The History Thread

[Guest Moomintroll]

Few years ago I'd to attend a day course in Edinburgh, which included a group of PhD history students doing 15min presentations. It dragged on - I can only recall a reasonably interesting one on using coin hoards to trace revolt in the Roman Empire - until an elderly local lady last up. As a girl she'd been interned in and survived a Japanese PoW camp during WWII. Utterly gripping.

Haven't read that book so will look for it on Kindle as it sounds right up my street, thanks HibeeJibee.

[HibeeJibee]

On ‎11‎/‎06‎/‎2018 at 11:02, CountyFan said:

There are plenty of documentaries people can watch if they want realism - the world at war being the obvious place to start. 

 

On ‎11‎/‎06‎/‎2018 at 11:49, dorlomin said:

The Great War Channel on youtube runs a short show to go over the history of the week 100 years ago in WWI. It has been one of the most fascinating things on the go. A vastly larger war than most people know, interestingly the Russians had a reasonable shot at winning it in mid 1916 when the Brusilov Offensive was close to knocking Austro-Hungary out of the war. Support for this was one of the two reasons the Somme Offensive was so badly needed but the Russian generals screwed up and the Germans were able to stabilise the Eastern Front. 

I'm a huge fan of "epic" documentary series - the sort of stuff with 15, 20, even 25 episodes that you can watch regularly over a decent period of time and get the story at a proper pace and in much better depth and chronology. Usually done by great narrators, too.

I've got The Great War (Michael Redgrave), The World at War (Laurence Olivier), War in the Air (Mac Hobley), Victory at Sea (from US so rather bombastic) and The Christians (Bamber Gascoigne!), which are all 20+... also A History of Britain (Simon Schama), which is about 15. I used to have The People's Century on VHS but they were thrown out years ago. Listened to This Sceptred Isle when doing lots of long-distance driving  a couple of years.

Anyone think of other "epic" documentary series in this vein?

[D.A.F.C]

If you haven't read it the forgotten highlander is worth reading.

Yes an anecdote but ffs how unlucky was this guy? Or lucky, depends how you look at it.

I think there's good mileage in the story of the soviet effort in winning ww2. There's too much emphasis on D-Day and how America won ww2. Did they f**k.

[Newbornbairn]

Read up on the battle for Berlin, how Zhukov and Konev  competed against each other to take the city even to the point of shelling each other's troops. Over 300,000 dead fighting a totally fucked German army made up of children and old men.  A complete and utter disregard for their own troops.

[Benjamin_Nevis]

It's probably been posted already, but the "Forgotten Voices of..." books are excellent. I had the "....Great War" edition which was fascinating and harrowing reading, especially the sections on Passchendaele. Highly recommended.

[Fullerene]

1 hour ago, NewBornBairn said:

Read up on the battle for Berlin, how Zhukov and Konev  competed against each other to take the city even to the point of shelling each other's troops. Over 300,000 dead fighting a totally fucked German army made up of children and old men.  A complete and utter disregard for their own troops.

Zhukov was quite happy to clear a minefield by telling his soldiers to march across it - as if it wasn't a minefield at all.

They were also happy to send soldiers into the field with no weapon at all.  "Don't worry.  At the first chance, take one from the fallen."

 

[Jacksgranda]

10 hours ago, HibeeJibee said:

 

In Search of the Dark Ages with Michael Wood: there's a book, plus a TV series (pretty ground-breaking in its time) where each episode takes a character (and chapter) from it except for Sutton Hoo Man. It has yet to be bettered IMO. It's very rich and atmospheric; even the incidental music by Vangelis really works. Boudicca and Arthur in their historical context, plus I'd never heard about Athelstan or Eric Bloodaxe beforehand or known much of Offa and his dyke or Alfred the Great. Some archaeological interpretation will be out-of-date but otherwise it's cracking stuff.

 

 

I've heard of them, but couldn't tell you much about them.

[Lex]

Anthony Beevor’s book on WWll are fantastic. Reading ‘Stalingrad’ just now.

The amount of deaths caused by Hitler’s and Stalin’s bizarre delusions is terrifying.

[Newbornbairn]

6 minutes ago, Lex said:

Anthony Beevor’s book on WWll are fantastic. Reading ‘Stalingrad’ just now.

The amount of deaths caused by Hitler’s and Stalin’s bizarre delusions is terrifying.

