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Solaris 2.0 posted:Berlin WW2 bombing survivor Saturn the alligator dies in Moscow Zoo https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-52784240 quote:Saturn somehow survived and then lived for three years in a city ravaged by war, and a climate unsuited to alligators.
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May 24, 2020 00:13
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It ate so many starving cats and dogs that somehow survived that long 
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May 24, 2020 01:06
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SeanBeansShako posted:It ate so many starving cats and dogs that somehow survived that long On the bright side, just imagine he ate Martin Bormann or some of the other top Nazis whose bodies were never found.
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May 24, 2020 01:23
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:On the bright side, just imagine he ate Martin Bormann or some of the other top Nazis whose bodies were never found. Hurray!
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May 24, 2020 02:03
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There was a LOT of ugly fighting in the Berlin subways and I imagine the more accessible sewers as well. That croc might have needed to scrounge for food for a few years but there was no shortage after May 45
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May 24, 2020 03:04
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:On the bright side, just imagine he ate Martin Bormann or some of the other top Nazis whose bodies were never found.
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May 24, 2020 03:16
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Nessus posted:A gator has a pretty slow metabolism too, he could have eaten Bormann and survived quite happily on that for months. he wasn't even the fattest nazi
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May 24, 2020 03:25
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HEY GUNS posted:he wasn't even the fattest nazi Yeah but he's the fat one who vanished. Hence he was obviously eaten by this gator.
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May 24, 2020 03:57
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I assume it burped up a Hitlergrussidentificationundpfeffenweizerbuch at the right time and won Stalin's approval.
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May 24, 2020 04:11
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:On the bright side, just imagine he ate Martin Bormann or some of the other top Nazis whose bodies were never found. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JQbrIjP70w
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May 24, 2020 06:44
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Nessus posted:I assume it burped up a Hitlergrussidentificationundpfeffenweizerbuch at the right time and won Stalin's approval. Superb pitch for a fun family movie.
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May 24, 2020 09:47
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Nessus posted:I assume it burped up a Hitlergrussidentificationundpfeffenweizerbuch at the right time and won Stalin's approval. It would be awesome (yet rather unlikely) if this gator was the inspiration for Gena the Crocodile, from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUBNtYixTSs
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May 24, 2020 09:55
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There's a horror movie waiting to be made there. Alligator in the bombed out Berlin sewers, hunting Nazi's. JoJo Alligator.
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May 24, 2020 15:35
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Comstar posted:There's a horror movie waiting to be made there. Alligator in the bombed out Berlin sewers, hunting Nazi's. JoJo Alligator. I'm picturing "Life of Pi" but with Martin Bormann and a Crocodile
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May 24, 2020 15:46
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I wonder why the British gave him to the soviets instead of putting him in BBC serials
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May 24, 2020 16:13
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Alan Smithee posted:I wonder why the British gave him to the soviets instead of putting him in BBC serials There were significant chunks of the British military and defense industries in general who thought Stalin was going to be their BFF after the war, which lead to some hilariously questionable decisions in light of the escalating Cold War stuff. For a really blindingly dumb example of this - so dumb even Stalin commented "what fool sells us his secrets" - look at the Soviets buying 25 Rolls Royce jet engines in 1946.
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May 24, 2020 16:19
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Cyrano4747 posted:There were significant chunks of the British military and defense industries in general who thought Stalin was going to be their BFF after the war, which lead to some hilariously questionable decisions in light of the escalating Cold War stuff. That’s hilarious because Churchill wanted to go to war against Stalin asap. I guess that’s one reason the British public voted his rear end out? *edit* I think Churchill was so gung ho about going to war against the Soviets that he had cooked up a plan to use reconstituted Whermact divisions?? Solaris 2.0 fucked around with this message at 16:24 on May 24, 2020 |
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May 24, 2020 16:22
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Solaris 2.0 posted:That’s hilarious because Churchill wanted to go to war against Stalin asap. He asked 'what's the option?', which was fair because Stalin was right at that point installing puppet governments across Eastern Europe, and the General Staff duly produced a sketch plan where under under the most favourable circumstances the Soviets just drive onwards to Paris to demonstrate what stupid idea it would have been.
