[HN Gopher] Visualizing World War II
___________________________________________________________________
Visualizing World War II
Author : gaws
Score : 320 points
Date : 2024-11-11 21:28 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (nathangoldwag.wordpress.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (nathangoldwag.wordpress.com)
| jonpurdy wrote:
| I expected to spend a couple of minutes browsing this, yet 25
| minutes later I'm not even halfway through.
|
| The best (so far) are the ones above the strings "on June 2nd,
| 1940" and "effort by Russian War Relief". I can't imagine the
| amount of research and sheer work (especially pre-internet) to
| create these.
|
| I was a kid who played SimCity 2000, RISK, and had tons of books
| about geography. Having physical pieces of paper that I'd spend
| minutes or hours analyzing was so satisfying. Scrolling around
| Google Earth or doing GIS-based analysis is also satisfying, but
| I really got a kick out of looking at this post (putting aside
| the seriousness of WW2).
| ww2supercut wrote:
| I recently finished a large World War II project that covered the
| full timeline of the war, and Google Maps was a valuable tool to
| follow what was happening in any given battle. The problem is
| Google Maps has more detail than you need, so trying to follow
| something like Operation Market Garden is much more difficult
| than just looking at this beautiful battle map:
| https://www.alamy.com/a-bridge-too-far-image68088140.html. "The
| West Point Atlas of War" is another great resource.
|
| Maps cover the spatial side of war, but in addition it's
| difficult to follow the timeline. My project stitched popular
| World War II movies together into a chronological series, making
| it easier to see what was happening across the world at any given
| time. You can view the episodes and the full blog post here:
| https://open.substack.com/pub/ww2supercut/p/combining-143-wo....
| And in addition "The Second World War" by Churchill's biographer
| Martin Gilbert, is a chronological, 750 page book that I couldn't
| put down.
| ICameToComment wrote:
| This should be a Hacker News frontpage posting all by itself.
| I'm deeply impressed.
| FredPret wrote:
| Seconded. This is awesome
| ww2supercut wrote:
| Thanks for the kind words!
| WesleyLivesay wrote:
| Now I am wondering if there are any deep studies of "World War
| 2 movie scenes where they talk to a map" from movies. That
| scene from A Bridge Too Far is a great example of giving the
| audience some spatial understanding both quickly and using the
| scene for character building as well.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| 8 seconds of Star Wars (ANH) was used to establish the time
| and space background for the "battle of Yavin":
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yWrXPck6SI#t=20s and the
| rest of that scene plays out in the real time (15min) given
| during those eight seconds.
|
| In contrast, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEv999K5Lr0 ,
| with a similar theme and screen time, is nowhere close to
| real time or distances. (although I guess Star Wars did have
| a strong advantage in being fictional)
| buildsjets wrote:
| Virtually the entire Battle of Yavin was directly copied
| from the old WWII movie "The Dambusters". The dialog, the
| planning scenes, the special targeting device, the trench
| run, the sequence of battle, Lucas pretty much ganked it
| all.
|
| https://youtu.be/lNdb03Hw18M?si=LRuJEFmZEK5vGN_s
| pif wrote:
| > Google Maps has more detail than you need
|
| I'd happily pay for a version of Google Maps where you can hide
| the streets and highlight the borders between countries,
| states, provinces and so on.
| FredPret wrote:
| I think Google Earth has that option
| briandear wrote:
| You can do that with Apple Maps.
| sofixa wrote:
| > I recently finished a large World War II project that covered
| the full timeline of the war
|
| When I was in high school I really wanted to make a full blown
| website with a timeline of WW2, using something like timelineJS
| (or whatever was available back then), with Wikipedia articles
| for all events, chronologically and filterable/organised by
| theatre. Never got around to actually making it, because it
| would be a massive undertaking.
|
| Related, if anyone is interested in a chronological telling of
| WW2 in video format, I can recommend the World War 2 channel,
| ran by real historians, with an episode a week (+ specials
| covering special events or topics or people):
| https://www.youtube.com/@WorldWarTwo
| vundercind wrote:
| Veeery interesting. After realizing that Tora, Tora, Tora! and
| Midway might make a good double-feature (I tried it, and, they
| do!) it occurred to me that it might be possible to assemble a
| film-based _curriculum_ to teach a great deal of the history of
| roughly 1933-1948, covering the lead-up to and immediate
| aftermath of the war, in a way that 's entertaining while being
| more informative than misleading. There are thousands of films
| covering the time period from dozens of countries, and lots of
| those stick reasonably close to historical events, so it might
| work out.
