It feels like it doesn’t happen often, and they paid a very heavy price during and after the war… but this is one where the Good Guys won. o7.
In Vietnam, they call it the American War.
Mary Beard said something similarly about the Samnite Wars. To the Samnites, it was clearly a Roman War.
As a 30-something idiot, I am relearning a lot of history in my free time, and it’s refreshing learning outside a public curriculum. Though I grew up in a conservative area, my teachers weren’t terrible at showing us the truth, however ugly it was.
Another reminder: Resistance is NOT futile.
I remember years ago I worked at a box Warehouse where we literally put together boxes for companies. I was a shift supervisor and we had a Vietnamese couple that worked there. Sitting down talking with him over the course of my time there was very interesting. I got to find out that he was actually part of the Viet Cong army and he was talking about his experiences there and the experiences of them in general. Overall they were pretty much defeated nearly destroyed and not many left before the Tet offensive. They decided to try to put up a huge show of force as one last big hurrah before they were defeated. They never expected it to actually work and when it did, and the Americans left everybody was shocked as hell.
The viet cong did the equivalent of me raising my hands and screaming at a bear lol
Known fact that smoking doesnt just kill the smoker
You’ll find that most history of military and police failures is portrayed as “they were unable to overcome a clever, all knowing enemy”
instead of the reality which is: “our forces are insanely incompetent, poorly trained, and simply bad at their job.”
Police example: everything about Jeffrey Dahmer.
Portrayal: powerful enemy
Reality: skill issue
It’s all part of propaganda to whitewash one’s own incompetence. It reminds me of WWII when the British lionised Erwin Rommel, in order to cover up British incompetence.
To be fair, the Germans (with generals like Rommel at the forefront), basically invented modern combined arms mechanised warfare. The allies were smacked around hard until they caught on to the concept.
Even more, the allies didn’t really win the war due to superior strategy, tactics, training, or equipment, but rather due to better logistics, manufacturing capacity, and more manpower. It’s actually a bit ironic that NATO has built its current doctrine around smaller but highly advanced and well trained forces; which is what the Germans relied on, rather than simpler equipment that is easy to mass produce; which is what beat the Germans.
Not that ironic considering they hired hitlers chief of general staff lol
Clicked on the link and no where did it say he was “Hitler’s Chief of Staff”. The closest I found was Operations Chief for the General Staff. But in either case, yes, definitely familiar with German military doctrine.
Shaped military doctine I would say… The man was Generalleutnant at the Ostfront. English is not my first language, what’s the difference between the two.
equipment that is easy to mass produce; which is what beat the Germans.
Over simplification. That was the Soviet strategy sure. Almost no changes were allowed to Soviet tank design unless in lowered cost or simplified manufacture. But that wasn’t British or American doctrine and they often had much more advanced equipment in key fields like radar and aircraft than their adversaries. I like your first point better though: the allies won thru superior manufacturing capacity. The Americans were a juggernaut and the Soviets managed to move most of their factories east beyond the reach of German aircraft while Germany itself got pummeled by bombing campaigns.
Sure, the allies had more advanced equipment in some areas (e.g. air power). On the other hand, what made the Sherman a good tank was never that it was individually better than a Tiger, but rather that there were more of them, and that they were easier to repair in the field. Basically, Sherman’s were production-line tanks, while Tigers were not. Looking at the production time of anything from submarines to Leaopards in NATO today is what makes me think that’s a bit ironic: It takes a loooong time to build stuff today.
So…the United States just can’t stop building Abrams tanks. We’ve got thousands of them, fields full. The US Army has begged congress to stop ordering them. We’ll finish four more by Friday.
We, at least, haven’t forgottem logistics.
The latter is what the Russians seem to have gone for. They just never considered that training their personnel was very important, so it never worked very well either.
?? The russians had weathered multiple wars by that point? Like the amount of wars the red army was involved in after the october revolution, they were extensively trained I should think
Nah, Russia has never cared about its soldiers (or russians in general really), they just rely on having enough numbers to throw into the grinder. Many soviet troops send to the wars against us finns in ww2 for example just froze to death because the leaders were incompetent and didn’t care enough about them to order proper equipment.
