u/charest

I have read and agree to the rules.

People on reddit are not always familiar with the illusion of choice and free will. If I was a poor bloke from Siberia raised all my life being told about my great leader and offered a great opportunity to « defend » my country while being paid awesomely, pampered in the back doing some job as a mechanic or something, and assured on my contract that I would under no circumstance ever, never see the front lines for any reason, I might join as well.

Most of those men are lied to, taken advantage of and they more or less disappear as soon as they enlist. You can be a victim and a perpetrator at the same time.

It's because contrary to what you seem to express, soldiers from Ancient Greece and Rome that wore those were from the elite too. While you imagine that hoplites and legionnaires were numerous, they represented only a fraction of the armed forces.

​

Metal was crazy expensive to fabricate and maintain, as horses were, so heavy infantry and cavalry units were rather rare and few in numbers and most of the members of the units provided for themselves.

​

Especially in Ancient Greece, typical troops were irregulars and were equipped with very little. A sling or a bow for ranged combat, a spear and a shield for melee, maybe a helmet.

​

As the question encompasses more than a millennia of warfare, 3 continents, multiple cultures and innovations, it will need to be refined for us to provide a better answer.

Don't mistake me for a russian bot, I'm very glad that they are out, but firing at abandoned targets with edited footage taking all the misses out of the video sure creates the illusion that they hit every time.

Considering that the first FW 190 was ordered in 1937 and flew as early as in June 1939, I'd say that this statement is, at best, unfounded.

" Questions should be about what did happen, not what could have happened.
If your question calls for the crafting of a counterfactual scenario to
answer it, you should either look to rework it to remove that element,
or else send it over to r/HistoryWhatIf or /r/HistoricalWhatIf."

Hindsight is 20 / 20. Death on the battlefield is imminent; surrender and you might live.

​

Wait until you face imminent death before assuming that it's so easy to fight to the death and judge those who chose to live another day.

Your question is interesting, but is pure speculation. No historian can answer about something that didn't happen. Please read the rules.

Obviously, the experience changes depending on if you’re shot hundred of miles away from your base, with a large body of water separating you from home or if you’re shot down just behind the lines doing some close air support.  But some basic stuff remains the same. You’re supposed to have a rough idea of where you are. You’re supposed to have a few things with you: compass, maps, rations, a hand gun, and the like.For more details about what some air crews carried with them, look at this neat article: https://medium.com/nc-stories-of-service/wwii-aaf-downed-pilots-survival-kit-1405e6767e5e So, what do you do? Find the North, find the front, get the hell away from the crashing site. Your mates might try to look for you (especially is someone was there to report that you might have made it alive), but the enemy will, too. So, disappear, wait, find an opportunity to get back to your lines. On the Russian front, for example, front lines can be spread over hundreds of kilometers with barely anyone holding the line. In some places, you could walk for days in relative safety. Elsewhere, the area might be packed with troops and hiding will be your only chance.I suggest you have a look at Hans-Ullrich Rudel books, a Stuka pilot that describes a bit about how he got out of being shot down multiple times over Russia. You can also look at this,where one anecdote is very telling. Zabecki, David T.,, ed. (2014). Germany at War: 400Years of Military History. London: ABC-Clio. ISBN 978-1-59884-980-6

Take the end of Fall Blau, somewhere in November 1942. Between Army group A, at the gates of Grozny, and Army group B, deployed inside and around Stalingrad, you have about 800 kilometres, basically held by no one. That is huge, but holding this means nothing, as there's nothing of value to hold; no strategic resource, no city of any significance, no important infrastructure, no railroads and in many case, not even roads. It looks good on a map to say you control this land, but it basically means nothing.

​

A few months later, in Kursk, about 3 million men were massed and fought for inches of land, for a few weeks, with casualties up to 240 000 men. As for scale, for the USA, it is estimated that they lost about 404 000 men for the ENTIRE conflict and both fronts.

​

Sometimes, front lines are extremely narrow, sometimes, non-existent.

I will let the finer details of tactical deployment and combat to others, but one of the clear advantages of being a veteran is the possibility to join elite corps, with better pay and living conditions. For example, one could probably become a Grenadier. According to the Regulations of Internal Economy and of Infantry [Section IX, Article 1] issued in 1791:

Grenadiers are supposed to set an example of good conduct and of subordination. They are always to be selected from the soldiers of the most distinguished and approved merit. Every year, on the 9th September, a list of privates to complete the grenadier company is to be formed. Each of the several captains in a battalion will select the 3 most eligible men from his fusilier company to become grenadiers. These selected men must have been serving for at least for 2 years and be at least 173.5 cm tall (French 5'4"). These selected men were assembled, talked about, and examined by the captain, officers, NCOs and two senior troopers of the grenadier company. The captain of grenadier company listens to the reports and remarks made, note down such as appear to him founded and then decides whom of the selected men put on the list to propose to the commander of demi-brigade. The commander of the demi-brigade judging from the reports which have been given to him by the captain will accept only those of the earlier selected by the captain men who "deem worthy of a decided preference."

You need to understand that Roman armies, like modern ones, have a deep logistical network of thousands of people to supply them. The armies daily needs are staggeringly high and necessitate legions of non-combat personnel and supply lines to gather, forage, prepare, repair, build, communicate and the like. So even if a Roman legion is destroyed, it's only a fraction of the whole system that is gone.

Sources about Sparta are really scarce and are mostly written by outsiders, so I'll keep my answer very broad. To begin, 300 is based on a comic book and does not even remotely pretend to portray history in any credible way. Ancient Greece is often badly portrayed in modern media, but 300 probably wins the gold.

