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best bale posted:Is there a book that covers this? Just a big ol’ myth-busting collection of nazi dysfunction and stupidity. It’s on the economic side of things but “Wages of Destruction” by Adam Tooze goes into a lot of this and is a favorite in the Milhist thread
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Mar 27, 2024 03:39
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"Wages" and that Kursk video posted on the last page paint a really vivid picture of just how bad the Nazis were at running an economy. The video is ostensibly about the battle, but why each side had so many of what kind of tank is a really important part of looking at the event.
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Mar 27, 2024 03:55
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Solaris 2.0 posted:Holy moly that single shot of him walking out of the snowy fog is visually so much more impactful than anything we got out of Masters of the Air. I refuse to ever say Foy the way it was said in this video and don't care if its the correct pronunciation
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Mar 27, 2024 04:01
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Solaris 2.0 posted:It’s on the economic side of things but “Wages of Destruction” by Adam Tooze goes into a lot of this and is a favorite in the Milhist thread Just ordered. Thanks!
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Mar 27, 2024 04:16
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George H.W. oval office posted:I refuse to ever say Foy the way it was said in this video and don't care if its the correct pronunciation Bastongyeuh If I wanted to pronounce it that way they should've spelled it Foie
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Mar 27, 2024 04:24
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skooma512 posted:Forest's haunted! "Now we know how the Romans felt." "Huh?" "Waiting for the Visigoths." "Wha?" "...  ... the barbarians.""Oh  "
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Mar 27, 2024 04:30
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McNally posted:I'm pretty sure they explicitly say "we're the only thing between the division's rear lines and a battalion of SS so we need to stay and fight." My bad, I haven't seen it since it was new. I seem to remember them mentioning having been in the same tank through all their campaigns. Edit: I did just watch the clip on Youtube and Brad Pitt's boys react with shock and disbelief that he wants to stay and play defense. Brad Pitt thumps the tank and says "It's home", which is where it seemed to me that he was staying because of sentimental attachment to the tank. This is an odd thing to say about a tank that you only received a few months before, and has not in fact actually been 'home' for years as it seems to imply in the movie. Presumably they have left multiple tanks behind before if they have been serving together since Operation Torch. They are in a late war Easy 8. In any case, still stupid: If you're worried about your rear echelon troops getting surprise attacked by a battalion of enemies then the proper response is to go warn them instead of relying on Plot Armor to assume you'd stand a chance of beating that many guys. The proper US Army solution to a bunch of Nazis marching in column in broad daylight in April 1945 is to plaster them with fire support from far away. No one would ever assume that these guys follow the stormtrooper school of accuracy. Mr. Grapes! fucked around with this message at 11:09 on Mar 27, 2024 |
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Mar 27, 2024 10:41
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Dang. McNally, if only you had some experience with US Army tactics and/or military history. Edit: but yeah, even if there weren't a rational explanation for sticking with the tank as a static defensive fighting position loaded with guns and resistant to small arms, it's a movie and it wouldn't be fun to watch the cast slink away into the night. Arc Light fucked around with this message at 10:51 on Mar 27, 2024 |
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Mar 27, 2024 10:49
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Mr. Grapes! posted:My bad, I haven't seen it since it was new. I seem to remember them mentioning having been in the same tank through all their campaigns. Their radio was destroyed, and none of them had any illusions about surviving. They just wanted to slow the advance. They could've probably outran the SS battalion on foot and called in arty though 
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Mar 27, 2024 10:49
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M_Gargantua posted:Did you even watch that movie? Did you forget to finish your post? If I'm wrong about the historical stuff I would actually prefer to be corrected rather than unintentionally spread misinformation.
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Mar 27, 2024 11:10
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Vampire Panties posted:Their radio was destroyed, and none of them had any illusions about surviving. They just wanted to slow the advance. Yeah, a handful of guys on foot running for their lives are gonna be faster. Even with a busted radio, they just have to run into any sort of friendlies who have a radio or motor vehicle to sort things out. Yes, I know it is fun to watch explosions and stuff so we get the scene we got. I can still enjoy some classic Nazis getting blown up. But, previously the movie actually seemed a bit more intelligent than that so it was more of a disappointment that it had to end that way because of Hollywood convention that all patriotic war movies must conclude with the heroes outnumbered and outgunned against overwhelming odds. Previously in the movie I thought it was trying to somewhat subvert all that stuff and show Fury's crew as cynical survivalists who didn't really care about being True American Heroes and would in fact loot, rape, murder prisoners, torture people, and shoot children in their quest to survive this maniacal war. Then at the end they just commit suicide.
