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Fearless posted:I cannot fathom what being in a heavy battery during the Great War would have been like. Far preferable to being in the PBI, let me assure you
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Dec 26, 2020 14:41
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Fearless posted:Yes, they are!...The last shots are the saluting charge and its shell insert. Field gun competition shells are cut down to facilitate faster loading and unloading. Fastest time I've seen was an average time of about 2.4 seconds between shots, sustained over eight rounds. Very little flash from the charges, but a hell of a lot of noise.
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Dec 26, 2020 15:06
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Xiahou Dun posted:Wait. Iceland still has an Allthing? That's amazing and cool and good. Iceland's Althing has been around since 930, and is their parliament today. Pryor on Fire posted:I had a friend who went to the marines and explained to me that hearing protection was rarely used in any situation, because the thinking was that you would toughen up your ears and get used to the sound of gunshots. I think it would be a better option to be able to serve in the military without permanent damage but apparently this is the sort of thing a pussy rear end bitch thinks. Hearing protection (in the form of ear plugs) was mandatory on rifle ranges when I was in, and you had to wear a CVC helmet with some built in earmuffs when you were driving or shooting. But the real problem was exposure to loud engines for extended periods of time on a regular basis on the ramp doing maintenance. Awareness that this might be bad was just starting to reach the command level when I got out, in the months that I was in you had to have earplugs in whenever you fired up an engine. You'd think they would have figured it out earlier the fact that every SNCO or above had some hearing loss and shouted all the time.
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Dec 26, 2020 18:38
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Cessna posted:By the time the war ended over 300 Icelandic women had married Marines and went to the States. One of which was my great-aunt. This was considered so shameful and vile that the only person from her family to attend her wedding was her sister (my grandmother). Although the rest of the family eventually reconciled with her, she wasn't on speaking terms with her father and his siblings until he died. There was a huge, incredibly dumb moral panic about Icelandic women dating American soldiers. The police set up a department exclusively to spy on girls suspected of dating soldiers, and hundreds of girls and young women were basically kidnapped extralegally by police and vigilantes and sent to "correctional schools" way out in the middle of nowhere to "rehabilitate" them. The panic was caused by a mix of feelings of inadequacy by the male population, who felt (somewhat rightly) that they couldn't compete with American soldiers. The other cause was, of course, nationalism and racism. One of the conditions set by Alþingi for the US occupation and the subsequent AFB was that the US military would only send white soldiers to Iceland. The whole thing is a black, dumb mark on our recent history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%81standi%C3%B0
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Dec 26, 2020 18:51
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Cessna posted:Iceland's Althing has been around since 930, and is their parliament today. It’s still a “requirement” these days, as in each day you have to show the coaches that you have it, but I’ve never seen anyone corrected for not actually wearing it on the firing line. Then again most people actually do wear it on the range in my experience.
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Dec 26, 2020 19:31
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Given that the Allies invaded Iceland and Persia, why didn't they bomb Sweden who was supplying Germany with critical materials? Were there any plans for it?
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Dec 26, 2020 20:30
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ChubbyChecker posted:Given that the Allies invaded Iceland and Persia, why didn't they bomb Sweden who was supplying Germany with critical materials? Were there any plans for it? In 1940 the British had a plan to mine the harbour at Lulea, which was the main (summer) route for Swedish iron ore going to Germany. Called Operation Paul, it would have used Fairey Swordfish aircraft flying from aircraft carriers in the North Sea to drop mines in the harbour, or in the approaches to it. The Battle for France delayed it, as the carriers were needed to respond to it; the loss of Glorious and the deployment of Ark Royal to the Mediterranean due to the Italian entry to the war put paid to the plan for good. Randomcheese3 fucked around with this message at 21:47 on Dec 26, 2020 |
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Dec 26, 2020 21:07
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ChubbyChecker posted:Given that the Allies invaded Iceland and Persia, why didn't they bomb Sweden who was supplying Germany with critical materials? Were there any plans for it? They were willing to basically invade in March 1940 if Finland provided a pretext by a formal request for aid. Otherwise, wouldn't the nature of the resources require a lot of bombing, sustained and intense since it's mines, ports, railways? From what I understand Sweden started distancing itself from Germany as soon as it could and diplomatic channels were open with the Allies so they probably understood Sweden's predicament.
