The Night Mail

[PhilJ W]

5 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

How do you know he uses a commode, pray tell. 

 

Jamie

 

5 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

Obvious - more commodious. 

Wasn't Commodious a Roman General?

[Hroth]

3 minutes ago, PhilJ W said:

 

Wasn't Commodious a Roman General?

 

Near enuff

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodus

[Hroth]

8 minutes ago, PhilJ W said:

Also so many resources was expended on the 'Final solution', the Holocaust that it reduced the effectiveness of the German military.

 

And Hitler being so convinced that he would win by 1943 that a number of potential devastating technical developments were put on hold.

 

[Compound2632]

9 minutes ago, PhilJ W said:

Wasn't Commodious a Roman General?

 

5 minutes ago, Hroth said:

Near enuff

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodus

 

He was Emperor when the Empire was at its most commodious. 

[Northmoor]

1 hour ago, Hroth said:

 

Its not a trainset, its prototypical!

 

Though a "bit" further south, I've seen photographic evidence of a Bulleid Air Smoothed Pacific with a single coach train...

 

In the early 1980s, most Swansea-Milford Haven trains were loco + four coaches.  For some reason one of the early evening ones was normally a Class 47 + three coaches; on at least one occasion Dad was it reduced to just two.  I would have loved to have been on that if the driver was trying to make up lost time!  West Highland and Far North services were also routinely short until replaced by second generation DMUs.

[iL Dottore]

1 hour ago, PhilJ W said:

Also so many resources was expended on the 'Final solution', the Holocaust that it reduced the effectiveness of the German military.

One of the bitter twists of the Final Solution was that many of those who survived owed their lives to the SS. When the Nazi Regime embarked upon the Final Solution there were two opposing camps within Nazi officialdom: those who wanted to immediately kill the Jews, Slavs, Gypsies and other "undesirables" and those who wanted to work the Jews, Slavs, Gypsies and other "undesirables" to death. If you got sent to a concentration camp you had a chance of survival, if you were sent to an extermination camp (like Sobibor) you died. So the SS who wanted to work the inmates to death ironically ensured that some survived.

 

One must be thankful that Hitler meddled and surrounded himself with toadies (not all the senior members of the regime were incompetent, far from it, but they did his bidding - no matter how counterproductive for the regime's war effort).

[Oldddudders]

1 hour ago, Hroth said:

Though a "bit" further south, I've seen photographic evidence of a Bulleid Air Smoothed Pacific with a single coach train...

 

Indeed you have, probably working tender-first. It was effectively a light-engine move from Wadebridge, where there was a turntable, to Padstow, for the up Atlantic Coast Express. Just a few miles. 

[Craigw]

51 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

One of the bitter twists of the Final Solution was that many of those who survived owed their lives to the SS. When the Nazi Regime embarked upon the Final Solution there were two opposing camps within Nazi officialdom: those who wanted to immediately kill the Jews, Slavs, Gypsies and other "undesirables" and those who wanted to work the Jews, Slavs, Gypsies and other "undesirables" to death. If you got sent to a concentration camp you had a chance of survival, if you were sent to an extermination camp (like Sobibor) you died. So the SS who wanted to work the inmates to death ironically ensured that some survived.

 

One must be thankful that Hitler meddled and surrounded himself with toadies (not all the senior members of the regime were incompetent, far from it, but they did his bidding - no matter how counterproductive for the regime's war effort).

 

 

It was not all down to rivalry. The Reich needed labour to support the war effort so the brutal reality is that those who could work were used as slave labour. Those not considered capable were murdered. 

[polybear]

4 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

.......and the eventual nuclear bombing of Japan (although some claim that it wasn't the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that caused the Japanese to surrender......

 

 

ISTR a programme reporting (alleging?) that the USA didn't need to bomb Nagasaki - but they did so as a "demo" to Russia so they knew it wasn't a "one off".  Does anyone know if there is any truth in this?

[Winslow Boy]

5 hours ago, Hroth said:

 

There are worse things that can come out of Squash Courts...

