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By September 1945, the Soviets had propeller aircraft that could intercept American bombers (mostly B-29s), but it does also show what the US was planning even very early on.
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Mar 27, 2021 07:57
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It was more than a "few bad things." The Dardanelles was largely his screw up and it was bad enough it may have actively prolonged the war. He also pushed the landings in Italy in 1943 which went nowhere and used up a bunch of Western strength that could have been used elsewhere. He pushed for the use of chemical weapons on the Kurds earlier in life. But the worst of all has to be largely ignoring the Bengal famine, a situation that could have quickly been resolved. (It didn't help that he had also pushed against dominion status for India during the 1930s.) I mean, he kept the British fighting, but you don't really have to accept hagiography about him. Ardennes has issued a correction as of 23:47 on Mar 29, 2021 |
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Mar 29, 2021 21:42
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exmachina posted:Didn't Roosevelt have a copy of Mein Kampf with marginalia that suggested he read the German version? quote:There is no firm evidence that Stanley Baldwin or Neville Chamberlain ever read the abridgement, but Franklin D. Roosevelt had one in his library in which was annotated: "The White House – 1933 This translation is so expurgated as to give a wholly false view of what Hitler is and says - the German original would make a different story."[75] He had been sent a complimentary copy by the publishers.[59] It seems like it.
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May 28, 2021 20:50
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mycomancy posted:Wait, I'm confused. Did FDR read an English version that toned Hitler down to be more acceptable to a liberal capitalist? Is that what I'm reading? If it is around 300 pages it is, the original is rather large at 720-800 pages. Supposedly, there is only one full translation of Mein Kampf in English and the vast majority you would see in most public libraries/bookstores is the abridged version. Also, supposedly all the abridged versions are very poorly translated. It sounds like FDR read both the original and at least looked at the abridged version. (Supposedly FDR knew both German and French from a young age.) Ardennes has issued a correction as of 23:04 on May 28, 2021 |
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May 28, 2021 22:45
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Maximo Roboto posted:I was going to make a thread for stupid alternate histories, but I might as well use this one. Some random loons like Golden Dawn or Casa Pound that barely anyone talks about nowadays.
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Aug 13, 2021 10:11
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Yamamoto probably wouldn’t have allowed Leyte Gulf to happen which on its own creates a pretty different scenario.
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Jan 8, 2022 13:03
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The problem is that Koga died and Toyoda took over and that’s where you get the “aggressive defense” strategy.
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Jan 8, 2022 13:32
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Sorry for the spoiler, but yeah, it eventually landed on the guy least qualified for the job. The IJN by mid-1944 was largely a spent force and an aggressive strategy only really works if you can do serious damage with sustainable causalities. Btw, current Russian doctrine is also aggressive-defensive but I think there is much more of an argument to be made the Russians could do serious damage before NATO could fully respond. Ardennes has issued a correction as of 14:46 on Jan 8, 2022 |
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Jan 8, 2022 14:41
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sullat posted:I think Yamamoto kind of got the "Rommel" treatment where after the war his loyal supporters cherry-picked his papers and quotes to make him look better. There is some of that, but Midway was more than anything else was about code breaking. His planning was complex because he knew the disadvantageous state the entire was in even in at the near peak of its strength. His planning at Midway was a lot more defensible then Toyoda’s, Japan was fighting from a position at desperation at that point.
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Jan 8, 2022 19:58
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Azathoth posted:Midway itself was a defensible plan given the forces present, but as was pointed out in Shattered Sword, it was a critical mistake to ever split up the carriers for any reason. Midway would likely have looked a lot different had the carriers Shokaku, Zuikaku, Ryujo and Junyo, been present, though all that likely would have done is made the Americans fall back to Pearl Harbor and maybe pushed out the war's timeline. Honestly, time was working against the Japanese at that point, they needed to take out US carriers. It was a gamble that didn’t pay off but I don’t think it was a pointless one.
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Jan 8, 2022 20:35
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Also, I think Hood had a better chance of actually doing something than Toyoda did even if both were in a desperate situation.
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Jan 10, 2022 20:41
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:I don't think either of them had a chance and I think it was the same stupid "strategy" both times I think Hood could have possibly at least isolated some Union forces and complicated Union operations even if he couldn’t have stopped Sherman. Toyoda sacrificed the Japanese fleet without any real hope of operational success. Both were poor plans, one poorer than the other. Yamamoto has certainly been over-celebrated by some writers to sell books but he was still the best man for the job.
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Jan 10, 2022 21:41
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Yeah, there is plenty of love for the Winter War…everything after that until now it politely completely forgotten about.
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Feb 9, 2022 01:30
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Grimnarsson posted:Everything you say here seems roughly in line what I've read. The peasants seized the lands and in the first elections they voted for those who recognised that which wasn't the bolsheviks because they were against private property. The right SRs also weren’t that interested in a dramatic social revolution either, they wanted their villages to keep their land but they weren’t that interested otherwise in the things they were pushing. That said, you really couldn’t organize a government around that and the SR was always historically pretty divided and the Bolsheviks clearly knew they had to push their way forward but the election results weren’t going to lead anyway productive.