Part of the incompetence is they can’t tell anything negative to higher ups so the chain of command all lie from the bottom to the top, so the leaders have no fucking idea what is actually happening. You can see this still going on in today’s Russia; the start of the war against Ukraine was a good example, conquering Kyiv in a day my ass. Putin clearly had no idea what was the actual state of his army. I doubt he still has too good of an idea about what is actually happening out there - people who tell hard facts are likely defenestrated
Rommel was an ardent Nazi and a bad general.
Some teenagers we plucked off the street
True for the army and for Dahmer.
American forces in Vietnam were not poorly trained. Maybe some of the like special forces guys.
They sent disabled people to try and “re-educate” them
Doesn’t mean gheg were trained.
McNamara’s folly has entered the chat. In October 1966 the pentagon lowered the IQ requirement for enlistment. This was done to increase the ranks by 100,000 per year. This led to lots of dumb, and mentally ill soldiers being enlisted. A good fictional media portrayal would be Forrest Gump and his beloved pal Bubba being shipped to where the war actually was. Inductees of the project died at three times the rate of other Americans serving in Vietnam. So yeah, some of the troops were dumb enough to leave a trail of cigarette butts behind them compromising their location.
If I was of a cynical mindset (and I assure you I am), that almost sounds like a deliberate eugenics plan.
It was more that the administration needed bodies to throw at the war, and the administration didn’t want to make the unpopular decision to force college kids to take leave from school for a draft. They weren’t trying to kill these guys on purpose. It was more like throwing shit against the wall and praying that something stuck.
I can totally see it being more stupidity than malice, but just the way that was put together in that comment had me looking askance.
My brother in cynicism from another mother. 🤣
I only just now noticed your username :) [fistbump]
Another good film on this is Full Metal Jacket
We see it with Private Pyle clearly being unfit for service intellectually and physically. He snaps and kills his drill sargent and himself.
You also see it throughout the war half of the movie such as with the helicopter gunner gleefully massacring civilians indiscriminately.
his drill sargent
Did you mean ‘sergeant’, by any chance?
You’re taking the reverse of my meaning.
They were so poorly trained they only had 3 attacks.
- Shoot villagers
- Bomb villages
- BURN EVERYTHING
They’re Americans; none of that took any training.
Where did you learn that? You might want to reconsider other things you learned in the same place as well.
Talked to some of the survivors; they weren’t trained at fucking all. Thanks for making me explain the joke. I’ll talk down more in the future.
Then I think you said your first sentence backwards on accident because it directly conflicts with your second sentence.
No way, poor training is different to no training.
No, I’m saying poor training is still … Never mind. Fuckers here have no sense of humor.
Sarcasm is difficult in text. Use /s
It’s not. Everyone just reads for outrage/self gratification.
As the powers fully turn imperial fascist, guerrilla warriors become more inspirational by the day.
The Viet Cong were the inspiration for the Rebels in Star Wars
Scoreboard! Scoreboard!
And the Vietnam War happened after “The Ugly American” was published. Some people never learn.
To think Americans thought that they would be welcomed with flowers in Iraq is simply amazing. It’s not only a problem of soldiers it’s a whole mentality.
E:
IrakIraqNeo Cons looked at how our two biggest enemies in WW2 had ended up being some of our biggest allies today but didn’t critically look at the reasons why. In their hubris, they just assumed that setting up an American Style democracy magically and instantly solved all problems.
Most of them are propagandized to believe they singlehandedly won both world wars.
So yea, the war hawks have them believe they’re invincible, before they’re fed to the cannon.
The average American knows so little about the First World War that propagandized is a strong word. I’d go for “ignorantly and indifferently assumed”. But yeah, the prevailing attitude about the Second World War is maddening and the number of Americans who use “if it wasn’t for us, you’d be speaking German” as a rebuke of complaints by Europeans about modern issues drives me crazy.
And every major war since WWII has been compared to it, whether it’s Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. And most people buy it every single time, which is absolutely wild.
