Ask me about Military History!

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Nude Bog Lurker: Jan 2, 2007; Fun Shoe

theBeaz posted:

Question: (re: WW2, I apologize in advance) We've already discussed the Pacific Theater and how the defeat of the Japanese seemed inevitable either by Russian or American hands... how does the world typically view the war in the Pacific? It's a common sentiment that the world considers the USA to be very about our involvement (and claiming victory) in Europe... but what about vs. Japan? Are we still looked down upon by others since the war against Japan was almost a "sure thing" or did it give us some major credibility as a fighting nation and our ability to mobilize even after the mess at Pearl Harbor?

Also I don't mean thoughts regarding how the war ended with nuclear bombs, but rather the operation as a whole.

From a New Zealand perspective, I think we feel America is entirely entitled to be :smug:

about winning the war in the Pacific because, you know, from our perspective you did. New Zealand didn't really do much in the Pacific - unlike the Australians or the British or the Indians, say.

Also, most New Zealanders who date from that vintage remember the Americans based in New Zealand extremely fondly - which is ironic because at the time a number of American activities were extremely (and at times even violently) disapproved of, including "stealing our women" and "being racist to our Maori".

# ¿ Aug 11, 2010 11:04

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 01:21

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lilljonas posted:

I haven't found any reliable source for this, but a lot of things insinuate it. In case that wouldn't have happened there were vague allied plans to invade northern Sweden from Narvik as well, simply to take control of the mines and let the Germans have the rest, which was of little strategic value. And in case of a German invasion, railroads from the mines to the sea would be fair game for allied, Norwegian and anti-nazi Swedish partisans, so the German access to Swedish ore would be pretty hosed up no matter what.

Part of the Allies' FORTITUDE NORTH deception before D-day was basically telling Sweden "we're going to take your ore mines away if you keep selling to the Germans", and then waiting for this to filter back to the Germans and for the Germans to work out how the Allies intended to be in a position to do so (e.g. invade Norway, not France).

# ¿ Aug 21, 2010 02:07

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WebDog posted:

Pretty much.
ANZAC day REALLY suffers from being buried under clods of revisionism.
For starters, most people tend to forget it also includes New Zealand.

Almost everything in the post applies to New Zealand as well - including the convenient glossing over the Australian role.

# ¿ Aug 26, 2010 11:05

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HeroOfTheRevolution posted:

They were close allies of Britain which pretty much prevented anyone with messing with them from the middle of the 14th century to the end of the 16th. They weren't conquered by Spain as Chade Johnson implies, they were legally forced into a union because the Portuguese king died heirless. However, they still weren't much of a military power; at their height, close alliance with Britain protected their interests, and later they lost most of their colonial possessions to invasions and revolutions. They were, however, a very strong economic power mainly due to Brazil.

They made a fairly disastrous contribution to World War One, contributing a worthless division to the Western Front and giving Lettow-Vorbeck even more territory to march all over in Africa.

In World War Two they were neutral, but basically fairly pro-Allied because of a) the alliance with Britain and b) the dictatorship being fairly sure Britain would win.

# ¿ Sep 8, 2010 08:41

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l33t Lurker posted:

Cue 200 years of Americans saying "why don't we just annex Canada already, jesus" and Canadians saying "You tried bitches, let us burn down your White House again."

To be fair, cue smarter Americans saying "that could have been a lot worse for us, let's play nice if possible" and smarter Britons saying "that was completely retarded and pointless, let's play nice if possible".

# ¿ Sep 9, 2010 08:09

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EvanSchenck posted:

The Soviets also would have been interested, though their contribution is a little questionable considering how bad their army was at the time and the difficulty of getting forces to the theater of war, since they had no land access.

Supposedly Stalin suggested that the Red Army could transit through Romania and Poland to help out the Czechs - whether Romania and Poland agreed or not. One suspects that Britain and France did not view this proposal with excitement - bearing mind that Stalin had literally murdered millions of his own people, and Hitler had merely expressed the intention to maybe do so at some point in the future.

