Edgar Allen Ho posted:Yeah I imagine most people reading this thread know this but the "light" translation in a lot of french milhist is often misleading and it most definitely is for the DLMs. The "light" refers to mobility entirely, so it works 90% of the time. Light infantry vs heavy infantry yeah, the lights will run faster and longer but sacrifice weapons and gear so they might not be able to stand up to the heavy infantry 1v1. Stuff like that. But the DLMs or "light" mechanized divisions were not lightly armed, they were cream of the crop cavalry divisions who on paper were perfectly equivalent to a german panzer division, and certainly put paid to the myth that the allies hadn't thought of an armoured division until Rommel was in Paris. And the DLMs were riding partially in the heaviest armour the french had outside of the B1. I love that little guy in World Of Tanks.
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Dec 17, 2020 23:47
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The SOMUA S 35 was an incredibly advanced tank for its time, but was hampered by strange French tank design conventions like one-man turrets.
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Dec 17, 2020 23:51
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BalloonFish posted:This is the problem with finding interesting stuff after falling down a rabbit-hole of links and archived .pdf papers on ww2aircraft.net - I can't track down the article in question. I'll keep looking. Yeah, the same thing has happened to me so many drat times.
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Dec 17, 2020 23:52
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Uncle Enzo posted:This is "Gay Black Maurice Gamelin", but was there any plausible way for France to hold out in 1940? Barring perfect knowledge of the future I mean. If France had held on even partially the war would have gone wildly, totally unpredictably different but I have to believe that would be a better timeline than the one we got. The Germans had an absolutely massive column of vehicles and troops heading into the Ardennes. Hundreds of miles long IIRC attacking at a very narrow point. As it happened the French weren't expecting it but if they had a couple of divisions in the right spot it could easily have caused the worlds biggest traffic jam, and if they didn't keep air supremacy it would be a massive target. They only had a few months of fuel reserves (~6 months) which eased after they beat France since Romania fell into their orbit, but if France holds out then Germany is on a ticking clock. The French and British can import whatever raw materials they need from the rest of the world and can buy manufactured goods from the US while Germany can't. I think if France survived the initial confrontation then their chances started looking quite good in the medium to long term.
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Dec 18, 2020 00:32
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I think I have finally overcome my deep-seated hatred of stupidity and aristocrats enough to read my first book about WWI What's the best book (or three) to start out with here?
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Dec 18, 2020 01:16
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you want history, memoir, or what?
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Dec 18, 2020 01:42
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Harry Turtledove had a very interesting series about what would happen if Germany attacked with the original plan. I liked how wargame-able that scenario was.
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Dec 18, 2020 02:18
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OctaviusBeaver posted:The Germans had an absolutely massive column of vehicles and troops heading into the Ardennes. Hundreds of miles long IIRC attacking at a very narrow point. As it happened the French weren't expecting it but if they had a couple of divisions in the right spot it could easily have caused the worlds biggest traffic jam, and if they didn't keep air supremacy it would be a massive target. They only had a few months of fuel reserves (~6 months) which eased after they beat France since Romania fell into their orbit, but if France holds out then Germany is on a ticking clock. The French and British can import whatever raw materials they need from the rest of the world and can buy manufactured goods from the US while Germany can't. I think if France survived the initial confrontation then their chances started looking quite good in the medium to long term. If the Soviet Union wanted to it could prop up Germany for awhile, at least regarding raw materials. Then you have the possibility that the Soviets will be dragged into the war directly. The French considered bombing the Baku oilfields but the British shot that idea down.
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Dec 18, 2020 02:21
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White Coke posted:If the Soviet Union wanted to it could prop up Germany for awhile, at least regarding raw materials. Then you have the possibility that the Soviets will be dragged into the war directly. The French considered bombing the Baku oilfields but the British shot that idea down. IIRC reading some vintage der spiegal(?) magazine in my school library I think Nazi propaganda between 1940-41 was bragging about the resources they were getting from the USSR.
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Dec 18, 2020 02:22
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White Coke posted:If the Soviet Union wanted to it could prop up Germany for awhile, at least regarding raw materials. Then you have the possibility that the Soviets will be dragged into the war directly. The French considered bombing the Baku oilfields but the British shot that idea down. The fall of France is what shot the idea down, not the British.
