World War II
- Thread starter Hollis
- Start date
LDC
On est tous des pangolins
Oh, there's some interesting snippets of knowledge on the Wiki flamethrower entry (I'm isolating and bored shitless today is my excuse...)
A Soviet one (from Libya) was used by the IRA in 1989 on an attack on a checkpoint apparently.
And they're not prohibited from private ownership in the USA (of course...).
A Soviet one (from Libya) was used by the IRA in 1989 on an attack on a checkpoint apparently.
And they're not prohibited from private ownership in the USA (of course...).
dylanredefined
Not a house elf a tiger
Not very well armoured ,but, fast and maneuverable"Get in set the bastards alight before they set you alight" As he said.
. Often the germans ran for it or surrendered when they realised what was coming towards them. Had a certain releish when he spoke about his war years probably not a conversation he could have in polite company.
Flamethrowers are obsolete now thermobarics rockets are the way forward. Though its more an explody death than a burning death. The Army brought one for Afghanistan as it was cheaper than the Javelin missile. Then after it proved to be more devastating than they thought ( Didn't they even watch the sales video? where after they show how easy it is to use they blow up all sorts of stuff with it buildings , hiluxes . bunkers,armoured vehicles etc) banned its use.
agricola
a genuine importer of owls
I wasn't falling for that - just pointing out that these were the same sort of people who in the previous war attempted to kill tens of thousands of their own men (edit: and ours) in a completely needless protest (the planned sortie of the High Seas Fleet at the end of the war), and who saw nothing wrong with developing and using gas, shooting large numbers of civilians and POWs (with or without "a trial" first), and using others for forced labour. They were also the ones who took the conscious decision to sink civilian merchant and passenger vessels without regard to the safety of the crew as well, and in a couple of cases machine-gunned the survivors in lifeboats. That is on top of the general looting and declarations of war on less powerful countries that were popular at the time.
By focusing on the greater horrors that they got up to in the second war, we do sort of forget that they were pretty rotten beforehand and could easily have done what they did without the racial nonsense pushed by the Nazis.
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spitfire
Walty McWaltface
Not very well armoured ,but, fast and maneuverable"Get in set the bastards alight before they set you alight" As he said.
. Often the germans ran for it or surrendered when they realised what was coming towards them. Had a certain releish when he spoke about his war years probably not a conversation he could have in polite company.
Flamethrowers are obsolete now thermobarics rockets are the way forward. Though its more an explody death than a burning death. The Army brought one for Afghanistan as it was cheaper than the Javelin missile. Then after it proved to be more devastating than they thought ( Didn't they even watch the sales video? where after they show how easy it is to use they blow up all sorts of stuff with it buildings , hiluxes . bunkers,armoured vehicles etc) banned its use.
Christ, they made a floating one.
I'd seen the Duplex Shermans but never one of these.Kevbad the Bad
Amiable Bowel Syndrome
That's all true, of course, but (lest we forget) it applies equally to the commanders of all the other 'allied' armies in WW1. Poison gas was developed and used by all sides. Indiscriminate use of artillery etc killed civilians on either side of the lines, and behind them. Economic blockades killed hundreds of thousands by starvation. Forced labour and looting, particularly in Africa, had catastrophic consequences. Not forgetting the slaughter of millions of soldiers in a pointless war. Oh, and it all helped set the scene for Spanish flu. So yes, German army high command were ruthless, uncaring, heartless bastards, but so were all the other high commands.
agricola
a genuine importer of owls
I don't think they were, tbh - yes, there were loads of other horrors carried out by military and political leaders on all sides, at vast cost in lives, but what the upper military class over there did usually went above and beyond all the examples I can think of, and of course in many cases they were the ones who set the precedent for doing all that. A look at what they got up to between 1918 and 1932 makes it even more blatant what sort of people they were, what with all the paramilitary politics, and Rapallo.
Even the economic blockade was something brought on by themselves (and made worse by ensuring the military was supplied first), and even if the RN had allowed (for example) foodstuffs and medicines through the blockade, the likelihood is the German Navy would have continued to send ships and submarines out to sink "our" shipping anyway (as that's how they thought they would win).
Kevbad the Bad
Amiable Bowel Syndrome
If we're talking about what happened after 1918 it's worth remembering that the economic blockade of Germany, and resultant death and malnutrition, continued for months after the end of the war. Perhaps half a million civilians died and no-one tried to sink "our" shipping during that time.
All the military elites were incompetent, ignorant and uncaring about their own troops, let alone anybody else. If they did care they had a funny way of showing it. If any of those people had done anything like this in civilian life we'd all be calling them monsters and psychopaths. Not an inaccurate description.
It's the same old bloody story. We are all expendable and of no account as individuals or communities. That's as true in Germany as it is in Britain, France, Italy, Russia, Serbia, the Ottoman Empire, East Africa etc in 1914, 1918, 2021.
agricola
a genuine importer of owls
That wasn't the end of the war though; the nature of that war (an armistice followed by an eventual treaty, with Germany not standing down its military until the treaty was signed) and with very little military occupation of Germany itself meant that the Allies couldn't just let everything through again (edit) until they were sure that they wouldn't kick it off again.
I agree all the military elites were horrors, but I think we do history a disservice if we don't acknowledge that there is plenty of evidence to say they were rather worse than their contemporaries, and that there are a lot of similarities with what they got up to (and how they blamed others afterwards for their failures) in both the wars that they started.
Kevbad the Bad
Amiable Bowel Syndrome
Who is this 'they'? The German people were never asked, ever, whether they wanted to start any wars. The army high command weren't decision makers in either event. The decisions to go to war were taken by a handful of people in both cases, but they were different handfuls of people each time, with different agendas.
