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One thing that I have thought a lot about is the lack of shields in post-samurai Japan. During many centuries you would find shields in pretty much every armed force in the world, except for in Japan. In some way it makes sense, since the major weapons of the Japanese battlefields were all two handed (long bows and spears/pikes), but the same can be said for many other armies that used shields anyway. When you first had a horse archer based army you can compare it to other such armies (Turkish, Mongolian etc.) where shields were used even by the cavalry. When the cavalry became more focused on shock attacks, they didn't use shields like knights or other medieval shock cavalry either. And all this time the supporting spearmen were without shields, which I find extremely rare until the Pike and Shotte period. It just doesn't make sense to me. It's not like they hadn't developed the shield, as shield wall phalanx-style infantry dominated Yayoi era warfare. And all neighbouring countries used shields all throughout these periods, with China being a huge source of cultural imports. And they realized that hiding behind wooden or metallic objects was a good way to protect yourself, since pavises were widely used both in sieges and set piece battles. They even built intricate paper boxes to wear on their armours to decrease the power of incoming arrows, yet for almost a milennia the Japanese warriors scoffed at shields. What the gently caress is up with that? entris posted:Admiral Snackbar, I am usually bored to tears by military history but you do an excellent job of presenting material in a concise and interesting way. Fantastic. It was weaponized for a long time, but instead of using it as a propellant like in the West. It was used mainly as an explosive, which honestly is a bit more obvious use of a powder that burns really really fast. Bombs and explosive rockets were used in sieges, both by attackers and defenders, as well as on battlefields. Combinations of gunpowder and petrolium-based explosive devices and incendiary bombs were used in both China and Korea in the 12th and 13th century, and was used a lot by Mongols during their sieges in Asia. But the difference in effectiveness is to a large degree down to the shrewd thought of using gunpowder to blow hard things far away instead of throwing explosive things by hands or with trebuchets. EDIT: coolest use of incendiary devices in Asian warfare: you take an oxen, and strap two large spears to its side. Put incendiary bombs on these spears. Then strap something that you can burn to the back of the oxen, like straws dripping in oil. Point the oxen towards war machines sieging your town, ignite, and watch the calamity. Chinese mofos throwing some mad "Heaven Shaking Thunder Crash Bombs", a.k.a grenades with poisonous gas, seriously serving some Mongols and wrecking their day:  Check more cool drawings of old Chinese bombs at http://www.grandhistorian.com/chinesesiegewarfare/siegeweapons-earlygrenades.html lilljonas fucked around with this message at 20:23 on Apr 29, 2010 |
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Apr 29, 2010 19:48
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Spartan421 posted:You mention Celts in Italy. I am curious exactly where Gauls and Celts start and end geographically. All I know is that Julius Caesar(JC if you will) conquered Gaul(modern day France) and defeated a massive unified Gallic army in the absolutely fascinating Battle of Alesia. The Romans talked about cisalpine Gauls ("on this side of the Alps Gauls") and transalpine Gauls ("on the other side of the Alps Gauls"), but Celts as a group had spread their culture all over Europe, from Britain to modern day Turkey, long before the Romans started on their Empire. There were lots of cisalpine Gauls in the Po valley, and they gave the Romans a hard time until they were conquered. So much indeed that a major part of Hannibal's plan to cross the Alps hinged on impressing the cisalpine Gauls into joining his attack on Rome. The Boii and the Insubres tribes rebelled and delayed Roman preparations for the Carthaginians. And once Rome was trounced at River Trebia, pretty much all cisalpine Gaul joined forces with Hannibal to get revenge on Rome. EDIT: nifty image on the spread of Celtic culture in Europe:  Yellow is the core area of the Hallstatt Celtic culture, from around 6th century BC. Light blue is the maximum extension of Celts, and green is parts where Celtic language survived into modern times. Here you can compare that to Gaul, with tribes marked out:  Click here for the full 787x799 image. lilljonas fucked around with this message at 18:41 on May 2, 2010 |
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May 2, 2010 18:31
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CatchrNdRy posted:Can you give some more unusual examples of one ethnic group appropriated for military use by a very different one? The most prevalent one I can think of is the Janissaries. I guess also the Mongol Hordes may have become racially dissimilar but culturally and lifestyle-wise very bonded. Stuff like the British empire using colonial troops is a little too passe'. Check out the Varangian guard, vikings mostly from Sweden or from viking settlements in Russia who served the Byzantines. Or why not not the exiled samurai who served the Siamese court in the 17th century? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamada_Nagamasa
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May 2, 2010 19:39
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CatchrNdRy posted:yeah don't the white supremacists in Russia think they are descendants of the Varangians as opposed to being dirty Slavs? How about this: Americans in the Civil War dressing up like Algerian beduins? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zouaves  French Zouave in 1888 While not ethnicities fighting far away, I'm pretty impressed by this far-flung spread of military fashion. The Zouaves were initially 19th century Berbers being recruited in the French north-African colonies, becoming the elite of the French African Army. All of the sudden Zouaves were all the rage in Europe: the Pope got himself some, Poles dressed in black Zouave dresses with white crosses fighting Russians as some crazed neo-Teutonic Knights, and Carlist Zouaves in Spain. And finally, Americans started raising Zouave regiments during the Civil War:  14th Brooklyn In total there were 95 regiments of Zouaves raised during the Civil War, most of them on the Union side, including the 5th New York Volunteer Infantry, an elite unit in the Army of the Potomac. And for the dude who wanted to hear bloody tales about the Civil war: "At the Second Battle of Bull Run, the 5th New York, along with another Zouave regiment, the 10th New York "National Zouaves", held off the flanking attack of James Longstreet's Corps for ten crucial minutes before it was overrun. The 5th New York thus suffered the highest percentage of casualties in the shortest amount of time of any unit in the Civil War (of 525 men, approximately 120 were killed and 330 were wounded in less than 10 minutes). I really had no idea that there were regiments on both the North and the South side who ran around with a fez and loose uniforms designed for combat in the desert of Africa.
