The History Thread!

It's not slow and plodding, it's just a normal speaking pace. Because essentially it's actually just like an audio book, the video is mostly archival footage that doesn't necessarily correspond to what was being said (for example, the Junkers shown flying during the Battle of Britain is also shown in the start of Barbarossa, Kursk, and even in the Western Front). Battle 360 is fast paced because it's a true combination of audio and visual (considering they're proud of the CGI there).

edited 7th Nov '15 6:54:12 PM by entropy13

I'm not referring to the narrator's speaking pace, I'm talking about the entire pace of the documentary. First, there's that intro with the CGI stopwatch, dividers, compass, etc. It doesn't even show opening credits or anything, so it's just wasted airtime. I know it's only about 40 seconds long, but it seems a lot longer.

Then, they break down the events by inserting bio pieces, order of battle, technical specs and everything. Nothing wrong with that, except there are too many portentous pauses consisting of fade-in graphics with no narrative, as if the viewer can't look and listen at the same time. Again, wasted airtime.

Same goes for the archival footage while the narrator is silent. By trimming off a few seconds here and there, the entire episode could be edited down to about two-thirds its original length without losing a thing.

I'm thinking they came up with too much content for a one-hour episode, but not enough for two hours, so they padded it out.

edited 7th Nov '15 7:34:58 PM by pwiegle

Here's another really good series -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battleplan It shows up quite a lot on the UK telly channel, "Yesterday", and it's on Region 1 dvd.

On this day, in 1799, the greatest European statesman of all time became First Consul of the Republic of France. Vive l'Empereur!

>I will never charge the Russians with Murat at Eylau

>I will never get to grumble in the presence of Napoleon

>I will never climb the Pratzen Heights under the sun of Austerlitz

>I will never fight the Ottomans and Mamelukes under the gaze of forty centuries

>I will never march from Italy to Poland with Dabrowski

>I will never fight in the rear guard with Marshal Ney

Why even live, guys?

edited 10th Nov '15 7:55:08 AM by Achaemenid

La garde meurt, mais ne se rend pas!

Nor stand square with the Highlanders at Waterloo, weathering the best Murat and the Guard could fling at you and throwing them back at the end of the day?

Never fire the cannon that took Sir John Moore. Never bury him with soldier's honors as our Marechal praises his generalship.

Never stand alone on a burning deck when all around us had fled.

What else will we never do, tropers?

Yes. Now continue the Napoleonposting.

edited 11th Nov '15 7:30:32 AM by Achaemenid

Is it true German surnames like "Bernstein" are associated with Jews because German Jews had to take on such surnames to be more German?

I think they were mainly "ornament names" that were picked because they were nice-sounding when Jews were forced to take surnames.

You'll never die from hypothermia in Russia. . . . . Or so I'd like to think.

edited 11th Nov '15 10:12:04 AM by TerminusEst

You will never be betrayed by Sweden even after you let one of the squad become king.

Is there any specific term for a practice of attacking your enemy, particularly political, by branding them as being part of factions that are deemed hazardous by the organization that they both belong to?

Like, witch hunt, Mc Carthyism, heretics hunting, etc?

"Anti-Corruption Campaign" in China.

A while ago my grandfather told me how, when he was a college student, he was almost arrested and killed because someone reported him as a communist, despite being a Korean War veteran. It was because one of the police officers knew his professor (and he was a very model student) that he managed to go free.

He told me how nightmarishly common it was for people to report others communist...simply out of spite or jealousy.

It's most often called 'Foe-baiting' or similar, typically 'Red-baiting' or similar.

It's also basically a form of Guilt By Association, but there's no one name for it.

Also... ALLONS ENFANTS DE LA PATRIE...

"Foe-baiting", that sounds like a good term.

And man, to believe that there was a time that I used to think the French Revolution was about noble and courageous commoners rising up against corrupt noblemen...

Seriously, I find it almost horrifying how glorified revolutions are in fiction, especially in YA novels because holy shit, does every fucking story needs to end in a revolution?

edited 11th Nov '15 11:49:46 AM by dRoy

re: German-Jewish names: part of that overlaps with Polish/Polish-Lithuanian history.

When Poland-Lithuania was partitioned in 1795, it contained the largest population of Jews in Europe. The three partitioning powers all handled them somewhat differently. Russia confined them in the Pale of Settlement, which is mostly the Russian Partition plus Crimea, and as a result the Jews developed a fiercely distinctive culture of their own, in something of a reaction against persecution. The Austrian Partition, or Galicia, was generally poor and backwards—it is said that a Socialist activist crossing into Galicia was stopped and asked by a policeman what he understood by Socialism, gave the answer of "the revolt of workers against capital", and was allowed in because "here in Galicia we have neither workers nor capital"—and the Jews were pretty much left alone, since the Austrian bureaucracy was too lackadaisical to do much with or to them.

The Prussian partition, however, is where things got interesting. One initiative the Prussians had was to give surnames to many of the Jews whether they liked it or not, and as the official in charge of renaming was free to be as boring or as capricious as he wanted, the results could be rather idiosyncratic. E.T.A. Hoffmann, he of the "Tales", was employed as such, and was reportedly known for giving out a bunch of religious-themed names after he'd been playing the organ in church, or in one instance (hungover after a night of drinking with a Russian colonel) issuing military surnames like "Festung" and "Pistolet" and "Szyspulver" (Schiesspulver, or gunpowder, and no, nobody knows why Hoffman thought it was a good idea to cross Polish and German in the names) until the clients all fled.

edited 11th Nov '15 10:57:50 PM by SabresEdge

In honor of Veteran's Day, we proudly present... Jimi Hendrix' instrumental rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner! As performed live at Woodstock, 1969.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPwrlKUtpwk

(Note how at the beginning, while warming up, he plays the guitar with his teeth...)

Oh History Channel your back to Hitler with "Hunting Hitler". One of the most popular WWII conspiracy theories.

How Filipino WWII Soldiers Were Written Out of History

Today's the 75th Anniversary of the Nuremberg Trials. Also the 45th Anniversary of Francisco Franco's death.

edited 19th Nov '15 8:36:06 AM by HallowHawk

I think there's a new book for my wishlist: Mary Beard's SPQR: a History of Ancient Rome. (NYT review link.) I know much less about Rome than I should, but I've had trouble finding a good "survey" volume, and Gibbon's Decline and Fall daunts me a bit.

edited 19th Nov '15 1:14:50 PM by SabresEdge

Gibbon is over 200 years old and was written with a particular agenda in mind. Forget it if you want to know what actually happened.

Also: https://www.utexas.edu/courses/rome/210reasons.html

edited 19th Nov '15 2:25:52 PM by Achaemenid

Out of curiosity, I looked up William Sherman Tecumseh, who I admittedly know only from his quote atop of War Is Hell.

......Damn, contrary to my expectations, his strategy was metal.

I guess he really did deserve to have a tank named after him. XD

I do want to read Decline and Fall one day, but as literature, not as history. Also, in great news, the County of Los Angeles Library System is going to be stocking SPQR.

re: Sherman: he really was. The Union's war-winning strategy came down to "Grant kicks in Lee's face in the East, Sherman kicks down the back door into Georgia from Tennessee in the West". (There was a lot of kicking.) Subsidiary generals in secondary theatres like the Shenandoah, Alabama, and Ben Butler's little amphibious visit to the Confederate capital were intended to put additional pressure on the Confederates; as Lincoln put it, "those not skinning can hold a leg". Which Grant, son of a leatherworker, must have appreciated.

Unfortunately for the Union the leg-holders were all incompetents who did fuck-all; fortunately, both Grant and Sherman knew their business.