JerseyJohn
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SnowStorm,
Appreciated. Enjoyed the momentary detour into politics. :cool:
BrotherRambo,
At first glance you got me with your George W. greatest president remark and then, as my mouth dropped open, I saw the portrait of that other American George from so long ago.
DesertDave,
As usual I envy you. No one in his or her right mind would want to go digging around this area. Not much of a dig anyway as after going a little way down there's only mucky mud-sand, and lots and lots of mainly unpleasant creatures that aren't even cute -- and the animal life isn't any bargain either. :eek:
I imagine in your historical search you'll eventually find a previously unknown dinosaur, or perhaps an even more important paleanthological find and, interviewed by The Science Channel, you'll explain that while seeking DeSoto you found DinoX.
-- Or, perhaps, you'll find that fountain so many have sought, and before long the world will once more have that promising young short stop, only this time around infinitely wiser and more philosophical. :cool:
If worse comes to worse and you get that desert fishing boat please leave a place for an old Coney Island type.
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See Post Below
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Rather than go into the books I've previously read on the subject I thought I'd start with a relatively new one. Please feel free to both comment and add books you've recently read on WWII that have impressed you, influenced your views, or that, perhaps, you threw in the corner.
Churchill, Hitler, and The Unnecessary War
by Patrick J. Buchanan
SYNOPSIS: Buchanan discusses the history of Europe from events leading up to World Wars I and II and their aftereffects on the modern world. He centers on key figures who caused or helped cause the wars, how their decisions might easily have been different, and the impact for better or worse they had on modern history.
His WWI villain is, more than any other nation, Britain with its secret deals and fear of Imperial Germany as it emerged not only as the dominant power of continental Europe but also as a colonial and naval power appearing to pose a real or potential threat to the British Empire. The result of the war was a destabilizing of Europe, the virtual end of European monarchial governments, the start of the decline of both the British and French empires, and the emergence of the United States as a global power.
The 1920s and 30s are filled with fateful political errors and mixed messages in the fatally flawed Treaty of Versailles and the mangling of Woodrow Wilson's promises to defeated Germany, and assurances to the newly created, mainly unstable, nations created out of the wreckage of pre-war empires. The consequence of Imperial Germany and Czarist Russia being destroyed and replaced by facism, nazism and communism. In the Pacific there's an interesting chapter on the alienation of Japan by Britain, cutting its alliance in favor of the United States, a nation that neither sought an alliance to replace the one lost for Britain, nor accepted any military commitments beyond its own borders and protectorates. The result, a Japan set loose from prior restraints deciding on a course of expansionism, eventually seizing Manchuria not only for imperial ambitions but also as a defense against Soviet Russia, soon to be followed by the interminable war of Chinese conquest.
The 1930s move to an end with Italy and Japan being driven from the League of Nations by Britain, France, and non-member American pressures for their various aggressions.
British prime minister Neville Chamberlain, in Buchanan's view, is the cause of WWII. Not, as is commonly stated, because he gave in to Hitler at Munich, but because afterwards he made the hopeless alliance with Poland, pulling France in as well, guaranteeing to fight in the Eastern European country’s defense if it were attacked by Germany. He places Chamberlain as equally guilty due to his pushing Chamberlain into this line of action. Were it not for Britain’s guarantee Poland, according to Buchanan, would have been forced to broker a deal with Germany with regard to Danzig and the corridor. According to Buchanan, Hitler at the time sought Poland as an Ally against the Soviet Union rather than as a German conquest. Buchanan goes further in his last chapter by stating Britain's involvement in the Sudetan episode was itself a terrible mistake. Without Munich there would have been two courses for Germany to follow: either fight for region, or back off. Either, it seems, would have been better than the actual historical course.
Once underway he points out Churchill’s part in its various military and political fiascos, particularly in regards to Britain itself, in not reaching an agreement with Hitler in 1940 instead of taking the, at the time totally unrealistic, stance of eventual victory over Germany. The inevitable result was the destruction of the British Empire, bankrupted even before the U. S. entry in the war, the replacing of Nazi Germany with Soviet Russia as the dominant power in Europe, and the establishment of the United States as the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth, replacing both pre-war Britain and France.