 

A commode.

[Hroth]

1 hour ago, polybear said:

 

ISTR a programme reporting (alleging?) that the USA didn't need to bomb Nagasaki - but they did so as a "demo" to Russia so they knew it wasn't a "one off".  Does anyone know if there is any truth in this?

 

It was certainly a suggestion in the novel The New Men  by C.P. Snow, published in 1954.

 

[jamie92208]

1 hour ago, polybear said:

 

ISTR a programme reporting (alleging?) that the USA didn't need to bomb Nagasaki - but they did so as a "demo" to Russia so they knew it wasn't a "one off".  Does anyone know if there is any truth in this?

It was the secondary target that day.  I can't remember what the primary one was but it was obscured by cloud. 

 

Jamie

[pH]

43 minutes ago, jamie92208 said:

It was the secondary target that day.  I can't remember what the primary one was but it was obscured by cloud. 

 

Jamie

Kokura.

[rockershovel]

23 hours ago, TheQ said:

Many men of the 8th army had been fighting long before that.

Granddads regiment of the time ,  The 4th Royal Tank Regiment, he fought with them in Europe before Dunkirk, then in north eastern Africa kicking the Italians out of Ethiopia, before returning to North Africa and fighting before the 8th army was created for the desert gallop..

My late father fought in Ethiopia - which was the original Italian debacle, the origin of the myth of Italian military excellence, in which an under-motivated, under-equipped Italian army was comprehensively defeated by a fully professional British regular force. 

 

Stories of mobile officers' pleasure houses and silk uniform shirts mostly date from this period, along with the wonderfully nicknamed General "Electric Whiskers" Bergonzoli (sp?)

 

Dad was never in Europe before 1944 AFAIK. 

[rockershovel]

8 hours ago, polybear said:

 

ISTR a programme reporting (alleging?) that the USA didn't need to bomb Nagasaki - but they did so as a "demo" to Russia so they knew it wasn't a "one off".  Does anyone know if there is any truth in this?

The Allies - meaning, by then the USA - had a fiendishly complex challenge to resolve in the Pacific

 

- defeat the Japanese in their homeland. This was being pursued through the hugely expensive B29 programme with a conventional invasion of hideous cost and scale being planned

- bring about the surrender of the Japanese in Manchuria. This was effectively a self-contained country.. the USSR effected this, but couldn't hold it

- bring about the surrender of numerous Japanese garrisons around the Pacific

- bolster the failing Nationalist regime in China, which would fall to the Communists between 1945 and 1950

- contain Communist expansion in SE Asia, which would remain a flash point into the 1970s

- reorganise Japanese society completely post-War

- prevent Soviet expansion into the Japanese home islands

 

The conclusion was that a show of overwhelming force was the preferred solution, hence the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. When that didn't produce immediate results, Nagasaki followed. There was NO Plan B, because the US couldn't field ANOTHER viable nuclear device at that time....

[jamie92208]

I have a vague memory that a third device, another plutonium bomb like the Nagasaki one, was not far off being built.  Another factor was that by then, Truman was president.  He had been an Artillery officer in WW1 and believed in the use of overwhelming force to bring about an end.  

 

Jamie

[rockershovel]

3 minutes ago, jamie92208 said:

I have a vague memory that a third device, another plutonium bomb like the Nagasaki one, was not far off being built.  Another factor was that by then, Truman was president.  He had been an Artillery officer in WW1 and believed in the use of overwhelming force to bring about an end.  

 

Jamie

The US had a whole pipeline of them. Its just that they couldn't produce another air strike quickly. 

 

Anyway, the tactical use of nuclear weapons was still unresolved. There was an alternative plan (with the added attraction of ending the firebombing campaign) of using them as tactical devices in support of the invasion. 