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May 2, 2010 21:30
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Burning Beard posted:Japanese Soldier stuff I think the most eye-opening book on the Japanese side of WW2 is Kamikaze Diaries, which is an utterly heartbreaking book. Just like most Westerners I was always told the story of the kamikaze soldiers as completely brainwashed nationalistic patsies who died believing they were saving their country. The reality is much more sad than that. By the time kamikaze attacks were used, most of the "ordinary" pilots were already dead, as noted before in this thread. Instead, the main source of recruits became university aged boys who were extremely well read, very reflexive and critical on the role of their country as aggressor but yet unable to give up their allegiance to said country. There are no gung-ho thoughts that they would ever live or even hope to win the conflict, indeed they wrote about an impeding sense of doom for their entire culture from very early on in the conflict. Really, it is the best read I can think of for dispelling these Western notions of a brainwashed Japan drunk on nationalism. Instead you find dispairing kids trying to find solace in everything from Zola to Botticelli and Kant while contemplating a death they know is inevitable. Are these the words of a nationalistic fanatic? "Individualism, egotism, amoral and demonic principles, the hypocritical/anti-emotion principle, the rational principle, antinationalism, utlitarianism - if people know how to skillfully combine them all, they will be great people in the world. The Jews and overseas Chinese have no country. They have strategically used these principles and succeeded in their effort; they should receive universal respect" -Takushima Normitsu, January 1941, died 1945 as an attack bomber captain, age 24. It is really tough to read some of the stuff in that book, wartime memoirs and diaries is the best way to really see many of the tragic side of these conflicts which are glazed over in the more overall descriptions of war, and also add complexity instead of stereotypical images of soldiers. After all, we want to believe the kamikaze pilots were simple minds hooked on nationalistic fervor instead of writing things like this the days before plunging into a destroyer: "It is easy to talk about death in the abstract, as the ancient philosophers discussed. But it is real death I fear, and I don't know if I can overcome the fear. Even for a short life, there are many memories, For someone who had a good life, it is very difficult to part with it. But I reached a point of no return. I must plunge into an enemy vessel. To be honest, I cannot say that the wish to die for the emperor is genuine, coming from my heart. However, it is decided for me that I die for the emperor." -Hayashi Ichizou, died as a tokkoutai (kamikaze) pilot on April 12, 1945, age 23. Many drafted Japanese write about expecting Japan to lose from as early on as 1942, which makes the thousands of futile deaths from then to -45 by soldiers with no hope for the future even more sad. As for Japan today, I lament the fact that younger generations know so very little about the war, but that goes for other Asian countries too. I studied in Tokyo and many Asian university students couldn't even place WW2 in the correct century (!), no less say which countries were involved or what happened during the war. But while knowledge about the wars of the 20th century was appalling, the ingrained pacifism of post-war Japan makes me doubt they will be the aggressors in an armed conflict within a generation or two, if ever. lilljonas fucked around with this message at 21:00 on May 3, 2010 |
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May 3, 2010 20:56
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Ego-bot posted:Anyone want to give their nomination for the worst military commander? While the accounts are a tad biased, he didn't have the best resources to work with, and were up against maybe the best military commander ever, Darius III was pretty crap. For more modern periods, check out the clusterfuck that is Pavel Grachev. Responsible for going into Chechnya to storm Grozny to put an end to the separatist movement. Led the attack, while drunk, and caused a Russian defeat and hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties. Yes, he called in tanks to flush out a capital populated by extremely highly motivated insurgents armed to the teeth. You shouldn't do that. lilljonas fucked around with this message at 20:20 on May 4, 2010 |
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May 4, 2010 20:03
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Barto posted:But they did end up with some of their own gun/rocket technology didn't they? I remember reading somewhere that there were hand cannon regiments in the Ming. Absolutely. Both Mongols, Koreans, Chinese and to a much smaller degree, Japanese used gunpowder for various weapons. Here the Mythbusters built a replica of a Korean Hwacha to try how effective it could be: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeQTpmaEkMY Handguns were used to a smaller degree than rockets and simple explosive grenade-style weapons though. They did some very advanced things too. Here's a museum replica of a Ming dynasty flying bomb:  Another favourite is the Korean Sam Hyul Chong, which is basically three rockets bundled up on a stick. So you got your cavalry to charge at the opponents, light the fuse, point it at the enemy and watch the calamity as *boom*, explosives all over the place. Which slightly negates the point of Admiral Snackbar above that early firepower was useless for cavalry, but I agree that it might not have been the most efficient weapon for long protracted battles between cavalry. The uneven timing of fuses made early gunpowder weapons far more efficient against more stationary targets like infantry, which also explains why it was largely relegated to sieges where both the attackers and defenders have little room to maneouver. EDIT: more asian gunpowder shenanigans. Ming soldier firing super-gun:  One-upmanship, Ming soldier firing five-barrelled umbrella gun half a century before the Penguin turned up:  Hello Mongols, why don't you please take a basket of burning arrow rockets to your face?  I love early manuscripts of Chinese gunpowder weapons because they did some very creative, yet childlike, attempts at conveying the image of explosions. Note my earlier picture of the bomb at the siege, with sublime waves coming from the intact bomb to explain that it exploded. lilljonas fucked around with this message at 18:57 on May 6, 2010 |
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May 6, 2010 18:39
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The BBC history magazine podcast had an interview with some guy working at the Teutoburg excavations just a few months ago. It's worth checking out their archives if you are interested.
