The History Thread!

Out of all the Russian nobles canonised by the Orthodox Church, I think Grand Duchess Elizabeth Fyodorovna is the only person who deserved it.

As shown in Fury, were tanks back in World War II capable of turning their turrets?

Of course they were, only big self propelled guns can't and even then they've got some aiming capability.

They can fire on the move too.

What about the Jagdtiger?

The Jagdtiger didn't have a turret to turn.

They have casemates instead of turrets.

No point having a turret if you can't turn it.

And speaking of the Jagdtiger, any reason why it doesn't look that much different from a Tiger II, wherein Jagdpanthers look nothing like Panthers?

Jagdpanthers do look like Panthers. Compare the running gear, the chassis, and the rear engine deck.

The reason Jagdtiger has a more central casement as opposed to the highly sloped Jagdpanther style will be because its forward suspension and final drives couldn't handle the weight. Neither could Jagdpanther's, really, but that's beside the point.

GERMAN MARCH TIME!

The parade march of the "long guys" - Prussian 6th Infantry Regiment, composed of abnormally tall soldiers. The regiment was instituted by Friedrich William I of Prussia, who scoured his kingdom for tall men - sometimes even resorting to kidnapping. The minimum height was 6'2", the tallest of the langen kerls, the Irishman James Kirkland, was reportedly over 7' tall. Many men were unable to actually to do anything militarily useful due to health problems brought about by their huge size. This march isn't actually an authentic period composition - it was written by Marc Roland for the 1922 Fridericus Rex silent film.

Ah, Potsdam. I simply must see it again before I leave the continent. What a place of history. I need to visit Germany again.

Don't forget to walk across the Glienicke Bridge while you're there.

Fuck yes. Check this out, btw.

I always thought the Potsdam Giants would be a good name for a basketball team.

Any reason why there was no peacekeeping force contingent sent by the UN during The Troubles?

Because it's a fairly delicate matter and it's not an issue which can be readily solved - the pro-treaty side of the IRA during the War for Independence saw that and let those six counties go. Sending in a peacekeeping force would only antagonize the British forces already there, and the last thing needed would be a potential target for both loyalists and republicans to go for.

edited 5th Apr '15 9:28:04 AM by RatherRandomRachel

I see, thanks.

Okay, two more questions:

1. Why on Earth did they allow Ian Paisley a seat in the European Union back during its earliest of days? I mean, yes, London backed Paisley, but isn't that legitimizing a faction already responsible for half of the violence that went on in Northern Ireland?

2. Did all militant groups of either denomination of Christianity had to work together, or were there cases of militant group A of denomination A fighting militant group B of the same denomination?

He was elected to the European Parliament. Also, the EU is a fairly late evolution of a politico-economic community that began with the European Coal and Steel Community in 1952. This isn't even it's final form, at least I hope. So Paisley joined "political Europe" quite late on.

I got a stupid question.

To whom did the U.S navy respond to the most during the years before the Civil War?

Specifically around 1857

edited 6th Apr '15 1:20:57 PM by Aszur

Post-Mexican-American War and pre-Civil War? Hard to tell. The Navy had around 40 active ships, probably less in reality than on paper since a number of them would be stuck in port for repairs at any given time. About a third of them guarded the American coast while the rest were scattered across the globe.

My best bet would be that a number of them stayed in the Atlantic, probably sticking around the Caribbean and West African coast, hunting for slave traffickers on their own or alongside the British.

But the Admiral was supposedly for the Union, right?

The Unites States didn't have any admirals until after the Civil War started.

Oh. Mmm. So no particular single dude was in charge?

Well maybe it is better if I post the whle context of what I am trying to find out.

Basically pre U.S Civil War, with the knights of the Golden Circle there were a couple of fillibusters that tried to annex southern lands as new states to the slave states in the U.S...one of these fillibusters was William Walker.

Now here is the thing. The nicaraguan canal was (and still is!) a very potentially profitable service that the Vanderbilts' transit company wanted a share of that. He took advantage of the fact leon and Granada were at war (cities in Nicaragua) at the time over political reasons and did some stuff down there to get himself a pretty puppet state.

At some point this pissed off its southern neighbor, Costa Rica (Any U.S history book at this point says that Cornelius Vanderbilt sent his secretary to tell the Costa Rican President just how to defeat Walker and only his heroic information saved the entire continent. All Costa Rican history books say that inflamed by democratic and patriotic fervor the President alone decided to wage heroic war upon Walker to rescue the beleaguered compatriots in Nicaragua and oppose imperialism.) and war got dun.

Walker lost. Twice, and here is where my question gets weird.

Walker then surrendered towards this guy, who was then a Commander and would later fight for the Union in the Civil War. He was quietly shipped back to the U.S and told to stay put. While the southern states considered him some sort of hero it was also said that he "alienated public opinion after he blamed his loss on the U.S Navy", and then he would try to do the same stuff again but the Navy or a few ships under this guy would stop him. This guy also fought for the Union, later.

