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Kemper Boyd posted:Holding a grudge against Sherman seems kinda odd. The ACW happened 150 years ago, one would imagine that people in the South would get over it. It's not like he burned my house or your house. Go ahead. I didn't even know there was a Finnish Civil War.
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Aug 9, 2010 21:24
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Any self-respecting nation has to have an internal bloodletting of some sort at some point in its history, followed by decades if not centuries of bitterness and anger.
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Aug 9, 2010 21:37
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Royality posted:Also, if any American goons who are up with the American Civil war want to explain why it happened, what it was and what happened during it I'd love to hear it (screw wikipedia!). As a Brit I've never heard about it, we only talk about stuff that we won or was so long ago it doesn't have any relevance (1066 for example!). Here's the shortest dirtiest summation of the causes that I can manage. Going back to the earliest colonial days, there were deep and fundamental differences between the northern and southern United States. The north grew in a way very similar to southern England in that period: an industrial capitalist base supported by efficient, small scale farming. While this was hardly a picnic for the urban poor, it turned the region into an economic monster. The prewar south, on the other hand, was becoming something closer to manorial: it was an agrarian culture, wealth and particularly political power was concentrated among the large scale plantation owners, social mobility was nonexistant, and the basis for it all was the "free" labor of slaves. Slavery, more than anything else, prevented anyone but the wealthy slaveowners from accumulating disposable wealth, which meant that the vast majority of the population was left to subsistence farming or working for the plantation owners. Slavery was seen as an elephant in the room from the earliest days of the US government, and the typical response at the time was to throw the dead cat into another room of the house and deal with it later. This worked reasonably well until western expansion began in earnest. By 1820, northern states had outlawed slavery and the abolitionist movement was gaining power at all levels of government, southerners were gradually getting more and more dependant on slavery to support their economy. This evolved into distinct "slave states" and "free states", which were, in general, completely different from one another culturally and economically. The first flashpoint for the war was Missouri, specifically whether or not Missouri would be admitted as a slave state or a free state. This resulted in the "Missouri Compromise", which codified the slave state vs. free state status, as well as ensuring that any future state admissions would have be done in a 1 for 1 deal to avoid either group having an advantage in the Senate. By this point pretty much everyone knew that some sort of secession was an inevitability. Various compromises and hissyfits were thrown over the next 30 years, and the divide between north and south continued to deepen: abolitionists in the north were becoming more and more militant, powerful, and violent, slaveowners were becoming more and more powerful in their own right. The period from 1830 to 1850 was a tremendously progressive time in the North, and this generated a lot of distrust/dislike/hatred on both sides. It was again continued western expansion that finally brought open conflict about. The Kansas–Nebraska Act was the final flashpoint; it established these two new states, got rid of the tenets of the Missouri Compromise, and provided each state with the right to choose slave or free on its own. The Republican party (yes that Republican party) was created as an abolitionist group and became dominant in direct response to the K-N Act, and the "right to choose" its destiny caused Kansas to explode in violence. It was this environment that Lincoln emerged from. He really wasn't a particularly militant abolitionist, but the power and reputation of the Republican party as an antislavery group terrified the South. When Lincoln was elected, the southern landowning aristocracy, who held literally all of the political power in their respective states, figured (probably correctly) that the election of an abolitionist party was the final threat to their slavery-based way of life. In response, they began to push for secession. The irony is of course that it was the poor non-slaveowning people who did most of the fighting and dying for the CSA, and that in staggering numbers. I might write another quick summation of the war itself later, what a fun and fascinating war this thing was. bewbies fucked around with this message at 21:46 on Aug 9, 2010 |
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Aug 9, 2010 21:42
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bewbies posted:Civil war and slavery The few times I've talked about the Civil War with "normal" (as in not history geek) Americans, they seem to think that the abolition of slaves after the Civil War was a progressive example of how freedom loving and democratic the US has always been. This is weird to me as I live in a country where slavery has been outlawed for 600 years, and given that it had been outlawed for a very long time pretty much everywhere in Europe by that time. Is that due to some kind of weird spin given to the war in US history classes, or what?
