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DarkCrawler posted:So how did Rome get that disciplined anyway/how come by the tenth time or something when they kicked an entire nation's rear end completely nobody started emulating them? Basically, no state was developed enough to counter them, the ones that did relied on the power of their nobility,mercenaries and levies due to a variety of reasons. Cataphract Paladin posted:
The Saharan desert, filled with sand and annoying nomads was something that the Romans didn't have much desire on, the Irish and Scottish rugged lands provided nothing to them of worth, Germania was hell, Dacia was hard as nails to hold on to and after that there was nothing of interest to such a massive empire, the Arabian peninsula had an extremely rich south, but they couldn't reach it (the Bizantines ,with the help of christianized Ethiopa actually managed to expand AND evangelize the land, but never actually took it directly.) and the rich and fascinating middle east was also filled with rich and fascinating Persians who where very keen of staying independent With no more land to conquer, the roman military had to suffer changes, mainly they made a considerable fortification effort in all their borders, and their army had to accept that role. In economic terms there was also a big urgency to change the Roman way. The Legions sucked about 60 to 80% of the entirety of the Roman income. Turning their Legions into two separate forces, border units and mobile units, saved a lot of precious Roman money, money that was constantly bleeding from the state. These units where well trained nonetheless, they might not have the elan and mystique of the classical Legion, but these hardass motherfuckers had the job of spotting roving Germanic armies and where encharged with delaying them until the mobile forces arrived to wipe them out. Sure, they could mostly do that by standing on their fortifications and flashing their dicks at the boys, but that wasn't going to work all the time. Not to go into a political debate, but it would be like the modern American army. Would they really need so much money? By turning into a defensive stance, they would save a lot of money (i know it's no this simple and modern weapon research is a lot diferent than finding a new point sword and that modern corporations get a lot of money out of this budget, but shut up about it!) and still maintain a good disciplined army (it's not like the romans got buff by working out in golden palaces). The auxiliares came from the fact that the Romans, especially the western side, who found their manpower simply unable to deal with so many different foes. This allowed a lot of foreign tribes, who where dealt with the sword, to be placed inside the empire borders, these Foederatti, federates, would live on Roman land in exchange for military service. This is actually how the Saxons and the Angles entered Britain. The Romans abandoned the isle to it's luck, so they had to rely on these tribes for protection from the pics, celts and pirates. These tribes began to realize they held the knife and the butter and as such started a massive migration movement into the isles. Flippycunt posted:
Wow, that was a quite a post! If anyone spots anything wrong in my post please feel free to say so! I love this thread 
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Nov 1, 2011 22:13
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Plus, the major players of the Germanic tribes payed a lot of respect to Imperial authority, sometimes seeming like nothing but a formality but other times looking like fetishism over serving the Roman Empire. Odoacer himself imagined himself as a servant of the state. Roman history is fascinating and if it's story was directly plagiarized to make some sort of comic book or romance people would constantly criticize the author for making no sense.
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Nov 2, 2011 02:07
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It's also worth noting that the Roman army was a picky one. Without their wine or nice food they'd start protesting and their morale would sink. Scipio Africanus ordered the decimation of his legions in a brutal fashion because they soldiers wouldn't shut up about eating lamb. It's also noting that you can't simply say that the Roman Legions where the best army in the world. They where the best because they had an entire state behind them. Other states and tribes simply couldn't create such a force. Still, when faced with smart foes, the Legions suffered severe losses. The Legion was useless against ranged and skirmishing armies. The Visigoths themselves where obliterated not by the great Omidian generals but by "simple" Berber armies who harassed the splendidly heavy and powerfull Visigoth infantry with ease. These where the people that beat the crap out of both western and eastern legions and assorted Germanic tribes. Basically, the Roman Legion suffered a lot when it came to "gangster" tactics. quote:Similarly, you can have a poorly-trained, ill-equipped army that fought for free that can win battles, kick asses and take names with a good leader who knows what he was doing, sky-high morale owing to a proper purpose and cause, steeled elans and esprit de corps and a willingness to take on the world if need be Attila 