So I am a bit weirded out. Just how much of the navy belonged to the Union or how much stuff was supposed to be working at that point for those actions, which could have had a huge impact on the U.S Civil war (imagine if the slave states had more members to outnumber the other states in congress instead of it being much closer) to make this thing rather uneventful?

Or is it uneventful and I am mistaking the importance of something?

This could be answered by the fact that this:

Is sadly incorrect. Your average US history book won't mention Walker or anything that went down in Central America during that time at all.

This wasn't the first time the slave powers in the South had tried to bring Caribbean or Central American localities into their control. While having another slave state would help them in Congress, at that point in time they would not have outnumbered the free states. Heck, outnumbering was never an option, the best they could do was tie in the Senate, and even then it wasn't Free vs Slave, but Free vs Slave + Free-voting-with-Slave, and the number of Free state senators willing to side with the Slave powers was rapidly dwindling. Adding Nicaragua or another one or two Central American states wouldn't have made a difference.

At the point in time of that conflict with Walker, the entire Navy was controlled by the United States, since the Civil War had not broken out yet. So, while the number of ships available in the area was only a handful, the Secretary of the Navy, the cabinet member civilian administrator of the Navy, which eventually got merged into the Department of Defense a century later, could order whatever was there to go out and sort things out.

Looking at some of these battles that took place during the Filibuster War, the ones that have reliable numbers indicate a fairly small amount of soldiers taking part. And around the same time, the United States was already beginning to tear itself apart over slavery; Bleeding Kansas, the Dred Scott Case, the Beating of Senator Sumner all happened in the 1855-57 time period. So it seems all the things going on down south could very swiftly have their attention be stolen by events closer to home.

edited 7th Apr '15 12:28:34 PM by Parable

Correct it is not a big thing on most US History books I should have specified just the ones that bother refering to the fact in the first place. I just wanted to point out it is hilarious to read both accounts. For example in the war of Rivas Walker writes he lost but killed 600 of the enemy only losing like 120.

But still, making a deal out of the war with Mexico and Texas and not this, "All of Mexico" and such just sounds sort of weird to me.

Also the armies were mostly mercenaries: Volunteers from the U.S, and French and german mercenaries under a certain commander Schlessinger. Also he would have annexed all of central america with the exception of Belize, and opened the opportunity for the annexation of all of Mexico. This would be more than two states but about 4 or 5 plus the addition of all Mexico.

not to mention a huge diversion of the armies if it suddenly became a lot easier to, instead of dedicating itself to fighting each other, dedicate themselves to taking central america. Which could have brought forth the attention of Britain (who owned Belize)

I mean. He had enough volunteers to make a small army. That must have spoken a bit of the interests vested in the people that later got embroiled into a civil war.

Related sauce

And on Vanderbilt

edited 7th Apr '15 1:05:32 PM by Aszur

The war with Mexico nearly doubled the size of the country and brought the much coveted Texas and California coasts under American control. Walker's plans of a Central American empire are a big "What If?" that ended when he fled Nicaragua. Actually, it's a bunch of "What If's?" piled upon each other. If he could hold Nicaragua. If he could fend off Costa Rica. If he could take Gautemala and Honduras. If he could take Mexico. One happened and produced concrete results for the United States, the other never came close to accomplishing it's goals and nothing it did do affected the US in any significant manner. That's the big difference to Americans.

Funny you should mention this, as there were several proposals to start wars with Spain, France, Britain, or any combination of the three as a means of uniting the increasingly broken country against a common foe. Invade Mexico, invade Canada, invade Cuba, etc. They all fell through because at that point not everyone making these decisions really had the heart for an obviously political war, nor was it guaranteed to generate that unifying patriotism like it was hoped. For certain, any war south of the American border would have generated strong opposition from the northern free states, who would have rightly suspected the whole thing was just a ploy by the slave states to expand their power. The could very well have blocked the whole thing.

There were even calls for war with one of those foreign powers all the way into the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln was all like, "lolno."

Not to mention Central America is far away from most of the American population. The war in Mexico might as well have been overseas considering how long it took to get from Point A to Point B back then. A war in Central America would have just been all kinds of logistical nightmares that discouraged most overt large actions.

Walker managed to muster a few hundred volunteers from California for his war, but that's a small amount compared to the thousands that had flooded to the same state less than ten years earlier looking for gold. Yes, Manifest Destiny was all the rage back then, but most people and the government were pragmatic about it. The territory we took from Mexico was ripe for the picking because there was hardly anyone it in. We stopped at the Rio Grande because going too far would have encouraged resistance from Mexican nationalist, the territory would have started becoming too far to govern effectively, and there were just too many Mexicans down there. Racist as it is, that was a big influence of America's attitude towards Central America; the more mestizos that were already there, the less the place was desirable. We had more interest in conquering Canada that anywhere south of Mexico because at least the Canadians were white and could be assimilated.

Most of those volunteers were from the south, so they had a vested interest in expanding the influence of the slave powers and should not be considered reflective of the whole of America and it's interests in Central America.