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Aug 9, 2010 22:00
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The Finnish Civil War has it's background in a tremendous amount of really dumb political games. So, initially this is really boring. At least this first part is. So, it was 1917. And not all was well in the Russian Empire, of which Finland was part back in the day. The difference between Finland and most of the other regions in Russia was that when Russia invaded and annexed Finland in 1809, Finland actually remained an autonomous duchy, eventually managing most of it's own business, though there occationally were attempts at russification. This meant, that even while the Russian state was gradually breaking down with provisional government never actually getting their poo poo together after the February Revolution, Finland continued to have a functioning state apparatus in the form of the Finnish Parliament. However, the toll of WW1 was clearly showing when the economy ground to a halt after the February Revolution. Food shortages became common, and the Parliament was unable to restore public order or deal with most issues raised, mostly because the Senate (what you would call a cabinet today) was weak and did not have the full cooperation of the Parliament. The Senate, led by Oskari Tokoi, should have had a clear majority in the Parliament by being a compromise Senate consisting of six socialists and six non-socialist members, but Tokoi was for the most part unable to govern the country. Among problems faced were wide-spread strikes, unemployment, food shortages and the general breaking down of public order due to the old police forces disbanding. Another major problem was that Finland was a Grand Duchy, and Nicholas II had been the Grand Duke. There was really no legal provision for him being ousted from power and transferring the powers of the Grand Duke to anyone except another Tsar. Which were quite in short supply at the time, mind you.  (look at this smug motherfucker) So, the question was: who actually governs Finland? Is it the provisional government in Petrograd or the Finnish government in Helsinki? There were attempts at dealing with the situation in the form of legislative attempts, but the abortive coup attempt by the Bolsheviks in the summer in Russia lead to Kerensky refusing to delegate power to the Finnish government. In addition, he disbanded the Parliament and sent additional troops to Finland. Elections were held in October and the socialists ended up as the opposition party, and the conservatives ended up controlling the Senate. Considering that the conservatives in the parliament had been cooperating with Kerensky, this was not too good really. The conservatives feared the socialists getting too much power in the parliament, so they had ended up blocking the attempts to Finnish self-rule. And then Lenin came along and ended the story of Kerensky's provisional government. This left the conservative right pretty much holding their dicks in their hand, as their main backer had vanished into thin air and Russia started tearing itself apart for real, and emboldened the Social Democrats, especially the more radical ones. The Social Democrats so far resisted bolshevik calls for revolution though, but the lines were drawn very clearly. The unions organized a general strike in November, and this was when militia groups started appearing for real. The conservatives had their Civil Guard and the socialists had the Red Guard. During the general strike, the leaders of the revolutionary socialist movement voted about if they should start the revolution. Revolution lost 14-11.  Women of the red guards there. By about the same time, the conservative-controlled parliament said gently caress it and announced that they were by law the sole source of legislative power. A delegation was sent to Petrograd to present the Finnish declaration of independence to Lenin and his government, and Lenin said what the heck and signed. This meant that Finland was independent and that it was now internationally recognized as such. Yay. What still remained was the deep rift between the socialists and the conservatives, the general lack of any public order whatsoever and the catastrophic economic situation. And a whole bunch of Russian troops inside the country. And with the situation in Russia making the revolutionary socialists more bold, something was bound to happen sooner or later. Part two is coming as soon as I have smoked a cigarette and typed a lot.
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Aug 9, 2010 22:00
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Also, Lenin had been a refugee of sorts in Finland when he had been running away from the Russian authorities back when he was a revolutionary. Some accounts say that he had a soft spot for Finland and didn't have anything against it's independence due to that.
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Aug 9, 2010 22:07
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lilljonas posted:The few times I've talked about the Civil War with "normal" (as in not history geek) Americans, they seem to think that the abolition of slaves after the Civil War was a progressive example of how freedom loving and democratic the US has always been. This is weird to me as I live in a country where slavery has been outlawed for 600 years, and given that it had been outlawed for a very long time pretty much everywhere in Europe by that time. Is that due to some kind of weird spin given to the war in US history classes, or what? Well, there are two answers to this. First, yeah, the US should be horribly embarassed that codified slavery existed within its borders for as long as it did. The UK, which was hardly progressive in its own right, was out capping mofos who were trading slaves a half century before the US figured out its business. Most of Europe had their business with slavery settled by the start of the 19th century, so by any reasonable measure the US was a half century behind the curve. On the other hand, America's divorce from slavery was far more difficult than most of its peers in Europe, many of whom had not had slaves for centuries before officially outlawing slavery. The southern slaveowners were almost certainly the most powerful pro-slavery group on the planet, and they demonstrated their power by taking on the mighty USA in one of the bloodiest wars in history. That the US had the political will to prosecute this war to its conclusion (and it really was about slavery after the Emancipation Proclamation) is something to be proud of, in my opinion at least. edit - to address how the Civil War is taught in American schools, in everywhere but the deep south it is portrayed as the heroes Lincoln and Grant bludgeoning the misguided southerners out of their foolish ways (which is a fair enough view in my opinion), in the deep south it is taught as a terrible blue invasion that robbed us of our fundamental rights, also slavery what? Let's put more confederate flags on things because of "heritage" or some poo poo. In general the fact that most other modern nations had long since abandoned the practice is not even discussed. bewbies fucked around with this message at 22:22 on Aug 9, 2010 |
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Aug 9, 2010 22:13
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Royality posted:Also, if any American goons who are up with the American Civil war want to explain why it happened, what it was and what happened during it I'd love to hear it (screw wikipedia!). As a Brit I've never heard about it, we only talk about stuff that we won or was so long ago it doesn't have any relevance (1066 for example!). The posts above mine have done a great job, but I wanted to add this note. One of the reasons the civil war is so divisive is because of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_Confederacy At the time of the war, everyone knew it was about slavery. There is no way the war would have ever happened with anything else. But, years after the war, many Southerners deliberately sought to alter the public image of the war. Essentially, they painted the South as a doomed group of freedom fighters, nobly struggling for state's rights against the northern war machine. The Southerners were chivalrous knight-gentlemen, battling against an industrial horde for the land they loved. Many Southerners will refuse to call it the (American) Civil War, instead refering to it as "The War of Northern Agression" or "the War between the States" While it's true that your average Southerner was poor and didn't own slaves, the idea that the war was somehow not about slavery is a joke. Smirking_Serpent fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Aug 9, 2010 |
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Aug 9, 2010 22:48
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It's quite crazy that the same people who are the most jingoistic about America also celebrate it's greatest group of traitors.