# ¿ Sep 22, 2010 09:52

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EvanSchenck posted:

*The outstanding example of this lack of good intelligence is that when the Germans invaded, they had only a hazy idea of how large the Red Army was, and not even the vaguest concept of Soviet mobilization capacity. The Germans destroyed what they believed was the entire Red Army in the first two months or so of the invasion, then again during the push towards Stalingrad in 1942, but the Soviets kept pulling new divisions out of nowhere, like a cheating AI opponent in an RTS.

There's a probably apocryphal tale of a Barbarossa wargame at Sandhurst in which both the Axis and Soviet teams complained the game was unrealistically rigged - the Soviets couldn't stop the Germans blasting through every defence line they set up, and the Germans could destroy dozens of divisions with no apparent impact on the size of the Red Army.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2010 00:34

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Nenonen posted:

Agreed. Still, I see it as the low point for Allies. Once the Blitz spectacularly failed and Germany got two of the world's greatest economic and military powers on the Allied side, it was absolutely impossible for the Allies to lose.

There's that old chestnut that Germany's prospects were very bad by the end of 1939, extremely bad by the end of 1940 and hopeless by the end of 1941.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2011 10:45

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Agesilaus II posted:

In terms of counter-factuals, the entire New Orleans campaign can be completely discounted. Fundamentally, the British attempt to conquer New Orleans took place AFTER the Treaty of Ghent was signed (which agreed to rectifying all territory to status quo antebellum). Even had the British taken the city, they would only have had to hand it straight back again.

I suspect there would be a real temptation to tell Brother Jonathan that treaties notwithstanding, His Majesty's Government would be administering New Orleans from now on (with an invented figleaf of legality), and if Brother Jonathan didn't like that then perhaps he could complain to his best friend Napoleon about it.

But that would be a HORRIBLE idea in the long run - British policy post-1814 towards Brother Jonathan could be summed as up as "giving him what he wants will never be as annoying and expensive as fighting him", and the temporary benefit in taxing traffic on the Mississippi would be well outweighed by making a permanent enemy of the Americans.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2011 10:28

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The Roman Empire ended in 1461 - wrap it up Palaiogailures.

# ¿ Nov 5, 2011 02:27

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Nenonen posted:

They did, in Norwegian coast, Mediterranean and South East Asia.

I don't know much about it but I could almost bet that it wasn't quite as easy to shut the Norwegian shipments down as you say, though. It's not a very long shipping route and there wasn't quite as much traffic compared to what was going on in the Atlantic. Add to this that the route was close to the coast under air surveillance and it must have been very dangerous.

The Mediterranean theater also had its own danger. The Med is quite shallow and has clear waters, making subs susceptible to being spotted from the air - and for the decisive years Axis controlled the airspace over most of the puddle.

Ironically, most of the British submarines were designed for action in the Far East, and died in droves in the Mediterranean, which was not friendly to large submarines designed for long jaunts in deep water.

# ¿ Jan 26, 2012 08:32

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Bagheera posted:

Although leaders such as Churchill wanted war, their people might not have gone along with it.

In Freedom From Fear, David Kennedy spends a lot of time explaining how reluctant Americans were to enter World War II. Even after Poland and France fell, and even after German U-Boats had started patrolling the East Coast, the best Roosevelt could get from American citizens was the Lend-Lease Act. If Japan hadn't attacked the US (even if they had attacked all the British adn Dutch colonies), I don't think the US would have declared war.

Note that the American public supported propositions like "the security of America depends on Britain winning the war", "America should enter the war if Britain is about to be defeated", and "US warships should attack German warships on sight", and "it is more important that Germany be defeated than America stays out of the war" by sizable majorities by the middle of 1941. Gallup polls are fascinating things.

# ¿ Jan 28, 2012 08:05

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The real question is whether the Klendathu campaign was winnable. I posit that if the Sky Marshals had deployed even more troops to the surface, the Arachnids would have been forced to terms.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2012 09:36

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wdarkk posted:

Lack of opposition, mostly. From what I can recall their method was more or less "find an undefended/lightly defended beach and then RUSH RUSH RUSH".

Luck was also a factor: the Japanese took a lot of risks that came off for them - something like the Indian Ocean Raid could have turned into an utter fiasco if Somerville had managed to get a decent fix on the Kido Butai and launch his ASV-equipped Albacores in the right direction, considering that the Japanese at that time had no real ability to operate carrier aviation at night and - worse - no idea that Somerville was anywhere near them.