In his recap he notes Churchill’s place in history as a great man who, in attaining that greatness, caused the downfall of the empire he’d led to pyrrhic victory. I wholeheartedly agree.
The final chapter compares the post war U. S. with the British Empire of pre-WWI through the end of WWII. After decades of wise leadership in which it avoided its predecessor’s errors, America finally repeats those mistakes after Ronald Reagan, culminating in the impossible foreign commitments of George W. Bush, a president who placed a statue of Winston S. Churchill in his working office.
NOTES: This book has been criticized for not having been written in a scholarly manner. Buchanan quotes other historians rather than primary sources. True enough, but I feel the overall message and slant on historical events count for far more than literary form. Enjoyed the book on several levels and agree with Buchanan most of the way on both his historical perspective, and the present day lessons to be drawn from the events discussed. I also like the overview of looking at the two world wars and the periods preceding, linking and following as a single period of history divided into various parts.
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Thank you, BrotherRambo, DesertDave, BrotherX, glad you all enjoyed it and added ideas of your own. And thank you, Gorgin, for helping to define our use of the word Axis.
I've been thinking about starting this discussion since becoming active again but didn't do so till just going to bed yesterday. Upon reading it now I wish I'd been more awake so the writing itself would have been better, but fortunately the facts are all as I'd intended them to be.
BrotherRambo, The Twitter comment is more relevant than you might think. I remember reading a book in 1974 called The Sovereign State of ITT that had a lot of great stories about WWII. -- All the leaders on earth at that time spoke to one another on phone lines run and operated by ITT (not sure if they also ran the phones in the USSR, but they probably did). The corporation regarded itself as beyond the politics of any nation, or group of nations, and never got involved in evesdropping or spying of any kind for any of the beligerants. It owned part of the German Focke-Wulfe aircraft company and successfully sued the United States government for damages when those plants were wrecked by Allied bombers!
BrotherX, I think those are interesting ideas. I'd like them set up as the special rules in Clash of Steel, which included many individual special rules, such as Hitler's stand and fight policy, OKH gone mad, etc..
DD what I always get a kick out of is the way Germany and Japan were so often represented in old war movies as very efficient military states working cloesely together etc & etc. Even more so in wartime propaganda, especially magazines and special publications. I'm sure you remember seeing those old maps of the Japanese Rising Sun spreading its beams across the Pacific and Asia going out to the western side of the Mississippi River, where it met the arms of the German octopus sprawling east across the Atlantic. I have to admit those things still scared me as a kid in the 1950s when they were already turning yellow with age.
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After a couple of days it's like sharp little shards of wire, can actually be used like a weapon if I rub it along someone's skin. :eek: If it grows for a week or two it turns into a regular beard. I never let it grow for more than a day in the interest of public safety, and my own. :cool:
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First, the Axis.
Germany-Japan-Italy. How well did they word as an alliance?
- Sept 1939, after telling Mussolini earlier in the year that Germany would not risk a major war till at least 1941, Hitler invades Poland despite a (very foolish) Anglo-French announcement to declare war on Germany if it did so. Meanwhile, Italy, which now had a program under way to be ready for war by 1941, found itself being pressured to join Germany immediately, despite being hopelessly unprepared.
During the phony war period Hitler called a strategy meeting and, beginning to doubt his Italian allies, who were still neutral, asked his top generals and admirals for their opinions. When it got around to von Rundstedt he said something to the effect of: "If Italy remains neutral we'll need to place 1 infantry division to cover the Alpine passes. If Italy goes to war against us we'll need to place 2 infantry divisions in those passes. If Italy joins us we'll be required to send 20 divisions to defend the the Italian mainland." Prophetic indeed.
