[Modern History] Guns Condoms and Electricity

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gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

I'd like to share the following excerpt from "The European Economy Between the Wars", by C.H. Feinstein, P. Temin, and G. Toniolo.

This chapter of the book deals with the findings of a group of sociologists that studied an industrial village in Vienna in 1931-2, and is a direct account of what life was like during the Great Depression.

___

Marienthal was an Austrian village with about 500 families in 1931. It could be reached from Vienna by a half-hour train ride to a neighbouring village and then another half-hour walk over the flat countryside. A cotton mill had furnished the chief opportunity for employment in the village since its founding almost a century ago. The mill had progressed from cotton to rayon after the First World War. Despite industrial strife and a slowdown in demand in the mid-1920s, employment was at its peak in early 1929. By February 1930, however, production had ceased in the mill. The mill owners must have expected business not to pick up, for they started to demolish the mill almost immediately. Workers in Marienthal looked ot in the early 1930s over the rubble of their former place of employment.

Unemployment relief was governed by a 1920 law. Workers were entitled to relief if they had worked at least 20 weeks in the previous year and had no other income. Aliens were not eligible. The amount of relief varied with the worker's work history, wage, and family situation. It lasted for 20 to 30 weeks. A worker's claim to relief was voided if any work at all was undertaken. Workers lost their benefits for activites as limited as cutting down trees in return for firewood, delivering milk in return for some of the milk, and playing the harmonica in return for a little money. The result was an idleness supplemented by minimally illegal activity, such as stealing coal from the railway or potatoes from farmers.

Emergency assistance was available after unemployment relief ended. It was only slightly less generous and lasted for an additional 20 to 50 weeks. After that, assistance ceased. By the winter of 1931-2, therefore, most families were still on some kind of relief, but they were approaching the end. Fewer than 100 families in the village had income from work in Marienthal, neighbouring villages, or Vienna. The other 400 subsisted on relief of some sort, with the exception of nine families with no relief or assistance and eighteen with railway pensions.

Four-fifths of the families had allotments in the common land owned by the village authorities and the factory. Each allotment consisted of five plots, about two by six meters each, which were used to grow vegetables, varying with the season. Many families grew flowers as well, choosing cheerfulness over sustenance. About thirty families also bred rabbits. Despite the home-grown vegetables, diets were very monotonous. Meat was eaten only once a week by half the families, on Sunday. Very few families had meat more than twice a week, and what they had was usually horsemeat. This was an 'inferior good' in the language of economists; consumption had risen as income fell. Starches were the basis of most diets, and the flour used had changed from wheat to the cheaper rye. Sugar was replaced by cheaper saccharine. While almost all families had three meals a day, the evening meal typically was either coffee and bread or leftovers from the noon meal.

This poor diet consumed almost all the incomes of the families in the village. Families with children also bought milk; most families bought coal for heat. But there was little money left over for clothes nd other expenses. Shoes in particular were a problem. Families typically could not afford to replace shoes that had worn out, and so they were patched and patched again. Some families even restricted activities of their children to save the wear and tear on their shoes.

While comparisons across time and space are difficult, the income of the unemployed Marienthal workers appears similar to the Italian worker of 1890 mentioned at the beginning of Chapter l. In cases, the cost of food�even with limited meat and variety�consumed almost all the budget. Little was left over for recreation or for capital expenses.

While spending collapsed back into food, and food into bread and coffee, movement collapsed back into the village. Trips to Vienna had been frequent during the 1920s, to go to the theatre, to do Christmas shopping, or to attend school. With unemployment, the money to undertake these journeys vanished. Even the train fare became a burden, and people relied more heavily on their bicycles. The isolation of rural villages, which had been broken down by the railway and prosperity after the First World War, reappeared in the Great Depression.

The isolation was deepend by a decline in newspaper subscritions. Subscriptions to the Social Democratic paper, which contained intellectual discussions as well as news, dropped by 60 per cent from 1927 to 1930. This was not entirely a matter of money, since the paper had a cheaper subscription rate for unemployed workers. Subscriptions to another paper with more entertainment value fell to only 30 per cent. Detachment was hardly complete, however. Political organizations continued, albeit with reduced passion. Votes in the 1932 elections were almost identical to those in the 1930 election. And the National Socialists started organizing in the village.

Politics, like other leisure activities, should have benefited from the increased availability of time. But this advantage was heavily outweighed by an increase of apathy that reduced all forms of activity. As noted, people stopped reading newspapers. It follows that they must have stopped discussing newspaper stories and columns with their friends and neighbours. Library usage also declined. Both the number of borrowers and the books checked out by each borrower fell. Card-playing became a popular way to pass the time.

One striking aspect of this lethargy was the fate of a park that had formerly belonged to the village manor and had become a focal point village for village life. In more prosperous times, villagers sat on its benches and walked on its paths on Sundays. The grass and shrubs were neatly tended. Despite the increase in leisure, the park fell rapidly into disuse as unemployment rose. The paths became overgrown: the lawns deteriorated; the park became a wilderness.

Villagers became suspicious of each other as they reduced their activities. There always had been denunciations of peoople seen or suspected of doing illegal activities, such as working while receiving relief. The number of denunciations rose dramatically in 1930 and 1931, but the number which stood up under investigation did not.

The observing sociologists classified most families as resigned to their condition. The families were hanging on, preserving as much of their life and family as they could on their meagre budgets. All their activity was dedicated to getting by; no thought was given to the future. Some families still planned as before, but others collapsed entirely in mental and physical neglect and conflict. Almost three out of four families in the village were classified as resigned

The unemployed men were exceedingly idle. They passed their time doing essentially nothing. They could not even recall much of any activity during the day when asked. They sat around the house, went for walks -walking slowly�or played and chess at the Workmen's Club. In a compilation of time cards, over half of the men's time was idle or unaccounted for. Another quarter was occupied in minor household tasks like shopping and gettin water. Less than a quarter of the time was used in major household work, looking after children, or handicrafts.

Women were far more active. Although no longer working, they had the responsibility of keeping the household running and caring for the children. They spent time cooking. mending clothes to make them last longer, and managing their budgets. The men contributed less to the running of the household than before�sometimes not even turning up on time for meals�and the women had the full responsibility. Even though the women often had had a hard time completing their housework after working they uniformly would preferred being back at work.

