Posts by Tom Semmens
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I saw Steve Tew being interviewed on telly the other night, and the sums of money he was talking about to keep the ANZC viable were actually quite small - about four million a year.
If we were to give the Japanese the RWC and stick the 200 million or so the government are going to end putting into it in the bank, the interest alone would mean the NZRFU could can the Super 14 and have a fantastic two tier provincial championship.
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Whoa! Back up the Savio Marchetti! In the spirit of formenting happy mischief, I should like to point out no has mentioned the big N word just yet in relation to ACC. A few assorted strutting Italian clods don't cut the mustard with those Northern Aryan types.
And anyway, we all know Rodders makes a near perfect Duce, John Key would be more like a certain failed chicken farmer who rose to great heights.
All in the spirit of happy mischief, of course ;)
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And just for Friday morning fun, Chris Carter's terminal case of both feet in mouth disease takes a turn for the worse.
Because the right is totally above that sort of thing.However, lets all talk about Chris Carter, if it saves you having to defend privatising ACC.
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@steven crawford - The Germans fled in their millions from the Soviet advance. Why did they do that? Because in their hearts, they knew. They knew what had been done in their name in the USSR and Eastern Europe. Almost all Germans were possessed of the Hitlerian madness when it suited them, when the going was good and retaliation seemed light years away.
Those German women were raped, a terrible thing. But at least they are alive to talk about it sixty years later. Should we feel sorry for them? I prefer to feel sorry for the 25 million dead, innocent and defenceless most of them, victims of their aggresssion in the East.
Nearly 12,000 New Zealanders were killed fighting them. What tender mercies could we have expected from Germany to help us from the savagery of her Japanese ally if we had lost the war? Could we have expected a Marshall plan from a victorious Hitler?
The Germans wanted total, brutal and pitiless war. They got their wish. And when it was over they were treated with a humanity and wisdom they denied their conquered victims. Why are we are meant to feel sorry for them again?
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John Ralston Saul is also a philosopher, not a military historian. The ideas of blitzkrieg pre-dates the tank, and form the core of German military thought from the formation of the Great General Staff onwards. The idea of decisive, violent and aggressive action by individuals trained to act on their initiative within a clearly understood framework and with a minimum of orders is visible as early as the Austro-Prussian war in 1866. The Germans were already reaching out to blitzkrieg warfare in 1918, where their infiltration tactics by storm troopers showed them the way. Indeed, it was this emphasis on violent initiative in infantry action that meant they initially failed to see the value of the tank.
After WWII the surviving German tank generals (Guderian, Bayerlein and especially von Mellenthin) were quick to see which way the wind was now blowing and heaped obsequious praise on Western military theorists like Liddell-Hart and Fuller, crediting them with the ideas of blitzkrieg. Most of their praise was arrant toadying to their new masters, but it worked for two generations.
The Germans were good at mobile warfare because:
1/ the tank was a synthesis onto an existing doctrine that emphasised flexibility and initiative. Because they synthesised the tank into their existing ideas, they did not suffer from the doctrinal issues that afflicted the tank arms of other nations.
2/ they were a homogeneous army with a common doctrine and command structure that made extemporising and rapid decision making easy.
3/ It is my view that Nazism was uniquely attuned to (and probably partially derived from) this over-all emphasis on violent action, and as a political doctrine it blended into the mix an ideological perspective to a set of tactical and strategic instructions that created an overarching world view that aided the Germans in decision making in battle.
Still, the Germans weren't all that. As one author archly noted, the Germans were the best soldiers of WWII, and they get better with every book. It worth noting that "the German Army" wasn't a single mass.
The armoured troops (including the elite Waffen-SS formations) were probably the best tank soldiers in the world until 1944, when the Soviets and Americans caught up. Not that being great at tank warfare was much use to you when you are being attacked by fighter bombers, an area where the Western Allies excelled.