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Nov 2, 2011 14:39
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Cataphract Paladin posted:
While your right about the equipment, you need to remember the composition of Atiila's army, comprised of every single tribe and people that where caught by Hunnic expansion. Iranians, Sarmatians, Slavs, Goths, Alans, Germans and wathever else where all united under a single person and led torwards the Atlantic in search of riches. As soon as Attila died this conglomerate of people split appart and the Huns where progressively pushed away from Europe. And they WHERE somewhat poorly equipped. Good horses and bows didn't create their sucess, it was the leadership and extreme horsemanship skill of the Huns that allowed them to be feared as demons by their contemporary foes. Cataphract Paladin posted:I just thought of this - could the final defeats of the Roman army in the field be attributable at least in part to the failure to adapt to their new enemies? Either their armies stopped assuming new ideas, or the lack of funding and all around social collapse prevented them from adapting new ideas even if they have found them to be useful in theory? Rome would fall a lot earlier if there had been an actual strong state neighboring the western side of the empire. When faced by people who, at best, wished to loot the border provinces of the land you can dedicate a lot more time to internal quarrels :P
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Nov 2, 2011 15:50
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It depends. The Persians kept killing themselves even as Alexander crossed Asia Minor. Facing their biggest opponent ever didn't stop the Carthaginians from squabbling and refusing to help Hamilcar. The Gauls hosed themselves over so bad they had to call in German and Latin help, which turned out great for them in the end. Hell, even when the Franks, Burgundians, Vandals, Visigoths and Allamani where cruising through the western empire generals and emperors (some of which where quite talented) where getting murdered.
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Nov 2, 2011 21:10
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People should also realize that the fall of the western roman empire wasn't a catastrophe. There where no Dark Ages, no barbarian slaughter, no destruction of the arts. It's really important to clarify that what happened was the natural process of a decaying structure, with the people who took over adopting most of the stable and organized structure of Roman economic life and adapting it to modern, decentralized lives.
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Nov 3, 2011 18:17
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I'm sorry, English isn't my first language and the were\where is my biggest flaw, i have no problems with "then" and "than" and stuff like that, but when i'm typing huge texts i screw up the "where" thing, i apologize.quote:I think the truth is somewhere in between. All things are a 'natural' process in one way or another, but in a lot of places many things were 'adopted,' many others were simply replaced. No one built new roads or aqueducts, and the system of trade within the Empire flat collapsed. The transition to the feudal manorial system is fascinating, but even though Duke comes from Dux but Dux just means 'leader.' It's not an adaptation of Roman structure, that's a boldfaced admission that hey, I'm a warlord. Will trade military service for land. The local churches made the transition from empire to kingdoms a somewhat stable thing. Through fund-raisings and demanding local taxes they managed to maintain a lot of the local structures that sustained urban and city life. Aqueducts and massive trade and road systems would obviously have to wait until a later, more organized period, but the fall of the Imperial system didn't cause a massive decrease in local quality life (most people were (:P) already living in a quite miserable state) or a "dark age" like so many people seem to believe. Sure, no major scientific advances were being made in Europe and compared to the Muslim world Christianized Europe looked somewhat backwards and primitive, but considering that western Europe was taken over by nomadic, foreign tribes that where not used to urban life, the transition was better than what could be expected.
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Nov 3, 2011 21:10
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People realize that any decent Roman knew both Latin and Greek right? That every single person of worthy in both the western and eastern part of the empire could speak Greek like most Europeans speak English? The only thing that might've felled were cities, Rome fell, Constantinople fell, Paris and Berlin fell. It's absolutely retarded that an Empire fell when the "falling" process took generations to complete, and the eastern part was as roman as the western, if not more. The luxurious trade from the orient came to the eastern merchant towns. Religion, philosophy, education, everything came from the east. To say that the state that supplied it's western counterpart with most of it's resources is not Rome is simply a falacy of the greatest kind. Are the Omayyad and Abbasid Empires not Islamic empires simply because of geographic shifts?