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Dec 18, 2020 02:29
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I remember reading that the french were hesitant to launch air attacks into Germany. Were their bombers bad or did they fear reprisal/high losses?
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Dec 18, 2020 02:51
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Lawman 0 posted:I remember reading that the french were hesitant to launch air attacks into Germany. Were their bombers bad or did they fear reprisal/high losses? Don't want to anger the beast. They invaded immediately when hostilities began but wanted to wait for Germany to make the first move/gather forces before going on the offensive
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Dec 18, 2020 03:00
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OctaviusBeaver posted:The Germans had an absolutely massive column of vehicles and troops heading into the Ardennes. Hundreds of miles long IIRC attacking at a very narrow point. As it happened the French weren't expecting it but if they had a couple of divisions in the right spot it could easily have caused the worlds biggest traffic jam, and if they didn't keep air supremacy it would be a massive target. They only had a few months of fuel reserves (~6 months) which eased after they beat France since Romania fell into their orbit, but if France holds out then Germany is on a ticking clock. The French and British can import whatever raw materials they need from the rest of the world and can buy manufactured goods from the US while Germany can't. I think if France survived the initial confrontation then their chances started looking quite good in the medium to long term. The way the French Army was, for the most part, they had to guess fairly correctly for it to work- anything requiring quick countermoves is just not going to work for such a raw force, particularly the infantry divisions. The idea with the Ardennes was that the cavalry cordon could slow such columns enough to give the rest of the army time to respond, but it turns out the cordon offered almost nothing as the troops that were sent had very meager anti-tank weapons, even for 1940. Given the performance of french infantry divisions in 1940, i'm not that hopeful about their odds when they have to rush into positions in the Ardennes, but it certainly wouldn't have been quite what really happened, which was almost wide open daylight once they crossed the Meuse. That being said, if the French guessed correctly, or simply opted to be willing to fight in France and chose a more cautious approach, there's a chance Germany has trouble with resources as you say.
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Dec 18, 2020 03:03
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Wasn’t there still fighting going on in Norway when France fell?
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Dec 18, 2020 03:19
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Pryor on Fire posted:I think I have finally overcome my deep-seated hatred of stupidity and aristocrats enough to read my first book about WWI If you want to unlearn the "men running aimlessly at machine guns for four years" trope I highly recommend Battle Tactics of the Western Front by Griffith. Turns out they didn't just try the same poo poo over and over. During those four years war changed by the week, and huge effort went into learning and teaching new tactics.
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Dec 18, 2020 03:38
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I'm not sure about how it stands up to more modern scholarship, but John Keegan's The First World War was a good broad overview for me.
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Dec 18, 2020 03:43
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oXDemosthenesXo posted:If you want to unlearn the "men running aimlessly at machine guns for four years" trope I highly recommend Battle Tactics of the Western Front by Griffith. Battle Tactics is great. Another thing to consider is Trin Tragula's day-by-day blog about the war https://makersley.com/a-failure-of-oversight/ They dropped it in mid-1916 so it's not the whole duration, and some people might like the day-by-day format and the focus on individual story threads and some people might not, but it's well done and gives a really worldwide perspective. It's not just the experience of the British Tommies that has been covered over and over again, albeit often extremely well. The blog is also for sale as a pair of cheap e-books too which makes for more convenient reading.
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Dec 18, 2020 04:23
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oXDemosthenesXo posted:If you want to unlearn the "men running aimlessly at machine guns for four years" trope I highly recommend Battle Tactics of the Western Front by Griffith.
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Dec 18, 2020 04:30
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gohuskies posted:Battle Tactics is great. Another thing to consider is Trin Tragula's day-by-day blog about the war https://makersley.com/a-failure-of-oversight/ They dropped it in mid-1916 so it's not the whole duration, and some people might like the day-by-day format and the focus on individual story threads and some people might not, but it's well done and gives a really worldwide perspective. It's not just the experience of the British Tommies that has been covered over and over again, albeit often extremely well. The blog is also for sale as a pair of cheap e-books too which makes for more convenient reading. I know I must've said this before, but for a long time my morning ritual was reading this and having my first cigarette of the day. To the point that my then girlfriend asked me why I was happy at the beginning of the morning but suddenly sad later. That poo poo owns bones.
