Merino History Thread: doing statistical sampling on captured german socks

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Hirez: Feb 3, 2003; Weber scored 49 points?

Ghost Leviathan posted:

The real fun there is the theories that Japanese doomsday cult tested a nuke in the outback and no one officially noticed.

I believe it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banjawarn_Station :tinfoil:

quote:

Aum Shinrikyo was a Japanese doomsday cult responsible for a range of criminal and terrorist acts. In April 1993, when Kiyohide Hayakawa, deputy leader of the Aum,[5] arrived in Western Australia, Aum Shinrikyo purchased Banjawarn and built a facility there. Hayakawa had come in search of areas suitable for uranium mining. In his notes, he also praised the high quality of uranium ore

# ? Nov 30, 2025 01:17

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# ? Dec 16, 2025 02:08

darthbob88: Oct 13, 2011; YOSPOS

Nessus posted:

isn't it generally agreed that the Israelis and South Africa teamed up on a test in the southern ocean at some point?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vela_incident

Officially uncertain and classified, but a lot of people think it was a South African-Israeli nuke

# ? Nov 30, 2025 03:38

Defenestrategy: Oct 24, 2010

For post WW2 is there a common agreement on what sorts of civilian infrastructure/commerce is open season as far as what is considered legitimate targets? I know the practical answer is: what ever so long as you are in a position to never be arrested for crimes against humanity, but from a "legalistic" standpoint.

# ? Dec 3, 2025 19:26

feedmegin: Jul 30, 2008

RFC2324 posted:

how much of this is like tech, where its the same people just now with a new gender.

it would make sense given that tech is where history majors go to make money

I resemble all of this post.

# ? Dec 3, 2025 19:47

Alchenar: Apr 9, 2008

Defenestrategy posted:

For post WW2 is there a common agreement on what sorts of civilian infrastructure/commerce is open season as far as what is considered legitimate targets? I know the practical answer is: what ever so long as you are in a position to never be arrested for crimes against humanity, but from a "legalistic" standpoint.

Pretty much anything is open season as long as there is a clear military objective and you pick the option that achieves that objective while minimising collateral damage. Dams get special protection, nuclear facilities are off limits. Hospitals absolute no go. So it's totally legitimate to knock out Baghdad's power plant on day one of the 2003 invasion because you want to sever the regime's ability to communicate with the army and understand what's happening.

This is obviously a spectrum and it's really about 'is this gratuitous?' rather than getting arrested. Sometimes US soldiers get arrested for what they do. But the US generally has a very permissive take on what the rules allow, whereas European nations take significantly more restrictive takes (arguably in Afghanistan to silly degrees tantamount to 'you aren't allowed to shoot back').

Russia deliberately targets hospitals.

e: the only thing that really changes post ww2 are rules around nuclear facilities and the practical elements of trying to enforce a blockade become really difficult

Alchenar fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Dec 3, 2025

# ? Dec 3, 2025 20:06

GhostofJohnMuir: Aug 14, 2014

operation pocket money in which the us mined hai phong and essentially halted all north vietnamese maritime capacity for a year until the Paris accords were signed stands out as one of the broader strategic interdiction campaigns in the post ww2 era. it was denounced by various parties, but not particularly singled out from the general outrage around operation rolling thunder and operation linebacker

it's a current event, but the how the siege of gaza is treated in the future will probably be the biggest test of what's "legal" in the post ww2 era

# ? Dec 3, 2025 23:16

Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Enjoy every sausage.; Smellrose

Alchenar posted:

e: the only thing that really changes post ww2 are rules around nuclear facilities and the practical elements of trying to enforce a blockade become really difficult

Note that it's not that nuclear facilities are protected from attacks by treaty (witness the Israeli strike on Iraq's unfinished plant in 1982 and the US blowing up Iran's facility this year), it's that for obvious reasons there's no good result from blowing a hole in an active nuclear reactor. As a historical example only--the Russians invading Ukraine, otherwise not noted for restraint, surrounded the Ukrainian nuclear plant on the Dneiper but ceased firing at the grounds in the face of the plant employees' very reasonable request that they not shoot at a functional reactor.

