Grognard Wargamer Thread!

It was that year in Moscow that turned me

To be fair, the atrocities of 1914 were measured by the standards of, well, 1914. I’m not at all sure that, twenty-five years later, much of the stuff that happened when the Germans rolled into Belgium in WWI would have been seen as (still horrid) background noise of modern war. It’s undeniable the Germans were not choir boys. It’s also undeniable that the British and French did, in fact, exaggerate and enhance any and all misdeeds of the Germans in order to pressure the US to get into the war on their behalf.

But it’s also undeniable that many Americans found the Germans to be too militaristic, too bombastic, and too undemocratic for their tastes, and that the Brits and French had relatively fertile soil to work with. And Berlin certainly let its own arrogance lead to all sorts of issues. But it was nothing even remotely comparable to what the Nazis did (though admittedly, that’s a pretty high (low?) bar).

German atrocities in 1915 and 1916 were even worse (Serbia, Poland).

And then there’s the Ottomans in Armenia in 1915-1916…

“Standards” were evolving each year in that conflict…

Ah yes, we’re all puppets of the establishment. Including some of us older folks who actively fought against the establishment during the 70s while some here were not even a gleam in their father’s eyes.

It’s not a matter of politics. It’s a response to someone saying “This is the truth, only I and a few select people know it, and any attempt to argue against my truth is a sign of how you’ve been brainwashed.” Some of us in this forum are extremely data driven, have studied history in great detail beyond popular books and internet theories, and would have no problem with a proven theory that, say, FDR intentionally prodded the Japanese into starting WWII. Just as we accept the horrific things we did in the Philippines and how that hidden for decades. But the theories you’ve been talking about have been around for a LONG time, and every detail of them have been studied, by people who don’t care one way or another, and they’ve been pretty well disproved. If anyone here wants to discuss these theories in good faith, for example the entries in Stimson’s diaries, people would enjoy the back and forth.

However, when people make broad statements and then their response to requests for data is met with “you can’t HANDLE the truth you blinded idiots! YOU CAN’T HANDLE IT!!!” yeah, that’s met with scorn.

I’ve read the stuff you’re talking about regarding FDR and WWII for many many years. It was interesting. But people have dug deep into the details (e.g. Japanese internal letters and documents, documents from U.S. archives, etc.) and the data when really put under a microscope just doesn’t hold up. Has nothing to do with politics. For a short period of time when I first started looking at the theories I thought it was pretty plausible.

Well, European atrocities in the colonial era were widespread and horrific, as well, so it’s not surprising war on a large scale brought out the worst in people. I’m not at all sure the French and British didn’t behave pretty badly at times, as well, though the dynamic of the war for them gave them less chance to do so.

Agree, though the Armenian Genocide was on a whole different level than “wartime atrocities”. It was a genocide that happened to occur during a war.

If I was in Turkey today, Erdogan could have me locked up for posting that one.

Now they are going to ban qt3 from Turkey

Shame, really, I’d have loved to visit Istanbul some day. But as long as Erdogan is in power, I would never actually do so.

Because as mentioned above, the Armenian Genocide is vigorously hidden today. History, especially from the late colonial era, is replete with all sorts of shameful nasty details.

However the notions of how and why the US got involved in WWI and WWII are quite interesting. There is definitely some truth to the notion that the respective presidents had taken what action to influence the war, short of declaring directly, and that they angled for a way to drive public acceptance to joining.

US shipping to England, despite some of the confiscations and blockade elements, certainly were not indicative of true neutral status to the Kaiser. Just as we weren’t neutral in WWII before becoming involved with arms.

So I don’t find a need for conspiracy theory to explain that. It’s simple deduction, the actions and activities of the US prior to direct entry into the war made conditions such that some form of military response was more likely than otherwise. And that the presidents took action not nessecarially trying to get us attacked to draw into the war, but rather knowing this was a plausible outcome.

Because if you don’t think that Wilson knew that the amount of US shipping going to the Triple Entente members with German sub activity was likely to result in some US shipping being attacked and sunk? I’ve got a nice bridge for you.

Tomorrow is Veteran’s day. 11/11/11. Take a moment and thank your veteran.

I don’t plan on arguing in the next 48 hours.

Our parade will be on Monday. God knows I am sure we all wish that would have been the War to End All Wars.

