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The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

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Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#151

Post by Nomentatus »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #85
Nomentatus wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mainland you mean, not the U.S. as a whole - since part of Alaska was invaded and seized. One of the reasons that's not well-known is that I believe it was kept secret during the war as it was a tad embarrassing.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleutian_Islands_campaign It wasn’t a very successful invasion. They held a couple of islands for two months at the cost of 4000 of their 8000 men.

However it's worth noting that the invasion caused at least tens of thousands of deaths and probably hundreds of thousands of deaths in North America - because the US and Canada built the Alaska highway to counter the Japanese; and that project spread illnesses to such as TB to native people who had never encountered them before; with a staggering deathtoll amongst them. Also not reported during the war.

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#152

Post by gumby »

guenthert wrote: post #150
gumby wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't want my wife, my children, or my neighbors to be burdened with thinking of something so horrible. Interesting. Until very recently, as far as I could know, my mother's life began at 16. She refused to talk about anything from her childhood. I don't know if, like you, she didn't want to traumatize us or simply didn't want to think about it at all. But now, in her late 80s, she'll sometimes absent-mindedly re…

> While my personal opinion is that Germany is not doing anywhere near enough to help Ukraine, I think they should be preparing a for a huge postwar assistance, not just money for rebuilding, but psychological / therapy based on their experience to try to reduce the effects of wartime trauma on Ukraine. Well, perhaps they should, but I'm not sure they can. My parents never mentioned any help regarding postwar trauma…

> My parents never mentioned any help regarding postwar trauma being available in Germany.

Yes, but it is now the 21st century.

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#153

Post by gumby »

usrusr wrote: post #139
gumby wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being a refugee is traumatic on its own. But Germany has a lot of lessons (including what not to do) that it could be providing for good.

I don't think that Germany has many lessons: our hindsight about the first decades after the war time is completely dominated by the the topic of denazification, in all its twists and details, that everything else just happened without anybody really taking note.

I can tell you it’s still a big issue in the Dörfer which were likely less subject to the denazification process. Our parents’ generation (those who were kids in the 30s & 40s) are mostly gone but those born in the 50s-70s are still around and many in therapy which was not common before. That is the pool to learn from.

There is sadly no shortage of countries with large populations who suffered in war. But Germany is a large, wealthy country which is a good example of what Ukraine will face in postwar reconstruction. And yes, Germany still owes an old debt to Ukraine (instigation of war) as well as a contemporary one (holding off Russia with limited German assistance).

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#154

Post by gumby »

chaostheory wrote: post #115
Schiendelman wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The psychiatric sector should be quadrupled. More so in some countries. It’s flabbergasting to me that people don’t see it as - not just a moral imperative - but also an obvious economic one.

Who’s going to pay for it? Health insurers are still trying to avoid it. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/11/29/5672649... https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/06/07/7304045...

That’s like saying “who will pay for clean power” or “who will pay for firefighters?” or. “Who can afford to pay for safer building codes?”

In the long term we all benefit.

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#155

Post by int_19h »

hef19898 wrote: post #122
int_19h wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, except for those that were preemptively deported for "disloyalty".

Or having the wrong nationality, race, religion...

To clarify, by "those" I meant whole nations, not individuals - the latter is a whole other kettle of fish.

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#156

Post by WalterBright »

softcactus wrote: post #147
WalterBright wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the reference! It seems that not that many were built: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C3%BCrzburg_radar

Sorry I worded my previous response poorly. > The 8.8cm german flak gun WAS a radar-guided AA gun. The Kommandogerat 40 was a rangefinder/computer, not a radar. It had the capability of being radar-guided, but was not necessarily radar-guided by itself. For the Kommandogerat 40 you needed a direct line-of-sight (they were still used in overcast conditions though) but it would compensate for the velocity vector of the…

I read that it took 16,000 88 flak shells to bring down one bomber. I infer the success of the flak was due simply to quantity.

I've also read numerous times that the searchlights would find and "pin" a bomber so that the crews could dial in the coordinates for firing. Wouldn't need that with radar guided guns.

I well know the death rate for B-17 crews - my father flew 32 missions in 1944 in one. The casualty rate was 80% (killed, wounded, POW). He told me that the way he dealt with it was simply accept that since he was going to die, he'd do the best job he could. I have the letter he wrote his father, dryly saying he'd completed his missions and would be coming home.

The Bismarck was well equipped with anti-aircraft batteries, which failed to stop the torpedo attack by slow-moving, obsolete biplanes. The Japanese navy didn't have much success with anti-aircraft batteries, either.

Regardless, the 88 was an excellent cannon.

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#157

Post by softcactus »

WalterBright wrote: post #156
softcactus wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry I worded my previous response poorly. > The 8.8cm german flak gun WAS a radar-guided AA gun. The Kommandogerat 40 was a rangefinder/computer, not a radar. It had the capability of being radar-guided, but was not necessarily radar-guided by itself. For the Kommandogerat 40 you needed a direct line-of-sight (they were still used in overcast conditions though) but it would compensate for the velocity vector of the…

I read that it took 16,000 88 flak shells to bring down one bomber. I infer the success of the flak was due simply to quantity. I've also read numerous times that the searchlights would find and "pin" a bomber so that the crews could dial in the coordinates for firing. Wouldn't need that with radar guided guns. I well know the death rate for B-17 crews - my father flew 32 missions in 1944 in one. The casualty rate wa…

> I read that it took 16,000 88 flak shells to bring down one bomber. I infer the success of the flak was due simply to quantity.