Vincent Van Goatse fucked around with this message at 00:30 on Dec 4, 2025

# ? Dec 4, 2025 00:26

SlothfulCobra: Mar 27, 2011

I think international law has always been pretty fuzzy and gets made up as it goes along. If one country decides to ignore it, then uh well, I guess figure out an enforcement method on the fly or just shrug and keep going. And there's a long history of the international community just shrugging at what another country does within its own borders as not their responsibility so various crimes against humanity are fair game.

# ? Dec 4, 2025 21:31

TheFluff: Dec 13, 2006; FRIENDS, LISTEN TO ME
I AM A SEAGULL
OF WEALTH AND TASTE

Cross-posting from the Cold War thread because I figure it's interesting to a general milhist crowd as well and there's not a 100% overlap between the two threads. It's maybe not milhist milhist but I figure civilian control over the military is definitely relevant here.

Anyway, Alex Wellerstein did an AMA on r/AskHistorians earlier today (the only part of reddit that is maybe not entirely garbage) and summarizes his new book, The Most Awful Responsibility: Truman and the Secret Struggle for Control of the Atomic Age, like this (bolding is mine):

quote:

This book is the product of over a decade of research, and involved a comprehensive review of nearly every primary source of relevance that I could get my hands on. It is an "atomic biography" of President Harry Truman, covering his entire administration, from the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt in April 1945, through Truman's last day as president in January 1953. (It also extends a little before and after these dates, of course, both to set up the context, and to compare Truman a bit with Eisenhower.) It is laser-focused on the question of the atomic bomb and how Truman, as an individual who found himself (to his own continual astonishment) suddenly put into a position of extreme responsibility and power, thought about it, felt about it, and intervened personally in the creation of early US nuclear policy.

My conclusions in the book are, I think, somewhat radical. I dislike the term "revisionist," but the book definitely is an attempt to revise our understanding of Truman and the bomb. My essential conclusion is that Truman was perhaps the most anti-nuclear US president of the 20th century: that he felt a deep antipathy and even horror about the atomic bomb, and that he associated it almost exclusively with the "murder" and "slaughter" of civilians ("women and children," as he put it). This expressed itself in different ways during his administration, but was a core element in his involvement with many early atomic policy decisions, including the centralization of the power to order the use of the atomic bomb in the person of the president (which was done to prevent the use of atomic weapons, not enable them), the championing of a civilian control of nuclear weapons production (and an explicit rejection of attempts by the military to gain even physical "custody" over the weapons), and, above all, a powerful moral aversion to the idea that the US should ever use nuclear weapons again, even during the time in which no "deterrence" conditions held.

There is an obvious paradox here: if he's so anti-nuclear, why'd he order the use of the atomic bombs? The short version of this is that he didn't order them used in the way most people think � he simply did not "interfere" with plans already underway. The long version of it, which the book spends about 1/3rd of its total page count looking at in detail (with lots of citations, discussions of sources, etc.!), is that I believe it more likely than not that Truman did not understand what the "plans already underway" were. That, in fact, Truman believed that the first use of the atomic bomb was going to be against a "purely military target," a military base (not a city with a military base in it) and that "women and children" would not be harmed by the attack. I also do not believe he understood that two atomic bombs would be used in quick succession (the schedule he was given was only for the availability of the implosion design, and implied there would be some time before the next bomb was available), and that he was not aware of the attack on Nagasaki until after the fact. Once he learned of all of these things, he ordered that the atomic bombing be stopped, and told his cabinet it was because the idea of killing "another 100,000 people was too horrible," and that he was disturbed by killing "all those kids."

