#Military strategy WWI

[goodoldbandit]

The Evolution of Messenger Transportation in World War I: From Horses to Motorcycles

https://gob.stayingalive.in/revving-up-knowledge-unveil/the-evolution-of-messenger.html During World War I, the urgency of battlefield communication transformed transportation methods. Initially relying on horses, messengers soon adopted motorcycles, revolutionizing their role and effectiveness. This journey from hoof to wheel is a captivating tale of innovation and adaptation, highlighting the…

[stvlti]

The beginning, expository monologue Chani gives in Dune Part 1 mentions something about how for decades, the Harkonnens have ruled the north of Arrakis with a brutal, iron fist. The Dune films then go on to make it clear that the Harkonnen dynasty has never ventured any farther south and mainly focused its ongoing war with the Fremen on the northern guerrilla troops of the Fedaykin. When Duke Leto Atreides arrives on the planet and receives a mission report from Duncan Idaho, they realise that there could be thousands upon millions of Fremen living in sietches, far surpassing the Harkonnens' estimations (at least under Rabban's stewardship) of a 50K Fremen population.

It is very clear that throughout the Harkonnens' colonial reign, they had never breached even the sietches - at least not the major ones. This means that Feyd-Rautha's assault on Sietch Tabr is truly the first of its kind, breaking up the status quo that has been the multigenerational guerilla warfare between the Fremen and the Harkonnen spice mining industry, and when you take that into account, it becomes abundantly clear what Gurney meant when he told Paul that his path can only lead to war, whether Paul accepts or refuses the call to ascendancy as the Fremen people's Mahdi. Feyd-Rautha's ascension to the mantle of the governor of Arrakis forced his hand.

Of course, you could argue that Feyd-Rautha wouldn't have made such an aggressive turn in the Harkonnens' military strategy had Paul, as Muad'dib, not amped up the Fremen guerrilla attacks on the Harkonnen spice mines, which led to Rabban's removal from the post and the assignment of Feyd-Rautha to Arrakis. But Paul's decision to amp up spice disruption came as a direct result of his exile at the wake of the Harkonnens and the Emperor's joint attempt of assassinating their House and ending the Atreides bloodline. He saw early on that that was the only way to avenge his father's death - by tearing down House Harkonnen's source of wealth and pulling them into destitution along with him. And so goes the chicken and egg question of causality: there is no one single factor to blame Paul's decision to go south and claim the title of the Mahdi, the Lisan Al Gaib, the Kwisatz Haderach, etc and the subsequent Holy War on. Just as there's no clear cut answer to historically well documented military conflicts. Archduke Franz Ferdinand's famous assassination in Sarajevo, as we all know, was simply the catalyst for WWI but not its sole cause. The seeds of conflict were sown decades and centuries beforehand.

[redpenship]

fun fact about the rouge one shot

commander douhet is named after giulio douhet, an italian general during WWI who was arrested for criticizing his superiors because he believed they weren't using their air force to its full potential. he advocated strongly for using bombers on enemy cities to break stalemates as well as the will of their populations. at the time period, he was one of the first to advocate for strategic bombing campaigns on cities.

it is worth noting that the difference between "civilian" and "military" casualties only came into existence in the post-WWII era. until that period, european military leaders did not distinguish between the two groups since civilians were often just as involved in the war effort (they farmed the food that was sent in soldiers' rations kits, manufactured their weapons and munitions, etc) and also because they didn't really care lol. i have actually read excerpts from douhet's power of the air wherein he literally advocates for bombing civilian centres. his theory correctly predicted many of the bombing campaigns seen in WWII, such as the bombing of dresden (in which the british dropped so much artillery on the city of dresden that its river literally dried up from the heat) and the us fire bombing of tokyo. ironically enough, the us army actually expressed a bit of moral outrage over britain's campaign in dresden, since the us army's modus operandi at the time was to conduct daytime strikes on industrial targets rather than urban ones, but this attitude clearly did not hold out by the time they were focused on defeating japan lmao.

anyways, douhet was ahead of his time military-strategy wise and died before WWII began, which i can honestly only compare to van gogh dying before any of his works became famous. i would call this a tragedy (jokingly) but the last thing anyone needed was for this guy to be in charge of the italian air force during WWII so its probably good that he checked out early

[howtofightwrite]

Hey! I'm back! I'm mostly hoping for a direction to be pointed in, because I don't actually know where to start. So I've got my very large world that I'm working in, and a few plotlines are looking like they're going to have professional mages in Europe during WWI / WWII. While I'm not super interested in dedicating entire novels of story to answering the question of "and how does magic change this" because honestly, the answer goes in the range from "secret mages change ultimately very little about the results, but there was magical fighting there too probably" to "it never happened thanks to magical intervention and now I need to figure out how the modern day is different without two very major historical events".

That being said, I'm likely to at least have to give a broad-strokes answer to it. I don't have much knowledge about WWI/II, since it's never been a period of history I've been interested in studying - I'm vaguely aware of the broad strokes of the Holocaust and also Canada's involvement, since that made it into highschool education several years ago. So I've got some serious knowledge gaps I'd have to fill. But if I do have to sit down and figure out how magic would change things, where should I be looking for examples / inspiration?

(I haven't answered the question yet on if mages were well-known to most non-magical societies at the time, and if so to what extent. I know that'll majorly affect what I can do, but not exactly how or in what ways. ^^; )

There's a lot to unpack here, so let's start with one of the most basic parts. The first and second world wars were extremely different conflicts. Technology, strategies, and attitudes towards war were completely different between them. You can't, really, transplant events from one to the other without dealing with serious thematic shifts.

Beyond this, there's a some real world mysticism associated with both conflicts. The first World War came in at a time when then the Spiritualist movement was gaining traction. If you're unfamiliar with this, it's probably simplest to describe this as a new age religious movement that mostly died out in the early 20th century. To the best of my knowledge, this never really penetrated into decision making regarding the war, but it was an element of, “life back home,” during the war.

The second world war is a lot better documented in this regard. The upper echelons of the Nazi party were particularly interested in creating a, “mythical basis,” for their ideology. This included forays into pseudoscience, faked archaeology and anthropology, and outright mysticism. There's a very real, historical, reason why you'll frequently see Nazis tied to the supernatural, and it has a historical basis.

Unsurprisingly, some of the German Spiritualist societies directly transitioned into the Nazi party, either directly or by supporting them. So, there is some continuity between these points. If you want a slightly more extensive primer on this, Wikipedia does have a pretty decent article on the actual history (including how it is frequently over-represented in popular fiction.)

Now, if you want to know what the world would look like without the first world war, I don't know. As in, that changed so much more than you realize. Don't even take this as a complete list, because I'm scratching across the surface from memory.

