Milhist Thread Part The IVth: sir, my ass is flowing like Sun Tzu's army

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Milhist Thread Part The IVth: sir, my ass is flowing like Sun Tzu's army

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HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

milhist posts go here, as well as more serious history discussion than (for instance) PYF

if you dinks go from friendly disagreement to a fight with real anger in it i will drive to your houses and kick you

here's the last installment: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3785167

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Nov 30, 2018

# ¿ Oct 23, 2018 13:31

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# ¿ Apr 23, 2024 20:09

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Kemper Boyd posted:

Milhist relevant: https://twitter.com/AliceAvizandum/status/1054698287448645634

faster than infantry, cheaper than cav, and nobody likes 'em

# ¿ Oct 23, 2018 15:59

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Perestroika posted:

Cheers! Though I'm also wondering about the "why" as much as the "what". Like, to my uninformed eyes it looks like the shape of European swords developed kinda like this:

And (assuming this observation isn't completely nonsensical ), I'm wondering why at that particular time and place a relatively short and choppy sidearm was preferred when it was seemingly bookended by longer and stabbier swords on both sides.

if you like that you'll love cinquedeas

# ¿ Oct 23, 2018 16:55

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GotLag posted:

It might have been the Nazi supervisor of civilian affairs who deliberately sabotaged the roundup of Jews in Denmark, not out of any particular love for Jews but to avert potential strikes or an uprising:

https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-45919900

counterintuitively i really like people who do the right things for the wrong reasons

# ¿ Oct 23, 2018 22:21

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Milo and POTUS posted:

Yay my thread back. I was hoping the next iteration would have a couple reserved posts so that effortposts from the previous thread(s?) could have a home at the top of the thread and maybe one for the upcoming effortposts too but I don't care too much.

What I am currently hoping is if someone remembered that medieval or maybe early modern battle where they drove huge spikes into the beach to stop the fleet like giant abatis? There was an amazing painting of it. I think it involved the Spanish, or maybe french.

siege of la rochelle, french royalists and the dutch v huguenots and the english, 1627/28

edit: the painting is 19th c

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 09:10 on Oct 24, 2018

# ¿ Oct 24, 2018 08:48

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Alchenar posted:

Yeah the thing about Best's story is that it's a reminder that Nazi Germany was in a constant struggle between the ideological drivers and competition between the hardcore Nazis, and the people who wanted an efficient functioning country.

also you cant run a functioning country and be a serious nazi at the same time, not only because of the racism but because part of the fascist ideology (if it is an ideology, or a single thing :can:

) is the belief that you can overcome any obstacle by wanting to really hard

# ¿ Oct 24, 2018 09:30

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

ChubbyChecker posted:

A great painting. Click the gray square for bigger size.

several threads ago someone described richelieu in this painting as "some kind of catholic darth vader"

# ¿ Oct 24, 2018 11:40

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Milo and POTUS posted:

Also was it part of the wider 30 yw or was its own separate poo poo? If the latter was the whole of the continent just primed to go off in the early c17th or what.

it was its own seperate poo poo, the answer might be yes, and we've been trying to figure out if so/why ever since some russian woman whose name i forget coined the phrase "crisis of the 17th century."

edit: it wasn't hobsbawm! it was a russian, it was slightly before hobsbawm used the phrase, and i cannot remember her loving name

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 13:47 on Oct 24, 2018

# ¿ Oct 24, 2018 12:27

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Chillbro Baggins posted:

So Roland joined a regiment just like Hey Gal's dudes did.

... oh right my father basically did that , but on the payroll of the US Army. (Dad says Thompsons were too heavy, he preferred the M3 if he had to carry a .45 SMG.)

until the rise of the PMC you joined either on your own, or you joined some kind of small fly-by-night operation that was probably run by British people with too much time on their hands. Mercenaries played decisive roles in all sorts of African wars and it's people like this that all the UN regulations are talking about.