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May 24, 2020 16:58
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Alchenar posted:He asked 'what's the option?', which was fair because Stalin was right at that point installing puppet governments across Eastern Europe, and the General Staff duly produced a sketch plan where under under the most favourable circumstances the Soviets just drive onwards to Paris to demonstrate what stupid idea it would have been. Were the plans made before the atom bombings?
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May 24, 2020 17:03
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Solaris 2.0 posted:That’s hilarious because Churchill wanted to go to war against Stalin asap. Eh, the plans were secret until 1998. Labour's Clement Attlee defeated him because Attlee promised to create the welfare state and provide free healthcare (which the UK has to this day as a result), while Churchill said it was unaffordable.
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May 24, 2020 17:05
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Alchenar posted:He asked 'what's the option?', which was fair because Stalin was right at that point installing puppet governments across Eastern Europe, and the General Staff duly produced a sketch plan where under under the most favourable circumstances the Soviets just drive onwards to Paris to demonstrate what stupid idea it would have been. How did the Soviets end up in such a solid position after the sheer world-historical level of bloodshed they experienced in their homeland and on the eastern front? I understand how the US did it - a basically untouched CONUS and comparatively small percentage population loss - but the Soviets by the end of the war are something I've never learned about.
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May 24, 2020 17:19
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Captain von Trapp posted:How did the Soviets end up in such a solid position after the sheer world-historical level of bloodshed they experienced in their homeland and on the eastern front? I understand how the US did it - a basically untouched CONUS and comparatively small percentage population loss - but the Soviets by the end of the war are something I've never learned about. The Soviets weren't solid in 1945, the population was mobilized to its limit and a small famine would break out in 1946. But there were definitely enough active Soviet soldiers that they could have ran over the Brits, who were also mobilized to their limit and running out of manpower. As for the Soviet rebuilding program, they got a big boost by looting industrial equipment from Europe and Manchuria. Even so, they weren't better off than before the war started, unlike the US.
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May 24, 2020 17:52
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ChubbyChecker posted:Were the plans made before the atom bombings? To be fair a) stocks of thone bombs were strictly limited and b) you have to get its target past actually existent air defence. Also bear in mind ths is an unprovoked surprise attack by the UK on their former allies. Getting the US to incinerate a few million civilians in support of this backstab wouid ummm be a worldwide PR problem.
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May 24, 2020 18:44
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Gort posted:Eh, the plans were secret until 1998. Labour's Clement Attlee defeated him because Attlee promised to create the welfare state and provide free healthcare (which the UK has to this day as a result), while Churchill said it was unaffordable. My impression is that while Churchill was seen as the best guy for fighting the war, the Conservatives said no to any serious reform or change, while Labour had all sorts of ideas (like universal health care/dental care) that were widely popular. The context makes total sense, too: wartime Britain had been moving mountains through organized action, and most people were afraid of a return to the poverty of the '20s and '30s. Churchill reverting to type once the war was done really didn't appeal. feedmegin posted:To be fair a) stocks of thone bombs were strictly limited and b) you have to get its target past actually existent air defence. Also bear in mind ths is an unprovoked surprise attack by the UK on their former allies. Getting the US to incinerate a few million civilians in support of this backstab wouid ummm be a worldwide PR problem. Yeah, during the Berlin blockade, Truman used the thread of the Atom bomb, only to discover he was bluffing. In a fairly hilarious example as to how dramatic the post war demobilization was, Los Alamos has been essentially abandoned, and a quick sit-rep from Los Alamos reported "maybe one" atom bomb (fat man implosion type) could be constructed quickly, with one or two more bombs possible from spare parts. The bombs used on Japan were in essence garage prototypes. Post this spooky experience, people were returned to revise the atom bomb design for production, and set up a factory for production.