|
| The hard part, I think, would be tracking down films that give
| a good sense of the causes and course of more-obscure things
| like Italy's invasion of Ethiopia. You'd need to find two or
| three good films on that. Spanish civil war? The invasion and
| occupation of Poland? The political maneuvering between the
| Nazis and Soviets before they went to war with one another? The
| Winter War? These have to be covered by a few films that could
| act to "teach" the events, but I don't know what those films
| are and bet most are non-English and not well-known in English,
| making them harder (for me) to track down.
| ww2supercut wrote:
| This could work for World War II since there's so many
| movies, but even so a bunch of events aren't covered. I also
| created this spreadsheet of films with their time periods and
| events covered. It's not exhaustive by any means though, and
| new ones are coming out constantly.
| mordechai9000 wrote:
| The first English language film that comes to mind for the
| Spanish civil war is For Whom the Bell Tolls. It's been a
| while, but I don't think it has much discourse about the
| causes or the background for the war - but films often treat
| those subjects either as assumed background information the
| audience already has, or as something that is not needed to
| identify with the characters and enjoy the narrative.
|
| So you could use it, but it would need to be accompanied by
| supplemental factual materials. But I think that is true of
| many, if not most, non-documentary popular war films.
| briandear wrote:
| Interestingly, a curated collection of films in my opinion is
| much better than relying on a few history books that, under
| the cover of being "academic," are considered
| "authoritative," but, in fact -- there are a lot of facets
| that aren't easily reconciled. While film simply embraces the
| ambiguity (meaning a collection of films all telling the
| story from slightly different viewpoints is a lot better than
| a single textbook that might be authoritative, but also
| suffers from the point of view of the writer.
|
| Here is an interesting article on the debate over when WWII
| actually began (this illustrates my point as "The Invasion of
| Poland" is often used at the "starting point" of WWII, when
| that is probably out of academic convenience rather than
| being factually correct (it's hard to say precisely when WWII
| began.) https://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-09-11/what-
| if-all-th...
| ssl232 wrote:
| > Maps cover the spatial side of war, but in addition it's
| difficult to follow the timeline.
|
| I'd love for there to be an OpenStreetMap style history project
| with a slider to change the date, allowing users to fill in
| battle lines and unit positions throughout history. There must
| be enormous troves of information on units and battles in
| archives around the world that can be put online in the right
| form. One obvious problem would be overcoming conflicting
| accounts of unit positions, strengths and extents, but even
| basic information on positions of units over time would allow
| users to get an idea of what was happening in a theater by
| dragging the slider.
| SimplyUnknown wrote:
| Not quite what you are looking but if you're interested in
| Operation Market Garden: for the Dutch maps there is
| https://www.topotijdreis.nl, which gives you historical maps
| with a year slider. This can at least help one visualize how
| cities, villages, and topography at through the years.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| I made something like this and briefly had it online but I
| didn't think there would be enough demand to make the time
| and costs of running it worth it.
| habi wrote:
| In theory https://www.openhistoricalmap.org/ could do exactly
| this.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Don't forget some cities have changed a lot during the war. For
| example Rotterdam was almost completely levelled so what is
| there now is nothing in relation to how it was then.
| wbl wrote:
| That's not the only thing that's different in the
| Netherlands: the Flevopolder was not drained yet.
| doodlebugging wrote:
| Just when I was about to finish my profile destruction on
| reddit I find another reason to dig a little deeper into the
| stew. I wish I had found your stuff on /r/fanedits a long time
| ago. The work you've done is excellent and is right up my
| alley, putting things into historical context using reliable
| sources.