-- After the war progressed Mussolini returned the Poland courtessy by not bothering to tell Hitler he had designs on Greece till after he'd launched an invasion of the country. He did this by walking up to Hitler, saying, "Fuhrer, we are on the march!" Hitler, meanwhile, had up to that point been attempting to draw Greece into the Axis. In any case, Mussolini had chosen the wrong season for an offensive in the Balkans and his troops spent less time on the march than he'd anticipated.
-- Spring 1941. The Japanese ambassador to Germany returns home full of enthusiasm for a joint war against the USSR. The Japanese government, having already lost two large battles in an undeclared border war against the Russians in Outer Mongolia, decided instead to plan on a Pacific strategy directed against the United States, Britain and the various European colonies. They didn't bother telling their German ally about any of that.
-- June 1941 Germany invades the USSR. Didn't bother telling their Japanese ally till after the fighting had already gotten under way.
-- December 1941 Japan attacks the United States and Britain in the Pacific. They don't bother telling Germany till after news reports began reaching Berlin in news reports.
-- Hitler, in part believing a DOW on the United States would compel a reciprical Japanese DOW on the USSR, adds America to his now hopeless list of enemy major powers. Japan continues on its way without the expected DOW on the USSR that Hitler hoped would draw Russian troops from the European front.
** Technology **
-- Italian BBs sunk in 1940 raid on Taranto by antique British biplane (Swordfish) torpedo aircraft. The attack would have easily been detected if Italy had possessed radar, but it didn't. Germany did, but chose not to share it with its ally. Italian warships also lost heavily in night actions with the Royal Navy due to British use of gunnery radar, which the Italians didn't possess. Again, Germany did and, again, Germany chose not to share it with its ally.
-- Japanese Navy heavily handicapped against the US due to its own lack of radar, both to detect aircraft and for use as range finders/locators on warships. Germany does not share the technology till much later in the war, after the key naval battles had already been fought, and the tide turned against Japan.
-- Long range heavy aircraft, a techonology the Italians had and the Germans sorely needed, but again, no need to share.
Final Touch. 1945, Germany in ruins, a Uboat heads for Japan with refined nuclear material for use in an A-bomb. Some sources say Japan actually tested one, with success, other sources say they didn't have the technology and only wanted the material for use in simple dirty bomb devices. Either way, the U-boat learns at sea of Germany's surrender and changes course for the United States, arriving with two dead Japanese naval officers and its precious cargo, which it presents to the Americans as a gift. The material is used in the Nagasaki bomb.
With allies like that who needs enemies? :eek:
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Thank you, BrotherRambo, and Likewise. :cool:
-- As far as I know the guy in the photo was just someone joking around, no doubt about his grooming.
KapitainKuni, Ever vigilant. What would this place be without you? :confused:
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BrotherRambo,
You have my apologies, I definitely misinterpreted your post.
But the thing is, how does anyone ban a picture?
I couldn't understand why, if it bothered you that much, you didn't contact me through a personal message here, or at Buntaland, or with an Email, and I'd have replaced that photo with something else.
Personally I thought it was a good choice specifically becuase it wasn't a depiction of Satan, only someone joking around with a toy pitchfork.
True about us knowing each other for 7+ years and I couldn't imagine why, out of nowhere, you were suddenly saying I should be banned.
I did become very angry believing that was what you meant, while at the same time knowing it couldn't have been, and I reacted in anger.
I offer my apology.*
The bible thumping remark was inexcusable on my part. Again, I was angry because at other sites in the past I've had several run-ins with people who were offended by any joking reference to Satan, etc & etc, and anything involving religious views being pushed in forums has become a raw nerve with me. -- But I can see now that this wasn't the case here.
Ah, if only that sainted gentleman were still among us he'd call for a group hug. :eek:
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Well, thank you BrotherRambo. Why not write an Email to the moderators suggesting I be banned?
Or, perhaps you should be banned for writing something so truly stupid? Maybe I should have been banned for sticking up for you, and others, to the point of writing Emails to the moderators when they were kicked out, guess that's a possibility too. I see how much it counted for.
Anyway, if you're degenerating back to your intolerant bible thumping BS and trying to impose it on everyone else, I'll just stay away on my own. I don't need that kind of idiocy.
