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As the thousanth post in this thread, I ask you: Will there be a major, conventional war (lasting over a year) in the next twenty? If so, who?
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Aug 23, 2010 07:32
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Groda posted:Are you a Dane or Swede? I live in Skĺne, so yes.  BDB: probably, depending on your definition of a "major conventional war". World War III? I would say no. Big armed conflicts over several years with many many thousands of casualties? Yes. I do think that the post-Cold War trend of armed conflicts consisting more and more of civil wars, but things like Iraq, Afghanistan and Georgia shows that even large military powers are still keen on pushing other countries around militarily. It is not a long stretch to assume that Israel will start something like in Gaza or Libanon again if you give them 20 years to do it, and I would be very surprised if something like the Eritran-Ethiopian war is not repeated in Africa, especially given the clusterfuck of Sudan and Sudanese independence movements. But I expect the list to keep looking like this: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/index.html Lots of internal struggles, with some long going conflicts that just won't go away. Notice how many of those started in the late 60's and 70's. Yeah, those won't go away easily. lilljonas fucked around with this message at 07:46 on Aug 23, 2010 |
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Aug 23, 2010 07:32
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billion dollar bitch posted:As the thousanth post in this thread, I ask you: How do you define conventional? Would the recent war in the Congo apply?
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Aug 23, 2010 14:52
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coolatronic posted:I have heard that the United States originally became involved in Vietnam because the French refused to join NATO otherwise. Even if this is true, I am sure it was only one of many reasons for US involvement over there, but can anyone confirm or deny that there is a link between the US in Vietnam and France joining NATO? At the risk of being called an "apologist" or something similar I'd like to talk about this, because it is one of the more fascinating bits of foreign policy in American history. As early as late August of 1945 (read: before the war was even officially over), de Gaulle had imparted to Truman that France (the Fourth Republic in this case) intended to reestablish control over Indochina. Ironically enough this was sold as a vehicle to "decolonize" which didn't make any goddamn sense at all, especially with the dedicated decolonization designs that were already under design at that point. During the war, the Viet Minh (the predecessors to the North Vietnamese that we'd eventually spend a decade fighting) had actively worked with the Allies during the war and had done quite well against two Japanese incursions into Indochina, and Ho Chi Minh was so sure that the US would support him instead of the French that he quoted the Declaration of Independence almost word for word as he declared Vietnam's independence as the Japs left. Viewed from this perspective, the US had some strong incentives to support both Ho and Vietnamese independence. However, the Allies had agreed as far back as 1943 that Indochina would return to French control after the war, at first intended as an anti-Japanese measure, later as a concession to the French. This wouldn't have been a big deal postwar, however, had a major conflicted factor not existed: the Marshall Plan. As we all know, after WWII the US took the leading role in helping Europe rebuild, and France was, in a lot of ways, the centerpiece of this effort (incidentally, the total aid offered was around 5% of the US GDP at the time which is mind blowing to me). The relevant backdrop to this is that the Fourth Republic was woefully unstable from its inception...due to any number of factors this government teetered around like a drunken amputee throughout its blessedly short life; this was the government that the US was having to deal with as they attempted to restabilize European politics and economies. De Gaulle essentially demanded tremendous concessions in various areas in exchange for his cooperation with the Marshall Plan, and one of the big ones, as mentioned above, was the return of Indochina to French control. So, Truman had a pretty big decision to make. At the time, the Marshall Plan was seen not only as critical to establishing a peaceful, stable Europe (remember, they had fought two massive wars over the previous 3 decades), as well as resisting the increasingly belligerent Soviet policies in the region (remember, the Berlin airlift occurred at this time, among other things). Truman chose to back the French, which included backing their policy in Indochina, and this was the seed that eventually grew into the Vietnam War. So, off went the French (and the Brits as well actually) to do battle with the Viet Minh and retake what was "rightfully" theirs. This is where the quagmire of Vietnam really began: the French military was extremely competent (in contrast to their historical reputation) but were underequipped and underfunded due in large part to the French government, so almost immediately American support was required to prop up the campaign. At the same time, almost immediately French communists (who were massive in number) and other groups both left and right wing began heavy public protests of the war. Elections began to be run on antiwar platforms, and very strange political alliances began to emerge in the French legislature (ultra right wing + communists working together). The immediate result was to further magnify the instabilities of the French government (there were 17 different French governments during this ~8 year period), and that coupled with the fact that much of the opposition was COMMUNIST (who were, in large part, funded by the Soviets) caused something of a panic for both the French republicans and the US. Not only