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There's a middle ground between "the foul Hun launched an unprovoked war of conquest upon the peace-loving people of Europe" and "oops all nationalism this was the only outcome!" No imperial power is blameless but the actual war, as it happened, in our timeline, was provoked by Austria-Hungary and Germany. A-H deliberately tacked ludicrous terms onto their ultimatum to justify an attack on Serbia, and Germany backed them because that justified their attempting to punch France and Russia in the dick. Their was no house of cards. The german government knew exactly what they were getting into and wanted it. France and Russia, while certainly prepared for war, did not deliberately try to provoke it in the way Germany did in 1914. In the particular case of France and Alsace-Moselle, yes, France had revanchism but there was no grand national plan to take it back. Germany, in contrast, had spent decades planning the next great dickpunch on France. Ironically, Bismarck himself had opposed the annexation in the first place but it was seized both for propaganda purposes* and because the Vosges are a strong defensive position that would funnel fighting into France in the future. *The idea of Alsace re-uniting with the Fatherland after centuries of french tyranny is pretty much ludicrous. There was practically no pan-german nationalism there and the Reich ended up colonizing it with prussians and beating down the local dialect harder than the notoriously language policing french ever did.
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Dec 28, 2020 00:35
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shallowj posted:What’s the relationship between military historians working for actual militaries, and “The Academy”? (am i ignorant to think there’s a distinction?)
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Dec 28, 2020 00:38
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steinrokkan posted:The only ones playing geopolitical games were those sneaky Serbs. I think we're getting away from who the real culprits are: Croatians. Mr Luxury Yacht posted:Yeah if there's one takeaway I got from Sleepwalkers it's that while it obviously doesn't justify a global war that killed tens of millions, it's a miracle that Serbia didn't kick off a global war even earlier with all the dumb bullshit they had been pulling for years. What sort of dumb, and no doubt hilarious, bullshit were they getting up to?
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Dec 28, 2020 01:14
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Pretty much anyone going to a professional staff college anywhere in the world will at some point have to write a thesis on some element of military history. Quite a few of them end up in this thread. e: ^^ by 1914 Serbia is a full blown rogue state. It's the reason when Austria said "You gave these terrorists the weapons they used to kill our crown prince" everyone else in the world shrugged and said "yeah, probably" Alchenar fucked around with this message at 01:27 on Dec 28, 2020 |
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Dec 28, 2020 01:24
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shallowj posted:What’s the relationship between military historians working for actual militaries, and “The Academy”? (am i ignorant to think there’s a distinction?)
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Dec 28, 2020 01:45
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ChubbyChecker posted:Which level infantry units got .50cal mgs or DshKs in WW2? Was there like a platoon of them in regiment or something? In a US Infantry division during WWII, the battalion weapons company would have a single M2 assigned to the company HQ. Dismount M2s aren’t particularly common.
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Dec 28, 2020 04:23
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:*The idea of Alsace re-uniting with the Fatherland after centuries of french tyranny is pretty much ludicrous. There was practically no pan-german nationalism there and the Reich ended up colonizing it with prussians and beating down the local dialect harder than the notoriously language policing french ever did.
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Dec 28, 2020 13:30
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MrYenko posted:In a US Infantry division during WWII, the battalion weapons company would have a single M2 assigned to the company HQ. Yeah, the M2 is not a small weapon. Almost five and a half feet long, weighing about eighty pounds without a tripod (which is ~forty pounds), and the ammo isn't exactly small either. Convenient Gun Jesus video with a size comparison: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmLnwiJRr78
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Dec 28, 2020 16:54
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Alchenar posted: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. Where was this? I think I missed it. Didn't the marines get rid of the SAW for the m27 maybe or am I thinking of something else?
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Dec 28, 2020 17:31
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shallowj posted:How historically informed are modern militaries? Are some militaries more informed than others...? I understand that you're talking about officers, but some history is taught even at the boot camp level in the USMC. This is classroom instruction; I don't have exact numbers, but I'd guess you probably get a couple of day's worth of History classes over the course of your boot camp. Broadly speaking it is self-promoting motivational propaganda bullshit - look at the battles we won! But there are occasional "lessons learned" classes that can be refreshingly introspective even at that level. Post boot camp you're expected to do "MCI" (Marine Corps Institute) correspondence courses. They're all online now, back in my day they'd send you an actual book. (Doing these courses helps give points towards promotions.) Some are on USMC history, and generally speaking they're pretty decent, roughly equivalent in rigor to a 101-level college History course, and some do get you college credits depending on the subject. I took as many History courses as I could when I was in, mostly because I liked the subject and command liked it if you took an interest in that sort of thing. There's a pretty decent range of courses available. Most are technical, but there are also foreign languages, regional history and culture, etc. MrYenko posted:Dismount M2s aren’t particularly common. But mounted? Every tank has one. Every halftrack has one. Hell, some trucks have one.
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Dec 28, 2020 17:34
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Some halftracks are truly blessed and have four!
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Dec 28, 2020 17:48
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HEY GUNS posted:I have been told by more than one person to use euphemisms to describe what I do. Care to elaborate? Curious what you might tell somebody about what you do if they're military vs. non-military vs. historian.
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Dec 28, 2020 17:50
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Cessna posted:Hell, some trucks have one. 