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May 13, 2010 22:33
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Lord Tomungus posted:Here are two WWII questions I often think about; While this is anectdotal since it was a while ago and I don't remember any references and such, I had an economy history teacher in Japan when I studied there who liked to discuss the economy of wartime and post-war Japan. According to the statistics that SCAP gathered directly after the war to plan the rebuilding of Japan, the strategic bombing of Japanese cities had very little effect on the Japanese war effort. Hundreds of thousands of people died, but the production of factories etc. was pretty unharmed by it. What totally hosed them over was the complete rear end-kicking the Allies delivered to the badly guarded Japanese convoys. That campaign drastically limited the ability to ship troops, the ability to supply troops and the ability to get raw materials from SE Asia to Japan to turn into supplies. The low number of remaining lorries and trains also surprised SCAP. It turned out to be a huge bottleneck in the rebuilding efforts, and the first pushes to turn Japan from the brink of starvation was to import a ton of lorries and to kick-start the coal mining. The lack of transportation at the end of the war and the immense drag on the Japanese economy it meant made it obvious that if strategic bombing had been aimed at railroads and transport centers, it would have impeded Japan far more than the relatively ineffective (if you don't count dead bodies) city terror bombings. I haven't really studied the effects of strategic bombing in Europe though, might have been different there. lilljonas fucked around with this message at 20:43 on May 31, 2010 |
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May 31, 2010 20:39
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Spartan421 posted:WTF is SCAP? Well I looked it up for you. Supreme Commander Allied Powers. AKA Douglas McArthur. While the Americans referred only to Douglas McArthur as SCAP, but the Japanese used the term for his entire administration including all the American staff etc. EDIT: the occupation of Japan is also interesting from a military history point of view since it is one of extremely few succesful military occupations that left most people happy, the country rapidly developing and ushered a more progressive and tolerant society. The Japanese had a huge sobbing farewell party for ol' Douglas when he was sacked and had to leave. lilljonas fucked around with this message at 11:58 on Jun 1, 2010 |
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Jun 1, 2010 11:40
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Isurion posted:They're worried about Seoul getting leveled and a good portion of its population getting killed. Some people don't realize just how close to the border Seoul is. It doesn't take some advanced long range missile to reach it; even if a war in Korea would certainly end in North Korea being defeated, Seoul would most likely come out looking like Beirut or Sarajevo at their worst times. No-one wants this. To understand why the various problems in Korea haven't sparked a war you must realize just how bad a war would be for everyone involved. No-one is really interested in a war, but threats are one of few tools available to both sides to change the behavior of the other side.
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Jun 2, 2010 07:14
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thetruth posted:Did Truman really need to use Fat Man and Little Boy on Japan to force Japan to surrender? Gore Vidal said, (if I remember correctly in Why We Fight) "Truman used atomic warfare to intimidate Stalin, not to get Japan to surrender." Most likely not. But by the time Japan surrendered, the Soviet forces would have taken at least Hokkaido, maybe even more of northern Japan, and Japan would likely have been divided like Germany and Korea. And while the atomic bombs were horrible, I sincerely believe that the long term results of a divided Japan would have been worse. The Soviets were close to an invasion of Japan, and this way they were left with previously contested areas like Sakhalin and the Kuril islands. There's a pretty cool museum about the Soviet attack on Sakhalin in Sapporo, and the possibility of a Soviet backed post-war communist northern Japan is something that very few seem to know about. The number of people who would have died in a land invasion is likely high, but also very likely overblown in US apologetic attempts to rationalize the bombs, as is the amount of preparation of the Japanese for a land invasion. There's little backing the "every Japanese in the country would have done suicide banzai attacks and 100% of the population would be dead" thesis either, the Japanese were really tired of the war effort by then. My fiancées grandmother was on one of the two last ships evacuating people from Sakhalin, and a Soviet dive bomber blew up the other one before they arrived. lilljonas fucked around with this message at 19:15 on Jun 7, 2010 |
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Jun 7, 2010 19:05
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HeroOfTheRevolution posted:The 'million casualty' estimates come from pre-bomb estimates and thus can't be apologetic by definition. US intelligence on Japan was also to a large degree based on anthropologist Ruth Benedict, who had never been to Japan and was heavily talking out of her rear end to support the culture and personality school of anthropology. But really I was more talking about the fact that the theory that every single Japanese would have stormed the beaches armed with brooms and kitchen knives is still brought out every time the bombs are mentioned. This is not a serious theory as the Japanese were already talking about how to approach a surrender before the bombs fell, to a large degree because of them fearing being invaded by the Soviets.