The first world war changed Europe's attitude towards military conflict irrevocably. Prior to this, European powers had viewed war as almost a diversion. Military hardware had been advancing rapidly in the late 19thcentury, but outside of a few border skirmishes between African colonies (I think it between was the Dutch and British), there hadn't been any serious armed European conflicts in over a century. Even early military officers who realized the destructive potential of machine guns were frequently punished and disregarded when they warned their superiors of what these new weapons were capable of. Before the outbreak of war, the expectation was that the first World War would be fought similar to how the Napoleonic campaigns had played out. Obviously that didn't happen, and by the end of the war over twenty million had died, with another twenty-one million wounded.

World War II was a direct consequence of the first World War. Germany was forced to sign crushing reparations in 1919 with the Treaty of Versailles. This started the resentment, and anger, that the Nazis exploited in their rise to political power over the next two decades. Again, the interwar period is something you want to look at in more detail.

The First World War created the Soviet Union. Specifically, the Russian Revolution of 1917 was a direct consequence of the Imperial Russian mobilization against the Axis powers. There were more factors, but if Archduke Franz Ferdinand didn't soak a bullet in in 1914 Sarajevo, there would have been no Soviet Union.

If there's no Soviet Union, there's no Cold War. If there's no Treaty of Versailles, there's no Nazi Germany.

And we're not even done.

Woodrow Wilson's speech on Self Determinism to (if I remember correctly) the League of Nations gave a lot of smaller nations the belief that the 20th century would be characterized by greater respect and autonomy to them. (It's seriously a very hopeful speech.) For many colonized powers, they were under the impression that this meant they would granted independence (or at least, granted dignity) under the new world order that was being ushered in. This included powers like Algeria and Vietnam who were under French Colonial control. (This will come up again later.)

It's easy to remember the Germans. Germany was one of the Axis powers in WWI, and of course, again, in WWII. Do you remember the other major Axis powers in WWI? Because most of them don't exist today. The Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires were carved up between the Allies as spoils of war. This directly lead to the creation of the Balkans, and of course the conflicts there in the 90s. But, it created the modern Middle East.

Similarly, the French and British laid claims to swaths of the Middle East (which were previously part of the Ottoman Empire), with little regard for the indigenous ethnic groups. Setting the modern borders for Iraq, Iran, Syria, Turkey (and I'm probably forgetting a few more.) Also creating problems (like the instillation of the Pahlavi Dynasty in Iran, which set the stage for the modern, Theocratic State, after the 1979 Iranian revolution.) Again, without the first World War, and specifically without the Treaty of Versailles, modern Iran would be unrecognizable, as it was part of a major Eurasian power. Similarly, without the Treaty of Versailles, there would have been no Iran Iraq wars, and probably none of the Iraq wars as we recognize them today.

The carving of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires also created a bit of resentment from Russia. Russia formally withdrew from the war after the 1917 revolution. As a result, they were completely cut out of reparations. So, while France and Britain were carving up the Middle East and helping themselves to Germany's economy the Russians were told to kick rocks. Historically (going back to the middle ages) Russia struggled to shake a reputation of being the, “backwoods,” of Europe. Technologically, socially, and economically, they struggled to keep up with European advancement. Some of this simply comes down to the distances, the harshness of their climate, and the difficulty of effectively governing such a massive nation. It's not an indictment of the Russian people. However, in the aftermath of WWI, the newly founded Soviet Union found itself in a particularly rough situation. They suffered heavier casualties than any other allied power (coming in second behind Germany for overall dead throughout the war.) (For reference, the Russian military mobilized more troops than any other power in WWI, their casualties were in line with other allied nations.) This was part of the political atmosphere that lead to the revolution, but it also meant that their exclusion from the Versailles reparations was particularly stinging. When I said that without WWI, there would be no cold war, it's not just because the Soviet Union wouldn't exist. Imperial Russia was an ally of the British.

If this wasn't bad enough, the Russian Revolution of 1917 also resulted in a six year civil war, in which Allied powers intervened on the side of the Czarists.

As a quick aside, Allied powers and Axis are the WWII terms. Technically, if you want to be precise, the contemporary terms were Entente Powers, with the UK, France, Italy, Russia, and so on, with the Central Powers referring to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, The Ottoman Empire (also sometimes referred to as Turkey at this point), and Germany. It's also a little like referring it to World War I. No one in 1919 would have referred to the conflict as, “The First World War,” or, “World War One.” No one was expecting a sequel to get pumped out less than twenty years later. The contemporary term was, “The Great War,” or, sometimes, “The War to End All Wars,” which was unfortunately too optimistic.

In a quick admission, mea culpa, I can't remember exactly how the First World war affected China. There was continuity between the Treaty of Versailles and the rise of the PRC, but I don't remember the exact cause and effect beyond Mao's trips to Moscow.

In the case of Vietnam (at the time, referred to in Europe as, “French Indochina,”) Wilson's speech on Self Determinism, followed by the deliberate exclusion of minor powers and colonized (or, if you prefer, subjugated) nations from the Treaty of Versailles sent some very mixed messages. In particular, Ho Chi Minh was actually in Paris during the negotiations, with the intention of representing Vietnamese interests. (There are a few stories like this, though I can't remember the full roster.) Though, somewhat obviously, the French were not interested in recognizing one of their colonies as an independent state. It's a little more reductive to say that, “without WWI there would have been no Vietnamese war. Vietnam has a strong history of throwing off foreign, occupying, powers. They expelled the Chinese multiple times, they stopped the Imperial Japanese ground campaign during WWII, they threw out the French and then did the same with the United States. Most of those are events that would not have happened if WWI didn't occur, but expelling foreign powers is part of their cultural identity. In this specific case, it's worth knowing that US involvement in Vietnam came at the behest of the French, invoking a now debunked political concept called, “The Domino Theory.” The fear was that a Communist Vietnam would (through simply existing) inspire communist revolutions in adjacent countries, and policy makers at the time feared that failing to contain the spread of communism from China to Vietnam would see a, “domino effect,” of revolutions producing Soviet friendly states across the entirety of southern Asia, from Indonesia, across India, before reaching Iran. Typing this almost 75 years later it seems laughable, but that was the political calculus of the day.

In the case of US politics, the 19thcentury, and even into the early 20thcentury, the US maintained a somewhat isolationist stance. Wilson struggled to get the US involved in WWI, and the Senate only declared war in 1917 (three years after the war had started.) After the war, the US withdrew back into a mostly isolationist stance. The biggest event in the 20thcentury that affected US foreign policy was the Japanese attack on December 7th1941. That single moment gave Roosevelt the “political capitol,” to completely redirect American foreign policy, and lead to the much more internationally aggressive America that we see today.

If you're expecting me to, once again, say, “this wouldn't have happened without WWI,” in this case, I'm not sure. Imperial Japan's campaign in the Pacific is part of WWII, but it's one of the very rare pieces where the instigating events (and, even some of their military campaigns) predate WWI. Japan had already won a skirmishing war against Russia in 1904 and 1905. Imperial Japan had annexed Korea in 1910. In 1931 they invaded Manchuria, and by '37 had nominal control over the province. Even in the absence of WWI, Japan's military ambitions were seriously ramping up.