One revealing key to the meaning of time for unemployed workers was their bedtime. While working, people generally went to bed around 11 o'clock. They came home from work, ate, put the children to bed, went to a political meeting or had some other activity, talked a bit, and then went to bed. In the early 1930s, the women still went to bed late in the evening, taking the time to complete their household tasks. But the men went to bed before 9 o'clock. There simply was no reason to stay awake; sleep expanded to take up the time.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2021 17:11

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 17:51

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

The overarching theme I'm picking up from my recent readings is that, as you said, World War I was at least partially prompted by the stresses of imperial powers running out of easy land to colonize and bumping into each other, and deciding that going to war was the only way to establish to resolve the impasse. I don't know if Marx or Lenin ever wrote anything to specifically address the problem of (capitalist-controlled) states essentially acting as corporations seeking monopoly power, except states actually have armies with which to pursue violent action against their competitors, but I feel like they probably did.

When the dust settles after World War I, there still isn't a single hegemonic power, just groupings of regional powers too exhausted to go at it again.

The British reinstate the gold standard, which triggers an economic crisis (thanks Churchill!), and they're forced to abandon the gold standard, and form an economic bloc around themselves, their Dominions/Commonwealth, and a couple of other European nations willing to join in.

The French refuse to abandon the gold standard, and form their own economic bloc between themselves, Belgium, Netherlands, and Poland.

Germany actually does also abandon the gold standard, but the Bruning government is still too conservative to really exploit the fiscal freedom that this would otherwise give them, and tries to maintain a balanced budget even after doing this. That only worsens their economic woes and destabilizes the Weimar government further.

The US also abandons the gold standard, but FDR wants to focus on domestic recovery and doesn't want the US dollar to be used as a peg by other countries, and so they draw inwards.

These unresolved economic stresses eventually explode into the Second World War.

At the end of THAT particular cataclysm, not only are the remaining powers so beat down by an even more violent shock that it actually now is possible for the US to establish itself as a hegemonic power, by this time Keynesianism has caught on and FDR has been won over to the idea that capitalism is going to need to be managed at the international scale, because again, competition between nation-states is going to go badly if nation-states can resort to armed conflict to enforce their capitalist aims. So you get Bretton Woods and the establishment of the dollar as the world's reserve currency, controls against capital flight, and so on.

Skipping ahead a bit through the incredible expense of the Vietnam War and the oil crisis of the 70s that eventually lead to the Bretton Woods system breaking down, it feels like what we are going through in the current moment is... perhaps not exactly the same as what was developing in World War I and the inter-war period, but there is a sense that the US is losing its grip as the hegemonic power, and that's creating space and opportunity for regional economic blocs to catch up and entrench themselves. Certainly China, but also the EU just by happenstance if not necessarily intent.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2021 05:28

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

PawParole posted:

we have a pre-napoleon and post-napoleon thread.

but where does napoleon go?

Napoleon has been #cancelled for a problematic age gap with his second wife

# ¿ Mar 27, 2021 13:22

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

I've been reading Antony Beevor's "The Battle for Spain", on the civil war, and something that stood out to me was his characterization of the policy of Appeasement. The common narrative is that this is regarded as UK/French leaders backing down in the face of Nazi Germany's demands because they wanted to avoid war at all costs, because they're barely one generation out from The Great War and they don't want to start another one.

What Beevor alludes to is that Appeasement was also at least partially born of fascist sympathies: the Conservative government felt that the social turmoil rocking nations in the wake of the Depression (specifically, the general strike of 1926) could trigger either communist revolutions or fascist coups, and that they'd much rather have the latter than the former, and that they had a friendly sentiment towards Germany and Italy in this regard because they had actually managed to successfully crush the socialists and communists in their respective countries.

And then there was also this:

# ¿ Apr 16, 2021 11:24

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Raskolnikov38 posted:

iirc texaco literally arranged for one of their own oil tankers to be hijacked by the nationalists because the republicans had purchased its oil

I'm scared I won't be able to finish the book from how depressing it is

# ¿ Apr 16, 2021 18:51

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

https://twitter.com/asatarbair/status/1393604640793456640

# ¿ May 15, 2021 18:04

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Some Guy TT posted:

https://twitter.com/Sharon_Kuruvila/status/1394501507177984000

having said all that, there's a certain care that must be taken when viewing these bits of "historical trivia" because my experience is that they're mostly coming from anarchist and demsoc folks trying to argue that "China / Vietnam is bad because they support Israel", as a sort of counterweight to the more popular narrative that it's the US that's bad for doing the same

# ¿ May 18, 2021 06:51

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

https://twitter.com/Hesp365/status/1406775136712216577

lol this loving rear end in a top hat

# ¿ Jun 21, 2021 16:14

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Deep Battle includes elements of modern combined-arms and maneuver/mechanized warfare - the Brusilov Offensive isn't really comparable because too few elements of these existed (most importantly tanks and aircraft) as of 1916.

What we can say is that it exhibited elements of maskirovka, which we know Russian military thinkers taught and practiced at the time.

Further, the use of a short, sharp artillery barrage instead of a prolonged bombardment, as well as some version of infiltration tactics, were advances in tactical doctrine that all belligerents eventually came to in WWI.

Some excerpts from Normal Stone's "The Eastern Front, 1914-1917":

quote:

The gathering was heartened by Brusilov. He said he would attack in the summer, that he would need only trivial reinforcements in men and guns. Kuropatkin �looked at me and shrugged his shoulders, in pity�. Brusilov was told to go ahead, although, since he had not much superiority of any kind�except leadership�over the Austrians, no-one expected from his offensive much more than a tactical success, and quite possibly only a repetition of the Strypa failures. Yet Brusilov�s team had come up with new ideas that made for the most brilliant victory of the war. They had studied the failures of December and January, which�as Zayonchkovski says�served something of the same purpose as the Russo-Japanese war had done. In reality, the Russo-Japanese war had led men often enough merely to a more vigorous repetition of the same views as before, whereas Brusilov�s command seems to have thought things out radically. Whatever the reason, these men came onto methods that were used�without acknowledgment�by Ludendorff in 1918, and then by Foch. To some degree, these new methods were forced on Brusilov by his very weakness. He could not hope for a crushing superiority of shell, and so had to think things out in other terms; in a sense, he had an advantage of backwardness, of being forced to move from 1915 to 1918 without passing through the stage of sacrificial Materialschlachten between them.