was France becoming unstable, but it was COMMUNISTS who were doing at least some of the destabilizing. The predictable response was for the US to decide that the stability of the French government was now tied up in Vietnam...if they left, the COMMUNISTS (in France, we really didn't care much about Ho and his buds) would win, and so we shouldered the financial burden of what was a surprisingly expensive war. Of course, eventually the French lost, and their government did indeed collapse somewhat due in part to their involvement in Vietnam. Personally, I don't fault the US much for their decision making during this time period, they were essentially having to choose between the loyalty of a powerful and critical ally and a somewhat marginal and not well known group of freedom fighters in a very strange nation. The very high tensions between the US and USSR (and the somewhat real threat of a major communist movement taking hold in French government) added to the defensive nature of the decision making, and in a proper historical context it is difficult to criticize what Truman, et al chose to do. That said, had we simply supported Ho, the French probably would have capitulated and we would have had a second Marshal Tito in Southeast Asia, complete with one of the most effective militaries in the world and a serious bone to pick with the Chinese (and the Soviets, somewhat). bewbies fucked around with this message at 15:50 on Aug 23, 2010 |
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Aug 23, 2010 15:43
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I have never fully understood why Spain went from superpower to also-ran seemingly so quick. All I ever heard was that absurd amounts of gold they were getting/stealing screwed up their economy, and the whole Spanish Armada going down. WWII questions: First, what were India's contributions against Japan? And what about the war on the Asian mainland in general? I know China's situation was complicated by internal strife and losing lots of good units in 1937, but thats about it. Second, why did Japan have such a huge problem with training and replaceing personel? From what I remember it seems like by the half-way point in the war all their good pilots/air crews were gone and always replaced by green units.
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Aug 24, 2010 02:04
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KurdtLives posted:I have never fully understood why Spain went from superpower to also-ran seemingly so quick. All I ever heard was that absurd amounts of gold they were getting/stealing screwed up their economy, and the whole Spanish Armada going down. At lot of their superpower status came from the other states their rulers ruled outside of Spain. Flanders and Italy were the economic powerhouses of the Renaissance and as those areas pulled away the relatively unindustrialized Spanish economy was no match for those of more populated and modernized states. Additionally, it'd be a mistake to label their colonies as even remotely controlled by the crown. They were much to far from Spain for any sort of governance to be effective and relatively unpopulated by Spaniards.
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Aug 24, 2010 02:43
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Also domestically, Spain had a series of weak kings, who were never able to control the bickering and in-fighting between the Spanish nobility. They were never able to set up a modern civil servant system like the British or the French. The nobles ran the different government branches, and looked out for their own estates instead of the welfare of the state, and so Spain lagged behind the other European powers.
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Aug 24, 2010 02:49
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When did soldiers in the world wars get to go home? If you're in the trenches the day an armistice is declared on November 11, how long until you're sipping tea in England again?
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Aug 24, 2010 03:32
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KurdtLives posted:Second, why did Japan have such a huge problem with training and replaceing personel? From what I remember it seems like by the half-way point in the war all their good pilots/air crews were gone and always replaced by green units. Several issues. Harsh climate and the need to have enough troops posted to oversee occupied Manchuria, Korea, Taiwan and the parts of China they controlled, together with the various islands across the Pacific stretched them thin. This was later worsened as the rivalry between the navy and the army lead to difficulties in getting supplies all over this stretched Pacific empire, and the Americans very strategically worsened the situation by crippling the badly escorted Japanese merchant fleet. In the end, some two third of Japanese casualties were from starvation and disease, and the lack of ammunition and fuel for airplane support lead to extremely deadly close quarter combat. Another issue was the high attrition of pilots. Japan had really good planes at the start of the war, but as the war progressed, US fighters caught up. Lots of good pilots were lost at Guadalcanal and Midway, and from the only book I've read on the issue (Kamikaze Diaries, which is an amazing book), the leadership in charge of training replacement pilots were more concerned about drilling patriotism and physical hardiness instead of teaching piloting skills. The lack of supplies and planes meant that new pilots had very little air time, which was a disaster when they met seasoned American pilots, especially as the american planes were now much more advanced. After the Battle of the Philippine Sea it was pretty much over for the Japanese pilots, who were so strapped for planes that they resigned to kamikaze attacks, and when you start using your planes as guided missiles, you really don't get veteran pilots anymore. Logistics, stretching thin, bickering betwen army and navy, reliance on patriot rhetorics instead of R&D, and a string of costly defeats.