|
| One thing I would like to mention concerns the last map at the
| end of your post where you show a map based on information from
| the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. The
| caption above the map says "Can't name a concentration camp or
| ghetto" and the lower states "Many Americans can't name a
| concentration camp or ghetto". I find it unusual that New York
| has such a high percentage of the population that is so
| clueless about history that is this recent. They are, according
| to your map, #2 behind Mississippi which I would've expected to
| be #1 or tied for it with some other southern state where white
| supremacists have long had a foothold or stranglehold on
| education.
|
| I see that most of the poorly educated states are in the south
| with Illinois (neo-Nazi foothold in some places) and Oregon
| (originally intended to be a whites-only state) being
| exceptions.
|
| And also, that map projection used makes it appear that a
| (large) hidden hand has torqued the eastern seaboard to the
| south from Maine to the (limp dick) state of Florida. You can
| see the distortion along the state lines east of the
| Mississippi River.
|
| Anyway, great work! I enjoyed reading your post.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| I've heard there were also great maps published in non-english
| newspapers during this time period.
| doodlebugging wrote:
| I'm a map guy. I love maps and I regularly use online
| translations to help me understand what the map-maker or poster
| is trying to convey.
|
| With your post and all the opportunities open to you I feel
| like you advertised a grilled sausage event but when I showed
| up I discovered you were vegan and only serving salad.
|
| Where's the links?
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| I should have added that I haven't physically seen these maps
| which may never have been digitized in the first place... so
| grilled sausage enthusiasts beware.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| I only eat plants but you woke my interest. Translator
| machine helped me to google " Karte aus dem ersten
| Weltkrieg" and found this funny German map from 1014:
| https://www.vintage-maps.com/de/antike-
| landkarten/europa/eur...
| WesleyLivesay wrote:
| Interesting article! The details on the maps are always
| interesting. The first map of 1939 shows the British blockade
| line of the North Sea that was so important during the First
| World War but would play a much lesser role in the Second, it
| probably would not even be present on most maps made after the
| war.
| Yawrehto wrote:
| I have a 1944 World Almanac. It's incredibly detailed on World
| War Two - by my count, page 31 and 35-113 are mostly or totally
| devoted to it, in addition to the various bits on armies
| scattered throughout. Sometimes I look at it just to see what
| happened on that particular day (for instance: today, German
| forces landed in Leros, in the Aegean Sea, which was at the time
| held by the British, among many other events - and that just in
| 1943!) There are also some incredibly detailed war maps which I
| sometimes look at. At some point I should probably get around to
| uploading them, as they are absolutely amazing and I'd like to
| share it, but it's always near the bottom of my to-do list.
| Someone wrote:
| Do you mean this:
| https://archive.org/details/worldalmanacbook0000unse_z4q3?
|
| (Unfortunately only borrowable)
| Archelaos wrote:
| Here is a full version: https://archive.org/details/world-
| almanac-and-book-of-facts_...
| Yawrehto wrote:
| I think both of those are correct, although they appear to
| be the paperback, as the hardcover has the front
| illustration on the inside and is otherwise plain.
|
| The electronic version does feel rather odd, though. It's
| much harder to open it to a random page and find something
| interesting (say, a list of refugee scholars who at the
| time had moved to the US, 561-63), which, for me at least,
| is the point. I could find the vast majority of the
| information, if not all of it, elsewhere with little
| effort, if I was so inclined. It's more in the discovery
| aspect of it (and the advertisements, which are often
| absolute _gems_ , although less so than the 1909 edition,
| which included two awkwardly arranged vertical ads which
| had large text of 'Rupture' on the left and 'Your Lungs' on
| the right so it reads as 'Rupture Your Lungs', and also
| "Dr." Rupert Weils, who claimed to be able to cure cancer
| at home, using "radiatized fluid", which I think is
| radioactive water; by 1944 they were much less blatantly
| wrong or poorly arranged.)
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| > advertisements, which are often absolute gems,
|
| Pages 42-60 of the 1944 900+ page tome are advertising
| (maybe more, I timed-out).
|
| Writing for pay and body building spent well ...
| derbOac wrote:
| I have a copy of Churchill's memoirs of WWII and also read his
| memoirs of WWI. I always liked the maps in the books, as they
| somehow brought me a little closer to the time. They're another
| way of conveying information not only about what is being
| discussed, but also how the people going through it saw things
| and what they wrestled with conveying.
|
| Maps made in the current day to accompany Churchill's text
| wouldn't have the same effect.
| MrMcCall wrote:
| My son and I are fans of Stephen E. Ambrose's books "D-Day" and
| "Citizen Soldiers" (as audiobooks), but would really love a video
| companion to the books that charts the territories being
| discussed. It would be like a subtitles file, but with map images
| and timing.
|
| I would love to endow Mr. Goldwag to undertake such an endeavor.
| His site demonstrates his love of maps as tools to help
| understand history. Fantastic!