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Feb 19, 2022 13:41
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John Charity Spring posted:gonna toss in an anti-recommendation for A People's Tragedy by Orlando Figes which is reactionary trash but highly esteemed in general for obvious reasons It isn’t by academics, it is well known Figes can’t read Russian and very little actual research was done for the book.
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Feb 21, 2022 12:05
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vyelkin posted:afaik Figes can read Russian (maybe you're thinking of Anthony Beevor who can't?) but has done other dodgy academic dishonesty things like potentially faking citations and definitely publishing fake Amazon reviews of his rivals' books and then blaming his wife when he got caught. He used to be quite highly regarded because a couple of his early books (here specifically thinking of Peasant Russia, Civil War and Interpreting the Russian Revolution, the book he co-wrote with Boris Kolonitskii) were good contributions to the field but at least among younger generations of historians he now has a reputation as a weirdo who tanked his own academic reputation for no good reason. Figes specifically had a reputation for being completely reliant on assistants to do archival work. That is at least the scuttlebutt. I don’t know about Beevor but he is more a general European historian anyway.
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Feb 23, 2022 11:09
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i say swears online posted:if you think about it, gannon was trying to stop a monarchy from enacting the triangular trade Gannon was enacting desert power against an oppressive imperium that only wanted to suck the land dry
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Apr 20, 2022 07:11
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Antonymous posted:I said to a foreigner today that the US had two, maybe 3 dictators. FDR Lincoln and Washington. and he got really really pissy with me and said none of those people 'tick the boxes' of dictator and I said what about japanese internment and threatening to pack the courts, and outright threatening dictatorship against his own party's congress in his inauguration speech and this guy got really really offended and refused to continue the discussion I just don't think any of them were really that strong enough to be independent dictators, it isn't really how the American system is run. There were certainly some of the strongest figures the US has had (well Washington was pretty heavily dependent on his cabinet and Adams). The American system is really about a relatively weak government that is behold to local and capital interests, during crises there are stronger figures but at the end of the day they still know how the bread is buttered (FDR would only go so far). Just like the Internment Camps was just about Roosevelt either. Ardennes has issued a correction as of 09:11 on May 16, 2022 |
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May 16, 2022 09:08
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I would say the difference is a dictator should doesn't have to manage different political interests on a constant basis to conduct policy, it doesn't mean they don't have allies but they are in the "constant driver's seat" and rule by dictate. Roosevelt had to manage a very broad coalition and couldn't rule by his own will alone, he didn't the Democrats to back him. He was more powerful than almost any other American politician (besides well Lincoln) and was largely the result of circumstance. A "Democrat" is a much more squirrely thing to nail down since theoretically they are acting instead for the will of the people but what is the will of the people? You could argue that FDR was constantly elected because he was acting through the will of the people, but he did that through action that benefitted them (at least for a time). I don't think a Roosevelt was a dictator, nor are dictators necessarily only bad, they certainly could act in the will of the people. The big difference is the process.
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May 18, 2022 02:46
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StashAugustine posted:This is a huge pedantic point but it is kinda funny given that the original dictators were specifically intended to relinquish power It doesn’t matter, when the position was held, the dictator could still rule by fiat (theoretically there was veto power by tribunes but rarely used) even if he was suppose to relinquish the position. Also, the relative weakness of the Emperor toward governors spoke more to the weakness of the empire as a whole rather than the position. (Also, technically the Princeps was beholden nominally to the Senate but it was generally ignored over time.) Ardennes has issued a correction as of 03:25 on May 18, 2022 |
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May 18, 2022 03:19
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Tunicate posted:not really, the traditional 'dictator' was totally a different than what we currently conceive of the word meaning. The dictator was a limited-term position with limited powers which worked fairly well, then wasn't used for centuries. Far later, Sulla created a new position with totally different powers and limits, and called it 'dictator' to try to connect it to a past precedent. That didn't work out for him, then a little later Julius tried the same thing and got stabbed, and that was the end of calling yourself 'dictator' in Rome. It only "didn't work out for them" because they were taken out with force by the aristocracy as a form of desperation. Also, the principate made the concept of a dictator obsolete but the name or position didn't matter as much as a centrally force that would then override the senate as they wished.
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May 21, 2022 21:59
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Yeah, that is true about Sulla, but in that case the term of dictator did essential “work out” even if it was different than previous interpretations. If anything I would say the fear about the word comes from Caesar himself who took both it out of bounds and then largely turned it on the Senate, but nevertheless it was still the result of a looser and looser interpretation of Roman laws. Also, Sulla himself was very much in control even if his overall goal was the restriction of popular movements.
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May 22, 2022 02:17
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It is sort of all of the above: The Treaty of Versailles, the occupation of the Rhur-Rhine region, and hyperinflation did create the stage for reactionary politics, but after the relative stability of the late 1920s, it took a great depression and the rise of KPD for German industrialists to start backing the Nazis. That said, there have been studies that showed that even before that point that they were rapidly gaining strength in protestant areas with high unemployment, particularly among the self-employed and white-collar workers.
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Jun 19, 2022 22:59
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