So, in the simple question of, “how much did these events affect?” A lot. And, I'm going to stress, aside from looking up dates, this is all off the top of my head. There is a lot of fallout from one nineteen year-old Serbian Anarchist with a pistol.

If you just want a historical breakdown of the events of World War I, in excruciating detail, I'd suggest The Great War on YouTube. From 2014 to 2019 they did a weekly ~10 minute news video covering the events 100 years earlier. So, if you want a detailed chronology, this is probably the place to start.

So, the thing I don't quite get when you're talking about the mage conflict not mattering might just be a communication issue. This isn't really an indictment of you, but you may want to reconsider any pitch that runs along the lines of, “my characters don't do much to affect the world.”

What you're probably looking for is a fairly reasonable, “secret war,” structure, where your characters are confronting an unconventional threat that runs in parallel to the rest of the war. This is your normal, “save the world,” plot. While these can be a bit cliché, they are pretty easy to write. The stakes are easy to grasp and articulate. It's not incredibly creative, but it is effective. Really the biggest danger with this structure is simply audience fatigue.

If you intend to expand the story into a series, you've already put the biggest threat you can on the table. Doing that again can feel repetitive, and stepping back from that into smaller threats can easily disappoint the audience. The problem with escalation is “the line goes up,” and once you've threatened to destroy the world, you can't really get the same results from doing that again.

You can build a series around dismantling a plot to destroy the world a piece at a time, though if that's your goal, you might want to start smaller and build your way up. While it's not the only option, one structure for serialized meta-stories like this would be to start with some independent, small-scale stories. As you progress your characters might realize that they're dealing with a greater threat, so the natural progression is for them to start trying to gather information about the foe who is orchestrating the threats they're seeing. This can include trying to determine what their foe is doing, and a lot of minor stalling actions, where they try to deny their foe various necessary resources. (This could include eliminating individuals supporting their enemy, it could include capturing or destroying artifact MacGuffins.)

As your characters discover more about their foe, and cause more problems, they're going to come under more direct retaliation. This could be simple situations where your characters are being literally hunted. Or a character who's operating undercover might be exposed and captured. Alternately, a cunning foe might try to implicate members of your characters as double agents, they might assassinate secondary characters who are helping your heroes. If they have the authority, they may even order conventional military forces to pressure your characters.

As a quick aside, it can be very easy to find yourself writing heroes who primarily focus on maintaining the status quo. Even the basic, “save the world,” concept is rooted in the idea that you don't want to see the world changed into something unrecognizable. When you have your characters on offense like I'm suggesting, it can do wonders for making them feel like they have actual agency, and and less like passive participants in your story. Similarly, a villain who retaliates based on your heroes actions can feel like an active participant in the story, even if they have yet to appear on the page. It can be very threatening to have your characters facing off against an enemy they can't even identify.

Ultimately, this structure would tend towards a situation where your characters (or at least your surviving characters) would be able to assemble a plan to finally eliminate their foe. As a general rule, for tension, you want your characters to assemble the best plan they can with the information they have, however, the more risky it is (especially when those risks are unavoidable), the more tense the situation will be. If you're willing, this would be the time to start killing characters without warning. Forcing the survivors to adjust the plan on the fly, and quickly find replacements when characters with critical skills are suddenly gone. (In general, the shock value of killing main characters has severely diminishing returns, however, this is a genre element for commando stories, and that's basically what you're looking at here.) Structurally, most of your characters have played their parts by now, and the series is ending once the mission is over, so you won't need those characters for something later. All that is left is to finish it go home, or (if you really want to twist the knife), scratch off the last characters and close the story.

I suppose, another approach would be to argue that the fantasy elements are ultimately a meaningless attempt to avoid the horrors of war, that your mages have no meaningful effect on the outcome of events because they're effectively LARPing in a warzone. It's unpalatable, brutal, and thematically perfect when looking at World War I. And there is some historical truth to this. A number of mystics and self-proclaimed mages tried to influence the outcome of both world wars to no effect. There is room for scathing indictment of fantasy as a genre when intersects with the entirely real horror of the war. Somewhere between Tolkien and Aleister Crowley, there is usable material to light up both both of them. Now, having said that, this would not be easy to write. You'd basically be working with the magical realism genre, though I don't think I've ever seen it used quite this viciously. If you really want to set the world on fire and walk way, this would be an option.

The obvious place on where to start your research would be with history books. Again, The Great War has that very detailed chronology and from what little I've seen, they've been branching out into other topics, including a few things I mentioned in passing.

For World War II, I'm not sure what I'd hold up as a definitive primer. Wikipedia is not a terrible starting point on this reference. In the case of World War II there was an entire cottage industry of documentary production companies that focused on World War II content back in the mid-to-late-90s. There are probably tens of thousands of hours of documentaries on the subject. Including a lot of very specialized documentaries. You can find full multi-part series on the historical context Nazis and the occult. I don't have any references on hand, but, I've run across more than one over the years.

-Starke

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[il3x]

I think military history buff is my new favourite Sophia Hess headcanon. Imagine, if you will, Emma inviting 14yo Sophia over only to lose her to animated discussion of WWI tactics and strategy with Alan Barnes after she sees his basement minifigure dioramas. POV: you're slowly realising that your super cool and totally not codependent friend-saviour-rolemodel-partnerincrimefighting-maybecrush has been poached by your very own dad.

[thesketchyheartist]

01/31

Tomino- Mobile Suit Gundam Episodes 1, 2, 8; Lamarre- Introduction My reactions immediately after the episode:

Post episode 1: The characters' eyes instantly remind me of that Korean YouTube video "Guess who?". I can't remember the creator, but the way the eyes have those reflection orbs in a solid color eyes (no pupils). I did not have subtitles, but looking at the fandom's wiki, I am displeased to find out the female lead's real name is not a playful nickname, insult name, or a name to play with words; It's Fraw Bow but I thought it said "frow brow" or "frow bow" which sounds awfully loke "frown brow" to imply her nagging attitude. Something inside me can't help but cringe when she cried and the main character and male lead has to literally slap her out of her trauma. Like, okay man, if you had your parents and grandparents killed in front of you, just a nice little b**ch slap is what you need. Overall, nice way to introduce the characters and their background. Although the enemies' reason for war sounds too similar to America's (actually any colony's) war for independence. The narrator said people were shocked, but it was not like America did not have a lot of street fights and actual battles, too. Not to justify the violence and the need to make battle suits, but they put too much praise for Amoro to step up and fight at a young age. I should say, I would not be surprised if someone else had a different reaction.