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Jun 7, 2010 21:30
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mrlego posted:Also, they wanted to keep the Emperor Herohito in power and not tried as a war criminal. They were big fans of his holyness and would die to protect him. I am not sure that the USA cared to prosecute the Emperor becasuse he was an asset to keep the Japanese people under control while the country was being rebuilt. Without the Emperor, it would have been a chaotic hell to bring that country out of the ashes. Then we would all be driving Lincolins. Yup, and McArthur settled it by going the European monarchy way, and letting the Emperor remain a symbolic leader but cutting all his ties to actual power (which were very small anyway), and avoided sending him to a trial. Avoiding post-war trials as a member of the Axis were p. easy if you had marketable skills like being a symbolic leader during a reconstruction or being able to make cool rockets. Actually, the whole rebuilding Japan was actually not something the Allies immediately thought of. The plans at the end of the war was to keep Japan without any real industry at all, completely neutered and mostly an agrarian economy. There were big rows as the occupational government in Japan wanted to rebuild the country, while Washington didn't like that idea one bit. There were several different economy envoys and experts involved and yadda yadda, but this is about military history so enough about that. When Soviet-Western relations started to sour the strategical value of Japan, especially an industrial Japan, started to become obvious to the US. And the real economic recovery kick-started with the Korean war, where the vast supplies needed by the US troops meant that Japan had an immense market close by to produce for, and the US administration started to see the economic recovery of Japan with kinder eyes. That's when Japan really became the "unsinkable American carrier in Asia". lilljonas fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Jun 8, 2010 |
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Jun 8, 2010 22:02
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Smoothrich posted:Also, it seemed that the Japanese were inflicting equal or more casualties on the US as their defensive tactics evolved. I'm sure the idea of a massive coastal invasion on Japan, where the defenders could actively reinforce their positions instead of being starved and cut off every time, along with Japanese generals becoming extremely effective defensive fighters, would be one with an absolutely massive casualty rate. What amount of manpower would the Japanese of been able to drum up? I imagine it would've been Eastern Campaign brutal. Not really. Japan was down to recruiting school kids and old men long before that point, compare it to the Volkssturm of Germany at best. They could probably have held for a little bit, but would probably have been easily swept aside by the battle hardened and much better equipped and suported US troops.
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Jun 10, 2010 16:21
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Humanoid Female posted:And read All Quiet on the Western Front. And watch Stalingrad.
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Jun 11, 2010 17:33
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AgentF posted:Would it have been so important to 'win'? You could strip Japan of its colonial possessions and sink their fleets and call it a day. You don't need to invade someone's homeland to win a war against them. The Western allies needed to invade Japan because if they didn't, the Soviet were months away from doing it, and there were already starting to not trust each other that much in 1945. If Japan didn't surrender to McArthur, it would have become a Soviet puppet, which would have drastically decreased the ability of the US to influence the Pacific.
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Jun 20, 2010 09:42
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Puukko naamassa posted:You mean like why the samurai didn't use them back in feudal Japan? That just doesn't completely add up, since other warfare traditions that are similar did use shields, and plenty of them. Relying on horse archery didn't stop the Mongols from bringing shields, relying on big masses of spearmen and pikemen didn't stop pretty much anyone prior to the Renaissance from bringing shields, and I can think of very few sword armed forces in history that didn't wield sword. It would instead make perfect sense for the Japanese, at least prior to the 16th century, to at least have something like a buckler. I don't buy the argument that infighting without foreign enemies prevented them from using shields. The Japanese picked up the arquebus because it was drat effective, and they were not adverse to develop more efficient methods of fighthing. That's why they changed how they drafted soldiers to develop bigger and more efficient armies based on mass infantry just as the same development happened in Europe. That's why they gradually developed new armours, experimented with lenghts of swords and spears, and developed new tactics. They were not stupid, and the whole "oh, maybe because their fighting was incestuous and they just couldn't figure out things or were to ritual about it" just doesn't make sense compared to the rest of the military development of feudal Japan. It's not like Emperor Jimmu said "oh, and those shields that everyone's raving about, just forget it, we're too insular for them, We'll do without fine, thank you". Many of the replies I've found is things like "oh well, look at these 16th century pikemen! They didn't have shields either!" or "look at these Late Medieval Knights! No shields!", "samurai were expert archers and armed with two handed swords, of course they would not have shields!", but that doesn't explain why it wasn't a good idea in 13th century Japan to hand out wooden shields to your spear armed ashigaru. I'm not talking just the samurai, but the veritable banishment of the hand-held shield from Japan for more than a millenia, something I can't find any other example of. Maybe barring Australia, the Amazon, and certain parts of central Africa, regions not known for their massed army warfare traditions. lilljonas fucked around with this message at 12:33 on Jun 28, 2010 |
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Jun 28, 2010 12:24
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HeroOfTheRevolution posted:
Japanese horses were really small, I agree on that. It definitely had an effect on the role of shock cavalry charges in Japanese warfare. But that doesn't explain why the infantry would not carry shields. Warfare was never completely mounted. If you look at mid-16th century before gunpowder made an entrance, you would look at something like 10-20% mounted troops, depending on region. So would those other 80-90% of the battlefield be prevented from using shields because Japanese horses were really small? This also makes me doubt the other big point brought up in other discussions I've read on the topic, that Japanese armour was so superior that they did not need to rely on shields, much like late medieval knights abandoned shields once platemail was good enough. Thing is, the lower ranked infantry never had much more than helmet and armour for the torso and upper thighs, maybe some metal sheets covering the arms and legs during later periods. For the lighter infantry it would make complete sense to use some kind of shield wall/hoplite formation with shields to better protect themselves. After all, Koreans used shields for exactly that purpose just a stone throw away. I don't get it. quote:Another postulation. I may be mistaken, but isn't most of our knowledge of Japan from after the advent of firearms? The Nobunaga era Japanese used firearms more extensively (and more effectively!) than their contemporaries in Europe; Nobunaga's peasantry were firing in cascading lines in the Maurician practice decades before Maurice of Nassau