 

[iL Dottore]

One of the outcomes of WWII was that of turning poor, essentially agrarian, countries like Italy, Japan and Switzerland into industrial and financial powerhouses, whilst other countries - ostensibly the winners (UK, France) - became much poorer. There is a convincing argument made by some historians that the US deliberately bankrupted the UK during the Second World War - fearful of a rich and powerful post-war British Empire (and for other reasons besides). Certainly, what the US demanded of the UK before it handed over some clapped-out destroyers was deliberately onerous.

 

There’s an interesting branch of serious historical study that looks at the “What Ifs” of history. Not the silly “what if the Romans had machine guns” sort of nonsense, but rather “what would have been the consequences if only one thing had been different?” One example being what if Halifax and not Churchill had become PM in 1940.

 

The other aspect of history that I also find fascinating is the perennial argument of “Great Men of History” versus “The Forces of History” (I’m sure historians have proper terms for these). In the first case it’s said that without X, Y would not have happened; in the second case it’s asserted that, even without X, Y would have happened anyway. In a more specific example the first reading of history asserts that had Hitler been killed in the Munich putsch, WWII would never have happened. The second reading of history asserts that even had Hitler been killed, the economic, financial, societal and political forces of the time would have thrown up someone just like Hitler and WWII would have happened anyway.

 

Exploring the “what ifs” of history with erudite, well read and like minded friends and doing so over a good bottle of whisky, is certainly one of life’s little pleasures.

[iL Dottore]

In regards to the ending of the war in the Pacific, there’s an interesting take on it put forward by some historians. They claim that by mid 1944 the Japanese were prepared to surrender but on only one condition: that they could keep the Emperor who, at the time, was considered divine. The Allies, insistent on “unconditional surrender” rejected the Japanese approaches - condemning the Pacific to another year of war.

 

And after all that death and destruction, the Americans let the Japanese keep the Emperor after all.

[iL Dottore]

Getting back on track (pun intended), I’ve been wandering through the jungle that is YouTube and came across a railway enthusiast who put up two intriguing videos about the two new SBB double deck EMUs. One from Stadler (so home grown) and one from Bombardier.
 

The Vlogger (who is British) was particularly scathing about the Bombardier EMU - highlighting the numerous technical problems and the (in his words) barely adequate seating whilst being very positive about the Stadler EMU. 

 

I like neither (but I agree that the Stadler EMU is better than the Bombardier EMU), preferring the “old fashioned” loco-hauled rolling stock - which I find far, far more comfortable. Now I understand the need for double-deck rolling stock - with essentially zero space in Switzerland for new track, double deck carriages double capacity at minimal cost. Capacity that is desperately needed on the high traffic Geneva-Bern-Zurich and Basel-Zurich corridors.

 

But why, for heaven’s sake, go for EMUs? SBB has double-deck loco hauled rolling stock - so could have just upgraded that fleet. So why fixed rake EMUs?

 

Can anyone clarify for me the advantages of having a fixed formation EMU (or DMU for that matter) over loco-hauled stock? You need the same number of staff for both types of train, but with loco-hauled stock if one carriage develops a defect it can be removed - leaving the rest of the train in service. Plus you can easily strengthen a formation at peak demand times (SBB know the loading well in advance - when you book tickets in advance online or on the SBB app, you will be informed if that particular train has low, medium or high occupancy).

[rockershovel]

50 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

In regards to the ending of the war in the Pacific, there’s an interesting take on it put forward by some historians. They claim that by mid 1944 the Japanese were prepared to surrender but on only one condition: that they could keep the Emperor who, at the time, was considered divine. The Allies, insistent on “unconditional surrender” rejected the Japanese approaches - condemning the Pacific to another year of war.

 

And after all that death and destruction, the Americans let the Japanese keep the Emperor after all.

MacArthur correctly identified at least as early as 1944 that the continuation of the Japanese Emperor was essential if any sort of control was to be exerted over Japan. 

 

The problem was that the Emperor was only a figurehead. This meant that the militarist faction controlling the Japanese government had to be ousted first. 

 

 

[jjb1970]

One of the things I find interesting is how the German general staff and generals came out of it with a golden reputation, one which is still held by many despite a lot of revision. They achieved one of the most brilliant campaigns in military history in 1940 but then went downhill rapidly to the point of ineptitude.