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Mar 27, 2024 11:17
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I rewatched BoB Episode 4 "Replacements" yesterday. I noticed that the burning Sherman that was chasing down Bull while he was in the ditch had a Bull sticker on its bumper. Subtle.
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Mar 27, 2024 18:23
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Mr. Grapes! posted:Previously in the movie I thought it was trying to somewhat subvert all that stuff and show Fury's crew as cynical survivalists who didn't really care about being True American Heroes and would in fact loot, rape, murder prisoners, torture people, and shoot children in their quest to survive this maniacal war. Then at the end they just commit suicide. It absolutely doesn't land it, but I think Fury is trying to do something like that, what with all the 'best job I ever had' stuff. The crew are complete gently caress ups who recognize they don't belong anywhere else (see the egg scene) and choose to stay and die with the tank because they know - particularly after everything they've seen and done - they won't fit in anywhere else ever again.
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Mar 27, 2024 23:44
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Is there a definitive-type eastern front book/series? I was riveted when Dan Carlin put out the Ghosts of the Ostfront hardcore history series around 15 years ago and would like to do some more reading on it.
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Mar 28, 2024 02:24
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The Breaking Point is about as unsubtle an episode title as you can get for episode 7 of Band of Brothers. Following on from the locked down misery of Bastogne, Easy are now at least able to move around and aren't completely surrounded anymore, but they're still dangerously close to the Germans, it's still freezing, men are injured and fatigued, and there is a serious lack of leadership on display with Winters now overseeing but not personally leading, and Dike (who, to stress once again, was REALLY done dirty by the characterization the real-life guy got in the show) either constantly disappearing from view or failing to connect with any of the men when he is around, with the latter not even offset by being an effective combat leader. Much of the episode is narrated by 1st Sergeant Lipton (I assume from the real soldier's own journals) as he goes about his day trying to keep an eye on things, helping out where he can. This leads to a fantastic moment near the end of the episode where his hard work is rewarded and Speirs is bemused to realize that Lipton had absolutely no idea of how much of a rock he has been for the soldiers, because he was just doing what he thought needed to be done. He certainly didn't have a choice, as in a rare sequence of "flashbacks" to support the dialogue, we see Winters and Nixon run through the current crop of Lieutenants and the many flaws they all exhibit - I think this is the first time Peacock is named? I mistook him for Dike in the previous episode so maybe I just missed his introduction. The best and most obvious candidate for Winters is Buck Compton, who appears to have shaken off the internal collapse he was undergoing, though a conversation between Guarnere and Heffron shows that this isn't quite fooling everybody. But as Winters points out, it doesn't matter in any case because this would leave the men without an effective combat platoon leader AND it's not like he can get rid of Dike anyway, since he's not actually technically done anything worth removing his command, along with a claim that Dike has connections that got him the spot so he could have "combat experience". There are some obvious parallels between Dike and Sobel, and indeed Winters finds himself on the other side of the equation when Lipton finally feels he has no choice but to tell him that he simply does not trust Dike to lead the men and thinks he will get people needlessly killed. NCOs stepped up to say the same thing about Sobel back during training (albeit they did it formally in writing, rather than Lipton talking directly to Winters) which Winters ended up benefiting from, but now Winters has to dismiss Lipton and be careful not to criticize Dike in front of him despite his own reservations. His attempted solution - as Nixon notes, what he REALLY wants to do is lead the men in battle himself - is to painfully lay out an exact and extraordinarily specific set of directions to Dike to follow when they finally assault Foy. It does him no good though, as Dike panics at the first moment things don't go entirely according to plan and halts the assault to hunker down behind painfully weak cover and leave most of the men exposed, before coming up with a lunatic plan to send a small unit of men to circle around the entire town to "flank" the Germans. Putting aside the character assassination of the real life Dike, the entire sequence is designed to showcase a common refrain from the episode that the soldiers often felt let down by their officers, with those who obviously were skilled and talented enough to be effective leaders either being promoted up and away from them or killed/injured. Foy might have been an entirely different kettle of fish if Moose Heyliger hadn't been injured, but we'll never know, and war is chaotic enough that there is no guarantee he wouldn't have been killed anyway. Because there is a LOT of death in this episode. An earlier sequence shows a replacement private being gently teased by the men pointing out how almost all of them have been