Straw Politicians in military fiction

Actually the French tanks were only fairly good, nothing like 'quite good'. Quite apart from a high proportion of the tank park being FT-17s kept in service after WWI, the new builds had the same crew ideas as those FTs - one-man turrets! So the commander had to load, aim, and with any luck hit an enemy target at the same time as telling the driver which way to go, looking out for more targets, watching for enemy surprises, receiving and/or issuing orders via his radio operator in tanks that actually had radios, and in the absence of a radio using and looking for flag signals. Compound that with French 'tactics', including fuel shortages and lack of spare parts because the support detachments were usually miles behind the tanks and often weren't even aware of where the tanks they supported had got to, and you have some idea of French capabilities.

Cheers, John

Dilandu wrote:

MAD-4A wrote:The answer to that is simple, the same idiots who restarted the Manty/Haven war, Idiot politicians (like the ones you complained about being portrayed) who, after WWI took over France and England, cut the military budget to dump the money in their own pockets, stripped those countries (and the U.S. btw) of any real military. When Germany started rearming (and interfering in Spain/Сhezoslovakia) nobody (except Russia who was complacent since they were in on it with him at the time) had any military capable of doing anything about it. I spent most of my life disparaging Chamberlin but recently found that he really had no choice. What he did do was reinvigorate/revamp the British arms industry, so when Churchill stepped in he had something to work with (still a ticks hair from being too-little-too-late).

Simple - but, unfortunately, only partially true)

1) France spended quite a lot of funds on the army in 1920-1930s. They have best fortifications possible, quite good tanks and artillery.

Problem is, that army itself stuck to the defensive "total mobilization" doctrine, which became, essentially, dogmatic. All criticism of the doctrine was strongly discouraged - basically that's why only in late 1930s French Army started experimenting with mobile tank forces.

So, the problem was NOT the politics, but rather the doctrinalism and purblindness of most senior officers.


2) The France and USSR, actually, have a treaty with Сzechoslovakia. Problem was, that there was Poland in between, that went hysterical about the mere idea of allowing the transit of Soviet troops.

The reason was, that Polish Army at this time was prepared to attack Czechoslovakia, because Poland wanted parts of Czechoslovakia, too. The USSR was ready to move troops against Germany - but Poland bluntly refused to allow their transit on ANY terms, and Britain supported Poland. Without any guarantees of USSR support, France alone wasn't eager to start the war with Germany, especially considering uncertain British position.

3) In 1936, Britain allowed Germany to re-arm their navy without even bothering to consult with France on that situation.

Jonathan_S wrote:...and start moving money out of the US through trade imbalance.
However instead the US simply "pretended" quite a lot of the gold didn't exist. They just didn't issue the additional gold notes to match the actual supply of gold - so the US dollar, in the 20s, didn't inflate like it "should have" with that much gold on hand.

Was there skimming by the Politicians? Probably. But I don't think that was the major reason their military forces were neglected through the 20s and early 30s.

The US was transferring Millions of US dollars to Germany, in the form of long term loans, the Germans were in-turn using that money to pay back the Allied extortion fee imposed on them after the war, which in-turn moved that money to Brittan and France, which is what paid for their economic boons and allowed them to by US products which fed that money back into the US economy. When this borrow-pay system fell flat in Germany due to the runaway inflation, the rest went poof and that's where you had the Great Depressions.

John Prigent wrote:Actually the French tanks were only fairly good, nothing like 'quite good'. Quite apart from a high proportion of the tank park being FT-17s kept in service after WWI, the new builds had the same crew ideas as those FTs - one-man turrets! So the commander had to load, aim, and with any luck hit an enemy target at the same time as telling the driver which way to go, looking out for more targets, watching for enemy surprises, receiving and/or issuing orders via his radio operator in tanks that actually had radios, and in the absence of a radio using and looking for flag signals. Compound that with French 'tactics', including fuel shortages and lack of spare parts because the support detachments were usually miles behind the tanks and often weren't even aware of where the tanks they supported had got to, and you have some idea of French capabilities.