The infantry were never the same after the 900,000 losses in the first six month of Barbarossa, something that was glossed over until the opening of Soviet archives in the 1990's led to a re-assessment of the Eastern front. What remained of the magnificent infantry army that over-ran Poland and France was finished off at Stalingrad, whilst the militia army that remained was only (just) adequate to deal with the Allies in defensive actions from 1942 and until late 1944. The German infantry were crippled by manpower shortages and were by and large incapable of proper offensive action after 1942. When reading tactical reports of German infantry attacks in 1943-45 one is struck at how clumsy they were and how heavy their casualties were when they ran into British and American defensive positions - particularly Allied artillery, which frequently did great execution amongst the Germans.
If anyone is interested, I suggest they get hold of read David M. Glantz's books on the war in Russia, and Carlo D'Estes books on the Italian campaign and Normandy are also excellent general histories.
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It's as if statistics were the final arbiter of history
In large scale coalition warfare between powerful industrialised states everyone and everything is a statistic.
The Americans could afford to lose 10% of their big four engined bombers (when the average tour for a bomber crew was 30 missions - you do the numbers) on every mission indefinitely in order to make the Luftwaffe fight their escorting Mustangs and Thunderbolts, but the Germans could not afford to lose 50% of their single engine fighter force every three months in such battles - which is exactly what happened in the nine months of October 1943 to June 1944, and it is why the Germans lost the air battle, and the Allies gained victory.
All such warfare is attritional by nature, and - to use the analogy applied to Verdun - men are used up like straw in a furnace. You shouldn't have to spell out the implications of that to a thinking audience.
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Simon: Unpalatable as it may be for us, the Germans didn't seriously start fighting WW2 until 1942. Until Albert Speer took over in 1942, German production of weapons had been tiny - they only made 100 tanks a month in 1940 / early 1941 for example. Prior to Speer, the chaos, lack of coordination and rivalry of the Nazi petty satrapies encouraged by Hitler as a way of keeping his potential rivals busy led to massive inefficiencies.
Once the Germans actually started fighting WW2 from the Spring of 1942 onward, given they had all the resources of Europe at their disposal after 1941, they were always going to see a massive surge in production. The intriguing question is how much MORE they could have produced if it hadn't have been for the bombing offensive.
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The Allied bombers may not have achieved very much as a strategic force
I stopped debating area bombing years ago, but I believe the strategic bomber offensive was a HUGE contributor to Germanys defeat. The Soviets like to dismiss its impact, but any history of German production is full of the delays and disruptions brought about by the need to repair, disperse and hide their industry. As early as the battle of Kursk, the Red Air Force was able to gain ascendancy over the battlefield because the German fighter Gruppen had been withdrawn to the defence of the Reich from the 8th Air Force.
And most of all, I believe that without the demonstration of what total war meant - not to someone else but to them - and without the loss of tens of thousands of innocent civilian lives and the reduction of their cities to smoking ruins in 1945 the Germans would never have accepted their defeat and the end of Nazism as completely as they did.
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It is suspected Bader was able to retain conciousness longer because not having lower legs acted like a form G-Suit, retaining blood that have otherwise would have rushed away from his head and causing him to black out.
But anyway, I have little time for Douglas Bader. He lost his legs being an idiot and stunting his aircraft to low. He was lucky he just lost his legs. Bader was the very epitome of the establishment, anti-intellectual, countrified aristocract that came damn close in it's stupidity to losing the war. His behaviour in cahoots with his big-wing buddy Sholto-Douglas that led to the firing of Dowding (and Park) wasn't just insubordinate, it was disgraceful. He was lucky man, not the least that he got shot down and captured at the right time to ensure he became a hero.
The consumate professional's of airfighting in WWII were the Americans and the Germans. One one of my favourite quotes of all is from General Hap Arnold, who looking out an airfield full of B-17 bombers and long-range P-51 Mustangs said "Now we are going to show the Germans what a war of attrition really means". As a statement of intent, it is hard to beat that.
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Dicks of the week.
Agreed, it is only a game. Although try telling that to a guy I know who $100 on a draw for the match. He was planning a lot worse than just an egg when I last saw him.
Which is why I never gamble, least of all on sport.