WW1 was the culmination of an arms race in which the governments of all the great powers participated. So a Serbian nationalist kills an Austro-Hungarian aristocrat in Bosnia, causing Russia to mobilise its armies, whereupon Germany invades Belgium. Hardly a master plan, is it? Just one particular chain of events which led to war. There could have been others, in some of which some other government 'started' it all.
WW1 was the culmination of an arms race in which the governments of all the great powers participated. So a Serbian nationalist kills an Austro-Hungarian aristocrat in Bosnia, causing Russia to mobilise its armies, whereupon Germany invades Belgium. Hardly a master plan, is it? Just one particular chain of events which led to war. There could have been others, in some of which some other government 'started' it all.
mod
A modernist
Since seeing this a week ago I've watched the entire series! Had seen it before but years ago.
Thanks for the heads up.
Its all available on Dailymotion - the home for videos that matter
spitfire
Walty McWaltface
Although very little can match up to World at War I watched this a few weeks ago and thought it was very good.
German made and not too many rubbish low budget re-enactments AFAIR.
German made and not too many rubbish low budget re-enactments AFAIR.
agricola
a genuine importer of owls
The German military elite? Sorry but I thought that clear about who we were speaking about.
Also FWIW that elite was also largely responsible for that arms race (especially the naval one against the UK), and actively pushed for that war to happen - they thought they'd smash everyone, and had been carefully preparing for it to happen for years beforehand (though obviously they probably didn't know exactly when it would happen). The idea that the guilt is shared, that it was an accident, is just not supported by much.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
maybe there should be a thread about ww1 where this could be fully discussed. but you're talking as though there wasn't a master plan, as though the germans hadn't had a plan which was updated every year. maybe there wasn't a general master plan in which the dramatis personae were marched round the stage. but there very much was a german plan to prevent fighting a war on two fronts, by which they could whack the french and then deal with the russians. and in history, as in fiction, the master plan so often fails to meet expectations.
an atmosphere in which war was perhaps seen as rather a release had been created over the previous 40 years as tales of the next war and repeated spy and invasion scares in britain and ireland (and perhaps on the continent, i don't know) led to an expectation that at some point war would come.
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Kevbad the Bad
Amiable Bowel Syndrome
An accident waiting to happen. An arms race has more than one participant. The British, French and Russian Empires were empires, after all, created by force, conquest and threat. As for guilt, I don't think the leaders of those empires knew the meaning of the word. It was the same for the Cold War and the arms build-up then. Whose fault was that? Well, you can argue about it. If there had been nuclear war, triggered by whatever events, whose fault would that have been?
Serge Forward
Just enjoyin' my coffee.
This is a great book, oral history of Britain during WW2. Joe Jacobs is in there: YOU,YOU & YOU! Restored NOW ONLINE
Hollis
bloody furious
I've just been reading David Stevenson '1914 1918' on the origins of the FWW.. the big thing for the Germans was a sense of encirclement.. also in terms of the arms race, the balance was slipping towards France/Allies in the longer term. It seems the British thought they had to be part of it, as much for if France/Russia defeated Germany, then they would either miss their share of the spoils and/or be seen to have 'not played their part'. Stevenson comments on how the 'left' parties were 'pretty' ineffective in mobilising or wanting to stage opposition to the war - though in all cases the war had to be positioned as a defensive war to get them on side..
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
i think the only european socialist parties which didn't support the war (soz this is from memory so don't take it as gospel) were the bolsheviks and the irish labour party.
Idris2002
canadian girlfriend
Jaures tried to organize opposition to the war in France, and got shot for his pains.
Like the rest of the Italian parliament, the Italian socialists opposed the war . . . and the king and the prime minister went behind their backs and got Italy involved anyway.
Kevbad the Bad
Amiable Bowel Syndrome
And the Independent Labour Party in the UK, and the Bulgarian socialists too iirc. Lots of others were opposed before the war broke out, but were then divided, with the majorities reluctantly supporting the war efforts. Most anarchists were against, some non-establishment religions, many trades unions, many national minorities.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
Oh they were all opposed before the war. But that's so often the way with parliamentary socialists.
spitfire
Walty McWaltface
Second world war, lads. Second!
Jaurès indeed
EtA, I suspect a thread on the First World War could end up longer because the causes are more arguable, nebulous and far-ranging than what made the second happen, which was essentially, Nazis.
Has to be done now really. Who volunteers to be the first over the top for World War 1 - the thread to end all threads?
spitfire
Walty McWaltface
I would do it but it's a bit far from my chateau 20 miles behind the lines so if one of you chaps would be so kind I'd be awfully obliged.
I'll be sure to write a letter of thanks to your relatives. Maybe send them a death coin as well if that helps?
Kevbad the Bad
Amiable Bowel Syndrome
Well I might start one off tomorrow or the next day, but I predict it'll all be over by Christmas.
Idris2002
canadian girlfriend
Interesting paper here on West African responses to war propaganda during 1939 - 1945, which did not have quite the effect that was intended.
Brits: "Now look here, chaps, Hitler wants to enslave your people and steal your natural resources".
West African people: "Hang on a minute".
Brits: "Now look here, chaps, Hitler wants to enslave your people and steal your natural resources".
West African people: "Hang on a minute".
Idris2002
canadian girlfriend
The lights are going out all over Urban.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
The permanent members of the un security council are the UK, USA, France, Russia and China: the countries (or successor countries) which played the largest part in the war against the axis powers. And it couldn't have been a world war without the participation of Japan and China who kicked off rather earlier than September 1939. It's rather Eurocentric to say the least to say that the NSDAP was the cause of ww2Second world war, lads. Second!
Jaurès indeed
EtA, I suspect a thread on the First World War could end up longer because the causes are more arguable, nebulous and far-ranging than what made the second happen, which was essentially, Nazis.
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