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Nov 4, 2011 19:29
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quote:Fallen, or been felled possibly. Certainly, the sack of Rome as a city is a big deal in and of itself. Rome didn't mean much in economic or administrative terms even in the Italian specter of things. Ravenna and Milan where much more important centers in Italy and this is just from the top of my head. And what sack? That city was sacked various times. Rome had it's value and whenever it was sacked it was a tragedy, but none of it's multiple sacks meant it doomed the empire. quote:How? Define 'Roman'ness. I'd define it around, I dunno, Rome. The language was different, the religion was different, the culture was different. Then by that logic the edict of Thessalonica killed Rome. It removed Roman religion in favor of Christianity, turning the later parts of the empire incomparable to the previous empire. The transfer of the capital to any of the various cities in Italy also killed the Roman Empire because Rome was no longer the center of the state. Do you consider the Monarchy period of Roman history to be part of Roman history? They where Etruscan in culture, they used hoplites, they even had kings! What does that era have to do with the Republic? Nothing! And what does the republic,with it's senate and consuls, completely in love with the Hellenistic world, with it's military reforms and massive land expansions and with it's new enemies have to do with the monarchy period? Nothing. Time changes people, it would be obvious that a state changes itself as time passes by too, especially the almost two thousand year old entity that was the Roman empire. quote:Setting aside the weird nationalistic vibes I'm getting, I agree. So it wasn't Roman, religion, philosophy, education, everything was different. Roman history and philosophy of life changed. 4th century B.C. Romans would be baffled with the way 1st century B.C. life was. Rome changed when it entered into contact with the east, like the Greeks did when the Persian gates opened themselves due to Alexander. quote:And I'd say that Rome supplied the Roman Empire with a certain Romaness and that I agree with you, the unified Empire as it was under Augustus was a fundamentally different beast than the structure the rose in Constantinople.[quote]  But that was a different situation, the Abbasids, even if they where extremely reduced in their political sphere, ended with the fall of Bagdad. There was no equivalent term in Roman history expect the fall of Constantinople, which truly ended the Roman state. quote:Likewise the ERE was (loosely) Roman, but it was fundamentally not the same as THE ROMAN EMPIRE!!!11!!!1! Thus, using the term 'the Fall of Rome' is a perfectly legitimate way to discuss the general decline of the Empire, Diocletian's split, the mass migrations, the breakdown of centralized political power in the West, and the failure of the Emperor in Byzantium to return the lost west to the fold. The Roman Empire wasn't focused on Rome for quite a while, since the split the eastern part was clearly the strongest part, and they clearly led the Roman legacy until the 15th century.
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Nov 4, 2011 23:41
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We seem to agree on almost everything but a few nitpicks that are almost full blown 'spergims, i say we agree on the (quite various) things we agree on, and disagree (on the quite few) things we disagree on. The byzantine empire referred to themselves as Romas as did, for example, the muslims, but since we're not having an official argument or thesis we can calmly mention them as the byzes for clarification purposes.
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Nov 5, 2011 00:58
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I agree with you, i'm just trying to steer the conversation away from this because i know that while this discussion is interesting to us, it's almost certainly being skipped over by the majority of the readers of this thread.
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Nov 5, 2011 01:39
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You know, at least this cat-fight made me think of something. Just how did the European powers manage to hold on to their colonies in such a stable way? Most countries ended up losing their colonial land due to revolt, but we're talking about, for example, almost 500 years of colonial Portuguese, English and French states. It amazes me how Empires evolved from barely being able to hold on to territories a hundred kilometers away from them to being able to control over seas lands, very rich lands actually, without anyone saying "you know what? I'm going to take it all to myself." The Persians managed to hold on to their empire through bribes, descentralized organization and acceptance of their multicural holdings. The same could be said about the islamic empires, but the western powers were anything but this. If someone who knows more about this particular situation wants to drop a line or two or thirty I'd appreciate it.
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Nov 5, 2011 13:59
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I was hoping there was more to it than what i knew. There's really nothing positive about the colonial age isn't it?
