The South basically bet the farm on King Cotton, the idea that European powers(England and France) would intervene to protect their supply of Cotton vital to their textile industries. That and giving the European the chance to humble the USA.
The South Failed to take into account that:
1) Even if the leadership didn't like the US, that didn't mean they wanted to send their soldiers to die for the South. Common people hated slavery and by extension the Confederacy. Large textile manufacturing towns like Manchester had rallies in favor of the USA, that's how much they hated slavery.
2) Europe could source cotton from other parts of the world to make up for the lost Southern supply and could wait out the civil war. Buying cotton from a south that had been crushed was way cheaper then a south victorious.
3) The North could make very unpleasant for the European powers if they chose to intervene. Canada was next door for example.
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
jesus, the US could put out thirty sherman tanks in the time it took to put out one tiger (given equal production, which of course wasn't the case, the US had vastly superior production)
I knew there was a disparity but holy crap
Quite possibly apocryphal story: Germans overrun an Army camp, find the remains of a birthday celebration in the mess, complete with a cake that was baked stateside, not locally. The German commander stands there, looking at this humble little demonstration of the Allies' transport and production capacity, turns to an aide, and declares, "We have lost the war."
I'd be very surprised if that wasn't apocryphal.
This specific story notwithstanding, versions of this story were probably repeated a thousand times on both fronts of the war in the later stages as the enemy saw the Allies' ridiculous logistics in action
IIRC The US had a prisoner of war camp within sight of a small american town that was gussied up to be extra prosperous (specifically for captured targets that presumably had important intel), it was a psychological tactic (designed by some jews no less) to utterly break the spirit of German officers who had just left their embattled homeland, they'd be told if they revealed nothing that we'd have to give them to the soviets per the arrangements of some treaty as extra motivation (but they would be very well treated and fed within the prison)
Getting off the train they might see American teenagers enjoying soda or ice cream, utterly oblivious to the war they themselves had just come from
like that image alone would solidify "It doesn't matter if we defeated every American currently in Europe, we'd still lose"
It's been a long time since I saw this story, back on History before it became about aliens, so I'm foggy as to the authenticity of it
jesus, the US could put out thirty sherman tanks in the time it took to put out one tiger (given equal production, which of course wasn't the case, the US had vastly superior production)
I knew there was a disparity but holy crap
Quite possibly apocryphal story: Germans overrun an Army camp, find the remains of a birthday celebration in the mess, complete with a cake that was baked stateside, not locally. The German commander stands there, looking at this humble little demonstration of the Allies' transport and production capacity, turns to an aide, and declares, "We have lost the war."
I'd be very surprised if that wasn't apocryphal.
This specific story notwithstanding, versions of this story were probably repeated a thousand times on both fronts of the war in the later stages as the enemy saw the Allies' ridiculous logistics in action
IIRC The US had a prisoner of war camp within sight of a small american town that was gussied up to be extra prosperous (specifically for captured targets that presumably had important intel), it was a psychological tactic (designed by some jews no less) to utterly break the spirit of German officers who had just left their embattled homeland, they'd be told if they revealed nothing that we'd have to give them to the soviets per the arrangements of some treaty as extra motivation (but they would be very well treated and fed within the prison)
Getting off the train they might see American teenagers enjoying soda or ice cream, utterly oblivious to the war they themselves had just come from
like that image alone would solidify "It doesn't matter if we defeated every American currently in Europe, we'd still lose"
It's been a long time since I saw this story, back on History before it became about aliens, so I'm foggy as to the authenticity of it
I'm unsure of the authenticity of stories like that, but:
Many enlisted Germans knew the war was over after D-Day. Some knew after Kursk. It debated whether or not Hitler really was so lost that he truly felt the war could still be won, or if he just didn't give a shit by then and just wanted to see how far people would really follow him.
They didn't need to see kids with cream soda or partially eaten shipped birthday cake to know the house of cards was caving-in; Nazi propaganda about bombs never exploding in Berlin was a broken promise for years by that point, the Japanese had failed to take control of the Pacific and block North American intervention, Mussolini was finished, etc.
jesus, the US could put out thirty sherman tanks in the time it took to put out one tiger (given equal production, which of course wasn't the case, the US had vastly superior production)
I knew there was a disparity but holy crap
Quite possibly apocryphal story: Germans overrun an Army camp, find the remains of a birthday celebration in the mess, complete with a cake that was baked stateside, not locally. The German commander stands there, looking at this humble little demonstration of the Allies' transport and production capacity, turns to an aide, and declares, "We have lost the war."
I'd be very surprised if that wasn't apocryphal.
IIRC, it's a scene from a classic war film, "The Battle Of The Bulge", if memory serves me correctly.
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Captain Marcusnow arrives the hour of actionRegistered Userregular
edited August 2015
The Germans hated the "cowardly" American/British artillery doctrine because it nullified the advantage their troops had in experience.
The Germans would send in forward observers and correct fire when it landed. The British used a grid system w/calculations however their system falsely assumed that the land was perfectly flat. The British compensated for their shells being off-target by firing every available artillery piece they had, covering the area in shells and wiping out Germany's veterans. Incidentally this is where the "Victor Target" ability of the British in Company of Heroes comes from: where every artillery piece you have on the map fires at a single target.