Yesterday was Black Ribbon day, commemorating the Nazi/Soviet pact and all the victims of their lunacy thereafter.

[Jacksgranda]

The number of deaths on the Eastern Front in the Second World War are mind numbing. Millions and millions + those murdered in concentration/extermination camps. Imagine being a Ukrainian getting "liberated" by the Germans in 1942, to then see your countrymen being murderd, then to be "liberated" by the Russians in 1944, to see the same thing repeated. Then all the displaced persons roaming about at the conclusion of hostilities

[Herman Hessian]

12 hours ago, HibeeJibee said:

In Search of the Dark Ages with Michael Wood: there's a book, plus a TV series (pretty ground-breaking in its time) where each episode takes a character (and chapter) from it except for Sutton Hoo Man. It has yet to be bettered IMO. It's very rich and atmospheric; even the incidental music by Vangelis really works. Boudicca and Arthur in their historical context, plus I'd never heard about Athelstan or Eric Bloodaxe beforehand or known much of Offa and his dyke or Alfred the Great. Some archaeological interpretation will be out-of-date but otherwise it's cracking stuff.

TBF the TV dramatisation of Bernard Cornwell's The Last Kingdom is pretty watchable; obviously not from the accurate historical aspect, but I think it does a good job of evoking the feel of period involved so you get some context in which to place the facts, and get's it right with regard to things like the numbers of men involved in battles, the size of the "cities" and the like - all on a far smaller scale than the chronologists would have you believe, going on about "epic battles" and the like, which we re-interpret with a modern slant and assume it must have been tens of thousands of men which was far from the truth

Cornwell's books are generally very readable - particularly like the American Civil War set (though the stories are a bit shite) and, of course, the four books about the longbow archers in the 100 Years War - they really are good; again, evocative rather than accurate, but enjoyable nonetheless...

[Herman Hessian]

1 hour ago, Jacksgranda said:

The number of deaths on the Eastern Front in the Second World War are mind numbing. Millions and millions + those murdered in concentration/extermination camps. Imagine being a Ukrainian getting "liberated" by the Germans in 1942, to then see your countrymen being murderd, then to be "liberated" by the Russians in 1944, to see the same thing repeated. Then all the displaced persons roaming about at the conclusion of hostilities

it's just as well that the victim-status enjoyed by certain groups isn't simply proportionate to the volume of deaths, or the Jews would have to make do with being "a bit miffed" about what when on during 39/45 when compared to the Russians and other ethnicities involved in the War in the East who would, quite rightly, have a far more cogent claim to having been the most put-upon collective...

[Jacksgranda]

16 minutes ago, Herman Hessian said:

it's just as well that the victim-status enjoyed by certain groups isn't simply proportionate to the volume of deaths, or the Jews would have to make do with being "a bit miffed" about what when on during 39/45 when compared to the Russians and other ethnicities involved in the War in the East who would, quite rightly, have a far more cogent claim to having been the most put-upon collective...

I heard a radio programme on Radio Ulster about Polish feelings towards the Germans (these were young Poles working in NI - mostly Belfast, probably) and they still harboured ill feeling towards the Germans. Hardly surprisingly, considering what went on in Poland, (was it 10% of the Polish population died?) no doubt stories of atrocities had been handed down from parents and grandparents.

[PWL]

Mentioned it on another thread previously but I managed to fulfill an ambition of a lifetime and got to work on a WW1 archaeological dig this year.

It was an German emplacement a few miles south of Ypres that had been untouched since 1918 but the land was being sold for housing. In order to get the site properly recorded before the bulldozers moved in they offered crowd funded places to help raise the necessary funds to support the "real" archaeologists.  Utterly fascinating and an experience I'll never forget.  There were munitions, personal items and, sadly, bodies everywhere.  These poor Bavarian lads were basically buried where they fell in full kit when they had the chance between lulls in fighting. In total there were something close to 130 different sets of remains though not all complete. 

The BBC did a wee piece on it and there is report being produced in November. Hopefully a few of the bodies will be identified and all will be given proper burials. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfPMK6vxhjo

 

 

[Herman Hessian]

26 minutes ago, PWL said:

Mentioned it on another thread previously but I managed to fulfill an ambition of a lifetime and got to work on a WW1 archaeological dig this year.