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Aug 24, 2010 07:43
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lilljonas posted:the leadership in charge of training replacement pilots were more concerned about drilling patriotism and physical hardiness instead of teaching piloting skills. I should of known, the instructors were drinking the kool-aid. Thank you very much.
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Aug 24, 2010 08:19
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KurdtLives posted:I have never fully understood why Spain went from superpower to also-ran seemingly so quick. All I ever heard was that absurd amounts of gold they were getting/stealing screwed up their economy, and the whole Spanish Armada going down. There were of course several factors, but yes, the gold played in. You see, back in those days economic theory didn't really exist among national rulers, beyond a vague "gold=good". So when the Spanish started shipping tons of gold from the New World, they thought that they had found the ultimate source of wealth. And they did become very rich - for a short while. However, after a while economic factors that we today take for granted - in this case the balance of supply and demand - kicked in, and suddenly the Spanish gold wasn't worth as much as it used to be. So you could say that Spain inadvertibly invented inflation.
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Aug 24, 2010 13:40
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KurdtLives posted:I have never fully understood why Spain went from superpower to also-ran seemingly so quick. All I ever heard was that absurd amounts of gold they were getting/stealing screwed up their economy, and the whole Spanish Armada going down. Can't help you with India but I linked a couple pages on China a couple pages back. China more or less singlehandedly tied up millions of Japanese soldiers and an untold amount of resources for the entire duration of the war, bleeding itself dry in the process. Wikipedia has pretty extensive coverage here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sino-Japanese_War
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Aug 24, 2010 14:57
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Mr. Sunshine posted:There were of course several factors, but yes, the gold played in. You see, back in those days economic theory didn't really exist among national rulers, beyond a vague "gold=good". So when the Spanish started shipping tons of gold from the New World, they thought that they had found the ultimate source of wealth. And they did become very rich - for a short while. However, after a while economic factors that we today take for granted - in this case the balance of supply and demand - kicked in, and suddenly the Spanish gold wasn't worth as much as it used to be. So you could say that Spain inadvertibly invented inflation. A historical note: While for centuries rulers have borrowed astronomical sums for wars, buildings, or other projects, Montenegro invented deficit spending as we know it today.
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Aug 24, 2010 22:13
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Just read a chapter about the Dardanelles campaign in WWI. Is it my imagination, or were there moments early in the naval and ground campaigns where a brutally aggressive strategy could have forced the issue, and taken no more casualties than the UK ultimately took anyway?