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| Some still haven't seen this picture:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Overlord#/media/File...
|
| I don't think we can really comprehend how big an operation that
| was. A movie like _" Saving Private Ryan"_ was incredibly good
| (especially the scene on the beach front) but didn't come
| anywhere close to show anything resembling that picture.
| the_af wrote:
| Impressive photo.
|
| I imagine many more are even less familiar with the _massive_
| operations from the Eastern Front, simultaneously more
| important and lesser known in the West (at least in pop
| culture; historians of course know them). E.g. Operation
| Bagration.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| Overlord overshadows other operations because it was unique
| in its nature, scale and difficulties. Eastern Front also had
| its iconic moments like Battle of Stalingrad or Siege of
| Leningrad...
| the_af wrote:
| > _Overlord overshadows other operations because it was
| unique in its nature, scale and difficulties_
|
| Without diminishing Overlord (a landing of this magnitude
| was unparalleled), I think Bagration is just as impressive,
| devastatingly effective at annihilating the German army
| (most of Army Group Center gone, poof), and must have been
| a logistical and secrecy nightmare to employ maskirovka at
| such a large scale. It was larger scale than Overlord, too.
|
| Not many in pop culture know about the Siege of Leningrad.
|
| Stalingrad is better known in pop culture, but regrettably
| most of it at the level of terribly bad and misleading
| movies such as "Enemy at the Gates".
|
| > _Eastern Front also had its iconic moments [...]_
|
| That's a bit of an understatement... The Eastern Front is
| where _most_ of the fighting in WWII happened. It 's where
| the European theater of war was truly won or lost.
| JackFr wrote:
| https://www.amazon.com/900-Days-Siege-
| Leningrad/dp/030681298...
|
| The 900 Days is an eye-opening and compelling book about
| the siege of Leningrad. Highly recommended.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| One of the big churches in St. Petersburg features huge
| columns - in some the pockmarks from strafing have been
| preserved.
|
| And the pictures at the Hermitage are labelled "Great
| Patriotic War 1941-45"
| The_Colonel wrote:
| > I think Bagration is just as impressive
|
| Well, I disagree.
|
| Landings are generally considered to be very difficult
| and risky operations to execute, and Overlord is by far
| the largest scale landing in history. It was a one-off,
| all-in operation. It had to be close to perfect or it
| would fail badly. You can't just call off the landing in
| the middle of it or reduce its objectives if it doesn't
| go well.
|
| Meanwhile, operation Bagration is just standard maneuver
| warfare, only particularly large and this time quite
| successful in achieving its objectives. Soviets had
| plenty of previous (some failed) attempts to improve
| their strategy and tactics. Maskirovka / deception
| campaign is standard for any such large operation. If
| things don't go as planned, you can scale down the
| objectives, or call it a diversion (Operation Mars).
| Operation Bagration might be more impactful on the course
| of the war, but in my mind it's not close to be as
| impressive as Overlord.
|
| > That's a bit of an understatement... The Eastern Front
| is where most of the fighting in WWII happened. It's
| where the European theater of war was truly won or lost.
|
| "Most iconic" is not the same thing as "most impactful".
| Maneuver warfare is just generally not as iconic as
| pitched, close quarters battles.
| the_af wrote:
| "Iconic" is an ill-defined thing anyway. "Most iconic" in
| the Western world is just because, like I argued, the
| Eastern Front is way less known and depicted in movies.
| It's almost the definition of "lesser known", of which
| there are many reasons (Cold War thinking being a big
| reason initially).
| ultimafan wrote:
| >The Eastern Front is where most of the fighting in WWII
| happened. It's where the European theater of war was
| truly won or lost.