But, as it happened, the two British aircraft that did spot the Kido Butai just as dusk was falling were shot down before they could radio its location, and the rest is history.

# ¿ Apr 16, 2012 08:26

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Ron Jeremy posted:

A post-American-carrier-sunk USN might look very different however.

I wonder what a "modern" navy would look like if the Pacific War never happened.

# ¿ May 5, 2012 05:35

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Alchenar posted:

I don't think you'll find a British or US WW2 Tanker who didn't feel angry and betrayed by their army when they were told that they were going to war with equipment that was every bit as good as the enemies and then found themselves going head to head with Panthers and Tigers that they simply could not penetrate from the front.

You can't ignore the human cost this policy had, not merely in absolute terms of casualties but in the morale effect of the Tank Corps driving into battle knowing that if a Panther or Tiger showed up then they simply could not match it.

I'm sure the superiority of the Tiger was an enormous consolation to the German soldier being deluged with high explosive and bullets by a swarm of inferior Allied tanks, particularly while it was stuck in a ditch twenty miles away.

# ¿ May 15, 2012 11:17

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EvanSchenck posted:

No. The English ruled Ireland for a very long time with varying degrees of brutality and repression. In the medieval period and the renaissance English control of the island waxed and waned until the English Civil War spread there in 1649. Fearful that Royalists could use Ireland as a base and filled with a vicious religious hatred of the Irish themselves, Oliver Cromwell mounted a major invasion that killed mass numbers of civilians (exactly how many is unknown and disputed, because of the contentious nature of Irish-English relations). This campaign drew Ireland more tightly into the English orbit than had previously been the case. It had already been under English rule, and Protestant settlers had been sent to colonize sections of the island, but these efforts were redoubled by Cromwell and succeeding governments. In particular, Cromwell began large-scale confiscations of land from the Irish. The process of colonization was particularly aggressive in the northern counties of Ireland.

From 1650 on, English/British rule over Ireland is generally regarded as more similar to the treatment of overseas colonies than to an actual core province, and Ireland is sometimes called "Britain's first colony." Catholics were not considered full citizens of the United Kingdom until 1829 and were subject to various legal restrictions, such as being barred from purchasing land, for much of that period. Ireland under British rule was also largely mired in poverty and ignored by the British, even during catastrophic events like the Great Famine of 1845-49, the British response to which was lackadaisical at best and malicious at worst. Without going too much further into the history of this, the Irish are not incredibly fond of the English.

During the independence process, the descendents of the Protestant settlers in the north believed without British protection they would be an oppressed minority in overwhelmingly Catholic Ireland, and they preferred to remain in Britain. Dividing Ireland was a source of enormous tension, being one of the main causes of the Irish Civil War (1922-23), fought between one faction that agreed to a negotiated settlement with Britain including a division of the island and dominion status in the British Empire, and another that refused any compromise. The treaty forces won, and Northern Ireland remained under British rule, but conflict between Catholics and Protestants over the division of Ireland did not stop. This conflict heated up in the late 1960s with regular violence until the late 1990s, a period called "The Troubles." British troops were sent to Northern Ireland to maintain order.

To fill in the "independence process" bit, the British Government spent most of the late nineteenth century trying to work out what to do about Ireland, since direct rule from London clearly wasn't working very well (famines, mass emigration, repeated election of Irish Nationalist MPs to Parliament, etc.)

By 1912 they'd put together a Home Rule Bill which would more or less have established Ireland (the whole Ireland) as a Dominion. Except that the Unionists in Ulster hated the idea and threatened to resist Home Rule by force. The Government in London decided that this wasn't really on and ordered British Army regiments in Ulster to disarm the Unionists - who, er, more or less mutinied instead of shoot at Irishmen who wanted to be British. So the Government decided that this was all a bit awkward and that there had been a misunderstanding and it wasn't really an order and it hadn't really been a mutiny.

This left things at a bit of an impasse because the Unionists wouldn't accept independence without partition and the Nationalists wouldn't accept partition at all. Awkward. Conveniently, the outbreak of World War One allowed Britain to kick for touch by enacting the Government of Ireland Act 1914 and then suspending it for the duration of the war.