# ¿ Oct 25, 2018 10:33

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sullat posted:

...(probably booze)...mercenaries

yeah

# ¿ Oct 25, 2018 16:07

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

it's actually quite difficult to compare the rate of sex crimes either across different times or at the same time but in different places, since different regions (and in places like italy that's as fine-grained as the city-state level) define things differently, different things are illegal in different places, and some sexual crimes may have been isolated to only certain places in europe

Garthine Walker, �Sexual Violence and Rape in Europe, 1500-1750,� in Sarah Toulalan and Kate Fisher, eds., The Routledge History of Sex and the Body: 1500 to the Present (New York: Routledge, 2015)

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 21:16 on Oct 25, 2018

# ¿ Oct 25, 2018 21:10

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ChubbyChecker posted:

I'd like to hear more about that stuff, is there a thread for it?

there is both a HEMA thread and a general fencing thread, my friend

# ¿ Oct 25, 2018 21:11

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Splode posted:

Does anyone have a handy link to Heygal's posts about gender in the 30 years war period? I think it was a perfect example of this sort of thing. "Gender is a spectrum" is a modern concept, but they had it back then! However that doesn't mean the 30 years war was some sort of lost age of progressive thought, and their version is uhhh, less cool than it initially appears.

you'd think that "women and men are the same kind of being" would be less sexist than the victorians but you'd be wrong: the kind of being everyone is, is men. Women are the less perfect version of that. This was, incidentally, immensely helpful for me when I was trying to figure out whether or not I was trans my first few years of my PhD program, but I can see how it would make a woman feel lovely.

Some people thought the Romantic model, in which women and men are different kinds of being, was less sexist--since now you can have a perfect woman as well as a perfect man, women can be 100% perfectly actualized. But what they're actualized as is completely different from men. Two totally seperate tracks of mental development. This is where the "seperate spheres" thing comes from. The early feminists do not push back against this as far as I know (the 19c is not my field), they think within it while arguing for more roles for women. "We deserve to participate in government as well as men because you need the voices of this different perspective on life."

So neither system of thought ends up being "better than" or "worse than" the other, they're just different and then people figure out ways to live in both of them

edit: this is what historians from the late 19th/early 20th century were talking about when they called the late 18th/early 19th century a period of the "discovery of woman."

edit 2: if you can't find my old posts just look up an author named Walter Laqueur, he's where I got this from. Then read the responses to him because not all historians agree with him.

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 11:21 on Oct 26, 2018

# ¿ Oct 26, 2018 10:52

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khwarezm posted:

What do you mean by that exactly?

All human beings start out at a child's level of development. People with more "vital heat" develop into men--they grow more hair, their penises get bigger, they get taller, and their bodies feel warmer and drier to the touch. (How "moist" your body is thought to be is a huge deal with these people. It reminds me of traditional chinese medicine, kind of. There's all sorts of "fluids" inside the human body, doing things.) People with less "vital heat" stay at a kind of arrested level of development, with soft, cool, damp bodies. Those people are women, or castrated men. Most people end up as one or the other--but theoretically it should also be possible to "stall" at any level of this process. Which is where my confused wonderings about what kind of person I was come in.

edit: i feel like this is a mental system that can only occur to a society where there are a whole lot of eunuchs around

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 11:55 on Oct 26, 2018

# ¿ Oct 26, 2018 11:34

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Fangz posted:

Is this based on the 'women are made from Adam's rib' idea?

nope: aristotle, galen, and the Humors

# ¿ Oct 26, 2018 12:22

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khwarezm posted:

It's just that it sounded a little bit like you were saying that your decision to transition was influenced by that archaic idea that women are just imperfect men.

no but the way i think about myself was influenced by that. If i had not already been between men and women it probably would have been insulting rather than hopeful.

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 16:33 on Oct 26, 2018

# ¿ Oct 26, 2018 16:22

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Alchenar posted:

My gut reaction on reading it is that it's looks like 'you have no idea what hormones are or even have a concept of biology that can include them but you can kinda observe (via eunuchs) that there's some sort of link between people's bodies and how they tend to act'.

A lot of science before really good instuments has a sort of...puzzling-it-out aspect. Assume these people are just as smart as we are, just they have no idea what chemistry is and they've just invented the microscope. What are they going to think? What would we think if we were them?

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 16:38 on Oct 26, 2018

# ¿ Oct 26, 2018 16:29

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Alchenar posted:

There's also a whole load of having to rely on what other people claim to be true/have observed without any peer review or having the resources to check yourself.

aristotle and herodotus are the best for this

# ¿ Oct 26, 2018 16:49

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

it took me months to get the materials and patterns together to make a 17th century outfit, and a longass time to make it as well, this is not just something you happen across

# ¿ Oct 26, 2018 18:14

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Phanatic posted:

I don't want to just throw it out, but I don't want to keep it around, either.

does it make it slightly better if you think that it was probably war loot? i mean it belonged to a nazi but that nazi was defeated at some point...