|
| I remember being very surprised when I heard for the
| first time that something like 80% of all casualties
| taken by the Germans happened on the Eastern front. Or
| the total sizes of the armies (collectively on both
| sides) fighting one another and the large margin by which
| the Western front was dwarfed by. It stood completely at
| ends with everything I learned about WW2 growing up in
| the US, through school, pop culture, friends, family of
| friends. I suppose it's not too surprising though that
| any country emphasizes their own involvement over that of
| others- for example I doubt that the Soviets touched much
| on the extent of lend lease in their education or war
| movies.
| bloopernova wrote:
| Even more incredible, the USA landed on Saipan soon after the
| Allies landed in Normandy. The landing ships for operation
| FORAGER had to travel 1,000 miles across open ocean.
|
| Recommended reading: _The Fleet at Flood Tide_ by James
| Hornfischer, and _Twilight of the Gods_ by Ian Toll.
| simonh wrote:
| Found this image of the landing craft:
| https://weaponsandwarfare.com/2019/07/09/saipan-
| landing-i/#g...
| bloopernova wrote:
| That's a really good article, I hadn't seen those details
| before. Thank you!
|
| Second part:
| https://weaponsandwarfare.com/2019/07/09/saipan-landing-ii/
| Someone wrote:
| > I don't think we can really comprehend how big an operation
| that was.
|
| I think that very impressive photo doesn't even show it.
|
| FTA: _"A 1,200-plane airborne assault preceded an amphibious
| assault involving more than 5,000 vessels"_
|
| = I estimate that that photo only shows about 2% of the vessels
| involved.
|
| Getting (also FTA) _"Nearly 160,000 troops crossed the English
| Channel on 6 June"_ onto a coast without using any ports and
| where you are getting shot at takes a lot of effort.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| The photo also doesn't really do justice to how much stuff
| was going on at one time since it just makes it look like
| supplies are being delivered to a beach. You've got an an
| incredibly dense (in terms of participants per area or
| volume) naval battle, infantry engagements, air superiority
| operations, close air support and logistics operation all at
| the same time in roughly same place and even if you pick one
| aspect to focus on you'll find that the scale and tempo of
| operations in any one area exceeds what's "normal" even for a
| pitched battle.
| Narishma wrote:
| Are those floating things airships? What were they used for?
| arethuza wrote:
| Also worth thinking about the plans that were in place by the
| Nazis but never fully implemented due to the defeat by the
| Allies:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost
| lsy wrote:
| It's wild to compare these maps with what is being published
| today in the New York Times about the war in Ukraine:
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/world/europe/ukrain...
|
| The modern maps, while technically more "accurate" than hand-
| drawn diagrams, are almost shockingly light on information in
| comparison, and the accompanying text is a linear recounting of
| various advances and retreats with only passing explanation of
| the strategic importance of either.
|
| I think there are two effects at play here: one is the decrease
| in expectation of the readership to have much comprehension or
| critical thinking facility, which is counterintuitive given
| supposed strides in education over the last eighty years. The
| second is the gutting of the news media as an industry where
| career professionals could get and keep lifetime experience in
| understanding important events and their place in history. While
| no doubt reporters today are doing their best, the news media is
| increasingly reliant on contract work and fresh grist for the
| mill, and it seems obvious that the writers at the NYT have just
| not been given the resources or motivation to become as familiar
| with the contours of the conflict as the writers of the past.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| Or maybe it's because they're busy fighting a war and trying
| not to die so that they haven't had the time to provide records
| for the historians and analysts to ruminate over.
| stonesthrowaway wrote:
| > The modern maps, while technically more "accurate" than hand-
| drawn diagrams, are almost shockingly light on information in
| comparison, and the accompanying text is a linear recounting of
| various advances and retreats with only passing explanation of
| the strategic importance of either.
|
| Feels like both are light on information. But what do you
| expect? It's war time propaganda. It isn't meant to educate or
| inform. The news during war is not the same as it is during
| peacetime. They serve different goals. Whether it's ukraine.
| Gaza. Or ww2.
|
| > one is the decrease in expectation of the readership to have
| much comprehension or critical thinking facility, which is
| counterintuitive given supposed strides in education over the
| last eighty years.
|
| Mass education was never meant to increase critical thinking.