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Dec 26, 2020 21:40
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Besides, a neutral power like Sweden has a lot of uses in war for things like prisoner exchange, diplomacy, Red Cross measures, etc. Not sure if Sweden was used this way, but the potential is valuable.
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Dec 26, 2020 22:12
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Britain also considered bombing Soviet oil fields because they were supplying German armies at the time. Short term tactical gains seldom work for long time strategic wins.
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Dec 26, 2020 22:18
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Bombing was of questionable effectiveness (as the thread recently went over) and to get to Sweden you have to fly over a ton of mountains. And then once you bomb them they go from neutral and selling iron to the nazis to entering the war on Hitler side.
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Dec 26, 2020 22:30
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Gnoman posted:Besides, a neutral power like Sweden has a lot of uses in war for things like prisoner exchange, diplomacy, Red Cross measures, etc. Thousands of Jews found refuge in Sweden. The nazi roundup of Jews in Denmark was found out before hand and then a co-ordinated rescue over the straits of Denmark to Sweden was done by locals. Alexandra Kollontai, the Soviet ambassador in Stockholm, was a connection for Finnish private citizens and for the government for at least preliminary negotiations with the USSR during both the Winter War and the Continuation War, or at least the other. I think I recently watched some video that a number of ships were allowed from Sweden to the Atlantic and back on a timely basis that both the Allies and the Germans agreed upon as it was beneficial to both. Hitler then throttled the trade to put the screws on Sweden.
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Dec 26, 2020 22:32
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Grimnarsson posted:They were willing to basically invade in March 1940 if Finland provided a pretext by a formal request for aid. Otherwise, wouldn't the nature of the resources require a lot of bombing, sustained and intense since it's mines, ports, railways? From what I understand Sweden started distancing itself from Germany as soon as it could and diplomatic channels were open with the Allies so they probably understood Sweden's predicament. Also, by early March the Finnish front was collapsing. No aid sent at the time would have reached Finland in time to save anything. An unilateral declaration of war from the UK and France against the Soviet Union might have affected things if it had come several months earlier, but by the time Finland was offered an armistice it was in no shape to fight any longer.
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Dec 26, 2020 22:34
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Ataxerxes posted:Also, by early March the Finnish front was collapsing. No aid sent at the time would have reached Finland in time to save anything. An unilateral declaration of war from the UK and France against the Soviet Union might have affected things if it had come several months earlier, but by the time Finland was offered an armistice it was in no shape to fight any longer. I agree. From what I've read even at best the Franco-British expeditionary force would have been 30 000 in Northern Finland, the rest (the bulk really) to occupy Northern Sweden and Norway. And at that point the Red Army had penetrated and flanked the Mannerheim Line nearing the outskirts of Viipuri, Finnish Army had no reserves, next to nothing in artillery ammunition, etc. The offer of aid in and of itself, in the form it was made in March 1940, was the best possible effect it could have as Stalin wanted the war ended without enlarging it. The deadline for the offer of aid was the day before the peace was signed but both Stalin, or Molotov, agreed to back date it. But that also gave away to the Germans the British and French intentions. Edit: The earlier offers of aid were conditional on Norwegian and Swedish consent, which they weren't going to give as it was already suspected that the main aim was to occupy Northern Sweden. If a unilateral declaration of war on the USSR had happened in December or January then the Soviets wouldn't have had any reason to end the war until a final completion, perhaps? Grimnarsson fucked around with this message at 23:30 on Dec 26, 2020 |
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Dec 26, 2020 22:53
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Grimnarsson posted:Thousands of Jews found refuge in Sweden. The nazi roundup of Jews in Denmark was found out before hand and then a co-ordinated rescue over the straits of Denmark to Sweden was done by locals. Alexandra Kollontai, the Soviet ambassador in Stockholm, was a connection for Finnish private citizens and for the government for at least preliminary negotiations with the USSR during both the Winter War and the Continuation War, or at least the other. I knew about the Jews - a relevant novel was an elementary school staple in my day. What I am not sure of is how much - if any - formal buffer state work was done.