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Dec 18, 2020 04:34
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Nessus posted:Wasn't the problem more that there wasn't really a good tactic to be had in the face of this, at least in the sense of one weird trick to beat the breastworks (Jerry HATES it)? Tanks aside, of course. No, there absolutely were tactics developed to get your guys into the enemy's trench line that didn't require tanks. There were a bunch of different ideas tried (that the book goes over) and they figured out what worked the best. The bigger problem was that there wasn't ever much of a way to ever exploit a break in the enemy lines. Pre-WW1 this was the cavalry's job, post-WW1 tanks did it, but for most of WW1 there wasn't really an effective exploitation arm that could take advantage of a breakthrough to quickly cause encirclements, take out command and control, etc, that you need to break out of the static trench warfare situation. Renault FT tanks and a million new American soldiers maybe/probably could have done it if the war had gone into 1919 like most people expected but Germany collapsed before that happened.
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Dec 18, 2020 04:40
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gohuskies posted:No, there absolutely were tactics developed to get your guys into the enemy's trench line that didn't require tanks. There were a bunch of different ideas tried (that the book goes over) and they figured out what worked the best. The bigger problem was that there wasn't ever much of a way to ever exploit a break in the enemy lines. Pre-WW1 this was the cavalry's job, post-WW1 tanks did it, but for most of WW1 there wasn't really an effective exploitation arm that could take advantage of a breakthrough to quickly cause encirclements, take out command and control, etc, that you need to break out of the static trench warfare situation. Renault FT tanks and a million new American soldiers maybe/probably could have done it if the war had gone into 1919 like most people expected but Germany collapsed before that happened.
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Dec 18, 2020 04:49
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Panzeh posted:The way the French Army was, for the most part, they had to guess fairly correctly for it to work- anything requiring quick countermoves is just not going to work for such a raw force, particularly the infantry divisions. The idea with the Ardennes was that the cavalry cordon could slow such columns enough to give the rest of the army time to respond, but it turns out the cordon offered almost nothing as the troops that were sent had very meager anti-tank weapons, even for 1940. Given the performance of french infantry divisions in 1940, i'm not that hopeful about their odds when they have to rush into positions in the Ardennes, but it certainly wouldn't have been quite what really happened, which was almost wide open daylight once they crossed the Meuse. Thank you. Those are both reasonably plausible. Understandably there weren't (and aren't, really) a lot of good ways to stop massed armor with strong air support, particularly in 1940 where that was basically new especially at that scale. My feelings don't matter of course, some situations really are unsalvageable (IJN/IJA in 1945) but it really sucked to think that France was hosed on day one. Of course the moment instead of The Fall Of France we get "horrible pitched battles, France is dumpling in men and tanks and planes but they're still in the fight so far" we're on to straight theory crafting, no one has the slightest idea how things would have gone then. It's such a big break with our history, but it's a tiny bit comforting that it could have gone differently.
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Dec 18, 2020 05:01
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Uncle Enzo posted:
Not being lovely cause we all make typos, but this gave me the hilarious image of French soldiers neatly arranged in pleated dough and stuffed up then fried and served with a scallion soy sauce or like a mala oil and it made me chuckle really hard. You could call it Dim Somme.
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Dec 18, 2020 05:16
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gohuskies posted:No, there absolutely were tactics developed to get your guys into the enemy's trench line that didn't require tanks. There were a bunch of different ideas tried (that the book goes over) and they figured out what worked the best. The bigger problem was that there wasn't ever much of a way to ever exploit a break in the enemy lines. Pre-WW1 this was the cavalry's job, post-WW1 tanks did it, but for most of WW1 there wasn't really an effective exploitation arm that could take advantage of a breakthrough to quickly cause encirclements, take out command and control, etc, that you need to break out of the static trench warfare situation. Renault FT tanks and a million new American soldiers maybe/probably could have done it if the war had gone into 1919 like most people expected but Germany collapsed before that happened. Basically this. There wasn't anything that could push fast enough to outrun the ability of the other side to reinforce and counterattack, and your guys outran their artillery and logistics quickly, so they had to stop after a bit. In 1918, the major difference was the scale of the attacks--the Allies used tanks, true, but even that wasn't enough. What finally broke the lock was a) morale on the German side failed and b) the Allies attacked in (relatively) rapid succession across a broad front, which prevented the Germans from effectively reinforcing things. The two combined with homefront stuff to end up in the truce.