​

If you want to see an idealized Greek warrior, you should have a look at copies of Polykleitos's Doryphoros, considered by many contemporaries as the epitome of masculinity for the 5th century BC. Outside of its obvious esthetic value, the Doryphoros shows us an idealized, albeit much more realist version of the ideal soldier than what you see in 300. Please note that overly massive men were considered barbaric by most Greeks.

​

About food... this is more complicated. Sources are rare and incomplete and the most commonly used source is Athenaeus's The Deipnosophists. Maza would probably be the most iconic meal eaten at the time and was in the center of a simple and frugal diet. Maza was made from roasted barley that would look like a mix between porridge and bread, to be eaten with whatever else you got, which is often not a whole lot: olive oil, cheese, a little bit of fish or meat...nothing to write home about and certainly not enough to create and sustain any excessively muscular bodies. Spartans also had a typical meal, called Zomos, which is a blood broth that was seen as disgusting by most outsiders, but that could provide nutrients to grow some muscle. For Spartans that were austere to a fault, add a little bit of wine from time to time that would be mostly it.

​

For bigger meals (either because you can afford it or a special occasion), Opson was the other part of the diet. To keep it simple, it was a much more diverse and plentiful meal, not unlike our contemporary meals: this higher protein intake certainly could help the soldiers grow muscle and the philosophers grow bellies. For the anecdote, Socrates was supposed to be a very fit soldier, but as he grew older and richer, his belly became part of a lot of stories.

Russians provided oil to the Germans until the very morning of Barbarossa. Romania was a big oil producer and was an ally (a very precious one) until late 1944. The US also provided oil for a long time, especially before the war. Moreover, Germany was very advanced in the area of producing synthetic oil from coal. Combined with all other more negligible sources of oil available from lesser producers, neutral countries and captured soviet territory, it could keep the war machine going.

​

However, oil became a huge liability for the war machine as soon as the war with the soviets started, and the stockpile needed for the Blitzkrieg quickly depleted. The more the war dragged on, the more shortages became severe and by the Ardennes offensive, any sustained ground or air offensive was limited at least in part by the shortage.

​

It is important to keep in mind however that the Wehrmacht never was a fully mechanized army and relied heavily on horse carriage especially for infantry and artillery, so people tend to exaggerate the amount of gas/diesel that was really needed.

​

You should have a look from that source: Shawn P. Keller, Turning Point: A History Of German Petroleum In World War II And Its Lessons For The Role Of Oil In Modern Air Warfare

We'll need more details, because a random nazi foot soldier who survived the war... that can mean so many things! Were they in the Wehrmacht, SS, are they Germans, Europeans, Hiwis, volunteers, conscripts, in the nazi party, not in the party... It will also depend heavily on who is capturing you, if captured, when, and if you did something linked to war crimes or not.

​

Most of the common grunts captured by western allies suffered little punishment. POW camps for a while and a check-up to see who you are and if you are a danger. If you are captured by the soviets, this is probably going to be much much worse. For example, the soldiers taken prisoner in Stalingrad were mostly sent to die in very remote gulags. 86 000 of the 91 000 German prisoners will die in captivity; they survived the war, per se, but not what followed.

I appreciate the joke, but I would suggest that you remove your comment before mods do.

I can't seem to remember about the young Socrates, but I can say for sure that the old Socrates had, by the words of Xenophon, a big fat belly and tells his friends at a banquet that he wants to lose some weight by dancing. Xenophon, Symposium, II, 16-19.

It is sad, but historical facts almost do not exist. Just relating something that arrived in the past is already distorting it ever so little because no one ever has the possibility to be completely detached from the past. Everything will always be biased. The best you can do is understand how to grasp and minimize the bias that will be in the text, either from a primary or a secondary source of information.

For this, first of all, criticize the document externally.

Just ask yourself a few questions to start. Who wrote the text? Is he\she a specialist on the subject or at least on a related subject? Can you find info on the author to see what he does for a living? Was his article or book something published to prove a point, to please someone? Was he paid to publish? Is the article or book recent or possibly outdated?

Now the text itself: is it supported by other books? Is the bibliography convincing you that the author knows the subject? When he makes sensible claims, does he back it up with references?

When you have info on all this, you can read the text. Be curious. Do not hesitate to read something written by someone else on the same subject. Challenge the author and you can search online for other opinions. Even a site like wikipedia can do wonders to help you start your research.

The more you do all this, the more it will become a reflex and the better you'll be at discerning what can be called a fact from what can be called opinion.

You just told the answer yourself. The word viking as almost an action, anyone can go on an expedition or a raid. In your party, there will be a lot of simple folks. The viking expeditions in North America, for example, were organised primarely to gather wood, not to fight. I invite you to read the sagas, especially the Erik the Red one.

Moreover, if you live in Canada, go and visit Anse-aux-Meadows, the only (thus far) official Norse camp site in North America. It's worth the (very) long trip.

I work on an Island where was produced hundred of liters of Anthrax. The idea was to obliterate the entire german population.

The production was never used, thankfully.

I invite you to read Deadly Allies, on that matter.

The events present in the Bible are not described in any other historical source whatsoever. The only mention of Jesus Christ in any work remotedly close to the era of Jesus is now proven to have been fabricated entirely by christians of a way more modern era.

The passage is the Testimonium Flavian by Flavius Josephus, and it can be found in section 18.3.3 of the Antiquities Of The Jews.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aoidos

Basically, it was chanted poems that were recited in social meetings or on special occasions. The aoidos could use musical instruments for the atmosphere or not. All the text is written in a way easy to remember, using mnemonic techniques (each sentence is exactly a specific length, rhymes, epithètes...) and the aoidos could begin/end anywhere in the poem, but most probably that they did so where a « chapter » begins/ends.