Post episode 2: So, another small detail I noticed is the shape or rather the rendition of noses. The shading underneath the nostrils is like a shading in manga or in comics. As these are animated faces, the details are simple, and the younger characters have a rounder face. Also, I don't think they blink, which is funny considering how detailed their eyes are. An important thing I noticed: a side character, wiki calls "Kai", runs back to the White Base by himself. Sayla criticizes him for being a "coward". While I know there must be more to the story, I can't help but wonder is it truly a cowardly move to escape with your life or a clever strategy to survive. At the same time, this is the first time we also meet Sayla, so perhaps it speaks more about her own character than Kai's.

Post episode 8; We were not assigned episodes 3-7, so my reaction may lack context. Spoilers permitted at your own expense: Kai in the span of 4 episodes became part of the military. I think it's because of the low supply of personnel as mentioned in episode 2. Also, you notice how his eyes are more of the "cunning" type to imply he is like Amaro's foil. In the WWI/WWII times, Kai would be the opposite of the ideal soldier, but during this episode he comes out as someone who is brave. I hope he does get some character development (when he goes into puberty and/or trauma, his eye shape might change). Also, Char calling Garma as someone who is too privileged makes fun of past Japanese leaderships during WWII.

These episodes altogether reflect the post-WWII sentiments Japan had. While weapons of unsurmountable force can and does tip the balance of a stalemate in their favor, the sheer power of these weapons compare to the power the atomic bomb had when it was first used. Japan recognized that if Japan ever came up with a power that outranks even Western weapons, they will use it for good because they were once the victims of a power that was used for the greater good...of America. While some may see this as humiliation, and they would not be wrong to frustrated veterans and civilians, it is also important to see this as equally humbling as humility for the silenced and hidden.

The animation and art style reminds me of the first Pokemon anime. While fictional creatures and fictional mechs are not alike at all, the animation reminds me of stopmotion, smooth but patterned to make a fluid-like movement.

also yesterday my birthday. this anime older than my parents.

-01/30/2024

[flesh-into--gear]

the morality debate of using nuclear weapons on imperial japan will never not be fascinating to me. because on the whole face of it, like anything done in war, of course it was wrong in hindsight, and objectively, it should be wrong.

but at the same time, we’re talking about a people (yes i understand not everyone) driven to fanaticism through absolute and complete indoctrination and propaganda, for an idealized society that never actually existed.

and it just… it fascinates me to no end that a lot of people cannot fathom that. they can’t fathom, despite decades and centuries and millennia of history where it happens over and over and over again, that an extremely loud vocal almost-minority (it sure wasn’t a minority in the 20s/30s and early 40s) can push a country over the edge, take complete control, and effectively brainwash generations.

it’s not like there are any glaring examples of that in our own US history that are extremely recent or anything. and i mean if you really need to see how far that extent goes, just look at what happened when Imperial forces lost Saipan. the first-hand accounts are horrific.

im not going to get involved on the morality itself, and im not going to go on and on about how Imperial Japan’s military and government were completely enamored with idealized bushido code and blah blah, because that’s research you can do yourself.

but i just wish that people would stop treating that as a black and white “BAD”. Imperial Japan on all fronts is a fucking tragedy, especially for every other Pacific and Asian nation, and for the japanese civilians that were simply born in the wrong time and place. but fuck me dude is there about eighty miles of nuance to the debate that just gets glossed so hard over. like you don’t know what it’s like to see news reels every day talking about casualty reports on Iwo Jima or Peleliu or any of those islands that Imperial Japan considered “home islands” and the absolute defense zone. we’re talking near-on WWI numbers of bodies, for strips of land that are tiny, being held by people with standing orders to die in their positions, and take as many lives possible. that was the whole point of the Imperial strategy in the Pacific, to make the losses so great that the American home front would call for ceasefire.

like… Imperial Japan was doing this /on purpose/.

if they’re fighting like this for islands that aren’t even technically a part of the main chain, what the fuck was a mainland invasion going to look like?

The Pacific Theater is a fucking tragedy for everyone that it involved. it doesn’t matter what side.

and for the record, of course, the nukes were wrong. but that’s also the benefit of almost 80 years of hindsight, and a life so comfortable i cannot fathom what it would be like to see entire parts of town populations just… disappear on some island i’ve never heard of and can’t find on a map.

again, it’s not that i agree. but at the same time as much as i want to poke holes in it, “oh the empire was winding down, the populace was beginning to pull support, etc etc”, knowing the history makes it a lot harder to do it

[aronarchy]

https://twitter.com/butchanarchy/status/1348796277379588096

[image ID: four lines of text on a white background that read,

1923: Hitler’s failed coup

No real consequences No fundamental changes

1933: Hitler takes power

/end image ID]

Seeing this image floating around, and while the message it sends is generally true and important (that fascism unchallenged leads to fascism building power), it leaves out important political factors between 1923 and 1933 we should learn from.

So, here’s what happened:

1923 Beer Hall Putsch: Inspired by Mussolini’s March on Rome in 1922, Hitler decides that a coup is the appropriate strategy to seize power in Germany. He had the support of elements of the German military (a crucial point in any coup), most notable among them General Ludendorff.

Their intention was to kidnap leaders of the Bavarian government and to accept Hitler as their leader, and, with the support of WWI General Ludendorff, win over the German military, proclaim national revolt, and bring down the German government in Berlin.

The coup was a total failure. The Bavarian leaders wouldn’t agree to Hitler’s demands until Ludendorff came and personally convinced them to, but word came back that the Nazis’ move to take over the army barracks had failed. Then the Bavarian leaders escape.

However, this WAS an important point in Hitler gaining power. This is because, at his trail, Hitler used the media coverage to get his messages out to the entire German public. The judges for his trial were Nazi sympathizers, and allowed him to talk as long as he wanted.

The court’s verdict? Treason carried a possible life sentence, but he was only committed to 5 years, and served only 9 months, in which he wrote Mein Kampf, had a private cell with a view, was allowed to receive visitors, and had his own private secretary.

After Hitler was released in 1924, he realized that taking power would not be possible without the support of the German Army and other established institutions. So, he decided to enter the world of electoral politics.

On this strategy he said: “Instead of working to achieve power by an armed coup we shall have to hold our noses and enter the Reichstag [...] If outvoting them takes longer than outshooting them, at least the results will be guaranteed by their own Constitution!”

Also important to note the the Nazi Party was organized like a government itself. This was so when they finally seized power over the German State, the Nazi “government in waiting” could slip into place.

1926-1929: Termed “the quiet years” for the Nazi party. The German economy was recovering, and there was overall less unrest to exploit. In these years Hitler consolidated his power within the Nazi Party, but they had a poor showing in the Reichstag elections.

1929: The Wall Street stock market crashes, and decimates economies worldwide. The German economy was especially vulnerable because it was built on foreign capital after WW1. By mid-1930 the German government is totally unravelling under the pressure of the crisis.

New elections are called, and the Nazi party launched a massive campaign. Hitler held rallies and delivered speeches all over Germany. He promised to make Germany great again, stamp out State corruption, and, of course, crack down on Marxism and Jewish people.