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Aug 9, 2010 23:04
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Part 2: How to end up with two illegitimate governments and how to start a civil war in Finland. So 1918 comes along and there is still two armed organizations in the country, the Civil Guards and the Red Guards. Neither of which are controlled by the government. There had been a number of violent confrontations during the general strike of November and people had died. As the main socialist party, the Social Democrats, lost control of the Red Guards it meant that the revolutionary wing of the socialist movement now had armed forces. The only answer that the conservative right-wing Senate had was to call the former Russian cavalry officer C.G.E. Mannerheim to lead the Civil Guards and to pass a law to create a force to keep public order. Seeing this as a threat (which is certainly was) the Red Guards now either had to move on to revolution or disband. When a law was passed making the Civil Guards the official army, revolution came. It's commonly considered that the war started officially by two independent actions: in late January, Civil Guards acting on the orders of Mannerheim started disarming Russian troops and on the 28th the Red Guards seized Helsinki, which became the capital for the Finnish People's Delegation. A number of senators managed to reach the coastal city of Vaasa in western Finland, which became the temporary capital for the rump senate. Some remained underground in Helsinki. At this point, front lines were drawn fast. The industrial centers of the country, most in the southern part of the country were staunchly Red and the North was for the most part White (which is what the side of the rump senate ended up being called). The war had actually started in Karelia before the actual revolution, with a number of skirmishes between Red and Civil Guard troops due to Russian arms being sent into Finland by the Soviet government. Some Red centers in eastern and northern Finland quickly succumbed to being isolated from the rest of the Red-controlled territory. The opening phases of the war were very chaotic: it's worth remembering that neither side had any real officers or soldiers at this point. Here is a nice map to show you the situation in early February when most initial skirmishes had settled down and the situation was somewhat stable:  At this point of the war, the Red Guards were more active on the main front. The White forces were instead cleaning up behind the main front, for example the coastal town of Oulu up in the North. Some areas had remained in White hands near Helsinki and on the northwest coast. As far as numbers go, both sides were rather equal throughout the war. About 90000 soldiers fought on each side, and in addition there was about 60000 Russian troops in the country. However, beyond the initial stage, very few Russians actually bothered to fight for the Red government. Behind the lines on the White side, most Russian troops were disarmed without violence. What could have won the war for the Red side instead became a total non-factor. Strategically, the Whites were not in a good position. The areas that gave them most support were on the opposite sides of the country: Karelia in the east and Ostrobotnia on the west coast. Lines of communication and supply were threatened, since there weren't many railroads running across the country at that time. If you look at the map, you see the railroad that runs from Vaasa through Jyväskylä and towards Karelia. Cutting off that track was the major strategic goal for the Red forces during their offensive in February and early March. The main thrusts are noted on the map by red arrows. And the offensive was a complete failure. Not because the Whites were better, but because the Red Guards had no working leadership anywhere between the level of the high command in Helsinki and the company chiefs. The strategy was sound, but the forces available simply could not carry out a grand offensive. On a local level, some forces fought well but it did not matter much since on the whole, the Red forces didn't manage to accomplish much. Some attempts to educate officers for the Red forces were made by the Red government, but the war was over before that actually became a reality. Most former Russian-trained officers fought for the Whites. CGE Mannerheim turned out to be a pretty good commander-in-chief too. At the same time, there was a plot twist. 1300 German-trained troops that had earlier left the country to get trained in the Imperial German army for an eventual independence struggle, returned to Finland. All but a few of them joined the forces of the Vaasa rump senate. The Jäger troops ended up being used as officers and NCO's in the White army, making it virtually overnight vastly more effective than the Red one. The Red offensives petered out by late March, around which the White army started to show actual competence. Up until the arrival of the Jägers, it had been a war of armed civilians against armed civilians. Now, when the White side got the initiative, it was a war of armed civilians against somewhat better trained armed civilians with an occasional actual soldier thrown in the mix. And the Russian troops mostly were content with leaving the country the best they could. So, it's not hard to see what happened.  (Blue lines show white forces and red lines, eh) During March, there had been talk of a German intervention against the Red forces, but Mannerheim was determined to have a battle that would show that the Whites could have handled the war themselves. The largest industrial area of the country at the time was the city of Tampere, which is where the largest battles of the war took place. It was in fact the largest battle ever fought in the north up to that point, and the only real battle of note in the entire war, to be honest. On the attacking side, there were 16000 white troops, including a brigade of swedish volunteers. On the defending side, there was 14000 Red Guards. So, about equal in numbers which according to traditional military thinking is not very good for a major offensive. Except that the battleground looked like this:  The city of Tampere is situated between two lakes, with a river running through it. The general ineptness of the Red Guards quickly lead to the city being surrounded with a pincer movement. The local Red commander, Hugo Salmela was not too bad, for being a former actor with no military training, but was killed before the city was taken, because a drunken dude with an armed hand grenade blew up the Red general staff by mistake. Note: do not throw armed hand granades into a box of hand grenades. As a defense, the guy who blew up the staff wasn't the only one who was drunk on duty. Overall, the whites lost about a thousand men in their operations in and around Tampere, the Red Guards lost a bit more but 11000 Red soldiers were captured. And since this was a civil war, the Whites figured out that it was time for some revenge now and several Red soldiers and politicians and other public figures were just flat out murdered after having surrendered. Vae Victis:  With Tampere lost, the next disaster soon came after that. German troops, led by Rüdiger von der Goltz landed on the Hanko peninsula and another unit of Germans from the Ostsee Division landed in Loviisa which is to the east from Helsinki. It meant game over for Red Finland. However, the fighting didn't stop just because of that. Time for a cigarette and then the last part of the war.