shot/injured and that he will have his "turn" soon enough, a dark prediction when the poor bastard is unceremoniously shot through the head by a sniper during the assault and nobody realizes till they try to get him to move from his position. Luz, one of the few men not to be shot so far in the war, looks like he's doomed as he crawls towards a foxhole during German shelling, his friends Muck (who has also never been shot) and Penkala screaming for him to get to safety... only for them to be obliterated by a shell right in front of his eyes. That follows Joe Toye (who refused to stay in hospital after taking an arm wound) getting his leg blown off and Guarnare having his own horrifically mangled while trying to rescue him, and the combination of all these things is finally too much for Buck. He was already badly shaken by Hoobler accidentally shooting himself with a luger he took from a German he killed, severing the main artery and dying as the men tried to treat him, and seeing Toye and Guarnere injured so badly and then learning of Muck and Penkala's death hits his "breaking point", and he is removed from the line for "trenchfoot". It's a kind way of giving him an out, with Lipton at pains to say that none of the men thought any lesser of him, they all knew how tough he was, but he just couldn't stand to see his friends hurt and killed. That leaves Easy without an experienced combat platoon leader, with a commanding Lieutenant that nobody trusts or respects, and the only person who seems to be keeping everybody together is Lipton, who at least finds one positive out of Hoobler's death by gifting the luger to Malarkey to help shake him out of his own funk, as Malarkey has been trying to get hold of one for his little brother since the series started. The one bonus is that they were able to get rid of Peacock by Nixon giving him the trip home to do PR ("We have to keep up morale for the folks back home," Sink notes at one point, and when Winters - exhausted and knowing his own men are the ones who need the morale boost - asks why, Sink pauses and says,"...I don't know.") and one Lieutenant from each of the other companies were brought over to help shore up Easy's flagging numbers. This includes Speirs, with a somewhat redundant conversation among some soldiers - including Michael Fassbender! - about the execution of the German prisoners and rumours he shot one of his own soldiers for being drunk. It all leads to the assault on Foy, which is a disaster until Winters - forced to halt by Sink when his instincts kick in and he tries to rush into battle himself - turns and screams for Speirs to take over. That he does, and it's important I think to remember that Speirs is a very different leader to Winters despite undoubtedly being effective. He's direct and to the point, but he also has absolutely no hesitation in taking personal risks or risking the lives of his men (not pointlessly or cavalierly) because of his philosophy that in war all soldiers are already dead. An earlier episode has soldiers saying they saw him take the final gun "almost single handed" at the Battle of Brecourt Manor, which is technically true because most of the men with him got shot when he just ran directly up to it to attack it. Winters meanwhile had laid out a plan to be as efficient as possible not just in their objectives but the lives of the men. However, in comparison to Dike, Speirs must seem like a divine gift to the soldiers, and certainly to Lipton, who watches in awe as Speirs' reaction to learning some of the men are disconnected due to Dike's terrible plan is to... just run directly through the battlefield... and then come running right back through straight afterwards! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76XTG6dFgx0 Here at least is a leader they can respect, who they know will put his own life on the line, who will be if nothing else present. The episode ends with Lipton, given a battlefield promotion to Lieutenant, talking with Speirs as the men sit in a church listening to the choir sing, enjoying a brief respite not knowing their planned pullout is about to rescinded. He's relieved that they came through it all alive, that they're out of the cold for a change, but it also gives us a chance to be reminded of just how many men have died through the series so far and even just in these last two episodes. The packed pews of the church, filled with men watching the choir sing, suddenly grow large gaps as Lipton remembers the fallen and, with each named listed, the soldier sitting in the pew disappears from view. At this point in the series, the characters are exhausted and it's exhausting for the viewer too, though not in a bad way. It's all with purpose, leading into The Last Patrol next and the utter bottom of the barrel/end of the line for many of the men who have been through hell through Bastogne, Foy, Noville and Rachamps, with Hagenau to come. To continue to draw parallels between how Band of Brothers and Masters of the Air were structured, I can only think of the episode where the men are asked to fly three missions over three days and how it left most of them completely hollowed out... except we barely saw or felt any of it because we were told rather than shown. Bastogne and The Breaking Point, though far from the subtlest of episodes, are very definitely showing rather than telling. Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Mar 28, 2024 |
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Mar 28, 2024 19:54
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Speiers is a good example of the kind of leader you don't normally want, but you're glad to have when poo poo hits the fan.