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Nov 5, 2011 15:04
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Yeah, this isn't rally true. The end of the empire in the West was definitely a catastrophe. Widespread trade and literacy disappeared with the Roman state and didn't return for at least a couple of centuries. Bryan Ward-Perkins' The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization goes into this in detail and I find it hard to argue with his conclusions. Trade was collapsing before the division of the empire. You have two states, one with trade cities, a merchant and naval culture, direct conections to the eastern roads coming from Persia and the trade from Arabia as-well as Nubia. The other side on the other hand, was literally depending on the East to provide them with pretty much everything that wasn't food related. The West was an agricultural, slave dependent state. The internal disputes of the East was somewhat mitigated by the richness of the land, in the West this simply couldn't happen. This resulted in a massive breakdown of communications in the western half NOT because of "the big bad germans  " but because the central government was a mess. The lack of slaves also created a gaping hole in agricultural manpower. The resulting economic breakdown led to people leaving the cities to join the local villas, who where essentially vacation houses to the rich but now where starting to become important villages where food and a degree and protection could be guaranteed. The literacy drop comes from the fact that the new owners of the land where foreign, illiterate tribes. Literacy levels dropped massively, only being somewhat saved by the local churches, who realizing the power they could obtain, took drastic measures to keep literacy levels from going up. The churches did,however, become essential to the preservation of the wellfare of the populace, they where the place where the community would gather, they would be the ones to organize the repair of roads, bridges, walls and provide help in case of disaster. All of this would be caused whether big bad foreign would enter Imperial territory or not. The foreigns ironically probably saved a lot of people from the common Roman reprisals. DarkCrawler posted:And a pretty bloody war that maybe one in fifteen people know about...it's really one of the most interesting forgotten things about history, especially when it wasn't that long ago... It's weird when people show shock about these events, since they're not even memories to us, they consequences of those wars are still felt nowadays. The Portuguese Colonial War was a bloody massacre. Imagine Vietnam, except the Angolans, for example, had nothing more than assault rifles provided by the Soviets and the Cubans, facing off against the Imperial strength of Portugal, who wasn't that strong to be honest. Portugal had a somewhat poor amount of armored vehicles, who where quite useless on the jungles of Mozambique and Angola. Portugal also had no air force per se, with NATO blocking the few planes they had. This meant that the Colonial war was a war, that first, was completely fought by extremely forced conscripts that where sent into a foreign land to fight on foot and without support against local ambushes and attacks. Ambushes that where made by groups that where united without any kind of training, by people who fought with their hearts more than with tactics, who where complete puppets during and after the war due to American and Soviet influence. Almost 10 thousand portuguese soldiers and 50 thousand African people (people who wanted freedom and justifiably raised up in arms are not soldiers) died. While the national soldiers where not shamed when they came back like in Vietnam and where given help, the truth was that a lot of them fell down to drug use, because scarred and invalid for life and became MASSIVE racists (you wouldn't believe how so). On the other end, Guinea-bissau Angola and Mozambique fell into civil war. Guine bissau still suffers political based attacks against politicians, Angola fell into civil war that lasted until 2002, in fact, last year during the African Cup of Nations, a football (soccer) tournament involving African countries, the Togo bus was attacked by Cabinda independence militias, killing three people. Angola is an absolute misery of a state, people live without water, electricity, healthcare is pathetic and crime (especially corruption) is massive. Mozambique on the other end suffered civil war because of Rhodesian influence. Timor , a country that was peaceful during Portuguese occupation, was brutally invaded by Indonesia when their Independence from Portugal was signed. Basically, the Colonial war led to the end of the Portuguese dictatorship and to massive civil wars in the African colonies as-well as military ocupation on Timor. It's a sad story where nobody won, where things could've been dealt with much better, but due to Soviet and American influence on one side and Nationalist mentality on the other led to massive and unnecessary blood loss.