On election day September 14, 1930, the Nazis received 6,371,000 votes—over eighteen percent of the total—and were thus entitled to 107 seats in the German Reichstag. The Nazi Party went from the smallest to the second largest political party in Germany.

After their victory, German industrialists began to invest in Hitler in the hope of getting favors when he came to power. This money was used to hire more salaried Nazis and push even more Nazi propaganda. Hitler also made strong alliances with German military leaders.

1932: Hitler runs for President against standing President Hindenburg. The Nazis run an intense campaign but ultimately lose the election and the following run-off. However, they are shown to be wildly popular, having secured 36% of the vote.

Kurt von Schleicher, a German Army officer, meets secretly with Hitler and offered him a deal: A current ban on the SA and SS would be lifted, the Reichstag dissolved, and new elections called, if Hitler would support him in a conservative nationalist government. Hitler agrees.

Schleicher worked behind the scenes (literally so much complicated political intrigue) and get President Hindenburg to fire the current Chancellor, and appoint a relatively unknown socialite, Franz von Papen, in his place.

On June 4th, the Reichstag was dissolved and new elections were called for the end of July. On June 15, the ban on the SA and SS was lifted. In the general election the Nazi party meets more success and becomes the largest party in Germany.

The ban lifted, Nazis hit the streets and are out for blood. Hundreds of gun battles between communists and Nazis erupt all over Germany. In one of the biggest shootouts, the Nazis were literally escorted by police to their attack on a communist area near Hamburg.

1933: Schleicher broke from the Nazis, in an attempt to grab power for himself, and after MUCH political wheeling and dealing, and many false starts, Papen, Hitler, and the president’s son work to convince an ailing President Hindenburg to give Hitler the Chancellorship.

Hindenburg refused and resisted repeatedly, but a false rumor that Schleicher was about to arrest Hindenburg and stage a military takeover of the government spurred him to finally give in. January 30, 1933, Hitler is named Chancellor of Germany, and takes power.

[thedukeofgloomhimself]

anyone have any recommendations for good books (non-fiction or fiction, i’d be interested in both) about wwi? preferably focusing less on military strategy and more on interpersonal dynamics/homefront efforts/the social aspect of the war?

[infiniteglitterfall]

I'm sorry. But. What.

First and most important: I can only assume, hope, that Ronnie Kasrils had no idea about what, exactly, Hamas did. Or how it treats the people of Gaza.

Mass rape is not, under any circumstances, a tool of resistance.

Mass murder is not, under any circumstances, a tool of resistance.

We don't murder children. We don't take children hostage. We don't rape children. We don't support these acts, much less celebrate them as resistance.

Some people maintain that "no settler is innocent" or w/e. That argument, if correct, would mean everyone in the United States should not just get the death penalty: we should be raped, mutilated, and burned in extrajudicial killings.

No trial, nobody checking to see if we're indigenous, or even if we're citizens.

Hamas didn't check: their victims included people in the country on work visas, people visiting to go to the music festival, and at least one Palestinian who was working as an EMT at the music festival. Who thought he'd be okay staying to help the victims.

Nelson Mandela was famous for ending apartheid through peaceful resistance. I cannot imagine what or who Kasrils means by "in the same way that we did."

The entire thing about Oct 7 is that nobody has ever done anything quite like this in one day. Hamas flattened 22 towns, killed 1,200 people, and took 242 hostages, in one day. Hamas has as much military funding per capita now as Iraq or Ukraine, but Israel has a million times the military power.

And yet, Hamas killed almost twice as many people in one day as Israel ever has. Without even an airplane. With knives and guns and fire and explosives and their bare fucking hands.

This is not a strategy of resistance. Heck, this is not AN EXPRESSION of the RIGHT TO RESIST. This is not some kind of performance art or creative protest.

This is fucked up and bad and wrong.

It's also truly baffling to see him say that Israeli Jews should react to this attack by accepting a nonexistent proposal to give Palestine land it hasn't asked for and live under Palestinian rule.

Like... Imagine if trans people rose up and killraped our way across America, and Canadians were like, "Cis Americans, you're not gonna have peace until you live with them as citizens in a single, democratic, transgender-ruled state, and compensate them for all the oppression."

It's one of those things where the end sounds ideal, and we can't REALLY imagine the means, so we just sort of.... Our brains sort of glide smoothly right over it and retcon it as good.

The Palestinian Authority has not asked for this. The Palestinian Liberation Organization has not asked fot this. Even Hamas has not asked for this. It wants to rule the land, sure, but not democratically, and not with Jews on it.

I can only assume that Kasrils did not know that the Palestinians have never had leadership that wanted a democratic state, whether with or next door to Israel.

He cannot have known that Palestine hasn't had an election in 18 years. That President Abbas is now entering the 19th year of his four-year term. That Hamas staged a violent coup 16 years ago to kick the Palestinian government out of Gaza, and has run it as a dictatorship ever since.

I am an optimist. I am determined to believe that people would care about these things and fight for Palestinian freedom within Palestine too, if they knew these things.

He can't know how many Israeli Jews actively work with Palestinians toward peace. That one of the kibbutzim Hamas destroyed had a community fund which collected money and sent it to kids in Gaza.

That Hamas's founding documents explicitly say that Jews are the enemy because they control the banks, the media, and the drug trade, were behind WWI and WWII, and want to expand Israel to take over the world.

That one of its soldiers called home during the attack, "on a dead Jewish woman's phone," after killing her and her husband, to boast that he had "killed 10 Jews with my bare hands. Mom, I killed 10 Jews with my own hands."

As for the other quotes: A 1995 quote claiming Israel had been committing genocide, and that the Palestinians are the indigenous people, should automatically be scrapped for both being outdated and blatantly inaccurate.

At most, the Palestinians have been there for 1,300 years. That's a long time. But there have been Jewish people there for more than 3,000 years.

And both before, and since this statement was made, the Palestinian and Israeli populations have grown at about the same rates. That is not what genocide looks like. This statement is deeply disrespectful to the people of Sudan, of Myanmar, of Syria, of all the places where genocide has occurred. Where people have perpetrated incredible horrors.

It is also wild to see a quote claiming Israel had been committing genocide in 1995, when before and since then, the Palestinian population has grown as quickly as the Israeli one.

Anyway, this shit needs to stop. I am NOT fighting for my own personal liberation as a trans person, a queer person, an autistic and mentally ill person, an abuse survivor, or a victim of capitalism, alongside anybody who thinks these atrocities are a form of fucking activism.

If you need me, I'll be in the woods, talking to some damn rocks.

Image transcriptions below:

Legendary South African Jewish Freedom Fighters

And Their Condemnation of Israel

Many people don't know that several of Nelson Mandela's closest and earliest comrades and co-conspirators were South African Jews.