In public, of course, he defended the bombings, and claimed he had a clear conscience � but there are many reasons (again, in the book!) to treat this with skepticism, and a manifestation of his self-imposed need to "protect" the reputation of the United States. From the day after Nagasaki onwards, Truman acted like someone who was horrified of atomic bombs, greatly disturbed by the attacks on Japan, and deeply distrustful of letting the military ever dictate atomic policy again. And so the rest of the book is about how that played out on issues such as domestic control of atomic energy, international control of atomic energy, the Berlin airlift, the Soviet detonation of an atomic bomb, the hydrogen bomb debate, and, in its last part, the Korean War, and the non-use of nuclear weapons during the latter.

This is not "great man" history: Truman happened to be in a place of unusual influence and power with regards to the atomic bomb, because its newness and "spectacular" nature allowed for a new sort of politics to emerge around it, and Truman put himself at the center of that. But even he was limited by the politics and tenor of his times, and the book is in some sense a meditation on what the limits are for even powerful individuals in influencing the direction of history. And, ultimately, while I think Truman had many virtues, he was (by his own admission), just a human being, full of human foibles.

So this is not a "Truman is great" book. But it is a "Truman is more complicated than either his supporters or his detractors believe" book � "my" Truman is one who will probably annoy both "camps" to varying degrees. But I do think it significantly changes the narrative we use for thinking about the atomic bombs during World War II, and the important early period of the Cold War where many ideas about the bomb became "codified" for the first time.

And if you find the above hard to believe without a lot of evidence... that's what the book is for! It is incredibly hard to be persuaded of something counterintuitive, and against the prevailing narratives, in a short amount of time/space, without the ability to cite a lot of evidence. Hence my writing an entire book on the subject. So if you're skeptical, but interested... perhaps you should check it out!

Most of this is probably not news to those who have read Wellerstein's writings before (and especially not if you've already read his 2020 paper The Kyoto Misconception), but the whole Q&A thread is interesting and worth a look IMO. Among other things he recommends the recently released book Strange Stability: How Cold War Scientists Set Out to Control the Arms Race and Ended Up Serving the Military-Industrial Complex which I wasn't aware of but will have to check out.

Wellerstein's book releases December 9, and I'm really looking forward to it. Wellerstein is a great writer who manages to combine rigorous academic history writing with a narrative that keeps your interest and is downright enjoyable to read. You get to have both the fun and the footnotes!

TheFluff fucked around with this message at 00:09 on Dec 6, 2025

# ? Dec 6, 2025 00:03

mllaneza: Apr 28, 2007; Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1993-1952

If you feel bad about cross-posting, don't. The second post got me to actually pre-order. Winter break mllaneza thanks you in advance.

# ? Dec 6, 2025 00:15

TheFluff: Dec 13, 2006; FRIENDS, LISTEN TO ME
I AM A SEAGULL
OF WEALTH AND TASTE

mllaneza posted:

If you feel bad about cross-posting, don't. The second post got me to actually pre-order. Winter break mllaneza thanks you in advance.

# ? Dec 6, 2025 00:20

D-Pad: Jun 28, 2006

Yeah it's a good post. I also thought this followup was very interesting:

quote:

How does it seem that Truman was able to rectify his apparent horror at the atomic bombings with his seeming lack of regard to the firebombing campaign? Or does it seem like he never associated the two together in his mind?

quote:
This is a really good question, and one I talk about at some length in the book.

First, it is clear that he never regarded the firebombing thing as a "choice" to be made. It was a policy initiated by the military as an operational tactic (not a "political" decision) during FDR's administration, and nobody ever consulted either FDR or Truman about it (or even asked them about the tactics). The only person in the entire administration who seemed slightly interested in inquiring whether this was a good idea was Stimson, and even he reserved his approach to basically "just asking questions" -- even when he talked to Truman about his unease, he never asked Truman to actually do anything or make a decision.

