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Post by timothylane on Mar 22, 2020 11:52:10 GMT -8
One mistake the Allies made was to have a German politician sign the armistice rather than von Hindenburg as Army commander. Professor Mork made a point of this in our German history class. It would certainly have made it harder for von Hindenburg to repeat the "stab in the back" and especially the "we were unbeaten" rhetoric. (On the other hand, Ludendorff called for an armistice a month or so earlier, after which he was replaced with General Groener, and that never kept him from spouting the same lies. But he was not merely a nationalist but an outright Nazi, and in fact ran for President as a Nazi after Friedrich Ebert died. In the end, von Hindenburg was elected instead. Groener, incidentally, did NOT follow the Army line after the war. This no doubt is one reason he wasn't given a position after Hitler took over.)
The signer, incidentally, was Matthias Erzberger of the Center Party. He was assassinated by nationalist fanatics a few years later, no doubt because of it.
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Post by timothylane on Mar 22, 2020 12:02:52 GMT -8
Japanese tanks were lightly armed and armored, which I suppose was useful when the used them in rubber plantations in Malaya. But I wonder if they had any on these various Pacific islands, including Bougainville (one of the Solomon Islands geographically, but separate politically due to events in the late 19th Century). Even a light tank could do some damage to newly landed troops.
I believe I saw the tail end of Santa Fe Trail, which was set at Harper's Ferry. (Stuart really was there, with Lee in command. Both just happened to be available in Washington, DC at the time. As I recall, most of their troops were actually Marines, no doubt from the Washington Navy Yard.) The historicity of most of it was minimal, since I believe it has Stuart and Custer facing Brown in Kansas. I don't think Stuart was there, and Custer certainly wasn't -- he didn't graduate from West Point until 1861.
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Post by kungfuzu on Mar 22, 2020 12:08:10 GMT -8
When I was a little boy, I loved looking into our World Book Encyclopedia. One of the things I liked to see was military rankings. They fascinated me. They had pictures of the insignia for each rank in the army and navy. Since that time, some 60 years back, I believe ranks have been changed and expanded. This is what I recall. Army Navy Insignia General of the army I don't recall the official term 5 silver stars
General Admiral 4 silver stars
Lt. General Vice Admiral 3 silver stars
Major General Rear-Admiral 2 silver stars I never understood how a major general was lower that a lt. general
Brigadier General Commodore (Since Changed) 1 silver star I seem to recall there were no serving commodores at the time Colonel Captain Silver Eagle
Lt. Colonel Commader Silver oak leaf
Major Lt. Commander Bronze oak leaf
Captain Lieutenant Double silver bar
1st Lieutenant Lieutenant J.G. One silver bar
2nd Lieutenant Ensign (as in Pulver) One bronze bar The enlisted ranks were easy, except that there were all sorts of different sergeants.
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Post by kungfuzu on Mar 22, 2020 12:25:20 GMT -8
Few realize what a Prussian Junker scoundrel Hindenburg was. Before his own death, he knowingly paved the way for Hitler.
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Post by timothylane on Mar 22, 2020 12:41:52 GMT -8
I think the Navy 5-star rank is Fleet Admiral. Commodore is more or less a temporary rank. I never paid much attention to the insignia. I'm not sure if our Funk and Wagnalls Encyclopedia had that anyway. (We also had a Richard's Topical Encyclopedia from the late '40s.) Later my mother's second husband had the Encyclopedia Britannica with excellent military coverage (much of it by Liddell-Hart). You bet I read a lot of those articles in detail.
What happened to all those, I don't know. Eventually I got my own set of Encyclopedia Britannica. That was left behind in my house along with everything else. But I kept buying the World Almanac every year until a year or so ago. That's where I would get a lot of that sort of reference material.