...

In the circumstances, there seemed no solution at all except �attrition��to attack the enemy where he could be hit hardest, where he would be obliged to fight, i.e. his strongest point�and then make him lose many thousands of men by heavy bombardment. This was the method chosen by Falkenhayn in summer, 1915, and executed particularly by Mackensen. A great phalanx would be assembled in the central part of the front, with thousands of shells for up to a thousand guns�Gorlice; Radymno; Krasnostaw; Przasnysz. The validity of this method had been impressed on Russian commanders in the most direct possible way, and most of them now could only think of producing some imitation of the German phalanx-system. Shcherbachev had tried it on the Strypa, and Pleshkov had tried it at Postawy. Now Evert had much the same in mind for the summer offensive. It was certainly true that these methods more or less announced in advance that attack was coming, and gave the enemy time to move up reserves, if he had any (as the Russians believed, in 1915, that they had not, at least none with sufficient mobility). Consequently, the break-through operation would have to be attempted again, as Mackensen had seen.

In December and March, the Russians had failed with these methods. Of these failures, various interpretations were possible. On the south-western front, the view was taken, by Brusilov though not by some of his subordinates, that the break-through operation had failed precisely because strength had been too narrowly concentrated. Pflug, commanding 2. Corps on Shcherbachev�s front, had attacked on a single kilometre of front; Pleshkov in March had really attacked only on a front of two kilometres, out of twenty. The theory, here, had been that a great weight of concentrated shelling would at least remove anything living from the small space involved�which was usually true enough�and that the Russian army did not have shell for more than two or three kilometres of front to be the object of such concentrated fire. It needed 400 heavy shells to tear a gap of fifty yards on three-strand barbed-wire, or 25,000 light shells; and when Austro-German wire was stepped up to nineteen or twenty strands, as came to be the case late in 1915, with not one but three different belts, the quantity of shell became literally incalculable, the more so as heavy artillery was not particularly accurate. Officers thought that only an extreme concentration of fire could bring results. In December, this had proved to be true: two, three Austro-Hungarian trench-lines would be occupied. But, in a small area like this, the attackers became highly vulnerable to enemy artillery to right and left, since it could rake them from both sides and front, while they were un-protected, and their supply-lines, reserve-lines and the rest were open to bombardment. Yet to deal with this problem�enfilading fire�seemed to demand a contradictory solution�attack on a front sufficiently broad that troops breaking through would not be within range of guns to right and left�in other words, a front of at least thirty kilometres. But a front of this length could not be broken through, since there would not be enough shell�or so the theory ran. Most commanders preferred to believe that the break-through operations had failed for a variety of other causes�not enough shell in particular; reserves not moved into support fast enough; troops lacking in �elan�, and so on. Each of these had sufficient validity to be convincing to many experienced observers. But they were far from being the whole truth.

Brusilov and his staff came up with good answers to all of this. It was, first, vital to disrupt the enemy�s reserves�his local reserves and his frontal ones. When the break-through came, the attackers would not therefore have to face the resistance and counter-attack of fresh troops. This could be achieved, first, by surprise�the enemy must be caught off his guard. Preparation must be concealed as far as possible�if it had to be done, it must proceed along the whole length of the front. Then, there must not be one single attack, but several, at more or less the same time, so that the enemy would not know where to expect the main blow. As regards the problem of breaking-through, the blows must be delivered along a front of not less than thirty kilometres, so as to avoid the problem of enfilading-fire. Reserves must be brought close to the front line, hidden in great, deep dug-outs (�platsdarmy�) with excellent communications to the front line. When troops got through a breach in the wire, they must be immediately followed by reserves. The artillery must co-operate closely with infantry�gunners living in the front trenches, carefully studying the problems, getting to know the infantry officers involved. There was one drawback to this method�that it entailed not assembling huge forces of infantry and cavalry at any point, so as not to draw the enemy�s attention to the point of attack. If a break-through came, it could not be exploited very greatly. Moreover, Brusilov not only failed to make use of cavalry, but seems even to have forbidden more than a division or two to take part in his offensive, at least on the main front, near Lutsk. He lost mobility, though no doubt gained endlessly better supply-arrangements.

The preparation ordered by Brusilov�s staff was thorough beyond anything hitherto seen on the eastern front. The front-trenches were sapped forward, in places to within fifty paces of the enemy lines�at that, on more or less the entire front. Huge dug-outs for reserve-troops were constructed, often with earth ramparts high enough to prevent enemy gunners from seeing what was going on in the Russian rear. Accurate models of the Austrian trenches were made, and troops trained with them; aerial photography came into its own, and the position of each Austrian battery noted�an innovation, since on the other fronts pilots were not given any training in aerial photography at all. The fact, too, that reserve-troops were under the same command for a number of months also helped organisation�another comparative rarity.

The Brusilov Offensive stands out because it was the most competently-lead and planned operation of the Russian Imperial army, but it was no Deep Battle.

# ¿ Jun 22, 2021 08:13

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

I'm not going to try and answer Maximo Roboto's question directly, but I did want to provide some context as to how the Kaiser viewed Hitler and the Nazis:

___

taken from "The Kaiser: Warlord of the Second Reich", by Alan Palmer

# ¿ Aug 15, 2021 05:58

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

https://twitter.com/mmabeuf/status/1433595798235885575
https://twitter.com/mmabeuf/status/1433597396613832706

The thread goes on for a bit longer on, if you're interested

This also got me to dig out my copy of James William Gibson's "The Perfect War: Technowar in Vietnam":

# ¿ Sep 4, 2021 07:27

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

late to the book recommendations list:

"Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years", David Talbot
"Late Victorian Holocausts: El Ni�o Famines and the Making of the Third World", Mike Davis
"War Plan Orange: The US Strategy to Defeat Japan, 1897-1945", Edward Miller
"The Radicalism of the American Revolution", Gordon S. Wood
"The Wehrmacht's Last Stand", Robert M. Citino
"The Global Minotaur", Yanis Varoufakis
"In The Shadows of the American Century", Alfred W. McCoy
"Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000", Stephen Kotkin
"White Shoe: How a New Breed of Wall Street Lawyers Changed Big Business and the American Century", John Oller
"The Eastern Front 1914-1917", Norman Stone
"German Social Democracy and the Rise of Nazism", Donna Harsch
"Approaching Vietnam: From World War II through Dienbienphu", Lloyd C. Gardner
"The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939", Antony Beevor
"The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome", Michael Parenti
"Deng Xiaoping's Long War", Xiaoming Zhang
"We are Cuba! How a Revolutionary People Have Survived in a Post-Soviet World", Helen Yaffe
"Deng Xiaoping: A Revolutionary Life", Alexander V. Pantsov and Steven I. Levine

# ¿ Sep 29, 2021 13:53

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Dreylad posted:

the LBJ series by Robert Caro is great if you want to read extremely in depth biography of an American politician who touched on every transformation in American politics and the Democratic party over the 20th century.

oh hell yeah it's been over four years since I last read this but this one is really good too

# ¿ Sep 29, 2021 15:40

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Some Guy TT posted:

https://twitter.com/graykimbrough/status/1443333396101541896

Pre Napoleonic era

Reported

# ¿ Sep 30, 2021 15:58

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Sergg posted:

LOL this guy is my pal and I took a shitload of classes with him at EMU for my history degree. My first class with him, I had already read one of his books, but forgot which class I was in, so when he lectures, I raise my hand and go "Yo dude there was this other author named like... "Citino" or something who said the exact same thing as you." and then he just starts cracking up and said "Yeah that Citino guy rocks." I couldn't figure out why the class was laughing at me until he pointed out he wrote it. I created his Wikipedia page for a laugh but they took down all the jokes. I trolled him by claiming he was an avid Freeper in the original article.

I started out by watching a few of his talks on youtube and moved on to his books because I like his style. He focuses on the German military, but in a way that doesn't descend into being a "wehraboo" or Nazi apologia - the spectre of fascist atrocity is always hanging over whatever the Heer did, and even when he invokes concepts like "honor" and "duty", it always circles back to an honor paid to a madman, and a duty that will drive them to suicidal lunges against an enemy they couldn't beat.

# ¿ Oct 1, 2021 06:48

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Some Guy TT posted:

id be curious what reasoning if any there would be for say a trotskyist soviet union to not take the threat of hitler as seriously as stalin did

I'm pretty sure the argument here is that the Soviet Union would less industrialized and less militarily developed under anyone besides Stalin. Someone like Trotsky or Bukharin would have kept the NEP longer, not pursued collectivization as hard, wouldn't have pushed for as much heavy industry, and so on.

gradenko_2000 has issued a correction as of 05:58 on Oct 2, 2021

# ¿ Oct 2, 2021 05:02

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

I've been reading David Stahel's "Retreat from Moscow" and I wanted to share a couple of bits and pieces that piqued my interest:

quote:

A further and more tangible explanation for the compliant attitude of the generals was sheer greed.

From 1940 onward, field marshals and colonel-generals, the two highest ranks, received secret monthly tax-exempt supplements to their already generous salaries, which more than doubled their income. On top of this, in 1941 and 1942 select officers also received �birthday presents� of up to 250,000 RM (reichsmarks), and later in 1944 a small number of generals were also given huge landed estates. The payments were in no way official and were not to be made public under any circumstances. Each recipient was made aware that the money came personally from Hitler and would continue entirely at his discretion.

As Norman Goda�s research revealed, such payments came with an explicit �quasi-contractual relationship in which huge amounts of money would be exchanged for obedience.�29 Thus, Field Marshals Brauchitsch, Bock, and Kluge were earning an illegitimate 4,000 RM a month, while Colonel-Generals Halder, Guderian, Hoepner, and Strauss were receiving an extra 2,000 RM a month.

Kluge, who enjoyed one of the best relationships with Hitler in 1941, was one of the select few to receive what members of the German resistance would later refer to as a �birthday bond.� In October 1942, he received 250,000 RM, a sum also paid to Field Marshals Keitel, Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb (commanding Army Group North), and Gerd von Rundstedt (former commander of Army Group South). After the war the generals made no reference to these payments in accounting for their actions or inactions during the war.30 Their wartime devotion to Hitler was often problematic enough without the suggestion that their highly valued honor was in any way influenced by bribery. Obviously, it is impossible to know the exact motivation such money played for each man, but the inducement of such large sums can only have won Hitler favor, and the wartime record shows that many of the recipients were not inclined toward confrontation with the dictator.

___

quote:

Humor was one of the most important coping mechanisms for the soldiers at the front even though to the outsider a lot of it would be considered a ghoulish and macabre �gallows humour.�57 As one soldier remarked: �If we made jokes before some mission that were not entirely kosher, it was to cover our fear.�58 Similarly, Willy Peter Reese observed: �Our humour was born out of sadism, gallows humour, satire, obscenity, spite, rage, and pranks with corpses, squirted brains, lice, pus, and poo poo, the spiritual zero.�59 Such black humor often involved irony, which provided an insightful view into the war from the average soldier�s perspective.

During the winter retreat a cynical expression circulated among the soldiers, often preceded by a reversing of the helmet or field cap: �Forward, comrades, we�ve got to pull back!�60

Similarly, the German military abbreviation �Mot,� denoting motorized divisions, was sardonically changed by the men to �Hot,� reflecting the extent to which their previously mobile divisions had devolved to horse-drawn draft power.61

Another joke foretold that in 1962 a disheveled band of German soldiers would be found wandering in China who were no longer even able to speak German. They would still wear their medals but would have been forgotten by the high command.62

When the German high command later issued a special medal for those who had served in the east during the first winter of the war (Medaille Winterschlacht im Osten 1941/42) it was mockingly dubbed by the men the �order of the frozen flesh� (Gefrierfleischorden).63

Helmut Pabst�s letters recount in some detail the humor he shared with his comrades, which even in the worst of times he noted, �always gets the better of us.�

Pretending to be serious, one of his friends would pick up a map of Russia and announce, �Now, once we get to Kazan�� (Kazan being over 700 kilometers east of Moscow).

