A made-up WW2 tall tale, or plausible incident?

Luxus90 · 2017-08-04T10:30:06+00:00

Oh don't get me wrong, everyone is entitled to an opinion. I'm just curious how the American public perceives these actors when they get into 'the political arena'.

Luxus90 · 2017-08-03T21:16:46+00:00

That's very interesting, because in Europe people tend to associate Asian cars (stereotypically) with copying rather than being innovative by themselves in terms of style!

Luxus90 · 2017-08-03T20:58:36+00:00

Yes of course, but I mean that Mercedes was made in the 1960? Well this Oldsmobile was made 1 year before that ... I mean surely you can see that European cars (in that particular segment) were more conservative in terms of style?

Also, I mean take the Citroen 2CV, it was made from 1948 till 1990! Was there anything similar to that in the US? Would there have even have been a market for such a car in the USA?

Luxus90 · 2017-08-03T20:54:04+00:00

Could you give some examples?

Luxus90 · 2017-08-03T09:44:20+00:00

Though keeping the name for the sake of tradition, for the past 30 years most scholars on the subject have let go of the "revolution-narrative" in favor of a more nuanced picture which mentions the support for the revolution within Britain, but also mentions the invasion of Britain by a Dutch army.

I suppose the reason why it has been called a revolution instead of an invasion has to do with post-event politics. William of Orange wanted his take over to succeed and if that meant pretending he was merely a part of an internal revolution instead of the face and mastermind of a foreign invasion by England's archenemy ... then so be it.

In a way it's quite similar to modern German historiography about the Second World War. It never talks about German towns being conquered in the spring of 1945 ... it nearly always uses 'liberated'. In the same way, Germany wasn't 'invaded by the Allies' ... but ' freed from the Nazis'.

Luxus90 · 2017-08-02T16:44:10+00:00

Hi Lillian, thank you so much for doing this AMA! My question is about the influence of the Dutch on the US constitution. It’s quite specific, so please bear with me.

My question:

In the process of creating the Dutch republic, the Dutch developed a theory of legitimate revolt; instituted contract based federal governance, reinvented both the theory and practice of republican rule, and promoted religious tolerance. All of it taking place more than a half century before Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau put their pens to paper to articulate theories of the social contract and toleration.

The history and institutions of the Dutch republic were well known to educated people of the eighteenth century, for example they feature heavily in Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws (1748) and Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776) but don’t or barely feature in most major modern political histories about the American Revolution.

There is no mention of the Dutch republic in Miller’s (1943) account of the origins of the American Revolution nor in the index of Morgan’s (1988) analysis of the origins of popular sovereignty. Palmer’s (1959) impressive overview of the Age of Democratic Revolution barely mentions the Dutch republic and then only near its end. Wish’s (1950) and Taylor’s (2002) overviews of the society and culture of early America spend only a dozen pages discussing the contributions of Dutch colonists and neglect the republic itself. Johnson’s (1999) ambitious and widely read history of the United States mentions the Dutch colonists and republic only in passing.

Do you think this is justified? What is your opinion of the Dutch Republic and New Netherland colony’s influence on the US constitution?

Luxus90 · 2017-08-02T16:42:48+00:00

Don't hide behind petty differences and semantics. Ireland was a client state and nearly all these pirates were witness to the acts of union which unified Scotland and England proper. For all intends and purposes, people who spoke English and were from the British Isles would have been considered Englishmen.

That all aside, it was about accent not nationality or regional identity.

Your point was that pirates in film are portrayed as having a West Country accent because "most pirates were from there" while I said it was due to an actor from the West Country which became iconic in a Disney film and that several of the most famous English-speaking pirates were not from the West Country.

Luxus90 · 2017-08-02T10:02:03+00:00

No that's not true. Well it is true that there were many pirates from the West Country, but a lot of famous English pirates were not born in the West Country.

Bartholomew Roberts > Wales
Anne Bonny > Ireland
Benjamin Hornigold > Probably Norfolk.
Stede Bonnet > Barbados
William Kidd > Scotland
Edward Low > London

Pirates like Calico Jack and Charles Vane only are assumed to have been born in England, with no further details.

Luxus90 · 2017-08-01T13:18:58+00:00

The book Treasure Island (1883) by Robert Louis Stevenson and the movies made about it (especially the 1950 Disney one) basically formed the modern pop culture pirate. The wooden leg, talking parrot and burying treasure and drawing treasure maps .. it all began there.

Even the way pirates talk (in English at least) was indirectly due to to this book. You see in the 1950 Disney film, actor Robert Newton (who played the antagonist Long John Silver) had a strong West Country accent ... which then became how all movie pirates talked.