| Mass education exists to brainwash and instill conformity. The
| modern education system was created by the prussians in the
| 1800s to "educate" the peoples of the various germanic states
| into one single nation. It's the same education system adopted
| by the US and much of the world.
|
| > and it seems obvious that the writers at the NYT have just
| not been given the resources or motivation to become as
| familiar with the contours of the conflict as the writers of
| the past.
|
| Because NYT reporters were so familiar with the contours of
| iraq and their wmd program? If someone gave the NYT a trillion
| dollars, what would change? Nothing. The reporting would be the
| same. Especially when it comes to wars.
|
| When you read war propaganda from the past ( pick any war ) or
| in any country, it's remarkable how similar they all are.
| openasocket wrote:
| I disagree. I see about the same amount of information on the
| maps in the article in comparison to maps of the war in
| Ukraine. The maps in the article are certainly prettier, but
| not more informative.
|
| I think your complaint about the "linear recounting" has more
| to do with the nature of the war in Ukraine compared to WW2.
| The battle in Ukraine is almost entirely on land, while in the
| WW2 maps the majority of the maps are focused on sea lines of
| communications and air bases. The front lines in Ukraine aren't
| static by any means, but compared to WW2 these lines are barely
| moving.
|
| > the decrease in expectation of the readership to have much
| comprehension or critical thinking facility
|
| > the gutting of the news media as an industry where career
| professionals could get and keep lifetime experience in
| understanding important events and their place in history
|
| I think you have certain per-conceived notions and are trying
| to justify them in these maps, rather than the other way
| around. I've read old newspaper articles and really don't see
| any "decrease in expectation of the readership". As for the
| "gutting of the news media," I think there is some truth their,
| but I don't think you should denigrate the journalists of
| today. Recall that Ernie Pyle, perhaps the most famous war
| correspondents of WW2, before the war was a human interest
| writer.
| jcranmer wrote:
| I don't agree.
|
| Part of the issue is that World War II is a _vastly_ more
| complex situation than the Russo-Ukrainian war; it 's really
| not so much a war as it is an overlapping mess of several
| smaller wars, with a large amount of rapid geographical
| alterations in a short timeframe. To explain to people in
| September 1939 what's going on, you have to bring up the
| Saarland, Sudetenland, Danzig, the Polish Corridor, the
| dismemberment of Austria and Czechoslovakia... and that's
| before Germany actually invades Poland. For the Russo-Ukrainian
| war, you need to bring up... Crimea, the Donbass, and maaaaybe
| Transdnistria, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia if you're trying to
| build a wider geopolitical picture. And most maps you see _do_
| highlight Crimea and the Donbass!
|
| As the war progresses, World War II grows in massive scale, so
| that places like Tobruk became important locations for the
| strategic aspect of the war, and even a well-informed
| individual would have been hard-pressed to locate Tobruk before
| then. So you need to highlight this town in North Africa, and
| then explicate why a town in North Africa is important in the
| context of a literal world-wide war. By contrast, Ukraine is
| far smaller than the entire world, and even an important
| linchpin like Vuhledar has only the significance of, say,
| Bastogne in WW2.
| cf100clunk wrote:
| Excellent historical resource. Also the ''Atlas Of World War II''
| is quite good:
|
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Atlas_of_World_War_II
|
| and there is this hard cover ''Atlas of World War II'':
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Atlas-World-War-II-Cartography/dp/142...
| panick21_ wrote:
| I would add to this:
|
| "A History of the Second World War in 100 Maps"
|
| See: A History of the Second World War in 100 Maps
| hnpolicestate wrote:
| The more I philosophize on the subject. The reason Western
| boomers had it so very good is due to them being born mere
| moments after a cataclysmic, violent human struggle that killed
| nearly 80 million people ended.
| warrentr wrote:
| The winds of war and war and remembrance books (or audio books)
| are a pretty good way to get a feel for ww2. They're historically
| accurate fiction and offer a lot of long-form detail and context
| (at least from the US/allies side of things)
| BubbleRings wrote:
| If you really want to have a solid overview understanding of
| World War 2, and you are just not the type to read two long
| books no matter how good they are, then here is probably your
| best option by far:
|
| 1. Pay for an Audible account. (Or figure out how to get free
| access to audio books from your local library.)