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Mar 28, 2024 20:09
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Jerusalem posted:The Breaking Point is about as unsubtle an episode title as you can get for episode 7 of Band of Brothers. Following on from the locked down misery of Bastogne, Easy are now at least able to move around and aren't completely surrounded anymore, but they're still dangerously close to the Germans, it's still freezing, men are injured and fatigued, and there is a serious lack of leadership on display with Winters now overseeing but not personally leading, and Dike (who, to stress once again, was REALLY done dirty by the characterization the real-life guy got in the show) either constantly disappearing from view or failing to connect with any of the men when he is around, with the latter not even offset by being an effective combat leader. Good review. I still remember the scene with the choir and how hard it hit
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Mar 28, 2024 20:44
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I often find the military world quite strange in these kinds of shows, knowing nothing about it. I kept expecting Winter to request to be degraded or something like that, since he clearly wasn't enjoying his promotion, and his men were suffering from it. There are also some stories I missed because I sometimes have a hard time keeping track of characters who all look alike and who don't get much character development.
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Mar 28, 2024 21:03
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I'm enjoying your recaps and hope you end up doing the same for the Pacific
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Mar 28, 2024 21:09
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I never rewatched The Pacific, so I certainly wouldn't mind watching it again it to see if I think better of it with the benefit of hindsight, and sadly with the disappointment of Masters of the Air still relatively fresh in my mind.
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Mar 28, 2024 21:15
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I generally despise alt histody but I have had an impression that even if the Nazis carved out a win, they most likely would have devolved very quickly into a civil war between the various army, SS, luftwaffe and navy factions.
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Mar 28, 2024 21:22
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I love the BOB reviews, they are well done. Please keep it up and do the Pacific next! I am a little over halfway through Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors and holy poo poo what a great read! I know the story of Taffy 3 as other books I've read have covered it. Ian Toll covered it fairly well in his series- that's why I waited so long to read this. I figured I knew the story. So many fantastic details in this and it reads like an action thriller. ColonelJohnMatrix fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Mar 28, 2024 |
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Mar 28, 2024 21:30
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Burns posted:I generally despise alt histody but I have had an impression that even if the Nazis carved out a win, they most likely would have devolved very quickly into a civil war between the various army, SS, luftwaffe and navy factions. The end of the war was a civil war between the army who was surrendering and the SS.
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Mar 28, 2024 21:44
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Peacock first gets introduced in Replacements. He's the lieutenant asking Johnny Martin if he could tap his leg when he's standing in the doorway to jump.
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Mar 28, 2024 22:21
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ColonelJohnMatrix posted:Is there a definitive-type eastern front book/series? I was riveted when Dan Carlin put out the Ghosts of the Ostfront hardcore history series around 15 years ago and would like to do some more reading on it. Probably the most famous and most cited is When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler David M. Glantz and Jonathan M. House But it is very dry "this division move here" type of stuff for much of it
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Mar 29, 2024 00:05
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Arc Hammer posted:Peacock first gets introduced in Replacements. He's the lieutenant asking Johnny Martin if he could tap his leg when he's standing in the doorway to jump. Ahh! That was him!?! I loved that scene, I presume he was colorblind and that this would have impacted him being allowed to be a paratrooper?
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Mar 29, 2024 00:47
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Jerusalem posted:Ahh! That was him!?! I loved that scene, I presume he was colorblind and that this would have impacted him being allowed to be a paratrooper? He's not colorblind, he's just very nervous and not cut out for field duties. Asking Martin to tap him as a "hey, get moving, sir" so he's not steeling himself up to jump all by his lonesome.
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Mar 29, 2024 00:54
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That's actually kind of disappointing to me, the way he was replying,"Just. tap. my. leg. Sergeant" through gritted teeth to Martin noting,"Sir, the light will be right next to you..." had me convinced it was something he was either embarrassed or worried about admitting.
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Mar 29, 2024 01:10
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ColonelJohnMatrix posted:Is there a definitive-type eastern front book/series? I was riveted when Dan Carlin put out the Ghosts of the Ostfront hardcore history series around 15 years ago and would like to do some more reading on it. If you're willing to sit through stuff not about the Eastern Front, the WW2 channel YouTube has been doing the whole war, week by week with animated maps at divisional scale. https://www.youtube.com/@WorldWarTwo They also have some excellent companion series on the espionage wars, and War Against Humanity if you need a weekly dose of "never forget".
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Mar 29, 2024 01:37
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I just watched all 3 Peleliu episodes from the Pacific back to back. It was really exhausting. While it's great TV, it's also just not enjoyable to watch. Was that the most hectic battle for the US during the war? I couldn't imagine how you would not go crazy in those conditions.
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Mar 29, 2024 01:56
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toggle posted:I just watched all 3 Peleliu episodes from the Pacific back to back. It was really exhausting. While it's great TV, it's also just not enjoyable to watch. Peleliu was more of a grind than hectic. The assault on Tarawa was shorter but also way more chaotic. It's really hard to quantify what counts as hectic and what isn't because there's inherent chaos to combat, imo.
