Military History Megathread: The era is called napoleonic because of the dude.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Military History Megathread: The era is called napoleonic because of the dude.

TheFluff: Dec 13, 2006; FRIENDS, LISTEN TO ME
I AM A SEAGULL
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHv5mncZxm8

Tank nerdery, courtesy of the Swedish tank museum.

# ¿ Feb 26, 2021 14:05

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# ¿ Jan 23, 2026 11:05

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

PittTheElder posted:

I'd suspect that it's more that English speaking governments have been the most deeply infected with neoliberal brainworms, and nearly everything has been privatized, meaning that our governments are now poo poo at planning, as none of the expertise is in house. When effective government action is avoided because it threatens private sector profit, government action won't be very effective.

But I know nothing about Scandinavian/German/French governments, so I could be wrong.

Pedestrian Observations (another post was linked by Tulip as well) brings up a long list of issues where most but not all are related to project management in some way. It seems to hold true in general though for major engineering projects that the customer needs to have significant in-house engineering resources on the project as well. If you don't, the supplier will almost inevitably rip you off, or you'll go and change requirements that require major redesigns and the supplier will happily charge you out the nose for it. Basically, you need to have deep knowledge of the thing you're ordering. I've seen references to studies calling this out as a key part of success in a whole bunch of different industries ranging from power grids and locomotives to jet fighters like the Gripen and the Rafale. In the case of the Gripen specifically they also went to great lengths when writing up the original contracts to prevent cost overruns, but the Swedish ordnance department has always had a great deal of engineering involvement in the design of Saab's fighters and it still has an in-house engineering department in the Gripen project office to this day. On a lot of other projects though that in-house resource has been replaced with consultants or removed entirely to varying degrees and then things also tend to become more expensive and/or delayed.

TheFluff fucked around with this message at 15:51 on Feb 26, 2021

# ¿ Feb 26, 2021 15:49

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

(cross-post from the cold war thread in TFR since I figured this thread might enjoy this sort of nerdery too)

TheFluff posted:

Here's a fun holiday watch: the Swedish tank museum Arsenalen, under its director Stefan Karlsson, lifts the power pack out of one of its strv 103's to replace a starter motor on the piston engine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0yLpP2LQwE

Karlsson mentioned in a comment on Facebook that by the book this operation is supposed to take no more than 8 hours and by his estimate they managed that timeframe at the museum as well, although they didn't do it all in one session. In the field trials in West Germany in the early 1970's the crews did this and the reverse operation (installing it back in the tank again) in the field overnight on several occasions. That was very early in the career of the vehicle; it had a lot of teething troubles. There was a crane frame thingy you could mount on top of the tank to lift the pack out, so you didn't have to use a truck with its own crane to do it.

Note the interrupted screw thread on the barrel at 8:58; it looks and functions exactly like the replaceable barrel on a machine gun.

edit: here's a pic of the crane attachment I mentioned above:

TheFluff fucked around with this message at 06:01 on Dec 20, 2023

# ¿ Dec 20, 2023 05:45

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

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

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# ¿ Jan 23, 2026 11:05

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

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Military History Megathread: The era is called napoleonic because of the dude.