introduced this in Europe. Is it possible shields could have been used before this, then disregarded when firearms became ubiquitous on the battlefield? No, we have tons and tons of descriptions of pre-firearms Japan, both in contemporary scrolls and wallpapers and lots of written accounts from the period. For one thing, accounts of the battles were of great importance to back claims of defeated foes, boasts of personal successes of various generals present etc. This means that we have actually really good accounts for Japanese battles from an early age compared to many other places in the world. We do have archaelogical finds of clay figures with shields, from the Kofun period before the rise of the samurai class. You have both infantrymen and cavalrymen depicted with shields. But by 6th century these drop off and it's pretty much all shield-less from there. Puukko naamassa posted:I swear I read an excellent article on the subject somewhere on the net (possibly samurai archives forums) way back when, but now I can't for the life of me find it anywhere, nor can I remember all the points it made. I don't see how any lack of resources could be that important, as other cultures have used everything from reeds to cured hides to make shields. Isolation is the same, it didn't prevent people in Hawaii to use shields. Mobility over protection is not unheard of, but that's not an argument against things like bucklers or using shields for your troops that are meant to just stand there and hold up your enemy, like light infantry. I might sound nit-picking here, but I'm just very interested in this puzzle. Maybe it is just so simple that enough of these things were enough for the Japanese to abandon shields, but it just doesn't sound so convincing to me.  Shield from Kofun era Japan. Notice how much it looks like the type of shield that would remain popular in Korea into the 17th century. It's not strange that they are similar as much of Kofun culture came to Japan from Korea, but obviously it remained useful in Korea for a long time after it was dropped in Japan.  A Kofun era warrior, just because they look kickin' rad. They do not wear the distinctive shoulder guards yet, which would evolve to be good protection from arrows for the mounted archer samurai. But I still wouldn't mind having a shield between me and a charging enemy if I were on foot. lilljonas fucked around with this message at 17:12 on Jun 28, 2010 |
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Jun 28, 2010 16:52
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l33t Lurker posted:It might help to examine things like the length of their spears. The vast majority of their soldiers would have been using spears/pikes, swords probably only would've been really common among samurai/officers/nobles etc. From my understanding the only reason phalangists and such were able to use spear and shield like they did was because of their formation. There's no way they would have been able to use something that length one handed, without resting it on the rank in front/being covered by your neighbour's shield. I don't think the Japanese ever developed phalanxes. No, most spear armed infantry have used shields, not just phalanxes. That's why I'm so amazed by this. The Japanese started to experiment with longer spears, reaching lenghts comparative to Western pikes, but not until the latter half of the 16th century. Most Spears were about the length of the soldier, about 1.6 meters (they were really short back then). Later on, they would use pikes as long as 5.6 meters. It does make sense not to carry shields when you hold a 5.6 pike: after all, Renaissance pikemen had abandoned the shields by then. But it's not impossible: the Macedonian sarissa was even longer, and they used shields while wielding them. But regardless, wielding a 1.6m spear and a shield at the same time is far from unusual, and was done by everyone from Celts to Vikings to Romans to Zulus to Chinese. It is not something unique to the phalanx. And ironically enough, the Japanese foot infantry were often used in dense formations where using phalangite tactics would have worked. Again, the point of long spears is a good argument for them not to use spears in late 16th century, when others didn't use them either, but not why they didn't use them in the 12th century. And peasants did get "little sticks", sometimes even just bamboo poles, so it would make plenty of sense to make them just that more resilent by giving them some simple shields as well. Shields are relatively cheap and easy to mass produce compared to armour as well as improvise, which is one of the reason why everyone use them. And again, explaining why the elite samurai didn't use them doesn't explain why everyone else, sometimes making up the entire army in the field, didn't. quote:All just conjecture, but something along those lines would at least make sense. I don't really know anything about Korean history, but if they were more centralized and didn't have the same kind of constant infighting as feudal Japan, that might explain the divergence. If you have a smaller, more professional army it's possible (and becomes worthwhile) to protect and to train them in more complicated manoeuvers like a phalanx. If you're raising a horde of peasants ever other spring, it makes more sense to just stick them in a line with the biggest pointy thing you've got. Japanese warfare turned did turn into a semi-professional standing army model in the latter half of the 16th century, when the increasing size of armies started to really gently caress up the harvests if you just drafted peasant levies every time you went campaigning. But drafted peasant levies with shields were not unusual in many other areas, China to mention one very close example. lilljonas fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Jun 28, 2010 |
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Jun 28, 2010 18:20
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Gully Foyle posted:The Crimean War was also fairly notable for its use of trenches and artillery barrages, plus the extensive uses of railroads and telegraphs. The Crimean War has always been interesting to me because of the mixture of Napoleonic and Great War era warfare. Is it just plain etnocentrism on my side that's the reason why I don't feel as interested in the Balkan wars, or is that just a general thing most feel?
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Jun 29, 2010 19:04
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combat engineer posted:I'm a bit of a nerd when it comes to Swedish military history, especially during the Cold War. If anyone would be interested I can answer any questions you might have about the nuclear weapons programme, the sub hunts and S-363 or the treatment of Baltic refugees for example. And thanks to everyone for an interesting thread. The March Across the Belts: best "oh snap!" moment in history, or best "oh snap!" moment in history? 
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Jul 2, 2010 22:48
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billion dollar bitch posted:Have the swedes even fought any wars ever? Few countries have fought Russia as many times as we have (9 times). Add wars with Poland, various versions of proto-Germany, many many fights against Denmark, our participation in the Napoleonic Wars and sort of dominating the 30 Years War for a while. We've fought 29 wars, though several of those were against multiple opponents. How does fighting Russia, Prussia, Denmark, Poland-Lithuania, and Sachsen at the same time sound to you? Ok, so we lost, but only after beating each one in turn and having our king killed in Norway at the end, possibly shot by his own troops. However, we were also one of the nations to stop warring the earliest, with Switzerland being the only other country I can think of that beats us. The Napoleonic Wars was our last actual war. We marched on Norway in 1814 after the end of the Napoleonic Wars, but that led to scaring the Norwegians into a union after just a few hundred casualties.