# ¿ Oct 26, 2018 21:46

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CoffeeBooze posted:

So that�s what the statue the DPRK built for Mobutu looks like. Apparently Juche has no need for accurate human proportions.

I don�t know why I didnt think to use French search terms. That is the language it was broadcast in after all. I�ll spend some more time rummaging around tomorrow to see if I can find it because Mobutu�s cult of personality seemed... well.... peculiar even by the standards of dictatorial personality cults.

i've seen that face in the sun thing with stalin and also with louis xiv

# ¿ Oct 27, 2018 10:28

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Cessna posted:

As it is, no one used this sort of camouflage post-WWII because no one wanted to look like a drat Nazi. But it did influence some designs like Germany's post-war "Flecktarn." The Bundeswehr was slow to adopt this - and France and the Dutch rejected it - because it looked too Nazi.

What about the DDR? They already goose-step and use those Napoleon's-Eagles-looking standards.

# ¿ Oct 27, 2018 17:19

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tonberrytoby posted:

They used a Flecktarn style pattern until the 70s. Then they switched to one based on dashes.

Did they adopt Flektarn faster than the Wessis?

# ¿ Oct 27, 2018 18:49

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Clarence posted:

Sounds like there is a niche for a youtube channel comparing different camouflage clothing types in different environments, conditions and seasons. Could easily have a dozen or more videos for each type.

that guy's a shill for Big Aluminum Hook

# ¿ Oct 27, 2018 20:58

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Marxist-Jezzinist posted:

I've got a soft spot for East German strichtarn, which is camo.

east german aesthetics in general are so good

trabis
rally cars
square-rear end motor scooters
those apartments, you know the ones
there's one brand of dishwashing soap that's in a bottle shaped like a tower and they liked it so much that when the firm collapsed after the Wende they crowdsourced the funds to start it up again

# ¿ Oct 27, 2018 21:43

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Marxist-Jezzinist posted:

I've got one of their funny helmets, it looks very good and modern with the camo cover. Less like a glans than the Naughty German helmets

my favs are still the ones with the spike, sorry

# ¿ Oct 27, 2018 21:49

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Marxist-Jezzinist posted:

Objectively correct opinion.

imagine how many steps they take to make and how expensive and yet not very protective the material is (they're leather lol)
imagine how much work it takes to make the all-weather canvas covers
and how much all that time could have been used for other war-effort-related things

That's German Engineering

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Oct 27, 2018

# ¿ Oct 27, 2018 21:54

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

the bavarians had their own design

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 23:04 on Oct 27, 2018

# ¿ Oct 27, 2018 22:26

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Epicurius posted:

Isn't integrating replacements into existing regiments more efficient anyway, because that way, the new recruits can learn from the more experienced soldiers?

according to 17th century french military theorists, it's important to keep a large veterans:new dudes ratio, otherwise you'll swamp the experienced people with more new guys than they can teach

# ¿ Oct 28, 2018 17:38

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Grand Prize Winner posted:

How experienced would they have been? The Mexican-American war had ended a little over a decade before the Civil War started so vets from that were probably starting to get long in the tooth assuming they'd even stayed in the army.

there are a large number of forts in the middle of loving nowhere in the us. this is where our tiny, tiny long-term army was

# ¿ Oct 28, 2018 21:45

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JcDent posted:

How... how the gently caress does that happen? How the gently caress is that allowed to happen? "Sorry, Branch B, Branch A patented the camo pattern, so you have to find your own. Now burn all the uniforms or we'll have to get Branch C to enforce the patent right with tanks an artillery."

nazi germany's economics were neither fully right-wing nor fully left-wing but they WERE fully bad

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 22:59 on Oct 29, 2018

# ¿ Oct 29, 2018 14:07

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Cyrano4747 posted:

To give you an idea of how much back biting went on in that system the luftwaffe had a tank division because Goering wanted a army off his own like Himmler had.

Roll that around in your head a bit.

Luftwaffe Panzer Division.

it's a man's life, in the air force's army's tanks

# ¿ Oct 29, 2018 14:31

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Corsair Pool Boy posted:

As a kid I thought the airborne were Air Force units.

Fortunately I learned the truth without ever saying this to anyone in the airborne.

you were a child, i hotglued an airborne patch to my milsurp backpack as a child before someone told me i probably shouldn't :negative:

the hotglue was because i don't think i understood how sewing worked yet

# ¿ Oct 29, 2018 14:57

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Cessna posted:

Who, as an aside, were given a big pile of those fancy SS camouflage smocks during Sicily:

So, an Luftwaffe Panzer Division wearing patented SS camouflage over their blue Luftwaffe uniforms.