These Jewish comrades and their work was pivotal to the defeat of South African apartheid, giving them a unique perspective on the state of Israel.

—

Joe Slovo (1926-1995) was a Jewish South African anti-apartheid activist. In 1942, at age 16, Slovo volunteered to travel to Europe to fight the Nazis. Upon return, he studied alongside Nelson Mandela. He eventually was a founding member of uMkhonto we Sizwe, the paramilitary arm of the African National Congress.

Slovo was exiled to Mozambique by the apartheid government. Whilst there, his wife, legendary Jewish anti-apartheid activist Ruth First, was assassinated by a parcel bomb sent by the apartheid regime.

Working from abroad for the fall of apartheid, he eventually returned and became a Minister in Mandela's government. Throughout his life he remained a staunch critic of Israel.

—

"Ironically enough, the horrors of the Holocaust became the rationalization for the preparation by Zionists of acts of genocide against the indigenous people of Palestine. Those of us who, in the years that were to follow, raised our voices against the violent apartheid of the Israeli state were vilified by the Zionist press."

- Joe Slovo

—-

Denis Goldberg (1933-2020) was a Jewish South African anti-apartheid activist. He spent 22 years in prison, mostly in solitary confinement, for his political activity alongside Mandela.

He was finally freed when his daughter, who lived in Israel, lobbied the Israeli government, which was closely allied to the apartheid regime, to release him. Due to his staunch opposition to Zionism, he refused to join her in Israel.

—

"The violence of the [South African] apartheid regime was nothing in comparison with the utter brutality of Israel's occupation of Palestine."

- Denis Goldberg

—

Beata Lipman (1928-2016) was a Jewish South African anti-apartheid activist. She drafted the original Freedom Charter in her own handwriting in 1952, which became the basis for the constitution of free South Africa after the fall of apartheid.

Lipman was a proud Jewish critic of Israel, penning many letters condeming Israel over its treatment of Palestinians.

—

"We who have fought against Apartheid and vowed not to allow it to happen again can not allow Israel to continue perpetrating apartheid, colonialism and occupation against the indigenous people of Palestine. We dare not allow Israel to continue violating international law with impunity. Apartheid was a gross violation of human rights. It was so in South Africa and it is so with regard to Israel's persecution of the Palestinians!"

- Beata Lipman in joint letter

—

Ronnie Kasrils is a Jewish South African who was also a founding member and Chief of Intelligence for uMkhonto we Sizwe.

In 1992, Kasrils led an unarmed protest when the apartheid government opened fire, killing 28 of his comrades and injuring over 200 others. He went on to serve in various Ministerial roles after the defeat of apartheid.

In 2001, Kasrils was co-author of the

*Declaration of Conscience by South Africans of Jewish Descent, which calls Israel a colonial apartheid-state. He has drawn criticism for stating that Israel has behaved like the Nazis.

—

"We recognise the operation today by the Palestinian resistance in Gaza as a legitimate expression of their right to resist. We support all efforts of oppressed people to liberate themselves from their oppressors in the same way we did in our liberation struggle.

We are saddened by all violence but Israeli Jews will not realise peace until they accept a future where they will live with Palestinians as citizens in a single, democratic Palestinian state, with Palestinians being compensated for seven decades of colonisation, occupation and apartheid."

- Ronnie Kasrils, 7th October 2023

[lboogie1906]

Lester Blackwell Granger (September 16, 1896 – January 9, 1976) was an African American civic leader who organized the Los Angeles chapter of the National Urban League and headed the league (1941-61).

He was born in Newport News, Virginia, and was one of six sons. His mother was a teacher, and his father was a doctor from Barbados. He grew up in Newark and graduated from Dartmouth College. He was a member of the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity.

He served in the Army during WWI and worked for the Newark chapter of the NUL.

He was an extension worker with the Bordentown School, New Jersey’s state vocational school for African Americans and youth.

In 1934, he led the organization’s efforts to promote trade unionism among African American workers and challenge racism by employers and labor organizations.

He became the NUL’s assistant executive secretary in charge of industrial relations and continued to work to integrate racist trade unions.

In 1941, an illness made the executive secretary of the NUL, Eugene Kinckle Jones, no longer able to carry out duties, and he was appointed as Jones’ successor. He led its effort to support the March on Washington proposed by A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, and A. J. Muste to protest racial discrimination in defense work and the armed forces. In 1945, he began working with the Department of Defense to desegregate the military, seeing his first success with the Navy in February 1946. During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, he insisted that the NUL continue its strategy of “education and persuasion,” which the NUL continued to support. He retired from the NUL in 1961 and joined the faculty of Dillard University.

He remained a leading figure in social work over the years, serving as president of the National Conference of Social Work in 1952. He was the first American citizen to serve in this capacity.

The Tucker Foundation annually presents The Lester Granger 18 Award to a Dartmouth College graduate whose commitment to public service, social activism, or nonprofit professions has been exemplary. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence #alphaphialpha

[tmarshconnors]

”We fought the wrong enemy”

George Smith Patton Jr. was a general in the United States Army who commanded the Seventh Army in the Mediterranean Theatre of World War II, and the Third Army in France and Germany after the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944. 

Born: 11 November 1885, San Gabriel, California, United States

Died: 21 December 1945 (age 60 years), Heidelberg, Germany

Belief in Reincarnation: Patton believed he was a reincarnation of several historical military leaders. He often mentioned that he had fought in ancient battles as a Roman legionnaire, a Napoleonic soldier, and even a Carthaginian warrior. His strong belief in reincarnation influenced his bold decision-making and sense of destiny on the battlefield.

1912 Olympian: Patton competed in the 1912 Stockholm Olympics in the modern pentathlon. This event tested multiple military skills, including shooting, fencing, swimming, horseback riding, and cross-country running. Patton finished fifth overall but controversially missed out on a higher placement due to an issue in the shooting event, where it was believed that one of his bullets passed through an existing hole in the target, not being counted.

Early Tank Advocate: Patton was an early advocate of tank warfare. During World War I, he played a key role in the development of the U.S. Army's Tank Corps. His experience commanding tanks in the later stages of WWI helped shape his strategic ideas, which he would famously use to great effect during WWII.

Sword Designer: Patton designed a cavalry saber, known as the "Patton Saber" (Model 1913 Cavalry Saber), which was adopted by the U.S. Army. His design emphasized thrusting over slashing, reflecting his belief that this was a more effective combat technique.

Fluent in Multiple Languages: Patton was fluent in French and spoke some German. His linguistic skills were part of his lifelong study of military history and strategy, which included reading works in their original languages. His fluency in French allowed him to converse directly with French military leaders during WWII.

