Supremacy 1914

[Kriegsmarine]

a fun Strategy game that people should play so I can get a room going
http://www.supremacy1914.com/

so
please?

[Zarik]

I'll give it a shot

[Tampashrew]

World War 1?

[MrKerplunkers]

World War 1?

It simulates the life of a fat englishman eating pork roast on the French country side wondering why the line isn't advance when you sacrifice 10,000 of your men a week to the Saxon War Gods.

[Guy Montag]

World War 1?

if you're gonna talk shit about ww1 with your plebeian 'but it was all just sitting in trenches' bullshit we're going to have a problem.

[Denzo]

World War 1?

if you're gonna talk shit about ww1 with your plebeian 'but it was all just sitting in trenches' bullshit we're going to have a problem.

Too bad WW1 was all about sitting in trenches, dawg.

[Riftoff]

Eagerly awaiting Montag to drop the knowledge bomb on your dumbasses.

[A Common Sandvich]

World War 1?

if you're gonna talk shit about ww1 with your plebeian 'but it was all just sitting in trenches' bullshit we're going to have a problem.

Too bad WW1 was all about sitting in trenches, dawg.

[Optimus Prime Rib]

[MrKerplunkers]

Man, I coulda sworn this thread was supposed to be about a video game and not me waiting for either Montag or Wintergreen to drop some mad history.

[Optimus Prime Rib]

All I need to know about wars, I learned from Wikipedia.

[Guy Montag]

Because it looks like none of us are actually going to play this game, I'll indulge all of you and respond to a troll post. YOU BROUGHT THIS ON YOURSELF.

In July 1815, the collective forces of Europe breathed a sigh of relief, having vanquished Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France, thought that they had crammed the genie of liberalism* back into its 1789-dated bottle, preserving monarchies and their dynastic holdings forever more. Napoleon and the causes he championed (and unambiguously exploited for personal gain) consisting of equality under law, the idea of the nation-state, freedom of religion and of assembly - all perished before that stubborn ridge near the town of Waterloo. Or, so the Habsburgs, Hohenzollerns, Victorias and other agents of the old order thought. Liberalism*, as it turned out, had escaped and would haunt Europe and the world to this day.

In France, the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty sputtered and died, giving way to a century of political unrest as the lower classes of France wrested with the army and the aristocracy to create a government that reflected their wishes, the 19th century a vicious cycle of monarchies, constitutional monarchies, republics, and, at one point, a proletarian dictatorship. It was here that Communism first raised its red banners in victory over a European capital, a victory only rendered possible by another upstart and its liberal* quest; Germany.

Liberalism transformed Germany as it did the rest of the world. In Napoleon's wake the patchwork array of microstates that had recently been dismembered from the Holy Roman Empire were drawn together by the daring, deviousness and awesome intellect of Otto von Bismarck, a man who championed the notoriously liberal* ideal of a united Germany - but, sympathized with liberals in nothing else, implementing their policies only to win the support of the left and even the emergent Socialists.

This new ideology was the progeny of Karl Marx, a man who saw what Napoleon had wrought and thought he had only taken tiny steps in the direction towards true equality and brotherhood for all men. He preached a dictatorship of the proletariat, wherein the downtrodden workers would be rewarded for their contributions to society. Workers across Europe took to his message, united in their dream of true equality at any cost, always machinating in acting on any great stage of political development to desperately attain this lofty goal.

The Habsburg dynasty in Austria were continually afflicted by liberalism*, and to them it was an illness that resisted all treatment. Napoleon, in his rampage through their traditional empire, had given the subject peoples of Austria a brief breath of freedom; Croats, Czechs, Italians, Serbs and more finally had a glimpse of what it was like to govern their own affairs. Napoleon planted a seed of idealism in every non-Austrian's mind within Austria's borders, and the results were telling: in 1867, the Habsburgs split their crown with Hungary, accepting the authority of a second parliament in Budapest, a concession that was only made with great discontent from the nobility in Vienna, and it only briefly sated the Hungarians, and did little to abate the mounting nationalistic fervour of the many varieties of slavs. The political, social, and even artistic climate of the imperial capital in Vienna was one of entropy. The era of the Habsburg empire had passed; no longer could one king rule over more than one nationality. The empire was naught but a tradition, and all that remained was to watch it pass.