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Nov 6, 2011 15:02
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Amused to Death posted:So why did Portugal fight tooth and nail to keep control of its colonies for so long when by that time basically every other colonial power has gone "gently caress it, you guys are on your own"(which in itself often had some miserable effects), especially when there seems to have been little popular support for it.  Luanda was as Portuguese as Lisbon in Salazar's eyes. The idea was that by treating the natives as Portuguese people, these would embrace Portugal as their land. There were no Angolans, Cabo Verdians, nothing, only Portuguese. The truth was that this was nothing more than pretty words. The colonies were still exploited by white elites and the reason why Salazar fought so hard for them was because of it's natural resources (Angola has a modest amount of diamonds and oil.). It also helped the Portuguese mentality of being "gloriously alone". Portugal wasn't supported by the Americans and, if you know anything about Estado Novo, they certainly weren't helped by the Soviets. Of course, a tiny country like Portugal can't be proudly alone and individual without resources, so the colonies were vital to this ideology. Vincent Van Goatse posted:And you, apparently, are one of those people desperate to erase anything that the Romans accomplished because they don't fit your model of an ideal society. Witness your application of terms like "genocide" to a period of history in which pretty much all of the inhabitants would laugh in your face if you tried to explain to them the concept of genocide. Barbaric as it is, that was the established principle of warfare in those days. The invasions helped the Roman Empire to fall, and this is quite honestly something good. It was a dying state, it would most likely fall under it's own weight sooner or later. Why it's a tragedy that a collapsing empire fell when outside sources were smart enough to kick them while they where down is simply silly. That's like saying that Philip II of Macedon was a monster when he dominated the weakened Greek States in the south, or how horrible Alexander was for taking advantage of the Persian's weakened state. The Romans grew by smartly taking their chances and taking advantage of moments of weakness by their neighbors, to say that it's a tragedy when someone else did it to them doesn't make any sense. Mans fucked around with this message at 18:44 on Nov 6, 2011 |
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Nov 6, 2011 18:42
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Well, the Suebi and Saline Franks where very in touch with the Roman world before entering it, Alaric was educated in Constantinople and Theodoric was pretty much a satellite of the same city. The only major players who i assume had zero to no Roman contact where the Vandals and the Burgundians, who came from Scandinavia.
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Nov 6, 2011 19:23
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Weren't the last sail vessels also especially fast when compared to the early steam vessels?
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Nov 9, 2011 22:07
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http://www.alanhamby.com/tigerfibel.shtml This one is a classic, a manual to the crew of Tiger Tanks.
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Nov 14, 2011 22:49
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Ensign Expendable posted:
See, this is why they won the war. Russians are super-human.
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Nov 15, 2011 01:09
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They actually tried to standardize their tanks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entwicklung_series) late in the war. The thing about Nazi Germany is that they never thought about losing the war, women were allowed to work in factories, most production was slave labored and worse than that was the fact that most vehicles were special little snow-flakes that required their own parts which made repairing hell. Combine the lack of spare parts with slave labored tanks and you can see how the Germans never could've won the production war. And while the Germans had massive fuel problems, most of them came from their heavy tanks sucking extreme amounts of fuel. A more liberal use of medium, less fuel demanding tanks would probably relieve the Germans of some fuel pressure. Not that it mattered much, after 1945 the Soviets would be vomiting ISs and t-54s while the Allies would be making GBS threads Pattons and Centurions. All the while their aerial power would keep rising while the Germans relied on 17 year old kids flying manned missiles.
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Nov 24, 2011 16:17
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Retarded Pimp posted:I've been checking out the IS-2 and it looks pretty impressive for the time, anyone know how it did in actual practice? They were what the Tiger was supposed to be. Heavy hitting, heavy armored, reliable and powerful. Not only that, but they were 20 tons lighter, were faster, had far more range (both cannon wise and engine wise.) and hell, look at it, it was pretty! It did have an unfortunate ammo system, i do not know why so i wikipedia'd it. After testing with both BS-3 and A-19 guns, the latter was selected as the main armament of the new tank, primarily because of its ready availability and the effect of its large high-explosive shell when attacking German fortifications. The A-19 used a separate shell and powder charge, resulting in a lower rate of fire and reduced ammunition capacity, both serious disadvantages in tank-to-tank engagements. This meant that the IS-2 fired at a whooping 2 rounds per minute and carried barely 30 rounds of ammunition. Still, it was quite the powerhouse, even if the T-34\85 was the main battle tank of the Soviet Union. Mans fucked around with this message at 21:47 on Nov 25, 2011 |
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Nov 25, 2011 21:21
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Farecoal posted:I'm a bit confused about the Spanish Civil War. Which side represented the government from before the war, the Republicans or Nationalists?
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Nov 26, 2011 04:59
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SeanBeansShako posted:You know how bad AI bots are some sub-par shooter games? They don't have the entirety of their country's resources (plus loans) backing them up nor are their leaders directly controlled by the army. And they're not "bad". That's a really weird adjective to call an army. They've been in Chechnya for years without a gaping hole in casualties and the South Ossetian conflict was dealt with swiftness. Saying that they're "bad" because of the Belsan and Moscow hostage crisis is silly, the west would be as hosed as them, how the christ do you deal with a theater with 50 suicide bombers and assault rifles?
