[HN Gopher] Collections: No Man's Land, Part II: Breaking the St...
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Collections: No Man's Land, Part II: Breaking the Stalemate
Author : jcranmer
Score : 56 points
Date : 2021-09-24 16:14 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (acoup.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (acoup.blog)
| Factorium wrote:
| According to some historians, WW1 was deliberately extended in
| order to completely eliminate Germany (which pre-WW1 was
| scientifically and industrially superior to the UK) as a
| strategic competitor to the British Empire:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Prolonging-Agony-Anglo-American-Three...
| jcranmer wrote:
| I haven't read that book at all, but the blurb itself suggests
| that it will be just dripping with antisemitism:
|
| > But the real power behind the war consisted of the bankers,
| the financiers, and the politicians, referred to, in this book,
| as The Secret Elite.
|
| [ okay, that's not _inherently_ antisemitic, but it finishes
| with ... ]
|
| > Featured in this book are shocking accounts of [...] American
| and British zionists in cahoots with Rothschild's manipulated
| Balfour Declaration.
|
| [ which clearly indicates how "bankers" and "financiers" is
| meant to be read. ]
|
| In any case, to sustain such a thesis, you'd have to explain
| why the war _could* have been won earlier than it actually was,
| and this post by Devereaux aptly points out that even the
| reasons commonly given for how WWI was eventually won (i.e.,
| tanks, airplanes) didn 't actually give the Allies the victory
| even in 1918, and couldn't have even earlier._
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| Its "Customers who bought this item also bought" list is
| interesting too.
| lolinder wrote:
| The qualifications of these "historians" appear to be that one
| was a secondary school theater teacher and the other was a
| medical doctor. So... there's that.
|
| Also, as others have noted, this book is one giant conspiracy
| theory, and reads as such. Here's an excerpt from the
| introduction:
|
| > No one outside the favored few knew of the society's
| existence. Members understood that the reality of power was
| much more important and effective than the appearance of power,
| because they belonged to a priveleged class that understood how
| decisions were made, how governments were controlled and policy
| influenced. Party-political allegiance was not a given
| prerequisite for members; loyalty to the cause of Empire was.
| They have been variously referred to obliquely in speeches and
| books as the "Money Power," the "Hidden power" or the "Deep
| State." All of these labels are pertinent. We, however, have
| called them, collectively, the "Secret Elite."
|
| The Kindle sample goes on to use that phrase "Secret Elite" 111
| times.
| mcguire wrote:
| I think one of them was a Scottish MP as well.
|
| According to one reviewer at Amazon (I could not find any
| scholarly reviews), the "Secret Elite" is the Milner group
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round_Table_movement), which
| apparently published a newsletter.
|
| That being said, non-professional-historians are capable of
| producing good history (for example, see _Shattered Sword:
| The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway_ , by Jonathan
| Parshall and Anthony Tully. I wouldn't discount it for the
| authors' qualifications alone.
|
| On the other, other hand, everything about it is setting off
| my "crackpot" sensor, so _I_ won 't be the one trying to
| figure it out.
| allturtles wrote:
| "some historians" here appears to mean "a couple of conspiracy-
| theory cranks" who use the term Secret Elite (caps theirs)
| without irony?
| mcguire wrote:
| Or, you could check the National WWI Museum and Memorial
| Youtube channel for a bunch of very good lectures by historians
| on WWI, its origins, and consequences.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCikj7PQyCCtoBMy9r7PvG3g
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Part I was an excellent overview of what caused the WW1 trench
| stalemate (TLDR: not as much to do with machine guns and bone
| headed generals as you might think).
| mcguire wrote:
| " _The trench stalemate is the result of a fairly complicated
| interaction of weapons which created a novel tactical problem.
| The key technologies are ... artillery, machine guns, trenches,
| artillery, barbed wire, artillery, and artillery..._ "
| inglor_cz wrote:
| All those elements have already coalesced into trench stalemate
| during the Battle of Port Arthur in the Russo-Japanese war, but
| even though most Western armies had their observers there,
| necessary lessons were either not taken, or taken in smaller
| extent than needed.
|
| One of those lessons, of course, being "do not start a war
| under such circumstances".
| johnthuss wrote:
| I was hoping this was going to be about Java's stale Collections
| API, but I was sorely disappointed.
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