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Mr Havafap posted:Nope they weren't and still aren't: at the time of the invasion they held the status of British Dependent Territory Citizens (now British Overseas Territories) and today, even though the process has been well streamlined as a result of the invasion, they still have to apply for full British citizenship. Either way, the islanders have chosen to remain British, which is all that should really matter. Which is Britains stance on the matter anyway. The whole right to self-determination and all.
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May 10, 2010 00:14
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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. According to Wikipedia the Japanese suffered 4 times as many military deaths as the US and that's counting both the European and Pacific theaters. Things just got harder for the Japanese as the war went on. The Battle of Midway crippled the Japanese Navy with the loss of 4 aircraft carriers. Hell look the Battle of Okinawa: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa And yeah it was brutal but I think I'd prefer to be on the side of the Allies if I wanted to survive. Japan picked a fight with the wrong country. Mustang fucked around with this message at 10:17 on Jun 10, 2010 |
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Jun 10, 2010 10:14
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Chade Johnson posted:The Japanese were attempting to negotiate for peace before the first atom bomb was dropped, but the US dismissed this to show the Soviets who was boss in the Pacific. Links?
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Jun 20, 2010 21:27
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There was trench warfare way back in the US Civil War as well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Petersburg I was reading The Generalship of Ulysses S. Grant by J.F.C. Fuller(British general) and if I remember correctly that's the one he wrote where he talked about how the US Civil war was almost completely overlooked by European militaries. Might have been in a pamphlet sized thing written by him too, though.
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Jun 29, 2010 16:39
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Am I a traitorous Southerner if I think that Sherman was a badass General? I agree that it's a 'whiny southerner' thing to bitch about Sherman. Well I think more of a whiny Georgian thing really. I'm from North Carolina and I don't think anyone there really gives a poo poo one way or another about Sherman. Not that I've heard anyway. edit: Maybe I'm biased since my ancestor deserted the CSA to fight for the Union
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Aug 9, 2010 17:04
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When my dad was at the Army War College one of his classes was about the various empires in history, especially the Roman Empire, and he said one of the conclusions they came too was that empires start to decline and collapse when they cease expanding. Next time I talk to him I'll ask him about the details because he told me this almost 10 years ago. If he wasn't 55 I'd try to get him on here, I'm sure he'd have a lot to contribute to the thread. Perhaps the frequent civil wars was a symptom of no longer expanding so they turned their attentions on their political rivals?
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Nov 1, 2011 18:05
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Yeah, I don't know why anybody would possibly want to be Emperor then, seems like a guaranteed early death.
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Nov 1, 2011 20:26
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I forgot where I read it, but I remember reading that they have found far more shipwrecks from the time of the Roman Republic through to the height of the Empire than they have from any period after until the Renaissance if I remember correctly. Anyone else remember something similar? I'm pretty sure it's on a wikipedia page somewhere but I couldn't find it again. It was used as evidence that trade throughout the Mediterranean dropped significantly after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire.
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Nov 6, 2011 01:14
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lilljonas posted:It's also a sort of safeguard against one political faction taking control of the army. If everyone has to serve, you don't get a situation such as a disproportional number of rightwing extremists, a group who often dream of making a military coup, enroll in the army. It also safeguards against a socioeconomic unfairness as in the US, where a sociopolitical group that almost never have relatives enrolled in the army can call for a war where mostly the poor and disenfranchised will sign up because of economic pressure, and risk being killed. The decision to go to war is simply more fair if everyone have to take similar consequences of it. Actually the majority of recruits in the US military come from middle class backgrounds and are more highly educated than the average American. We don't have to worry about military coups by rightwing extremists over here either. The Republican candidate from the previous election, John McCain, has 2 kids in the military that have been deployed, though I don't know the specifics of their careers. Though they don't join up in nearly as many numbers as the middle class, there's a few from the upper classes. I do agree that we need to use our military with some restraint, Invading Iraq was a horrible idea. Mustang fucked around with this message at 21:16 on Nov 27, 2011 |
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Nov 27, 2011 21:11
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Are you an American? Can't say I've run into too many people like that in the military, though they do exist.
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Nov 27, 2011 21:18
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gradenko_2000 posted:Is there any truth to the claim that the great European powers did not pay all that much attention to the ACW, resulting in the horrible casualties from charging straight into trenches during WW1? A British General and WW1 veteran named J.F.C. Fuller eventually wrote several books about the ACW, which he admits he overlooked as well. "The Generalship of Ulysses S. Grant" is the first one I believe. It's been several years since I've read them, but I do remember that he has a very high opinion of U.S. Grant. He also points out similarities between WW1 and the ACW when applicable.