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Dec 18, 2020 05:52
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Uncle Enzo posted:Thank you. Those are both reasonably plausible. Understandably there weren't (and aren't, really) a lot of good ways to stop massed armor with strong air support, particularly in 1940 where that was basically new especially at that scale. My feelings don't matter of course, some situations really are unsalvageable (IJN/IJA in 1945) but it really sucked to think that France was hosed on day one.  very large,  also very large and much harder to bomb" meant there would be few happy endings for Hitler.
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Dec 18, 2020 05:58
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Wasn't cavalry used throughout the war on the Eastern Front in WW1? Were they anything other than mounted infantry by the end?
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Dec 18, 2020 06:33
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Some good photos of HMCS Sackville, the only surviving Flower-class corvette, being restored: https://twitter.com/HMCSSACKVILLE1/status/1339556113101041666
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Dec 18, 2020 08:02
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FuturePastNow posted:HMCS Sackville Fuckers took my china. Can’t have poo poo in the Shire!
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Dec 18, 2020 08:06
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Xiahou Dun posted:Not being lovely cause we all make typos, but this gave me the hilarious image of French soldiers neatly arranged in pleated dough and stuffed up then fried and served with a scallion soy sauce or like a mala oil and it made me chuckle really hard. https://youtu.be/CIjTseb14Fk
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Dec 18, 2020 08:07
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What was that napoleonic era tactic battalion au feu or whatever
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Dec 18, 2020 08:45
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I'm getting real minimalistic with my posting so it's still bad but at least it's shorter
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Dec 18, 2020 08:45
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Raenir Salazar posted:Harry Turtledove had a very interesting series about what would happen if Germany attacked with the original plan. I liked how wargame-able that scenario was. What’s it called and what happens?
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Dec 18, 2020 08:46
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I love this thread and it's many incarnations. The only time I really had major battles explained as to how, why and who when Nicholas Moran did a video series and I seemingly didnt fall asleep for some of it. The fall of France series is incredible tbf. Drachinifel did a thing on the salvage of pearl harbour which I did also find fascinating, but he sends me to sleep pretty soundly so I'm not sure I can go toe to toe with any of the gay black Hirohito in my gap fuelled state. Keep it up though guys.
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Dec 18, 2020 09:14
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Comstar posted:What’s it called and what happens? The War That Came Early I swear turtledove is just making the titles of his books all sex jokes Basically the war begins in 1938 because some Nazi party bigwig is assassinated by a Czech nationalist. Hitler no longer satisfied with the Munich Conference settlement demands more prompting the British and French to refuse, Germany invades and immediately embroils itself into war with England, France and the USSR who had a defence pact with Czechoslovakia at the time. The first interesting things here is since Poland refuses the USSR transit privileges to come to the aid of the Czechs, the USSR decides to go through Poland, so Poland allies Germany along with Italy. Germany invades France through the Low Countries after they clean up Czechoslovakia ala the Schiffelin Plan 2.0 and push into France and get pretty close to Paris just like WW1 but are stalled out here since they failed to encircle the British/French militaries; and eventually have to switch forces east because Poland is desperate for help. Another thing that's different is some Spanish nationalist general who was in charge prior to Franco survives his plane trip and so instead of the Republicans losing, they are able to drag it out long enough (and hold Madrid) for the war to start and from there actually gain military support from Britain and France (not much but some) and from Czech soldiers in exile who arrive later after fighting first in France after being interned in Romania and then in Spain after UK and France at some point I think its mid 1940 agree to stop fighting Germany and to help Germany fight the Soviets after Churchill is assassinated. The Germans trounce the disorganized post-Purge Soviet army in Poland and push them out, but get stalled west of Smolensk and never get close to Kyiv. During this time Japan is mostly focused on fighting the USSR around Vladivostok, eventually taking the city from the distracted Soviets until a cease fire is signed allowing the Soviets to focus on Germany in the West. Japan eventually still picks a fight with the US anyways. I think the US fleet gets mauled trying to fight the Japanese navy in Japanese waters so it takes sometime before the US fights Japan properly. I don't quite remember what Japan does, mostly just sits on Wake island and Guam and not much else; they use a gently caress tonne of germ and chemical warfare against the US though, experimenting on captured Soviet troops in Unit 731. The pacific theatre is largely forgettable with large amounts