History Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread VIII

[JohannaK]

It was one of the largest and most important German kingdoms and then states, and notably it is also where the NSDAP was born and developed most of its activity early on.

 

[Dachs]

I always had the impression that Bavaria was mostly inconsequential farmland until the end of WWII.

Under the Kaiserreich, and unlike the other constituent non-Prussian states, Bavaria had its own army and military bureaucracy. It might have been mostly farmland, but it was fairly heavily populated farmland, and thus was politically valuable and at least somewhat consequential.

 

[caketastydelish]

Did the Dragon mythology in Europe in the middle ages (or in various parts of the world, actually) have to do with people finding dinosaur bones and wanting an explanation they couldn't understand?

 

[r16]

Spoiler :

Awed by the efficiency of the Prussian general staff, the French were no less impressed by the large and ready reserve that the Prussian Landwehr had furnished in 1866; two years later, the French army established the Garde Nationale Mobile to perform the same function. France’s mobile guard was the brainchild of Marshal Adolphe Niel, Napoleon III’s war minister from 1867–9, an admirer of Moltke’s institutional reforms who strove to match them. Niel watched two developments with particular misgiving: the alarming decline of France’s population, and the no less alarming expansion of the Prusso-German armies after 1866. Caution and contraception were so ingrained in French peasant culture that the nation had not seen growth in its pool of twenty-one year-old males since 1835. (And growth had occurred in that year only because so many French women had been accosted in the course of the Russo-Prussian march across France twenty-one years earlier, yielding, incidentally, the nineteenth century’s tallest class of French conscripts [Journal Official de l’Empire Francis, 24 March 1870]. Infused with Slavic and German seed, the lanky French conscripts of 1835, with their average height of 1.67 metres, were not surpassed in height until the twentieth century.) By 1867, a disastrous situation was at hand: the Prussians were able to deploy a million German troops against the French, who would be hard pressed to findhalf that total for the defence of France.

random reading to wait between turns while playing Civ and this one from some nice one . Dealing with war in Europe between 1792 and 1914 . It's so incredible this Caution and contraception were so ingrained in French peasant culture thing . France , the most populous country of Europe after Russia , and the inventor of the human wave attack in the Modern Era or whatever , which is like half the reason how they got to Moscow . And they are using contraception , them villagers who are not modern at all in any other thing ? ı am reduced to hypothesing that


a ) they know France can not grow in territory and increased population will cause future disaster , yet this would be like far too advanced even for the French Academy of Sciences

b) growing up on that Hollywood narrative on Paris , the capital of the world for Love , there is still love , but not in the family ? Which is like unlikely as well ...

So , simply , why contraceptives in the 19th Century ?

Spoiler :

and why , the book is like wondrous ... The French have "obtained" the Schlieffen Plan 1903–4 , Russians likewise in 1905 , though ı am pretty sure ı said it somewhere that Moscow was planning for a pre-mobilization invasion of East Prussia starting from 1895 or there abouts . Hence , Entente Cordiale eternal , as long as British troops are committed to the Continent , it's war . Berlin would not dare "fighting" London . Meaning Belgium not violated . Or a slowdown in operations as BEF blocks the German advance . With ease , like without firing a bullet . Hence 80% of the French Army in Alsace Lorraine . Against 10% of the Germans . Not to march on Berlin , but save Patrie Belle as much as possible . They readily know the attacking French units will be butchered but the war might not even last a month . Similarly BEF can not be located like for a week , neither by the Germans , and nor the French ...

 

[Absolution]

How did Odoacer actually style his title?
King of Rome? Kind of Italy?
What did "Italy" mean to his contemporaries?
Did his rule play an important early role in the consolidation of the concept of Italy, in geographic or ethnic aspects?

 

[Ajidica]

How did Odoacer actually style his title?
King of Rome? Kind of Italy?

A quick wiki check indicates that his coins were stamped "King of Italy", alongside with stampings emphasizing the consent of the Senate and Odoacer's submission to Emperor Zeno.

What did "Italy" mean to his contemporaries?

An administrative/geographic region basically.

Did his rule play an important early role in the consolidation of the concept of Italy, in geographic or ethnic aspects?

Not in the slightest. Odoacer was firmly carrying on Imperial traditions and habits. All that really changed was that he decided to do without a feckless seat-warmer in Ravenna.

 

[Absolution]

Cold ancient Egyptians or Canaanites identify this shape?