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Mar 29, 2024 01:57
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Was there anything on the Western front that matched that same grinding chaos?
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Mar 29, 2024 02:15
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toggle posted:I just watched all 3 Peleliu episodes from the Pacific back to back. It was really exhausting. While it's great TV, it's also just not enjoyable to watch. You come out of Band of Brothers with a romanticized idea of war, but then the Pacific (even though it uses the same soaring Spielberg soundtrack) pretty much sets you straight about just how terrible combat really is.Then there's Masters of the Air, which
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Mar 29, 2024 02:48
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We haven't really talked much about WWII movies besides SPR. I really liked Hacksaw Ridge. Mostly for "That's a great war uniform" because I wish he would have said "Thanks, I tried really hard on it."
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Mar 29, 2024 03:25
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I like the more recent The Forgotten Battle.
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Mar 29, 2024 16:45
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Well the early reviews I read weren't very positive so I put it off while I was watching something else. Caught up just now after running out of other backlogged shows. And sadly, it's not great. Yes I did watch all the episodes anyway lol. I didn't come close to puking like the Ars reviewer but I thought it way weaker than BoB or even the Pacific. The CGI is unfortunate but the biggest problem for me was the overall structure and pacing of the show. I don't know the source material so no idea what they've done with that. I suspect that some issues are just fundamental to what they were trying to cover. There aren't many flying B-17s so everything has to be CG, the missions, from what can be shown on TV, are very repetitive - fly over Germany, get flak, fighters, gunners shoot at them in the distance, some planes get shot down. Rinse, repeat. Very high casualties so you don't get to know or care about anyone. Still, there were also some poor decisions on their part that didn't help. Spending some time in training could've let them have some TOPGUN shenanigans to get us invested in the characters, the spy lady that was only doing spy poo poo for two scenes, the escape from Belgium, the Tuskegee Airmen, etc. IMO they should've either expanded them to take most of an episode or dropped the subject. Also all the time skips and skipping over some of the major milestones. Like they could've done something about D-Day, no?
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Mar 29, 2024 19:47
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Cojawfee posted:We haven't really talked much about WWII movies besides SPR. I really liked Hacksaw Ridge. Mostly for "That's a great war uniform" because I wish he would have said "Thanks, I tried really hard on it." Maybe I should give it another chance, but when I first saw it Hacksaw Ridge didn't do a drat thing for me because it was just too stupidly over the top. It aims for "War is Hell" and shoots right past it into "War is a cartoon". A guy literally picks up a dismembered torso to use as a shield while one-handing his BAR to blast people away. People stand in an orderly line to get mowed down left-to-right. The style of violence is halfway between Rambo (2 and onward) and Tarantino. With that as the backdrop, the main story about the medic earnestly trying to protect his humanity in the face of war just fell completely flat.
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Mar 29, 2024 20:33
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my biggest question about hacksaw ridge was how 300lb middle aged vince vaughn managed to haul his fat rear end up those ropes on the cliff
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Mar 30, 2024 09:14
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Arc Hammer posted:Peleliu was more of a grind than hectic. The assault on Tarawa was shorter but also way more chaotic. It's really hard to quantify what counts as hectic and what isn't because there's inherent chaos to combat, imo. The fighting on New Guinea was pretty solidly awful throughout. I'll recommend Touched With Fire by Eric M. Bergerud for land combat in the Pacific Campaign. And if you want videos, Hypohystericalhistory's coverage is both excellent and extensive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pToxEa30KdU Fair warning, he's very detailed and makes massively long videos with good use of maps. That's more of a scheduling warning though, who doesn't want an hour and a half on the Kokoda Track campaign or three hours on Finschhafen? Let's help get him over the 100k subscriber mark.
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Mar 30, 2024 22:25
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Mr. Grapes! posted:
I was catching up on the WW2 channels videos and I watched the one on Artillery, and the Americans had timed how long every single type of shell they fired from every single type of gun so they could coordinate artillery strikes from multiple sources, so their barrages were not just 105s of whatever, but a whole mix of calibers that would probably play havoc with the germans because the explosions hitting you would be random. ColonelJohnMatrix posted:Is there a definitive-type eastern front book/series? I was riveted when Dan Carlin put out the Ghosts of the Ostfront hardcore history series around 15 years ago and would like to do some more reading on it. I'm sure you can find copies at used book stores, but the book Enemy at the Gates give a really good detailed account of Stalingrad, and there is another by the same author about Berlin, but I forget what it was called.
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