The Americans' artillery ability (in COH and in real life) was "Time on Target": where the battery commanders were given a time when the infantry wanted shells to hit. They'd then back-calculate when they should fire and the result might be 30 guns' worth of shells landing at exactly the same time.
Yeah, and the British hated the rebellious colonists' "cowardly" habit of hiding in villages and sniping at their marching troop columns from the treeline, rather than coming out and forming a battle line and getting slaughtered like gentlemen.
Two hundred years later, we were similarly unhappy when the Viet Cong did it to us.
And today, because people still do that to our grunts whenever they get the chance, we much prefer to shoot missiles at them from RC airplanes.
War is a dirty, ugly, messy business, where everyone tries to make things as unfair in their own favor as possible.
Many (from individuals up to entire nations) would like to believe that their conduct in war is always just and fair and honorable, and that they are sufficiently superior to their craven foes (in strength and morality) that they can defeat them with (relatively) clean hands, without resorting to "base trickery" or worse.
Anyone who actually studies history and/or war, or is genuinely fighting for survival, knows this is bullshit. You do what you have to, and maybe you'll live long enough to lie about it.
And we hate the Fabian Strategy (among others) because it tears away the lie, the cherished myth that makes war tolerable or even admirable, and reveals it for what it is.
I don't know why we'd need a term "Wehraboo" when we could just say, for example, "apologist" or even just "revisionist".
Then again, I'm an expat who watched enormous amounts of The Simpsons and Friends before I came to the United States (indeed, the earliest things I know about American mannerisms are derived from them probably). As such, I'm an "anti-weeaboo", and I don't really know why we'd need that term either. Whatever, it's the internet.
I've mentions this in the past, but for a period during the Cold War, a certain historical narrative arose that was derived from a few different things--the creation of the Warsaw Pact in response to NATO, the re-arming of West Germany (and then East Germany), the reaction to the "leeway" given to the USSR during the Second World War in political circles in the United States and the United Kingdom, and very importantly, the publishing of a lot of memoirs from high officers and generals of the former Wehrmacht who were now living in West Germany and, while not necessarily in the new Bundeswehr, where in positions of some influence (teaching in particular). So we saw the creation of the "a few bad apples" narrative--the subtle separation of the Holocaust of the Jews, as the most infamous period, from the German war effort as a whole, the notion that it was not the normal German armed forces, but the Waffen-SS as a particular force, that was responsible for "the majority" of atrocities (something that had already become a mindset during the war itself), and a lower level of academic interests in things like Generalplan Ost (spurred in part because of a Soviet reluctance to advertise its own civilian and economic suffering internationally and domestically, and the resulting close control the government had over scholarship in that field). The German war effort became framed as a war in the west--which remained as it did, of Germany versus France, Britain, and the United States primarily--and a war in the east, which started to take shape as part of a perhaps-necessary struggle to hold back the "Asiatic hordes" (in the parlance of the time) that some argued whatever atrocities might have been committed were warranted and Germany should be thanked for. Weirdly, we saw a much later example of this of sorts in the Red Alert series, though I doubt that was Westwood's intention so much as what they thought was an interesting fantasy plotline.
This particular mindset was dominant for a short while when antagonism with the USSR reached its height before the Brezhnev era detente of the 1970s (though it did have a short resurgence under Reagan). It competed with an older sense of scholarship that encouraged research into German behavior in the occupation territories (as had been done with Japan's occupation of China and Korea more and more) and an unwillingness to fully take the word of a few well-written and well-spoken men in West Germany over every other source available. It's still something that has to be taught in the university level for world or European history, as a lot of students have grown up watching History Channel documentaries with fairly blatant apologist tendencies (as far as the Eastern Front is concerned), and would be shocked to learn the sort of things you'd find in, for example, Richard Overy's Russia's War or Omer Bartov's Hitler's Army. An acknowledgment that the crimes we fault Germany with, including perpetration of genocide, were the acts of the military system as a whole, and not just a few theatrical units in slightly different uniforms, can and does coexist with, for example, a study of the Khatyn Massacre of Polish POWs by the NKVD (and the military)--itself an act largely downplayed in the post-war order until the very late Cold War--or the complex relationship of Ukrainian nationalist partisans, the German and Soviet military forces, and the legacy of the Holodomar, or the actions of Jewish Red Army partisans.
But, it's still a thing (as is denial of atrocities committed by, for example, the Soviet Red Army in its advance towards Berlin, or less known topics like Polish war crimes committed following their annexation of part of Belarus). You'll find a certain segment of John Birchers marching oddly in step with a certain segment of Holocaust Deniers over German treatment of European Jews in the war. Politically charged Ukraine has seen narratives, counter-narratives, and counter-counter-narratives about the role of anti-Soviet Ukrainian nationalists, some massacres of Polish civilians, and the issue of the repulsion of the German military from Ukraine (as the new Ukrainian P.M. briefly discussed on German television, only to be mocked and dismissed by the rest of the new Kiev government for it). I'd say the field as a whole is a lot more reflective of reality than it was, say, fifty years ago or even thirty years ago, but there are good things and bad things in it.