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May 24, 2020 19:08
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Alan Smithee posted:I wonder why the British gave him to the soviets instead of putting him in BBC serials Jealous of his teeth
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May 24, 2020 20:23
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Nebakenezzer posted:My impression is that while Churchill was seen as the best guy for fighting the war, the Conservatives said no to any serious reform or change, while Labour had all sorts of ideas (like universal health care/dental care) that were widely popular. The context makes total sense, too: wartime Britain had been moving mountains through organized action, and most people were afraid of a return to the poverty of the '20s and '30s. Churchill reverting to type once the war was done really didn't appeal. Your impression is correct. Churchill's case wasn't helped by the fact that he had, quite deliberately, set himself up as The Great International War Leader and focussed on the conduct of the conflict and the diplomacy with other powers. Meanwhile the Home Front and the UK's domestic political affairs were headed up by Attlee while the Beveridge Report, which laid out the blueprint for the post-war welfare state, was authored by a prominent Liberal under the direction of a Labour minister. So Churchill and the Conservatives had excluded themselves from both the tangible and successful systems put in place during the war (which virtually the entire British population had direct interaction with) and the ideas being gestated for the post-war world. There was complacency that Churchill's status as Victorious War Statesman and his apparent high popularity with the British public would see him coast to a win. However it was quite possible for large sections of British society to simultaneously respect, admire and even slightly deify Churchill for his effort and work during the war while also remembering his actions with regard to strikes in the 1910s, his rhetoric around the General Strike in 1926 and his part as chancellor in the Gold Standard debacle. It's often accounted that Churchill 'lost the election' when he said that implementing Labour's welfare state would "require some sort of Gestapo". Which certainly wasn't a good public statement to make against policies that were broadly supported by a population that had spent six years fighting a state with the actual Gestapo. I believe that the actual polling results show that the statement didn't really have any effect on the national opinion, but it shows that Churchill was out of step with the public. His attempts to gee-up the nation to keep fighting the war in the Pacific were just tone-deaf and, although Operation Unthinkable was secret, there were widespread rumours that Churchill was agitating for a fight with the USSR. Churchill effectively admitted that he wasn't catching the public mood when he shared a taxi with Attlee and said "I've tried them with pep and I've tried them with pap, and I still don't know what they want."
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May 24, 2020 20:59
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Nebakenezzer posted:Yeah, during the Berlin blockade, Truman used the thread of the Atom bomb, only to discover he was bluffing. In a fairly hilarious example as to how dramatic the post war demobilization was, Los Alamos has been essentially abandoned, and a quick sit-rep from Los Alamos reported "maybe one" atom bomb (fat man implosion type) could be constructed quickly, with one or two more bombs possible from spare parts. The bombs used on Japan were in essence garage prototypes. Post this spooky experience, people were returned to revise the atom bomb design for production, and set up a factory for production.
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May 24, 2020 21:28
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Nessus posted:Imagine the world where we never had industrial scale production of nuclear weapons! This was never on the table. Remember the Soviets were going all out to build their own.
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May 24, 2020 21:35
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Not a chance. The only way for that to happen would be maintaining the Angloamerican atomic monopoly, and Stalin was going to set off his bomb in '47 no matter what. You cannot trust a nuclear monopoly from someone who is an ideological enemy just because they were a convenient co-belligerent in the war just ended. Once the Soviets had the bomb, any major confrontation would have resulted in a nuclear arms race.
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May 24, 2020 21:38
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:As for the Soviet rebuilding program, they got a big boost by looting industrial equipment from Europe and Manchuria. Even so, they weren't better off than before the war started, unlike the US. I dunno, I'm looking at numbers that suggest their GDP grew about 40% from 1941 to 1944.
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May 24, 2020 21:39
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Nessus posted:Imagine the world where we never had industrial scale production of nuclear weapons! That actually seems like it would legitimately and concrete change the course of world history. It isn't as if there was no precedent - everyone basically stuffed chemical weapons back in the closet after War War 1. The Nuclear Secrecy blog has some interesting thoughts on this; basically in the early history - think 1945-46 - it really wasn't clear if the bomb was going to be deployed, stockpiled or banned. While the rivalry between the USA and USSR was inevitable, and the Cold War with all its paranoia was really goddamn likely (especially with Stalin around) I think things could have taken a different turn. Though if you want a page from "it could have been worse", check out wikipedia's disturbingly long list of nations that tried to develop a bomb before realizing it was too expensive/geopolitically costly and signed the NPT.
