History (and related interesting facts)

Video of the East German national anthem "Auferstanden Aus Ruinen"(Risen from the ruins) with footage from East Germany back in the day.



The song is pretty good ^

The Course of Empire paintings created by Thomas Cole in the years 1833–36:

The Savage State


The Arcadian or Pastoral State


The Consummation of Empire


Destruction


Desolation

Where do you get those numbers from? A6Ms were only a part of those close to 4000 kamikazes. Many different aircraft types were used, dive bombers and torpedo planes, even some purpose built piloted flying bombs. "Roughly a quarter"? That's very "roughly" indeed. 14% struck their targets, managing to sink 3 escort carriers, 14 destroyers, 3 serious transport, and a handful of smaller stuff, landing ships, transports, a few minesweepers.

And the Zero outclasses the Wildcat in terms of flight performance. But not everywhere it counts in air combat (as of wider relevance than "dog fight"). I've already explained that the Wildcat was better at high speeds and at diving. And something that sure counts, and counts a lot, is self sealing tanks and armor.

It's not an asinine argument. It's a historical fact. The only thing not quite fitting is that most of them were not shot down by Wildcats, specifically (The F6F is the main perpetrator here). But I never claimed so nor intended to give that impression. And the very reason the Japanese went Kamikaze, was that they were thoroughly clobbered by then. Another irrefutable historical fact.

The Zero just wiped out any resistance before it came up against the P-40 and F4F. Those planes coped with the A6M. That's what I'm saying. In slightly different ways. Read up on history. The F4F was in a perilous position because it was slower in level flight. That means it can't permanently disengage by performance. And caught on low altitude it will go slow and be outmaneuvered and outclimbed. They needed altitude and they had to rely on numbers and mutual support. But they mostly managed to do that. Air combat is not just an aerobatic contest. It's mostly engage and disengage. The Zero couldn't roll and twist with the Wildcat at high speeds. It was too weak for that.

The very low loss numbers of the Wildcat, just as the fact that it was kept in service throughout the war, is absolute, irrefutable proof that it managed quite well in the war. I don't see how you can fantasize your way out of that. The 6 X .50 for the F4F-4 was probably a mistake, as the FM2 went back to 4 X .50 and that weight increase was something many pilots complained about.

The type 99 cannon was actually a really good weapon for being Japanese. A copy of the Oerlikon, I believe. But it might interest you to learn that this 20 mm cannon round only had 20% higher kinetic energy than the American .50 Browning? And the .50 cal fired twice as often, reached farther and quicker, had a flatter trajectory, had better armor penetration, more ammo, and four, six or eight guns were carried, instead of two. But sure, that small 20 mm shell explodes slightly when it arrives.

Hmm... I didn't know about this...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_Bangladesh_genocide

It was such a bloody independence revolution.

Ignore the title, but watch it to understand the Mongolian savagery.



What is said in this video I've read it before. Exactly what happened (but many cities are not mentioned in this short video).

It did slip my mind that I was going to do a more detailed reply to this, but I've finally got round to it....



1 and 4 (these are both Africa related so I'll put them together).

I'll start with Torch as it's absence would affect the rest of the analysis. While accelerating it isn't a certainty, cancelling it simply makes no sense at all given the situation that America would be faced after a Midway defeat. At this point the Americans have essentially no capability for offensive action in the Pacific due to Japanese carrier superiority, but their ability to act in Europe is pretty much unaffected. So why would they suddenly ignore the latter in order to do...not much...in the former? Even if they are moving away from a Europe First strategy, this can't be done on any significant scale until Summer 43 at the earliest, so Torch is a no-brainer at this point. They can't get a major offensive victory over Japan (though a defensive one is in the pipeline), but they can get one over Germany. Not to mention that the forces used in Torch didn't take away from Pacific operations historically - remember Guadalcanal was occurring concurrently. Maybe they reduce the naval support of the invasion - Ranger might be sent to the Pacific for example - but when combined with the RN, they'll still be far superior to anything the Axis have. There's no reasonable justification to put off Torch. Well, unless the inability to act in the Pacific pushes American to an even more aggressively Europe first stance and they swicth to their preferred plan (before the British managed to convice them it wasn't a good idea): Overlord in 43.