Personally, I still think the Tiger I is a super-cool looking tank (I don't own a T-34 model, but I do have a die-cast Tiger, along with the tank destroyer Jagdpanther sitting on my shelf). And in video gaming I vastly prefer German aircraft to those of the VVS in the same period (particularly the radial engine FW-190 series), and will always choose them over the other. Wehraboo tendencies? Maybe, maybe...
I generally love the style that German gear had, over the Allies. Nothing to do with effectiveness, and a purely subjective opinion. Japanese stuff was universally butt ugly though.
I generally love the style that German gear had, over the Allies. Nothing to do with effectiveness, and a purely subjective opinion. Japanese stuff was universally butt ugly though.
The most lovely plane in WWII was the Spitfire.
Funny enough, I think the Spitfire is an ugly aircraft. Nothing to do with reputation or effectiveness, I think it's just ugly because I like the way radial engine aircraft look. I think the BF-109 is ugly for the same reason.
I think the FW-190 and Ki-100 are much more aesthetically pleasing.
The most lovely plane in human history was the Spitfire.
Fixed.
Thinking of unsourced anecdotes from WWII earlier in the thread, I read one years ago that I loved but that I've never been able to locate again.
A group of reporters and expats, mostly from America, were staying in southern England, outside of London. They watched the enormous German air fleet fly up on September 15, 1940. Disillusioned and cynical by quick fall of Poland, Denmark, the Phony War, the fall of France, the massive Luftwaffe force seemed invincible. One of the reporters raised a glass and said something along the lines of "Here's to democracy! It was good while it lasted."
And then from the west and the north came the Spitfires and Hurricanes, tearing into the Luftwaffe. Dogfights broke out in the skies above the reporters, they saw the German planes fall, and then the Spitfires and Hurricanes turned back to join the main fray over London. One of the Brits clapped the American reporter on the shoulder and said something along the lines of "Reports of the death of democracy have been greatly exaggerated."
Shadowhope on
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
jesus, the US could put out thirty sherman tanks in the time it took to put out one tiger (given equal production, which of course wasn't the case, the US had vastly superior production)
I knew there was a disparity but holy crap
Quite possibly apocryphal story: Germans overrun an Army camp, find the remains of a birthday celebration in the mess, complete with a cake that was baked stateside, not locally. The German commander stands there, looking at this humble little demonstration of the Allies' transport and production capacity, turns to an aide, and declares, "We have lost the war."
Not sure where you got this story but I don't thinks it's the real or original one. I believe the quote is in the band of brothers book. A German officer is captured at normandy and watches the ships drop of vehicles and tanks. A Sherman gets stuck disembarking and is having engine trouble. The engineers call a bulldozer over and shove the tank into the ditch. The officer knew then they have lost considering our very non chalant treatment of an armored vehicle.
I generally love the style that German gear had, over the Allies. Nothing to do with effectiveness, and a purely subjective opinion. Japanese stuff was universally butt ugly though.
The most lovely plane in WWII was the Spitfire.
Funny enough, I think the Spitfire is an ugly aircraft. Nothing to do with reputation or effectiveness, I think it's just ugly because I like the way radial engine aircraft look. I think the BF-109 is ugly for the same reason.
I think the FW-190 and Ki-100 are much more aesthetically pleasing.
The FW-190 is ok, if you like boring wings that monotonously protrude from their fuselage in straight, predictable lines.
If you want an airframe with some pizzaz, you need look no further than the F4 Corsair. Propped up like an alpha sea lion, the Corsair makes clear that the other planes need to wait their god damned turn when the fish bucket comes around.
PS: This weird analogy brought to you by the fact I can't explain why it's most attractive feature also reminds me of a seal but is somehow still awesome. It just is!
I generally love the style that German gear had, over the Allies. Nothing to do with effectiveness, and a purely subjective opinion. Japanese stuff was universally butt ugly though.
The most lovely plane in WWII was the Spitfire.
Funny enough, I think the Spitfire is an ugly aircraft. Nothing to do with reputation or effectiveness, I think it's just ugly because I like the way radial engine aircraft look. I think the BF-109 is ugly for the same reason.
I think the FW-190 and Ki-100 are much more aesthetically pleasing.
The FW-190 is ok, if you like boring wings that monotonously protrude from their fuselage in a straight, predictable lines.
If you want an airframe with some pizzaz, you need look no further than the Corsair.
Sorry, I can't hear you over the unquestionable beauty if the superior marriage of a small, well-protected airframe to a giant engine.
(I actually think the Corsair is much more handsome than the other famous radial-engine aircraft, the P-47.)
Come to think of it, the Japanese also had modern ships (even if they used them in an outdated fashion, and rapidly ran out of the resources to build them)--at least as much as the other nations in the Pacific War. So, aircraft, torpedoes, and ships.
Now if World of Warships actually goddamn worked, I could give them a try.