Some unpleasantness followed in Ireland, particularly in 1916, and London tried a new Home Rule arrangement coupled with conscription in 1916-18. Everyone hated this and engaged in even more vigorous unpleasantness, particularly after the war in Europe ended. London then tried the Government of Ireland Act 1920, which did implement partition after a fashion, and which everyone hated very much indeed.

Much toing and froing followed, and eventually London and Dublin struck a deal where Ireland would become independent and then Ulster could leave. This was acceptable to enough people that it stuck, even though Southern Ireland (now the Irish Free State) promptly decided to have a vigorous exchange of views between the Nationalists who thought the Anglo-Irish Treaty was acceptable and the ones who thought it was terrible (because it had too much King and not enough Ulster, mostly).

Hence Britain was stuck with Ulster (now Northern Ireland) which it didn't particularly want, and Ireland spent the next eighty years talking about how it really, definitely wanted Ulster back one day because it was very much part of a united Ireland forever etc _{you are very welcome to those awful people, please never leave}.

# ¿ Nov 5, 2012 10:48

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Alchenar posted:

Eh, if there's one thing I am sympathetic to it's the argument that by the point at which it because apparent that Hitler was so insane that a coup was necessary then Germany was already at war with the USSR and deposing him would have meant being responsible for national suicide.

The German generals trapped themselves in a moral dilemma, but that doesn't make the trap less real.

The Commissar Order was flagrantly illegal and was being circulated among the General Staff well before the commencement of Barbarossa. The general staff knew drat well what they were signing up to do.

# ¿ Nov 14, 2012 08:04

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Blckdrgn posted:

It seems the "in" thing to do is say that the Germans managed to claimed what they did by sheer dumb luck. I find it very hard to believe that a nation can blindly stumble over not only overstepping the goals of the first world war, but manage to actually nearly end both major opponents within a couple years of the start of the conflict. All I'm saying is credit where credit is due. Its more likely that they knew what they were doing half the time, than a dozen countries going out of their way to gently caress everything up for 4 years straight.

Take something like Crete, though. The Germans were incredibly lucky to win that one. Anyone other than Lt-Colonel Andrew at Maleme and Brigadier Hargest giving him orders and the whole invasion would have been a rather embarassing damp squib.

Andrew in particular should have been shot (and probably Hargest too). Probably the most disgraceful moment in New Zealand military history.

# ¿ Nov 22, 2012 08:49

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SeanBeansShako posted:

Two points towards MBT development! anything else in the field of the RAF or Royal Navy?

The Concbomber, an amazing concept that while highly jolly does not seem to have actually existed.

# ¿ Jan 3, 2013 04:34

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Chamale posted:

What's this? I Googled it but couldn't find any info.

Basically, it "was" a completely demented urban legend to the effect that the Concorde was really designed as a supersonic bomber and that there was at least one Concorde with the relevant equipment actually built. Quite mad, but good fun.

# ¿ Jan 4, 2013 04:54

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Saint Celestine posted:

No. Because while the Iowas were still building, they realized the aircraft carrier as the centerpiece to build the fleet around, not the battleship.

Why would it be the raddest thing? It would look the same, have the same drawbacks, not to mention youd have to rip out all the exis... this question is dumb. Reagan wasn't even this crazy when he started on his 600-ship navy and reactivated the Iowas. Why would yo.. nevermind.

A nuclear powered Iowa-class festooned with hundreds of radar-guided AA guns and no main guns at all (replaced with more AA guns).

:getin:

# ¿ Jan 10, 2013 10:24

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What did the South Africans get up to in World War Two - we hear a lot about the Canadians and the Indians and the Australians and even the New Zealanders, but not much about South Africa.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2013 05:00

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 01:21

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HEGEL CURES THESES posted:

In four hundred years, people will be exactly as emotional about all of this as they are about the War of the Three Henries, or the Fronde. The US is not the center of the universe.

Counterpoint: try having a discussion in rural Ireland about Oliver Cromwell's generalship.

# ¿ Jul 20, 2013 01:21

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