History Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread VIII

Circling back to my earlier point, Germany was not only not invincible, the war was pretty much a gamble from the start. So many things went right for them early on, but when events beyond their control stopped working in their favor (i.e. Britain refusing to sue for peace after the fall of France), they were screwed. And not going to war at all requires fundamentally changing who the Nazis were and what they believed.

And even then, German the economy in the second half of the 30s was entirely predicated on going to war, and they'd have been screwed without it.
 
There seems to also be a quote by Hitler about trying to get Japan to declare war on Russia and how that (in theory) would have won the war.
Then again, Japan went to war to gain oil resources. If instead of taking over british/dutch colonies with some oil, it tried to invade Russia, how would it manage to get anywhere near the Urals? (not even Germany could get tanks to the Urals, unless it conquered the caucasus or other energy-rich areas).
 
Then again, Japan went to war to gain oil resources. If instead of taking over british/dutch colonies with some oil, it tried to invade Russia, how would it manage to get anywhere near the Urals?
You can produce liquid fuels from petroleum, actually, and in Russian Siberia, north of Mongolia, there are plenty of coal mines. Sakhalin has oil, but it wasn't developed at the time.

In any case, Japan's thing was NATIONAL HONOUR and how its totally-not-samurai government felt that Japan had been slighted after WWI, so it was busy conquering China and its main rival for Pacific domination was, of course, the expanding U.S. of A.!

It was weird, but a lot of Jews from occupied Lithuania got out thanks to the offices of a Japanese diplomat while a lot of Chinese escaped the Japanese occupiers thanks to German diplomats.

Simultaneously it has to be said that until 1934 Mussolini was trying to get Austria to join him against the Germans and until 1938 he was trying to restore a Greater Italy i.e. basically the lost Savoian possessions (Nice, Corsica) and trying to get France to hand them back in exchange for joining him in his LATIN RESTORATION against the GERMANIC BARBARIANS. Dalmatia also should've reverted to them as part of the old Republic of Venice. :crazyeye:
Austro-fascism was solved by Austrian Nazis assassinating Engelbert Dollfuss in '34. The Anschluss in '38 would later convince Mussolini that his revanchist plans for a Greater Italy would be more realisable with Germany as an ally than as an enemy, which really means the whole thing was a charade of the type acted out in more recent times by South American or African dictators, before the European mayhem of the last ten years.

And, likewise, Russia wanted to effectively recover its imperial borders (Finland, Bessarabia, &c.) and so it first split up the world with the Germans and then both waited to see who made the first mistake.

Just to reiterate: :crazyeye:
 
Germany did occupy half or more of Ukraine in 1941-42, but the massive amounts of coal there didn't seem to matter as fuel :/ Without oil, it probably wouldn't mean much even if they had taken Moscow/St Petersburg, particularly when the factories were moved to the Urals.
Japan, on the other hand, would have needed to traverse an entire continent to get to the Urals.
 
Germany did occupy half or more of Ukraine in 1941-42, but the massive amounts of coal there didn't seem to matter as fuel :/ Without oil, it probably wouldn't mean much even if they had taken Moscow/St Petersburg, particularly when the factories were moved to the Urals.
Japan, on the other hand, would have needed to traverse an entire continent to get to the Urals.
While you can make liquid fuels from coal. It's easier to make them from petroleum. So that was the bigger goal.
 
the famed Siberians . Two front war keeps Russia from concentrating on Nazis , the existantial threat thing , allowing the Japanese to make a little show and get things . Siberia is too large and too tough . But if Japan manages to gain a foothold it can be a really useful addition to Manchuria ... Letting Japan to declare a truce with China . So that China can be invaded and destroyed later , say , by 1950 or 60 . Except the Russians in the Nomonhan Incident totally crushed the Japanese Army , which was a second rate force when you omit the fanaticism of the troops . On the other hand the IJN was indeed a major naval power , perhaps the best in the world , before the US defence industry got into high gear . Adolf wants a distraction , might even give parts of Siberia to America to make a peace in the West .
 
the famed Siberians . Two front war keeps Russia from concentrating on Nazis , the existantial threat thing , allowing the Japanese to make a little show and get things . Siberia is too large and too tough . But if Japan manages to gain a foothold it can be a really useful addition to Manchuria ... Letting Japan to declare a truce with China . So that China can be invaded and destroyed later , say , by 1950 or 60 . Except the Russians in the Nomonhan Incident totally crushed the Japanese Army , which was a second rate force when you omit the fanaticism of the troops . On the other hand the IJN was indeed a major naval power , perhaps the best in the world , before the US defence industry got into high gear . Adolf wants a distraction , might even give parts of Siberia to America to make a peace in the West .
I ask all that because I have very little knowledge of ww2. I have to assume that since russians already felt safe from Germany in the Urals, they wouldn't bother much with an attack by Japan that had to literally reach the opposite edge of the largest continent.
Though I suppose US wouldn't as easily send them supplies if the Barents sea ports had fallen (after a fall of St. Petersburg).
 