I generally love the style that German gear had, over the Allies. Nothing to do with effectiveness, and a purely subjective opinion. Japanese stuff was universally butt ugly though.
The most lovely plane in WWII was the Spitfire.
Funny enough, I think the Spitfire is an ugly aircraft. Nothing to do with reputation or effectiveness, I think it's just ugly because I like the way radial engine aircraft look. I think the BF-109 is ugly for the same reason.
I think the FW-190 and Ki-100 are much more aesthetically pleasing.
The FW-190 is ok, if you like boring wings that monotonously protrude from their fuselage in straight, predictable lines.
If you want an airframe with some pizzaz, you need look no further than the F4 Corsair. Propped up like an alpha sea lion, the Corsair makes clear that the other planes need to wait their god damned turn when the fish bucket comes around.
PS: This weird analogy brought to you by the fact I can't explain why it's most attractive feature also reminds me of a seal but is somehow still awesome. It just is!
Yeah, and the British hated the rebellious colonists' "cowardly" habit of hiding in villages and sniping at their marching troop columns from the treeline, rather than coming out and forming a battle line and getting slaughtered like gentlemen.
Two hundred years later, we were similarly unhappy when the Viet Cong did it to us.
And today, because people still do that to our grunts whenever they get the chance, we much prefer to shoot missiles at them from RC airplanes.
War is a dirty, ugly, messy business, where everyone tries to make things as unfair in their own favor as possible.
This is actually mostly a myth, except for what were basically a few small skirmishes.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
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Kane Red RobeMaster of MagicArcanusRegistered Userregular
I generally love the style that German gear had, over the Allies. Nothing to do with effectiveness, and a purely subjective opinion. Japanese stuff was universally butt ugly though.
The most lovely plane in WWII was the Spitfire.
Funny enough, I think the Spitfire is an ugly aircraft. Nothing to do with reputation or effectiveness, I think it's just ugly because I like the way radial engine aircraft look. I think the BF-109 is ugly for the same reason.
I think the FW-190 and Ki-100 are much more aesthetically pleasing.
The FW-190 is ok, if you like boring wings that monotonously protrude from their fuselage in a straight, predictable lines.
If you want an airframe with some pizzaz, you need look no further than the Corsair.
Sorry, I can't hear you over the unquestionable beauty if the superior marriage of a small, well-protected airframe to a giant engine.
(I actually think the Corsair is much more handsome than the other famous radial-engine aircraft, the P-47.)
Come to think of it, the Japanese also had modern ships (even if they used them in an outdated fashion, and rapidly ran out of the resources to build them)--at least as much as the other nations in the Pacific War. So, aircraft, torpedoes, and ships.
Now if World of Warships actually goddamn worked, I could give them a try.
Ehhhh. Modern warships full of wood and rice paper and covered in flammable oils with incredibly terrible damage control equipment and doctrine. I mean, I know that fire extinguishers aren't terribly sexy, but when one bomb burns one of your carriers to the waterline, but your bombers hit the same US carrier three seperate times and assume it has to be a different one each time because it looks fine and report that they've sunk three enemy carriers I think you might be screwed.
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TurksonNear the mountains of ColoradoRegistered Userregular
Many (from individuals up to entire nations) would like to believe that their conduct in war is always just and fair and honorable, and that they are sufficiently superior to their craven foes (in strength and morality) that they can defeat them with (relatively) clean hands, without resorting to "base trickery" or worse.
Anyone who actually studies history and/or war, or is genuinely fighting for survival, knows this is bullshit. You do what you have to, and maybe you'll live long enough to lie about it.
And we hate the Fabian Strategy (among others) because it tears away the lie, the cherished myth that makes war tolerable or even admirable, and reveals it for what it is.
"For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind: it hath no stalk: the bud shall yield no meal: if so be it yield, the strangers shall swallow it up."
Hosea 8:7
Harris said what he meant and meant what he said. If you put a modern industrialised nation into a situation of existential threat then said nation will react accordingly to the limit of its capabilities.
I don't know why we'd need a term "Wehraboo" when we could just say, for example, "apologist" or even just "revisionist".
I'd say there's a difference between one hopelessly in love with German panzers and one who glosses over the atrocities of the German Army, personally.
Japan was basically fighting WW2 with WW1 era tech
With the notable exception of aircraft and torpedoes. And I guess aircraft with torpedoes.
This is accurate for the Japanese Army. The Japanese Fleet and aircraft were some of the best in the world.
Technically speaking, the Japanese Army Air Force also had some very advanced aircraft (including some, like the Ki-100, which were deployed on an unexpected scale given the state of the home islands).
As oppose to, well, mediocre interwar light tanks, which is what we usually think of. The Germans also mostly used horse-drawn artillery and First World War bolt action rifles, so it's easy to overlook how common that was.
I don't know why we'd need a term "Wehraboo" when we could just say, for example, "apologist" or even just "revisionist".
I'd say there's a difference between one hopelessly in love with German panzers and one who glosses over the atrocities of the German Army, personally.
I'm clearly hanging out with the wrong people on the internet.