I am not trying to be pedantic, just wondering out loud. 16,000 shells per bomber sounds like a lot, but I am sure you are familiar with the statistic that 250,000 small-arms rounds were fired for every insurgent killed in Afghanistan, and 25,000 rounds fired per kill in WWII. I can't find an actual hard source on the ratio of bullets per kill though. Bombers obviously cant hide behind cover, but I wonder if that 16,000 number isn't as unreasonable as it seems.

> I well know the death rate for B-17 crews - my father flew 32 missions in 1944 in one.

He sounds like an amazing man. I get queasy in light turbulence. I can't imagine the stress and horror of even a single bombing run. That's more than anyone should ever have to go through.

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#158

Post by agumonkey »

hcrisp wrote: post #137
agumonkey wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read an article long ago about war veteran that wanted to go back. They found life in society more dreadful than war. War brought them unrivaled intensity of bonds (life or death is unquestionable) and order. In society everything is muddy and mediocre. Even without going to the extent of war, I find "primitive life" is probably still healthiest for us existentially. Maybe using proxies like sports as symbolic w…

Sounds like "Why Young Men Go to War" [0] by Sebastian Junger. He also wrote the book called War with similar themes. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9389520

Thanks but the webpage i remember was older. Early 2000s style article and more about Vietnam era.

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#159

Post by colinsane »

lisper wrote: post #144
colinsane wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we live on a finite planet with finite resources, and at the end of the day it is Darwin who runs the show, not Jesus. natural selection/Darwinism isn’t any sort of genius. from one angle, you outsmart it every time you use a condom. from another angle, if Darwinism leads to such an apparently contradictory behavior — one which popped into being suddenly, after millions of years without — how certain can we really…

> you outsmart it every time you use a condom Not really. All you're doing is moving the needle a tiny bit so that in the next generation there will be fewer people inclined to use condoms. > if Darwinism leads to such an apparently contradictory behavior What contradictory behavior are you referring to? The ability to suspend disbelief is useful to survival in all kinds of situations, especially in our ancestral env…

> All you're doing is moving the needle a tiny bit so that in the next generation there will be fewer people inclined to use condoms.

so you claim, yet condoms have been around for generations now and my perception is that their use has only increased over generations. am i mistaken in this?

> What contradictory behavior are you referring to?

i said "apparently contradictory": on first look it appears to be contradictory, whether it objectively is or not. better would have been for me to use "unexpected", best would have been "unpredictable": because evolution produces so many random effects along the way.

> we can't all just get along, because we live on a finite planet with finite resources, and at the end of the day it is Darwin who runs the show

Darwinism suggests here that solving for limited resources will someday be required for an organism to be successful. it doesn't care how that's solved for: how can you be so confident that the emerging solution won't be coupled with "all [of this organism] just getting along?" for example, an unending arms race over physical superiority may be disastrous against resource use, and a more successful strategy might be some level of cooperation that avoids that arms race. if today's humans are a Darwinian product consider that they differ from parts of the past both along increased large-scale cooperation (e.g. cities) and less individual-against-individual violence (e.g. violent crime). that already looks a lot more like us "just getting along" than many stages of the past.

how long will this be stable? where lies the next local optima? can anyone really know?

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#160

Post by lisper »

colinsane wrote: post #159
lisper wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you outsmart it every time you use a condom Not really. All you're doing is moving the needle a tiny bit so that in the next generation there will be fewer people inclined to use condoms. > if Darwinism leads to such an apparently contradictory behavior What contradictory behavior are you referring to? The ability to suspend disbelief is useful to survival in all kinds of situations, especially in our ancestral env…

> All you're doing is moving the needle a tiny bit so that in the next generation there will be fewer people inclined to use condoms. so you claim, yet condoms have been around for generations now and my perception is that their use has only increased over generations. am i mistaken in this? > What contradictory behavior are you referring to? i said "apparently contradictory": on first look it appears to be contradic…

> so you claim, yet condoms have been around for generations now and my perception is that their use has only increased over generations. am i mistaken in this?

Condoms only go back a few hundred years, and that happens to coincide with a period of time where evolutionary pressure on humans was generally low because of the economic prosperity brought about by the industrial revolution. So all kinds of alleles have been able to survive in the last few hundred years that would have had a much harder time before.

Condoms are hard to analyze because they offer not only birth control but also protection from sexually transmitted diseases. Their effects are also temporary, so someone who uses a condom can still reproduce.

> Darwinism suggests here that solving for limited resources will someday be required for an organism to be successful.

You have to remember that evolution advances the reproductive fitness of genes, not organisms. This is most dramatically illustrated by hive insects where the vast majority of the individuals are sterile. Humans are ridiculously complicated compared to any other life form. But one of the things that is observed across all human societies across all human history is the segregation of human populations into in-groups and out-groups. This can take different forms: tribalism, castes, social classes, nation-states... but human populations that embraced all other humans as part of "us" are nearly unheard of. I don't know of any examples. And it's pretty easy to understand why: any such group would be easily conquered when it came into contact with a more militarily aggressive group, and so genes for aggression will tend to dominate genes for getting along with everyone.

You are correct that "solving for limited resources" will eventually be required, but that can just as easily take the form of killing off a lot of people as it can wisely planning for the future. Evolution doesn't care about our sensibilities. Evolution doesn't actually "care" about anything, except in the sense that water "cares" about flowing downhill. Genes build brains that care about things, but the genes themselves don't care.

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