Another would follow: �Does anyone know where Asia is?�

When one of the men spoke longingly about being home for Christmas, one of his comrades replied: �He didn�t say which year.�

There were also jokes about how one might speak to officers, especially those conducting training exercises who had not served in the east. One man would take on the role of the officer: �200 yards beyond village, Russian infantry! What�s your action?� To which another answered: �You tell them you�re going to the village to catch a few chickens for the frying pan�� What else?�64

Even in the strictly hierarchical Wehrmacht, the relationship between the men and the officers was sometimes familiar enough to allow for humor. When Colonel Heinrich Eberbach was promoted to divisional command after his predecessor was wounded, the �grim wit� of his men wished him Hals und Bauchschuβ. This was a play on words from Hals und Beinbruch, for which the equivalent English expression would be �Break a leg!,� but instead Eberbach was essentially being told, �Get shot in the neck and stomach.�65

After 1941 the Nazi newspaper Der V�lkische Beobachter published several collections of jokes under the title Privates Are Laughing: Humor from the Front. The humor it recorded was often defined by its �bitter� tone, and for men who had to endure the �Russian swamps,� supposedly without �wine, women and songs,� laughter was the only recourse. According to one submission by Werner Lass and Hans-Adolf Weber, it was only through the hard experiences of the front that soldiers� humor acquired its amusement and joviality. Depictions of German superiority are conspicuously absent, and instead the curious self-directed irony reemerges, including some unlikely (because they were published in the Nazi press) depictions playing upon the German failings of the winter.66 Yet many of the most �bitter� jokes could never have been published in Nazi newspapers. Hermann Gӧring was the most obvious target, especially for soldiers, given his extravagant military uniforms covered in what seemed to many excessive decorations.

As one joke ran: �Gӧring recently added an arrow to the many medals on his chest. It�s there as a direction sign. �To be continued on my back.��67

�Whispered jokes� about Hitler were also made. �What is the difference between Christ and Hitler? With Christ one died for all.�68 �What is the difference between the sun and Hitler? The sun �rises� in the East, while Hitler �sinks� in the East.�69

German humor was also fed from abroad, with BBC broadcasting providing an endless stream of satirical caricatures of Hitler and his Nazi government. An exiled Austrian actor, Johan M�ller, who used the pseudonym Martin M�ller, could imitate Hitler speeches so well that people could often only tell it was not the Nazi dictator by what was said. After Hitler had promised �final victory� in 1941, M�ller couldn�t resist the opportunity to revisit this statement as Hitler at the end of 1941:

My message today coincides with the conclusion of a year in which I guaranteed final victory. But the year has only concluded according to the calendar, the same Gregorian calendar that was forced upon the Germanic world by international Jewry and a Roman pope named Gregor who had been bribed by Freemasons. Do we National Socialists, who have given the world a new order, want to be told by shadowy foreign forces when a year begins and when it ends? No, my radical comrades, I alone am entitled to decide when a year commences and when it concludes.70

# ¿ Oct 11, 2021 17:34

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Weka posted:

Presumably a bunch of these civilians being warcrimed are children.

they knew what they signed up for

# ¿ Oct 14, 2021 06:33

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

# ¿ Oct 25, 2021 12:31

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

quote:

Most of the praise that Engels dictated in this situation belonged to those officers of junior rank who achieved something noteworthy. This is particularly significant as it demonstrated a further development in Engels� thought process where he began to notice the lower level decision-makers and decisions that were critical to an operation, as well as the importance of junior officers. Three examples in particular stand out. First, The English Engineer, Colonel Sir Harry David Jones, who oversaw the English fortifications in the Baltic and Crimean theaters, was adept at realizing and understanding the capabilities and limitations of the English forces available to him.{248} Similarly, one of the chief Russian engineers, Colonel Count Eduard I. Todtleben, a �comparably obscure man in the Russian service,� proved himself adept at developing fortifications inside Sevastopol.{249} Finally, Engels took enough notice of the astute observations of a young Prussian Major in 1836 when that officer wrote about the particulars and details of defending Silistria. That Engels took such an early no- tice of the remarks of Major Helmuth von Moltke reflects quite positively on his observational skills.{250}

...

McClellan maintained the dubious distinction of being one of the very few American Civil War Generals concerning whom Engels remarked, and his comments were far from favorable. Engels rather flippantly dismissed McClellan in May 1862, as a �military incompetent,� who was unable to win battles through fear of losing them.{255}

# ¿ Oct 29, 2021 06:11

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

The book is "First Red Clausewitz: Friedrich Engels and Early Socialist Military Theory", by Major Michael A. Boden

quote:

It is somewhat surprising that for all of the importance of economics in the theoretical observations and logic of Karl Marx�s thought, and of communism in general, that subject figured so little in Engels� reflections concerning war and fighting. Surprisingly, when Engels first read one of the most well- known military missives of the nineteenth century, Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz�s On War, the first thing that caught his attention was the way in which Clausewitz incorporated commerce into war. Engels specifically drew Marx to this correlation.{286}

Certainly, there were frequent examples of how economics functioned in conflict, but for the most part, these observations occurred primarily in the early years of his writing, and seldom concerned any innovations at the tactical levels of warfare. Distinct themes surface throughout these writings, however, particularly the role of conflict in resolving the struggle between rich and poor, and the importance of financial viability in the execution of warfare as an increasingly expensive field. In this last regard, Engels made several very insightful observations, and almost foreshadows later writers, such as Jean de Bloch, who, at the turn of the twentieth century, pointed to the difficulty of waging and financing war on a mass scale.

quote:

Two years later, Engels remained critical of the English rank and file when he wrote his entry �Alma� for The New American Cyclopaedia, noting the English �habitual clumsy way� of conducting military operations.{329}

But perhaps his most insightful comment on the English soldier was not one of condemnation, but one of praise for the system under which the warrior fought. Such a man was to be envied because, almost alone in the European armies of the nineteenth century, he was �by no means regarded by the law as a machine that has no will of its own and must obey without argument any order given it, but as a �free agent,� a man possessing free will, who at all times must know what he is doing and who bears responsibility for all his actions,�{330} This attitude arises from Engels� belief that the soldier/worker maintained an individual consciousness and was a subject capable of defining his own world and not an automaton. Such discussion, written in March 1849, in the midst of revolution for the Neue Rheinische Zeitung displays a remarkable grasp of futuristic military conceptions of responsibility and accountability.

quote:

Even before the final convulsions of the early 1850s, Engels began to describe some of the specific concepts that made such popular wars different from previous conflicts.