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Jul 6, 2010 18:48
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billion dollar bitch posted:And then they stopped... why? One reason is that we finally lost Finland and our holdings on the other side of the Baltic, which had been the main reason for the various wars against Russia and Poland/Poland-Lithuania. Swedens time as a Great Power were at an end, so we had little chance to try to retake those holdings, and our last attempt had failed miserably. Our second favourite sparring partner Denmark had lost all their holdings on the other side of Öresund, while Sweden had lost their possessions in Germany. Sweden was also rewarded for siding with the 6th Coalition against a French-backing Denmark, and got to keep the usually Danish oriented Norway in a union. Water now completely separated Denmark and Sweden, so it was more difficult than ever to make anything of our ancient feud. With border disputes with Denmark and Russia being the most common cause for Swedish wars, it was quite natural that the fighting would ebb out a bit. Then we got lucky in the 19th century in that we had plenty of mostly uninhabited frigid cold space filled with forests and ore. So when we got started industrializing we had all we needed on our own turf, and didn't need to attack other people to get it. Add a mostly ethnically and religiously homogenous Nordic population that is amazingly uninterested in civil wars, and you have one of the most boring military histories of the 19th and 20th century. Sweden rode through WW1 by proclaiming neutrality, which worked quite well for many neutral countries in that war. WW2 was tougher as our neighbours were occupied despite claiming neutrality. We managed to get through the war by helping each side enough to be useful to them, and being just too big for any side to waste the manpower in occupying and policing us. Shimrra Jamaane posted:What is the long story with Switzerland's everlasting neutrality in conflicts? A relatively small and very defensive position that is strong enough that you'd have to pour insane amounts of resources into invading and controlling it, and small enough that you can mostly just bypass it no matter where you actually want to go. Many major players in the Medieval and Renaissance eras depended on the highly skilled Swiss mercenaries so they had little interest in pissing the Swiss off, and an active interest in preventing other countries to conquer their source of mercs. In WW2 they made enough concessions to the Germans to put off an invasion, even if such plans were made. You can make a forced comparison with their previous role as mercenaries, as they now provided unique services to both sides; acting as the worlds most powerful banker, a hideout for refugees and a gateway for both spies and diplomats. Also they had a hell of a lot of fiercely nationalistic militias hiding in the Alps, and that is just something you don't want to deal with if you can avoid it. lilljonas fucked around with this message at 21:30 on Jul 6, 2010 |
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Jul 6, 2010 21:08
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Freeze posted:As far as I understand it, when they declared their neutrality in the early 1800s the other European countries basically agreed to respect it. As lilljonas said, it's a small country and it was generally just not worth it to invade. On top of ball bearings the Nazi as they could get huge loans from them when the rest of the world was blocked for trade, and also stash their ill-gotten loot there. There's plenty of reasons not to invade your private banker. But the stereotype of Swiss as peaceful is a historical anomaly. They were just scary enough to do almost all their fighting outside their own lands, for other armies, for huge sums of cash.
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Jul 6, 2010 21:51
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Hannibal was great, and there's very few who managed to campaign for such a long time in enemy territory, where every defeat would be a catastrophy. He pulled off some insane logistics and Cannae, Trasimene and Trebia were amazing battles from Hannibals side. However, he never beat Rome and he really hosed up at Zama, so he has that speaking against him. But lets just say that few people have managed what he did with the resources he had at hand. Scipio Africanus managed to figure out just exactly what Rome had to do to win the war (attack Spain and Carthage on home turf and force Hannibal to quit his shenanigans), and once he was on a battlefield against Hannibal he whipped him. So that's points to Scipio. In the end I think it is the question of whether to compare them at their careers zenith or not. I do think that Hannibal at around 217 BC would have beaten Scipio anno 202. You can say "oh, Hannibal lost in the end, and he didn't know how to capitalize on a victory", but the same can be said about Scipio "ungrateful fatherland, you will not even have my bones" Africanus as well. Scipio beat Hannibal when Rome was on top already, so I don't think Zama is a completely fair comparison of their entire careers. In the end it's not such an important question as they both were two extremely competent commanders, and putting one or another ahead of the other doesn't make their legacy smaller in any way. I much more prefer the game of "which Roman dick made such a fool of himself that it is amazing Rome lasted as long as it did", and in that game Marcus Licinius Crassus (Carrhae) is my favourite, even if Publius Quinctilius Varus (Teutoburg Forest) is hard to beat in pure numbers.