I generally love the style that German gear had, over the Allies. Nothing to do with effectiveness, and a purely subjective opinion. Japanese stuff was universally butt ugly though.
The most lovely plane in WWII was the Spitfire.
Funny enough, I think the Spitfire is an ugly aircraft. Nothing to do with reputation or effectiveness, I think it's just ugly because I like the way radial engine aircraft look. I think the BF-109 is ugly for the same reason.
I think the FW-190 and Ki-100 are much more aesthetically pleasing.
The FW-190 is ok, if you like boring wings that monotonously protrude from their fuselage in a straight, predictable lines.
If you want an airframe with some pizzaz, you need look no further than the Corsair.
Sorry, I can't hear you over the unquestionable beauty if the superior marriage of a small, well-protected airframe to a giant engine.
(I actually think the Corsair is much more handsome than the other famous radial-engine aircraft, the P-47.)
Come to think of it, the Japanese also had modern ships (even if they used them in an outdated fashion, and rapidly ran out of the resources to build them)--at least as much as the other nations in the Pacific War. So, aircraft, torpedoes, and ships.
Now if World of Warships actually goddamn worked, I could give them a try.
Ehhhh. Modern warships full of wood and rice paper and covered in flammable oils with incredibly terrible damage control equipment and doctrine. I mean, I know that fire extinguishers aren't terribly sexy, but when one bomb burns one of your carriers to the waterline, but your bombers hit the same US carrier three seperate times and assume it has to be a different one each time because it looks fine and report that they've sunk three enemy carriers I think you might be screwed.
You can sort this out with Turkson, thanks to my own background I mostly know about the army.
aside from your neo-nazis and so on, I think it's just fun for people to marvel at things the nazis did which were not related to the holocaust or other political repression; I mean the schwerer gustav was kinda fucking crazyawesome and people want to say that without having to preface the whole discussion with 'but of course the nazis were politically/morally awful.'
You see it in every area of military history, really; there are lots of people who are just uninterested in the political or economic reasons for war and want instead to read about weapons and to a much lesser extent about military tactics.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Yeah, and the British hated the rebellious colonists' "cowardly" habit of hiding in villages and sniping at their marching troop columns from the treeline, rather than coming out and forming a battle line and getting slaughtered like gentlemen.
Two hundred years later, we were similarly unhappy when the Viet Cong did it to us.
And today, because people still do that to our grunts whenever they get the chance, we much prefer to shoot missiles at them from RC airplanes.
War is a dirty, ugly, messy business, where everyone tries to make things as unfair in their own favor as possible.
This is actually mostly a myth, except for what were basically a few small skirmishes.
I don't know why we'd need a term "Wehraboo" when we could just say, for example, "apologist" or even just "revisionist".
I'd say there's a difference between one hopelessly in love with German panzers and one who glosses over the atrocities of the German Army, personally.
Yeah, this was the flavor of fandom that came to mind when I first saw the thread title: "Damnit, why did the Bad Guys have to have all the coolest stuff? Gear lust, but, but, Evil... so conflicted..."
Yeah, and the British hated the rebellious colonists' "cowardly" habit of hiding in villages and sniping at their marching troop columns from the treeline, rather than coming out and forming a battle line and getting slaughtered like gentlemen.
Two hundred years later, we were similarly unhappy when the Viet Cong did it to us.
And today, because people still do that to our grunts whenever they get the chance, we much prefer to shoot missiles at them from RC airplanes.
War is a dirty, ugly, messy business, where everyone tries to make things as unfair in their own favor as possible.
This is actually mostly a myth, except for what were basically a few small skirmishes.
Wait, are you telling me that The Patriot is not historically accurate???
Next you'll be telling me Braveheart isn't a historical documentary.
Japan was basically fighting WW2 with WW1 era tech
With the notable exception of aircraft and torpedoes. And I guess aircraft with torpedoes.
This is accurate for the Japanese Army. The Japanese Fleet and aircraft were some of the best in the world.
It's of course really satisfying to point to the Japanese foolishly building huge battleships like the Yamato without realizing that the age of the battleship was past.
But really the Japanese were at pretty much aware of it as anyone else - Japan was tremendously bitter over their perceived lesser status in the Washington Naval Treaty and in other international treaties (not entirely unreasonably), and once the treaty expired the Japanese were determined to build at least a couple of absolute fuck-off battleships. They were political statements at least as much as anything else, both by Japan as a political whole, and especially by the Japanese navy, who were increasingly antsy to start stealing some glory from the army (and the political capital that comes from it). Once they got themselves a big badass navy all they needed to do was find a suitable enemy to fight...
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
I don't know why we'd need a term "Wehraboo" when we could just say, for example, "apologist" or even just "revisionist".
I'd say there's a difference between one hopelessly in love with German panzers and one who glosses over the atrocities of the German Army, personally.
Yeah, this was the flavor of fandom that came to mind when I first saw the thread title: "Damnit, why did the Bad Guys have to have all the coolest stuff? Gear lust, but, but, Evil... so conflicted..."