Foremost among these new trends was the degree of barbarism that inherently was a part of such war. Engels� most insightful comments on such conflicts occurred in the spring of 1857, when he wrote about the situation involving the British in China and India and commented that �in a popular war the means used by the insurgent nation cannot be measured by the commonly recognized rules of regular warfare, nor by any other abstract standard, but by the degree of civilization only attained by that insurgent nation.�{343} In this particular instance, this meant that the war was not being fought under the conventional, Euro-centric conception of honorable fighting, but instead fell increasingly under the rules that the �oppressed� Chinese people wished to emplace on the conflict.

Such new measures of this fight therefore included actions like poisoning of foodstuffs, kidnapping, and random massacre of European travelers.{344} This was not the way that regular European forces were accustomed to fighting�it was a new type of warfare. Later, when writing for The New American Cyclopaedia, Engels commented on the same type of combat parameter redefinition occurring in Algeria, where the fighting on both sides took on a degree of barbarism that was not common in Europe. The significant point about these particular engagements was that many of the atrocities were committed by the more �civilized� French troops, who indiscriminately burned and destroyed Arab houses, supplies, and crops.

...

Even when Engels discussed military tactics and procedures that both regular forces and irregular soldiers needed to learn, he structured these skills within the construct of maintaining military spirit and presence of mind on the battle-field:

quote:
The considerable extension of patrol and foraging expeditions, outpost duties, etc., the greater activity demanded of every soldier, the more frequent recurrence of cases in which the soldier has to act on his own and has to rely on his own intellectual resources, and, finally, the great importance of skirmish engagements in the fighting, the success of which depends on the intelligence, the coup d��il and the energy of each individual soldier-all this presupposes a greater degree of education of the non-commissioned officer and rank-and-file soldier. A barbaric or semi-barbaric nation, however, is unable to offer a degree of education of the masses such that 500,000-600,000 men recruited at random could, on the one hand, become disciplined and trained to act like machines, and at the same time acquire or retain this coup d��il

quote:

As discussed above, Friedrich Engels was one of the first early socialist writers to devote energy to the actual operations of armies in the field. And although he might not have been a dramatic innovator his observations and concepts nevertheless contributed greatly to the way in which socialist movements since his time developed and engaged in military operations. And his impact has been felt in no arena more than in the area of guerrilla warfare. Engels, almost alone of his contemporaries, discussed to considerable length the ideas behind guerrilla movements:

quote:
Mass uprising, revolutionary war, guerilla detachments everywhere--that is the only means by which a small nation can overcome a large one, by which a less strong army can be put in a position to resist a stronger and better organized one.{351}�Friedrich Engels, �The Defeat of the Piedmontese�

quote:
Now, insurrection is an art quite as much as war or any other, and subject to certain rules of proceeding, which, when neglected, will produce the ruin of the party neglecting them.{352}�Friedrich Engels, �The Defeat of the Piedmontese�

quote:

In the summer of 1848, Engels watched the developments in Paris with great attention. It was a situation where the workers were competing militarily against a regular force that both outnumbered them and contained far more lethal weaponry than they possessed. While the ultimate outcome was not in doubt for long, and the bulk of the fighting ended within a week, Engels drew some conclusions concerning the nature of insurgency warfare, especially when conducted in an urban environment.

First, Engels emphasized the Parisian revolutionaries� success and necessity of turning individual buildings into strongpoint defenses.{355} Through the use of barricades along critical streets and passageways, each individual building was transformed into a defensible strongpoint, suitable for sustained action against a foe. While these strongpoints were being constructed and manned, the insurgents properly used smaller elements to maintain lines of communications, using barricades and lesser streets to keep contact between individual strongpoints. All of this was done only in sections of the city where the workers were relatively sure of local support, and not in more affluent districts of the city.

In addition to this, the rebel leader Joachim R. T. G. de Kersausie (a former military officer) concentrated his available manpower on a single objective, the Hotel de Ville, while lesser sections of the movement protected the insurgency�s bases of operations. These bases, Engels observed, had been �skillfully transformed into formidable fortresses.�{356}

# ¿ Nov 3, 2021 11:40

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUQqwyDPZRw

watched this lecture today - it's a discussion on the Soviet theory of operational warfare, specifically touching on concepts advanced by Mikhail Tukhachevsky

there's a lot of hemming-and-hawing from the speaker about not wanting to show favor towards the Soviet system because it's America and you have to walk on eggshells talking about communism, and perhaps this is a bit too basic for anyone who's already been reading a lot of Soviet warmaking and strategy, but I thought it was a good intro to the subject

# ¿ Nov 4, 2021 07:39

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Raskolnikov38 posted:

ohhh clean wehrmact is a good one, especially since halder helped write US army history documents

I just finished reading "The Wehrmacht's Last Stand" and I wanted to share this excerpt:

quote:

The German Way of War: A Retrospective

And so ended World War II in Europe. What Rommel had called the �unequal struggle� had mercifully come to an end.45 The war that Hitler started and the Wehrmacht conducted so tenaciously killed at least 50 million people and destroyed a continent, all for naught. Hitler was dead. Germany was occupied and divided, a pariah among nations for its crimes, especially the attempted genocide against the Jews. The war shattered Germany�s reputation, transforming the land of Dichter und Denker (the poet and the thinker) to the land of Richter und Henker (the judge and the hangman). The country has yet to live down that reputation, and it probably never will. Anytime the reunited Germany�today a robust and powerful player in Europe�performs some controversial act on the international scene, someone will throw down the word �Nazi.�46 The German experience in World War II should be an object lesson against the notion of �rolling the iron dice� and resorting to a war of aggression.