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Well, I'm shocked, could have been knocked over with a feather, etc & etc. Never suspected on page 9 when I put up that can of Troll spray that our new freind really was -- a Troll! :eek:
So it goes on.
Stalin had his Leon Trotsky,
-- Big Brother his Emmanuel Goldstein,
-- -- And Battlefront its Gaylord Fokker.
This is the last known photograph of him in case anyone wants to do a three minute hate.
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Well, Snowstorm, I ponder what you've just said sitting here in Xanadu, Florida, my latest blonde blues singer failed opera star having just walked out on me -- ironically to move back to NJ, hope she's shovelling snow now! -- so I sit here looking at the glass ball in my hand, flakes of fake snow falling on a small country house in the middle of nowhere, and a word crosses my ancient lips, Rosebud-d-d-d as the ball drops from my hand and bounces down the hallway steps, breaking as it reaches the landing, but my faithful childhood sled safe in the basement, among tens of thousands of other trifles accumulated during a wanderlust lifetime.
In your garage you say? Most of the snow landing 100 or so miles from your own house? :eek: Well, poetic justice considering the screen name you've chosen.
-- Anyway, I don't think your alternate of plan of vengeance on the politicians through mountains of snow is going to work. I've found the more of them who get buried, the more of them who arise from someplace else to replace them. :eek: -
It's probably the first time in my life, JP, that I made the right move at the right time.
During all those low-snow years I kept saying I wanted to have a little more of it, just enough for some good snowball fights. Guess my request was filled a little too late, and with a bit too much enthusiasm. Sounds like being stranded at work for a while is a good call; here's hoping it won't be uncomfortable. Snowstorm, and now that name takes on diabolical significance; Kuni suspects you've got one of those electron beam facilities in your backyard like the one the government has in Alaska. Okay, you proved your point, if you direct it north most of the country gets buried in snow. :eek: Now please turn the damn thing off!
Also, it wasn't I who unleashed the four horsemen, it was some character who dumped 30 inches of snow on their pasture, now their just looking for a place to graze their horses. I mean, after they set me up with a summper bungalo high in the sky overlooking Central Park.
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Well, there's the 15 lb hardcover, or the 4 oz paperback.
Good to see you, JP. Hope the snow isn't too bad. The last few years I was up there we didn't get very much; guess it was waiting for me to move south. Pretty considerate of old Mother Nature. :cool:
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Oh, and here they are now, BrotherX! They're good kids, really, a bit misunderstood, much like our very own Kuniworth. I've asked them to find me a nice Manahattan penthouse with a good view of Central Park, something sixty or seventy flights up so I won't get wet in case some Canary Island drops into the Atlantic. And the winters I'll spend here; perhaps a bit farther inland for the same reason.
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I'm praying for a huge windfall so I can live here during the winter, and someplace I actually like during the summer.
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Aw, okay, I was out of line so just this once, I'll give you and Kuni a big hug. It's so rare I get asked. :eek::eek:
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Ah, Snowstorm, this weather situation has been rough on all of us. We've had plumetting temperatures out here too. Why, just the other night it dropped all the way down to, hmmm,
, well, anyway, I watch the national weather and it takes me back to 1969 and standing on that flightline at a SAC base in exteme NE Maine.Anyway, you've got my sympathy. Down here we'll pay for it in July and August when they turn on that Big Broiler In The Sky located right over my house!
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Thank you, DD, and likewise. This site, when it's going really well, has a lot of synergy among its posting members. I don't think any of us set out to be funny, or profound, or anything in particular, but when everything is going just right one thing leads to another.
I agree about laughter, it really is the best medicine.
I'm sure we've both seen people who just didn't have it in their lives, and neither of us would want to be among them. And, sure enough, talk about terrible health problems, in so many cases those poor mirthless souls, those miserable laughterless wretches, those cranky cantankerous nasty pieces of -- :eek: , er, sorry, what were we discussing? :cool:
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A group hug?!! Wow, what a great idea. :eek:
But first, let's freshen up a bit.