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Aug 9, 2010 23:13
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lilljonas posted:The few times I've talked about the Civil War with "normal" (as in not history geek) Americans, they seem to think that the abolition of slaves after the Civil War was a progressive example of how freedom loving and democratic the US has always been. This is weird to me as I live in a country where slavery has been outlawed for 600 years, and given that it had been outlawed for a very long time pretty much everywhere in Europe by that time. Is that due to some kind of weird spin given to the war in US history classes, or what? "America was born because we wanted to be free from England, there were some problems along the way involving people in the South who didn't let people be free, then we fought two wars for freedom against the evil, old, un-free Europeans (but alongside the good, semi-free Europeans such as the Brits), spread freedom across Western Europe, and then in 1989 our way of freedom was vindicated by the un-free USSR collapsing because they wanted our freedom." Today, it's "The Middle East hates our freedom." It's a fairly typical positivist narrative ("everything is getting better and better," read here as "everything is getting more and more free"). It's no accident that Civil War revisionists play up the whole "state's rights" (freedom) vs. industrial (un-free) bureaucrats thing. North or South, we all love "freedom," however we define it (and we have many, many, ways).
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Aug 9, 2010 23:34
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Part 3: The war being practically over doesn't mean the dying stops. The Germans had landed on the 3rd and 7th of May and the last major offensives started.  The gray arrows show the German offensives, and by this time the focus of the fighting moved to Karelia, towards the third largest city in Finland at the time, Viipuri. The Germans reached Helsinki by the 10th of April and by the 14th the city was in German and white hands. A number of White troops took part in the battle, but they were quite unneeded. For the most part, the Red Guards by that time were fleeing towards Viipuri and the Soviet border as fast as they could. And who could blame them, considering that summary executions of prisoners and assorted tortures were quite certain by that time.  Germans manning a machine gun in Helsinki, probably after the fighting. The Germans managed to cut the area controlled by the Red forces in half which probably shorted the war by quite a bit and made the strategic position of the Red forces untenable. Western Finland and southern Finland were now lost to the Germans and the Whites. And as a side note, Sweden briefly occupied the Åland Islands for about two weeks around this time. The situation around Viipuri turned into the last major battle of the war, and the city ended up in White hands by the 29th of April. Almost 20000 White troops fought against a remnant of the Red Guards that numbered probably less than 7000 men. About 4000 Red soldiers were taken prisoner after the battle though, so most didn't even fight in the defense of the city. Around a thousand prisoners were executed by the White forces after the battle. With Viipuri lost, all that was left to do for the remains of the Red army was to surrended or go into exile in the Soviet Union. Most of the Finnish Worker's Delegation ended up in the Soviet Union and most of them died in Stalin's purges later on. Quite a few Finns who decided to go into exile later died in the gulags, too. There was no treaty or peace that would have ended the war: it just tapered off with a few skirmishes and cleanup actions. By the 15th of May, no resistance to the White army remained. With the war being won by the White forces of the rump Senate in Vaasa, there began in earnest what has been known later on as White terror. A significant number of Red soldiers and sympathizers were murdered both during the war and immediately after that. At least over 7000 people were murdered, mostly by shooting. Over a thousand went missing and in addition to actual executions after a brief trial, a large number of Red Guards were shot without a trial. For those who managed to avoid being murdered, there awaited a long period in a prison camp. Over 80000 people at best were housed in prison camps following the war. It was probably the largest humanitarian disaster in Finnish history, since there was practically no preparations whatsoever to house this many prisoners. Over 12000 prisoners died overall during the summer of 1918. I live about a half a mile from a former prison camp site which before that was a Russian garrison. Only about 20% of the prisoners there died, in the worst camp in Tamminiemi over a third of the prisoners died of malnutrition and disease. During and after the summer of 1918, 70000 people were charged with different crimes and sent to trial. All in all, most of the ones who actually were sent to trial were convicted, most with prison sentences of various lengths. Suspended sentences were used, but many people got sent straight back to the camps, up until most sentences were commuted and the prisoners paroled. By late 1918, over six thousand Red prisoners remained in various prisons, the last ones being pardoned in 1927. The final cost to the war was over 95000 people dead from a population of a bit above three million. That's quite a bit. And here so we don't end on a too gloomy note, is a picture of people being executed during the war. 
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Aug 9, 2010 23:55
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That was a really good summary of the Civil War. As a Finn it's pretty hard to believe that we had a brutal conflict like that not so long ago.
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Aug 10, 2010 00:04
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Those casualty numbers (and associated "dealings" with the reds, especially after capture) are staggering. Surprisingly brutal.
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Aug 10, 2010 00:29
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Is the Finnish Civil War still an issue in Finnish politics/culture?
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Aug 10, 2010 00:31
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Smirking_Serpent posted:Is the Finnish Civil War still an issue in Finnish politics/culture? Hahaha No. You never hear anyone even mention it. Some really old people have fights about what to call it, but that is all the controversy it causes. Two wars against the Soviet Union did a pretty good job in uniting the nation. THAT stuff comes up often.
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Aug 10, 2010 00:58
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They argue about what to call it? What are the options?
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Aug 10, 2010 01:15
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Well now I would like to hear summaries of the Finnish wars with the Soviets, as well as how they are treated in modern Finnish society. Also regarding current feelings on the American Civil War, I just want to clear something up so that some of the people in the thread who are from outside the US don't get the wrong idea. There is not some sort of massive divide between northern and southern states today. Are there rednecks in the deep south who ascribe to the "War of Northern Aggression" theory? Absolutely. But the idea that there are deep feelings of suppressed hatred for northern states throughout all southern states isn't just wrong, it's ludicrous.
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Aug 10, 2010 06:56
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So why did the U.S. cut off oil shipments to Imperial Japan (leading up to the bombing of Pearl Harbour)? Every resource I've looked at can't give a simple, straight answer.