[andronetalks]

World War 3 warning as Ukrainian commander tells West 'time is no longer on our side'

Mirror UK By Susie Beever News Reporter16:05, 23 Jul 2024 Western leaders should prepare for a world war on the scale of WWI and II if they do not change military strategies, Kviv’s ambassador has warned. General Valerii Zaluzhny urged officials at a conference in London the West needed to up its game in its weapons arsenal, with time “no longer on our side”. The former Commander-in-Chief for…

[mariacallous]

Meduza: (Opinion) Inozemtsev’s plan for the opposition’s overthrow of the Putin regime

Economist Vladislav Inozemtsev has a grand plan for the anti-Kremlin opposition, and it involves fomenting a WWI-style rebellion among Russia’s troops at the front and overthrowing the “imperial and chauvinistic” of the central government in Moscow. Writing for The Insider on January 19, Inozemtsev warns that the West no longer views Russia as an existential threat and isn’t pursuing regime change in the Kremlin, meaning that the opposition must rely on itself. At the same time, those in exile are losing touch with Russian society. He faults dissidents for focusing on issues that don’t resonate with ordinary Russians (such as corruption and political repressions) and wasting their time on presidential election strategies and “camping outside European institutions” to advocate for Russian emigrants’ human rights. Additionally, activists who associate openly with Ukraine, joining its military or lobbying for more Western sanctions, only reinforce Kremlin propaganda that depicts the opposition as nothing but traitors and pariahs.

The military: Inozemtsev says the Russian opposition in exile has foolishly made it a “crime” to talk of saving “our boys” in uniform. He urges the anti-Kremlin movement to exploit the military’s eroding discipline and mimic the Bolsheviks’ success in 1917 by focusing on the injustices inherent in (1) the army’s mobilization methods, (2) the mistreatment of soldiers by commanding officers, and (3) the “blatant social inequality” in the army’s formation, which relies unevenly on manpower from the lower classes and spares the children of elites. With a second round of mobilization seemingly likely, Inozemtsev points to the military’s weak, unenthusiastic defense in 2023 against the Wagner Group rebellion and incursions from Ukraine by paramilitary groups comprised of Russian fighters. He argues that Russian deserters in Ukraine should be welcomed but not as prisoners of war. He even suggests paying mercenaries to turn on their Russian commanders and allies.

A Russian Confederation: Inozemtsev says Russia’s opposition ignores the potential appeal of an anti-imperialist platform, either sidestepping the issue completely or radically embracing the country’s outright dissolution. He laments that not enough is heard from strategists who acknowledge “the problems of minority ethnicities” while remaining wary of dividing Russia into tiny ethnostates. Inozemtsev’s solution: “end Russia’s history as a national state of the Russian ethnic group” while transforming the country’s constituent territories into “semi-independent states.” The main goals would be to tap protest undercurrents in ethnic republics and overthrow Moscow’s suffocating centralization, thereby liberating the country’s potential for political freedom and economic development.

A developed economy: Inozemtsev advocates nationalizing Russia’s mineral deposits, suspending existing development licenses, and then quickly selling the fields “on equal terms” to the companies (whether foreign or domestic) that agree to pay maximum rents, which would then be redistributed to the public to sustain living standards while gradually (somehow) weaning Russians off state paternalism and facilitating economic development. (Inozemtsev also wants to use this money to pay reparations to Ukraine and “other countries.”) The government’s general spending, including the defense budget, should be financed exclusively from income taxes, says Inozemtsev, adding that “exiting the Putin system” will require an overhaul of Russia’s property relations, but he says there’s no need to repeat the Bolshevik experience. The task now is to expropriate the rents embezzled by the regime’s bureaucrats and businessmen.

[kaurwreck]

Actually, I'd argue that Bungou Stray Dogs is set in a timeline that very much parallels our own!

You're not wrong that Bungou Stray Dogs is its own timeline, but there are actually WAY more indicators of period inspiration than only World War I and closer connections between Bugnou Stray Dogs' timeline with ours. Rather than a completely separate world, Bungou Stray Dogs seems to be set in an alternative timeline in which the existence of skill users dramatically changed the global geopolitical landscape. And I know that because it's actually possible to roughly, and with several exceptions, trace the current Bungou Stray Dogs timeline to the 1930s. (Hence the Guild being dressed like 1930s Americans!)

The older characters in Bungou Stray Dogs are based on Meiji-era authors (namely Natsume, Fukuzawa, Mori, and Hirotsu). The Meiji era of Japanese history extended from October 23, 1868, to July 30, 1912, and was characterized by Japan shifting from isolationist feudalism to modernization and industrialization based on Western scientific, technological, philosophical, political, legal, and aesthetic ideas. (Otherwise, Japan was at risk of colonization by Western powers; it was a transition undertaken under duress.) That's why Fukuzawa is aesthetically a rōnin (the actual Fukuzawa was born in 1833, decades prior to the Meiji era), why Mori rattles off Western foreign political strategies with which Fukuzawa is unfamiliar (the actual Mori was born just six years prior to the Meiji-era), and, most importantly, why Yokohama is sometimes referred to as the Yokohama Settlement, and why it is implied that there are national powers in Yokohama. (For example, in 55 Minutes, an antagonist declares, "If the Yokohama Settlement and the various nations' military parties within it are wiped off the face of the earth, there will be no way for their governments to hide the truth.")

The Yokohama Settlement was established in 1858, through treaties with the US, England, France, Russia, and the Netherlands that opened several cities and five ports to those Western powers. Although the treaties were abolished in 1899, the influence of those treaties appears to persist in Bungou Stray Dogs' current timeline, implying that they did exist, but perhaps not with those specific powers, and perhaps not within the same time frame. (This is further supported when Chuuya debuts in the story's current timeline; he mentions to Dazai that he had only just gotten back from quashing trouble in the West, which may be referencing the western section of the Yokohama Settlement.)

The younger characters (such as Chuuya, Dazai, Atsushi, Kunikida, Ango, etc.) were all part of literary and poetry scenes characterized by the impacts of World War I and World War II on Japan. Although their ages relative to each other and the older characters are NOT the same as their real-life namesakes, they roughly correlate with the generational differences cultivated by Japan's transitions from feudalism to industrialization to post-World War I.

Further, World War I was called the Great War, which is also what Bungou Stray Dogs calls the ability-based war that transpired 15 years prior to the current canon timeline. Like the real-life authors, the Bungou Stray Dogs characters are consistently and constantly grappling with the impacts of the Great War, which created orphans (like Atsushi and Akutagawa), traumatized soldiers (like Mimic and Fukuchi), advanced and unprecedentedly destructive methods of warfare (in WWI, it was chemical warfare, in BSD, it's ability-users), and which prompted multinational treaties and organizations that sought to prevent such devastation from happening again (Standard Island in 55 Minutes; in the manga and anime, it's implied the United Nations exists, although the logo is just slightly different from the real-life United Nations, which was not formed until after World War II).