(southeastern Mediterranaean coasts)

 

[JohannaK]

Why the weird bay shape where Lebanon should be?

EDIT: Is this supposed to be a ludicrously oversized bay of Haifa?

 

[Absolution]

Yes, it is just a quick sketch at the Windows Paint. You can also notice how southern the Sea of Galilee is comapred to it...
The point is, would Egyptians and Canaanites identify the sape of their geographical area?

 

[Traitorfish]

The average Egyptian or Canaanite? Almost certainly not. Very people in the pre-modern era had much of a sense of the shape of the world outside of the area they personally inhabited. They probably understood the broad outlines of their own place within it- that the sea is this way, the desert that way, the mountains are over there- but not much more than that.

A few sailors or administrators may have recognised the shape, but pre-modern travel was more a matter of time and landmarks than lines on a map, in the same way that road travel still kind of is today, so they probably wouldn't be used to seeing it represented like that. Early maps tended to be symbolic unless representing something relatively localised and human-ish-scale, like a city plan or a land survey. The best you could probably hope for is that they'd puzzle it out given a few clues- that the the big squiggle at the bottom is the Nile, that the blob on the right is the Dead Sea, and so on, but they may not realise that they're supposed to be looking at a physically accurate depiction of the region, and not just a peculiarly fussy symbolic representation.

The deeper question might be, what significance would such a shape have held to them? Until the emergency of seagoing travel, the actual physical shape of the world is less directly important that knowing how to identify and maintain the correct route. Subjective significance towers above objective reality- and even then, when seagoing travel emerges, that's still fundamentally the case, and remains so today, it's just that the two begin to overlap more heavily. Case in point, the Mercator projection: beloved of seafarers, not actually that great at representing the relative size and shape of land or water.

 

[Absolution]

Very interesting.
Anyway, be it as unimportant for them as it could get, is it likely that a council of intelectuals in Memphis would have identified what they were looking at, if they were shown such drawings?
No colours of sea, no lankmarks. I understand from your comment that it is unlikely for them to immediately identify the shape, but rather think about it and figure out. Is that so? Wouldn't it require immense brilliance to identify it when you have never placed anything on a regional-sclae map?

 

[Silurian]

If there were few maps at that time I think it would be unlikely the sketch presented would be recognised.

The orientation could also be a problem.
It may be upside down so harder to recognise.

https://www.ancient-origins.net/art...ographical-and-geological-egyptian-map-005999

 

[r16]

so , what do people think about Inventing the Schliffen Plan ? A book by a Terence Zuber and apparently one , only single one in the entire universe . Based on the guy's doctoral thesis and put to print . To advance historical debate no less , by the encouragement of Hew Strachan , who seems to be a really big name in WW I research -as far as my limited reading suggests . The gist is that Schlieffen never planned a massive invasion of France through Belgium to win fast in a continental two front war , due to sheer impossibility of it . The famed 1905 paper is a flight of fancy requiring 8 extra corps , which remained unattained in 1914 as well . While the real intention was fighting "defensive" , destroying the French / Russians / the French once again with counter-attacks . Using rail mobility (like any Civ III player would do) to achieve local superiorities and trusting on German junior ranks "out-officering" the enemy forces . In my personal understanding , the whole Belgium thing arises from Britain possibly joining the land battle with the French and creating Belgium as a venue for attacking Germany itself and each year more troops allocated upnorth and they just can't sit on their backsides . Campaign upto Marne being a shock for all concerned , German small unit excellence , heavy artillery "clearing" Belgium and even Germans being surprised at their own success at mobilizing and railroading their formations , shade of 1940 . And when things go South , an explanation is needed in the bleak days of the Weimar Republic .

ı need a negative vibe , before ı set upon writing another ode to my "scholarly stuff" or like totally avesame smartness . With a solid reminder that it has nothing to do with my current predicament vis a vis people whom am blamed to be with , but Dreyfus was not the "Jews" who yearly provided French railroad tables so that the German General Staff would have the exact French war plan and NOT a little bit of fright , many Jews like rightly opposed Zionism as a prelude for Holocaust even if the latter was yet to be coined , a strong Ottoman Empire would never give away Palestine and Schlieffen would really be a senile idiot if he emptied East Prussia before creating a diversion for the Russian steamroller , von der Goltz was a nice guy or something and Britain always hated the 1908 stuff and "answered" it with 1909 (even if New Turkey thinks the exact opposite) have never been written in the same paragraph . Will no doubt include a passing reference to the imbecility of Wilhelm who entered Jerusalem on a white charger , too . And the British war-guilt , convincing the said that they would allow free passage through Belgium at the very last moment , with the mass of German Army at this Luftstoss (beating the air) wrecking the Belgians while the French gloriously liberating Alsace Lorraine and the Russians marching on Berlin .