(If photo doesn't show, please click on link)
http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f399/myfask/258Troll_spray.jpg
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Ah, SeaMonkey, Viagra laced water, I thought there was something going on under the plaster!
Water sports would be great, and as you know we've got plenty of it down here. The trouble is whenever I look at it, even a puddle after it rains, I start hearing the theme from Jaws! :eek:
Out of traction now and the doctor says the cast will be removed by New Year's Eve, just in time for the big annual football game. Feeling intense agony under the plaster; I'm told that is a good indication of healing. :cool:
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KapitainKuni, On behalf of myself, and my various otherselves, I, uh, we, wish to thank you for posting those vintage quotes from your archives, resurrecting old antagonisms. :eek:
-- I remember when BrotherRambo claimed he was twelve years old. I wrote something that wasn't particularly nice and another member told me I ought to be ashamed of myself for saying things like that to a 12 year old! I should have responded that I was only 11.
-- And then there was Bogsie, RIP, who sent me an Email: We're the same person, did you know that? Do we live in the same house and share each others wives or something? Do we look alike?
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Ahhh SC1:), ...
If you wanted to win, the path was apparent and the Axis had the edge and a bidding system developed for the "Fall Weiss" scenario. Ooooh but there was that editor...ehhhhh JJ. Simple, yet elegant enough to interject that variation into user made campaigns and so the game kept going and we railed for scripts.......and more.
Boy ...did we ever get it! Get it Snow?:cool:
Nicely put SeaMonkey. And funny you should mention snow (sorry, Snowstorm, I couldn't resist) I remember a game I had with Hueristic where I had the Allies. In the height of winter the Germans went rampaging across Russia. I threw my hands up on my end and sent him a note: "This is ridiculous. Hubert must be the only Canadian who's never noticed that it snows!" :eek:
Brian The Dane Good to see you again. Guess you lost some posts when the place was reorganized. It cost me something like 1500 or so, probably from the old General Forum. I wonder if I said anything worthwhile in any of them?
KapitainKuni, it's good that you maintain your vigilance. Keep an eye on this guy, and I'm not so sure about any of the others either, better keep a close watch on the whole lot! :cool:
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Jeez SeaMonkey, you mentioned the T word. How depressing! I've been trying to ignore it. Just the other day I was playing baseball with some of my nephews, uh, all right, grandnephews, on break from college and on leave from various military branches. They helped me off the field and my sister drove me to the emergency room after a collision in the third inning. She said something about the T word too, about how maybe I shouldn't be playing hardball with young kids like that. But I stick to my principles, if we just ignore time, uh, that T word, we stay young. It's hard typing in this body cast, :eek: I'm trying to get the doctor to have it off in a few days. I don't want to miss our big New Years Day family football game.
HappyCat, glad we agree. Back in the SC1 days the site had a lot of different kinds of threads going. It's true a lot of them were locked fairly soon, but some great ones, mainly about related history topics went on for over a hundred posts. We said things in them that might be considered slightly off-color, or even unacceptable in themselves, but among dozens of other posts they were fine. And along the way their was an unexpected bonus or two.
One of the things I got a kick out of in this clip was Hitler and Stalin, after Germany's invasion of Russia, snapping at each other over broken promises of truces. That's right out of history! At one point or another both Hitler and Stalin wanted to have a truce on the Russian Front. Both were aware the other couldn't be trusted but they figured it would give them a year, perhaps more, to repair damage. Stalin, around the time of the Battle of Moscow, was willing to give Germany all it had taken up to that point; it was in the spirit of The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (1918) where the Bolsheviks ceded most of European Russia to Imperial Germany on the premis they needed to win their civil war first, and worry about retrieving lost territory later.
Also, I enjoyed the idea of the historical participants fighting WWII in the form of an online game. Guess then we're talking about 50 million virtual deaths. But the language -- can't imagine why its creator went over the top on it.