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Jul 10, 2010 22:08
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Chexoid posted:My brother is a big Roman history fan, and he's always told me that Germanicus was an awesome guy, but he never really elaborated. Can anyone provide some detail on him? (specifically if he did anything of note). Basically I want to find out if my brother knows what he's talking about, or if he's just picking a guy at random to make himself seem smart. Well, he took command over the Roman forces responsible to keep Germania in check after the disaster in Teutoburg, and turned the situation around from maybe the biggest humiliation the legions had experienced ever into a trashing of the German alliance. Once done he went to Asia and got Rome some new provinces, which is pretty cool too. He was one of the good Julio-Claudians. The dynasty started with Julius Caesar and followed up with Augustus, who were really good at getting things done. It was then followed by Tiberius, who was a complete dick. The next in line was Caligula (you might see where I'm going), and by then the people were stoked that they could get a "proper" Julio-Claudian, as Caligula was the son of Germanicus, a wildly popular and efficient general unlike Tiberius. But then the Caligula was Caligula, so even more poo poo was heaped at the dynasty's name. Then came Claudius who was pretty ok but unpopular. Finally you got Nero at the tail of the Julio-Claudians, and we all know how that turned out. So you see, with Tiberius, Caligula and Nero at the end of the dynasty and guys like Julius Caesar, Germanicus and Augustus at the start, it's not difficult to see what makes the earlier guys look so much better than the later guys. Anyway, check out the History of Rome podcast if you are curious about the topic, it's one of the best history podcast I've found this far. Just Another Lurker posted:Saw a program about that a few years back, went into how it might have happened and followed one local man who had caucasian features as he got genetically tested for any link... he was a bit depressed when he came up as having desent from Iranian/Iraqi origins (given the Silk Road it seem more possible than transplanted Romans). Considering the geographical location it's not hard to see that it is more likely that it's a relic of the multitude of Central Asian steppe tribes, sometimes caucasians, who went back and forth all over the continent for millennia, or with the Persian traders, rather than a few hundred Roman survivors arriving 2000 years earlier. But it is a good story. lilljonas fucked around with this message at 09:34 on Jul 11, 2010 |
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Jul 11, 2010 09:30
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WW2 is really not my strong suit, but is it correct to assume that the mere threat of AA guns forced the bombers to a higher altitude and do night time bombing, thereby decreasing accuracy and effectiveness?
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Jul 12, 2010 14:10
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Cyberbob posted:If anyone is still answering questions: I'd say the Sea Peoples would have been interesting to know more about than we do. Also pretty high up there are a more nuanced understanding of the Carthaginian culture, as Rome really did a number on their representation in history.
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Jul 13, 2010 12:40
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Chade Johnson posted:They destroyed the Assassins impregnable fortress, although that was 50+ years after the timeframe we are talking about, to be fair. Yes, they were quite good at conquering cities both in China and the Middle East. I think the defining issue in pushing into Central and Western Europe would be whether they would be successful at making puppet regimes from where to draw local troops, troops with expertise in how to fight in the local area. They did really well at this in China and Korea, and if they had managed to recuit enough European infantry as to not be tied down by the logistics of armies made up by horses, they would probably make at least a bit more progress. But again, it's not completely a fluke that the Mongol progress into Europe stops around the area where the Hungarian plains marks the border between teh big steppes of Eastern Europe and the deep woods of Central Europe.
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Jul 15, 2010 07:37
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Tab8715 posted:What did Germany do right technically when it came to World War II? The Stukas were good at dive bombing enemies, and caused great havoc in the East until they could not be supported by proper air superiority fighters. And German tanks had plenty of success against US and UK forces. Soviet having better and most importantly more tanks doesn't mean that German tanks were lovely. lilljonas fucked around with this message at 12:49 on Jul 18, 2010 |
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Jul 18, 2010 12:43
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Tab8715 posted:Yea, but is it possible for a country Germany or the size of to invade both Europe and the Soviet Union? It seems that it's impossible. Russia completely caved in to internal struggles in WW1, and was knocked out while Germany was putting most of their resources into fighting in the west. In WW2, Soviet was riddled with internal strife, political purges and other nasty after-effects of a huge revolution. At the same time, Germany was posed to attack with one of the largest armies ever seen, as the western front was mostly under control. Looking back at it from 2010 it's easy to say that it was never enough, but given what they knew at the time, it was far from unthinkable that the Soviet Union would fold just as easily as Russia had in WW1.
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Jul 19, 2010 05:05
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GhostStalker posted:Fair enough. I think I was mixing up my terms and some of my history (3 hours of sleep will do that to you). I guess I meant authoritarian when I said totalitarian. My professor basically said the same thing of Phillip, he was a barely tolerated semi-barbarian in Greek eyes that eventually came to dominate the region after coming to power through much scheming and application of military power. I guess if he hadn't been assassinated, we would be calling him Philip the Great and Alexander would be much more of a footnote, unless he struck out on his own after his father's eventual death. Then we would have maybe had a father-son pair of Macedonians with the epithet of "the Great". The whole discussion is pretty weird, as dismissing people from military history because they weren't nice people would make for very thin history books. Sure, Alexander was a hedonistic dude who likely might have believed he were divine. But take a recent personality like Winston Churchill: also a drunk and often quite unfriendly person, responsible for some blatant blunders that led to the massacre of thousands of soldiers at Gallipoli. None the less he is regarded as an important driving force behind the stiff British resistance during WW2. Should we just vilify him for his bad sides, or do the intellectual stunt of being able to keep both his good and bad sides and accomplishes in our heads at once? Isn't that what what makes for the most interesting historical characters? Those people with both grandeur and faults? Complete goody-good shoes are usually very boring to read about, just like the white-washed school book versions of historical persons. Doesn't a person like Thomas Jefferson become more interesting when you know about his alleged slave children? Why is there a hundred time as many books written about Hitler as about Franklin D Roosevelt? Frankly, I can find few "the Greats" throughout history who haven't been assholes in one way or another.
