So March 8th (Women's Day) a friend of mine sent me this link of women's photos throughout history, there's a lot of pictures from WW2. She was surprised of seeing fighting women in the Red Army, Soviet Partisans and French Résistance, also that most of the workforce in USA and UK was female.
The participation of women in direct combat throughout history has been passed over and ignored to a point that borders on active suppression. Even today it's not hard to find reactionary types denouncing as 'politically correct' depictions of female combatants, even when based on sound history.
Van Voort has pointed in the right direction; Nazi ideology virtually precluded the use of women in any role other than as breeder of future soldiers. Amusingly enough, a sub-title sometimes used by the magazine Ostara, which Hitler assiduously collected, was "Briefbücherei der Blonden und Mannesrechtler", or "newsletter of the blonde and masculists", confirming the close association between far right ideologies and reactionary anti-feminism that we see in the modern "men's rights" movement. |
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Hitler declared war on the US for the prestige of being the attacker rather than the attacked. This again was a public opinion issue. But there was no real need for it as such; the alliance with the Japanese was a defensive pact, not one to join in wars of aggression. Hitler might alternately have considered that the outbreak of war with Japan would draw off American attention, reduce their willingness and ability to support the British and Russians, and effectively keep them out of the war in Europe. This, IMO, is the strangest strategic decision he made.
On the other side of things, the Soviets also thought a war of some kind was inevitable. After all, there had been forces from no less than 17 foreign states involved in the Russian Civil War on the side of the Whites, including the USA, and the more recent Spanish Civil War had also had an explicitly international dimension. The worst case scenario was a German-lead crusade against the USSR backed at least by Britain, as Hitler had hoped, and possibly the other European states and the US as well. From this perspective, the outbreak of a war between the European capitalist states was an immense stroke of good luck. And as WW2 almost immediately turned into the Cold War, neither side was significantly mistaken about seeing things in these terms. Indeed, Patton had wanted to go to war with Russia as soon as matters with Germany were concluded, while US forces were still mobilized and present in Europe.
So I don't think Hitler was nuts to expect some sort of showdown. On the other hand, many Nazi beliefs certainly did impair their effectiveness. The bizarre conviction, for example, that "will" could overcome any and all adverse material circumstances was certainly one of them, leading to setbacks being interpreted as failures of personal character rather than tactical or strategic errors, or even just plain physical reality. Equally, the view that Communism was merely a branch of the supposed "Jewish conspiracy" lead to a complete failure to understand how the Soviets thought and operated. |
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The Germans had no realistic prospect of contesting British control of the sea. Probably nobody did barring the US, which which Britain had treaties regulating the proportional sizes of their naval strength that had come about after WW1. So even if Germany had had the resources for a major naval re-armament, which it probably did not, and even if they had disregarded Versailles, and been allowed to do so with a nod and a wink, doing it would certainly have attracted serious British and American attention.
Strategically, all they needed was enough naval power to block the Kattegat, and after the capture of Denmark and Norway even this ceased to be an issue. The highly engineered 'pocket' battleships they built were perfectly adequate for this task; the only other strategic concern was interdiction of British supplies, which fell to the U-boat arm, as it had done in WW1, and disguised commerce raiders.
I don't believe they had any intention of trying to re-fight the battle of Jutland, and so a large surface navy simply was not required. |
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I did play during the period, got the decal etc. I did not know there would be a time limit for claiming whatever DLC might be coming if COH2 won out, as it did. I assumed there would just be a flag set, as there is for other DLC. |
It doesn't have to be that way:
It may not have to be that way; my point is rather that it often is that way, and it's not out of incompetence. An army that expects to expand dramatically in war time still has an interest in preserving an officer cadre, even if they have no troops to command. In this respect, senior, experienced NCO's are arguably even more important than the officer class themselves, as in practice green officers are often better off letting veteran NCO's be the de facto unit leader until they have some experience of their own under their belts. On top of this, the Junker officer class had a military tradition dating back to Prussian times which they proudly maintained and defended, and it may well have been politically impossible to dispose of them even if you wanted to.
This reminds me, incidentally, that it was argued above that the Ardenne assault was a demonstration of German military competence; however, I suggest this may be the wrong way to look at it. Because not only had the Germans invaded France through the Ardenne at the beginning of the war, but they had also done so in the First World War. So in fact the Battle of the Bulge was the third time that Germany had used the Ardenne route, and it can be argued that the surprise they achieved was really a failure of imagination on the part of the Allies to assume it couldn't be done, although admittedly neither of the previous operations had been carried out in winter.
If you are really savvy you select your Officers on the basis of their loyalty to the Government rather than their competence, perhaps unfortunately that wasn't an option open to the Weimar Republic.
Hmm, not sure many would agree with that. I think the issue of how the Nazis came to take over Germany is a rather separate one; I think we kind of forget just how weird Nazi Germany really was. The other day I was looking at pic of a grenadiers helmet bearing the German flag on one side and the party symbol on the other; can anyone today really imagine how strange things would have to get for say the US military to be sporting the party symbol of the Democrats or the Republicans? |
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I'm surprised there is no "naval infantry" doctrine for the Soviets. Also no German mountain infantry. I'd quite like to see the Marder come back as well. |
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I also seem to recall that the Germans had something equivalent to the American Civilian Conservation Corps, a large number of men living in barracks, with a regimented lifestyle, and physically fit due to manual labour. That is, not so much an army in being as an army in waiting. |
Some may be interested in this film on the South African Border War, which is little known or discussed in the West, despite lasting from 1966 to 1989, and featuring the largest tank battle in the southern hemisphere. This is essentially a South African propaganda piece aimed at a foreign, primarily American, audience, but considering how little information on the war is to be had it is a fairly good place to start.
The Last Domino
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFXAytmglYY |
Yeah this is right up there on my Best Games Ever Made list.
Relic don't own the IP any more. It was transferred to THC when Relic was part of them, or something like that, and when THC went bust Gearbox bought the rights.
Thus it's a bit unfair to blame Relic for failing to continue the franchise; it was in THC's hands.
I do hope we will end up getting a HW3 eventually, but my understanding at the moment is that Shipbreakers is either on hold or something, and the team that was producing it are now working with Gearbox on the reboot. On the positive side, this means that the reboot is going to have some of the same people involved, they have access to original concept art, and even the original uncompressed DAT recordings of the soundtrack, so the reboot will have higher audio quality than the original. They even got the original Karen S'Jet to rerecord the part she was unable to do for HW2.
RockPaperShotgun has given pretty good coverage: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/?s=homeworld
They also say that Shipbreakers has now been rebadged as a Homeworld title, and this is reflected on Blackbird's site, but there has not been any statement I've seen so far about actual plans to produce Shipbreakers, and whether it happens may now depend on how well the reboot does commercially. |
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Dang it, I didn't know there was going to be a time limit, seems I've missed it. |
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