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I'm reading Massie's Dreadnought now and he does make a pretty decent case through his narrative of events that Bismark really hosed up with his latter years diplomatic strategy of 'make mutually incompatible secret pacts with your neighbours, hope they don't notice'.
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Apr 30, 2024 19:27
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Alchenar posted:I'm reading Massie's Dreadnought now and he does make a pretty decent case through his narrative of events that Bismark really hosed up with his latter years diplomatic strategy of 'make mutually incompatible secret pacts with your neighbours, hope they don't notice'. I think the thesis is more that "Bismarck could keep that poo poo up because he was The Man but his successors, who were much less talented, couldn't keep things going" - I think the Leo von Caprivi quote regarding the reinsurance treaty was that while Bismarck could juggle three balls he could only juggle two or something to that effect.
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Apr 30, 2024 20:13
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"Who Caused WWI" discussions have a tendency of treating France and its revanchism as an implacable force of nature that everyone else has to factor around. Even if you think they were in the right, you can't avoid the feeling Paris was going to pounce on the Germans the first instant they could if they had to ally with the devil himself (and between the Tsar and as it turned out, colonial Belgium...)
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May 1, 2024 04:37
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Could anyone link me to some deckplans for, say, a 1910 dreadnaught? Not fussed about the class or even the size apart from large, it's for a game I'm running (blades in the dark)
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May 1, 2024 06:33
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sebmojo posted:Could anyone link me to some deckplans for, say, a 1910 dreadnaught? Not fussed about the class or even the size apart from large, it's for a game I'm running (blades in the dark) By deck plans how much detail do you want? There's deck plans and there's deck plans, if you catch my meaning.
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May 1, 2024 06:50
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Basically enough to run a fairly tactical game in it, like cabins, bulkheads, corridors, cargo, guns
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May 1, 2024 06:57
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sebmojo posted:Basically enough to run a fairly tactical game in it, like cabins, bulkheads, corridors, cargo, guns My recommendation is to seek out a copy of John Roberts' The Battleship Dreadnought, which has plentiful drawings of Dreadnought's interior layout. It's not as detailed as an official "as fitted" blueprint but it's the best you'll do without going to the National Archives or the National Maritime Museum in London and pouring over official large-scale drawings. PM me if you need more info because I have a bunch of official files about dreadnought construction that will otherwise never be of use to anyone. Also I can tell you what things are where they are and why, and why different ship's officers are called whatever they're called and why there's different names for equivalent ranks and why the chief engineer can't just take command if all the senior officers get mulched by whatever. Vincent Van Goatse fucked around with this message at 07:22 on May 1, 2024 |
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May 1, 2024 07:04
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Arbite posted:"Who Caused WWI" discussions have a tendency of treating France and its revanchism as an implacable force of nature that everyone else has to factor around. Even if you think they were in the right, you can't avoid the feeling Paris was going to pounce on the Germans the first instant they could if they had to ally with the devil himself (and between the Tsar and as it turned out, colonial Belgium...) Having watched a lot of videos of Michael Neiberg speaking about the French perspective on the war, I'm absolutely pretty convinced that French revanchism is actually really overstated, particularly in regards to A-L.
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May 1, 2024 07:29
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Saul Kain posted:Went to the British Cemetery on Ocracoke Island. Thanks for the pics - looks like an interesting spot, and a pretty one. I knew naval trawlers made it across the Atlantic as escorts when there was nothing else available but had no idea they were loaned to the US and stationed there for patrol work. Vincent Van Goatse posted:...why the chief engineer can't just take command if all the senior officers get mulched by whatever. Can't go in the command citadel without a curled stripe on your sleeve, old chap! Did you even go to Dartmouth?!
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May 1, 2024 07:40
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BalloonFish posted:Thanks for the pics - looks like an interesting spot, and a pretty one. I knew naval trawlers made it across the Atlantic as escorts when there was nothing else available but had no idea they were loaned to the US and stationed there for patrol work. Dartmouth? You mean the Britannia, surely?
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May 1, 2024 07:42
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sebmojo posted:Could anyone link me to some deckplans for, say, a 1910 dreadnaught? Not fussed about the class or even the size apart from large, it's for a game I'm running (blades in the dark) In addition to the book VVG suggested, there's also Aidan Dobson's 'The German Battleship Helgoland', which is basically an annotated version of the original plans for the ship. The San Francisco Maritime Museum have also uploaded a whole bunch of ship plans. While these are mostly from a later time than you're looking for, they do have plans for Texas and New York, which would fit.