|
| 2. Listen to the books "Winds of War" and then "War and
| Remembrance" by Herman Wouk.
|
| The drama and characterizations are just fine, and will pull
| you right in to caring for Pug Henry and wanting to know what
| happens to him and his family.
|
| The battle scenes are true history and will blow you away, and
| teach you a lot. Midway, incredible.
|
| The coverage of the Holocaust will break your heart, but make
| you think, "wow, everybody in the world should read this once".
|
| The character evolution of Werner Beck, in light of today's
| world events, might terrify you. Whole nations don't all of the
| sudden become evil. Evil powerful leaders push evil down into a
| country over time.
| stared wrote:
| For WW2 visualizations, The Fallen of World War II
| (http://www.fallen.io/ww2/) is a masterpiece--well-researched,
| clearly visualized, and paired with excellent narration. It
| balances nuance with the big picture, and even though it
| addresses tens of millions of deaths, it reminds us that these
| are people, not mere statistics.
| bane wrote:
| Something I've come to really appreciate about WWII, is how much
| effort was put into either creating or implementing concepts
| about organization and efficiency into action. WWII was likely
| the largest organizational endeavor in human history.
|
| There's an almost paradoxical immensity to it, where humans,
| using paper, typewriters, physical mail, and early electric (not
| electronic) communication systems had to organize millions of
| humans into large coordinated efforts over about half the surface
| of a planet.
|
| They did it without the aid of computers and the unlimited up-to-
| date firehoses of data that we have today. The paradox is that
| it's not entirely clear that our modern civilization, using these
| advantages, would be able to do what they did. Modern
| technologies seem to create an effect of overanalysis, where the
| WW2 generation often worked in deeply ambiguous grey areas.
|
| Our tendency today is to want to produce as much up to date
| information as possible, even if its not necessary to the overall
| goal. We want to use a computer to scrub deeply through immense
| data to produce marginal gains. A Strategic General in WW2 might
| want to move 100,000 men and arms to a different location and
| issue the order where it would be relayed by post, telephone, or
| telegraph. To find out if that order was fulfilled might take
| weeks or months to even find out. Today we would want to track
| each soldier's boots to watch them march across a digital map in
| real-time.
|
| Yet it worked. With major operations occurring down to the minute
| that involved multinational organizations moving millions of tons
| of human lives, arms, supply, and equipment, all also built to
| fulfill that order, on time and at high quality.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| They didn't have computers, but they did have card machines.
|
| https://www.ww2online.org/image/large-replica-punch-cards-bu...
|
| https://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/405.html
|
| https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/10264546...
|
| dieselpunk ftw
| cgh wrote:
| Hard to upvote this comment enough. D-Day alone was
| staggeringly immense, the largest naval, air and land operation
| in history, likely never to be matched. And the entire thing
| was basically planned and executed with pen and paper.
| retrac wrote:
| The number of telex channels available between the US and UK at
| the peak of the war was several thousands. That is, very
| roughly, about 10 kilobytes per second altogether. Telex was
| very important then. Message forwarding/switching is arguably
| the precursor to packet switched networking and it was first
| used at large scale during the war. I would suggest that era
| achieved what we have now in terms of telecoms, just for a much
| smaller user base: almost-instant encrypted text messaging.
| Supposedly there were 236 billion telegrams in the US in 1945.
| AcerbicZero wrote:
| Those are some impressive maps, with tons of foreshadowing,
| barely 9 days into the conflict.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| There was a 1937 one worrying about the partition of the US:
| https://imgur.com/O4tp7JB
| hyggetrold wrote:
| This is awesome. Cool to see the history told this way.
|
| I would also encourage folks to seek out photos/footage of the
| concentration camps in Europe as well as the aftermath of the
| atomic bombings in Japan. When you see the unsanitized horror it
| really gives you pause that people did this to each other. And
| why war is worth trying to prevent.
| sorokod wrote:
| Looking at the first map, the line between Paris and Berlin goes
| straight through Ardennes where Army Group A broke the French
| line in May 1940.
| aenopix wrote:
| I see Palestine in one of those maps (never israel). It was
| always Palestine
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