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Dec 26, 2020 23:06
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Trin Tragula posted:Far preferable to being in the PBI, let me assure you What is the PBI? I'm sure you don't mean the Pennsylvania Bar Institute, or Palm Beach International (Airport).
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Dec 26, 2020 23:38
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White Coke posted:What is the PBI? I'm sure you don't mean the Pennsylvania Bar Institute, or Palm Beach International (Airport). Poor Bloody Infantry
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Dec 26, 2020 23:40
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Are there any good write ups from the girls who broadcast as Tokyo Rose? We're they native Japanese? Japanese Americans? Where did they broadcast from? Who passed them the propaganda?
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Dec 26, 2020 23:57
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HEY GUNS posted:Did the whole placing of batallions on a field for set battle part not tip you off? Eh, modern armies do some weird parade ground poo poo. Elendil004 posted:Are there any good write ups from the girls who broadcast as Tokyo Rose? We're they native Japanese? Japanese Americans? Where did they broadcast from? Who passed them the propaganda? Iva Toguri D'Aquino's Wikipedia article is probably as good a place to start as any. She's the most famous of the "Tokyo Rose" broadcasters. Vincent Van Goatse fucked around with this message at 03:24 on Dec 27, 2020 |
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Dec 27, 2020 03:16
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What if we replaced all wars with judged re-enactments? Challenged party picks the era.
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Dec 27, 2020 03:53
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A fact that seems to pop up a lot is that the Germans thought that the Russians were going to be unbeatable by 1916, and therefore they needed to go to war as soon as possible while they still had the advantage. Where does this fact come from, and is there any truth to it?
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Dec 27, 2020 04:45
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I don't know if it's based on any exact studies by the General Staff, but it's rooted in the fact that Russia was rapidly modernizing it's infrastructure and industry using French capital (provided largely in order to help them serve as a counterweight to Germany), and Russia's far larger population.
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Dec 27, 2020 05:16
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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White Coke posted:A fact that seems to pop up a lot is that the Germans thought that the Russians were going to be unbeatable by 1916, and therefore they needed to go to war as soon as possible while they still had the advantage. Where does this fact come from, and is there any truth to it? I'm not a real historian, just historically-adjacent, so in my classic style I'm going to respond with the assumption that the grown ups will correct me and this'll be a teachable moment. I think this question is ill-phrased because it has two parts : what the Germans thought and what was most likely to happen. The former is theoretically possible to determine assuming you can find, say, a bunch of diary entries by, like, everyone in German high command going, "Yeah, we deffo want to do X," and you have [reasons] to trust that they're accurate ; the latter rapidly gets into weird counterfactuals and you're talking about what various countries are like after multiple years of some of the most brutal war ever done in human history. So there's the question of can we show sufficient evidence that it's likely people believed that was possible, maybe ; can we show that if a bunch of other stuff happened it'd be different ; difficult to gently caress no. But, as always, I'm just an idiot trying to help the conversation along.