This is interesting for a lot of reasons, but one of them is about the question of, "what is the distinction between military and civilian/political decisions?" During WWII, the Secretary of War did not intervene on operational or tactical questions -- he was mostly in charge of logistics and financing and domestic policy (conscription, contracts, etc.). (The interventionist Secretary of Defense is basically only a "thing" from McNamara onward.) The military treated firebombing as just an evolution of existing policy (which it both was and wasn't), and the political side of things (and the media!!!) went along with this distinction for the most part. And this includes both Roosevelt and Truman.

The atomic bomb is interesting in that its development was something initiated by civilians, and they had more oversight and interest in how it was used, and framed it not as a "weapon" but as some kind of new era in human history which, if bungled, would destroy civilization. And -- note -- the person who did the most to frame it this way in high-level discussions was... Stimson! The same guy who was uneasy about the firebombings thing. So there is an important overlap there, where Stimson very clearly was "choosing his battles."

Truman was perfectly adopting of this approach, that the atomic bomb was something "special" and different, something that challenged the traditional ideas of how things worked. (During the war, again, I don't think he implemented this distinction very well, because I don't think he understood the plans very well. But after the war, he asserted himself on this issue.)

Even well after the war, at the end of his presidency, Truman repeatedly asserted that nuclear weapons were in an entirely different category even from other weapons of mass destruction -- that the atomic bomb "is far worse than gas and biological warfare because it affects the civilian population and murders them by the wholesale," which he wrote on his final day in office in a private letter.

Now, we in retrospect can ask, well, is it so different? From either gas and biological weapons, or just old-fashioned napalm? And we could hash out different arguments pro or con the "special" argument. But I think the historical point here is that Truman clearly saw the atomic bomb as "special" and he also just as clearly did not see the firebombings as "special."

I think that the takeaway is that the nexus of military vs civilian control significantly changed post Vietnam era. We look back and say how could Truman think that about the atomic bombings but not the firebombing but that's looking at it through the lens of how the military vs civilian control works in the modern era plus the fact that the fog of war between then and now is drastically different. It sounds crazy to us that the firebombing was never discussed in the white house but the military had way more leeway to govern its prosecution of the war. The media environment changed things as well. A firebombing campaign now would be live streamed and pictures would be immediately in the press followed by direct questions to the president but that's just not how things worked back then.

# ? Dec 6, 2025 01:12

Peggotty: May 9, 2014

TheFluff posted:

Cross-posting from the Cold War thread because I figure it's interesting to a general milhist crowd as well and there's not a 100% overlap between the two threads. It's maybe not milhist milhist but I figure civilian control over the military is definitely relevant here.

Anyway, Alex Wellerstein did an AMA on r/AskHistorians earlier today (the only part of reddit that is maybe not entirely garbage) and summarizes his new book, The Most Awful Responsibility: Truman and the Secret Struggle for Control of the Atomic Age, like this (bolding is mine):

Most of this is probably not news to those who have read Wellerstein's writings before (and especially not if you've already read his 2020 paper The Kyoto Misconception), but the whole Q&A thread is interesting and worth a look IMO. Among other things he recommends the recently released book Strange Stability: How Cold War Scientists Set Out to Control the Arms Race and Ended Up Serving the Military-Industrial Complex which I wasn't aware of but will have to check out.

Wellerstein's book releases December 9, and I'm really looking forward to it. Wellerstein is a great writer who manages to combine rigorous academic history writing with a narrative that keeps your interest and is downright enjoyable to read. You get to have both the fun and the footnotes!

Consider me "skeptical but interested", as he put it.

# ? Dec 10, 2025 13:28

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# ? Dec 16, 2025 02:08

TheFluff: Dec 13, 2006; FRIENDS, LISTEN TO ME
I AM A SEAGULL
OF WEALTH AND TASTE

Peggotty posted:

Consider me "skeptical but interested", as he put it.

I've started reading it now, so far he's been very convincing. It's a great read as I expected, so if you are interested I do think you should check it out!

# ? Dec 10, 2025 20:56

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