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Aug 25, 2010 03:11
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Zorak of Michigan posted:Just read a chapter about the Dardanelles campaign in WWI. Is it my imagination, or were there moments early in the naval and ground campaigns where a brutally aggressive strategy could have forced the issue, and taken no more casualties than the UK ultimately took anyway? Cant speak for the ground campaign, but hindsight is 20/20, and imagine if you were the naval commander. Would you want to ram your shiny new Queen Elizabeth class dreadnought up a narrow strait filled with mines, torpedoes, artillery on the sides and the SMS Goben? Sure it could have worked, but the Admiralty was not willing to risk it, since they imagined the half the fleet sinking in the narrow straits. Edit: The allied forces lost a crapton of ships, mostly older pre-dreadnoughts- 6 battleships sunk 3 battleships damaged 1 battlecruiser damaged 1 destroyer sunk 8 submarines lost But, to risk a significant portion of your Mediterranean fleet was not something they wanted to do. Especially since they tried numerous times to clear the mines, but the minesweepers would come under fire from the shore and turn around. Also floating mines. And torpedoes. Also guns. lots of guns. Guns that were really difficult to spot, and shore bombardment was pretty much in its infancy, so they werent sure if they could reliably silence all the forts. However, who knows? If the Allied forces pulled a Farragut and said "drat the torpedoes! full speed ahead!" and plowed through regardless of losses, they most likely would have lost at least a few more ships, but would the presence of a few predreadnoughts and maybe a modern dreadnought off the horn be enough to force Turkey out of the war? Probably not, since there were no ground for a landing or invasion, so the only option would be to bombard Istanbul. Saint Celestine fucked around with this message at 05:51 on Aug 25, 2010 |
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Aug 25, 2010 05:19
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Zorak of Michigan posted:Just read a chapter about the Dardanelles campaign in WWI. Is it my imagination, or were there moments early in the naval and ground campaigns where a brutally aggressive strategy could have forced the issue, and taken no more casualties than the UK ultimately took anyway? The British really hosed up the ground campaign. They telegraphed their intentions for an invasion weeks ahead of time, giving the Ottomans several weeks to prepare. They were way too slow ashore, and once ashore large parts of their forces just ended up standing around! I sadly can't remember his name right now, but the commander for one of the invasion beaches never left his command ship. Once his forces had walked ashore virtually unopposed, he sent them a letter congratulating them on their great advance - and then never ordered them further forward! E: The only part of the Gallipoli invasion that worked as intended was the withdrawal, which was so masterfully executed that not a single British life was lost, and the Ottomans never realized that the British were leaving until they were already gone. Mr. Sunshine fucked around with this message at 11:35 on Aug 25, 2010 |
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Aug 25, 2010 11:33
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I recall that the Dardanelles landing was delayed by a few extra days when someone suddenly noticed that the rifles and ammunition were on the cargo ships and not on the troop transports.
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Aug 25, 2010 11:51
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Mr. Sunshine posted:The British really hosed up the ground campaign. They telegraphed their intentions for an invasion weeks ahead of time, giving the Ottomans several weeks to prepare. They were way too slow ashore, and once ashore large parts of their forces just ended up standing around! I sadly can't remember his name right now, but the commander for one of the invasion beaches never left his command ship. Once his forces had walked ashore virtually unopposed, he sent them a letter congratulating them on their great advance - and then never ordered them further forward! I don't see the Gallipoli campaign being successful no matter how the stars might have aligned; there wasn't a way to ungently caress the ground campaign. The British Army at the time--and indeed, most armies of the Great War--were simply not built for the rapid movement and expansion an amphibious campaign required. I think it would have behooved them to initially aim a little bit lower in order to iron out any doctrinal kinks, rather than immediately trying for the knockout blow. Finally, I find the whole premise of the Dardanelles campaign questionable. Suppose they break out of the Peninsula, and make it to Istanbul, and the Ottomans decide to fight it out in the streets? Street fighting of that sort requires a certain level of small-unit autonomy, which was utterly lacking in the British Army of the day. At worst, it would have become another Kut-El-Amara.
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Aug 25, 2010 13:50
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Saint Celestine posted:Cant speak for the ground campaign, but hindsight is 20/20, and imagine if you were the naval commander. Would you want to ram your shiny new Queen Elizabeth class dreadnought up a narrow strait filled with mines, torpedoes, artillery on the sides and the SMS Goben? Sure it could have worked, but the Admiralty was not willing to risk it, since they imagined the half the fleet sinking in the narrow straits. That's actually the part that was making me crazy. They started out the attack in the conviction that losing pre-dreadnought battleships or lighter units would not be a big deal, but then every time they actually lost one in an attack, they'd pull back and try to figure out what went wrong. If they'd made their first push with every available predreadnought, determined not to retreat no matter what, they might have lost six in one go, but the rest might have managed to get up the strait. Every moment of hesitation after the first attack gave the enemy time to lay more mines, position more guns, etc. I agree that actually invading Turkey on a large scale would be a non-starter, but even the Turks seemed worried that the government would fall if an enemy could bombard their cities at will.