And yet, for all the pain and suffering it caused, the Wehrmacht emerged from the war with its reputation intact. Its victories early in the war�Case White in Poland, Exercise Weser in Scandinavia, Case Yellow in the west, Operation Mercury, the airborne conquest of Crete�will always stand as innovative examples of modern mechanized operations.47 German generals rushed into print with their memoirs, and those written by Guderian, Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, and staff officer Friedrich Wilhelm von Mellenthin won a vast and fascinated reading audience in the West among those eager to learn the secrets of blitzkrieg. Likewise, a large body of popular West German authors like Franz Kurowski, Erich Kern, J�rgen Thorwald, and above all Paul Carell extolled the fighting qualities of the army, the level of comradeship within the ranks, and its heroic struggle against the odds. Their publishers were affiliated with the political far right, and they often wrote under pseudonyms to hide their past�either as soldiers of the Wehrmacht or as officials of the Nazi regime�but these details mattered little in the English-speaking West.48 All these authors painted a picture of commanders of genius and a heroic army with �clean hands,� that is to say, men who would never have dreamed of carrying out atrocities against civilians and who condemned in no uncertain terms the Nazi Party and SS monsters who did so. With the West locked in a frightening new struggle against global communism, the Wehrmacht looked not so much like a former enemy but rather a forerunner: the first to take on the Red Army and the only force in the world with deep experience fighting the Russians. Wehrmacht worship in the West reached a peak in the 1980s, as the US Army began rereading Clausewitz, studying the campaigns of Moltke the Elder, and rediscovering K�niggr�tz and Case Yellow.

That pleasant consensus on the Wehrmacht has now unraveled, and the notion of the army�s �clean hands� is gone forever. Scholars have meticulously catalogued the crimes of the Wehrmacht, the military�s participation in the Shoah, and the merciless slaughter of civilians on the Eastern Front and in the Balkans. A traveling exhibition with that very title��War of Annihilation: Crimes of the Wehrmacht��moved across Germany beginning in 1995 and was seen by almost a million Germans.49 The damning photographs and textual evidence generated rage in some of the visitors, including those who thought that the exhibition slandered the memory of their fathers and grandfathers, but it caused shock and horror in many more. Scholarly interest in the Wehrmacht today is more likely to center around its participation in mass murder than its military operations. Our reassessment has likewise extended to the memoirs that formed so much of the historical memory of the Wehrmacht, and historians working in the primary documents have had a field day deconstructing some of Manstein�s or Guderian�s more fanciful claims and blatant omissions�especially their tendency to heap all blame on Hitler for decisions and failed operations in which they were deeply complicit.

# ¿ Nov 10, 2021 08:37

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:

Already deleted, what was it?

This is why screenshots are better.

It was something like "going by the analysis that anti-communists use, I can conclude that some 1-3 million people died during the Travis Scott concert"

# ¿ Nov 13, 2021 07:10

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Jimmy Hoffa deez nuts

# ¿ Nov 21, 2021 02:05

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Some Guy TT posted:

https://mobile.twitter.com/KFILE/status/1463572077932433414

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYt0khR_ej0

Some Guy TT posted:

in more substantial posting

this is quite an interesting interview

quote:

We started with you talking about Robert E. Lee and all the positive books about him, and then a march at Charlottesville with white supremacists and the President of the United States not condemning it. Many of the things you�ve said and that we�ve talked about suggest to me that there is some way in which racism is very deeply woven into our country. Is critical race theory helpful in that sense?

I mean, it�s one thing to say that racism has been a chronic American problem. It has. Slavery itself was the birthmark of the American Republic. We paid a severe price for that. We continue to pay a price for it. And I suspect we will continue to pay that price into the future for, at least, some time. I don�t think it�s a question of: Do we demean the significance of race in American history? The question is: Are we going to make things all one single explanation? I think history is a lot more complicated than that. But, if we�re going to say that everything in American life is therefore rendered null and void because of race, then I think we�re dealing with an exaggeration. If everything is rendered null and void by race, how is it we�re able to talk about race at all?

What do you mean?

Well, if race has made any discussion of race null and void, nobody can really talk about it, because everyone is a captive of their particular race. Then why are we talking? Why are we having a discussion about race at all? We should not be able to rise above that, but we do. Happily, we do.

and there was maybe one instance in this interview where Guelzo gets "caught out" by Chotiner with respect to the characterization that he's a Trump supporter, that Guelzo has to deflect from (if that), but it feels to me like this is an interview where the subject isn't as dumb as a box of rocks that walks into a number of rakes all because Chotiner actually read the subject's work and describes it back to them as-is-where-is

# ¿ Nov 25, 2021 09:09

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Some Guy TT posted:

paging gradenko we need more book reports

...

excerpted from "Islands of Destiny: The Solomons Campaign and the Eclipse of the Rising Sun", by John Prados

(off-hand, I'd consider this book a much better account of the Solomons campaign than James Hornfischer's "Neptune's Inferno", which was the one that usually gets tossed around in recommendations)

# ¿ Jan 8, 2022 05:14

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

there's no way they could have known it at the time but it's kinda fun thinking about arguing from the other direction: you should keep Yamamoto in the seat because his penchant for overcomplicated plans keeps getting the IJN into trouble

# ¿ Jan 8, 2022 06:00

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Weka posted:

Did killing him lead to a bunch of jostling between admirals?

Nope. Yamamoto had written a memo in January 1941 that advised who he wanted to succeed him, and he named Koga Mineichi. Everyone who was more senior than him was already holding a government post with the exception of Toyoda Soemu, and Toyoda lacked Koga's political connections, so he was able to slide into the role without much dispute.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2022 13:12

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Ardennes posted:

The problem is that Koga died and Toyoda took over and that’s where you get the “aggressive defense” strategy.

Ah shoot I hadn't gotten to that part of the book yet! But thanks for the catch

# ¿ Jan 8, 2022 13:35

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Beevor's book on the Spanish Civil War I thought was fine enough

# ¿ Jan 9, 2022 04:10

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:

I'm almost done this book and it's pretty good. A little bit too fun. I have already read Neptune's Inferno. Also Tales of the South Pacific by Michener. You got any other Solomons Campaign book recommendations?

