P.O.Ws

Given that there is no norm against PoWs being put to work, I would expect the best answer to be:

Ship small penny-packets of PoWs to Charis in every merchantman going back (fairly) empty having brought weapons, or equipment, or Charisian soldiers. Not enough to mutiny and take over the galleon, but enough that over time the number of PoWs held in Siddarmark will decrease.

You thus relieve pressure from the food stocks of Siddarmark, and take these men to somewhere less hostile to them.
Once they are in Charis, you settle them somewhere in a "PoW camp" which is actually more like a farming village or logging encampment a good distance from the coast. Give a home detachment of cavalry a job of bringing back runaways. Let the PoWs work, allow them to live there, and by the time the war is over a lot of them might not want to go home.

It might perhaps be wise to try to syphon off the most dogmatic Temple Loyalists, to make trouble less likely.

As I recall a scheme something like this worked rather well for the Allies in WW2, with PoWs in large numbers scattered across Western Canada, with no realistic prospect of ever escaping to return to the fight...

saber964 wrote:Your overlooking the fact that the Grand Fornicator whoops I mean Grand Inquisitor is a megamanical religious fruitcake with delusions of godhood and zealous since of zealotry.

Josef Stalin (nee Jugashvili) springs to mind as a similar example, he not only worked his German POW's to death he had Soviet POW's executed or imprisoned when returned as an example. That said he was marginally better than the Nazi's (and was on the winning side)but had longer to work and thus produced a higher body count.

AirTech wrote:

saber964 wrote:Your overlooking the fact that the Grand Fornicator whoops I mean Grand Inquisitor is a megamanical religious fruitcake with delusions of godhood and zealous since of zealotry.

Josef Stalin (nee Jugashvili) springs to mind as a similar example, he not only worked his German POW's to death he had Soviet POW's executed or imprisoned when returned as an example. That said he was marginally better than the Nazi's (and was on the winning side)but had longer to work and thus produced a higher body count.

Sorry I can't agree with you on this one. While the Nazi's may have been more evil if you look at "The Great Famine" or ‘Holodomor’ (Hunger) with 4-8 million dead and then add the devastation of Poland and top it off with the Jews killed by the Soviets, you just can't say he was better. In shear numbers he was the worst of all the 20th century mass murderers.

Barron wrote:Sorry I can't agree with you on this one. While the Nazi's may have been more evil if you look at "The Great Famine" or ‘Holodomor’ (Hunger) with 4-8 million dead and then add the devastation of Poland and top it off with the Jews killed by the Soviets, you just can't say he was better. In shear numbers he was the worst of all the 20th century mass murderers.

Paging Chairman Mao, will Chairman Mao please come to the desk, he's been forgotten again.

Incognitia wrote:

Barron wrote:Sorry I can't agree with you on this one. While the Nazi's may have been more evil if you look at "The Great Famine" or ‘Holodomor’ (Hunger) with 4-8 million dead and then add the devastation of Poland and top it off with the Jews killed by the Soviets, you just can't say he was better. In shear numbers he was the worst of all the 20th century mass murderers.

Paging Chairman Mao, will Chairman Mao please come to the desk, he's been forgotten again.

We could have a great debate on that one, but we would have to bring Japan as well.

AirTech wrote:

saber964 wrote:Your overlooking the fact that the Grand Fornicator whoops I mean Grand Inquisitor is a megamanical religious fruitcake with delusions of godhood and zealous since of zealotry.

Josef Stalin (nee Jugashvili) springs to mind as a similar example, he not only worked his German POW's to death he had Soviet POW's executed or imprisoned when returned as an example. That said he was marginally better than the Nazi's (and was on the winning side)but had longer to work and thus produced a higher body count.

My best friends family is Ukranian Cossaks. He would argue with you on that one. For a high school project he had to do on the leading cause of death in his family it was on the NKVD. His grandfather strolled into WW2, one of seven children. He was the only one left alive at the end of the war, his great grandfather's generation had been decimated by the famine and Stalin's purges. Ever hear of something called Decossackization? I assure you it's one he is intimately familiar with.

I am in no way saying Hitler wasn't anything other then an absolute monster, but to think Stalin is ANY better in ANY way is laughable. They were both monsters, and I hope they are rotting in whatever hell the two of them deserve with each other.

On the subject of 20th centuries worst dictators the worst in terms of percentage of population was Pol Pot of Cambodia. He killed 25-30% of the population of Cambodia from 1975 - 1979.

As numbers go

Hitler 11 Million 1933 - 1945

Stalin 25-45+ million 1927 - 1954

Mao 50-125+ million 1949 - 1976

Hi Incognitia,

Welcome to the forums, enjoy your favorite simulated beverage on the forum.

The empire has plenty of land that needs to be consecrated (terraformed), especially in places like Silverlode; so the suggestion has some appeal, but the labor requirement in the republic is so much greater and more critical that it may well win out.

I suspect the EoC could find all the farm etc laborers it needs from volunteers within itself, that aren't accepted by the military, given all the newly freed serfs from Zebediah, Corisande, Tarot, and possibly even Chisholm since the empire's only existed 4-4.5 years from the Royal marriage.

German POW's also helped with agricultural production in the states, and many escaped to stay in here for almost 40 years after the war before getting legal waivers.

The Afrika Korps veterans at Fort Sill didn't believe they lost the war, and were shocked when those sent home wrote how bad things really were, and to stay there as long as possible.

The result of that new reality my Dad said, was the service at the Officer's club where the remaining POW's worked was never bettered; your grilled steak plate practically arriving before you barely finished sitting down, despite your waiter not speaking English, because everything was numbered.

What to do with Go4 POW's has been the subject of many threads, including letting Harchong POW's homestead after after years of service.

None of us I feel, have come close to what RFC intends, thus the field is wide open until somebody gets it right.

So feel free to go at it.

L

Incognitia wrote:Given that there is no norm against PoWs being put to work, I would expect the best answer to be:

Ship small penny-packets of PoWs to Charis in every merchantman going back (fairly) empty having brought weapons, or equipment, or Charisian soldiers. Not enough to mutiny and take over the galleon, but enough that over time the number of PoWs held in Siddarmark will decrease.

You thus relieve pressure from the food stocks of Siddarmark, and take these men to somewhere less hostile to them.
Once they are in Charis, you settle them somewhere in a "PoW camp" which is actually more like a farming village or logging encampment a good distance from the coast. Give a home detachment of cavalry a job of bringing back runaways. Let the PoWs work, allow them to live there, and by the time the war is over a lot of them might not want to go home.

It might perhaps be wise to try to syphon off the most dogmatic Temple Loyalists, to make trouble less likely.

As I recall a scheme something like this worked rather well for the Allies in WW2, with PoWs in large numbers scattered across Western Canada, with no realistic prospect of ever escaping to return to the fight...