As you've pointed out, there are still SEVERAL differences between the real-world and Bungou Stray Dogs' timelines. Many of these can be explained by the existence of skill users, such as the mixed technology in the series, which ranges from the 1980s to the current day. Others are analogs, such as Verlaine and Chuuya, who were both created in response to the Great War, such as how WWI rewrote how wars and war technology were approached. Others are less easily explained by anything other than the butterfly effect, such as the seeming continuation of Japan's port treaties and, as mentioned above, how instead of the League of Nations, the aftermath of the Great War in Bungou Stray Dogs led to the creation of the United Nations, decades before the United Nations formed in our timeline. Further, in Bungou Stray Dogs, France, Germany, and Japan were allied in the Great War, with Japan withdrawing early due to Fukuzawa's intervention (France and Japan were allied against Germany in WWI). The most inexplicable difference is that one of the Western foreign policy strategists cited by Mori is Henry Kissinger, who was only a child in the 1930s. So on, and so forth.

However, that it parallels our timeline explains exactly what you've noted above, which is the reason why Europe is the center of geopolitical power. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, that was still very true, especially in the aftermath of World War I (and which would continue to be true if Europe had powerful ability users). It also explains why the most powerful ability user group, the Order of the Clock Tower, serves as the Queen of England's personal guard-- while the monarchy isn't Britain's head of government now, it was in the early 1900s. It also adds context to Season 5, Episode 61 of the anime, in which Fukuchi reveals that his actions were spurred by his learning that there would be another global war, one much more destructive and violent than the prior. In other words, Fukuchi sought to prevent the Bungou Stray Dogs' version of World War II.

And so while you're right that Bungou Stray Dogs exists in its own timeline, it's not fundamentally different from ours, and in fact, follows the same patterns and themes that the real-life character namesakes explored in their bodies of work. Following the logic of Bungou Stray Dogs existing in an alternate but parallel timeline, it roughly takes place in the early- to mid-1930s. However, it's a version of the 1930s in which skill users exist and have existed for long enough for their skills to shape the course of human history. Thus, the timeline in Bungou Stray Dogs is a sandbox of alternative history that nevertheless honors the ideas, traumas, and eras of the authors whose lives and literary works inspired the series.

That being said, it's a fictional universe subject to the author's purposes, so nothing is certain unless indicated by Kafka Asagiri. But understanding the historical parallels certainly explains a lot, and provides a nifty guide for understanding the underlying literary references.

Bungou Stray Dogs does not follow our timeline! Its an entirely separate universe. So the question "what year is BSD set in?" doesn't have an answer.

This is one of the most common questions I've seen about bsd, "What year is it set in?" or people saying stuff like "Why do the guild dress so old timey?" or "Why do the characters have flip phones but such advanced technology?" etc...

And the truth is, the series is set in a completely different world then ours, some series like Jujutsu Kaisen or Harry Potter are set in our world, and (mostly) follow our history. But the BSD universe is just fundamentally different, There was a war, heavily modelled after world war 1, less than 20 years before the present. There are loads of references to huge political events that simply didn't happen. in fact, it seems like the technology of bsd is many decades ahead of its politics. For instance, the Guild all being dressed like great depression era Americans fits if you consider that the great depression happened just after ww1 IRL.

Another difference is that In BSD Europe is described as the centre of global power instead of America, which might be explained by Dazai saying Europe has a high number of powerful skill users.

Maybe Abilities accelerated the growth of technology, they probably also changed the balance of politics.

What im saying is there is so much different in the bsd universe, that trying to match the story to a real life year or time period will never work, its like trying to find out what kind of wood a rock is made of, they have similarities but are just fundamentally different.

[ramrodd]

The implosion of Fox News | Brian Stelter interview

COMMENTARY 

Everybody in the media reflects the Oliver Stone version of Vietnam. That's the Boomer mythology that Boomer's need to 86. Trump happened because that was argument the "60s was all about.

it's not that the Oliver Stone version of Vietnam is untrue: it's that it is insufficient because it has been shaped by the dialectical fallacies of the critical historic method of the Post Modern Historic Deconstruction. All journalists have been intimidated by the right wing ever since Newt Gingrich cancelled Connie Chung's career for committing  journalism. By the time people like Robert Kagen and John Bolton began agitating to invade Iraq, every body at the National Press Club was on board.

The Sainted Michael Kelly was goosing the afterburners to launch the invasion and he died in his tarted up GI Joe SUV in a mundane traffic accident like Patton in Iraq, James Fallows scolded me for observing tht the war Kelly was a major cheerleader rose up and bit him in the ass. He made it sound like I had voted for Hamas, blah, blah, blah, My only response there he was just the first of this stupid Conservative Free Market hegemony so that Cheney could pay off his Houston Big Oil patrons. Like Clarence Thomas,.\

After Desert Storm,  Cheney went to work for the usual suspect as a rainmaker. It took a little war to do, but Richard "Dick: Cheney delivered the Iraq oil patch.

Since 1960, the Conservative movement William F. Buckley launched with the Sharon Statement has been designed to elect someone like Trump and overthrow the US Constitution, And to sabotage Eisenhower's 1956 Presidential Platform. The reason he did it so that people like Cheney could do deals like he did with Haliburton as in the laissez-faire regulatory environment of Free Market hegenomy As an outlaw nation.

You both need to talk to Jen Psaki about the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and the Ernie Pyle Journalism Seminar and Z-Pulse Theory. The Ernie Pyle version of Vietnam will enrich your existing experience of the Oliver Stone version of Vietnam and become a force multiplier for the woke  Biden voters. .

Taylor Swift and Beyonce are a cunt hair away from taking their co-mingled fan base through the looking glass of the final paradigm shfit from the Military Industrial Complex to the economic system necessary to sustain a lunar colony for 100 years, if not forever.

The Patriot Act is the source of the hole in American and Israeli national security that Hamas launched it's attack through, Bush and Cheney reorganized the US intelligence community to justify the envision of Iraq. Edward Snowden amplified this risk exponentially. I believe the Hamas raid was designed to jure the 7th Fleet into the Red Sea as a killing Zone. Somebody wants to sink an aircraft carrier and that somebody might be closure to home than even Elon Musk. Putin's de-Nazification has Steve Bannon by the balls in some manner not entirely evident to me.

The Ernie Pyle version of Vietnam is that the success of the US Army strategy convinced both Brezhnev and Mao that Marxism was untenable and that Nixon's domestic program, which was Stage 2 of Eisenhower's 1956 Presidential Platform and proposed to reconfigure the global military industrial complex of WWI into the Aerospace-Entrepreneurial Matrix of Eisenhower's Star Wars economics illustrated in 2001" A Space Odyssey. When I got back from Vietnam in 171, every body inside the Beltway was working on the basis of achieving the 2001 deadline for a lunar colony.

Except the Plumbers, who were the leading edge of the Nazification of the Conservative insurgency set in motion by its Master Mind, William F. Buckley. In no smal degree, your personal careers have been determined by that Nazification. The good news is, Earnie Pyle Journalism will cure you of its toxic effects. Only the good will persist.