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May 1, 2024 08:08
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Arbite posted:"Who Caused WWI" discussions have a tendency of treating France and its revanchism as an implacable force of nature that everyone else has to factor around. Even if you think they were in the right, you can't avoid the feeling Paris was going to pounce on the Germans the first instant they could if they had to ally with the devil himself (and between the Tsar and as it turned out, colonial Belgium...) In "A World Undone", the book that started this discussion, he's currently explaining the political background and mentions the what if of whether the assassination of Gaston Calmette did not occur and Joeseph Calilaux become prime minister. The author describes him as being against the militarism and the arms race of pre-WWI europe and being in favor of an accomidation with germany.
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May 1, 2024 10:23
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Oof, just learned about Jean jaures.
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May 1, 2024 10:53
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Alchenar posted:And lets not forget around 1943ish where they just start naming army groups or whatever after the General in charge because everything is such a mess and they're just scraping formations together. The UK did this a lot too - well usually smaller groups, but <name>force is pretty common.
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May 1, 2024 11:05
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Arbite posted:"Who Caused WWI" discussions have a tendency of treating France and its revanchism as an implacable force of nature that everyone else has to factor around. Even if you think they were in the right, you can't avoid the feeling Paris was going to pounce on the Germans the first instant they could if they had to ally with the devil himself (and between the Tsar and as it turned out, colonial Belgium...) Honestly, my biggest takeaway from reading The Sleepwalkers for the first time was that one of the bigger forces leading to WW1 was Russia's unrelenting lust for control of the Turkish straits and committed interest in loving with southeastern Europe as a lever to that end.
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May 1, 2024 12:32
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Cythereal posted:Honestly, my biggest takeaway from reading The Sleepwalkers for the first time was that one of the bigger forces leading to WW1 was Russia's unrelenting lust for control of the Turkish straits and committed interest in loving with southeastern Europe as a lever to that end. Yeah, that's a bit one. There's no mono-causal reason for WW1, but Russia's foreign policy for the last ~50 years was to basically gently caress the Ottomans at every turn to expand to the SE (either directly or via friendly states peeled off of their empire) and that's a lot of what contributed to the region being such a powder keg to begin with. PittTheElder posted:Having watched a lot of videos of Michael Neiberg speaking about the French perspective on the war, I'm absolutely pretty convinced that French revanchism is actually really overstated, particularly in regards to A-L. It was a lot more of an issue a few decades earlier when Boulanger was a major force. But his movement was on the out by the 1890s and from there things soften a lot as far as demands on Alsace-Lorraine.
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May 1, 2024 12:52
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Cythereal posted:Honestly, my biggest takeaway from reading The Sleepwalkers for the first time was that one of the bigger forces leading to WW1 was Russia's unrelenting lust for control of the Turkish straits and committed interest in loving with southeastern Europe as a lever to that end. Pan-Slavism was a driver of Russian foreign policy not just vis-a-vis the Ottoman Empire but also vis-a-vis the Austro-Hungarians. Control of the straits was a major objective but you've got to also take the whole Nationalism angle seriously (in the people/volk sense) because that drove a lot of pre-war politics and decision-making.
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May 1, 2024 13:53
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Cyrano4747 posted:Part of the reason I lean so far into Fischer and recoil at the argument that Europe blundered blindly into WW1 is that that denies the agency of the politicians who, at the end of the day, were the only ones in that clusterfuck who DID have agency. WW1 wasn't a hurricane or a volcano. It wasn't some act of god that just happened. It wasn't even an accident, even a negligent one, like an improperly secured pile of bricks tipping over and hurting someone at a workplace. It was the result of things that people did for reasons of their own and to further agendas of their own that, taken as a whole, led to the largest disaster to befall Europe in a century. Hell, the largest disaster to befall the entire world in at least, what, three centuries? if we count WW2 as a knock-on effect. Wasn't a huge cause of at least the Western European part of WWI basically the course and outcome of the Franco-Prussian War? My understanding of that one is limited, but I thought it played a big role in reshaping the global and European balance of powers situation generally and engendering enmity between and revanchism on the part of the French and Germans specifically, leading Germany to want to do what it did and basically turning WWI into WWI.