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Dec 27, 2020 05:33
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Xiahou Dun posted:I think this question is ill-phrased because it has two parts : what the Germans thought and what was most likely to happen. The former is theoretically possible to determine assuming you can find, say, a bunch of diary entries by, like, everyone in German high command going, "Yeah, we deffo want to do X," and you have [reasons] to trust that they're accurate ; the latter rapidly gets into weird counterfactuals and you're talking about what various countries are like after multiple years of some of the most brutal war ever done in human history. The reason the question is in two parts is because I've seen the specific year of 1916 pop up often enough that there's probably some source that they get it from, but I can't find it so I don't know how authoritative it is, or if it's even contemporary. As for second part, I asked because I want to know if there's any hard data that could validate the fears of 1916 being some kind of a turning point. Was there a certain amount of railroad tracks that would'v been built, a certain number of artillery pieces that would've been produced, or just that the population would have grown enough to somehow be insurmountable for Germany? Assuming the German General Staff was afraid of how powerful Russia was growing, what was the metric they used to quantify its power? Ultimately, yes there's more to warfare than material superiority, but it certainly helps so I don't think it'd just devolve into counterfactuals about gay, black, Imperial Russia.
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Dec 27, 2020 05:50
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Kotkin laid out that argument in his second installment of his Stalin biography, that in 1914 the Germans thought that war was coming, Russia was fast industrialing and therefore it was better to have that war sooner than later, in 1940 Stalin allowed German diplomats and military attachés to tour Soviet factories to dissuade them from attacking in a show of strength, but giving Germany the same old conclusion that war must come sooner than later since they had already decided it will come. I think that's the most important thing, that the Germans had decided that war is inevitable.
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Dec 27, 2020 06:12
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PittTheElder posted:I don't know if it's based on any exact studies by the General Staff, but it's rooted in the fact that Russia was rapidly modernizing it's infrastructure and industry using French capital (provided largely in order to help them serve as a counterweight to Germany), and Russia's far larger population. Yeah that was pretty much it. Worth noting that the Russian Imperial Census of 1897 recorded the Empire's population as over 125 million, which would have doubtlessly increased significantly by 1916. By comparison, the 1900 German Census listed 54 million, which increased to a hair under 65 million by 1910. So while Russia was still horrifically backwards, the prospect of a modernizing Russia that was more capable of utilizing its vast population was deeply concerning to German military planners.
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Dec 27, 2020 06:24
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White Coke posted:The reason the question is in two parts is because I've seen the specific year of 1916 pop up often enough that there's probably some source that they get it from, but I can't find it so I don't know how authoritative it is, or if it's even contemporary. As for second part, I asked because I want to know if there's any hard data that could validate the fears of 1916 being some kind of a turning point. Was there a certain amount of railroad tracks that would'v been built, a certain number of artillery pieces that would've been produced, or just that the population would have grown enough to somehow be insurmountable for Germany? Assuming the German General Staff was afraid of how powerful Russia was growing, what was the metric they used to quantify its power? Ultimately, yes there's more to warfare than material superiority, but it certainly helps so I don't think it'd just devolve into counterfactuals about gay, black, Imperial Russia. I'm saying without any real knowledge that the construction of railroads (to key regions of course) and plain production of steel by tonnage are metrics that they would have looked at. That's how they measured who's industrialised and who isn't, and the Soviet Union's planned economy aimed to those as a key metric for prosperity. I'm basing this off of what I learned in school about industrialisation and Adam Curtis documentaries. What the books I've read recently say is that Russia was far weaker than any statistics could show, but it bounced up. Brusilov's offensive was among the most effective against the Central Powers during the whole war.
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Dec 27, 2020 06:27
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ChubbyChecker posted:Given that the Allies invaded Iceland and Persia, why didn't they bomb Sweden who was supplying Germany with critical materials? Were there any plans for it? Iceland was in a critical spot between the US & UK and Denmark surrendering it to Germany could have been bad news for convoys. It also had a small population and tiny military so was not expected to be trouble. Similar with Persia as having a leader sympathetic to German could have been bad news, and invading kept a lend lease corridor to the USSR open and oil secure. Sweden was a stronger power and while they had sympathy with the allies that could have gone downhill fast if the British started bombing their ports. When the British bombed the French fleet at Toulon it led to such bad tensions there were problems when the British and US invaded northwest Africa where Vichy had power.