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Aug 25, 2010 16:53
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Zorak of Michigan posted:That's actually the part that was making me crazy. They started out the attack in the conviction that losing pre-dreadnought battleships or lighter units would not be a big deal, but then every time they actually lost one in an attack, they'd pull back and try to figure out what went wrong. If they'd made their first push with every available predreadnought, determined not to retreat no matter what, they might have lost six in one go, but the rest might have managed to get up the strait. Every moment of hesitation after the first attack gave the enemy time to lay more mines, position more guns, etc. Well they said that, because keep in mind this is the first time anyones actually tried doing shore bombardment of this scale and range with dreadnoughts. The Turkish guns could only be taken out by a direct hit and it was apparently very hard to spot where your shells were landing cause there were no shell splashes. Anyways, so the allies decided to send more modern ships to help out, like the battlecruisers and the brand new HMS Queen Elizabeth. Except when they sent them, they were under orders not to risk them. This actually held them back. They were also hampered by the fact that they didnt know how many mines or torpedos or what not were waiting in the narrows. We know now that if they had just charged in, they most likely would have forced the straits, but at that time, the possibility of losing most or all of their crappy predreadnoughts as well as a newer ship was a very real possibility.
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Aug 25, 2010 17:20
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It's also an example of the kind of thinking that all the involved nations suffered from, and which helped make the war into the bloody, senseless mess it became. Every combatant nation, from the king down to the lowest soldier, were convinced that their culture, their morale and their warriors were superior to those other fellows, and one good push would send those uncultured cowards running. Strangely enough, the "one good push" never worked, no matter how many times you pushed...
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Aug 25, 2010 17:50
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Mr. Sunshine posted:It's also an example of the kind of thinking that all the involved nations suffered from, and which helped make the war into the bloody, senseless mess it became. Every combatant nation, from the king down to the lowest soldier, were convinced that their culture, their morale and their warriors were superior to those other fellows, and one good push would send those uncultured cowards running. I disagree! Farragut at the battle of Mobile Bay just rammed through a line of mines while under fire from forts and "one good push"ed his way to victory.
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Aug 25, 2010 17:59
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I think that knocking out the Ottoman Empire wasnt the point of the Gallipolli campaign, rather, it was to ensure a steady flow of supplies to Russia through their far more developed Black Sea ports, rather than going the Northern Route.
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Aug 25, 2010 19:39
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I'll have to double check, but I recall that it might have been Churchill or other allied leaders who distinctly had the goal of knocking the Ottomans out of the war with the Gallipoli campaign. From the Ottoman perspective at least, they were all ready to abandon Istanbul if British dreadnoughts showed up at the horn.
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Aug 25, 2010 20:00
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Saint Celestine posted:I'll have to double check, but I recall that it might have been Churchill or other allied leaders who distinctly had the goal of knocking the Ottomans out of the war with the Gallipoli campaign. From the Ottoman perspective at least, they were all ready to abandon Istanbul if British dreadnoughts showed up at the horn. There were a lot of reasons for the campaign. Knocking out the Ottomans was certainly one of them, but you must remember that the Ottomans were really not much of a threat to anyone other than maybe the British forces in Iraq (even the Russians managed to beat them in a rather horrifying war in eastern Anatolia). The biggest reason was really to open the supply lines to Russia through the Bosphorus, as they were more or less cut off from Britain and France by 1915. In addition to that, Churchill in particular was also hoping that some south Europe countries (mainly Greece) would join the Allies in exchange for the chance to nab some Ottoman territory, which would then open up a third front on the Central Powers and force Austria-Hungary to defend itself more directly. One of the more interesting strategic debates of the time was whether to try and open the Bosphorus or just invade Germany near Bremen/Wilhelmshaven (Fisher was the proponent of the latter). Given how Gallipoli went I can't imagine a direct invasion of Germany would have gone much better, but it is an interesting thing to think about.
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Aug 25, 2010 20:13
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Fisher if I recalled, wanted to use the British fleet to land troops in the Baltic, 90 miles from Berlin and in his words - "Tie up a million troops". Probably would have been a military disaster.
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Aug 25, 2010 20:35
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The most interesting thing about Gallipoli is the sheer veneration it is held in with Australians. I nearly got punched by an Australian when I suggested that more British soldiers were killed in Gallipoli than Australians. I had to retract my statement under threat of physical violence and admit that more Australians and Kiwis did infact die in Turkey than the British. It seems to be some strange thing they are taught, and I was more than willing to agree to an a-historical fact to prevent violence on myself. But why is it that Australians think nobody else was there and they did all the fighting and dieing?