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Aug 10, 2010 07:05
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melon cat posted:So why did the U.S. cut off oil shipments to Imperial Japan (leading up to the bombing of Pearl Harbour)? Every resource I've looked at can't give a simple, straight answer.
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Aug 10, 2010 07:15
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melon cat posted:So why did the U.S. cut off oil shipments to Imperial Japan (leading up to the bombing of Pearl Harbour)? Every resource I've looked at can't give a simple, straight answer. Because they didn't want Japan to completely overrun the Pacific. That's the simplest answer you'll get. Japan had the industry to build an Empire, but never the raw materials for it. That's why expanding into Manchuria was so important, and almost all of their oil was imported from the US. If the oil from the US was cut out, Japan had no other chance but to try to grab the oil fields of Indonesia or pull back. At the time of the oil embargo, Japan was running rampant across south-east asia, rapidly taking new territories. US cutting off the oil shipments was like them seeing Japan's bluff, and they didn't expect the reply to be an all out offence a la Pearl Harbor.
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Aug 10, 2010 07:15
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Godholio posted:They argue about what to call it? What are the options? These days it's usually simply called "Sisällissota" ("Internal War", translates to "Civil War"), but in the decades following 1918 and before the end of WW2, it was often referred to in official sources as "Vapaussota" (direct translation would be "Freedom war", AFAIK it's usually translated as "Independece war"), which was not entirely true, but the winning side tried to put a romantic spin on the bloody events. Another name used mainly by the winning side was "Red rebellion", while the reds themselves sometimes referred to the conflict as the "Class war", or simply just "the Revolution". Other names include "Crofter rebellion", "Veljessota" ("War of Brothers") and "Kansalaissota" (another Finnish name for "Civil war"). The more neutral ways to refer to the conflict are probably "The War of 1918", or even just "The events of (the spring of) 1918".
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Aug 10, 2010 07:55
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Was there any one battle that lead western European powers to go 'gently caress it, this knight and arrows bullshit is finished' or was there more of a gradual change towards more shot-heavy armies? I know that the Spanish tercios experienced a gradual change over their lifetimes, but then there were dramatic and to my vision sudden leaps in gunpowder warfare such as Jan Zizka's wagons from the Hussite wars. Were there any battles that really cemented that guns were the new in thing? edit: also can a Brit tell me a little bit about your civil war?
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Aug 10, 2010 08:35
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Was there any one battle that lead western European powers to go 'gently caress it, this knight and arrows bullshit is finished' or was there more of a gradual change towards more shot-heavy armies? I'd say that there was a period between "knights and arrows" and "shot-heavy armies", where pikemen and gendarmes dominated the field. But generally it's the Italian Wars that saw the creation of pike and shot armies, so check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cerignola for a real "oh poo poo, these guns can really wreck poo poo" point in history.
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Aug 10, 2010 09:42
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Mustang posted: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. I wish he took a right turn when he reached the Atlantic. Living with the North Florida crowd makes me cheer for the Union that much more.
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Aug 10, 2010 18:19
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lilljonas posted:One really big issue here is just how difficult it was to get around in most of Scandinavia. The terrain meant that a centralized feudal state took centuries longer to develop than in southern Europe, leaving farmers in a relatively strong position. Serfdom was not so common, and completely outlawed in Sweden in 1335, and we also don't get a real taxation system until the 13th century when the leidung system is removed. So generally, farmers in Scandinavia were better off than farmers in many other countries at the time. On that note, common farmers were under a much more feudal system in Denmark, and this shaped their state all the way into the modern era.
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Aug 10, 2010 20:36
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bewbies posted:...in the deep south it is taught as a terrible blue invasion that robbed us of our fundamental rights, also slavery what? Let's put more confederate flags on things because of "heritage" or some poo poo. In general the fact that most other modern nations had long since abandoned the practice is not even discussed. Smirking_Serpent posted:The Southerners were chivalrous knight-gentlemen, battling against an industrial horde for the land they loved. Many Southerners will refuse to call it the (American) Civil War, instead refering to it as "The War of Northern Agression" or "the War between the States" As a resident of the southern US (is Memphis "deep" enough), are you guys throwing out generalizations based off of popular representations of rednecks (which exist everywhere from coast to coast) or have you actually witnessed any of this in the education system? I grew up learning about both sides of the conflict... and while being taught to respect the valor of the troops of the CSA we were also shown that the cause was ultimately immoral. At worst it was "a war about states rights" but they didn't cover-up slavery as being that #1 right at risk. Never once did we salute or even hang a confederate flag on school grounds (though plenty of faux rednecks put them in their lifted trucks... moreso than actual rednecks). As for the "War of Northern Aggression" thing, I've never heard that in any sort of non-ironic way. Maybe the worst of the worst white trash would say something that stupid. I would go so far as to say that probably have as many pieces of Nazi memorabilia as they do Confederate. Sure, there are stupid bigots in the south, but I'm pretty sure there are just as many in New York City and Los Angeles. I'm tired of us being stereotyped as "those guys". Idiots are universal.