 

[Dachs]

so , what do people think about Inventing the Schliffen Plan ?

You're not going to believe this, but I have thoughts. They are slightly different than the ones I had a few years ago.

It's undoubtedly one of the most historiographically important books in the field of the last forty years (although the original journal article in War in History was the real kick-starter). A recent (published spring 2018) and outstandingly well-researched book on the army of Imperial Germany spent multiple chapters discussing the implications of Zuber's thesis - even though Zuber originally published his article in 1999 and his first book in 2001.

In many particulars, Zuber is clearly correct. The 1905 (although it was finally finished in 1906) Denkschrift, or position paper, on which most studies of the so-called Schlieffen plan were based, is not an accurate representation of the German war plan in either 1905 or 1914. The German right wing was never so absurdly strong as it was in the paper; the German military lacked the force structure to execute the plan even after the army expansion of 1912-13 (and certainly not in 1905) therefore it could not have been an actual war plan (which needs to make use of the actual forces an army possesses); and most of the actual deployment plans and exercises that we have of the German military strongly indicate that the war alluded to in the 1905 paper was never even tested. Many of the other bits of received wisdom about the plan are also demonstrably false, such as the claim that the Germans believed they would defeat France completely within six weeks, or the claim that the Germans did not believe the Russian military would mobilize as rapidly as it did.

Zuber is right to point out that the entire notion of a "Schlieffen Plan" is faintly absurd and does little for the study of the war save create a mythical counterfactual in which the German military "would not" have lost the war. The 1905 memorandum is not a good source for the actual German war plan of 1914. Explaining away the differences in terms of what the German General Staff "ought to have done" in 1914 is pointless. The real area of interrogation ought to be what the differences between them are and why, and Zuber's explanation - that the Denkschrift was a Schlieffen political argument for a more thorough mobilization and use of Germany's available manpower, and that it showed, as did many of Schlieffen's exercises, that attacking to the west of Paris was military nonsense, and that it was emphatically not an actual plan for any military situation that existed for Germany at any point from 1905 to 1914 - is as good as any, and better than most.

Unfortunately, received wisdom is hard to eradicate. A recent German-language history of the war, Die Büchse der Pandora, repeats many of the hoary old myths of the so-called Schlieffen Plan (although it is not fully up to date on other aspects of the war, either). Many other texts published in the last twenty years either ignore Zuber's claims outright, even when they are well sourced, or dismiss them out of hand.

Zuber has not exactly made things easy on himself. In his book, and in subsequent other works on the First World War, he specifically calls out other historians for being wrong about things to a degree that is probably too combative and violates a lot of academic assumptions about the collegial academic spirit. He's made a lot of enemies, even when he is right about things. And he is also not right about everything. For example, in his books he alleges conspiracy as the reason behind the German officer corps' efforts to claim the Schlieffen Plan existed. But other historians have shown that at least some generals seemed to genuinely believe it was a thing. The generals may have been wrong (this is the conclusion that, for example, Hughes and DiNardo seem to reach in the aforementioned Imperial Germany and War), and many of the relevant officers made efforts to make it seem like they were right, but Zuber's jump to alleging bad faith is a matter of some contention.

Another problem in his books is his discussion of Great Power politics as they relate to the French, German, British, and Russian war plans. In Inventing the Schlieffen Plan he discusses the issue of war guilt in the July Crisis off the back of his Schlieffen thesis. Combined with his praise of Erich Ludendorff and Erich von Manstein as generals - the first one being a far-right ideologue and the second being one of Hitler's thugs - it can make the book read...very awkwardly. (At the very least, it exemplifies the US Army of the 1980s and its officer corps' transformation into Wehraboos.) At one point in Inventing he says of the working history of Wilhelm Dieckmann that it probably would have been better off without Dieckmann inserting his political opinions; this is undoubtedly true of Zuber's own book as well.