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Aug 26, 2010 00:04
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asbo subject posted:The most interesting thing about Gallipoli is the sheer veneration it is held in with Australians. I nearly got punched by an Australian when I suggested that more British soldiers were killed in Gallipoli than Australians. Mel Gibson.
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Aug 26, 2010 00:12
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I just read The Conquerors by Michael Beschloss, why would the Morgenthau Plan have been ineffective in a Post-War Germany? Why was FDR and Truman so reluctant to accept it?
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Aug 26, 2010 00:12
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asbo subject posted:But why is it that Australians think nobody else was there and they did all the fighting and dieing? It's this "small island in a big world" mentality we have. Constantly under the shadow of "mother England" we've tended to have a bit of a "we can do this too!" nature. The fact is Australia's always been a support role in many engagements, so to compensate there's always this attempt to put a positive spin on something that wasn't really that important at all. The common theme in any Australian engagement is "shining through hardship", see also Kadoda trail and Vietnam. Gallipolli has become such a byword for "Aussie battlers", "Mateship" and other jingoistic echos of sacrifice. You have to remember that it was dreamed up by a British journo, who wasn't there in the first place, and in some way it was an attempt to comfort the readers that the Australians did something other than getting shredded due to poor planning. It's gotten to a point where it's "Un-Australian" not to acknowledge the advent. There was a huge surge in nationalism during the run of John Howard where he went so far as to suggest he'd claim that patch of Turkish soil as there was more Australian blood there than Turkish.
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Aug 26, 2010 00:55
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WebDog posted:
Jesus, your country really is quite stupid. I had not quite appreciated this till now. No offence to you mate, fair dinkum. But the small island in a big world and living under englands shadow comment really confuses me geographically if not culturally. asbo subject fucked around with this message at 01:19 on Aug 26, 2010 |
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Aug 26, 2010 01:00
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To contribute to this thread, can anyone tell me about why the Swedes were so good at firing muskets before 1645? I was reading a book about the English Civil War and it mentioned the New Model Army adopted the Swedish method of firing muskets- the third rank stood, the second rank squatted down and the front rank kneeled. I had it in my head that was a British army invention, probably from watching this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1csr0dxalpI&NR=1 awfully racist film that it is
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Aug 26, 2010 02:50
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I'm going to try this question again since the only response I got was a lovely attempt at trolling. How badly did the Sack of Baghdad by the Mongols set back Islamic civilization and Western civilization as a whole?
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Aug 26, 2010 03:14
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Sandwolf posted:I just read The Conquerors by Michael Beschloss, why would the Morgenthau Plan have been ineffective in a Post-War Germany? Why was FDR and Truman so reluctant to accept it? The way I understood it is that Germany was an economic powerhouse, and the economies of the european nations at the time were inexorably linked. By turning Germany into a pastoral expanse, you run the risk of crippling the European economy. It also would have killed a lot of people, but that, I think, was ultimately secondary.
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Aug 26, 2010 03:40
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asbo subject posted:Jesus, your country really is quite stupid. Pretty much. ANZAC day REALLY suffers from being buried under clods of revisionism. For starters, most people tend to forget it also includes New Zealand. Around the time of the Vietnam war attitudes changed dramatically and by the mid 1970's it had pretty much been forgotten. Peter Wier's film kickstarted the 1980 revival along with the incessant preaching that Australia "Was born on the battlefields of Turkey", despite being a federation at the time, and over the decade remembering the losses at Anzac slowly turned into a nationalistic rock concert promoted by the PM. Many veterans don't bother going there as they no longer see it as a solemn remembrance but a showpiece where former Generals appear on commercials asking Australians to have a pint for honor, sponsored by VB and Legacy. http://raiseaglass.com.au/#/videos And this is what is the really tragic part, the fact that anyone who's 20 now only sees Anzac day as something as another "Australia day" without understanding how it actually came about. It's been overblown to proportion as there's very little in Australia's military history that plays any worldly significance, and there's a tendency to overplay participation in wars as a crucible of sacrifice and hardship, but the question is for what exactly.