 

The standard excuse from the generals for the failure in the USSR was:

 

-it was cold

-it was a big country

-we faced hordes of untermenschen

-Hitler was an idiot who stole all our victories

 

The first two were simple facts that should have been obvious to anyone. One of the oddities of the 1941 winter campaign was that the German army went into the winter with no real winterization and grossly inadequate logistic support yet even if the campaign went anything like as well as hoped in Berlin they faced garrison and mopping up operations over the winter. And it's quite stunning that German planning was so spectacularly wrong in its assessments of Soviet capacity, especially when its own attaché in Moscow was sending pretty good information. After the war the 'lost victory' idea took hold on the back of the many memoirs (especially those of generals like Guderian and von Manstein) yet the imbalance in casualty rates on the battlefield in the east was nothing like as one sided as was once thought nor German tactical superiority while many of the most significant causal factors for German defeat were down to the general staff and military commanders (there was no real strategic plan was Barbarossa beyond an assumption they'd achieve stunning tactical victories which would deliver a strategic victory), the arguments in the late summer which paralysed the German advance, the plan for Kursk etc. Looking at it my view is the German commanders were tactically brilliant but a strategic clown show.

[rockershovel]

1 hour ago, iL Dottore said:

One of the outcomes of WWII was that of turning poor, essentially agrarian, countries like Italy, Japan and Switzerland into industrial and financial powerhouses, whilst other countries - ostensibly the winners (UK, France) - became much poorer. There is a convincing argument made by some historians that the US deliberately bankrupted the UK during the Second World War - fearful of a rich and powerful post-war British Empire (and for other reasons besides). Certainly, what the US demanded of the UK before it handed over some clapped-out destroyers was deliberately onerous.

 

There’s an interesting branch of serious historical study that looks at the “What Ifs” of history. Not the silly “what if the Romans had machine guns” sort of nonsense, but rather “what would have been the consequences if only one thing had been different?” One example being what if Halifax and not Churchill had become PM in 1940.

 

The other aspect of history that I also find fascinating is the perennial argument of “Great Men of History” versus “The Forces of History” (I’m sure historians have proper terms for these). In the first case it’s said that without X, Y would not have happened; in the second case it’s asserted that, even without X, Y would have happened anyway. In a more specific example the first reading of history asserts that had Hitler been killed in the Munich putsch, WWII would never have happened. The second reading of history asserts that even had Hitler been killed, the economic, financial, societal and political forces of the time would have thrown up someone just like Hitler and WWII would have happened anyway.

 

Exploring the “what ifs” of history with erudite, well read and like minded friends and doing so over a good bottle of whisky, is certainly one of life’s little pleasures.

 

1 hour ago, iL Dottore said:

One of the outcomes of WWII was that of turning poor, essentially agrarian, countries like Italy, Japan and Switzerland into industrial and financial powerhouses, whilst other countries - ostensibly the winners (UK, France) - became much poorer. There is a convincing argument made by some historians that the US deliberately bankrupted the UK during the Second World War - fearful of a rich and powerful post-war British Empire (and for other reasons besides). Certainly, what the US demanded of the UK before it handed over some clapped-out destroyers was deliberately onerous.

 

There’s an interesting branch of serious historical study that looks at the “What Ifs” of history. Not the silly “what if the Romans had machine guns” sort of nonsense, but rather “what would have been the consequences if only one thing had been different?” One example being what if Halifax and not Churchill had become PM in 1940.

 

The other aspect of history that I also find fascinating is the perennial argument of “Great Men of History” versus “The Forces of History” (I’m sure historians have proper terms for these). In the first case it’s said that without X, Y would not have happened; in the second case it’s asserted that, even without X, Y would have happened anyway. In a more specific example the first reading of history asserts that had Hitler been killed in the Munich putsch, WWII would never have happened. The second reading of history asserts that even had Hitler been killed, the economic, financial, societal and political forces of the time would have thrown up someone just like Hitler and WWII would have happened anyway.