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Jul 20, 2010 15:38
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TyChan posted:Well, for many scholars, it's easier to write about a man with a relatively short life who instigated the most sprawling military conflict in world history as opposed to a man who impacted politics on a state, national, and international level for decades and who requires extensive research just to accurately portray his time as governor of New York, let alone his 12 years in the Oval Office. To be honest, I think it has more to do with books about Hitler selling in the millions all over the world every year, not the amount of ground work required from the writer. But that's my thought on the issue. The number of people interested in reading about someone like Roosevelt are just dwarfed by the number of people interested in reading about someone like Hitler. My point is that I don't see the reason to whine about a prominent historical person being as prominent as they are just because they did bad things or had big personality flaws. On the contrary, it is usually those very things that makes us want to study them. lilljonas fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Jul 20, 2010 |
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Jul 20, 2010 17:30
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MrDutch posted:What effect had ww2 on demographics, escpecially for Germany and the USSR. They lost millions of men. And I know they lost millions of civilians also, but with alot of men dead from the war. Did this cause a serious shortage of men for women? There's quite a lot written about the importance of WW2 for the Women's Movement. First it lead to women across the world moving into jobs that would normally be closed off for them, with said women being not so happy about just abandoning their newfound positions of authority as well as economical and social freedom to go back to being housewifes after the war ended. Secondly, the decrease in able bodied men afterwards lead to more openings for the women who wanted to stay in the work force after the war compared to previous decades.
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Aug 2, 2010 18:59
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Kingsbury posted:Couldn't you also say that about WW1? I'm no expert, but I'm not sure. One big reason might be that the most widely studied example is the US and the American Women's Movement, and the very short American action in that war meant less of a long term stress on the industry to get new workers, any workers. In addition, WW1 was followed by the Great Depression where job opportunities completely bottomed out, compared to WW2 which was followed by a surge in industry output all over the world with lots of job opportunities.
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Aug 2, 2010 19:58
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Surprisingly, one of my strongest TV or cinema memory of WW1 was from the episodes of Young Indiana Jones (I know...) regarding the period. While I was just a kid and can't vouch for how well they would stand up to scrutiny today, I remember them as very dark and visceral compared to the ordinary feel of that show. Even trench warfare with flame-throwers, head-on charges on machine gun nests etc.
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Aug 3, 2010 22:39
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Nova Bizzare posted:Does anyone know how the Danish/Norwegian military forces changed as the Viking's time ended and they went into the high middle ages? Generally, the Scandinavian countries were a bit behind the times when it came to equipment such as armour, but eventually the formation of more centralized countries after the Viking age meant that the armies took on a shape that was similar to othern northern European feudal monarchies. Scandinavia was at that time even more rugged than now, with almost impenetrable deep forests in Sweden and tall mountains everywhere in Norway. Combined with the well developed sailing skills of the population meant that navies were very important for getting armies around. Well equipped infantry played a larger role than in southern Europe for the ease of transporting them and because Scandinavian terrain rarely favoured cavalry. Overall, farmers have generally held more power and more wealth in Scandinavia than in southern Europe, and so the difference in the skill, constitution and equipment between nobles and peasants were not quite as big. Nobles would still fight as knights, but the ratio of cavalry to infantry was smaller. Also they used a lot of crossbows. Some viking equipment such as the big round shields would survive on the battlefields well into the high medieval period. Lamellar armour took over after the chainmail that the Vikings loved so much.
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Aug 7, 2010 10:09
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Mail was never replaced by lamellar. The lamellar was used to augment the mail, and very rarely to augment textile armour. However, mail remained by far the most prevalent form of metal armour through the high middle ages, and deservedly so. I also think you overestimate the skill of Scandinavian farmers at war. I doubt very much they were better trained than their Central European counterparts since neither group was heavily used as professional soldiers. Other than that I agree with your assessment. Thanks for the correction. My mention of the farmers fighting ability is mostly based on the tradition of relatively independent farmers who are not subjected to as heavy a taxation and feudal pressure as say, those in Spain or France, meaning that they could afford to arm and feed themselves better. As I mostly read about Asian history, the ability of town militias and farmers to form capable fighting units are quite different than the asian counterparts. The success of independent Viking raiders/farmers and the aggressive colonization for farming are also quite different from what I've read about more southern farming populations. So if I had a bunch of Norwegian farmers and a bunch of Spanish farmers from 12th century squaring off, I'd put my money on the Norwegians. One really big issue here is just how difficult it was to get around in most of Scandinavia. The terrain meant that a centralized feudal state took centuries longer to develop than in southern Europe, leaving farmers in a relatively strong position. Serfdom was not so common, and completely outlawed in Sweden in 1335, and we also don't get a real taxation system until the 13th century when the leidung system is removed. So generally, farmers in Scandinavia were better off than farmers in many other countries at the time. But yes, much of Sweden's medieval period was a series of ongoing feuds between families or between brothers (and the occational woman) within the royal families, combined with the slow project of centralizing the state. The ambitious travels of Vikings was replaced with dynastic intrigue, civil war, uprisings and assassinations. It's not really until the Renaissance that Sweden starts to get its poo poo together and project power again. Denmark was far from the only one being busy duking it out with pagans, as Sweden started to expand into Finland during this time, crusading several times in that area. After the Treaty of Nöteborg, most of Finland was a Swedish territory. Granted, this is nowhere near as impressive as when Vikings settled the Danelaw, Dublin, Normandy, Kiev, Greenland etc. lilljonas fucked around with this message at 21:09 on Aug 7, 2010 |
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Aug 7, 2010 21:07
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Chade Johnson posted:Awesome answers guys. It's great to learn about something not WWII related, and I was wondering how the Danes were able to be power players for several centuries, post Viking age. Denmark might be a small country, but it is good for farming and in a very nice position for trade. All maritime trade from the Baltic region and northern Germany to Western Europe had to pass through the narrow Řresund. Don't forget that it wasn't until 1658 that control of the sound was really contested by Sweden, as they took the eastern shores. The taxes levied from trade made up the majority of the Danish royal coffers from the 13th century into modern times, and did a lot to protect Denmark from their larger neighbours.
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Aug 7, 2010 22:27
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