I will call my veteran tomorrow – he was a B-52 pilot that may or may not have bombed Cambodia. But he had 63 combat missions. And, well, he is my father. But I know he took off from Guam with burning planes on the runway (crashes not combat losses obviously)

Yeah, and as a violator can I recommend that politics and non-wargaming discussions be moved out of this thread and this get back to something that belongs in the Games forum? @tomchick ?

Military History is a tough call though. That certainly seems like it should be fair game in the thread for discussion.

Yeah, I guess it is hard to avoid it, but if the thread becomes purely military history I’d suggest we start another thread in “Everything Else” for the topic. There’s a line, of course: if we’re discussing, e.g., the role of subs in the Pacific war in WWII, and whether that role is being represented correctly in a game, that seems to fit. If we veer off into the morals of a submarine attacking hospital boats, that probably should be discussed elsewhere (IMO.)

That seems like a fair line in the sand. Both current contentious topics did arise from games, however. Subs/Battles in the Pacific in World War 2 as you pointed out, came from that Kickstarter and German crimes in Belgium from the “Brave Little Belgium” Hollandspiel Baordgame.

The thread is so broad and wide ranging (not limited by historical period or something similar) that it is bound to wander a LOT. Not complaining, I love the thread. Just seems to be a fact of life. It’s going to deal with games and its going to deal with history (the Grognard part). And it’s unlimited in historical scope. :) Lotta terrain.

EDIT: I mean Hollandspiele is releasing this (as an example, I keep seeing it on Twitter). Is this fair game? Will it become contentious?

I don’t have answers, I’m just asking the questions. :)

Actually, maybe we just need to police ourselves and not let this thread fall into insults and personal attacks. Which I also just fell into. If someone decides to start throwing out insults and acting childish, I’d suggest we just ignore them as if they haven’t posted and stick with the kind of mature discussions that most of the history fanatics here usually stick to. For example, it is a valid discussion to talk about the true level of atrocities/war crimes on both sides of a conflict and even the desensitization of young men by the daily horrors of combat and war, with references (grognards LOVE references) - not so much to say if you don’t believe that I am the sole arbiter of truth and you don’t believe me you are a brain washed puppet of the state. I suppose there’s some kind of line if someone starts arguing something like the moon landing was a hoax or the world is flat or a modern aircraft carrier went back in time to WWII. ;)

I think I concur. I think we have been self-policing like you suggest. And I think yeah, if someone thinks a Napoleonics game sucks because secret Machine-guns weren’t modeled properly in the game, or that This Guilty Land is a bad game because “Slavery was hoax”, well, we’ll deal with it. Probably promptly and exhaustively and with many references. :) I think this place handles it’s bidness fairly well. :)

And most of us do love to cite! My God how we love to cite…

That belongs in a Film thread!!! :D

A nice and decent way to handle things.

And if I looked like I was stirring things up a bit, well I apologize. I will police myself a bit.

No doubt about it. I didn’t include that in the conversation because, as you note, it’s an entirely different thing on many levels. The war provided a climate and opportunity for the Turks, but I wouldn’t call the Armenian genocide a “war crime” per se.

My first stint in grad school, I was in a poli sci department which, among others, had one Turkish guy, and one Armenian guy. The two never, in two years, spoke to each other, nor would they be in the same room with each other. And this was 1982-84…

Dang it, I didn’t get a chance to insult anyone before we clamped down on it.

I think most people here would really, really enjoy Dan Carlin’s podcast on WWI. It is exhaustive and starts with the politics that led up to the war (but in a very interesting, non-dry way) and then goes through the entire war. I’ve got an entire bookshelf in my military history library on WWI and I was still fascinated; Dan’s intent is to give you the human dimension behind all of the numbers and stats. He does talk about the Armenian genocide also. Some of the letters home he reads put chills down your back, such as the accounts of the British soldiers stepping off of the wooden planks on the ground and slowly being sucked underground by the mush of mud, with no one being able to do anything but watch their friend slowly get pulled underground. I know the huge amount of artillery that was used but the numbers and ways he talks about how many shells get fired at any one time in, say, Verdun (and he discusses some of the arguments around that battle) boggles the mind. Dan also gives extensive references.

It’s Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast, free, and this series is Blueprint for Armegeddon parts 1 -VI. It’s exhaustive, about 4 hours per episode, but I could not put it down.

I have listened to everything Dan Carlin has done. :) Except the Mongol series. Not my cup of tea, historically. He is fantastic.