 

Exploring the “what ifs” of history with erudite, well read and like minded friends and doing so over a good bottle of whisky, is certainly one of life’s little pleasures.

It was well known in London that the British Empire could not survive, far less win another conflict such as 1914-18. It was also politically impossible to openly discuss, far less espouse a policy of war against Germany to defend France. 

 

The "appeasement" policy of the 1930s has to be seen in that light. 

 

Hitler built upon the work of the "Old Right" and financial and industrial complex in securing Germany against Bolshevism. 

 

The Japanese were feeling pretty hard-done-by after 1919. In their view they had "stepped up to the plate" as a modern, industrial power and deserved to be treated as such; they certainly didn't have the resources to stand still. America was NOT going to open its doors to mass immigration from the Pacific. This led to the conclusion that war against the weak, chaotic China was inevitable, and hence conflict with the European Empires. 

 

The great "what if" is the German declaration of war against the USA. This makes no sense, strategically or politically.

 

 

 

[rockershovel]

10 minutes ago, jjb1970 said:

One of the things I find interesting is how the German general staff and generals came out of it with a golden reputation, one which is still held by many despite a lot of revision. They achieved one of the most brilliant campaigns in military history in 1940 but then went downhill rapidly to the point of ineptitude.

 

The standard excuse from the generals for the failure in the USSR was:

 

-it was cold

-it was a big country

-we faced hordes of untermenschen

-Hitler was an idiot who stole all our victories

 

The first two were simple facts that should have been obvious to anyone. One of the oddities of the 1941 winter campaign was that the German army went into the winter with no real winterization and grossly inadequate logistic support yet even if the campaign went anything like as well as hoped in Berlin they faced garrison and mopping up operations over the winter. And it's quite stunning that German planning was so spectacularly wrong in its assessments of Soviet capacity, especially when its own attaché in Moscow was sending pretty good information. After the war the 'lost victory' idea took hold on the back of the many memoirs (especially those of generals like Guderian and von Manstein) yet the imbalance in casualty rates on the battlefield in the east was nothing like as one sided as was once thought nor German tactical superiority while many of the most significant causal factors for German defeat were down to the general staff and military commanders (there was no real strategic plan was Barbarossa beyond an assumption they'd achieve stunning tactical victories which would deliver a strategic victory), the arguments in the late summer which paralysed the German advance, the plan for Kursk etc. Looking at it my view is the German commanders were tactically brilliant but a strategic clown show.

The Germans expected the Soviet Union to collapse under its own internal stresses following Barbarossa.

 

They were very nearly right. 

 

Had they held to their actual plan, of striking through the Caucusus to the Caspian and Iran, thereby cutting of oil supplies to USSR and British Empire then they would have won the war by preventing their opponents from fighting on. Montgomery's victory at El Alamein would have been for nothing; Stalingrad, an isolated garrison like the British and German troops stranded on the French coast at various times. 

 

 

[jjb1970]

9 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

The Germans expected the Soviet Union to collapse under its own internal stresses following Barbarossa.

 

They were very nearly right. 

 

Had they held to their actual plan, of striking through the Caucusus to the Caspian and Iran, thereby cutting of oil supplies to USSR and British Empire then they would have won the war by preventing their opponents from fighting on. Montgomery's victory at El Alamein would have been for nothing; Stalingrad, an isolated garrison like the British and German troops stranded on the French coast at various times. 

 

 

 

The Soviets were never in any real danger of collapsing. They took huge losses but their force regeneration capacity massively exceeded that of Germany and its allies. The Eastern war was decided in the Summer of 1941, by failing to defeat the Soviets. That didn't necessarily mean the USSR would win, but Germany was from then on incapable of inflicting a strategic defeat on the USSR. Taking the Caucasian oil fields wasn't part of Barbarossa, that came in 1942. Germany had to concentrate its efforts in the South and was incapable of reaching the oil fields. The effort probably greatly hastened their defeat.