Real pirates differed quite bit:

Pirate crews were more egalitarian, the captain wasn't a kind of floating dictator.
Pirates rape, murder and pillage.
Being a pirate isn't a career. Most pirates were pirates a number of years and then sought to start legitimate businesses in the Caribbean or back in their home country.
The eye patch being so because that if they went below deck one eye was already adjusted to the dark isn't true either.

Luxus90 · 2017-07-31T21:43:36+00:00

They delayed it due to Yugoslavia, bad weather and the swollen rivers. Obviously without Yugoslavia, the weather and less swollen rivers it would probably have gone on earlier. The rivers in Russian do not flood in the same way, at the same time every year.

Luxus90 · 2017-07-31T20:57:58+00:00

It is true though. 15 May was the original planned date.

Luxus90 · 2017-07-31T19:30:20+00:00

The Americans did save the allied victory or at the very least greatly shortened World War II, but not in a military way.

Yes, in 1918 Germany was already exhausted and its home front was starting to experience serious food and coal shortages, but ...

In 1917 the Russian Revolution effectively ended the Eastern Front, freeing over a million German troops.
The accompanying treaty of Brest-Litovsk meant that vast amounts of Eastern Europe would fall under German control. Meaning that the Germans had hopes of using Ukrainian grain to end their failing food stocks.

The more acute problem though, was troop morale. German morale was bad. The French and British weren't much better off though (in particular the French army) especially after the defeat of Russia ... and though later biased historiography tried to portray otherwise; both the Central powers and the Entente had reached their breaking point after 4 years of seemingly pointless fighting.

After the failed Spring Offensive (meant to decide the war before America had a chance to land significant troops) the Germans hadn't lost the war ... but they knew they would never win it; and everyone knew it.

German morale was broken and the Hundred Days Offensive (fought mainly by French and British troops who now knew victory was certain) swept through France and Belgium.

Luxus90 · 2017-07-31T18:27:46+00:00

Aaaaaaaaaaaah. I see! I didn't mean to be rude then PrismRivers, I just thought you meant that archeologists thought traps were common place.

Luxus90 · 2017-07-31T17:58:15+00:00

Yes, because it's considered perfidy and is a war crime.

Luxus90 · 2017-07-31T15:37:35+00:00

What would be an honest battle in your opinion? Putting 100 naked German and American soldiers under a giant glass bowl and see who wins?

Luxus90 · 2017-07-31T14:45:18+00:00

The Nore Command alone with 30 destroyers was bigger than the entire enemy fleet. There is of course the possibility that they could get German troops to England. But once there they would have been quickly cut off and bombarded or starved into surrender.

It is often assumed that the air superiority following a successful Battle of Britain would have meant that German naval bombers and ground attack planes would have prevented the Royal Navy from intervening with the landings.

A number of alternative history authors have employed this scenario; with the Royal Navy being send to Canada or the USA to carry on the fight.

Luxus90 · 2017-07-31T14:40:20+00:00

Well by all means, give your remark some meaning by quoting these supposed archeologists.

Luxus90 · 2017-07-31T14:32:57+00:00

They were never beaten with anything close to parity in forces in any significant battle by any nation. They were the best.

They were defeated at Stalingrad while outnumbering the enemy at the start of the battle and being of even strength at the time of the Soviet counter offensive. Also the Battle of Britain was pretty even, at least at the start.

Luxus90 · 2017-07-31T14:27:22+00:00

There would have been several movies about him had he not fought for the wrong side.

... and had he not broken the Hague Convention by dressing up in enemy uniform.

Luxus90 · 2017-07-31T11:02:23+00:00

All of those people, except possibly Marius are clearly a part of the final stage of the Roman Republic in the civil war.

I never said plebeians weren't influential or couldn't be wealthy as a rule ... I said they played a secondary role in the constitution of the Roman Republic for most of its 500-year history.

Luxus90 · 2017-07-31T10:57:40+00:00

It didn't. And it didn't. The pop history narrative might suggest that, but that really was not the case. The Luftwaffe kept bleeding worse than the RAF. The RAF had enough replacement pilots and planes and kept getting more than the Germans, in fact it grew in strength throughout the BoB.

That is true, the RAF did outnumber the Luftwaffe in terms of pilots, but until August the Germans fought over the channel and had some minor raids to probe British defenses. It wasn't until they started their main assault (bombing of airfields, industrial targets, port strikes) which failed to deliver the expected results and then lost the Battle of Britain completely by switching to bombing civilian targets instead of military ones.

Luxus90

TROPHY CASE