Zuber's book also includes some military counterfactuals; he argues that some German generals did not do the most optimal thing, or the thing that was provided for in the real plan, in 1914, and that this was the reason they created their conspiracy to sell their alternate version of history. This is writing military history as an after-action report, which...well, it rubs a lot of academics the wrong way. Even in the area of military history, many historians are not soldiers and dislike treating the subject as an opportunity for soldiers to get better at their jobs. When Zuber further criticizes certain historians for being bad at their jobs for not understanding military terminology in the primary sources they're analyzing, you can see how that would lead to a lot of tension.

Many historians are willing to give Zuber's thesis a fair shake regardless of the more awkward aspects of it. Dennis Showalter, who is still a titan of the field, certainly does, as do Hew Strachan and Rob Citino; Hughes and DiNardo treat the whole issue as carefully and respectfully as humanly possible. Historians who have been personally attacked by Zuber are probably less willing to do so; the circumstances around one particular German-language conference on war planning were so acrimonious that apparently Zuber refused to give permission for the paper he delivered there to be published in the conference collection.

Inventing the Schlieffen Plan is the kind of book that usually causes a radical realignment of the field. These sorts of things don't happen quickly or cleanly, and the way in which Zuber chose to do it undoubtedly made the whole process messier than it should have been. But as long ago as 2001, in the first part of his history of the First World War, Hew Strachan was quite clear that Zuber had effectively destroyed the old narrative of war planning. Despite efforts by Zuber, Terence Holmes, Robert Foley, Gerhard Gross, and others, it's clear that the academy hasn't come close to deciding on a new one, but whatever it is, it will not be the same as it was before 1999.

 

[sophie]

Wehraboos

This is such a great term.

 

[Lexicus]

This is such a great term.

It also Doesn't Bode Well given the current...climate.

 

[Dachs]

It also Doesn't Bode Well given the current...climate.

I'm honestly not sure what you mean, but the Wehraboo joke is in this case mostly about doctrine.

Rob Citino made a joke in his book about operational art about how you could hardly read a US military journal article after 1982 without needing a German-English phrasebook. Sometimes it seemed as though those terms were applied without enough thought to what they actually meant and whether they were being used in a meaningful way. The 1980s US military, in which Zuber served as a battalion commander and intelligence officer, was sometimes criticized for taking the self-serving memoirs of German officers on the Eastern Front too uncritically in a bout of wishful thinking: just like the Germans, we too can fight the Red Army outnumbered and win!

The thing is, those critiques came most strongly from inside the US Army itself. Whatever else one might say about the American military's intellectual culture at the time, it was refreshingly honest to a degree that basically every military has struggled to reach before and since. This was the era of Donn Starry and Richard Cavazos; it was the era of soldier-scholars like David Glantz, David Zabecki, and H. R. McMaster. By the late 1980s, the pendulum was already swinging toward an examination of Soviet operations in the war (Glantz being the most visible of those historians, of course); it's moved on from there. Every step of the way, things like active defense and AirLand Battle were the subjects of intense, erudite debate. For everyone who overzealously parroted something out of Verlorene Siege or Kraznaia Zvezda there was another person to say "hey, wait a second..."

I didn't think my words through carefully enough if I implied that the US military is full of Nazis, or that Zuber is, because neither thing is true. Zuber's take on Manstein has nothing to do with executing Jews in the Crimea and everything to do with the Rochade maneuver at Kharkov in 1943. It's awkward to read because of Manstein's history. It's awkward because Zuber gets a bit lost in who Schlieffen's "true disciples" were, which is an odd line of argument that sticks to the terms set by his primary sources, the German officers of the 1910s and 1920s. It's not awkward because of Zuber saying that, say, Ludendorff's take on total war was fine, because Zuber didn't say that or even imply it.

 

[Lexicus]

I'm honestly not sure what you mean, but the Wehraboo joke is in this case mostly about doctrine.

I thought it meant basically subscribing the myth of the Clean Wehrmacht and fetishizing the struggle of the Germans against the barbarous abomination of the USSR.

I didn't think my words through carefully enough if I implied that the US military is full of Nazis,

The measure of this is the stuff the US military has actually done, not its level of fascination with the Wehrmacht.

 

[Dachs]

I thought it meant basically subscribing the myth of the Clean Wehrmacht and fetishizing the struggle of the Germans against the barbarous abomination of the USSR.



The measure of this is the stuff the US military has actually done, not its level of fascination with the Wehrmacht.

Ah. They've mostly grown out of the first one of those things.

As far as the second one goes, ain't no military in the world incapable of violating the laws of war, and ain't no military in the world incapable of justifying it happening after the fact.

 

[Lohrenswald]

Do we like know what the actual german war plans were?