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May 1, 2024 16:07
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Fuschia tude posted:Wasn't a huge cause of at least the Western European part of WWI basically the course and outcome of the Franco-Prussian War? My understanding of that one is limited, but I thought it played a big role in reshaping the global and European balance of powers situation generally and engendering enmity between and revanchism on the part of the French and Germans specifically, leading Germany to want to do what it did and basically turning WWI into WWI. Maybe? I mean, the F-P war is kind of why Germany exists in 1871 as a unified entity under the now-imperial Prussian crown. So by that logic, yeah, you don't have a young empire with the locus of power in Berlin (as opposed to Vienna, the Rhineland, Munich, etc) without it. But if you were to take a snapshot of European politics in the 1880s there's nothing really to say that WW1 is going to happen the way it happens. At the same time that France was saber rattling about getting A-L back, for example, relations with England were at an absolute nadir due to the French going deep on naval building (sound familiar? This is what wrecks German relations with England later on) and expanding in a big way in Africa. Meanwhile Bismark had been pretty actively courting good relationships with the UK. That only really soured in 1890 when Wilhelm took the throne, pushed Bismark out, and insisted on massive ship building and colonies in a way that freaked the gently caress out of the UK. If you were to tell someone in 1885 that some day France, Germany, and England would be involved in a terrible land war with a line that stretched from the channel to the alps they may very well have guessed that it would be Germany and the UK cutting France down to size once again. edit: that said, the Prussian system as a whole was far more autocratic than what you see in other European monarchies after the early 19th century and a lot of the bellicose foreign policy that Germany was engaging in from 1890-1914 was at the behest of Billy numero duo. It's a bit much to say that he directed it, but he's certainly giving it its general direction and making key calls about who is in decision making positions, e.g. firing Bismark. Which is a big part of how you can draw a pretty straight line between Prussian social conservatism as embodied in the Hohenzollerns and the system they sat atop and the hard rightward turn Germany took in the 30s. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 17:35 on May 1, 2024 |
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May 1, 2024 17:31
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I think the influence of the franco-prussian war thinking was in thinking that there weren't enough modernizations to completely change everything between 1870 and 1914 when there actually were. Because the whole thing was a pretty ordinary-then war of maneuver and there were no grand step-changes
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May 1, 2024 17:34
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bob dobbs is dead posted:I think the influence of the franco-prussian war thinking was in thinking that there weren't enough modernizations to completely change everything between 1870 and 1914 when there actually were. Because the whole thing was a pretty ordinary-then war of maneuver and there were no grand step-changes the F-P war freaked the gently caress out of the Prussian military establishment and spurred a lot of changes, in particular due to how badly they got manhandled in a few key assaults when they had to run men up into the teeth of French rifle fire across open terrain. The Battle of St. Privat is the big one you'll see referenced a lot in contemporary journals, and the results were ugly enough that the Kaiser's congratulatory message on the rather phyrric victory both commended the bravery and success of his soldiers and encouraged the use of cover. It also changed up how they dispersed artillery in the army but I couldn't tell you the details of that right now. For example, one of the debates was on how low you should delegate battlefield authority. On the one hand you had a group of officers - who I'll hand wave here as traditionalists for lack of a better term- who wanted to be in fairly direct control of all aspects of the battle. Their fear was that if you didn't maintain that level of control then you risked not being able to control the army and it breaking apart at a key moment. After the FPW a lot more tactical authority got pushed further down, with junior officers and NCOs having a lot more say in how specific objectives were achieved. There's a minor example of this that you can see in contemporary debates over magazine-fed repeating firearms, which more or less boiled down to weight of firepower vs. sustainability of firepower. The traditionalists were afraid that if the troops were not closely controlled to maintain fire discipline that they would expend all their ammo in the early stages of a battle and be defenseless at the key latter periods. Their opponents felt that a withering volume of fire at the right moment could decide the battle before that really became critical. There are a lot of pretty major changes that happen between the 1860s and 1914, and a lot of ink was spilled in a lot of military journals examining all sorts of different conflicts to figure out how to adapt to them. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 17:55 on May 1, 2024 |
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May 1, 2024 17:44
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sebmojo posted:Could anyone link me to some deckplans for, say, a 1910 dreadnaught? Not fussed about the class or even the size apart from large, it's for a game I'm running (blades in the dark) You've gotten other good recommendations but I'll just throw in this site about USS Texas BB-35, which has a good number of plans from different times in the ship's history along with various other information you might find helpful for your setting.