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Dec 27, 2020 06:29
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White Coke posted:The reason the question is in two parts is because I've seen the specific year of 1916 pop up often enough that there's probably some source that they get it from, but I can't find it so I don't know how authoritative it is, or if it's even contemporary. As for second part, I asked because I want to know if there's any hard data that could validate the fears of 1916 being some kind of a turning point. Was there a certain amount of railroad tracks that would'v been built, a certain number of artillery pieces that would've been produced, or just that the population would have grown enough to somehow be insurmountable for Germany? Assuming the German General Staff was afraid of how powerful Russia was growing, what was the metric they used to quantify its power? Ultimately, yes there's more to warfare than material superiority, but it certainly helps so I don't think it'd just devolve into counterfactuals about gay, black, Imperial Russia. To the first point, I obviously can't prove a negative, but I've read a decent amount of primary sources and I've never heard of such a thing ; the general idea that Russia might arm up and be a monster, sure, but that's 2 years earlier. Where are you getting this from? And I'm probably going to get absolutely nailed into the ground, but if I gun to my head had to pick a year of WWI that was literally just a slog and nothing was going to change, it'd be 1916. Specifically saying that it was the year when least change could've happened and it was just more churning. I'm probably wrong but it was still more uh sedentary? than 1914 or 1918 for example. And this is ignoring that this would require the Germans to predict something in 1914 that would be true two years later. In a war where everyone had no idea what to do. I must not be following your point and this is a personal failing because I don't understand.
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Dec 27, 2020 06:31
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The point is WITHOUT the war Russia would be putatively unbeatable by 1916.
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Dec 27, 2020 06:45
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Xiahou Dun posted:To the first point, I obviously can't prove a negative, but I've read a decent amount of primary sources and I've never heard of such a thing ; the general idea that Russia might arm up and be a monster, sure, but that's 2 years earlier. Where are you getting this from? The projections would start earlier than the war, decades maybe? Russia's economy was growing rapidly overall and railroads as a funnel from Russia to Poland were seen as a strategic mobilisation asset, stuff like that.
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Dec 27, 2020 06:53
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I vaguely recall hearing about the 1916 year mark as well, and yeah, it was a pre-war projection that by that year Russia's population and modernization would create an unbeatable juggernaut that Germany would be unable to meaningfully resist. As it stood of course the projections were completely wrong, but that was mainly due to Imperial Russia's infrastructure and leadership being so decrepit that no amount of numbers would have been able to overcome the vastly better trained, organized, and led German forces.
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Dec 27, 2020 06:58
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Alright, found some sources to refresh my memory. So to answer the original question:White Coke posted:A fact that seems to pop up a lot is that the Germans thought that the Russians were going to be unbeatable by 1916, and therefore they needed to go to war as soon as possible while they still had the advantage. Where does this fact come from, and is there any truth to it? The Germans were particularly concerned with the question of mobilization. The Russian Empire had a huge population, but it was a massive country with numerous enemies and a fairly underdeveloped transportation infrastructure. Because of this, for several years German war plans counted on a key window of opportunity where they would be able to mobilize their forces and strike into Russia before Russia was able to fully mobilize its forces to defend itself or attack into Germany. However, that window was constantly shrinking, in large part due to Russian reforms post-1906 that prioritized expanding railroad infrastructure to allow for more rapid mobilization—and critically, this also affected Germany's war plans in the west, as any war against Russia would also mean war against France. By the time World War I actually kicked off, the German plan was to mobilize quickly, knock France out of the war, and then reshuffle their forces east to meet the Russians before they could fully mobilize—but, as I said, these predictions came to naught as while they failed to knock France out of the war, the fears of the "Russian Steamroller" simply never materialized.
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Dec 27, 2020 07:17
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I seem to recall something about Russia rapidly acquiring more artillery, specifically, too.
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Dec 27, 2020 08:15
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Hyrax Attack! posted:When the British bombed the French fleet at Toulon it led to such bad tensions there were problems when the British and US invaded northwest Africa where Vichy had power. There would have been problems here anyway. Vichy was a Nazi client state. Also you mean Mers-el-Kebir.