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Aug 10, 2010 22:10
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Bored at work = more writing on the Civil War! I figured I'd give an essay on the Battle of Shiloh, it is the most interesting battle of the war in my opinion. It was the first battle of the war that really showed how bloody the fighting would be, and it was the first battle that really horrified the public at large. It also featured two of the war's most interesting characters: we saw the rising star and near-failure of US Grant, and we also saw the death of one of the war's most interesting personalities (Albert Sidney Johnston). The battle took place in southwest Tennessee, which was considered to be in the Western theater of the war. In contrast to the Eastern theater, which was defined mainly by massive pitched battles of relatively well organized armies (Antietam, Gettysburg, Overland, etc) primarily trying to defeat Lee, the war in the West has a very different character: less organized, more anarchical, grittier, and arguably more violent. Battles in the west tended to be more in the wilderness, where long range artillery and rifle fire inflicted fewer casualties and hand to hand combat was far more common. Shiloh is probably the archetype of this kind of battle. In a lot of ways, it was more medieval than Napoleonic. US Grant at this time was seen as something of an enigma. He was known as a smart, capable officer, but he had battled with alcoholism and abject failure in civilian life (after resigning his commission prior to the war), and he did not have a particularly stellar reputation among Union officials or the public at large. He had, however, enjoyed some limited success in command during the early days of the war, which in view of the failures in the east, proved enough to get him command of an Army under the command of a general (Henry Halleck) who absolutely hated him. The day of Shiloh, Grant began the day miles away from the fighting, recovering from a fairly serious ankle injury that had resulted from a falling horse. Albert Sidney Johnston, in contrast, at the time of Shiloh was widely seen as the most capable officer serving on either side (his only real competition was Lee, who was not yet in command). His biography is like a movie: grew up on the frontier in Kentucky and Texas, wrangled a shady appointment to West Point, left the Army as an officer to serve as a private in the Texas Army, rose to the rank of General there, got shot in a duel where he refused to fire on his opponent, served as a politician for the Republic of Texas, went back into the US Army for the Mexican War, got promoted to command the entire Department of the Pacific, refused to give San Francisco to the CSA when asked, then decided (when Texas seceded) that he would fight for the South (his journey back from the west coast is fascinating a nd a book in its own right). He was close with Jefferson Davis, and was seen by both sides as the most capable field commander then serving. After receiving his general's commission, he reported to the Western Theater and organized the Army of Mississippi. Johnston's objective was a lot simpler than Grant's. He was to defend Mississippi and the waterways around it, and he was to do this by destroying Grant's army. The background for the battle was an offensive by Grant's Army of the Tennessee into western Kentucky and Tennessee. Grant was attempting to move down the Tennessee River and into Mississippi, with the ultimate goals of 1) destroying the CSA Army of the Mississippi, and 2) severing Memphis and much of the west from Richmond by taking key rail depots. At the time, this offensive was viewed as the focal point of the war (as little was going on in the East), and the attention of both nations was on these two armies. Johnston was the commander who seized the initative. Grant was away from the Army that morning; his trusted subordinate Sherman was in immediate command and was encamped at a place called Pittsburgh Landing in rural southern Tennessee. Sherman and Grant both were convinced that Johnston's army was 15 miles away, across the Mississippi border in a town called Corinth. Johnston, however, knew of Grant's location, and had devised a plan to conduct a surprise attack. His army crept, totally undetected, all the way up from Corinth, camped only a couple of miles from Grant and positioned themselves for an early morning attack. Grant's army had no pickets, screens, recon, or anything else going on to warn them of this attack, and they were taken completely by surprise as a result. It is here that what I'll call "the clusterfuck" begins. Johnston's army had positioned itself during the night, and lines between whole divisions were confusing and mangled. In addition, his battle plan was totally ignored by his subordinates (particularly PGT Beauregard, "hero" of Fort Sumter). The result of all this is that approximately 45,000 Confederate soldiers, poorly equipped, poorly led, and not uniformally dressed, waded into around 48,000 sleeping Union soldiers. When the fighting started, no one knew what the gently caress. Confederate units were all over one another and were unable to tell friend from foe (some estimates place 25%+ of CSA casualties as fratricides), Union soldiers were even more confused as they were being ripped out of their bivouac by a marauding army, inexperienced officers on both sides had no idea how to rally or organize their troops, and everyone was scared to death as few men had seen any combat to this point. The result was something that looked more like a medieval slash 'n' hack festival than two modern regimented armies. The scope and proximity of the fighting only made things worse. Grant, who somewhat amazingly did not panic nor overreact to this surprise attack, moved quickly down to the field. Sherman, who had been so embarassingly surprised, had effectively rallied a couple of divisions to conduct a determined defense, and in doing so was wounded and had at least 3 horses shot from under him. Grant arrived about a mile behind the main line and began organize available units to reinforce the line, and he did this with remarkable effect. That said, Grant probably would not have had time conduct this rally had two Union divisions not conducted one of the most epic fights of the war, at a place now known as "The Hornet's Nest". These two divisions aligned along a road (inaccurately called the "sunken road") and were pounded on ruthlessly by most of the Confederate Army, which was so disorganized by this point that no one realized that all they had to do was go around the stubborn defenders, instead of trying to uproot them. After 7 hours of what was perhaps the most brutal fighting of the war, around 25,000 soldiers and 50-odd cannon finally got the Union to abandon the position. Over half the Union casualties occurred here, but those 7 hours it took to move them meant the survival of the Army. It also cost the CSA their commander, as Johnston was mortally wounded, probably by his own troops, as he was attempting to organize the attacks against the forces on the road. The first day ended in roughly this position. The second day was wholly predicable. Grant brought up reinforcements enough to nearly double the size of his army, Beauregard (now in command) informed Richmond that he had won and would finish things up in the morning. Both armies poised to attack, and did exactly this early the next day. The CSA's defense against a force now twice its size was impressive, especially considering that no divisions, corps, or army organization existed any longer, but they were eventually overwhelmed and retreated back to Corinth. The aftermath of the battle is fascinating. The Confederacy mourned the loss of Johnston, who may well have been placed as commander of the Army of Northern Virginia (the CSA's main army in the east) had he survived Shiloh. As it was, the Army of Mississippi was in terrible shape, Memphis and all of Mississippi (to include the iconic Vicksburg) was now open to the Union. Despite what was a fairly impressive performance as a commander, Grant was absolutely mangled by the Union press, who falsely accused him of being drunk during the initial attack. Lincoln, to his credit, mostly ignored these reports, saying "I can't spare this man; he fights." Sherman was the main Union hero; this battle was the first major victory in what would be a spectacular (and controversial, if you read this thread) career. Sherman, however, was very nearly lost while on a recon-in-force mission a few days after the battle. Sherman was in command of around a division-sized element when he found and attacked a cavalry battalion led by one Nathan Bedford Forrest. Despite the long odds, Forrest's response to seeing a huge force attacking him was to charge straight at it. They very nearly made it to Sherman before they began to fall back. Forrest, however, didn't realize that his troops had retreated, and continued to charge until he was completely surrounded by Union soldiers. In a scene that I assume was something like "Braveheart" or "The Last Samurai", Forrest hacked away at the horde surrounding him until someone shot him in the spine, then despite this serious wound he snatched up a Union soldier and put him on his horse to cover himself as he ran from the Union army. He trundled around for a week with the musket ball in his lower back until it was finally removed (without anesthesia). The casualties from the battle were obscene: from around 111,000 soldiers engaged, nearly 24,000 were casualties with around 3,600 KIA on the field. This was more battlefield casualties than all previous American wars put together, and it made First Bull Run (which had so shocked everyone at the time) look like a slapfight. Interestingly, everyone thought of this battle as an aberration; no one imagined that far worse was to come. Finally, there is an interesting point of discussion: weapons vs. tactics. The traditional retelling of the Civil War states that weapons like the rifled musket and rifled artillery made Napoleonic tactics (eg, closely packed regimental formations) obsolete, but since no one realized this, casualties were ridiculously high. I disagree with this somewhat. The major tactical innovation that needed to occur was the concept of fire and maneuver. That is, the modern "fire team" concept, soldiers at good intervals moving individually from cover to cover, incrementally providing suppressing fire from covered positions. While this works very well, my contention is that it would not have worked in the Civil War, for two reasons. First, the rifled musket required a soldier to either be standing or to have a shitload of room on the ground (which slowed him down a lot) in order to load it. Thus, in order to maintain the highest rate of fire, a soldier had to be standing up, and this made movements to cover an impossibility. Second, the rate of fire of these weapons was extremely low. Even though their effective range was further than that of the smoothbore musket, they still had the same very low ROF, which necessitated larger groups of soldiers firing in concert to generate an effective weight of fire. In short, I think that the tactics used during the war were really not all that far behind the weaponry. It was instead the nature of the weapons themselves that caused the ridiculously high casualties: having weapons that were lethal at hundreds of yards, yet required the firer to remain standing and in a formation in order to maximize their firepower was the real culprit.
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Aug 10, 2010 22:19
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theBeaz posted:As a resident of the southern US (is Memphis "deep" enough), are you guys throwing out generalizations based off of popular representations of rednecks (which exist everywhere from coast to coast) or have you actually witnessed any of this in the education system? I grew up learning about both sides of the conflict... and while being taught to respect the valor of the troops of the CSA we were also shown that the cause was ultimately immoral. At worst it was "a war about states rights" but they didn't cover-up slavery as being that #1 right at risk. Never once did we salute or even hang a confederate flag on school grounds (though plenty of faux rednecks put them in their lifted trucks... moreso than actual rednecks). No, as a fellow southerner I can tell you that there were still way too many people in my high school and college history courses who wanted to downplay slavery or paint it as some sort of symptom of the Big Bad North stealing all the industrialization from the poor widdle South that, aw shucks, they just had deprive a group of people of their basic human rights. Yes, only the dumbest redneck racists will really believe that the South's actions in the Civil War weren't immoral, but I get so tired of these "lost cause" idiots trying to skirt the issue and defend the indefensible because they are ashamed that their great-granddaddy fought for slavery. Don't even get me started on that Confederate Flag waving nonsense.
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Aug 10, 2010 22:25
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I went to school in Texas and have both lived in and visited numerous southern states and have never met a single person who tried to downplay slavery or paint the cause of the confederacy as noble. The closest I've come is aforementioned rednecks plastering flag stickers on their truck bumpers. I guess I don't hang out in enough trailer parks. quick edit: Really this entire thing should be dropped, there are ignorant people in every region of the world and this is just a dumb tangential affair in what is otherwise a very interesting thread. tranceMD fucked around with this message at 23:28 on Aug 10, 2010 |
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Aug 10, 2010 23:25
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"Heritage not hate" is pretty stupid and I see that in suburban Maryland. I'd understand if this was Easton or Salisbury but no, you're driving home to a mansion most likely.
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Aug 11, 2010 03:36
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theBeaz posted:As a resident of the southern US (is Memphis "deep" enough), are you guys throwing out generalizations based off of popular representations of rednecks (which exist everywhere from coast to coast) or have you actually witnessed any of this in the education system? I grew up learning about both sides of the conflict... and while being taught to respect the valor of the troops of the CSA we were also shown that the cause was ultimately immoral. At worst it was "a war about states rights" but they didn't cover-up slavery as being that #1 right at risk. Never once did we salute or even hang a confederate flag on school grounds (though plenty of faux rednecks put them in their lifted trucks... moreso than actual rednecks). I didn't say that everyone in the South believed that. I don't think most people in the South believe that. I just thought that many of the foreigners might be confused why this is is still (mildly) controversial, and there's a very specific reason for that. I don't think anyone in this thread honestly thinks that the South = rednecks.