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May 24, 2020 21:53
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:This was never on the table. Remember the Soviets were going all out to build their own.
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May 24, 2020 22:23
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Nessus posted:It isn't as if there was no precedent - everyone basically stuffed chemical weapons back in the closet after War War 1. Because they're actually kind of crap outside of literal static trench warfare, not because of morality.
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May 24, 2020 23:06
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Gnoman posted:Not a chance. The only way for that to happen would be maintaining the Angloamerican atomic monopoly The what now? America tried very hard to prevent Britain getting the Bomb. You might as well talk about the French-American monopoly because the only way Britain got an ounce of cooperation from America was proving it could build it's own. This would still have happened if the Soviets hadn't don'e a drat thing, btw.
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May 24, 2020 23:08
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feedmegin posted:Because they're actually kind of crap outside of literal static trench warfare, not because of morality.
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May 24, 2020 23:14
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Nessus posted:I don't know, they seem like they'd either generate massive enemy casualties (with surprise) or require the operational challenges of using and deploying NBC gear correctly in a combat zone (without it). Yet they do not seem to have been widely used. Now we can speculate on exactly why that is, but it seems to be a fact with which we must reckon. They also weren't used much outside of the Western Front in WW1. They are a pain to use against a mobile opponent, especially if you're planning to then occupy or move through that ground yourself. Here check this https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-chemical-weapons-anymore/
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May 24, 2020 23:20
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Gort posted:I dunno, I'm looking at numbers that suggest their GDP grew about 40% from 1941 to 1944. Where are you reading this?
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May 24, 2020 23:48
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The Labour party also used its position in the wartime government to commission the Beveridge Report, which was essentially an indictment on how lovely living conditions were for the majority of the population. This was used as a rationale for the reforms Labour wanted to get done if they won in '45, despite the fact the 1945 manifesto wasn't much different from the 1935 one (something radical Labour complained about) Edit: beaten like the Tories in 1945
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May 24, 2020 23:56
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Nessus posted:My thinking is not "the Soviets never get the bomb," it is "a confluence of factors means that the nuclear arsenals never became the elaborate things they actually became." It seems that most of the deterrent value comes from your first handful, and past that it's pretty much being able to play thermonuclear whack-a-mole and maybe not run out of shots until you get the privilege of being the Enclave in the new LARP of Fallout. Well that's another point. The nukes of WWII and its immediate aftermath were basically just bombs. Big bombs to be sure, but not in principle a clear change in the nature of warfare, much less species survival. What an atomic bomb could do was not in theory all that different from having a conventional bomber fleet pound on you for a while. It would have seemed sort of silly not to build them. It's specifically the MT-scale thermonuclear weapons where it became clear that the Big One wasn't a weapon of much military utility, it was strictly a city eraser. But that wasn't known in 1945-1947, and at that point the genie was out of the bottle.
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May 24, 2020 23:58
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feedmegin posted:The what now? America tried very hard to prevent Britain getting the Bomb. You might as well talk about the French-American monopoly because the only way Britain got an ounce of cooperation from America was proving it could build it's own. This would still have happened if the Soviets hadn't don'e a drat thing, btw. Truman's high-handedness delayed the British program, but it was still an inevitability - particularly since there was no attempt to interfere in Britain's domestic program. The Manhattan Project was a joint operation between the two powers from 1943 onward, and the British had most of the data needed before the McMahon Act was passed in 1946 as a result of several publicized incidents of espionage. The Soviets could not count on this soured relationship remaining soured, and even then it was a certainty that Britain would get the bomb - creating an environment where the only two atomic powers were the United States and Britain - Two powers that were ideological enemies of the USSR.
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May 25, 2020 00:04
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