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Aug 26, 2010 04:51
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asbo subject posted:To contribute to this thread, can anyone tell me about why the Swedes were so good at firing muskets before 1645? I was reading a book about the English Civil War and it mentioned the New Model Army adopted the Swedish method of firing muskets- the third rank stood, the second rank squatted down and the front rank kneeled. Because of the original "warrior king" of the 17th century, Gustav II Adolf (Gustavus Adolphus) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustavus_Adolphus_of_Sweden He pretty much kicked all kinds of rear end during the 30 years war, and had an impeccable moustache.  He turned the failure of the protestants in the 30 years war by intervening and beating the Holy Roman Empire silly, and is one of the fathers of modern warfare, innovating every single part of early 17th century battlefield tactics. He started to use mobile artillery and invented the light field artillery. He started the tactic of rotational shot in rank and he integrated cavalry tactics to use infantry and artillery for protection. He pretty much made the pike and shot tercio obsolete by figuring out much more efficient ways to deploy troops in more shallow and mobile formations, leaving room for rapid redeployments that was impossible in the traditional pike and shotte army. He also made leaps and bounds towards making the army a combined arms army, where every part was seen as integral to success and reinforcing each other for maximum strenght, instead of the enmity and disdain that cavalry, artillery and infantry usually had for each other in other armies at the time. And every single troop was extensively drilled, not only in their specific role, which made the army much more efficient and fluent than their enemies: these changes altogether made his infantry fire three times as fast as their enemies, which goes a long time to explaining why Gustavus could start wars against pretty much every neighbour and beat them. To put it in perspective, he made tiny Sweden into the third biggest country in Europe. Then he got shot because he charged into the fog of Lützen so much faster than his slumpy entourage. Oh, but he still won that battle anyway, the smug bastard.
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Aug 26, 2010 09:24
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WebDog posted:Pretty much. Almost everything in the post applies to New Zealand as well - including the convenient glossing over the Australian role.
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Aug 26, 2010 11:05
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:I'm going to try this question again since the only response I got was a lovely attempt at trolling. This isn't something I've studied much personally but I'll give it a shot. First, the background: Hulagu Khan was the aggressor (I believe he was a great-grandson of Genghis). He was a fairly typical Mongol raider, and was granted the far southwestern portion of his grandfather's empire which put him in a position to raid and eventually conquer a large part of what is today the Persian Gulf region. Baghdad was one of his early campaigns, and it was not intended as a territory grab but rather as a wealth-stealing kind of expedition, and possibly as retribution for an ambassador being killed by the muslims. The Abbasids were the defenders, we know these guys best as the caliphs who oversaw a lot of the Islamic Golden Age. The Golden Age is one of the most glossed-over historical events in Western schooling; without going into too much detail, the ay-rabs managed, during the heart of this Golden Age (roughly 300 years say, 800CE-1100CE) to invent, create, and envision more useful things than the rest of mankind had done collectively in his entire history to that point. I can't cite this, but I've heard claims (albeit from middle eastern scholars) that nearly all of our modern sciences were really born in this era. The wiki page is just as unreadable as any other historical wiki, but you can get an idea of how many modern concepts these guys were responsible for just by glancing at the page. In this context, the Abbasids were entirely comparable to the Medicis or Charlemagne when it came to facilitating this environment. They maintained a relatively peaceful empire despite its massive size (remember, Europe was in a near-constant state of war at this time), they facilitated sharing of knowledge through books and schools, and much of this was done at their capital in Baghdad. In Baghdad, there was one place in particular which was, at the time of the Mongol invasion, almost certainly the single most important building in the world: the Great Baghdad Library, the "House of Wisdom", or "Bait al Hikma" in Arabic (people in the middle east still use that term in various ways). The library was a place where people from literally all over the world (to include England and China, for example) came to have important texts translated into arabic, which was the de facto lingua franca for a huge part of the world at this time. There was a small army of scribes ready to copy these works into manuscripts, and as a result the library probably had more books in it than the rest of the world put together. This, coupled with the breadth of the topics was what made this building so important. So, long story short, the mongols invade, take Baghdad without much of a fight, and destroy the entire city with great loss of life. They went to