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Dec 27, 2020 08:19
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Xiahou Dun posted:To the first point, I obviously can't prove a negative, but I've read a decent amount of primary sources and I've never heard of such a thing ; the general idea that Russia might arm up and be a monster, sure, but that's 2 years earlier. Where are you getting this from? 1916 pops up in some places I've read, but I haven't seen any primary sources that say 1916 was seen as some kind of point of no return, so I was wondering why multiple people quote this idea like it's a fact. I want to know where this came from, and why it seems to have achieved the level of common knowledge since nobody feels the need to cite a source. The issue was, as Weka said, that Germany thought if there wasn't a war soon Russia's modernization would make it unstoppable, so Germany encouraged Austria-Hungary to start a war with Serbia because they thought they had a narrowing window of opportunity for victory. You seem to think the calculation was made after the war started, and I see why it confused you since Russia's weakness became apparent very quickly so Germany wouldn't have had any reason to think that in two years they'd somehow fix all their problems and turn into the proverbial steamroller. Grimnarsson posted:Kotkin laid out that argument in his second installment of his Stalin biography, that in 1914 the Germans thought that war was coming, Russia was fast industrialing and therefore it was better to have that war sooner than later, in 1940 Stalin allowed German diplomats and military attachés to tour Soviet factories to dissuade them from attacking in a show of strength, but giving Germany the same old conclusion that war must come sooner than later since they had already decided it will come. I think that's the most important thing, that the Germans had decided that war is inevitable. Russia needs to learn that they have to convince the world they're just a smol bean whomst can't hurt a fly uwu.
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Dec 27, 2020 08:30
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Acebuckeye13 posted:I vaguely recall hearing about the 1916 year mark as well, and yeah, it was a pre-war projection that by that year Russia's population and modernization would create an unbeatable juggernaut that Germany would be unable to meaningfully resist. As it stood of course the projections were completely wrong, but that was mainly due to Imperial Russia's infrastructure and leadership being so decrepit that no amount of numbers would have been able to overcome the vastly better trained, organized, and led German forces. It's hypothetical to say the predictions were wrong, maybe if Germany invaded France two years later Russia never would have collapsed. What happened is that Germany struck what they hoped was early enough for Russia not to be able to resist them, which turned out to be the case. Whether or not Russia would have been able to defeat Germany at a later date is unknown.
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Dec 27, 2020 08:31
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Pretty sure the 1916 quote is from Guns of August. Don't have the book on hand to check but it feels like that's where I've seen it
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Dec 27, 2020 08:43
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"Two years from now our enemy will be undefeatable/will have nukes" sounds like an effective line for any proponents of a pre-emptive strike, it seems.
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Dec 27, 2020 10:11
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Grimnarsson posted:They were willing to basically invade in March 1940 if Finland provided a pretext by a formal request for aid. Otherwise, wouldn't the nature of the resources require a lot of bombing, sustained and intense since it's mines, ports, railways? From what I understand Sweden started distancing itself from Germany as soon as it could and diplomatic channels were open with the Allies so they probably understood Sweden's predicament. I checked the numbers. The Swedish iron ore was higher grade than elsewhere, so about 60% of the prewar iron for Nazi Germany came from Sweden. It had the most importance during the late -39 and early -40 after the West had stopped trading with Germany and before Germany had conquered Belgium and France. During that critical period about 75% of the German iron came from Sweden. For the rest of the war the percentage was about 20%. Sweden stopped the iron ore trade only in November 1944, so they definitely didn't mind collaborating with the Nazis. Strategic bombing wasn't very effective at hindering the Nazis war machine, but since Sweden was trading with Germany to make profit, they might have stopped it earlier if they had had to account the cost of rebuilding their cities. And the Allies bombed France killing 70k people, so bombing collaborators wasn't off the table.
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Dec 27, 2020 12:21
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