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Post by kungfuzu on Mar 22, 2020 12:54:10 GMT -8
For some reason, the insignia fascinated me as a little boy and such things stick with you even when you are older.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Mar 23, 2020 7:05:18 GMT -8
The Sante Fe Trail was pretty awful very early. I moved on and I found a couple quite watchable movies: First is 1945’s Captain Kidd which is currently playing on Amazon Prime Video. Certainly this is an imperfect story. But this is more than made up for by the performance of Charles Laughton as Captain William Kidd. This would be an obvious b-movie without him. But he raised this to a very watchable feature film. Randolph Scott is tolerable as Adam Mercy. John Carradine is interesting as one of Kidd’s partners in crime. The premise of the movie is the imperfect part. Capt. Kidd, already quite involved in piracy, somehow convinces a somewhat daft King William III (Henry Daniell) to provide an escort to a valuable ship coming out of India. Once the premise is set, Kidd is wonderfully treacherous at every turn. Reginald Owen is good as his valet, Cary Shadwell, who has been hired so that Kidd can pass as a blue-blood. Kidd has ambitions not just of fortune but of a title. This movie is never dull. We now move onto 1942’s Desperate Journey. After laying an egg with The Sante Fe Trail, I found a similar one by random chance. And if you search your Roku, you will find this pops up on a free channel called “TV Time: Feature Films.” It has a whole slug of old movies although the streaming quality of some of them are poor. Basically Errol Flynn, Ronald Reagan, Alan Hale, and Arthur Kennedy (and a few more along the way here and there) bomb a high-value target in Germany. But they are shot down and then are on the run as they try to make their way back to England. This is an eye-rollinging corny comedy at times. Alan Hale hams it up as Flight Sergeant Kirk Edwards — quite too much at times. This movie is like the forerunner of Hogan’s Heroes. It mixes the serious with the comedic, although Desperate Journey is much more toward the serious side. They kill or maim a whole bunch of Nazis as they make their way through Germany. By rights, this shouldn’t be entertaining. But the characters do grow on you. It does turn out to be good fun if not taken too seriously. And this movie is clearly not meant to be taken very seriously. Helping to anchor the picture is Raymond Massey who plays a memorable Nazi commander.
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Post by timothylane on Mar 23, 2020 8:08:22 GMT -8
Kidd actually was sent out as a privateer, and it's not clear that he was ever really a pirate. It's also not clear how much control he had over his own ship (he claimed none at all). One of the main charges he was convicted of was murdering a sailor early on. In essence, he fell afoul of politics. The people who sent him out were replaced by others who wanted him to testify in such a way as to hurt them. When he wouldn't, they were quite happy to toss him overboard metaphorically.
William Kidd was at best a poor captain and a gross bungler, but as a pirate he was certainly no Edward Teach.
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Post by kungfuzu on Mar 23, 2020 8:54:54 GMT -8
This is the Western pirate who had the most success.
There were some Asian pirates that could even teach him a thing or two. Of course, I am referring only to those pirates who sailed the Seven Seas, not those who sit in political office. They are the biggest thieves of all.
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Post by timothylane on Mar 23, 2020 9:32:34 GMT -8
I think I may have heard of him. Of course, Kidd and Teach (Blackbeard) are the names everyone knows.
Incidentally, George Macdonald Fraser in his Hollywood History of the World gives special credit in at least one respect to Captain Blood: its presentation of the articles about how the loot was to be shared. Naturally I looked at that portion of the article on Roberts.
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Post by kungfuzu on Mar 23, 2020 9:53:44 GMT -8
Yup. I had never heard of Roberts until a few years back. I found this surprising considering his success.
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Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
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Post by Brad Nelson on Mar 23, 2020 10:20:27 GMT -8
Obviously there’s a real story there about Captain Kidd. But it will be hard for reality to beat the fictional one of Charles Laughton. You just can’t help noticing how he enlivens the character. Every line of dialogue is a juicy morsel as he delivers it, although you wonder if much of this would have sounded cornball coming from a lesser actor. We now move onto a true uber-classic: 1938’s Angels wit Dirty Faces. This might be difficult to find, although this site seems to have it. This is old-style, old-school Hollywood. A lot of this shtick would seem corny today, such as the way Cagney pushes his hand forward as he shoots his revolver. I’ve certainly seen this before, but I forgot how funny it was as they recreate Stooges slapstick for much of the first have before the film goes much darker. The Dead End Kids can be found in many movies, including this one, Crime School (with Humphrey Bogart), and one of my particular favorites, Dead End (also with Bogart). Bogart is in Angels with Dirty Faces as well. He’s an old friend of Cagney’s from childhood. But things aren’t necessarily how they used to be between them. Pat O’Brien (another old childhood friend of Cagney’s) plays the good-guy priest. This is a can’t-miss classic.
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