100 million or 120 million Japanese are a lot of manpower . Russians had better tanks with much better models on the way and a working theory of armoured warfare in contrast to Japanese who had none of the above . A short sharp clash and the Japanese Army discovered it had no chance of winning . A thing to remember about Japan is the fall of the Shogunate , where the victors parcelled the spoils . One group gets the Navy , other gets the Army . Defence budget is roughly divided in half . Army tends to be traditional , everywhere , studying Napoleon . Navies are always in a tech race where a single shot can decide the fate of nations . IJN prospered , though it was still miniscule when the Allied potential was considered . IJA was backwards but it would have to improve . Exposure to real combat tends to bring about that . So , Russia could really NOT ignore millions of Japanese troops milling around in Soviet territory , extracting mines and stuff .

much the same with the Chinese in the 1960s and 70s . The Chinese nukes might have been delivered by donkey carts but they would have a lot , really a lot of infantry . So , the Russians feeling hopeless in the immensity of the task to deliver conventional weapons to stop all those hordes , tried to design supersonic aircraft to fly low and fast to fight the Chinese with breaking the sound barrier all day long . If you ever see F-16s over your home , they are probably slow to keep the noise down . While with the F-104s and F-4s in the 1980s , you would see the window panes rattling ... Like , gotta be much , much more louder to hurt the Chinese with sound .
 
Japan had 70 million people in ww2 (from a search online). Of those, it appears that around 1/10 were serving in the armed forces by the end.
But I doubt they had enough vehicles to carry a meaningful fraction of that force anywhere near european Russia?
 

151 million people in the Empire in 1940 or so . 74 million of them Japanese . Which would mean Japan could field a very large army through using the rest as slaves and whatnot . Even if a substantial part of that Army would have to oversee the slaves . Already countered by the notion that the Japanese would use and exploit them ruthlessly as slaves even in peacetime anyhow .

they do not need to go to European Russia . Falling victim to the Polish Bloc propaganda here , that Russians should divest themselves of territory and it will be allright .
 
Do we see today any influence of Eastern Germanic languages in various Romance languages?
Gothic, Suebi, Gepid?

Or did the Lombards leave a mark on late northern Italian langauges?

Beyond names...
 
Not a grammatical one, unless you count the incorporation of the -esco and -engo endings for adjectives and nouns respectively, but there's a small yet interesting influx of vocabulary. Do you want me to start digging up?

As a sidenote, the influx of Yiddish-speaking Jews into the River Plate area has resulted both in the language surviving as a minority 'Haussprache', and here in Buenos Aires you still see some books published in Yiddish.
 
Yes, Eastern Germanic impacted Romance languages, especially lexicon. Italian has a few hundred loanwords from Gothic and Lombard (the latter's classification is still not clear), mostly military terms or adaptations of concepts that existed in German law. For instance, faida (in English, 'feud') is directly lifted from Lombard, stalla ('stable' as a noun, a shelter for farm animals) is more or less taken from Gothic.

I don't suppose it would be possible to gauge a possible lasting influence of Germanic languages on present-day Northern Italian accents.
 
If China hadn't stopped its advance in the 1962 war with India, how far in could it have reached? (and what would the peace terms be like?)
Afaik China literally obliterated the Indian border army, but then moved back, largely because neither USSR nor US would diplomatically take its side.
 
the entire 1962 affair is about the surprise the Chinese pulled on the Indians . A junior American officer , a Captain or a Major was caught in the act of being within minutes of launching a nuclear tipped Matador cruise missile on China .

equally impressive was the attempt of de Gaulle to invade Monaco , to stop the hemorrage of French companies moving into the Principality as a tax haven .

no , the Chinese would not advance any further . They had had enough mountains already . But it did create a safer passage to Pakistan . Which has been truly important for Mao/China aa a conduit to the outer world .
 
EXHIBITION REVIEW

Behind an Ancient Battle

A show examines a decisive conflict in Greece

BY JAMES ROMM
Athens

Over the course of history, only a few single days can be said to have “changed the world,” but the day on which a coalition of Greek city-states was defeated by Philip II of Macedon, at the battle of Chaeronea, may well be among them. In a show that dramatizes that day—Aug. 2, 338 B.C., according to one reckoning—the Museum of Cycladic Art here advances a claim for the battle’s epochal meaning, and briefly raises the question of whether the world was changed for the better.

The issue decided at Chaeronea, some 70 miles northwest of Athens, was whether the Greek city-states could push back the huge, highly trained army led by Philip and his teenage son, Alexander (soon to be known as “the Great”). Philip had slowly encroached on the autonomy of those cities, especially Athens, and threatened to subjugate them entirely.

Athens united with Thebes, the other major power of mainland Greece, and contingents from other states, to take a stand against Philip. Before Aug. 2 was over, however, both leading cities had suffered horrific losses and Philip had made himself master of most of Greece. (The Spartans had stayed out of the fight and remained, at least in theory, independent.)

