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Old 04-16-2016, 08:35 AM   #1161
ericthered
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Default Re: Real-Life Weirdness

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Originally Posted by Warlockco View Post
If Japan hadn't attacked Pearl Harbor and drawn the US actively into the war, Germany would taken over Europe. Yes, there would be tons of resistance fighting, but US being an active participant in the war is what ultimately defeated Germany.
I don't know if the 'active' participant part was nearly as important as the aid provided to the allies against germany: lease-lend was powerful tool of war, and if you look at the eastern front, it'd turned around (krusk) before d-day, not after it.
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Old 04-16-2016, 10:54 AM   #1162
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Default Re: Real-Life Weirdness

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If Japan hadn't attacked Pearl Harbor and drawn the US actively into the war, Germany would taken over Europe. Yes, there would be tons of resistance fighting, but US being an active participant in the war is what ultimately defeated Germany.
Honestly, the U.S.'s biggest contribution to winning the European half of WWII, was Lend Lease, and the air campaign. Hitler essentially lost in Russia in 1941 when he didn't take Moscow and Stalin. He might have kept Eastern Europe, and the Baltic Republics, but he failed to knock out Russia quickly enough to outright win. With Lend Lease, Russia managed to keep enough supply in the field in 1942 to "win" at Stalingrad while their factories were being moved and rebuilt, after this Russia produced more supply than the Germans, they even out produced the U.S. in artillery and tanks.

The biggest effect after 1942 was the British/U.S. air campaign, it kept ~1,000,000 men in Western Europe manning air defenses and doing fire fighting/rescue work, as well as thousands of 88mm and larger AAA guns that would have been used as anti-tank guns against Russian armor. It also kept a large portion of the Luftwaffe in Western Europe.

The big affect of D-Day was how much of Europe fell under Soviet domination. The only real limit on Russian offensives by then was how far they could advance until they ran out of ready supplies.
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Old 04-17-2016, 10:11 AM   #1163
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Default Re: Real-Life Weirdness

While this is fascinating (and I'm not being sarcastic, I love history and AU discussion, and WWII is fascinating in general) I think we're sliding well off topic for Real-Life Weirdness. Before we get totally derailed, may I suggest breaking this off into its own post?
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Old 04-17-2016, 06:29 PM   #1164
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Government in Action
-- The Pentagon admitted recently that it has no way to know how many parts or devices are in its equipment inventory -- except by going through its estimated 30 million contracts (on the text-unsearchable electronic database) one by one. For a recent Freedom of Information request from a software developer (for the Pentagon's number of "HotPlug" power-extenders for computers), it quoted a retrieval price of $660 million to cover 15 million hours of work. [Center for Public Integrity via Slate.com, 3-18-2016]
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Old 04-25-2016, 01:31 PM   #1165
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The Old Lych Way, where the dead of Widecombe were carried to the church in Lydford, miles away, for their burial.
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Old 04-26-2016, 09:28 AM   #1166
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Default Re: Real-Life Weirdness

If you want a real-life example of Hard to Kill, you should probably look up Michael Malloy. That man survived practically anything they gave him to drink.
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Old 04-26-2016, 11:48 AM   #1167
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Default Re: Real-Life Weirdness

Quote:
Originally Posted by adm View Post
Honestly, the U.S.'s biggest contribution to winning the European half of WWII, was Lend Lease, and the air campaign. Hitler essentially lost in Russia in 1941 when he didn't take Moscow and Stalin. He might have kept Eastern Europe, and the Baltic Republics, but he failed to knock out Russia quickly enough to outright win. With Lend Lease, Russia managed to keep enough supply in the field in 1942 to "win" at Stalingrad while their factories were being moved and rebuilt, after this Russia produced more supply than the Germans, they even out produced the U.S. in artillery and tanks.

The biggest effect after 1942 was the British/U.S. air campaign, it kept ~1,000,000 men in Western Europe manning air defenses and doing fire fighting/rescue work, as well as thousands of 88mm and larger AAA guns that would have been used as anti-tank guns against Russian armor. It also kept a large portion of the Luftwaffe in Western Europe.

The big affect of D-Day was how much of Europe fell under Soviet domination. The only real limit on Russian offensives by then was how far they could advance until they ran out of ready supplies.
Advancing against overwhelmingly superior air power and artillery is something they had never done before. The Wehrmacht only maintained the illusion of mechanization by concentration. In any case supplies is not something you say "only" about.
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Old 04-26-2016, 11:51 AM   #1168
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Default Re: Real-Life Weirdness

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Originally Posted by ericthered View Post
I don't know if the 'active' participant part was nearly as important as the aid provided to the allies against germany: lease-lend was powerful tool of war, and if you look at the eastern front, it'd turned around (krusk) before d-day, not after it.
Actually at best it stalemated there. Kursk pretty much said that Germany could not reasonably take the initiative for a long time. It did not say therefore that the Allies could.
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Old 04-27-2016, 05:54 AM   #1169
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C coders might soon become the largest recognized people without a homeland. How is that happening?

Well, you see, a company in RF decided to post a job vacancy ad, written in C (sort of). Like this:
https://habrastorage.org/getpro/geek...ba80aee5bc.jpg
But RF law states that foreign-language advertisements need to be translated into Russian. Which is why the federan antimonopoly service insists it needs to be done. And it probably needs to be done by a certified C-Russian/Russian-C interpreter
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Old 04-29-2016, 11:53 AM   #1170
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A story of good intentions, bad intentions, and crossed wires, suitable as a background for a character or a plot element.

Long story short, an ordinary man had a friend in the military get killed in Afghanistan, and he starts a one-man keyboard jockey program of watching ISIS on Twitter and talking to people he thinks are them on Skype.

News reporters tell him he's interacting with frauds. The feds do too... except that he may have stumbled across a nugget of information, which they ask him to forward in a particular case. He does, flush with success, but then the case goes sour and the hostage dies.

He becomes increasingly obsessed and angry with the government for not listening to him. He leaves his job. The frauds are telling him they're going to kill hostages, they're demanding ransoms, and the FBI is brushing him off as deluded. Finally, angry, he phrases a prediction of doom badly: "Just remember whatever ends up happening to you... You deserved it..."

The sirens come. He's locked up. Over the course of 14 months in prison, his claims of being active in hostage negotiations and talking with ISIS leaders are treated as delusions of grandeur. Stop the story here, and we have a basically good man caught up in charges of terrorism and diagnoses of insanity, all for good intentions gone awry and a flash of anger.

Finally a public defender gets attached to his case. The first psychologist who bothers to look at the call records realizes the man has just been misled, and he's released with the judge summarily dismissing the charges. So, good news in the end. Set it in a country with less need to give a case to a public defender, however, and you have a tragedy worthy of Dumas or Hugo.
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