It was an German emplacement a few miles south of Ypres that had been untouched since 1918 but the land was being sold for housing. In order to get the site properly recorded before the bulldozers moved in they offered crowd funded places to help raise the necessary funds to support the "real" archaeologists.  Utterly fascinating and an experience I'll never forget.  There were munitions, personal items and, sadly, bodies everywhere.  These poor Bavarian lads were basically buried where they fell in full kit when they had the chance between lulls in fighting. In total there were something close to 130 different sets of remains though not all complete. 

The BBC did a wee piece on it and there is report being produced in November. Hopefully a few of the bodies will be identified and all will be given proper burials. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfPMK6vxhjo

pics or GTF - alice roberts in a trench, down-blouse stuff, obviously...

seriously, though - jealous as f**k here - that must have been a fantastic and thought provoking thing to be involved with

[Sergeant Wilson]

57 minutes ago, Herman Hessian said:

 the Jews would have to make do with being "a bit miffed"

What are they like?

[Jacksgranda]

9 hours ago, D.A.F.C said:

If you haven't read it the forgotten highlander is worth reading.

Yes an anecdote but ffs how unlucky was this guy? Or lucky, depends how you look at it.

I think there's good mileage in the story of the soviet effort in winning ww2. There's too much emphasis on D-Day and how America won ww2. Did they f**k.

They certainly helped.

[PWL]

11 minutes ago, Herman Hessian said:

pics or GTF - alice roberts in a trench, down-blouse stuff, obviously...

seriously, though - jealous as f**k here - that must have been a fantastic and thought provoking thing to be involved with

It was. Really humbling and moving. If you watch that clip you'll see a white tent at round 2:45. That was covering a mass grave of 25 Bavarians. 

Cant offer Alice's cheebs but would a 7.7cm Minenwerfer shell suffice? I'd been digging away with a mattock just inches from it....

 

[dorlomin]

2 hours ago, Jacksgranda said:

The number of deaths on the Eastern Front in the Second World War are mind numbing. Millions and millions + those murdered in concentration/extermination camps. Imagine being a Ukrainian getting "liberated" by the Germans in 1942, to then see your countrymen being murderd, then to be "liberated" by the Russians in 1944, to see the same thing repeated. Then all the displaced persons roaming about at the conclusion of hostilities

Quote

 

Under Hitler and Stalin the Nazi and Soviet regimes murdered fourteen million people in the bloodlands between Berlin and Moscow.

The killing fields extended from central Polads to western Russia. For twelve savage years, on this bloodsoaked soil an average of one million individuals - mostly women, children and the aged - were murdered every year. Though in 1939 these lands became battlefields, not one of these fourteen million was killed in combat. They were victims of a murderous policy, not casualties of war.

Int his deeply unsettling and revelatory book, Timothy Snyder gives voice to the testimony of the victims through the letters home, the notes flung from trains, the diaries on corpses. It is a brilliantly researched, profoundly humane and authoritative bok that demands we pay attention to those that history is in danger of forgetting.

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bloodlands-Europe-between-Hitler-Stalin/dp/0099551799

 

 

[renton]

10 hours ago, D.A.F.C said:

If you haven't read it the forgotten highlander is worth reading.

Yes an anecdote but ffs how unlucky was this guy? Or lucky, depends how you look at it.

I think there's good mileage in the story of the soviet effort in winning ww2. There's too much emphasis on D-Day and how America won ww2. Did they f**k.

It's not surprising that western historians would concentrate on the efforts of western troops in winning the war - or at least achieving their war aims. It helps of course that the historiography around the Western front in 1944/45 has more than it's fair share of controversy due to the vagaries of coalition warfare and the squabbling personalities of the Generals and governments (to a far larger degree than the Soviet system would permit). There are also a number of salient lessons to be learned in the Western conduct of the war, and it's effect on contemporary warfare. Both Western partners, and the British above all due to severe manpower shortages from '43 onwards coalesced around a firepower heavy, technically advanced, attritional approach that eschewed manoeuvre and risk and was designed to minimise casualties  to allow their citizen armies, pulled from liberal democracies to compete with the ideological and survivalist impulses of the Germans.  The reasoning may have changed but the desire remains the same. No one denies the herculean effort of the Soviet forces in achieving victory, but at the same time it's unlikely they could've done it by themselves even as they engaged the majority of the Wermacht. The Soviets became adept at operational level manouvere to a far higher degree than their Western counterparts, that made for impressive victories - particularly operation Bagration, achieved however with butcher's bills that the Western democracies could neither tolerate or afford.