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Dec 28, 2020 18:36
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the long forgotten origins of the bang bus
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Dec 28, 2020 18:42
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Cessna posted:But mounted? Every tank has one. Every halftrack has one. Hell, some trucks have one. Ya, one of the sources I found had a mechanized infantry company having something like seven of them, even before Joe starts welding extras onto everything in sight.
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Dec 28, 2020 18:48
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That looks like if the Cobra Commander was low on money.
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Dec 28, 2020 19:10
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In the Canadian Forces we also have history classes about Canada's participation in military conflict, I think it started with the Boer War.
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Dec 28, 2020 21:21
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There's so many little things wrong in this image I can't take it.
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Dec 28, 2020 21:28
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Yeah, the German soldiers' canteen covers are the wrong color.
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Dec 28, 2020 21:34
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:There's so many little things wrong in this image I can't take it. Yep, the Harley Davidson 47 'Thunderbikes' with sidecars are misrepresented!
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Dec 28, 2020 21:49
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Later adapted into the Bill Murray comedy "Stripes"
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Dec 28, 2020 22:07
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HEY GUNS posted:It is ubiquitous but despised--to the point where I have been told by more than one person to use euphemisms to describe what I do. I woud probably agree with your last sentence there. That's messed up.
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Dec 28, 2020 22:09
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Nebakenezzer posted:Later adapted into the Bill Murray “comedy” "Stripes"
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Dec 28, 2020 23:35
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Preggo My Eggo! posted:Care to elaborate? Curious what you might tell somebody about what you do if they're military vs. non-military vs. historian. I tell military personnel I'm a military historian. I tell other historians I got my doctorate in the social history of early modern central Europe and right now I am focusing on the microhistory / historical social anthropology of common soldiers from the Germanosphere during the early seventeenth century. This is an understudied group which was hated both then and now; it's a good candidate for history from below because of this; and it's a lot better documented than people used to think. I am interested in violence; subcultures; social interactions; non-state political entites; the history of material objects; and the physical experience of transport before the eighteenth century. I'm interested in the way microhistory and global history. function together. Lately I've been thinking about social interactions within groups so I have been calling myself a historical social anthropologist more often.
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Dec 29, 2020 02:25
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I like that the kill markers suggest that there are Nazi killbusses out there too (and they only need one more to make ace). Like not Sd.Kfz. 251s or whatever, those are clearly bus silhouettes.
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Dec 29, 2020 02:36
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SubG posted:I like that the kill markers suggest that there are Nazi killbusses out there too (and they only need one more to make ace). Those are train silhouettes.
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Dec 29, 2020 02:39
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This looks like a mad magazine fold in Edit: actually, where "is* it from? Rodrigo Diaz fucked around with this message at 05:43 on Dec 29, 2020 |
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Dec 29, 2020 05:39
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:This looks like a mad magazine fold in
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Dec 29, 2020 05:42
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FMguru posted:It's from a 1973 National Lampoon article about "The Battling Buses of World War II". Lol thank you
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Dec 29, 2020 05:43
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It looks to me that it would get the undercarriage hung up on the hill there if it just kept driving forward.
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Dec 29, 2020 05:43
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CommonShore posted:It looks to me that it would get the undercarriage hung up on the hill there if it just kept driving forward. They are clearly going to ramp off the hill
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Dec 29, 2020 06:09
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BalloonFish posted:In 1914 Russia had seven railway lines leading to the German frontier, none of which were double track (maybe these were the ones which were planned to be doubled which the Germans saw as such a threat to their plans?). These lines had an estimated capacity of 223 trains per day, or 0.25 trains per day per kilometre of border. What do you mean by trains? As in how many carraiges of soldiers/tons of material would be considered a train.
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Dec 29, 2020 07:06
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/pants, closes door Finally here! Should we talk about drunken waves, tank destroyers or vikings? 
Tias fucked around with this message at 14:47 on Dec 29, 2020 |
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Dec 29, 2020 11:33
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Those are train silhouettes. Here in the fields of Normandy we meet the bus, the natural enemy of the train. What a great opportunity to observe its behavior in the wild. Let's watch as it drives towards a German railyard...
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Dec 29, 2020 16:49
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Dec 29, 2020 18:52
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Jobbo_Fett posted:They are clearly going to ramp off the hill Got to get some air to drop the bombs.
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Dec 29, 2020 19:01
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Is War in Human Civilization by Azar Gat well-regarded? I started it and so far the intellectuals he's cited uncritically are Napoleon Chagnon, Jared Diamond, Emile Durkheim, and Richard Dawkins, which is setting off a lot of alarms for me.
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Dec 29, 2020 19:25
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Raenir Salazar posted:In the Canadian Forces we also have history classes about Canada's participation in military conflict, I think it started with the Boer War. The military history of Canada goes back rather further than that and is taught, particularly given that substantial numbers of regiments claim to perpetuate units that existed as early as the 1700s. HEY GUNS posted:You can't say "military history." You won't get hired. The pervasive assumption is it's all unsophisticated drums-and-trumpets stuff at best. At worst they believe you're right wing or that you approve of what you analyze. This is the lament of the military historian. The number of people who are hired in Canada explicitly as military historians is vanishingly small, and yes military historians are certainly maligned by a lot of their peers for the reasons HEY GUNS has described. Fearless fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Dec 29, 2020 |
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Dec 29, 2020 22:23
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*glances at the White House, which is on fire*
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Dec 29, 2020 22:24
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feedmegin posted:*glances at the White House, which is on fire* Yeah but we didn't do it this time or the last time, really
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Dec 29, 2020 22:26
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