Discussion Main / RetroUpgrade

As anyone who's read the Guerrilla Minimanual knows, SM Gs were much beloved in the struggle against the Brazilian Army dictatorship. They were easily outclassed in a traditional battlefield already, but a supporter's home could easily be retrofitted into a secret SMG factory.

Guerrillas soon designed a specialized SMG with interchangeable parts that fired standard Army ammo, which could be seized by catching lightly-armed and poorly-trained recruits by surprise... or using the ancient siege technology of "ask civilians to quietly step out of your way, and then you just walk in unopposed".

Another key element of the strategy as laid out in the Minimanual addressed the unique brutality and love of torture in the Brazilian junta: refusing to blame either comrades or civilians for information they reveal under torture. This required extreme measures in every stage from planning to execution: even crucial fighters were ignorant of any detail they didn't absolutely need to know, high-tech communication was avoided, and every action had to be planned in such a way that it would be obvious civilians were in no added danger- so they knew they had someone to trust in a wretched place and time.

Separately: I forgot to check the page for this before I came here, but in the Spanish Civil War, Orwell and others noted that some fascist units were defeated simply by offering the soldiers hot toast and oil. A national comfort food that was probably older than Caesar.

The first paragraph doesn't make a lot of sense except by cross-referencing, and uses references with which not all readers will be familiar. Can this be rewritten somehow?