That and the fact that the French liked to use high command positions in-place of rest-homes. most of the French high-command were near retirement in the last war and had no clue what a 'mobile war' even was. During the German invasion, orders consistently came down for units to 'pull back' to areas already well behind German lines!

MAD-4A wrote:

John Prigent wrote:Actually the French tanks were only fairly good, nothing like 'quite good'. Quite apart from a high proportion of the tank park being FT-17s kept in service after WWI, the new builds had the same crew ideas as those FTs - one-man turrets! So the commander had to load, aim, and with any luck hit an enemy target at the same time as telling the driver which way to go, looking out for more targets, watching for enemy surprises, receiving and/or issuing orders via his radio operator in tanks that actually had radios, and in the absence of a radio using and looking for flag signals. Compound that with French 'tactics', including fuel shortages and lack of spare parts because the support detachments were usually miles behind the tanks and often weren't even aware of where the tanks they supported had got to, and you have some idea of French capabilities.

That and the fact that the French liked to use high command positions in-place of rest-homes. most of the French high-command were near retirement in the last war and had no clue what a 'mobile war' even was. During the German invasion, orders consistently came down for units to 'pull back' to areas already well behind German lines!

Made worse, from what I understand, by the fact that the French learned the wrong lesson on communication security from WWI. They'd had issues with having radio communications intercepted (and decoded), but motorcycle dispatch or telephone / telegraph lines were fairly immune to that (though there were problems early on with unshielded untwisted wires leaking enough that you could read their signal through ground).

So instead of deciding that better encryption or codebooks were the answer, they assumed the largely static nature of trench warfare would continue and set up communication plans relying largely on hard lines or physical messages - so when the war went mobile they didn't have radio nets to fall back on. When a unit or headquarters was moving it was basically out of contact (in theory dispatch riders could still get too and from, but finding the unit again was a challenge)

That meant the HQs weren't getting intel on where units were when they were displaced, or in a fighting retreat; and even if they found where they were often had no way to send timely orders back.


If you're coordinating your next offensive from a fixed position you can deal with half day delays in communications. If you're forced into a mobile fight you can't.

Reality is stranger than fiction.

The military has weapon systems using complex technology and physics but can't figure out that it is absurd to think that a 150 ton airliner, including the 34 tons of fuel, could not destroy a 400,000+ tons skyscraper in les than two hours.

umbrarchist wrote:Reality is stranger than fiction.

The military has weapon systems using complex technology and physics but can't figure out that it is absurd to think that a 150 ton airliner, including the 34 tons of fuel, could not destroy a 400,000+ tons skyscraper in les than two hours.

I think it's because the people who looked at the figures simply looked at the fuel load and original impact while forgetting about the chemical interaction between the molten aluminium of the plane and the cladding used in the walls.
Yeah. Add the two together and you get a highly energetic exothermic reaction which proves to be more than hot enough to semi-melt the support girders, hence the collapse.
Then again, that would shift part of the blame to the people who chose the cladding, and they were Americans, so obviously it had to be avoided.

forgetting about the chemical interaction between the molten aluminium of the plane and the cladding used in the walls.

Oh please!

What is going to happen if aluminum melts? What are the chances it will flow away from the heat source? How fast is it going to freeze again once it flows some distance.

That is one of the feeblest excuses I have heard.

So why don't we have a simulation of the north tower. Completely remove 5 storeys, 91 through 95. That would create a 60 foot gap. Drop the top 15 storeys 60 feet and simulate how much damage they could do.

So how is it that we now have the computing power to simulate the climate 100 years into the future well enough to be taken seriously, and yet the WTC was designed with an IBM 1620, only 4 times as powerful ans the ENIAC, but we can't get a collapse simulation in 15 years.

