamese complaints though, that caught me off guard. I don't know if I can find a charitable explanation that actually explains what he meant, but it seemed bonkers to me.
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May 28, 2021 09:05
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A question about Charles V and I guess the Spanish crown more generally. I know he got into his eyeballs in debt for a lot of different activities, like bribing his way into Emperorship, fighting with France, etc., but do we know what he or his contemporaries thought about debt? Was it considered a lesser evil, did he think he could pay it back without any issues, was it just considered a part of being a king? I'm curious what their conception around taking out loans was, but not sure sure if it's captured in the record at all.
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Jul 21, 2021 20:29
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Not sure how accurate this is, but I'd heard that in recent years Lee's status as a general had been downgraded in terms of his actual command abilities. That he was closer to the Mendoza line and that his legacy has been much increased because of Lost Causism etc. Is that a misreading of things? This is unsupported and a general feel, so not sure if it's accurate.
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Aug 2, 2021 02:53
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Are there any articles about the South Korean government was like during the war? I was speaking with someone and they said the government of South Korea was very similar to Ngo Dinh Diem's government in terms of competence and corruption, but I realized I didn't have much of a conception of it.
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Aug 7, 2021 23:25
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Bean dad.
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Aug 25, 2021 21:23
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Sanguinia posted:Thanks for the info. A little googling and reading more or less gave me the answer that I was looking for and the answer to the two obvious followup questions: "The invasion was definitely the plan despite the fact that the Japanese capacity to wage war had been effectively eliminated. It stayed the plan in spite of that reality and thus the fact that alternatives to invasion still would have made victory inevitable because the Allied overall military command wanted the war officially ended within the year to avoid 'damaging homefront morale.' Even up to the A-Bombs being used it wasn't really a consensus that it was the right or best course, which in turn explains why Truman was talking even in his private journal like it wouldn't be necessary even before the bomb was successfully tested." I'm not sure who's quote that is about the Japanese capacity to wage war bring eliminated, but to my knowledge it's very much not considering the occupied territories of Korean and China. There was still a lot of suffering in those areas directly related to the Japanese occupation, which regardless of the Japanese ability to send out ships to directly challenge a US fleet is still quite important. Also too, a lot of these narratives ignore the Japanese government agency in these discussions. Like yes it's important to consider the American perspective, but don't forget that the war could have ended a lot earlier with less loss of life had the government not been so stubborn. They had agency and were responsible for their own actions. They're not a simple force of nature.
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Aug 30, 2021 05:02
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Sanguinia posted:why invasion was even being considered in the first place when from the American perspective it would not seem to be necessary to win the war Why do you think it wouldn't be necessary to win the war? What are your criteria for American Victory?
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Aug 30, 2021 07:18
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One thing I've read most recently from Michael Twitty is that the original crop before cotton was rice, and in fact a lot of enslaved people were taken from their home country because of their knowledge of rice cultivation. He's talked about how the way large parts of the South look today is directly dependent on African rice knowledge and cultivation, and that it wasn't simply labor, but skill and knowledge that built financial empires for those who took advantage. Also too the rise of cotton seemed to change the nature of slavery and that once it took off the experience of those in bondage changed and became harder.
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Sep 16, 2021 06:22
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Nine of Eight posted:The great part is that Machiavelli got to test his theories and lead a citizen militia at some point and they got dunked on by well drilled mercenaries. Wasn't there some thories that the Prince was meant to be a Trojan horse of bad advice, setting up those who followed it for failure?
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Oct 13, 2021 05:30
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Randomcheese3 posted:and that they did not trust him to make the right decisions. Seems like they were right there.
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Oct 24, 2021 19:58
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 Hermann Goering Veteran Historical Tracksuit That's quite bad.
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Jan 19, 2022 19:10
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A small question, but where was the petrol/diesel used in Normandy and the invasion of France refined? Did Britain have enough capability to handle the process on the island itself? Was it shipped refined overseas and then just sent forward?