of waiting around for nothing to happen. There's a coup in both the UK and France by the militaries who secretly negotiate with the Soviets to defect their forces and extricate them back out via the USSR and reinvade the German occupied low countries. Germany is a lot slower in implementing the holocaust in this timeline and only gets as far as ghettos before its stopped. Hitler is successfully assassinated by the military and a civil war breaks out between the Heer and the SS, the former eventually beating the later. Republican Spain eventually wins the Civil War and is allied to the USSR. Towards the end the USSR and US are close allies and are preparing to take on Japan together as the UK and France being revolving door allies kinda miffed the US quite a bit who were caught in a bit of a lurch. Anastas Mouradian and the two Czech snipers were the best characters in my view. Basically it would fit very much at home in the Hoi modding community as it comes across very much like it was meant for a video game. World War would make a good game as well come to think of it. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 09:32 on Dec 18, 2020 |
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Dec 18, 2020 09:30
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Trin Tragula posted:You sure about that? They were organic assets in 1914, two per battalion in their own machine-gun section. The Machine Gun Corps was founded by abstracting the Vickers gun sections from the infantry, who got the man-portable Lewis guns instead. The smallest thing the RA had was the pom-pom gun. Sorry, I got that confused with the Motor Machine Gun Service, which was originally Royal Artillery, and then incorporated into the newly-formed MGC. I had a link saved to 1914-1918.net that I've managed to revive through the magic of the internet that was what I was basing this on. https://archive.is/Ilzr
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Dec 18, 2020 09:36
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OctaviusBeaver posted:They only had a few months of fuel reserves (~6 months) which eased after they beat France since Romania fell into their orbit, but if France holds out then Germany is on a ticking clock. The French and British can import whatever raw materials they need from the rest of the world and can buy manufactured goods from the US while Germany can't. I think if France survived the initial confrontation then their chances started looking quite good in the medium to long term. White Coke posted:If the Soviet Union wanted to it could prop up Germany for awhile, at least regarding raw materials. Then you have the possibility that the Soviets will be dragged into the war directly. The French considered bombing the Baku oilfields but the British shot that idea down. During the Battle of France Germany and Soviet Union were allied. They made a new trade deal in February 1940, and among other things Germany bought 900,000 tons of oil. As long as their alliance held, Germany wouldn't have ran out of raw materials or fuel.
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Dec 18, 2020 11:54
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It should also be stressed that France had very little in terms of anti-tank and anti-air weapons. Not that they were devoid of either, but they lacked the numbers. The lack of motorisation of them doesn't help when the blitzkrieg rolls in and you have to leave the gun behind as you retreat... again.
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Dec 18, 2020 12:22
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tokenbrownguy posted:Keep Finnposting. This rocks. Thanks, mate.  I'll try to get the last part finished before Christmas.
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Dec 18, 2020 12:35
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You mentioned a separate military for the Grand Dutchy - what was the status of a unit like the Finlandsky Guards Regiment and Guards Rifle Battalion? Part of the Finnnish army, or not? Were the units comprised of ethnic Finns in Russian service?
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Dec 18, 2020 16:10
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oXDemosthenesXo posted:If you want to unlearn the "men running aimlessly at machine guns for four years" trope I highly recommend Battle Tactics of the Western Front by Griffith. That's a good book, but Griffith oversells the innovation and prowess of the BEF a bit. After reading that book for a while you find yourself asking “if the BEF was so good, Paddy, why didn’t they just stroll to Berlin and punch the Kaiser in the nose?” (This is not to say that the BEF deserves the reputation of Oh What a Lovely War/Col. Blimp foolishness either.) Nessus posted:Yeah, better way to put it. I remember reading that the Germans basically added tanks to their infantry tactics from the end of the war to make ~the blitzkrieg~ "Blitzkrieg" is nothing particularly special; it's then-new technology plus traditional military techniques of maneuver warfare and ideas straight of Jomini. The term itself is from propaganda, not military doctrine. White Coke posted:Wasn't cavalry used throughout the war on the Eastern Front in WW1? Were they anything other than mounted infantry by the end? Yes. Cavalry was also used by the Germans in the invasion of Poland in 1939 - they had more cavalry than the Polish. It was used in France in 1940, it was used extensively on the Russian Front of WWII, etc., etc. The fact is that in some circumstances, like trench warfare, cavalry is useless - but in other circumstances cavalry can be quite useful. The Soviets didn't disband their last cavalry division until 1955.
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Dec 18, 2020 17:02
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