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May 1, 2024 18:27
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One thing that I think doesn't always get a ton of coverage is how A-H's response was terrible. They took forever to act, and that really made things worse. If I remember a decent chunk of that was Tisza really trying to slow their roll.
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May 1, 2024 18:38
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Carillon posted:One thing that I think doesn't always get a ton of coverage is how A-H's response was terrible. They took forever to act, and that really made things worse. If I remember a decent chunk of that was Tisza really trying to slow their roll. Part of that, though, was due to A-H going "Yo, Serbia, what the gently caress? Deal with this yourselves and bring us the guilty parties and maybe we won't lose our poo poo" and Serbia going "lol loser"
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May 1, 2024 18:40
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Cythereal posted:Part of that, though, was due to A-H going "Yo, Serbia, what the gently caress? Deal with this yourselves and bring us the guilty parties and maybe we won't lose our poo poo" and Serbia going "lol loser" What? Austria-Hungary gave Serbia 48 hours to accept a ridiculous list of demands and Serbia only objected to "A-H gets to be directly involved in the judicial inquiry." Austria-Hungary was not interested in any kind of compromise or negotiation, they wanted war and they got it.
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May 1, 2024 18:57
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Acebuckeye13 posted:What? Austria-Hungary gave Serbia 48 hours to accept a ridiculous list of demands and Serbia only objected to "A-H gets to be directly involved in the judicial inquiry." Austria-Hungary was not interested in any kind of compromise or negotiation, they wanted war and they got it. My impression from The Sleepwalkers was that A-H's demand was "You've been stirring up poo poo in the region for years, actively funding and supporting guerrilla movements outside your borders, ethnic cleansing minorities everywhere you've claimed, and we know you almost certainly had something to do with this. Bring us the people who did this or else."
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May 1, 2024 19:02
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Cythereal posted:My impression from The Sleepwalkers was that A-H's demand was "You've been stirring up poo poo in the region for years, actively funding and supporting guerrilla movements outside your borders, ethnic cleansing minorities everywhere you've claimed, and we know you almost certainly had something to do with this. Bring us the people who did this or else." I quoted from Wikipedia the demands in the Ultimatum below. They're a lot more than "bring us the people who did this", they're much closer to insisting that Serbia cease being a sovereign country. Points 1 and 3 say that Austria-Hungary dictate what publications are allowed, including schoolbooks and public documents. Point 4 let's AH veto any officers and functionaries, point 5 and 6 allow AH to operate police in Serbia, Point 9 requires Serbia to offer explanation of any officials critical of AH. quote:1. Suppress all publications that "incite hatred and contempt of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy" and are "directed against its territorial integrity".
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May 1, 2024 19:53
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By the time Austria-Hungary sends the ultimatum, it's clear they're gunning for war - and that is not even because of the language they used and demands they made, but because a 48 hr deadline was completely insane and calculated specifically at preventing European diplomacy from defusing the situation. But they did not send the ultimatum until July 23rd, almost a full month after the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. They spent most of that time trying to figure out if they want to go to war, how they want to proceed with the war, if they even can go to war, will Russia intervene, and trying to sleight of hand their timing so as to prevent Russia from coordinating with Serbia and France, hoping to win as much time as possible at the word go. Their problem was that they did not anticipate the crisis (which would be very hard, considering what brought it about). Their troops were not in the barracks, they were in the fields for the harvest season. Their officers were on leave. Their diplomats were on holidays. It was a giant clusterfuck.