great lengths to destroy the Library, the oft-repeated line being that "the river went black with ink from the books" or something like that. So, this incalculable loss of knowledge occurred and that is awful; also bear in mind that books were arguably the most valuable commodity in the world at this time, the financial cost of this event is likewise staggering. Yay war. This event is often cited as the end of the Islamic Golden Age, in much the same way as the Bonfire of the Vanities is seen as the end of the Italian Renaissance. I've experienced two different intepretations of this event. The first, from a middle eastern historian, is that the IGA was well in decline by this point anyway, due to Crusades, the loss of power in by the Caliphs, increasing xenophobia/religious conservatism, etc, and that this particular event was not only not significant as a bookend, but that it almost certainly would have happened anyway with or without the Mongols. Western historians almost always take the opposite view, that the Mongols crushed the flower of intellect which was still in full bloom, and this was the singular event that started the downfall. I don't know enough on the subject to have a strong opinion of my own. In addition to the loss of knowledge, this event helped to relegate the Arabs to the underclass of the world, instead of the world leaders they had been prior. Persian usurped Arabic as the lingua franca of the region, power in the region moved mostly to the very, very strange Mamluks in Egypt, and soon after, Europe unfucked itself sort of and took hold of the world. A few more Crusades and the eventual colonization of the Middle East finished off this amazing society, and the strange postcolonial middle east is all that is left. Anyway, after typing all this I've realized I have no idea how to answer this question. It was probably the most significant destruction of knowledge that the world has ever experienced, but to be able to contexulalize that is far beyond my knowlege or ability. I think you can certainly argue that the somewhat retarded development of much of the middle east can be attributed, in part at least, to this particular event, as it most certainly certainly caused a dramatic retraction into religious conservatism by what was at one time the most liberal and advanced society on the planet. As for the knowledge lost, who the hell knows. Maybe we'd be living like Star Trek right now?
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Aug 26, 2010 15:17
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asbo subject posted:But why is it that Australians think nobody else was there and they did all the fighting and dieing? In addition to what webdog said, our last (conservative) Prime Minister actively promoted remembrance and veneration of the First World War to the detriment of the Second. That's because the conservative government for the first 18 months of WWII (and most of the previous two decades) screwed up pretty badly, and the subsequent Labor government is remembered as one of Australia's best. That's not something that they want to promote.
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Aug 28, 2010 08:41
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lilljonas posted:He started the tactic of rotational shot in rank and he integrated cavalry tactics to use infantry and artillery for protection. While the bit about cavalry is true (he invented the technique known as the caracolle, where cavalry fired pistols before closing with steel), rank-firing (or at least the drill necessary to make it effective) was invented by Maurice of Nassau in the last decade of the 16th century and used to great effect by his armies during the Dutch Revolt; however, it's worth mentioning that Oda Nobunaga had his musketeers firing in ranks in Japan several decades before Maurice of Nassau or any other European army. In order to get the rank-firing down, you needed smaller units and more specific orders, leading to more or less the invention of the junior officer class who commanded these smaller units. This increased tactical flexibility and decreased miscommunication and the herd mentality of medieval warfare. Gustavus Adolphus was notable because his army was extremely well drilled and trained as was mentioned and used Maurician tactics better than any before because of this, while the Catholic armies in the 30YW were using the less-effective Spanish tercio, which was a square of pike surrounded by musketeers rather than the Maurician/Gustavan lines of rank-firing musketeers and separate units of pike. These were big, unwieldy things up to 50 ranks deep, so the smaller infantry units of the Swedish armies had the advantage of maneuver. GA's musketeers also supposedly were more accurate and quicker at reloading due to their extensive training than their Catholic counterparts. Gustavus also did not revolutionize artillery warfare, though his small leather cannons were extremely innovative. While the Ottomans had shown their mastery of siege cannon in the 15th century but never got away from gigantic bronze pieces, smaller field artillery had first come into use during Charles V's invasions of Italy in the 1520s and 1530s. But the way he combined pike, shot, horse, and artillery into one cohesive whole that supported each other was extremely innovative and also extremely effective. HeroOfTheRevolution fucked around with this message at 10:10 on Aug 28, 2010 |
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Aug 28, 2010 09:59
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