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Dec 13, 2011 19:11
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:The American Civil War. Mostly only amongst Southerners though. My fellow southerners love to tell people how Robert E. Lee is the greatest general that has ever lived. Which is unfortunate because Grant and Sherman did far more for the United States than Lee ever did. The United States as we know it likely wouldn't exist without them. Many people think of Grant as a drunk and a butcher and Sherman as a war criminal. If only people would stop and think what the world would be like if the Confederacy was still around, or maybe read a few unbiased books about the American Civil War. edit: It's pretty sad, even many northerners get roped into the hero worship of Robert E. Lee. It's ridiculous. And I don't know why anyone is surprised that Grant suffered heavy losses against Lee, Grant was on the offensive. Mustang fucked around with this message at 05:21 on Mar 26, 2012 |
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Mar 26, 2012 05:14
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Don't get me wrong, Lee was a great tactician, but he was not at all a strategist, and he fought for one of the worst causes in human history. His only concern was Virginia, and fortunately for the Confederates Virginia bordered the Union and Washington, D.C. And it helped that every general the Union sent against Lee was mediocre at best until Grant took over in the east. And of course Lee's defeat at Gettysburg by Meade. There's a short pamphlet/book written from an outsiders perspective by a British general and WWI veteran named J.F.C Fuller that compares Grant and Lee. I don't have it with me right now and don't remember the title but I'll try to find it tomorrow if anyone is interested. He also wrote The Generalship of Ulysses S. Grant which is a great analysis of Grant as both a man and a general.
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Mar 26, 2012 15:30
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DarkCrawler posted:So was Grant truly the best general of the Union, then? Or the best general of the war? His he dominates the mentions of Union generals(at least for me as a foreigner) while there seem to be more mentions of different Confederate generals. Sherman comes up in Atlanta which was a beautiful as a campaign of strategic destruction but he was pretty much unopposed during it, right? By far the best of the war, one of the few that understood the "big picture." Confederate generals get so much mention because we southerners seem to be really hung up on the American Civil War and so we tend to write tons of books about it. It also didn't help that at times even the Northern press was against Grant. There's no evidence that Grant was ever drunk on campaign. It's blown way out of proportion, officers that served with Grant throughout the war repeatedly claim that they have never seen him drunk, yet that's how many modern Americans view him. Grant had 3 entire Confederate armies surrender to him, at Fort Donelson, Vickburg, and Appomattox, the only general in the war to do so. Check out Grant's Vicksburg Campaign. Nobody thought he could pull it off, but he did. The South lost the Mississippi River and the Confederacy was cut in half, one of the most decisive campaigns of the war. Eisenhower held Grant in very high esteem, here's what he had to say to Nixon in 1956 during a conversation when Civil War generals are brought up: quote:I wouldn’t say that, Dick. In fact I think it’s not a very reasoned opinion. You forget that Grant captured three armies intact, moved and coordinated his forces in a way that baffles military logic yet succeeded and he concluded the war one year after being entrusted with that aim. I’d say that was one hell of a piece of soldiering extending over a period of four years, the same time we were in the last war. It's pretty ridiculous how the South thinks of Grant considering how much he did at their surrender Appomattox and reconstruction to preserve their pride. It's a drat shame how we remember him, Grant should be up there with Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. If any other man had been in charge (or if Lincoln had not been reelected) then the South likely would have been successful in getting the peace the needed and today would be something like a third world country probably. And in regards to other Union Generals, you can't forget George Meade, the man that led Union forces at Gettysburg. Mustang fucked around with this message at 21:54 on Mar 26, 2012 |
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Mar 26, 2012 21:47
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I am sure anyone that reads Civil War history has heard of James M. McPherson. He has a book called Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief that goes into detail about his strategic abilities, but I haven't started reading it yet.
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Mar 27, 2012 01:34
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Right, he definitely had a drinking problem before the war or when there was nothing to do, and his staff officers all later wrote that they very rarely ever saw Grant drink and no more than a shot at one time, and only to have a drink with his men. He knew he had drinking problem and, like you said, generally avoided alcohol throughout the war.
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Mar 27, 2012 02:00
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Nenonen posted:So I hear you guys like the US Civil War... Yes, and some didn't get citizenship until years after the war. Robert E. Lee didn't get his restored until the 1970s, but due to a error in paperwork if I remember correctly. Jefferson Davis was only imprisoned for a year and continued to believe in white supremacy over blacks. Many southerners were given citizenship and voting rights at the end of the war (but not blacks) and many former Confederates were elected as congressmen and governors, which outraged many northerners and blacks. A few years later blacks were given the right to vote and the Reconstruction Acts were enacted, which was essentially martial law, to ensure suffrage for blacks. All states were readmitted by 1870 and the Amnesty Act of 1872 pardoned all remaining former Confederate soldiers and leaders.