John B Lundstrom's "The First South Pacific Campaign"

his "The First Team" is also reportedly very good, though not specific to the Solomons

# ¿ Jan 26, 2022 03:28

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

What did NATO think the USSR's objective was if the balloon ever went up in Europe? "Unify" Germany? Occupy France? Drive all the way to Lisbon?

# ¿ Jan 30, 2022 23:29

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Raskolnikov38 posted:

seven days to the river rhine is the major strategic plan that's turned up post-fall of the wall iirc

interesting that this was leaked by Radek Sikorski

i say swears online posted:

why did eisenhower do more to support the french and south vietnam than batista? or am i incorrect in that assumption?

they didn't think Castro was a communist until it was way too late. as far as they were concerned the fight against Batista was internecine, not ideological.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2022 03:55

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

https://twitter.com/guardian/status/1490946273788272640

Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:

Here's a very long and very fun slice of the book "Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York" by Lucy Sante

tag urself I'm Eddie the Plague

seriously though this is fantastic, thank you for sharing

# ¿ Feb 8, 2022 10:51

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:

For further reading I suggest "Churchill's Secret War"

I was looking for this and "A People's History..." (and I did find them) and I stumbled across

quote:

After three years of great loss and suffering on the Eastern Front, Imperial Russia was in crisis and on the verge of revolution. In November 1917, Lenin�s Bolsheviks (later known as �Soviets�) seized power, signed a peace treaty with the Central Powers, and brutally murdered Tsar Nicholas (British King George�s first cousin) and his children so there could be no return to the old order.

As Russia fractured into loyalist �White� and revolutionary �Red� factions, the British government became increasingly drawn into the escalating Russian Civil War after hundreds of thousands of German troops transferred from the Eastern Front to France were used in the 1918 �Spring Offensive� which threatened Paris.

What began with the landing of a small number of Royal Marines at Murmansk in March 1918 to protect Allied-donated war stores quickly escalated, with the British government actively pursuing an undeclared war against the Bolsheviks on a number of fronts in support of British trained and equipped �White Russian� Allies. At the height of British military intervention in mid-1919, British troops were fighting the Soviets far into the Russian interior in the Baltic, North Russia, Siberia, Caspian and Crimea simultaneously. The full range of weapons in the British arsenal were deployed including the most modern aircraft, tanks and even poison gas. British forces were also drawn into peripheral conflicts against �White� Finnish troops in North Russia and the German �Iron Division� in the Baltic.

It remains a little known fact that the last British troops killed by the German Army in the First World War were killed in the Baltic in late 1919, nor that the last Canadian and Australian soldiers to die in the First World War suffered their fate in North Russia in 1919 many months after the Armistice. Despite the award of five Victoria Crosses (including one posthumous) and the loss of hundreds of British and Commonwealth soldiers, sailors and airmen, most of whom remain buried in Russia, the campaign remains virtually unknown in Britain today.

After the withdrawal of all British forces in mid-1920, the British government attempted to cover up its military involvement in Russia by classifying all official documents. By the time files relating to the campaign were quietly released decades later there was little public interest. Few people in Britain today know that their nation ever fought a war against the Soviet Union. The culmination of more than 15 years of painstaking and exhaustive research with access to many previously classified official documents, unpublished diaries, manuscripts and personal accounts, author Damien Wright has written the first comprehensive campaign history of British and Commonwealth military intervention in the Russian Civil War 1918�20.

I'm excited to dig into it

# ¿ Feb 14, 2022 12:31

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Dreddout posted:

Mike Duncan claims there's no evidence for this on his podcast. In fact he adds that the allies wanted the reds to win the civil war.

man I'd stopped following Duncan since like... end 2019 but this is hilarious

# ¿ Feb 15, 2022 11:56

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

around 32:00 of episode 10.84 - The End of the World

quote:

Now, I don't wanna underestimate Allied support for the Whites - they absolutely did pump supplies and guns to the White armies, but with the benefit of hindsight we know that the Allied interventions into Russia were never gonna be as wholehearted as any of the Russians expected.

In the winter of 1918 and 1919, the Allies had far bigger issues on their plate. The civil war in Russia was just not a high priority. Now it is the case that there were small groups out there, in France and in Britain and the United States, people like Winston Churchill for example, who really were pushing for an immediate all-out attack on Bolshevism, but they were in the minority.

At least as many British, French and American leaders liked and supported the idea of the Soviet socialist republics as they appeared in 1917 and 1918, certainly they much preferred the socialist reds to the reactionary whites, who no doubt intended to restore barbarous absolutism.

Mostly though, both the general populations and ruling classes of Britain, and France and the United States just did not have Russia very high on their list of interests. Everyone was sick of war, sick of fighting, sick of being trapped in destructive quagmires. The unrestrained jubilation that marked the end of World War 1 meant that it was going to be very tough to say "oh yeah, glad the war with Germany is over, now we're gonna plunge into the middle of the Russian civil war," so as we go forward we are never going to see the Allies make the kind of major commitments both sides of the Russian civil war expected them to make.

The expeditionary forces they landed in 1918 around the periphery tended to just stay put and not grow. There were some naval blockades, definitely major shipments of munitions, but the Allies were not, in fact, hell-bent on destroying Bolshevism. And they were absolutely ready to cut the cord if it looked like destroying Bolshevism was going to require them to get sucked even deeper into the Russian civil war.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2022 06:49

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

I guess part of what makes Duncan's remarks hard to swallow for me is that the Entente powers couldn't even stand Mihaly Karolyi's Hungarian [people's] republic for all of the Wilsonian policy they adopted, and then they absolutely brought the hammer down on Bela Kun's Hungarian Soviet Republic, so it's pretty incredible to claim that they ever had any sympathies towards Soviet republics.

vyelkin posted:

The really short version is that Russia had two revolution in 1917, one in March (called the February Revolution because it happened in late February on the old-style Russian calendar) and on in November (the October Revolution, for the same reason).

I'm currently reading Laura Engelstein's "Russia in Flames" and your posts have been great supplemental material, thanks

# ¿ Feb 17, 2022 18:20

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 17:51

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

vyelkin posted:

To be fair to them, they were among the most left-wing liberals in Europe, but they weren't socialists.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2022 19:22

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