It goes beyond that, too. It's also clinging to myths like the Ronson, invincible tigers, Germany's vastly superior technology, or how Hitler would have won if only X.
Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion.
The Washington Naval Treaty wasn't all bad for the Japanese though, as they would have had difficulty acquiring the materials and having the manpower to assemble their ships on a scale equal to Britain or the US. By putting up such a fight before settling for the final ratio, they were able to negotiate concessions by the other participants that limited further Western expansion and fortification of naval bases in much of the Pacific and also limited numbers of Western ships that could be operating in the area at any one time, which helped Japan when they began claiming territory from Western powers in the Pacific.
So World of Warships is pretty accurate then in the American/Japanese naval disparity?
Basically, in the game, around half of all Japanese ships have torpedoes, and really fucking good torpedoes
And the ships best used with torpedoes are destroyers, japanese destroyers can sink American battleships with them pretty easily
American torpedoes on the other hand...
well their guns are pretty decent
American torpedoes in WW2 had defective fuses that meant that only 25% of torpedoes actually exploded. The Navy people in charge of overseeing this, refused point blank to acknowledge that there even was a problem until one sub commander took his live torpedoes and fire them straight into a Hawaiian island cliff.
The Germans had a similar fuse problem, but since their navy actually took the complaints seriously, their torpedoes where fixed pretty quickly. The US had to wait until late 1943.
Kipling217 on
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
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The South Failed to take into account that:
1) Even if the leadership didn't like the US, that didn't mean they wanted to send their soldiers to die for the South. Common people hated slavery and by extension the Confederacy. Large textile manufacturing towns like Manchester had rallies in favor of the USA, that's how much they hated slavery.
2) Europe could source cotton from other parts of the world to make up for the lost Southern supply and could wait out the civil war. Buying cotton from a south that had been crushed was way cheaper then a south victorious.
3) The North could make very unpleasant for the European powers if they chose to intervene. Canada was next door for example.
This specific story notwithstanding, versions of this story were probably repeated a thousand times on both fronts of the war in the later stages as the enemy saw the Allies' ridiculous logistics in action
IIRC The US had a prisoner of war camp within sight of a small american town that was gussied up to be extra prosperous (specifically for captured targets that presumably had important intel), it was a psychological tactic (designed by some jews no less) to utterly break the spirit of German officers who had just left their embattled homeland, they'd be told if they revealed nothing that we'd have to give them to the soviets per the arrangements of some treaty as extra motivation (but they would be very well treated and fed within the prison)
Getting off the train they might see American teenagers enjoying soda or ice cream, utterly oblivious to the war they themselves had just come from
like that image alone would solidify "It doesn't matter if we defeated every American currently in Europe, we'd still lose"
It's been a long time since I saw this story, back on History before it became about aliens, so I'm foggy as to the authenticity of it
"The Americans didn't so much solve logistics as overwhelm it"
I'm unsure of the authenticity of stories like that, but:
Many enlisted Germans knew the war was over after D-Day. Some knew after Kursk. It debated whether or not Hitler really was so lost that he truly felt the war could still be won, or if he just didn't give a shit by then and just wanted to see how far people would really follow him.
They didn't need to see kids with cream soda or partially eaten shipped birthday cake to know the house of cards was caving-in; Nazi propaganda about bombs never exploding in Berlin was a broken promise for years by that point, the Japanese had failed to take control of the Pacific and block North American intervention, Mussolini was finished, etc.
IIRC, it's a scene from a classic war film, "The Battle Of The Bulge", if memory serves me correctly.
The Germans would send in forward observers and correct fire when it landed. The British used a grid system w/calculations however their system falsely assumed that the land was perfectly flat. The British compensated for their shells being off-target by firing every available artillery piece they had, covering the area in shells and wiping out Germany's veterans. Incidentally this is where the "Victor Target" ability of the British in Company of Heroes comes from: where every artillery piece you have on the map fires at a single target.
The Americans' artillery ability (in COH and in real life) was "Time on Target": where the battery commanders were given a time when the infantry wanted shells to hit. They'd then back-calculate when they should fire and the result might be 30 guns' worth of shells landing at exactly the same time.
Two hundred years later, we were similarly unhappy when the Viet Cong did it to us.
And today, because people still do that to our grunts whenever they get the chance, we much prefer to shoot missiles at them from RC airplanes.
War is a dirty, ugly, messy business, where everyone tries to make things as unfair in their own favor as possible.
Anyone who actually studies history and/or war, or is genuinely fighting for survival, knows this is bullshit. You do what you have to, and maybe you'll live long enough to lie about it.
And we hate the Fabian Strategy (among others) because it tears away the lie, the cherished myth that makes war tolerable or even admirable, and reveals it for what it is.
Then again, I'm an expat who watched enormous amounts of The Simpsons and Friends before I came to the United States (indeed, the earliest things I know about American mannerisms are derived from them probably). As such, I'm an "anti-weeaboo", and I don't really know why we'd need that term either. Whatever, it's the internet.