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Nov 26, 2011 17:30
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Ghost of Mussolini posted:
Never apologize for making such an interesting post! I knew about the corruption in the Russian\Soviet army, but that was a fascinating read. It seems weird how many states still rely on conscription. You'd think the last centuries would show how poorly forced soldiers fare in battle in comparison to voluntary forces. On the other hand, a voluntary army would need higher wages so that people would consider the army as a decent job. That would probably cause a lot of economical problems for Russia i guess.
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Nov 26, 2011 18:24
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The example about Iraq and Syria is moot since the opposition had such superior firepower that their soldiers could be half Brandenburguers, half SAS, with SEAL toenails and Visigothic heavy infantry arms and still be obliterated.
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Nov 26, 2011 20:23
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I just don't see the point is losing one work or study year of my life to learn how to die in case of war. At least here in western europe were we don't really need a massive number of trained civilians ready for war.
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Nov 27, 2011 16:35
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Nenonen posted:Thread taken over by political discussion over XYZ. Exterminate. I really can't see how zeppelin attacks can be dangerous to any moving object. You could see those fat bastards from a mile away and simply walk away from their path. They were better off sending Germans in glides with a grenade belt.
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Nov 27, 2011 23:38
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I can't imagine the balls you'd have to dangle between your legs to stand in open ground completely straight while musket bullets wizzle by and cannon shots obliterate entire lines. Not to mention that while this act is horrific, it was followed by a bayonet charge were you had to stab your enemy right in the gut and see him die before you. No trenches, no shield, no cuirass, nothing could protect you but divine will. War in the 19th century must've been the most terrifying time in military history.
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Dec 12, 2011 23:22
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gohuskies posted:Would you consider this "destroyed"? I would. I don't know if this or others have been permanent write-offs but I think it's fair to call this destroyed. Aren't most of those pictures taken by tanks blown up by the Americans themselves? I've read somewhere that when a tank needs to be abandoned they'd blew it up so that parts of it couldn't be scavenged. Plus, you can totally buff that out 
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Dec 22, 2011 08:54
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Being able to turn crewmembers into squishy bits is a bit worse than scrapping a tank of all of it's components while the crew makes it out alive.
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Dec 24, 2011 09:42
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Konstantin posted:I have to say the title goes to the Ohka. It was a Japanese plane designed for kamikaze pilots. It may not qualify as a plane, as it attaches to a Betty for takeoff, then detaches when it is near the target and has rockets to propel it to its' destination. Of course, the bombers that carry it were sitting ducks for Allied forces, especially since the Ohka only had a 20 nautical mile range. The biggest ships they sunk were two destroyers, and 852 were produced. And they were so volatile that if a carrier had them on board when they were hit the whole ship would light up like a Christmas tree! It's amazing to see how one sided world war two has. It really was, the Axis did put on a respectable show but the sheer weight of the opposition would never be defeated. I mean you look at the Battle of Britain and it looks so tense and so dire, but even if the British suffered a terrible loss Operation Sealion would still be impossible. Same thing with the Japanese, Pearl Harbour and Midway, even if more sucessfull, would simply delay the inevitable.
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Dec 26, 2011 06:18
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Can i ask something about Wikipedia? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kursk#Casualties Just what the hell am i supposed to take out of the casualty results? The Germans attacked with less than half of the Soviet force and managed to obliterate a great portion of the Soviet army, even causing 130% casualties on Soviet tanks (5,128 were deployed and 1,614 – 1,956 lost on Citadel while 6,064 tanks were destroyed in Kursk)and like, 200% aircraft casualties. This in the battle were supposedly the Soviet deep battle system showed how effective it was. I tried looking at the discussion but i get tired of (at least mentally) 13 year olds jacking off about how great the Germans were. Can someone with a deeper knowledge about either Wikipedia or Kursk explain this to me?
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Dec 28, 2011 12:31
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A Dapper Walrus posted:Thanks for all of that. I was curious because of how history portrayed such fighters as 'dishonorable' or some other similar term. Portrayed? Iraqi insurgent and Talibans are still considered cowards and shameless for doing gangster tactics. Whenever a inferior force sees that their chances in open combat are null they will retreat to the hills, woods and mountains and use the knowledge of local terrain to inflict punishment by indirect means. The British hated it, the French hated it, the Germans hated it and the Americans hate it too. It has a lot to do with the smugness inherent to having a clear superior force in quality to the opposition but the enemy simply won't face you like gentlemen.