The Cycladic Museum offers two illustrations of how Aug. 2 played out: a traditional battle map at the show’s entrance, and then, near its conclusion, a whimsical model composed of Playmobil figures, including a blond-haired Alexander leading a cavalry charge. Opposite him stands the tightly grouped Sacred Band of Thebes, a corps made up, according to ancient sources, of paired male lovers fighting side by side. The band had been undefeated in battle for decades before this, but the model shows Alexander cutting them off from their line and preparing to destroy them, as he is known to have done. Unfortunately the toyland smiles on the soldiers’ faces seem out of step with their imminent fate.

The Sacred Band features prominently throughout the exhibition. Its mass grave, uncovered at Chaeronea in 1880, is explored in several displays, including one case containing bones and grave goods as they were found at the site. Remarkably, the band was interred with iron strigils, scrapers for cleansing the skin after exercise, rather than with shields or swords. The significance is unclear, but the curators remark, in an online text linked to the tomb display, that “they died as soldiers but were buried as civilians.” A set of drawings and notes made by the excavator, Panagiotis Stamatakis, evokes the excitement of the discovery of the band’s resting place, beneath the fragments of an enormous marble statue, later reconstructed as the Lion of Chaeronea.

The weaponless grave of the band contrasts with the wide range of arms and armor shown in other parts of the exhibit, connected to peoples involved in the fight at Chaeronea. An intact panoply of infantry gear, found in northern Greece, was buried with a man who lived at the time of the battle. The iron helmet is coated with silver, lending it a metallic sheen that must have terrified foes. Macedonian swords, spearheads and slingshot projectiles give a sense of Philip’s might, as does the metal spike that once tipped the butt end of a wooden sarisa, the fearsome infantry lance that Philip pioneered.

The significance of Aug. 2, as the show demonstrates, extends beyond the battle itself to longer-term or indirect consequences. Philip went on to forge a Panhellenic federation out of the Greek city-states, thereby helping to end the classical age defined by those smaller polities. When Philip was assassinated two years after the battle, Alexander cemented that union of states and then embarked on a grand invasion of Asia, following plans his father had laid down. In a sense then, the Hellenistic world—with its towering kings and vast empires that dwarfed the classical polis—was launched at Chaeronea, where Alexander first took on leadership of the army that went on to conquer what was then a great part of the civilized world.

Before deploying that army in Asia, against the Persian Empire, Alexander first hurled it against the city of Thebes. Unreconciled to the outcome of Chaeronea, Thebes tried to revolt from the Macedonian empire in 335, soon after the death of Philip. A case in the show containing a heap of pottery shards, recovered from the “catastrophe level” at Thebes, attests to what happened next. Alexander allowed his troops to sack and ravage the city, then razed what was left and had the entire populace killed or sold as slaves. A marble inscription seen on a nearby wall contains the names of donors who helped rebuild Thebes, some 20 years later, after Alexander had passed from the scene. At that point, it seems, the great marble lion was also erected atop the Sacred Band’s tomb.

In recent times the battle of Chaeronea, and the lion statue (rebuilt from its fragments in 1902), have taken on new importance, especially in Greece. Some have seen in Philip a national hero and in his victory the violent birth of a unified nation. In a final wall text the Cycladic Museum curators, Panagiotis Iossif and Ioannis Fappas, lean in this direction, claiming that 19thcentury excavations done at the battlefield “were essentially leading to the creation of a new identity for the newly established Greek state.”

That’s a strange transmutation of the view of Demosthenes, who fought in the battle and later delivered the eulogy over Athenian dead. In his view, preserved in that oration, the light of Greek freedom had been blotted out from the sky at Chaeronea. The Cycladic Museum show does not go far in dealing with these complexities, but its amazing array of finds helps put them squarely before us.

Chaeronea, 2 August 338 BC: A Day That Changed the World
Museum of Cycladic Art, through March 31
Mr. Romm is editor of the “Ancient Lives” series published by Yale.



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PARIS TAVITIAN/ MUSEUM OF CYCLADIC ART ( 2) Playmobil diorama of the Battle of Chaeronea at the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens.
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Marble head of Alexander (2nd century), son of Philip II of Macedon.
 
Wikipedia says: In 982, Adud al-Dawla sent another envoy to Constantinople, this time, Abu Ishaq ibn Shahram, who, after spending three months in the city, concluded a 10-year peace treaty with them. One year later, a Byzantine envoy arrived back in Baghdad, but Adud al-Dawla was too ill to bring an end to the negotiations. In the end, the 10-year peace treaty was finally completed, and the Byzantines also agreed to mention Adud al-Dawla's name in the Friday prayer in Constantinople. Sahib ibn Abbad is known to have said the following about this event: "he [Adud al-Dawla] has done what no kings of the Arabs nor any Chosroes [kings] of the Persians could – he has Syria and the two Iraqs, and he is close to the Despot of Byzantium and the Maghribi by his continuous correspondence.
The bolded part is egregious. Was there a mosque in Constantinople in the 900s? Were there a significant population of Muslims?
 
a room is enough . If not an open area . And possibly some traders . Can't imagine a neighbourhood within the walls with a mosque and a minaret and 5 times a day calling of the faithful to pray . As a matter of fact and stuff Athens was the last European capital without a mosque , they might have opened one or are still building .
 
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