I've mentions this in the past, but for a period during the Cold War, a certain historical narrative arose that was derived from a few different things--the creation of the Warsaw Pact in response to NATO, the re-arming of West Germany (and then East Germany), the reaction to the "leeway" given to the USSR during the Second World War in political circles in the United States and the United Kingdom, and very importantly, the publishing of a lot of memoirs from high officers and generals of the former Wehrmacht who were now living in West Germany and, while not necessarily in the new Bundeswehr, where in positions of some influence (teaching in particular). So we saw the creation of the "a few bad apples" narrative--the subtle separation of the Holocaust of the Jews, as the most infamous period, from the German war effort as a whole, the notion that it was not the normal German armed forces, but the Waffen-SS as a particular force, that was responsible for "the majority" of atrocities (something that had already become a mindset during the war itself), and a lower level of academic interests in things like Generalplan Ost (spurred in part because of a Soviet reluctance to advertise its own civilian and economic suffering internationally and domestically, and the resulting close control the government had over scholarship in that field). The German war effort became framed as a war in the west--which remained as it did, of Germany versus France, Britain, and the United States primarily--and a war in the east, which started to take shape as part of a perhaps-necessary struggle to hold back the "Asiatic hordes" (in the parlance of the time) that some argued whatever atrocities might have been committed were warranted and Germany should be thanked for. Weirdly, we saw a much later example of this of sorts in the Red Alert series, though I doubt that was Westwood's intention so much as what they thought was an interesting fantasy plotline.
This particular mindset was dominant for a short while when antagonism with the USSR reached its height before the Brezhnev era detente of the 1970s (though it did have a short resurgence under Reagan). It competed with an older sense of scholarship that encouraged research into German behavior in the occupation territories (as had been done with Japan's occupation of China and Korea more and more) and an unwillingness to fully take the word of a few well-written and well-spoken men in West Germany over every other source available. It's still something that has to be taught in the university level for world or European history, as a lot of students have grown up watching History Channel documentaries with fairly blatant apologist tendencies (as far as the Eastern Front is concerned), and would be shocked to learn the sort of things you'd find in, for example, Richard Overy's Russia's War or Omer Bartov's Hitler's Army. An acknowledgment that the crimes we fault Germany with, including perpetration of genocide, were the acts of the military system as a whole, and not just a few theatrical units in slightly different uniforms, can and does coexist with, for example, a study of the Khatyn Massacre of Polish POWs by the NKVD (and the military)--itself an act largely downplayed in the post-war order until the very late Cold War--or the complex relationship of Ukrainian nationalist partisans, the German and Soviet military forces, and the legacy of the Holodomar, or the actions of Jewish Red Army partisans.
But, it's still a thing (as is denial of atrocities committed by, for example, the Soviet Red Army in its advance towards Berlin, or less known topics like Polish war crimes committed following their annexation of part of Belarus). You'll find a certain segment of John Birchers marching oddly in step with a certain segment of Holocaust Deniers over German treatment of European Jews in the war. Politically charged Ukraine has seen narratives, counter-narratives, and counter-counter-narratives about the role of anti-Soviet Ukrainian nationalists, some massacres of Polish civilians, and the issue of the repulsion of the German military from Ukraine (as the new Ukrainian P.M. briefly discussed on German television, only to be mocked and dismissed by the rest of the new Kiev government for it). I'd say the field as a whole is a lot more reflective of reality than it was, say, fifty years ago or even thirty years ago, but there are good things and bad things in it.
Personally, I still think the Tiger I is a super-cool looking tank (I don't own a T-34 model, but I do have a die-cast Tiger, along with the tank destroyer Jagdpanther sitting on my shelf). And in video gaming I vastly prefer German aircraft to those of the VVS in the same period (particularly the radial engine FW-190 series), and will always choose them over the other. Wehraboo tendencies? Maybe, maybe...
The most lovely plane in WWII was the Spitfire.
With the notable exception of aircraft and torpedoes. And I guess aircraft with torpedoes.
Germany fought almost the entirety of the war with torpedoes from the First World War.
Funny enough, I think the Spitfire is an ugly aircraft. Nothing to do with reputation or effectiveness, I think it's just ugly because I like the way radial engine aircraft look. I think the BF-109 is ugly for the same reason.
I think the FW-190 and Ki-100 are much more aesthetically pleasing.
Fixed.
Thinking of unsourced anecdotes from WWII earlier in the thread, I read one years ago that I loved but that I've never been able to locate again.
A group of reporters and expats, mostly from America, were staying in southern England, outside of London. They watched the enormous German air fleet fly up on September 15, 1940. Disillusioned and cynical by quick fall of Poland, Denmark, the Phony War, the fall of France, the massive Luftwaffe force seemed invincible. One of the reporters raised a glass and said something along the lines of "Here's to democracy! It was good while it lasted."
And then from the west and the north came the Spitfires and Hurricanes, tearing into the Luftwaffe. Dogfights broke out in the skies above the reporters, they saw the German planes fall, and then the Spitfires and Hurricanes turned back to join the main fray over London. One of the Brits clapped the American reporter on the shoulder and said something along the lines of "Reports of the death of democracy have been greatly exaggerated."