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Dec 28, 2011 21:45
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That guy is begging to lose a toe.
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Jan 9, 2012 22:59
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Rabhadh posted:If you look at maps of medieval battles they were mostly concentrated in the most fertile areas of countries in which they were fought. That argument is really wierd because medieval armies wouldn't be fighting outside of fertile areas because the wars usually had the objective of conquering land. Why would a medieval army want a barren wasteland? EDIT: Not your argument, Rabhadh,i meant the guy you quoted. Mans fucked around with this message at 18:34 on Jan 22, 2012 |
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Jan 22, 2012 18:23
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Bagheera posted:I would disagree, with qualifications. It's true that the Axis couldn't have conquered the entire Soviet Union. However, I think they could have held onto (that is, made puppet states of) Poland, France, the Low Countries, Czechoslovakia. Germany may have been sane enough to offer a negotiated settlement that left the major allies (US, UK, and USSR) intact. Those three major allies would have sacrificed their European brethren for the sake of peace. After the Anchluss and the Czechoslovakian debacle there would be zero concessions by the part of Great Britain. You're still ignoring the fact that Italy would sooner or later force their intentions to the rest of Europe. So we're talking about Churchill seeing Western and Central Europe's central governments being replaced by leaders with German accent while the Balkans and Greece are forced to eat Pizza. We're also assuming Turkey, a fairly conservative country, wouldn't befriend two superpowers right at their doors, allowing them direct access to the Middle East and the Baku fields.
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Jan 28, 2012 02:51
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I really doubt the 5th or 6th century Visigoth army would be defeated by a Roman Army. The same could be said for Carolingian armies and the like. We're clearly forgetting that the Legion fell against Germanic warbands and the East saw repeated losses against Arab armies that acted in a similiar fashion to the medieval West. We're also forgetting about the implications of a Roman Legion in it's prime in medieval europe. Did they just drop out of the sky? If so, they're hosed for reinforcments and weaponry replacements. Did they come from a state? If so, then that state is using a crippling portion of it's resources to mantain that Legion. That state is losing a massive ammount of manpower, the (still weak) agrarian production of the 10th and 11th century would collapse. It was collapsing by simply sustaining the ever increasing Medieval population, i shake to think what that state would have to go through to sustain a Legion. It's fine to speculate about a "roman legion in medieval europe", but we can't simply look at it like we were making a custom battle on Medieval Total War. Even if the Legion destroyed a French army the losses the Legion would cause to it's own country would make the battle useless. Plus, ignoring medieval armies' combat capability is a mistake. The Portuguese and the Spanish spent literally hundreds of years fighting the Moors, Burgundy had sent countless knights and nobles to every corner of the fighting world, the Normans were tough as balls, the Germanic states were impervious in the Classical era, now with a developed and modernized society they would be even more impervious, France had a gently caress off ammount of manpower and knight culture and the condottieres were used to fighting in Italy, specially in indirect warfare, something that would cripple the Romans. This is without even bothering to mention the Magyars, Bulgars, Cumans and Pechenegs that at least once managed to beat the Romans raw and reach the gates of Constantinople.
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Jan 28, 2012 17:16
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Jesus Christ. While the Germans lost soundly they always seemed to have *a bit* of concern about the state of their troops. Looking at the Japanese, from the airplanes to the ships to the tanks and to the infantry weapons you get the idea of an army that was nowhere near prepared to plan a defensive war, let alone conquer the Pacific.
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Feb 2, 2012 21:49
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Yeah, the Suebi and the Vandals wouldn't loot their way into the Iberian peninsula if they didn't have good reasons to do it.
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Feb 6, 2012 00:15
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| # ¿ Apr 19, 2024 05:48 |
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Oxford Comma posted:Was there ever a peasant-led revolution that succeeded? Or did they all wind up nailed to crosses on the road leading to Rome? The Gallic Empire was founded by a man of humble Batavian origins, so does that count?  feedmegin posted:Again though, slaves, not peasants. Slaves belong to people, peasants belong to the land. The difference between slaves, serfs, peasants and proletariat is so nonexistent that i don't think it really matters.
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Feb 7, 2012 22:49
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