Again, the answer is "because Nazis."

are they meant to look like windbreakers, because lmao

# ¿ Oct 29, 2018 15:00

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Fangz posted:

I think rather than McCarthy, think of him as someone like Hubert Humphrey or Mondale, except somehow even lower profile since they got a VP position.

we did have a VP who was a communist, henry wallace. but after his third party run he sank into obscurity, changeed his mind, and reappeared as a republican lol

# ¿ Oct 29, 2018 15:24

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

i sew. i can feel that jacket.

considering what 1940s industrial tailoring was like, do you know how much of this was finished by hand?

edit: how did the same people who tailored every feldgrau jacket to every grunt not realize it's impossible to not look like bill clinton c. 1993 in a windbreaker

edit 2: does this mean that if you were wearing an ss smock over a standard-issue feldgrau jacket you had to take off literally every piece of gear you had to take a poo poo, or do the pants go up and down without engaging with the hook assemblage

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 16:08 on Oct 29, 2018

# ¿ Oct 29, 2018 16:05

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Cessna posted:

Guess what? There's sort of a fly opening, but if you want to poop, you have to take off your entire uniform

this is a problem from the 16-teens, when everyone's pants were hooked or laced to their jackets

the nazis infented a three hundred year old problem for themselves

quote:

* Sometimes you can read WWII memoirs where they talk about going out on patrol and finding Germans by smelling them. "I could just smell the Nazis." Before I did reenacting I thought this was an exaggeration, a soldier's hyperbole. Having done reenacting, it's totally legit. Get that wool uniform and leather field gear wet and it smells like wet dog. It's a really distinctive smell. I can easily imagine if you get a company of troopers wet, and add in tobacco and maybe a cooking fire and you could smell them hundreds of yards away.

gonna push back against you a little here: all woolen poo poo smells like wet wool, i probably smell like that in reenactments as well. plus the stuff i oil my sword with, plus wet metal. also everyone smells a tiny bit like what they eat and you can really tell the difference if it's a food you're not used to. one difference is that linen seems to be a really "clean" material, like you smell less bad if your shirt is made of linen

also in the 17th c buff coats were finished with cod oil and chalk, imagine that when it rains
tasty

ALSO: all woolen or silk stuff would have never been washed, ever. part of the way they constructed the clothing--like the seams, or how breeches or doublets were shaped--means they would fall apart if washed.

quote:

If it means anything, they had unit tailors assigned as a section at the battalion level. Yes, this is insane.

lolllllllllllllll

edit: it's like that scene from three amigos, "sew, very old one! sew like the wind!"

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 16:41 on Oct 29, 2018

# ¿ Oct 29, 2018 16:35

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Cessna posted:

- a "service shirt." This is sort of like a cotton men's dress shirt, but thicker and longer - that is, it hangs down well below the waist.

this is old school as poo poo for europe, it reminds me of the kind of shirts i wear at reenactments, which is knee length. are you sure they were cotton? how were they constructed? specifically what do the shoulders, neck hole, and sleeves look like

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 16:44 on Oct 29, 2018

# ¿ Oct 29, 2018 16:41

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Cessna posted:

Yeah, but American uniforms and field gear were made out of (for the most part) cotton post-D-day. Soviet stuff also, for basic uniforms, with cotton supplemented with synthetics later on. (Yes, greatcoats were often wool, so this isn't always the case.) So you'd have German infantry out there smelling like wet-dog wool while the GIs/Frontoviks didn't. It's really noticeable.

I didn't know that, I though everyone's uniforms were always wool. What did US troops do when it was cold?

quote:

Here's a reproduction, but...

ah, that's nothing like the shirt i'm thinking of. Which held on until the early 1800s i think.

Nenonen posted:

Airborne are trans infantry.

airborne are dragoons

hot take: everyone is a dragoon

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 17:18 on Oct 29, 2018

# ¿ Oct 29, 2018 17:08

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# ¿ Apr 23, 2024 20:09

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Rocko Bonaparte posted:

Cessna, are those SS camo pictures showing recreations or originals? I assume recreations because I thought the originals bleached out during use, like, immediately.

what dye and mordant did they use, i might be able to tell if that would have happened

# ¿ Oct 29, 2018 18:51

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Milhist Thread Part The IVth: sir, my ass is flowing like Sun Tzu's army

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