The story of the Ottoman Empire is a similar one. Whereas three hundred years ago Ottomania was united under the feudalism of the Sultan and in many cases faith in Allah, the Turks of the 1800s were an understaffed prison guard contingent attempting to keep order in an increasingly rowdy jail. Napoleon's campaigns had not taken him to Anatolia or even the Balkans, but he had visited Egypt - instilling the Arabs with a desire for their own governance rather than that of the decadent Sultan in Istanbul - and his stay in Austria had inexorably leaked over the southern border into Osman's Empire. Like Austria, client peoples of the Sultan began to dream a little and then a lot of freedom. Unlike Austria, they violently reached for freedom with both hands and tore it from the already tenuous grasp of Istanbul. Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Greece, and even Albania emerged into the world stage, desperately clawing at their surroundings to bring all of their nation into the governance of a proper state. The Ottomans had grown complacent in their past successes, and had let the world pass them by. Educated Turks began to rumble for a restoration of the Empire along lines of modernity.

Italy had traditionally been a number of individual states organized along lines of city-states, making Italy traditionally a region of easy conquest. This held true in the first decade of the 19th century, northern Italy falling to Napoleon's legions as well as the forces of Italian liberalism* seeking to disband the power of doges and kings and obtain a rule for the people. Napoleon left Italy to greater conquests, but not before uniting Milan, Tuscany, Piemont and almost the entirety of Northern Italy under an unfamiliar but undeniably attractive banner - the Kingdom of Italy. This, while an unsubtle proxy for Napoleon's rule, gave the Italians something to aspire to following the 'restoration of the natural order of Europe' at the congress of Vienna. It motivated Italians, already a romantic people, to dedicate themselves to a cause as allegedly high-minded and noble as that of a unification of the entire peninsula. The realpolitik of Sardinia-Piemont combined with the utterly superhuman dedication of Giuseppe Garibaldi to form a true Kingdom of Italy, one that aspired to forge an empire worthy of such a great title.

Russia, far off in east, had the reputation of dealing the brutal deathblow to Napoleon as well as his attempt to spread liberalism* to eastern Europe. The Tzar's subjects were affected by the spread of liberalism*, but compared to most countries Russia remained largely unaffected, and the country remained utterly autocratic right until its unforgettable revolution. Nationalism of a different sort took hold in Russia, as St. Petersburg extolled the pride of the Russian people during Napoleon's invasion in a desperate and ultimately successful bid to inspire the troops. This idea proved to be Russia's own brand liberalism* and the Tzar's ultimate doom; that Russia, not its Tzar, was what all good Russians were loyal to. If the motherland needed courage, good Russians would perish to supply it. If the motherland needed industry, good Russians would fanatically build and maintain it. If the motherland needed leadership, good Russians would die in defence of it - or in the effort to replace it.

As the disparate nations of Europe united through political intrigue or force of arms, this fervour remained. Liberals* and conservatives alike agreed that it was not enough for your nation and your people to be well, and that it was imperative that your nation was acknowledged as greatest - that your nation had a place under the sun. It was for this reason that France nearly fought a war with Britain over control of the Sahara desert so that the French colonial empire may look bigger and more impressive on a map. It was for this reason that all of Europe and even Japan united to destroy an attempt by China to expunge itself of foreigners and their malign influences. It was with this sacred idea in mind that one Italian Prime Minister declared war for the conquest of Ethiopia while parliament was on vacation. It was with this in mind that Leopold II of Belgium personally purchased the Congo to partake in the race for Africa. It was for this most noble of causes that the United States of America fought Spain and with a straight face seized control of the Philippines, the wayward colonists becoming the colonizers.