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Feb 10, 2022 01:37
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Randomcheese3 posted:The UK had a few small refineries, but nothing major. Most of the fuel it used was refined abroad - prewar, this usually came from the Anglo-Persian Oil Company's refinery at Abadan, but during the war, it switched to Caribbean sources as this was more efficient in terms of shipping. Fuel was usually shipped into the main ports on Britain's west coast, where it entered the GPSS pipeline and storage network. This linked the ports, protected storage sites, airfields, and depots where it could be transported by road, rail or ship to where it was needed. For the liberation of France, most of the fuel was shipped across the Channel in coastal tankers. Thanks this was super helpful. It occurred to me that the focus on oil in WW2 at least of what I read was always focused on the Nazis and their inability to get the fuel they needed, but never about the allied infrastructure that let all those shermans and spitfires actually perform.
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Feb 11, 2022 00:18
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Is the American recovery efforts today only possible because of the type of conflicts the armed forces are fighting, or is it something that could have been done in past conflicts and wasn't for reasons of cost/political will/etc.?
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May 5, 2022 19:41
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It's a very violent and traumatic potential event that one has no control over, so it's generally a way to feel better about it.
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Sep 21, 2022 17:21
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Inspired by recent news, but did NASA notify the Soviets of their launch of Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, etc? Did they assume that the news was enough or were there formal channels?
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Nov 16, 2022 08:07
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Evidence of zubaz dates back longer than you think
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Jan 14, 2023 04:33
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Cessna posted:Clearly the message here is to do foil instead. Mispelled épée
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Mar 9, 2023 08:27
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spider bethlehem posted:Hello Milhist thread! I am a longtime lurker and ambient forums goblin. That said, I am going to Japan next week, I have Japan Rail pass, and I would love recommendations about some MilHist locations to see. Himeji was absolutely amazing, definitely worth it if you like castles!
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Apr 7, 2023 07:11
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My father was an F8/A7 pilot in Vietnam and he has told me stories about using his survey to strafe infantry. Mainly ot was like truck parks and things, but he also targeted infantry formations. So personal evidence that it did happen in Vietnam with jet technology
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Jul 7, 2023 17:44
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madeintaipei posted:It's a real Tragedeigh. Boo this man
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Aug 15, 2023 21:52
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Xiahou Dun posted:Just incase you care, I think the word you wanted was "inflection". If it's some little grammar gubbin that gloms onto a word, that's inflection ; i.e. it has to be bound* to a word, and in as much as it has a meaning it's something weird and abstract about grammar. Like the third person English verbal agreement suffix /z/ is a good example of an inflection ("I/we/you/they run" vs. "John/he/she/it runs") ; by its nature it just gets tacked onto only some verbs some of the time, and its meaning is some abstract notion of personhood,. number and tense features. Interesting, I hadn't thought about this. Did English lose it's inflections? Or is there a reason why Indo-European languages bristle, but English doesn't?
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Nov 6, 2023 03:43
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Didn't Japan have generally terrible iron which is why they had to resort to layering their swords like that?
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Nov 21, 2023 06:04
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FMguru posted:He's been asked about it, and his responses have been some variation of "were you there? can you prove it didn't happen?" Ah yes, the Ridley Scott defense.
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Jan 13, 2024 06:14
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I know this, you read a magazine and use a clip to keep the hair out of your eyes.
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Mar 15, 2024 18:29
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Likely a different answer for each site, but how similar is the terrain today compared to when the battles were fought? Is there generally a sense that it is pretty close? I imagine 150 years could really change things.
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Apr 18, 2024 00:10
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Cyrano4747 posted:
So they're often used in the dragoon role then? It's interesting how much the perception is about charging, but that role of fighting on foot never leaves.
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Apr 19, 2024 05:02
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One thing that I think doesn't always get a ton of coverage is how A-H's response was terrible. They took forever to act, and that really made things worse. If I remember a decent chunk of that was Tisza really trying to slow their roll.
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May 1, 2024 18:38
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:
Something I've been curious about recently is the potential addition of Croatia to the Double Monarchy. I hadn't realized there was strong enough support for that, that even the fail-emperor Charles I was considered pretty in favor of it. Hungary in particular seemed jealous of guarding their privileges.
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May 14, 2024 22:04
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