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Mar 28, 2012 02:39
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It's interesting you posted that link about Southerners fighting for the Union because one of my ancestors was conscripted from the mountains of east Tennessee for the Confederacy and deserted to join the Union army, we have a copy of his discharge papers.
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Apr 2, 2012 03:59
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I had a professor that speaks with an accent that sounds like he belongs on a plantation somewhere, even looks like an old southern gentleman. I wonder where it's from? I've lived almost my entire life in the south and I've only very rarely heard it. That's where his similarities with the old south end though, he was pretty harsh towards the CSA when he covered it, and extremely anti-slavery.
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Apr 5, 2012 03:48
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iamtheliquor posted:What were LRRP's in Vietnam? How do they compare to say Green Berets or other special forces? I had a family member who was a LRP, however, info about these guys seems real hard to find. Here are a couple of good books about LRRPs and Rangers in the Vietnam War. You can follow links on their pages to even more. http://www.amazon.com/Recondo-LRRPs-Airborne-Larry-Chambers/dp/0891418407/ref=pd_sim_b_6 http://www.amazon.com/Phantom-Warriors-LRRPs-Rangers-Vietnam/dp/0804119988/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335909689&sr=1-2 Recondo was a reconnaissance school taught by instructors from the 5th Special Forces group. It was located in Vietnam and concluded with an actual combat patrol at the end of the course. It's been a while since I read these books but I believe being a Recondo grad was a requirement to be any kind of leader in a LRRP/Ranger unit or a recon unit in general. It's hard to say how any unit compares to another, but there is no doubt that being a LRP was a dangerous job that required a great amount of skill. Their leadership was trained by Special Forces troops so they probably operated in a similar fashion, at least out on patrol anyway. They used some of the same equipment too, like tiger stripe uniforms and I'm pretty sure some of them used CAR-15s too. Phantom Warriors is collection of personal experiences from men that served in various LRRP/Ranger or similar units. Mustang fucked around with this message at 23:47 on May 1, 2012 |
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May 1, 2012 23:29
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The 119th Field Artillery Regiment of the Michigan National Guard was originally a 30 man unit of Roger's Rangers from the French and Indian war that were left behind in Michigan to form the nucleus of the militia in Fort Detroit. However none of the info is cited so who knows how true it is. And they haven't been called rangers for a long, long time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_Battalion_119th_Field_Artillery
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Jun 24, 2012 05:28
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I remembered I had this in my favorites, a bunch of US Civil War Photos. http://www.civil-war.net/cw_images/
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Jul 25, 2012 22:44
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J.F.C Fuller was a British general that experienced WW1 and he felt that they could have learned much had they paid more attention to the ACW. He brings it up several times in his book "The Generalship of U.S. Grant."
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Sep 30, 2012 19:18
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It's not just marines, there's also a book called Platoon Leader: A memoir of Command in Combat written by an Army Lieutenant. Actually I'm pretty sure that guy went on to become a senior officer. Pretty sure used that title as throwback/reference to a WW2 book called Company Commander. Both are really good books.
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Jun 5, 2013 16:22
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Kemper Boyd posted:Lincoln's concern was always first and formost to keep up the political will to end the war successfully. A wholesale slaughter of Union troops in 1862 Grant-style would have severely put a crimp on that. The army needed (as a cohesive unit) to get their poo poo together so it could actually operate the way it did later on. There was no wholesale slaughter of Union troops "Grant Style." Grant suffered heavy losses in the east because he was attacking Confederate troops on the defensive. The US Army to this day still suggests a numerical superiority of 3 to 1 when attacking defensive positions, and Grant only ever had a 2 to 1 superiority at best. Lee lost a larger percentage of his troops than Grant did, yet he isn't known as "Lee the Butcher." Grant was the only General of the Civil War to capture three enemy armies intact. Grant outmaneuvered his opponents and was always on the offensive. Grant deserves better than to be remembered as the "butcher." His Vicksburg campaign is considered the finest campaign ever carried out on the American continent. He was definitely the best general of the war, despite what Lost Causers like to say about Lee. Grant's campaigns succeeded in what he was trying to accomplish, Lee's didn't. And if he was so careless about the lives of his men I highly doubt they would love him the way they did. Grant was a good man, and it's a drat shame what Lost Causers have done to his memory.
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Jul 19, 2013 17:03
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I never said it wasn't a mistake, and I'm aware that he regretted it. But it was hardly his "style" to order such attacks.
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Jul 19, 2013 17:19
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Yeah I wasn't trying to say Grant was perfect, no general is, but it just seems like Grant is better known for his mistakes than his frankly outstanding successes. Lee on the other hand seems to have a nearly demigod like status, despite being guilty of using the same frontal assault tactics with the same outcome.