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Aug 11, 2010 03:50
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Smirking_Serpent posted:I don't think anyone in this thread honestly thinks that the South = rednecks. Question: (re: WW2, I apologize in advance) We've already discussed the Pacific Theater and how the defeat of the Japanese seemed inevitable either by Russian or American hands... how does the world typically view the war in the Pacific? It's a common sentiment that the world considers the USA to be very  about our involvement (and claiming victory) in Europe... but what about vs. Japan? Are we still looked down upon by others since the war against Japan was almost a "sure thing" or did it give us some major credibility as a fighting nation and our ability to mobilize even after the mess at Pearl Harbor?Also I don't mean thoughts regarding how the war ended with nuclear bombs, but rather the operation as a whole.
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Aug 11, 2010 04:32
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theBeaz posted:
From a New Zealand perspective, I think we feel America is entirely entitled to be about winning the war in the Pacific because, you know, from our perspective you did. New Zealand didn't really do much in the Pacific - unlike the Australians or the British or the Indians, say.Also, most New Zealanders who date from that vintage remember the Americans based in New Zealand extremely fondly - which is ironic because at the time a number of American activities were extremely (and at times even violently) disapproved of, including "stealing our women" and "being racist to our Maori".
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Aug 11, 2010 11:04
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The Pacific is different than Europe, given that Japan was at their height of their power when you started to fight them, not like Germany who was desperately clinging to their gains after several years of bloody battles with the Soviets. The only thing I might roll my eyes over is that the role of the Chinese resistance to Japan seems to be glossed over by Americans due to post-war antagonism. If Japan hadn't been bogged down in China since '37, it would have been more difficult for the US to start dealing with Japan four years later. But just like Americans are prone to gloss over the effort of the Soviet Union on the east front, they are prone to gloss over the effort of the Chinese. Because communists can't win wars after all.
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Aug 11, 2010 11:30
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lilljonas posted:The Pacific is different than Europe, given that Japan was at their height of their power when you started to fight them, not like Germany who was desperately clinging to their gains after several years of bloody battles with the Soviets. Yeah, it's actually really bad because the way it's presented in US history books, China didn't really fight in the war at all, just got conquered. Sometimes there were throwaway lines about how their was a Chinese resistance mainly brought up when covering the communists and nationalists in China rather than under the topic of the war proper.
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Aug 11, 2010 17:39
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The Pacific is viewed as America's war here.
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Aug 11, 2010 18:17
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lilljonas posted:The only thing I might roll my eyes over is that the role of the Chinese resistance to Japan seems to be glossed over by Americans due to post-war antagonism. If Japan hadn't been bogged down in China since '37, it would have been more difficult for the US to start dealing with Japan four years later. But just like Americans are prone to gloss over the effort of the Soviet Union on the east front, they are prone to gloss over the effort of the Chinese. Because communists can't win wars after all. Which is odd, because from what I've read it was the Nationalists that did most of the fighting. If anything, the Communists were a hindrance to the war effort, looking to push their own agenda while the Nationalists were otherwise occupied.
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Aug 11, 2010 22:47
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Smirking_Serpent posted:Is the Finnish Civil War still an issue in Finnish politics/culture? Not really in a way that is directly mentioned (although I recall an old mans outburst in 2007 at war memorial service: "They shot my father in front of my eyes. I will never forgive!" ) but it underlies a lot of issues. Take, for example, conscript army and the discussion whether we should move to a professional force. One big argument for conscription is that you can't use a conscript army against the people: obviously someone is still thinking about the Jaegers. For the longest time organizing voluntary military practice was forbidden. Gustav Hägglung, former Chief of Defense, mentions the resistance in his memoir "Leijona ja kyyhky" that he met while trying to reorganize voluntary national defense activities: "If you do that, we'll start the Red Guards again." The class distinctions and perceived unfairness that started the war have pretty much disappeared, and the young generations speak of the civil war as something that has no relevance in life anymore.
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Aug 12, 2010 01:00
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Something previously unknown to me that has recently caught my attention was the "blood for goods" program during WWII, where an SS officer gave a proposal to a Hungarian diplomat to take to the allies where one million Jews would be freed in exchange for 10,000 trucks. It was ultimately rejected by allied intelligence because it was believed to have been a fake offer with the ultimate goal of splitting the Western allies and the Soviet Union. This theory was supported by the fact that the deal expressed that the Germans would only use the trucks on the Eastern Front. So, does anyone know more about it that could shed some more light on the deal? Was it possible that the offer was genuine and one million Hungarian Jews could be saved or was it merely all a bluff? Apparently there is intelligence that shows that this deal was brokered without Hitler's knowledge, and the SS officer Adolf Eichmann who made the deal was already starting the deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz for extermination. I also can't imagine that any of the German high command would agree to exchange the Jewish people for war materials when their extermination was already placed as a higher priority than anything else, even when it was clear Germany was losing the war. I really don't know what to make off this whole intrigue here. It's really painful to think that there might have been a way to save a lot of people from their terrible fate at the hands of the Nazis and we ignored it. It's just so hosed up and depressing. 
Shimrra Jamaane fucked around with this message at 03:38 on Aug 12, 2010 |
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Aug 12, 2010 03:34
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