It was for this reason that on the 28th of July 1914 every major nation in the world announced that they had honoured their alliances and would commit all of their fighting men to the slaughter of as many other fighting men as possible, to riotous applause and fanfare. Here, at long last, was the great ragnarok Napoleon had brought about. At last, Britain could restore order undone over the past hundred years and prove that its dominance could not change even in the face of global war. At last, France could prove it was still formidable even after the political turmoil of the last hundred years. At last, Italy had the glorious baptism that a nascent nation of romantics needed. Here was Austria's glorious last stand as expected of a history as colourful and proud of the von Habsburgs. Here was the Ottoman Empire's best chance to revolutionize itself and prove to its prodigal children that it was still relevant. Here was Russia's great opportunity to show that liberal reform was not necessary to be a great and dangerous power in the new world of the 20th century. Finally, Germany had the perfect opportunity to show the world it, not Britain, not France, not Russia, would dictate the shape of the new century.

And fight they did. As infantry doctrine had not evolved to face innovations in artillery tactics and technology, the immediate answer to the slaughter of the 1914 offensives was to dig ditches in the ground to a depth of at least eight feet to protect against shrapnel. These ditches, deemed trenches, proved surprisingly defensible especially given the recent invention of the fully automatically loaded gun. The traditional answer to a strong defensive position in warfare is to flank it.

And flank they tried. And tried, and tried. It was remarkably quick and brutal in the west before trenches stretched from the English channel to the Swiss border. In Italy, trenches were a redundancy that would have been hilarious were they not utterly immovable in the alps. At sea, blockades guaranteed a slow but decisive death for the central powers, one that the ravenous and bloodthirsty British Royal Navy, believing the ghost of Nelson to be cheering them on, could not wait for. The Battle of Jutland ended as many land battles of the war did - an expensive stalemate that regardless of tactical outcomes changed nothing strategically, and was conducted mostly due to a popular demand for decisive action. In the east, the Tzar's court also bayed for blood, leading to a mobile meatgrinder campaign in eastern Germany that came to naught - and then the deadliest game of tag ever in the great expanse of the Russian steppes until the final Russian surrender in 1917. An overconfident British Expedition landed in Gallipoli seeking a quick occupation of Istanbul, believing the barely-European defenders of the ancient city to offer token resistance, only to be soundly hurled back into the Mediterranean. In Asia, Japan, eager to prove itself the equal of any westerner, collected the colonial possessions of all the central powers in short order.

But the western front was not, as so many say, a matter of sitting in trenches. The generals could not abide sitting in trenches, as the civilians and government demanded action. The officers could not abide sitting in trenches, as it either insulted their honour or contradicted the orders from above. The rank and file soldiers could not abide sitting in trenches, as it corroded their minds and bodies and was just as detrimental to their sanity as offensive action. But how could they do anything when death was a piece of shrapnel, a burst of machine gun fire, a sniper's whimsy away?

All three were avoided quite easily by two things, the first of which was night. Night offered little respite for forward trenches as raids for prisoners were frequent. An obvious solution both sides quickly came to was to simply burrow to the opposing trenches and engage them by surprise - something that simply led to a deadly game of cat and other cat as sappers attempted to gauge the location of enemy sappers, both attempting to set explosives under opposing trenches in preparation for major offensives.

As the battle of Arras proved, offensive action could be decisive. The combined effort of tanks, coordinated artillery support, and properly instructed infantry tore a massive hole in the German lines in 1917, a battle in which the defenders took almost as many casualties as the attackers. This restoration of faith in the offensive caught the eye of all nations, but the first to capitalize on it were the Germans. The principle of trench raids - moving small amounts of troops at a time across no man's land so as to not be seen and attract weapons fire - could be taken to a decisive extreme. Instead of sitting in trenches and charging en masse when told, German troops could, in small amounts, hide in the moonscape of no man's land dangerously close to entente positions, and in many cases cross their trenches. When the order came, the landwehrs would swarm the French, Belgian and Commonwealth positions well before they could effectively react. These tactics were the centerpiece of the 1918 Spring Offensives, the ones that took the Kaiser's armies all the way to artillery distance of Paris for the first time since 1914. This was not accomplished, to the surprise of the uninformed, by having the participating German divisions sit in their trenches and wait.