Maybe we need robots to replace the military. LOL

imperatorzor wrote:This trope that comes up in military fiction that can be very annoying: broad antagonism of civilian government. Making politicians out (or at least those who don't unquestioningly support the military) as being a bunch of hopelessly naive mush minded fools or corrupt fat-cats solely interested in lining their own pockets who always leave the country vulnerable by not letting the military solve everything, not giving the military all the funding it wants and so forth. Leaving aside the simple points that A: Civilian Leadership operates on very different principles than military leadership because military leadership has at it's core the idea that decisions need to be made quickly, obeyed and followed to the letter while civilian leadership has to discuss things, deal with conflicts of interests, resolve conflicts through mediation and persuasion, work out compromises and all that, B: Applying military thinking to civilian governments almost always ends badly, C: The Government has other duties beyond maintaining a military like running schools, building and maintaining infrastructure, environmental efforts, funding R&D, providing healthcare, providing police, providing support for the poor and courts and all that stuff and if it devotes most of the budgetary pie chart to the military they'll still end up with less funding in the end as the pie's radius will shrink as said nation would have a compromised economy (on top of all the other problems that would come) and D: the military brandishes around a lot of power and of course the solution to abuses in power is oversight.

On the same note the opposite which makes out all military leaders as a bunch of crazy warmongers who are always itching to blow stuff up is no better. Then again Strawmanning is a bad way to convey points in general.

Zor

It´s essentially standard tropes for authors who wants a an easy antagonistic setup.
Easily recognised stereotypes all around, zero effort "drama" creation.

That at least is one of the very good sides of authors like RFC, they DO write the more complex, they do spend the effort to set up some more interesting sides.

MAD-4A wrote:If you like that then there's Battletech, everyone in Battletech is a 'good guy', & everyone is a 'bad guy' depending on which faction you get attached to. I am a long time FedCom advocate - I quit reading after the FedCom civil war where Prince Victor won, his 'evil' sister was exiled and he decided "I don't want to play any more" and split his realm between his other two siblings , My second favorite (backup) was Wolf's Dragoon, but then Outreach gets nuked well I guess they just don't want me as a fan anymore, but I have friends who are avid Clanners, Smoke jaguar, Wolf... Others Draconis Combine or Capellan Confederation etc... (both of whom I hate - old enemies of FedCom).

Me, i´ve mostly played as Dracs, Lyrans, FRR and probably most of all as Magistracy of Canopus.

Fedcom? Psh, they´re just total fanwank author fiat!

My(/our) alternate history(which we even gamed out) is much more fun, where the initial suggestion from Hanse ends up in the hands of Melissa at a BAD BAD timing(early 20s, waaayy too early), which results in a very rude, and accidentally not personally only delivered, message back, the accidental part becoming a "great insult that must be avenged!", at least according to the troublesome elements in the FS who wants to discredit Hanse and/or stuff themselves with a bit of extra money or assets, or just glory...

Hanse groans in annoyance and "retaliates" by setting up for the war suddenly desired against LC, to be led by the as many of his political opponents as he can manage, while using the worst possible troops for it that he can ever possibly justify.

DC notes that FS will be very busy for the foreseeable future and decides to fix the Rasalhague issue one way or another in the meanwhile(this leads to roughly the same FRR except without the ronin wars, and finishes much faster, LC also gets involved and "donates" a few border planets to get a quick deal out of the event, essentially securing as much of that border as easily as possible).

The FWL also takes not and gleefully starts preparing to hit LC while it´s busy defending against FS. They fail to realise that Hanse knows perfectly well that attacking LC effectively isn´t realistic without going through either DC or FWL as well, and he has chosen FWL to do the honors.
FWL does expect CC to be the ones overrun by FS and prepares their own attack of opportunity in that direction.

FS beginning attack wave basically runs into a brick wall, perfectly in line with what Hanse expected and preferred, wanting to get rid of some idiots and his least loyal troops.
He´s not ready for what is going very haywire.

FWL uses the troops prepared to attack CC along with some other from that area to completely lock down the fights on their planets. Quickly turns into serious meatgrinders way beyond Hanse´s expectations(or anyone´s really, as 2 major well prepared assault forces impacting each other is not the norm) Then...