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May 1, 2024 19:57
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The Serbs were willing to concede on all of those points, which are frankly ludicrous for a sovereign state to accept, except for I think part of point 5, which they gave a qualified concession on. "They will admit such collaboration as agrees with the principle of international law, with criminal procedure, and with good neighborly relations," which is a hell of a concession to a demand that amounts to "we control your internal affairs and judiciary now" edit: they rejected the participation of A-H officials in trials as unconstitutional, so I guess that's an active point of refusal but still, 6 is a restatement of "we control your internal affairs and judiciary now" KYOON GRIFFEY JR fucked around with this message at 20:28 on May 1, 2024 |
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May 1, 2024 20:20
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Cythereal posted:My impression from The Sleepwalkers was that A-H's demand was "You've been stirring up poo poo in the region for years, actively funding and supporting guerrilla movements outside your borders, ethnic cleansing minorities everywhere you've claimed, and we know you almost certainly had something to do with this. Bring us the people who did this or else." seriously this is just an absurd misreading and misunderstanding of A-H's demands, its mind boggling
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May 1, 2024 20:21
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One the one hand I'm handily down on the 'WW1 was deliberately provoked by a German Imperial state who saw the balance moving against them and were willing to stake everything on a throw of the dice' side of things, on the other hand it's also true that a world war was triggered by a rogue terrorist sponsoring state probably letting one of its proxies get too far out of control, and a rotting Empire that spent a month deciding to provoke war while not actually getting its army ready.
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May 1, 2024 20:27
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Alchenar posted:One the one hand I'm handily down on the 'WW1 was deliberately provoked by a German Imperial state who saw the balance moving against them and were willing to stake everything on a throw of the dice' side of things, on the other hand it's also true that a world war was triggered by a rogue terrorist sponsoring state probably letting one of its proxies get too far out of control, and a rotting Empire that spent a month deciding to provoke war while not actually getting its army ready. world war 1 was truly a land of contrasts
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May 1, 2024 20:28
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:world war 1 was truly a land of contrasts Pretty much. It's also the difference between proximate causes and the deeper background of how you get there. Put another way: a man gets killed outside of a bar and his wallet stolen. Did he die because his attacker needed drug money, or did he die because drug treatment programs had been systematically defunded and dismantled by political parties intent on milking tough on crime stances for votes?
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May 1, 2024 20:37
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Cyrano4747 posted:There's a minor example of this that you can see in contemporary debates over magazine-fed repeating firearms, which more or less boiled down to weight of firepower vs. sustainability of firepower. The traditionalists were afraid that if the troops were not closely controlled to maintain fire discipline that they would expend all their ammo in the early stages of a battle and be defenseless at the key latter periods. Their opponents felt that a withering volume of fire at the right moment could decide the battle before that really became critical. So I take it the results from history was that the traditionalist approach was wrong.
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May 2, 2024 08:42
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Comstar posted:So I take it the results from history was that the traditionalist approach was wrong. The trick is to make the bullets smaller so they can carry more of them.
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May 2, 2024 09:45
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I don't think they were completely wrong. Rather just that manufacturing and logistical processes for ammunition improved so most of those concerns went away.
Fangz fucked around with this message at 10:13 on May 2, 2024 |
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May 2, 2024 10:11
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And in fact Prussia was repeatedly validated in its decision to preference artillery modernisation over small arms.
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May 2, 2024 10:13
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The Lone Badger posted:The trick is to make the bullets smaller so they can carry more of them. I think it's more that you have industrial mass production of ammo, and trucks and trains to constantly resupply the men, as opposed to hand made cartridges and being mostly reliant on what the army can carry with them plus a few carts etc.
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May 2, 2024 10:19
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Was there any battle ever where two closely-matched sides fought, and the side with slower-firing guns won because their enemy ran out of bullets? It seems like an absurd scenario. I guess an early-20th-century general without the benefit of hindsight might argue that an army with slowly-firing guns is just as good as one with repeaters, and it's easier to keep it supplied.
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May 2, 2024 10:39
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Cyrano4747 posted:There's a minor example of this that you can see in contemporary debates over magazine-fed repeating firearms, which more or less boiled down to weight of firepower vs. sustainability of firepower. The traditionalists were afraid that if the troops were not closely controlled to maintain fire discipline that they would expend all their ammo in the early stages of a battle and be defenseless at the key latter periods. Their opponents felt that a withering volume of fire at the right moment could decide the battle before that really became critical. Is this why the British were so insistent on having a magazine 'disengage' (don't know if that's the fully correct term...) feature and the capability for single rounds to be chambered from above? The pre-WW1 SMLEs had this and even the first Webley semi-auto pistols did.
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May 2, 2024 10:49
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