The entente very nearly lost the war - both sides had been ground down in every possible way by four years of this intensely attritional war, but Germany had momentum on its side. Enthusiasm, jingo, and patriotic fervour had long evaporated, leaving only a desire on all sides to see all the sacrifice be for some gain, even if negligible. The strange few who held on to the motivating tenets of the average person in 1914 went on to create an ideology known as fascism.

The United States has traditionally regarded the First World War as a 'European war,' one that was fought for stupid motivations they were just as infected by yet did not as clearly understand. In the media World War I is regarded as an attritional slog, as Hollywood is American and America only arrived at the end of the war to witness a lot of people trapped in holes in the ground hysterically yelling at them to keep their heads down. It is ironic that the US Army arrived in the muddy hellscape of eastern France completely and utterly clueless as to how best conduct a modern war, and that for that precise reason performed so well and tipped the scales so decisively. It is far more ironic that the First World War is the war that America genuinely won, and genuinely and irrefutably saved Britain and France from German tyranny, and were viewed by all save Russia as glorious liberators and agents of civilization - and this same country remains utterly fixated on a similar yet far more controversial conflict that transpired twenty years later as a direct result of this one.

And so America saved the day, and then utterly failed to make the necessary changes it could so easily have made given their newfound hegemony over the western world to prevent another titanic war like the Great War from happening again. The French ensured the Germans would nurse a contempt for them that would last twenty years, the British kept their peace arrangements focused on business and finance, Austria-Hungary fell apart like a house of cards, the Ottomans focused inward and became Turkey, Germany feigned defeat and shed its bothersome monarchy, Italy threw its hands in the air at its negligible gains, Russia began another chapter in its long, troubled history, the USA blew off an appeal by a French-educated Vietnamese student for the independence of Vietnam (who went on to destroy American exceptionalism), and the rest of the world set about slaughtering each other for another few years to sort out what the congress of Paris had dictated. The machinery Napoleon had set into motion a century before had finally produced a Europe organized along mostly-liberal* lines. In conclusion, TheDenzo and A Common Sandvich and Tampashrew are colossal faggots who wouldn't know the history of warfare from a fucking michael bay movie and should be regarded by all (including fun server kiddies) as sub-human scum that can be bullied and laughed at by all. I'm von Montag, and I've been your evening's history major.

*contrary to what Fox News or ABC will tell you, THIS is liberalism.

[Denzo]

I like the part where you wrote in a thread that everyone ditched about 2 weeks ago and decided to write about trenches.

GG, montag. But maybe next time.

[Haunwulf]

I'm sorry but, I had a huge laugh when reading through this.

[Guy Montag]

I'm sorry but, I had a huge laugh when reading through this.

that's quite alright. I wrote it with some satire in mind.

[Tampashrew]

I like the part where you wrote in a thread that everyone ditched about 2 weeks ago and decided to write about trenches.

GG, montag. But maybe next time.

It took him 2 weeks to write it, it's not really old at all.

[Denzo]

I like the part where you wrote in a thread that everyone ditched about 2 weeks ago and decided to write about trenches.

GG, montag. But maybe next time.

It took him 2 weeks to copy and paste it, it's not really old at all.

I thought something was off.

[A Common Sandvich]

So... it's basically about sitting in trenches.

Shit happens at the beginning and the end. The middle? TRENCHES.

My dad is essentially a history major. (As in, the only reason he didn't was financial, he had all the classes). I'm not pig-ignorant. GOOD DAY SIR

EDIT: I would feel more proud of myself if I didn't learn anything from reading that whole damn thing. Stupid below-par history classes.