Not sure where you got this story but I don't thinks it's the real or original one. I believe the quote is in the band of brothers book. A German officer is captured at normandy and watches the ships drop of vehicles and tanks. A Sherman gets stuck disembarking and is having engine trouble. The engineers call a bulldozer over and shove the tank into the ditch. The officer knew then they have lost considering our very non chalant treatment of an armored vehicle.
The FW-190 is ok, if you like boring wings that monotonously protrude from their fuselage in straight, predictable lines.
If you want an airframe with some pizzaz, you need look no further than the F4 Corsair. Propped up like an alpha sea lion, the Corsair makes clear that the other planes need to wait their god damned turn when the fish bucket comes around.
PS: This weird analogy brought to you by the fact I can't explain why it's most attractive feature also reminds me of a seal but is somehow still awesome. It just is!
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Sorry, I can't hear you over the unquestionable beauty if the superior marriage of a small, well-protected airframe to a giant engine.
(I actually think the Corsair is much more handsome than the other famous radial-engine aircraft, the P-47.)
Come to think of it, the Japanese also had modern ships (even if they used them in an outdated fashion, and rapidly ran out of the resources to build them)--at least as much as the other nations in the Pacific War. So, aircraft, torpedoes, and ships.
Now if World of Warships actually goddamn worked, I could give them a try.
Corsair bro!
:bro:
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This is actually mostly a myth, except for what were basically a few small skirmishes.
Ehhhh. Modern warships full of wood and rice paper and covered in flammable oils with incredibly terrible damage control equipment and doctrine. I mean, I know that fire extinguishers aren't terribly sexy, but when one bomb burns one of your carriers to the waterline, but your bombers hit the same US carrier three seperate times and assume it has to be a different one each time because it looks fine and report that they've sunk three enemy carriers I think you might be screwed.
This is accurate for the Japanese Army. The Japanese Fleet and aircraft were some of the best in the world.
"For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind: it hath no stalk: the bud shall yield no meal: if so be it yield, the strangers shall swallow it up."
Hosea 8:7
Harris said what he meant and meant what he said. If you put a modern industrialised nation into a situation of existential threat then said nation will react accordingly to the limit of its capabilities.
I'd say there's a difference between one hopelessly in love with German panzers and one who glosses over the atrocities of the German Army, personally.
Technically speaking, the Japanese Army Air Force also had some very advanced aircraft (including some, like the Ki-100, which were deployed on an unexpected scale given the state of the home islands).
As oppose to, well, mediocre interwar light tanks, which is what we usually think of. The Germans also mostly used horse-drawn artillery and First World War bolt action rifles, so it's easy to overlook how common that was.
I'm clearly hanging out with the wrong people on the internet.
You can sort this out with Turkson, thanks to my own background I mostly know about the army.
You see it in every area of military history, really; there are lots of people who are just uninterested in the political or economic reasons for war and want instead to read about weapons and to a much lesser extent about military tactics.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
A really dumb myth too
Kittyhawk is best hawk, and best hawk is (obviously) best plane. You cannot refute my logic.
Kittyhawk: greatest and prettiest of all the aircrafts. It's a fact.
Yeah, this was the flavor of fandom that came to mind when I first saw the thread title: "Damnit, why did the Bad Guys have to have all the coolest stuff? Gear lust, but, but, Evil... so conflicted..."
Wait, are you telling me that The Patriot is not historically accurate???
Next you'll be telling me Braveheart isn't a historical documentary.
Tie/D best Tie
I mean, hilaruliously brokenly good sure
But best Tie
It's of course really satisfying to point to the Japanese foolishly building huge battleships like the Yamato without realizing that the age of the battleship was past.
But really the Japanese were at pretty much aware of it as anyone else - Japan was tremendously bitter over their perceived lesser status in the Washington Naval Treaty and in other international treaties (not entirely unreasonably), and once the treaty expired the Japanese were determined to build at least a couple of absolute fuck-off battleships. They were political statements at least as much as anything else, both by Japan as a political whole, and especially by the Japanese navy, who were increasingly antsy to start stealing some glory from the army (and the political capital that comes from it). Once they got themselves a big badass navy all they needed to do was find a suitable enemy to fight...
It goes beyond that, too. It's also clinging to myths like the Ronson, invincible tigers, Germany's vastly superior technology, or how Hitler would have won if only X.
- John Stuart Mill
Basically, in the game, around half of all Japanese ships have torpedoes, and really fucking good torpedoes
And the ships best used with torpedoes are destroyers, japanese destroyers can sink American battleships with them pretty easily
American torpedoes on the other hand...
well their guns are pretty decent
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American torpedoes in WW2 had defective fuses that meant that only 25% of torpedoes actually exploded. The Navy people in charge of overseeing this, refused point blank to acknowledge that there even was a problem until one sub commander took his live torpedoes and fire them straight into a Hawaiian island cliff.
The Germans had a similar fuse problem, but since their navy actually took the complaints seriously, their torpedoes where fixed pretty quickly. The US had to wait until late 1943.
Wouldn't make my top 20. I'm not a big fan of US planes though, apart from the Corsair and Lightning.