C* got involved similarly with FRR and helped it go quite smoothly(they really want more divided states after all), and looking at all the fun stuff and even some goodtech that DC managed to squeeze out of the deal(slightly better than canon), mr bigwig chancellor Liao figures out how to get in on the action...
He offers Candace a similar deal as the FRR got, except with the provision that she has to take and hold a certain number of FS planets or the St Ives Compact will be reabsorbed into the CC. With the C* acting as the neutral 3rd party making sure eeveryone has plenty of incentive to stick to the deal.



The FWL slightly panicking sends off orders to cancel the massive attack prepared against LC. A MIM operative intercepts the order, makes it look like it was properly sent, mess up the communications just enough to matter then flees for home with some very valuable information, making a very short stop on Andurien on the way... Oh, she also sent the info to LC.

The FWL attacks into LC do not run into a meatgrinder, worse, much worse, they´re caught before planetfall and more or less captured.

FWL reacts by trying to set up defense against the enemies...
And wow, where DID that Duchy of Andurien suddenly come from? Oh and the CC didn´t bother seriously defending the few planets the FS took, instead they now hit the FWL at the same time the MoC does.

Meanwhile, the TC thinks it´s a great time to mess with FS. On this occasion, surprisingly, they are entirely correct.
Because the DC, now with some neato lostech gear smacks into FS as well.

Supported by C*, Outreach and 5 nearby planets declare indepence during the mess.

FWL scrambles to react to now having effectively 5 enemies facing them from 3 directions, LC uses captured equipment to bolster its troop numbers and launch a limited counter offensive against FWL while just holding ground against FS(who in the area is mostly tied up fighting the best or 2nd best FWL troops)...

FWL forced to a very bad peace with nearly all enemies.
FS, well Hanse mostly did get what he intended, problem is he also got a crapload of landgrabs from TC,DC and SIC, which all together forces FS to a less than great peace, but Hanse uses it to clear out the idiots and disgrace them for pushing such an "obviously stupid war just because a pre-teen girl threw a little temper tantrum" so it´s not a complete loss at least.



Big mess. Timeframe somewhere around 3020 to 3023

End result, a much stronger, slightly larger FRR than canon(+6 planets compared to canon IIRC).

A StIvesCompact which as long as it retains enough planets formerly of the FS, has its independency from CC guaranteed by C*, ending up with 37 planets.

A Duchy of Andurien that is viable(simply because FWL got whacked too much to risk another war with anyone anytime soon) with 26 planets.

A CC that lost 20 planets and gained 93(not entirely sure of the number but hopefully correct), loosing surprisingly little for its gains, and effectively conning C* to give them a nice little tech power up.

A LC who because it was reasonably well prepared, including letting the Dragoons be a primary part of the defense against FS, in the end only lost the planets it freely gave up to FRR to make that border happy, while taking 33 planets along the FWL border.

DC scampered off with 57 planets more, nothing important but improving borders a lot in several cases. The 84 planets for the FRR hurt, but with drastically less issues during the secession, they come out of it much better than canon.

MoC meanwhile took back a bundle of the planet historically affiliated with it, abusing perfect information, chaos and weakness in the FWL to aquire 37 planets.

While TC was taking it cool and easy, just pinching off 13 planets from FS as some payback for old wars onesided the other way.


In short, we end up with a much less monolithic fanwank FS/FC, a DC that is a better big bad antagonist than ever, a CC that can almost be called a fullsized(rather than one-bitesized ) realm and several smaller nations that are suddenly much more interesting and viable to play in strategic games.

Michael Everett wrote:...Then again, that would shift part of the blame to the people who chose the cladding, and they were Americans, so obviously it had to be avoided.

Yea, like they, or the terrorists, new that was going to happen. Why didn't you send the builders a message when they were building them to let them know? Guess it was your fault too, for not warning them, since you seem to have 100% foresight, oh and the crew of H.M.S. Sheffield as-well.