The logistical chain to Axis forces in North Africa was in an awful state by late 42. The Italians hadn't just lost more of their navy, they'd also suffered crippling losses to their merchant marine - which only gets worse over time now they lack the Navy to protect it. This is what happened in Tunisia historically - the Germans rushed troops into the country after El Alamein 2 and Torch, only to find that they simply didn't have the capacity to keep those troops supplied. The result was a utter disaster with over 200,000 men surrendering. Now, if you somehow manage to contrive to get Torch cancelled, things will be a little better from the Axis perspective, as the Allied ability to interdict from the west is reduced (though far from eliminated), so they might just about be able to get in enough supplies to allow for a defense, but anything beyond that is just ignoring the realities of the situation.

Which leads onto the next issue. Lets say we give the Axis a perfect situation - Torch is cancelled, Algeria remains loyal to Vichy, and they are able to get enough men and supplies through to halt the British advance, say, somewhere in Tunisia. How does this lead to them actually winning the campaign? Britian alone still has far more men in the theater, is better able to supply and reinforce them and, in the worst case for them, they can simply fall back along the coast, shortening their supply lines and lengthening the Axis' already stretched ones, before making another defensive line like El Alamein. Egypt is so far out of the Axis reach it might well be on the Moon - even if they somehow manage to inflict heavy defeats on the 8th Army in Tunisia/Libya, they simply don't have the logistics to sustain an attack there. We saw this in '42, and you're suggesting they're going to to better when they have less ability to supply themselves (thanks to the Axis being even lower on ships)? Of course, that doesn't mean they wont try - Rommel, for all his abilities, had a serious blindspot when it came to logistics - but they're no plausible way such an attack can succeed, and all it ends up doing is consuming more Axis troops, material and supplies they they're going need in Russia if they're somehow going to beat the Soviets as you claim.

2. That the loss of Moscow would've been a major blow to the Soviets is not something I would disagree with - hell, I'd say that if the Germans wanted to beat the Soviets they would've needed to take the city in '41. Once they failed to there was no real plausible route to victory barring Soviet political collapse, with it they would've had a chance of winning. The problem is that there aren't really any plausible ways to get the Germans to take Moscow. They all fall apart on a combination of Soviet strength and good old fashioned logistics (you might be noticing a theme here...).

You're seriously exaggerating the impact of lend-lease supplies on the Battle of Moscow. I'm not claiming they weren't beneficial to the Soviets, but they hardly changed to course of the war. The Soviets won the Battle of Moscow because they were able to get in reinforcements while the Germans were acting at the end of a massively overstretched supply chain (which is why the various suggestions of the Germans doing better if they get to Moscow significantly sooner are utter crap - getting there sooner means they're even further from their railheads and are thus even less capable of maintaining serious operations). The winter counterattacks were successful because the Soviets had brought in another million troops after halting the German advance which they threw at the already battered and undersupplied Germans. The equipment received from the British in '41 lead almost certainly helped reduce Soviet losses and increase German ones, but the ultimate result would've been the same regardless.

3. Frankly, getting rid of Churchill might well help the allied war effort - he was the perfect leader for rallying the country the "dark days" of '40, but he had a massively overblown view of his understanding of military matters and an a tendency to interfere in such things, which usually resulted in disaster (see: Gallipoli, Norway, Greece etc.). If had the decency to remove himself from the picture in late '40 we probably wouldn't even be having the North African part of this discussion - give O'Connor the troops he was meant to have and instead got diverted to Greece, and there's a decent chance the second phase of Compass succeeds. But I should stop complaining about Churchill, that's a whole 'nother disillusion.

5. If Germany managed to drive the Allies completely out of North Africa and had reversed their defeats against the Soviets, maybe this kind of stuff is plausible. But the those conditions aren't, so....

6. In the long run, I don't think this is an implausible. But major action in New Guinea is not something that's going to be done straight away after Midway. The Allies are still going to be on the defensive for quite some time.

7. I would say it's less of a "high opinion of the Communists" and more an appreciation of how utterly fucked the Axis were even prior to Midway. Frankly, it's almost unbelievable they did as well as they did, but even after a near perfect run up to that point, their opposition were still standing and while they could still potentially win battles - such as Midway in this timeline, or Stalingrad in another - they couldn't really win the war without something completely beyond their control like the Soviet political crisis resulting from Stalin's early death I've suggested a couple of times. You are right that German needs to beat the Soviets, the problem is that they can't.

The two front war isn't actually as much of a disaster as you might think for the Soviets, as, by the time it starts seriously affecting them, they've won the key battles and Germany's offensive capability is shattered (see below). The war will be longer and bloodier, but the outcome isn't going to change.

Japan doesn't really bleed the Allies that much in the Pacific, simply because of the nature of the war their means that it's one primarily of machines - ships and aircraft. Land battles are very bloody for their size, but are pretty small. And this is really why, even an American seeking vengeance for a lost Midway on top of all her previous losses is very unlikely to switch to a Japan first strategy - it simply doesn't take advantage of their capabilities. The tank factories of Detroit do pretty much nothing for a Pacific war. The huge army they've raised does very little for a Pacific war. Prior to the B-29, the airforce is limited in what it can achieve there. On the other hand, building of the major warships is limited by both time and available slips. As a result, an Europe First strategy still makes sense. It was chosen as it was the best use of what the Americans have available to them, and nothing in this timeline has changed that. There might well be some alterations to the timescales, and some smaller operations could be cut, but we're going to be seeing plenty of American boots on the ground in Europe in '44 - even with all the stuff you want to go in the Axis favour working out for them, the Soviets are not going have collapsed by then, so Overlord still makes perfect sense.

How are Germany getting a nuke? Their program was an utter failure and at the rate they were going would've been lucky to get one by the late 50s even if they knew for certain it could work (which they wouldn't until it was a bit too late). The Soviets only managed to get theirs as quick as they did thanks to spies within the Manhattan Project, and they sure as hell aren't going to be reporting to Germany. Frankly the only nation other than America who could've gotten a nuke within a timescale short enough to matter is Britain (rather remarkably, Tube Alloys had chosen exactly the right method for making uranium bombs, so unlike the MP, they wouldn't have had to spend huge amount of resources investigating every option) and they had cancelled their program to aid with the American effort (only for the latter to screw them over post war).



There's no way the Japanese would abandon their existing plans in favour of invading the Soviet Union when their plans are going so well. MF achieves a vital strategic aim - cutting off America from Australia - while invading the Soviet Union is of no real benefit to Japan but instead a favour for an ally, not to mention that it takes advantage of the naval superiority they've just obtained, while attacking the SU is a predominately land based operation, and could frankly have taken place at any time. Midway doesn't really change anything on that front. MF is a crazy plan, but so was pretty much everything else Japan did in WW2 and up to this point, it's worked. That Nagumo thinks it would be a bad idea is pretty much irrelevant because the main driver behind MF is the IJA - you know, the very people you are expecting to do the bulk of the work against the Soviets. They couldn't care less what some admiral thinks, they want those islands captured and they're not going to comit to another major operation until its done. Remember, Yamamoto only barely got the Army to agree to a short delay so the Midway campaign could occur. Getting agreement for an attack on the Soviet Union before MF is complete would require pretty much the entire Japanese leadership to magically change personality. It's not alternative history. It's outright fantasy.

But even if somehow you do get them to attack in September, there still isn't the timescale for them to impact the outcome of war. I'm having trouble finding confirmation, but as far as I know, there weren't major transfers of troops from or to the Far East during 1942. Some Siberian troops were moved west in '41, arriving in time to help at Moscow (though they were still a relatively small proportion of the Soviet forces fighting there, and, as such, contrary to the myth, they weren't responsible for saving the city), but nothing major after that. So the Japanese pinning the far east forces down, and even cutting the Siberian Railway (far from a certainty given the balance of forces in the region) doesn't really impact the forces the Soviets have in the West in the short term. And given the situation in the west, I can't see any reason for the Soviets to use anything other than local troops to respond to the Japanese attack immediately. Even by September, Stalingrad had become more than just a battle, it was a matter of national prestige and indeed personal pride for Stalin (for obvious reasons). The battle plays out roughly historically, and Germany is screwed. That the Soviets are worse off in '43 doesn't let Germany get back to a position where they could potentially win the war, it's simply too late. The balance of men, material, industry, resources etc. is just heavily weighted against them. All they can do is make the Soviets bleed more.

I suspect you know this, but just to clarify, mechanising Soviet infantry was not a big deal. The benefit of the American trucks was on the supply chain, especially when advancing beyond railheads - without it the Soviet advances in '44 and '45 would've faced far more of the issues the Germans did back in '41.

As for the lend lease tanks, not much attention is put on them because they simply didn't have a major impact. They were nice for the Soviets to have, but didn't affect the course of the war and compared to the Americans motorising their supply chain, pretty minor.


As an overall summary, and I think you rather accepted it with the final bit of the first of these posts I've quoted, it seems your more interested in trying to figure out how to get a German victory and not at examining the likely results of a Japanese victory at Midway. I can understand this, it, along with a CSA victory are the two classic counterfactuals people look at. But you've fell into the usual problems Alt. Hist. writers have when trying to achieve either of these, which is that ultimately, it's incredibly hard to come up with a plausible route to this result. I honestly can't think of a good example of an Axis victory alt hist - there are several good ones that look at the impact of such a victory, but they, by necessity, have to at least somewhat handwave how it happens. Have a look for The Anglo American Nazi War, its an excellent example of this (it's an examination of what could happen if the SU surrendered to Germany) - this is where I got the "Stalin dies early" idea from but even then the author admits that that the circumstances that lead to the Soviet collapse aren't really that plausible, but are necessary to get to the actual focus of the timeline.

._.

Me as well, I'd thought it was over.

I'm probably not going to respond to it again.

My interest is low, recall if you would that this shit initially began off a conversation and premise from a decade ago that I had to refresh myself on.

Also you seem very unwilling to relent at all on the USSR and that'd be a point I'd never concede. Because even back then I realized how untenable the whole bloodbath that was their defense of Russia was to begin with.

._. The last decade has not devested me of those thoughts.
Anyway I had fun discussing alternative history with ya.

Pervert.

You can find lots of examples where Christian traditions overlay older pagan rituals, but this one just seemed a little bit more odd. I mean, this is a festival for a catholic saint, right? Someone who probably was celibate...
As for the phallic motif, the Romans were really into them. For example, it was common for a Roman house hold to hang phallic wind chimes by the front door for luck and fertility. The British Museum has some of these artifacts. I just thought it was really bizarre to see them pop up in this time and place.
About the site, www.atlasobscura.com/ , this site lists cultural oddities and lesser well known sights from all over. If you're going to be traveling, it can suggest some unique side trips.

Here's the small red brick school where Germany signed their surrender during WW2...
www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-school-where-germany-surrendered

The former 1407 Paris home of Alchemist Nicholas Flamel:
www.atlasobscura.com/places/house-of-nicolas-flamel

Why?

I mean the Persians I get, you fap all over them, and I suppose I can understand...even if I think there are more fascinating ancient middle eastern societies.

But why the Chinese?