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Jul 19, 2013 18:50
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I'm a southerner myself and I have a hard time looking at the CSA as anything but an aberration. The bloodiest war in US history so that some rich white dudes could own other people. Regardless of Lee being a traitor or whatever, it is seriously hosed up how Lost Causers have hijacked Civil War historiography. Lee and the CSA are noble defenders of states rights while Grant and Sherman are blood thirsty butchers and war criminals. This is the history every southerner learns in school. The only people that know otherwise are the ones that have an interest in history and read something other than the endless amounts of Lost Cause 'history.' And the shame is that thousands of southerners enlisted in the Union army because their loyalty was to the US. Lost Causers have managed to spin things so that it seems like the entire South unanimously decided to secede. And I don't know how the Civil War is taught outside of the South, but I'm sure it's not much different considering Southerners wrote the majority of Civil War history books. So much for history is written by the victors.
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Jul 20, 2013 05:05
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It is in Georgia and North Carolina. Even my college history professor couldn't stop talking about Robert E Lee being the greatest general in US history, etc etc. I didn't read a single good thing about the Union until I was 21. And it's ridiculous to contest that Lost Causers have hijacked Civil War historiography because they have. If they hadn't you wouldn't see any of this ridiculous "States Rights" and "War of Northern Aggression" poo poo all over the South. And the Grant and Sherman I was taught about in high school were bloodthirsty butchers. This is the same history my ex's younger brother learned in a Tampa high school. Mustang fucked around with this message at 05:44 on Jul 20, 2013 |
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Jul 20, 2013 05:41
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When the narrative you're taught in public school is "the South fought for States Rights," that Sherman is a war criminal for his March to the Sea, and that Grant was a butcher that only won because he used "Soviet Style assaults" than I don't see how the answer can be anything other than "yes, yes it is." Maybe you guys had better, unbiased teachers than I did but that's the narrative I knew about the Civil War when I graduated high school. We went on a field trip to a Civil War battlefield when I was 10 or so (forgot which one) and several of the parents that were chaperons wouldn't let the kids get Union blue caps from the gift shop, they had to go back and get CSA grey caps. And like I said, even my college American history professor taught the "Robert E Lee is gods gift to generalship" and that Grant only won because he didn't care about the men in his Army and threw endless hordes of men at Lee's lines. If there was no bias in Southern Civil War Historiography than why slander Grant and Sherman while ignoring the flaws of Robert E Lee? Why are there still thousands of southerners that believe the Civil War is really about States Rights and that the North started the war? edit: but anyways, done with this derail Mustang fucked around with this message at 16:57 on Jul 20, 2013 |
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Jul 20, 2013 16:48
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True, Grant was a horrible politician, horrible judge of of character, and tended to support his friends who were suspected of corruption unless the evidence was overwhelming. He should however be given credit for being ahead of his time in regards to Civil Rights for Blacks and Native Americans and fighting the KKK.
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Jul 21, 2013 04:05
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I think it's also interesting that three of the UKs former colonies, USA, Australia and Canada, ended up with absurdly huge territories. Other empires former colonies seem to be much worse off in comparison to the former British colonies. edit: And the British had THE biggest empire in history,
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Jul 23, 2013 20:41
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I've always wanted to read Grant's memoirs, and he really is a good writer, they're very interesting. It's pretty incredible that a man that didn't really want to go to West Point or join the army and wanted to to be a professor instead, ended up being the greatest US General of the era. Thanks for the link!
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Aug 3, 2013 05:59
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Blows my mind that he became a Brigadier General at the age of 27 in 1814 after 6 years in the army and retired in 1861 after 53 years in the Army and 47 years as a general while serving through 14 presidential administrations. loving insane.
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Aug 7, 2013 07:11
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canuckanese posted:Here's a short anecdote about George Washington I saw during a special on him on National Geographic the other day. Apologies in advance if I butcher any facts. Everything I've read on Washington(which isn't much) suggests that while he wasn't that great as a tactician he was pretty good at strategy and intelligence/counterintelligence.
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Aug 24, 2013 21:01
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The United States expanding westward was essentially conquering foreign land. And it's fairly obvious it paid off in the end. From a few colonies along the east coast to global superpower and largest national economy in less than two centuries. And to a lesser extent the same can be said of the other British settler colonies Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Generally I'd say when the goals and objectives are clearly laid out (obtain territory X for X reason) things tend to go pretty well for the invader. Of course you can still bite off more than you can chew. You start having problems when you have more ambiguous objectives, ie Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.
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Sep 21, 2013 08:06
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Mans posted:Military History Thread II: Ceasar crosses the Fulda Gap I vote for this one as well. Funniest thus far, and relevant.
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Nov 13, 2013 03:58
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