1 Answers 2015-09-26
2 Answers 2015-09-26
2 Answers 2015-09-26
I'm going through my great grandfathers stuff and saw this. It's the only medal of his that I can't identify. He went through the Spanish American border war, WW1, and WW2.
Any ideas ?
1 Answers 2015-09-26
[deleted]
1 Answers 2015-09-26
[deleted]
1 Answers 2015-09-26
I recently finished reading David Chandler’s The Campaigns of Napoleon (I have difficulty wrapping my head around the amount of expertise, research, and scholarship that it would take to write such a book), and I had some lingering questions about the Aulic Council in Austria.
In the book, Chandler sort of makes the Council out to be a collection of doddering old generals who were (especially at the very beginning of the Napoleonic Wars) out of date in their military planning, organization, and tactics - totally out of their depth in facing Napoleon and the revolutionary French armies. Nevertheless, they were the military planning authority in Austria. So here are my questions about them:
How was it that the Aulic Council initially came to be responsible for Austrian war planning? The rather short Wikipedia article simply describes it as a consultative body of the Holy Roman Empire, one which seems to have had legal responsibilities but no others. The military role is not mentioned at all.
Was this kind of arrangement unusual or unique to Austria? Or is it somewhat similar to how generals in other countries might report back to a Ministry of War or a high commander for further instructions (for example, like how Napoleon initially had to keep in correspondence with Carnot back in Paris)?
How reliant were Austrian commanders on the recommendations or orders from the Aulic Council? Were they sent orders or “marching orders” or were the communications that they received from the Council somewhat less binding?
Did the Aulic Council's outdated views on conducting warfare contribute to the many Austrian defeats during this period? Or does more blame fall on the generals in the field and the outdatedness of the Austrian army and its logistical systems (not to mention the fact that they were facing a brilliant general)?
Did the Council’s role change at all after the decisive defeats that Austria suffered in successive campaigns? The Wikipedia article says that it was dissolved after the Battle of Austerlitz, but was the Council the subject of any reform attempts before that?
1 Answers 2015-09-26
War is the same no matter where or when it is fought. But in America WW2 veterans where seen as heros when they return while Vietnam veterans were demonized in media.
1 Answers 2015-09-26
Been rewatching Band of Brothers, and was wondering at what rank a soldier wouldn't jump in real life. Obviously generals didn't jump, but did colonels, lt. Colonels, or majors jump? Would very senior NCOs (e.g sgt majors) jump?
2 Answers 2015-09-26
im interested in learning this since cortes' victory over an aztec army who literally outnumbered his tired force by thousands of men, was primarily attributed to his use of shock cavalry and the aztec's lack of experience with the shock cavalry tactics.
2 Answers 2015-09-26
Something I read today reminded me about how the Cultural Revolution in the People's Republic of China included a great push against "the bourgeois", which seemed to include "intellectuals" and "intellectualism". The result was that doctors, engineers, teachers, professors, writers, and other professionals and artists were forced out of their professions and into peasant farm labour.
There is also an ongoing thread of anti-intellectualism throughout US history, of whom Richard Hofstadter seems to be the pre-eminent documentarian. While it certainly persists to the present day, I'm quite happy to let it go as of, say, 1985, to comply with subreddit rules. (Not to mention that it dates back to 1642 and John Cotton.) There appears to have been a brief push-back with "the Sputnik scare", when it became actually fashionable, for a brief period, to be a STEM nerd, but that was rare.
Anyhow, have any historians or other researchers found any parallels, or any common threads, in these two threads of anti-intellectualism? (Or, for that matter, in other cases, the most egregious being Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge and "the killing fields" in Cambodia?)
2 Answers 2015-09-26
And where can one find links that list the demands.
1 Answers 2015-09-26
Playing lots of Crusader Kings and watching Game Of Thrones, I couldn't help but notice in both those situations, members of the nobility seem to have their own navies at their disposal. Is that how it worked in real life, lords would have a cadre of ships at their beck and call. Or was it more of a "Hey merchant/shipwright I need ships, I'm going to use yours. I also have guys with swords. Cool? Sweet." Situation. I also realize it might vary from place to place depending on culture and geography.
5 Answers 2015-09-26
1 Answers 2015-09-25
Too far away? Not enough resources? Lack of Interest? A combination of these factors?
1 Answers 2015-09-25
1 Answers 2015-09-25
how did the kingdom of aragon become a thing? i heard that most of spain except the kingdom of asturias was under muslim control. did francia/france expand into spain and the area later became independent?
1 Answers 2015-09-25
Found here, the claim:
...the size of the empire created problems. The sultan was expected to lead the army, setting out with it each spring from the capital. This meant that as the frontiers expanded, it took the army longer to reach the enemy, thus shortening the campaign season to the point where it was very hard to conquer new lands.
Seems like a bit of a silly problem for a militarily advanced Empire. Surely bases could be set up near the frontier from where to launch invasions. "Invasion launch-pads" are an important feature in warfare for a reason.
Was there such a strong tradition for Ottoman sultans to start their campaigns from the capital that they couldn't make a militarily sensible change? And was this whole thing even a major problem or just a minor issue beside the other ones?
1 Answers 2015-09-25
Nowadays it seems really normal to us that we bury our dead (except cremation of course). But when did this begin to be common practice? I believe it's a rather old technique as it can prevent diseases, although this again would bare open the question if and why nomadic people did/do it. So what do we know of the origin of the burial?
1 Answers 2015-09-25
1 Answers 2015-09-25
Here is a lecture he gave at the London School of Economics.
http://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/publicLecturesAndEvents/player.aspx?id=3200
As far as I can tell he seems to be saying Hitler's vision was ultimately a utopian one where states inhibited "natural" racial organizations of peoples. That is Hitler envisioned a stateless society. Which seems an odd claim that a fascist regime would be fundamentally anarchist on a first pass. But on second thought anarchist philosophies often posit that more "natural" and desirable social interactions are impeded by states, and I know of at least one historical anarchist movement that had harsh military discipline as a (presumably) transitional phase: Nestor Makhno's army in Ukraine.
He also claims that the institutional workings of the nazis, while sometimes fitting in awkwardly with the anti-state ideaology, that at least part of the nazi project was to destroy states and fit it well. Only in states that nazis first destroyed were they able to perpetrate genocide unimpeded. As an example, nazi controlled states that retained continuity with previous states such as Denmark and Romania, higher proportions of Jews survived. Even in Germany nazis first had to strip jews of citizenship and all its protections and deport them before they could perpetrate the genocide unimpeded on german jews (the number of Jews actually killed within German borders was relatively small Snyder claims). As a striking example, in nazi controlled Denmark, which retained some continuity with its former government, a large majority of Jews survive. Whereas in Estonia, Poland and Holland, states that the nazis completely destroyed most jews were killed.
Does this seem right? He says most historians agree with the premise implicitly, but, to paraphrase, the traditional narrative leaves this anarchist aspect of nazi idealogy and institutional workings unilluminated.
1 Answers 2015-09-25