DD Agreed. In the case of Lenny Bruce we could listen past the profanity because the material itself was funny. And, of course, everyone understood he was battling unfair and uncalled for legal restrictions on Freedom of Speech. Similar issue earlier with Henry Miller for writing similar things during the 20s and 30s. It was okay by the 50s, enabling Salinger to say much of what he wanted to say in Catcher in the Rye without having to pretend people (most people) don't use profanity. By the time I read Miller's Tropic of Cancer in 9th grade, 1963, I couldn't understand what the fuss had been about. But in this clip there wasn't any purpose for the profanity, even if it had been milder, so that was one of the things making it offensive, at least for me. I think if there'd been an attempt to make the various genocides committed by Germany, Russia and Japan I'd have gone on the warpath.
Big Al
... "--- as for video
I didnt like the profanity either BTW. I always think that good comedy uses profanity only when it is completely appropriate and rarely. ..."
Exactly! Nice take on war, of course there's always a way around it and it's never an acceptable way to do things, but there are constant wars, many more wars than years since the beginning of written history, so it seems a part of our present state of development as a species.
One thing we have to say about them is they make great material for games. When we begin seeing them more deeply, see our games as also representing the rape of nations. As it becomes represented more realistically, the smell of burning flesh from bombing missions, the sight of homeless families freezing to death or starving, an impaled corpse lying next to our computer, the scent of blood in our nostrils from gunned down civilians, then our game, like the real life events, become abhorrent to us.
In SC1 I made a scenario called Sane Germany Without The Hollocaust and the main change was to add a German army in Sept 39, raise its production tech to level 3 and not have partisan activity in either Yugo or Russia. And, of course, I was able to play the Axis without seeing execution squads slaughtering villages behind the lines in Russia, Poland without the death camps and killing ghettos etc & etc. I liked it but no doubt it wouldn't have made a very competitive mod for head to head play.
BrotherRambo, The Nazis were careful to make everything they did legislatively correct, including the deportation of those groups and individuals who didn't fit in with their pathetic view of how things should be. Their legislation stopped short of the concentration camps, there was no legal pretense that murder was anything other than murder. There plan was to simply keep it covered up and, after winning the war, to say all the Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, Freemasons and the rest had been sent to extreme Eastern Europe for work assignments where they could no longer be reached. At least not without a crystal ball. So in that sense I think what you said is exactly right. I'm sure when you say concentration camps you're using it as a catch all for all the genocides done by the Nazis.
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There were parts that had me chuckling, but it would have been a lot better if he language were cleaned up. No need for the profanity.
Some of us, going back to the early SC-1 days, were speculating about a game where Germany has the option of playing without all the fatal racism, withouth it's Final Solution, without the plan to eradicate Gypsies, Poles, Russians, Slavs in general in addition to the Jews, in short anyone Hitler felt a personal prejudice against etc & etc, but to balance that there would need to be some advantage in the historical option of running the war that way (with concentration camps and death squads etc) but I couldn't think of a single thing to be gained on that end and apparently no one else could either. But thinking along those lines makes you really consider where the mindset of making such things as this, costing 50 million lives, can be really seen as a game. I was thinking about those things while watching this video.
It's hard to see humor in tragedy, and yet we can play it out as a game. Kind of odd.
-- Insulted? Not really. Just a feeling that it is a good idea done tastelessly. Cleaned it up and I think people would like it who don't like it in its present form.
Anyway, glad you posted it. It's always good to see different views of things, even those that border on, or are, distasteful to most.
:eek:
Re-introducing the Forum and Game Veterans
in Strategic Command - GLOBAL CONFLICT
Posted
I met a lot of those guys in my trips to Gettysburg over the years.
The best was in July 2003 on the anniversary days of the battle, a reenactor playing Robert E. Lee who very patiently explained his plans for that day to my young grandniece. When a junior officer came with a message he bent slightly, took her right hand and kissed it, excusing himself as the actions were about to unfold.
-- A nice touch was when he asked where she was from and she answered Long Island. He thought a moment. "Ah yes, I know the place. Fine country. During happier times I set up, and commanded, the defensive batteries of New York Harbor."
The man might well have been Robert E. Lee himself. :cool: