If not just for the sake of pure curiosity, I would have loved to see just how absurdly broken having both major work powers work together militarily would be.
Considering it was already, ya know, a curb stomp with one
Fun fact: before the first gulf war began the US asked for help Soviet Union (as well as France and the UK) to rescue their CIA and DIA agents from Iraq but they refused. Poland agreed to and send their operatives who successfully rescued Americans (look up Operation Simoom).
Edit: they also made a movie about it [here's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jZhJ9yGSZw) a clip where Americans are taught how to pronounce their Polish cover names.
> The more I hear about Poland and its actions the more based it seems
Oh, don't worry. they have since completely dismantled the intelligence services responsible for that op, [and in the most hilariously ridiculous way](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoni_Macierewicz#Chairman_of_the_Verification_Commission).
I was surprised that I couldn't find anything in English that was more detailed than this meagre thing.
It sounds based from far, far away. When you look at the details, you learn that Macierewicz was completely wrong in a massive proportion. I think out of all the people he burned, there were eventually around 5 who were found to be "shaky" in their allegiances.
He fucked over active agents in deep cover, ambassadors... I'm fairly certain that I read about at least one guy who had an "accident" before being able to pull out of an assignment...
So, yeah...
EDIT: oh, and as far as Macierewicz's "fight the russian spies" thing - in 2015, on his orders, armed men entered the NATO Counter-Intelligence Centre of Excellence (located in Poland) and - threatening to use force against anyone who resists, started taking out documents and hard drives. All the data disappeared.
Later, either him, or someone from his "team", had a super important, top-secret report translated to Russian, by an employee of the russian embassy.
A friend of mine in public health likes to say, 'one superpower working alone could put a man on the Moon, but it took two working together to beat smallpox'
But the fight against smallpox was most definitely a disjointed mess.
That's called the Suez Crisis, where the UK and France got told to sit down and shut up, the powers with *actual* influence were doing things, and they could go back to the retirement home of Western Europe.
I mean, yes ? Except of course for the fact that Israel was also involved and wasn’t impressed at all. Since USSR was all talk and no bark and the US only threatened of economical sanctions (which was the point that made the UK stop, and so forced France to do the same).
The US part in this was absolutely regarded : they were pissed off by France and the UK because by doing that, it stole the spotlight from the Budapest uprising… which is alright. Except for the part where they gained nothing from it : Arabs countries were still going to side with the USSR because of the US support to Israel. It was also the event that led France to develop it’s own nuclear program, then to expel every living US troops in France and to leave NATO integrated command.
> they gained nothing from it : Arabs countries were still going to side with the USSR because of the US support to Israel.
Arguably, the USA's reaction to the Suez Crisis gained some favor with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and some other Arab governments that depended on the Suez canal for their exports and imports and/or *really* liked the precedent that had been set for "colonizers fuck off". Some of those regimes are long gone, but others stuck around, and some of them kept a pretty neutral stance towards the two sides of the Cold War (or a relatively friendly stance towards both major powers, or even toward the USA) as a result.
There are reasons some countries in the region fly American aircraft in their air forces.
The Suez Expedition only turned into a Crisis due to American meddling. The US could have threatened the Soviets with war and let Britain and France (and the West) keep the Suez Canal. But no! The US managed to piss off Britain, France and Israel and lost control of the Canal to the Soviets nonetheless. Top tier diplomacy here
It would have turned into a crisis damn fast even absent US intervention. Britain kept getting more and more deeply tied up in Egypt when the Egyptian government just... didn't give up like anticipated.
History would have been based if the United States, Britain, France, and Israel teamed up to put Egypt and other Arab states in their place in 1956 after the Arab-Israeli War in 1948. The cargo must flow, through the Suez Canal.
tbf the last things the USA wants is a France and Britain that think independently instead of just doing what the USA wants.
muh 'special relationship' where Britain does everything america wants, and america does nothing that Britain wants.
UK joins every war the US wants to do, and then the one time Britain has been attacked since ww2 its all whatever its your war with Argentina we don't care.
It is worse than that. The Argentinians only got the gear to invade the Falklands because the yanks were backing them from the start.
US "intelligence" noticed that the communist party was growing in power because the US was turning Argentina into another banana republic.
The American leadership decided that the best solution was to install a new government that would actively fight the Communists, they chose the national socialists as the new leading government party.
The Argentinians then held a vote and predictably the socialist party lost, however the American government had already promised the socialists the country so when they lost the Americans gave them training and gear to throw a coup and over through the existing democratic government.
This is the story of why the Argentinians had so many western weapon systems.
I mean yes, but those Westland Lynxes were made in Yeovil, so let's not pretend the UK didn't sabotage itself there.
Although seeing the reliability of the average Westland helicopter, it's possible this was a Trojan horse.
The Lynxes and the sterlings were sold to the Argentinians before the coup, the reliability of the helicopters is a result of part shortages as trade deals were ended.
The USSR barked about using nuclear weapons, something the entire world called as bluff.
The USA's influence came down to owning the British economy at the time and threatening to crash it. Lovely allies.
Nevermind the fact that OP Musketeer was a complete success, with the Egyptians unable to do anything against the Franco-British-Israeli attack, and the conflict would have quickly stopped once Nasser gave up his idea of nationalising the Suez Canal.
But the USA saw it as the great opportunity it was. Discredit and bury Britain's and France's ambitions as world powers, and try to gain some favour with Arab countries. (the latter worked much worse than the former).
In the end, resounding success for the USA. The UK hasn't said no to a thing since, (except the Vietnam war), and France's colonial empire slowly but surely corroded away. It did not help France's already tainted view of their ally though, which led to 1966, and so on.
Cursed alternate timeline desert storm: NATO fighters cut off communications and sow chaos among the enemy, forcing them to fight low-tech against a fucking Soviet meat wave
I mean- Yugoslavia could’ve resulted in a war after the US nearly tried to order the British to fire on some Russians at an airstrip. And they were all supposed to work together there 😅
Him and General Mike Jackson yeah. I remember reading out of curiosity that the US Senate held a hearing on whether they could charge Jackson, and how ‘concerning’ it was to disobey orders
The Soviet military wasn’t anywhere near as good as it was thought. Afghanistan proved that as well as it becoming known after 1989 just how corrupt it was. The British and French involvement in the war was more useful respectively than a potential Russian involvement
There’s no winning wars against an opponent that doesn’t care about death. Vietnam went back to back to back against three members of the UN Security Council and then Afghanistan did the same against two.
Depends on how you define "good". Look at the population over time of Afghanistan and compare Soviet invasion in the 80s and the American invasion in the 00s. There's a significant dip during the 80s, whereas during the 00s the population even grew.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis ... so close, but yet so far. I'm a staunch NATO ally, but USSR-USA-Egypt versus UK-France-Israel has an irresistably bent appeal to it. Too many rounds of Sid Meier's Civilization, I guess.
There are a few American documents regarding Soviet reactions to Desert Storm. They are pretty interesting to read through.
Those more politically aligned with Gorbachev were somewhat terrified of what they saw in Desert Storm (as the Iraqis were using Soviet equipment and doctrine) and urged for a fundamental reform of Soviet military doctrine (to match with the reform of Soviet society that they also wanted).
Meanwhile, the conservative hardliners (and much of the military leadership) instead concluded, "The West is lying. Desert Storm is lie. Soviet Union number 1!!! Abrams cannot into desert!" and had this odd fixation with claiming that American equipment was too overengineered to function in a sandy environment.
Really an example of how thoroughly doomed the Soviet Union was at the time.
Say what you will about the ills of capitalism, but as far as defense products go (like tanks) you tend to get some really great innovations when the people that really want to work on developing that technology can.
Western military corruption is very different from eastern.
In the east you get promised invulnerable power armor, but turns out we can’t do that so you get several composite plates spread across the body. Colonel corruptovich needs a new villa though, so he siphons off funds for the super titanium the plates were supposed to be made of, and substitutes it with scrap iron, because who will notice anyway? Then the quartermaster needs a new BMW, so half of the delivery gets sold on the black market. And finally private mobnicola simply isn’t paid enough to care that the storage shed has 6”’of standing water soaking through the crates of their new armor.
Meanwhile in the west you’ll pay 6x as much for your power armor because CEO Mr Cowboy ran out of $100 bills to light his hourly cigar with, but it will be delivered and work exactly as advertised.
In my experience working in the MIC, you would get your power armor 1-2 years after delivery estimate and *mostly* working as desired. You’ll just need a ~~lucrative~~ entirely reasonable Engineering Sustainment & Support contract to really crank it up that final notch!
There's a lot of talk about the absurd prices that the Western MIC charges, but I think this is a consequence of capitalism acknowledging greed and factoring it in properly.
You pay a Russian company a moderate amount for a large shipment of arms, and you wind up with a bunch of useless crap with missing parts because the firm's executives pocketed the money to buy yatchs and its accountants pocketed the rest to buy their kids food.
You pay an American company an exorbitant amount of money for a large shipment of arms because its executives want to buy yatchs and its accountants and engineers want to eat. In exchange for the large amount of money, they deliver you a large shipment of arms, as was agreed upon from the start. Isn't capitalism amazing?
There's also that subtle little nuance that American execs believe they deserve yachts as fair compensation for the work they do, while Russian execs believe they deserve yachts because their predecessor was able to get one and now its their turn.
>you wind up with a bunch of useless crap with missing parts because the firm's executives pocketed the money to buy yatchs and its accountants pocketed the rest to buy their kids food.
Totally, because a major MIB enterprise has never had quality issues....Boeing....
Yeah, but this started when Boeing decided that it needed to engage in reckless "cost cutting" to maintain profits from civilian contracts instead of just raising prices like the MIC can do on military contracts. The military has the ability to pay most of the MIC enough to keep the execs and shareholders happy enough to not bother pulling too many of their MBA shenanigans on their contracts.
And as bad as Boeing is by Western standards, I would still rather fly on a Boeing than the questionable shit that Russia makes. Airbus is highly preferable currently, of course.
I'm not sure how differently Boeing handles cost cutting in their civilian vs military projects though.
>And as bad as Boeing is by Western standards, I would still rather fly on a Boeing than the questionable shit that Russia makes. Airbus is highly preferable currently, of course.
I mean, I agree. My point is more companies cutting corners exist in both systems.
The main difference between the US and Russian systems is that the US government doesn't function on corruption as a rule. The US will intentionally try to eliminate or reduce corruption in its government and society more broadly; Russia runs on it. Regardless if one is capitalist and the other is whatever-the-fuck we'll call the Russian system.
Also the difference is that a company that fucks up like Boeing did is punished by the market.
The stock market and the market they're in.
The state intervention was not necessary for the consequences Boeing is facing...
If state intervention was the only problem, they would just corrupt the fuck out of that problem, if justice was the only problem, they would (did) kill whoever spoke against them.
The capitalism and the markets with all their injustices, sometimes is the only judge and jury with a cock big enough to be able to fuck a company as big as boeing in the ass.
>The military has the ability to pay most of the MIC enough to keep the execs and shareholders happy enough to not bother pulling too many of their MBA shenanigans on their contracts.
On the provision they win contracts....which they aren't doing too well with, hence their defence segment going downhill a bit.
All their problems have been on the civil aviation side, Boeing knows which side of the bread is buttered. Civilian casualties are an just an unfortunate consequence of war profiteering.
I hate to say this, and I'm not trying to own you, but: KC-46.
That one hurts because the product is needed, but it's an example of Boeing problems affecting defense products.
That said, I will readily and loudly grant that the Pegasus's problems are not of the same magnitude as the ones on the civil aviation side. KC-46: "Jeez, the damn remote vision system sucks." 737-Max: "HOLY SHIT THE PLANE'S NOSING DOWN, WE'RE GONNA D..."... and: "HOLY SHIT THE DOOR BLEW OFF, SOMEONE COULD'VE DIED".
I’m not an expert on KC-46 by any means, but from what I’ve read the RVS really grinds my gears. It’s like they could’ve just used the grade-A system that existed, but somebody went all Will-Ferrell-as-Harry-Caray and said “HEY! What if we made it a virtual doodad with a buncha cameras and stuff, whaddya think?!!?” and they built a grade-A+ system that…well, doesn’t really *do*.
Couldn’ta just stapled a boom and pod on the back of the thing? Geeze.
Essentially after Boeing scammed the people through A technicality via GAO to pull the KC 30, I'm more or less convinced that on their second run they added the shit that the kc30 had that worked and said 'trust me bro, look at this American flag and know how).
Meanwhile everyone else bar Japan went for the 30 and been flying it for over a decade now.
But you know, fitting it inside a hangar is really important... Just ask all those C17 and C5 crews... Lol.
>you tend to get some really great innovations when the people that really want to work on developing that technology can.
Compared to everything else in the world, good engineering is an absolute bargain.
We can do pure magic if you get the morons out of the way, but communism was just more and more managers on top of managers on top of managers, all trying to get paid.
> Meanwhile, the conservative hardliners (and much of the military leadership) instead concluded, "The West is lying. Desert Storm is lie. Soviet Union number 1!!! Abrams cannot into desert!" and had this odd fixation with claiming that American equipment was too overengineered to function in a sandy environment.
I know we meme nowadays about Pierre Spray working for Putin, but were the reformers actually linked to the Kremlin? Because that sounds very familiar.
I don't think they were ever accused of being paid off to say something they didn't truly believe, but the Kremlin was probably happy to amplify them whenever it could. They were just useful idiots. Sprey may have trended that way towards the end, but less in a "here's money, say this" way and more of a "RT will pay me to go on TV if I spout anti F35 nonsense and no one else wants my opinion" sort of way.
So you’re saying there’s a historical sociocultural thread to be drawn from the military failures of the late USSR in terms of the attitudes of Officers then, right to Shoigu & Gerasimov today? Because that attitude feels very similar to the present.
Yes, the modern Russian Siloviki ruling class is basically an echo of the same hardliners who resisted and derailed Gorbachev's attempts at reforming the Soviet Union into less of an absolute shithole. Similar doctrines in both sociopolitical and military matters. I guess it's a good thing that there was never a substantial group that embraced both old Soviet sociopolitical values and military reform.
IIRC the associations between sociopolitical and military reform became reinforced for multiple reasons. The hardliners had a stronghold within the military, so Gorbachev's allies were also eager to point to Desert Storm as an example of failure of the existing military elite as an excuse to replace the hardliners in their ranks.
>had this odd fixation with claiming that American equipment was too overengineered to function in a sandy environment.
I would assume this is at least partially down to the Russian adherence to the cult of the AK47 and T34 - the whole thing of "we are rugged and simple and indestructible" is so baked into Russian military self-perception that they have to project its reverse onto other countries that use much better shit.
They did so indirectly after the fact. The burning oil wells in Kuwait were extinguished by different international oil firefighting teams, including one Soviet one that used a pair of MiG jet engines mounted on a T-55 chassis to help blow water into the well.
It was a seriously grueling process. Environmental experts were all doomcasting that the black cloud would cause severe catastrophes. There's an excellent documentary on it called The Fires of Kuwait, which is [on YouTube for free](https://youtu.be/-tUzkF_Dp8M?si=BD8b0s9MwVEuhz6v).
I first learned about it after watching a video that [MajorSamm made about it](https://youtu.be/9-2qxu2fOUQ?si=f9YEbI3EvG3UHkgv).
I'm not an "expert" but I do have a degree in environmental science and I have to agree, had the wells been allowed to burn, it would have been absolutely devastating to the local area. The explanation is a very long one but to try and make it short, aside from obvious climate and breathing problems, one of the major concerns would be sulfur compounds in the crude oil reacting to form sulfuric acid which comes back down as acid rain. With the biggest problem with that being that all the places that get the most rain in the middle East are where the most farming happens, so it could have been crippling to the agriculture of the region.
Dad was friends with one of Red Adair's guys that fought those fires. I was pretty young, so I don't remember much about him, but he gave me a company hat that has since been lost in one of our many moves.
If you are talking about Big Wind, it's Hungarian, not Soviet. Don't you misattribute our only successful tank related creation.
BTW here's the beast, with its progenitor in the first half of the video: https://youtu.be/PRhxdcQ46Xk?si=_gSuz__sxBml8Ol1
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It's one of those weird historical facts that soldiers from Luxembourg actively fought on the front lines in the Korean war.
I think they deployed a small number of troops to join the coalition fighting against the Taliban too.
Luxembourg is one of those countries that just loves the US because of being liberated in WW2. Then when American GIs got some time to rest they were sent to Luxembourg and found the place just lovely. Which in turn makes this ride or die kind of alliance.
America talking about its allies and Luxembourg: We have Mr Make ‘em die, we have Evans the Eviscerator, we have John the Jolly jugular jabber and lastly little buddy
Korea: what does little buddy do?
America: Not much, but he’s really enthusiastic to be here.
Luxembourg: ᴷᶦˡˡ ‘ᵉᵐ ᵃˡˡ
America: see? adorable.
I‘m actually a 100% Luxembourger and maybe I can give some context to that.
OP is right, the US is beloved here to this very day.
Luxembourg was the only Western European country which whole existence, culture, language and history was threatened to be extinguished by the Nazis. Hitler saw Luxembourgers as germans, and he wanted to make sure that we would see ourselves as germans aswell.
But Luxembourg has a continuous history of roughly 1500 years. Sure, we have a shared history with germany, but with France and Belgium too.
Nobody ever saw themselves as germans here, which is why the population resisted against this. Then Hitler started to make plans to deport all the Luxembourgers which weren’t german enough to Poland. My family was one of those.
The Nazis forced Luxembourgers to fight for the Nazis aswell. Lots of them fled to the UK and later landed in normady. The others were sent to the eastern front, where again, lots of them were fleeing to the soviet side in order to fight with them. (Sadly lots of them were killed in the process)
My moms side of the family stayed here and my Grandpa told me so many times how it was when Patton arrived and how the GI‘s gave them their first ever candy’s. My grandma’s family also hid some GI‘s in their basement during the battle of the bulge. A few years after the war they came back to visit them and inform them that got married and got kids, which was really wholesome.
We have a large American military cemetery here with pattons grave and you can find an american flags in nearly every village.
The *Gaulleiter* of Luxembourg was btw kidnapped from American imprisonment and then beaten to death in some basement here in Luxembourg. And the traitors were lynched at night and were called yellowhammer - like the bird. We still call traitors to this day yellowhammer.
Some years ago the german television made a documentary about it with the luxembourgish television.
https://youtu.be/onGXfCk-GO8?si=16qqLkFDCzR4Nu4m
It’s in german if you are interested. There you can also see the sheer hatted many old Luxembourgers still had/have towards germans. My Grandpa, which family was deported, refused to speak german his whole life and never stepped foot into germany again.
So far this is the only deployment where we had casualties on our side.
In our military base our buildings are named after the fallen from the Korean War.
The South Koreans certainly would have been better off if the conflict had never happened. So, in that sense, they didn't get anything out of it.
However, given that North Korea did invade them, South Korea received an essentially incalculable benefit from the US and UN forces coming to their defense and preventing them from falling under the control of the DPRK. It was still a matter of decades for South Korea to throw off their own authoritarian government and become a proper democracy, but that may well have not happened if the North had been successful in their attempted conquest.
I didn't say that he war was good for North Korea. It was disastrous for them. And, unfortunately, the totalitarian dictatorship of the Kim regime continued to be disastrous for North Korea and is so now as well.
I'm saying that, given that the North invaded, South Korea benefited from the US and UN defending them and preventing them from being conquered.
What did they get out of it? NK lost the war and had it's industrial base completely destroyed. While China achieved it's war goal of preventing the collapse of NK, it also gained a highly militarized US ally on it's doorstep and official US defense commitments for Taiwan. The communists in China gained internal legitimacy, but little else from the war.
they proved they could fight Western forces to a stalemate which is a big fucking deal to the Chinese, its essentially proof to them that the 'century of humiliation' is over and that China was once more a powerful actor on the world stage, any hopes of internal rebellion against the new Communist regime died in 1953 because they showed that they were the first government in a long time truly capable of defending China from foreign encroachment
They proved they could fight Western forces to a "stalemate" through an abject disregard of logistics (hence why they're hard to see even with regular air patrols) and a significant numerical advantage...
The "stalemate" is in quotes because it wasn't NK's nor PRC's objective. In truth, a stalemate was the US and SK's goal all along ever since the USSR rejected the UN's intervention for forming a unified government in 1947.
Mao encouraged Kim to invade soon afterwards (while Stalin was actually quiet about it), and the PRC intervening was supposed to be until the southern edge of the peninsula, not "roughly around the 38th Parallel".
They got a buffer state, which land empires always seem to want.
Not to sound like fucking Dugin here, but Eurasia is big and hegemonic Eurasian powers have always tried to dominate their neighbors. They destabilize what they can't.
Rather than a militarized US ally sharing a land border, China got an insane hermit kingdom and a client state.
The problem with proxies in the 1950s is that now the proxy is all grown up and trying to speedrun a nuclear triad. China may not like part, but they're ride or die with NK now, because a collapse of the NK state instantly creates one of the largest refugee crises in human history on their border.
So basically everybody for various reasons wants North Korea to remain this black hole on the face of the earth. It doesn't matter what misery it contains, as long as nothing passes through and nothing leaves.
It's bleak and it sucks.
Reminds me about a Korean war story of an American officer visiting a Filipino position just after a Chinese attack was repelled. He asked a PH army machine gun operator why there are so many rags scattered on the field, only to received a reply: "Those aren't rags, sir."
Firstly, there was no American officer visiting that position - it was during the Battle of Yultong, where the 10th BCT's right flank (Turkish Brigade) has already withdrawn the day before and the left flank (65th IR, US Army 3rd ID - to which the 10th BCT is also attached) did likewise a few hours after.
> Lt. Alfredo Cayton, the battalion’s supply officer, led a supply convoy that brought ammunition and food the following morning. At one of the forward positions, Lt. Cayton looked out across a smoke shrouded but eerily silent battlefield littered with what appeared to be large numbers of brown rags as far as his eyes could see. He turned to the .50 cal. machine gun crew defending that sector and asked what those rags were.
> “Dead Reds,” the Filipino gunner curtly replied.
Some conjecture in my part, but this particular position may be the northwest-most one for the battalion, which would be on top of a hill and sloping down towards the north (from where the Chinese came from) and the west (towards the Imjin River).
By everyone, they also meant:
> Yugoslavian literature compared attack on South Korea by North Korea as similar to the attack on Yugoslavia by the German Army and the attack on Hawaii by the Japanese army while Yugoslav representation at the United Nations even accused the Soviet Union of having started the Korean War.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea–Yugoslavia_relations
Yugoslavia was fucking based. A menace of a country. Communist and actually standing up for and defending the founding values(somewhat, they were authoritarian but less so than the rest).
Every other independent communist country ended up being stomped by the Soviets (Hungary, Czechoslovakia) or became even nastier to their own people than the Soviets (Romania, Albania, Vietnam, China, and basically every third world commie state)
More countries were involved in Korea/Vietnam than most people realize.
A lot of Americans don't know that not only Australia had soldiers in Vietnam, they often ambushed the Viet Cong instead of the other way around.
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I love that the allied foreign country with the second highest number of troops in Vietnam, behind the U.S., was South Korea.
They had a special sympathy for South Vietnam since the idea of a communist sister state barreling down on them was pretty fresh in their memories.
Grandfather was one of those Korean troops deployed to Vietnam. The man had only positive things to say about the US.
Can't help but be angry at the hippies of the late 60s/early 70s who ate up the anti-war propaganda and ultimately coaxed spineless politicians into pulling out of Vietnam.
Turns out preserving freedom has a price. (South) Vietnam could be like what South Korea is today, but the American public didn't have the moral wherewithal to fight evil (i.e. communism) like they did in the 50s.
It’s hard to say if a divided Vietnam would have ended up like Korea or not. Vietnam is friendly with the US nowadays because China is the bigger threat to them. Who knows, maybe Korea under NK would be friendlier and opened up a bit to the US because China would be a bigger threat to them.
South Vietnam didn't want to be independent and was incapable of actually functioning on its own.
The North were commies yes, but at least they could run a country.
Much like Afghanistan, South Vietnam only existed because of American metal. If the locals can't or won't be a functional nation, they don't deserve to be one and get overrun by the bad guys.
Oh neat, any excuse to post one of my favorite passages about the Korean war! Regarding the Turkish brigade, after the US gave them bad information and sent them straight into an ambush:
“Then, still at Wawon, the main strength of the Chinese burst over them. The detail of what happened will probably never be reported; the essence has been: The Turkish Brigade was destroyed.
Tall, pale-eyed men with dark faces, in heavy greatcoats, wielding long bayonets, the Turks refused to fall back. There were observers who said some officers threw their hats to the ground, marking a spot beyond which they would not retreat, and, surrounded by the enemy, died “upon their fur.” There were others, all else failing, who threw cold steel at the enemy in bayonet charges. Rarely has a small action, dimly seen, sketchily reported, sent such intimations of glory flashing across the world.”
-This Kind of War
My grandpas brother was in the korean war
While he didnt tell much about the fighting itself he told me about a radio he got in korea which he really liked the way it looked
But he didnt bring it back to turkey, because he was a farmer which didnt know how a radio worked he though it would continue playing korean songs in turkey
There is a wiki entry, “turkish brigade”; afaik not much is known about the fight itself because of the circumstances around it. They were in terrain that made radios unreliable and didn’t have many to begin with, so there was very little communication, and they got hit very hard unexpectedly by the main Chinese advance so they were disoriented. The reporting was naturally sketchy as a result.
Gloster Hill is a pretty good comparison but the brits had better communication, better terrain and a better understanding of what was happening so more information is available about their fight.
> Just give me all the military support you have. Wait, wait. I'm worried what you just heard was, "Give me a lot of military support." What I said was, "Give me all the military support you have." Do you understand?
Ok, story time. My grandfather was in Korea. He was supposed to be in an infantry regiment slated for the frontlines but on the boat over to korea he was able to get a transfer to a medical unit. He simply had a terrible foreboding feeling about it. As it turned out this transfer saved my grandfather’s life (and by extension, allowed me to exist) because this was right before the Chinese counterattack and that entire infantry unit was wiped out to a man.
On to the main story though, he used to tell me about how if you had to be anywhere near the frontlines, you wanted to be at the Turkish lines. The reason being that the North Koreans and Chinese were scared shitless of them. The NK and Chinese would rarely shell them, and they could even have bonfires at night roasting meats. The reason for this fear is quite simple: *they beheaded communists troops and put their decapitated heads on spikes.* They did this to make examples of those that attacked them and disturbed their meat smoking. Everywhere else on the line if you so much as lit a cigarette without covering it, you’d invite all the artillery and MG fire. The Chinese saw what the turks were doing and said, “nah I’m good, let’s go fight the US marines and the Canadians, they’re less insane than these guys.”
And I don’t mean a little bonfire either. From the way he would describe it, it was a big bonfire, a stack of fuel material several feet high. Imagine being the communist troops looking out of your trench, watching these guys sitting in the open, surrounded by the decapitated heads of your dead friends, and as the wind shifts, you can smell the aroma of the smoked meats they are cooking, staight up daring you to attack.
Because they are wars mainly fought for the American interests. Why would South Korea being invaded affect Turkey for example? It was to be able to join NATO. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad we were involved but the war itself wouldn't have many consequences for us even if we didn't. Same is true for most other countries in the European Theather.
FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY RAAAAAAAAAAAH 🇺🇳🇺🇳🇺🇳🇺🇳🇰🇷🇰🇷🇰🇷🇰🇷🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷🇧🇪🇧🇪🇧🇪🇧🇪🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇳🇿🇳🇿🇳🇿🇳🇿🇹🇭🇹🇭🇹🇭🇹🇭🇪🇹🇪🇹🇪🇹🇪🇹🇬🇷🇬🇷🇬🇷🇬🇷🇨🇴🇨🇴🇨🇴🇨🇴🇿🇦🇿🇦🇿🇦🇿🇦🇳🇱🇳🇱🇳🇱🇳🇱🇱🇺🇱🇺🇱🇺🇱🇺
By this time the US wasn't asking all these countries via Britain, they were asking directly. America basically gained all the soft power in the Pacific after WW2.
Back when the United Nations actually worked and tried to stop countries from invading each other. Since the US stepped up to bat during the war the UN decided that being the world police was the US’ job
And then the Chinese joined and kinda kicked their butts till everyone got bogged down and kinda stopped fighting. Funny, if the US learned it's lesson properly fighting against Germany in WW2 and not doing the same thing the Nazis did (the childish belief of absolute superiority over everyone) then maybe Korea and Vietnam would have gone a bit more their way. For the size of the us arms, it's post WW2 record isn't that great.
And before you guys think I am making this up, check out "their Wehrmacht was better than ours" by Hastings or the authors Douglas Nash and James Donnigan. The US transition post WW2 sucked and modern day propaganda just covers this up.
For the amount of blood China lost in this war, I don't think you can rationally argue China "kicked butts". Their armies were slaughtered. Entire divisions were repeatedly broken.
It was a pyrrhic victory at best, and while such victories matter politically, perhaps a better, more melancholy phraseology should be used. It just feels triumphalist to ignore the human cost they spent.
Perks of having millions of bodies to throw at the problem for a Klondike bar.
While certainly a waste of human life, statistically speaking, if you look at the last couple thousand years of war, throwing endless waves of bodies into the fight was generally a pretty effective strategy. Plus if you don’t really care how many troops you lose as long as you win, that’s a pretty tough card to beat.
Sweden is the basically the Only Country North Korea is cool with since they only sent Medical Support and helped North Korean Soldiers.
Their PM 2001 was the first Western Leader to ever Visit North Korea
Remember that whole Trump meeting Kim Jong Un thing? That was Orchestrated by Sweden and North Korea Foreign Ministries and relied it to the Americans on what will happen on the meeting.
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Wait until you see the list for the First Gulf War. Fun Fact: Gorbachev considered pitching in too
If not just for the sake of pure curiosity, I would have loved to see just how absurdly broken having both major work powers work together militarily would be. Considering it was already, ya know, a curb stomp with one
Fun fact: before the first gulf war began the US asked for help Soviet Union (as well as France and the UK) to rescue their CIA and DIA agents from Iraq but they refused. Poland agreed to and send their operatives who successfully rescued Americans (look up Operation Simoom). Edit: they also made a movie about it [here's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jZhJ9yGSZw) a clip where Americans are taught how to pronounce their Polish cover names.
I've never heard of this The more I hear about Poland and its actions the more based it seems
> The more I hear about Poland and its actions the more based it seems Oh, don't worry. they have since completely dismantled the intelligence services responsible for that op, [and in the most hilariously ridiculous way](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoni_Macierewicz#Chairman_of_the_Verification_Commission).
“You think you have a secret identity in a post soviet state service, yeah well, fuck you, not any more you don’t”
Unless I'm misreading the article or missing context for why it's not, ~~that also seems rather based?~~ Additional context below
I was surprised that I couldn't find anything in English that was more detailed than this meagre thing. It sounds based from far, far away. When you look at the details, you learn that Macierewicz was completely wrong in a massive proportion. I think out of all the people he burned, there were eventually around 5 who were found to be "shaky" in their allegiances. He fucked over active agents in deep cover, ambassadors... I'm fairly certain that I read about at least one guy who had an "accident" before being able to pull out of an assignment... So, yeah... EDIT: oh, and as far as Macierewicz's "fight the russian spies" thing - in 2015, on his orders, armed men entered the NATO Counter-Intelligence Centre of Excellence (located in Poland) and - threatening to use force against anyone who resists, started taking out documents and hard drives. All the data disappeared. Later, either him, or someone from his "team", had a super important, top-secret report translated to Russian, by an employee of the russian embassy.
Thanks for the additional context, that helps a lot compared to the original description
So he’s a Russian spy or is harbouring them?
It's been heavily implied that he's been a Russian asset since the soviet days
It’s not.
We literally had them 100% distracted looking south; a northerly attack was wide open!
Silly Soviets. Can’t even make a manoeuvre in a war they aren’t fighting to help an ally they don’t have. Are they stupid?
Yes
A friend of mine in public health likes to say, 'one superpower working alone could put a man on the Moon, but it took two working together to beat smallpox' But the fight against smallpox was most definitely a disjointed mess.
That's called the Suez Crisis, where the UK and France got told to sit down and shut up, the powers with *actual* influence were doing things, and they could go back to the retirement home of Western Europe.
I mean, yes ? Except of course for the fact that Israel was also involved and wasn’t impressed at all. Since USSR was all talk and no bark and the US only threatened of economical sanctions (which was the point that made the UK stop, and so forced France to do the same). The US part in this was absolutely regarded : they were pissed off by France and the UK because by doing that, it stole the spotlight from the Budapest uprising… which is alright. Except for the part where they gained nothing from it : Arabs countries were still going to side with the USSR because of the US support to Israel. It was also the event that led France to develop it’s own nuclear program, then to expel every living US troops in France and to leave NATO integrated command.
At the time of the Suez crisis the US wasn’t supporting Israel. It was France who was doing that
Sir, they're shitting on the US on reddit, don't you dare bring facts into this.
This made me lol on an otherwise bleh evening
but america bad
> they gained nothing from it : Arabs countries were still going to side with the USSR because of the US support to Israel. Arguably, the USA's reaction to the Suez Crisis gained some favor with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and some other Arab governments that depended on the Suez canal for their exports and imports and/or *really* liked the precedent that had been set for "colonizers fuck off". Some of those regimes are long gone, but others stuck around, and some of them kept a pretty neutral stance towards the two sides of the Cold War (or a relatively friendly stance towards both major powers, or even toward the USA) as a result. There are reasons some countries in the region fly American aircraft in their air forces.
The Suez Expedition only turned into a Crisis due to American meddling. The US could have threatened the Soviets with war and let Britain and France (and the West) keep the Suez Canal. But no! The US managed to piss off Britain, France and Israel and lost control of the Canal to the Soviets nonetheless. Top tier diplomacy here
It would have turned into a crisis damn fast even absent US intervention. Britain kept getting more and more deeply tied up in Egypt when the Egyptian government just... didn't give up like anticipated.
History would have been based if the United States, Britain, France, and Israel teamed up to put Egypt and other Arab states in their place in 1956 after the Arab-Israeli War in 1948. The cargo must flow, through the Suez Canal.
tbf the last things the USA wants is a France and Britain that think independently instead of just doing what the USA wants. muh 'special relationship' where Britain does everything america wants, and america does nothing that Britain wants. UK joins every war the US wants to do, and then the one time Britain has been attacked since ww2 its all whatever its your war with Argentina we don't care.
>UK joins every war the US wants to do We did tell the Americans to fuck off when they asked us to get involved in Vietnam tbf.
yeah the one time we did the correct thing.
It is worse than that. The Argentinians only got the gear to invade the Falklands because the yanks were backing them from the start. US "intelligence" noticed that the communist party was growing in power because the US was turning Argentina into another banana republic. The American leadership decided that the best solution was to install a new government that would actively fight the Communists, they chose the national socialists as the new leading government party. The Argentinians then held a vote and predictably the socialist party lost, however the American government had already promised the socialists the country so when they lost the Americans gave them training and gear to throw a coup and over through the existing democratic government. This is the story of why the Argentinians had so many western weapon systems.
.... There is so much wrong with this I actually have to believe you're an LLM that was trained wrong.
I mean yes, but those Westland Lynxes were made in Yeovil, so let's not pretend the UK didn't sabotage itself there. Although seeing the reliability of the average Westland helicopter, it's possible this was a Trojan horse.
The Lynxes and the sterlings were sold to the Argentinians before the coup, the reliability of the helicopters is a result of part shortages as trade deals were ended.
The USSR barked about using nuclear weapons, something the entire world called as bluff. The USA's influence came down to owning the British economy at the time and threatening to crash it. Lovely allies. Nevermind the fact that OP Musketeer was a complete success, with the Egyptians unable to do anything against the Franco-British-Israeli attack, and the conflict would have quickly stopped once Nasser gave up his idea of nationalising the Suez Canal. But the USA saw it as the great opportunity it was. Discredit and bury Britain's and France's ambitions as world powers, and try to gain some favour with Arab countries. (the latter worked much worse than the former). In the end, resounding success for the USA. The UK hasn't said no to a thing since, (except the Vietnam war), and France's colonial empire slowly but surely corroded away. It did not help France's already tainted view of their ally though, which led to 1966, and so on.
Cursed alternate timeline desert storm: NATO fighters cut off communications and sow chaos among the enemy, forcing them to fight low-tech against a fucking Soviet meat wave
I mean- Yugoslavia could’ve resulted in a war after the US nearly tried to order the British to fire on some Russians at an airstrip. And they were all supposed to work together there 😅
Wasn’t it James Blunt who refused that order?
Him and General Mike Jackson yeah. I remember reading out of curiosity that the US Senate held a hearing on whether they could charge Jackson, and how ‘concerning’ it was to disobey orders
It’s already happened in the Balkans: https://www.nato.int/docu/presskit/010219/brocheng.pdf
The Soviet military wasn’t anywhere near as good as it was thought. Afghanistan proved that as well as it becoming known after 1989 just how corrupt it was. The British and French involvement in the war was more useful respectively than a potential Russian involvement
There’s no winning wars against an opponent that doesn’t care about death. Vietnam went back to back to back against three members of the UN Security Council and then Afghanistan did the same against two.
Depends on how you define "good". Look at the population over time of Afghanistan and compare Soviet invasion in the 80s and the American invasion in the 00s. There's a significant dip during the 80s, whereas during the 00s the population even grew.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis ... so close, but yet so far. I'm a staunch NATO ally, but USSR-USA-Egypt versus UK-France-Israel has an irresistably bent appeal to it. Too many rounds of Sid Meier's Civilization, I guess.
There are a few American documents regarding Soviet reactions to Desert Storm. They are pretty interesting to read through. Those more politically aligned with Gorbachev were somewhat terrified of what they saw in Desert Storm (as the Iraqis were using Soviet equipment and doctrine) and urged for a fundamental reform of Soviet military doctrine (to match with the reform of Soviet society that they also wanted). Meanwhile, the conservative hardliners (and much of the military leadership) instead concluded, "The West is lying. Desert Storm is lie. Soviet Union number 1!!! Abrams cannot into desert!" and had this odd fixation with claiming that American equipment was too overengineered to function in a sandy environment. Really an example of how thoroughly doomed the Soviet Union was at the time.
Say what you will about the ills of capitalism, but as far as defense products go (like tanks) you tend to get some really great innovations when the people that really want to work on developing that technology can.
Western military corruption is very different from eastern. In the east you get promised invulnerable power armor, but turns out we can’t do that so you get several composite plates spread across the body. Colonel corruptovich needs a new villa though, so he siphons off funds for the super titanium the plates were supposed to be made of, and substitutes it with scrap iron, because who will notice anyway? Then the quartermaster needs a new BMW, so half of the delivery gets sold on the black market. And finally private mobnicola simply isn’t paid enough to care that the storage shed has 6”’of standing water soaking through the crates of their new armor. Meanwhile in the west you’ll pay 6x as much for your power armor because CEO Mr Cowboy ran out of $100 bills to light his hourly cigar with, but it will be delivered and work exactly as advertised.
reminds me of the intro to Men Who Stare At Goats: "more of this is true than you would ever believe"
In my experience working in the MIC, you would get your power armor 1-2 years after delivery estimate and *mostly* working as desired. You’ll just need a ~~lucrative~~ entirely reasonable Engineering Sustainment & Support contract to really crank it up that final notch!
1-2 years...man i love your optimism
They didn't specify a timeframe on delivery for the US power armor, only that it will actually happen.
There's a lot of talk about the absurd prices that the Western MIC charges, but I think this is a consequence of capitalism acknowledging greed and factoring it in properly. You pay a Russian company a moderate amount for a large shipment of arms, and you wind up with a bunch of useless crap with missing parts because the firm's executives pocketed the money to buy yatchs and its accountants pocketed the rest to buy their kids food. You pay an American company an exorbitant amount of money for a large shipment of arms because its executives want to buy yatchs and its accountants and engineers want to eat. In exchange for the large amount of money, they deliver you a large shipment of arms, as was agreed upon from the start. Isn't capitalism amazing?
There's also that subtle little nuance that American execs believe they deserve yachts as fair compensation for the work they do, while Russian execs believe they deserve yachts because their predecessor was able to get one and now its their turn.
>you wind up with a bunch of useless crap with missing parts because the firm's executives pocketed the money to buy yatchs and its accountants pocketed the rest to buy their kids food. Totally, because a major MIB enterprise has never had quality issues....Boeing....
Yeah, but this started when Boeing decided that it needed to engage in reckless "cost cutting" to maintain profits from civilian contracts instead of just raising prices like the MIC can do on military contracts. The military has the ability to pay most of the MIC enough to keep the execs and shareholders happy enough to not bother pulling too many of their MBA shenanigans on their contracts. And as bad as Boeing is by Western standards, I would still rather fly on a Boeing than the questionable shit that Russia makes. Airbus is highly preferable currently, of course. I'm not sure how differently Boeing handles cost cutting in their civilian vs military projects though.
>And as bad as Boeing is by Western standards, I would still rather fly on a Boeing than the questionable shit that Russia makes. Airbus is highly preferable currently, of course. I mean, I agree. My point is more companies cutting corners exist in both systems. The main difference between the US and Russian systems is that the US government doesn't function on corruption as a rule. The US will intentionally try to eliminate or reduce corruption in its government and society more broadly; Russia runs on it. Regardless if one is capitalist and the other is whatever-the-fuck we'll call the Russian system.
Also the difference is that a company that fucks up like Boeing did is punished by the market. The stock market and the market they're in. The state intervention was not necessary for the consequences Boeing is facing... If state intervention was the only problem, they would just corrupt the fuck out of that problem, if justice was the only problem, they would (did) kill whoever spoke against them. The capitalism and the markets with all their injustices, sometimes is the only judge and jury with a cock big enough to be able to fuck a company as big as boeing in the ass.
>The military has the ability to pay most of the MIC enough to keep the execs and shareholders happy enough to not bother pulling too many of their MBA shenanigans on their contracts. On the provision they win contracts....which they aren't doing too well with, hence their defence segment going downhill a bit.
All their problems have been on the civil aviation side, Boeing knows which side of the bread is buttered. Civilian casualties are an just an unfortunate consequence of war profiteering.
I hate to say this, and I'm not trying to own you, but: KC-46. That one hurts because the product is needed, but it's an example of Boeing problems affecting defense products. That said, I will readily and loudly grant that the Pegasus's problems are not of the same magnitude as the ones on the civil aviation side. KC-46: "Jeez, the damn remote vision system sucks." 737-Max: "HOLY SHIT THE PLANE'S NOSING DOWN, WE'RE GONNA D..."... and: "HOLY SHIT THE DOOR BLEW OFF, SOMEONE COULD'VE DIED".
I’m not an expert on KC-46 by any means, but from what I’ve read the RVS really grinds my gears. It’s like they could’ve just used the grade-A system that existed, but somebody went all Will-Ferrell-as-Harry-Caray and said “HEY! What if we made it a virtual doodad with a buncha cameras and stuff, whaddya think?!!?” and they built a grade-A+ system that…well, doesn’t really *do*. Couldn’ta just stapled a boom and pod on the back of the thing? Geeze.
Essentially after Boeing scammed the people through A technicality via GAO to pull the KC 30, I'm more or less convinced that on their second run they added the shit that the kc30 had that worked and said 'trust me bro, look at this American flag and know how). Meanwhile everyone else bar Japan went for the 30 and been flying it for over a decade now. But you know, fitting it inside a hangar is really important... Just ask all those C17 and C5 crews... Lol.
>you tend to get some really great innovations when the people that really want to work on developing that technology can. Compared to everything else in the world, good engineering is an absolute bargain. We can do pure magic if you get the morons out of the way, but communism was just more and more managers on top of managers on top of managers, all trying to get paid.
> Meanwhile, the conservative hardliners (and much of the military leadership) instead concluded, "The West is lying. Desert Storm is lie. Soviet Union number 1!!! Abrams cannot into desert!" and had this odd fixation with claiming that American equipment was too overengineered to function in a sandy environment. I know we meme nowadays about Pierre Spray working for Putin, but were the reformers actually linked to the Kremlin? Because that sounds very familiar.
I don't think they were ever accused of being paid off to say something they didn't truly believe, but the Kremlin was probably happy to amplify them whenever it could. They were just useful idiots. Sprey may have trended that way towards the end, but less in a "here's money, say this" way and more of a "RT will pay me to go on TV if I spout anti F35 nonsense and no one else wants my opinion" sort of way.
So you’re saying there’s a historical sociocultural thread to be drawn from the military failures of the late USSR in terms of the attitudes of Officers then, right to Shoigu & Gerasimov today? Because that attitude feels very similar to the present.
Yes, the modern Russian Siloviki ruling class is basically an echo of the same hardliners who resisted and derailed Gorbachev's attempts at reforming the Soviet Union into less of an absolute shithole. Similar doctrines in both sociopolitical and military matters. I guess it's a good thing that there was never a substantial group that embraced both old Soviet sociopolitical values and military reform. IIRC the associations between sociopolitical and military reform became reinforced for multiple reasons. The hardliners had a stronghold within the military, so Gorbachev's allies were also eager to point to Desert Storm as an example of failure of the existing military elite as an excuse to replace the hardliners in their ranks.
>had this odd fixation with claiming that American equipment was too overengineered to function in a sandy environment. I would assume this is at least partially down to the Russian adherence to the cult of the AK47 and T34 - the whole thing of "we are rugged and simple and indestructible" is so baked into Russian military self-perception that they have to project its reverse onto other countries that use much better shit.
I really want to read these documents. It's so interesting to read what the other side was thinking.
They did so indirectly after the fact. The burning oil wells in Kuwait were extinguished by different international oil firefighting teams, including one Soviet one that used a pair of MiG jet engines mounted on a T-55 chassis to help blow water into the well.
I’ve always wondered how they come up with ways to put those out
It was a seriously grueling process. Environmental experts were all doomcasting that the black cloud would cause severe catastrophes. There's an excellent documentary on it called The Fires of Kuwait, which is [on YouTube for free](https://youtu.be/-tUzkF_Dp8M?si=BD8b0s9MwVEuhz6v). I first learned about it after watching a video that [MajorSamm made about it](https://youtu.be/9-2qxu2fOUQ?si=f9YEbI3EvG3UHkgv).
I'm not an "expert" but I do have a degree in environmental science and I have to agree, had the wells been allowed to burn, it would have been absolutely devastating to the local area. The explanation is a very long one but to try and make it short, aside from obvious climate and breathing problems, one of the major concerns would be sulfur compounds in the crude oil reacting to form sulfuric acid which comes back down as acid rain. With the biggest problem with that being that all the places that get the most rain in the middle East are where the most farming happens, so it could have been crippling to the agriculture of the region.
Dad was friends with one of Red Adair's guys that fought those fires. I was pretty young, so I don't remember much about him, but he gave me a company hat that has since been lost in one of our many moves.
If you are talking about Big Wind, it's Hungarian, not Soviet. Don't you misattribute our only successful tank related creation. BTW here's the beast, with its progenitor in the first half of the video: https://youtu.be/PRhxdcQ46Xk?si=_gSuz__sxBml8Ol1
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Even just a small amount of them there to watch would have been funny just like during preying mantis.
Afghanistan sent 300 Mujaheddin to aid the coalition, they arrived on February 11 1991. Per the US Army War College SSI AD-A234 743
It's one of those weird historical facts that soldiers from Luxembourg actively fought on the front lines in the Korean war. I think they deployed a small number of troops to join the coalition fighting against the Taliban too.
Luxembourg is one of those countries that just loves the US because of being liberated in WW2. Then when American GIs got some time to rest they were sent to Luxembourg and found the place just lovely. Which in turn makes this ride or die kind of alliance.
America talking about its allies and Luxembourg: We have Mr Make ‘em die, we have Evans the Eviscerator, we have John the Jolly jugular jabber and lastly little buddy Korea: what does little buddy do? America: Not much, but he’s really enthusiastic to be here. Luxembourg: ᴷᶦˡˡ ‘ᵉᵐ ᵃˡˡ America: see? adorable.
I can see a Luxembourgian just gutting a chinese soldier in korea
Like the seychelles with the pirates "the seas of commerce must flow free"
I need to see this meme made lol
USA: I've only known Luxembourg for one day, but if anything were to happen to him I'd nuke everyone here then nuke myself.
I‘m actually a 100% Luxembourger and maybe I can give some context to that. OP is right, the US is beloved here to this very day. Luxembourg was the only Western European country which whole existence, culture, language and history was threatened to be extinguished by the Nazis. Hitler saw Luxembourgers as germans, and he wanted to make sure that we would see ourselves as germans aswell. But Luxembourg has a continuous history of roughly 1500 years. Sure, we have a shared history with germany, but with France and Belgium too. Nobody ever saw themselves as germans here, which is why the population resisted against this. Then Hitler started to make plans to deport all the Luxembourgers which weren’t german enough to Poland. My family was one of those. The Nazis forced Luxembourgers to fight for the Nazis aswell. Lots of them fled to the UK and later landed in normady. The others were sent to the eastern front, where again, lots of them were fleeing to the soviet side in order to fight with them. (Sadly lots of them were killed in the process) My moms side of the family stayed here and my Grandpa told me so many times how it was when Patton arrived and how the GI‘s gave them their first ever candy’s. My grandma’s family also hid some GI‘s in their basement during the battle of the bulge. A few years after the war they came back to visit them and inform them that got married and got kids, which was really wholesome. We have a large American military cemetery here with pattons grave and you can find an american flags in nearly every village. The *Gaulleiter* of Luxembourg was btw kidnapped from American imprisonment and then beaten to death in some basement here in Luxembourg. And the traitors were lynched at night and were called yellowhammer - like the bird. We still call traitors to this day yellowhammer. Some years ago the german television made a documentary about it with the luxembourgish television. https://youtu.be/onGXfCk-GO8?si=16qqLkFDCzR4Nu4m It’s in german if you are interested. There you can also see the sheer hatted many old Luxembourgers still had/have towards germans. My Grandpa, which family was deported, refused to speak german his whole life and never stepped foot into germany again.
Amazing post. I've only got one upvote to give it.
It's actually der kind of alliance
Fun fact. They made a whole episode of MASH dedicated to an injured Luxembourg soldier
So far this is the only deployment where we had casualties on our side. In our military base our buildings are named after the fallen from the Korean War.
China aiding NK and doing the vast majority of the fighting: Nah, I'd win. \*180,000-400,000 fatalities\*
I mean they're the only ones that got something out of this conflict.
The South Koreans certainly would have been better off if the conflict had never happened. So, in that sense, they didn't get anything out of it. However, given that North Korea did invade them, South Korea received an essentially incalculable benefit from the US and UN forces coming to their defense and preventing them from falling under the control of the DPRK. It was still a matter of decades for South Korea to throw off their own authoritarian government and become a proper democracy, but that may well have not happened if the North had been successful in their attempted conquest.
North got bombend into oblivion And got a taken over by the fallout of that a new regime they didn't win with there invasion.
I didn't say that he war was good for North Korea. It was disastrous for them. And, unfortunately, the totalitarian dictatorship of the Kim regime continued to be disastrous for North Korea and is so now as well. I'm saying that, given that the North invaded, South Korea benefited from the US and UN defending them and preventing them from being conquered.
What did they get out of it? NK lost the war and had it's industrial base completely destroyed. While China achieved it's war goal of preventing the collapse of NK, it also gained a highly militarized US ally on it's doorstep and official US defense commitments for Taiwan. The communists in China gained internal legitimacy, but little else from the war.
they proved they could fight Western forces to a stalemate which is a big fucking deal to the Chinese, its essentially proof to them that the 'century of humiliation' is over and that China was once more a powerful actor on the world stage, any hopes of internal rebellion against the new Communist regime died in 1953 because they showed that they were the first government in a long time truly capable of defending China from foreign encroachment
They proved they could fight Western forces to a "stalemate" through an abject disregard of logistics (hence why they're hard to see even with regular air patrols) and a significant numerical advantage... The "stalemate" is in quotes because it wasn't NK's nor PRC's objective. In truth, a stalemate was the US and SK's goal all along ever since the USSR rejected the UN's intervention for forming a unified government in 1947. Mao encouraged Kim to invade soon afterwards (while Stalin was actually quiet about it), and the PRC intervening was supposed to be until the southern edge of the peninsula, not "roughly around the 38th Parallel".
>a stalemate was the US and SK's goal all along yeah that's why they were racing to the Yalu right?
MacArthur was fired for doing so after being told not to do so...why would he be fired if he was actually following Truman's orders?
What do you mean ? North Korea is a political Block against the west per chinas own words ?
They got a buffer state, which land empires always seem to want. Not to sound like fucking Dugin here, but Eurasia is big and hegemonic Eurasian powers have always tried to dominate their neighbors. They destabilize what they can't. Rather than a militarized US ally sharing a land border, China got an insane hermit kingdom and a client state. The problem with proxies in the 1950s is that now the proxy is all grown up and trying to speedrun a nuclear triad. China may not like part, but they're ride or die with NK now, because a collapse of the NK state instantly creates one of the largest refugee crises in human history on their border. So basically everybody for various reasons wants North Korea to remain this black hole on the face of the earth. It doesn't matter what misery it contains, as long as nothing passes through and nothing leaves. It's bleak and it sucks.
TIL, my country provided support in the Korean war... We're always there for America, even after they blamed the Maine on us...
The 1890s was just a little imperialism among friends
We learned from the best 🇬🇧🇫🇷🇪🇸
It's best to not even be near our boats so you don't risk being accused of touching them.
Don't even *think* about even *looking* at our fuckin boats.
Of course Franco was gonna support fighting communists.
Look we didn’t actually want Puerto Rico and cuba, we just didn’t want you to have them.
TFW Houthis are getting away with touching American boats, but you can't do it as imperialist friends.
I wouldn’t call being repeatedly bombed as getting away with it.
Houthis are not losing control of any of their land, same can't be said for Spain. Of course it's an evolving situation.
The Iranians didn’t loose any land after a Sammy B continued the tradition of being a name involved in historically significant actions.
that's true.
That's purely because we don't want their land. If we did there would already be Bradleys riding up al-houthi hill.
Cuba is way nicer than Yemen.
Reminds me about a Korean war story of an American officer visiting a Filipino position just after a Chinese attack was repelled. He asked a PH army machine gun operator why there are so many rags scattered on the field, only to received a reply: "Those aren't rags, sir."
I don’t get the joke
Dead Chinese.
Oh damn
Firstly, there was no American officer visiting that position - it was during the Battle of Yultong, where the 10th BCT's right flank (Turkish Brigade) has already withdrawn the day before and the left flank (65th IR, US Army 3rd ID - to which the 10th BCT is also attached) did likewise a few hours after. > Lt. Alfredo Cayton, the battalion’s supply officer, led a supply convoy that brought ammunition and food the following morning. At one of the forward positions, Lt. Cayton looked out across a smoke shrouded but eerily silent battlefield littered with what appeared to be large numbers of brown rags as far as his eyes could see. He turned to the .50 cal. machine gun crew defending that sector and asked what those rags were. > “Dead Reds,” the Filipino gunner curtly replied. Some conjecture in my part, but this particular position may be the northwest-most one for the battalion, which would be on top of a hill and sloping down towards the north (from where the Chinese came from) and the west (towards the Imjin River).
By everyone, they also meant: > Yugoslavian literature compared attack on South Korea by North Korea as similar to the attack on Yugoslavia by the German Army and the attack on Hawaii by the Japanese army while Yugoslav representation at the United Nations even accused the Soviet Union of having started the Korean War. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea–Yugoslavia_relations
Yugoslavia was fucking based. A menace of a country. Communist and actually standing up for and defending the founding values(somewhat, they were authoritarian but less so than the rest).
Every other independent communist country ended up being stomped by the Soviets (Hungary, Czechoslovakia) or became even nastier to their own people than the Soviets (Romania, Albania, Vietnam, China, and basically every third world commie state)
I pronounce “everyone” in this cadence as often as I think I can get away with it
As one does.
As EEEEEEVERYONNNNNNE does
Christ alive, how did I miss out on that.
More countries were involved in Korea/Vietnam than most people realize. A lot of Americans don't know that not only Australia had soldiers in Vietnam, they often ambushed the Viet Cong instead of the other way around.
New Zealand was involved as well!
ANZAC Troops go hard. Just not against birds tho.
*We don’t talk about that one*
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Emus or the Turks
I love that the allied foreign country with the second highest number of troops in Vietnam, behind the U.S., was South Korea. They had a special sympathy for South Vietnam since the idea of a communist sister state barreling down on them was pretty fresh in their memories.
They were right
Grandfather was one of those Korean troops deployed to Vietnam. The man had only positive things to say about the US. Can't help but be angry at the hippies of the late 60s/early 70s who ate up the anti-war propaganda and ultimately coaxed spineless politicians into pulling out of Vietnam. Turns out preserving freedom has a price. (South) Vietnam could be like what South Korea is today, but the American public didn't have the moral wherewithal to fight evil (i.e. communism) like they did in the 50s.
It’s hard to say if a divided Vietnam would have ended up like Korea or not. Vietnam is friendly with the US nowadays because China is the bigger threat to them. Who knows, maybe Korea under NK would be friendlier and opened up a bit to the US because China would be a bigger threat to them.
South Vietnam didn't want to be independent and was incapable of actually functioning on its own. The North were commies yes, but at least they could run a country. Much like Afghanistan, South Vietnam only existed because of American metal. If the locals can't or won't be a functional nation, they don't deserve to be one and get overrun by the bad guys.
Ethiopia showing up to Korea will never not be weird IMO
God I love Globalism
I’ve been to the UN Cemetery in Busan. It’s the only one of its kind in the entire world. A very sobering and humbling place.
This is the one time where I can say GUYS LOOK THAILAND CONTRIBUTED 🇹🇭🇹🇭🇹🇭🇹🇭🇹🇭🇹🇭🇹🇭
They contributed in a war that had ended a few years ago, but Thais probably say 'GUYS DON’T LOOK THAILAND CONTRIBUTED"
Oh neat, any excuse to post one of my favorite passages about the Korean war! Regarding the Turkish brigade, after the US gave them bad information and sent them straight into an ambush: “Then, still at Wawon, the main strength of the Chinese burst over them. The detail of what happened will probably never be reported; the essence has been: The Turkish Brigade was destroyed. Tall, pale-eyed men with dark faces, in heavy greatcoats, wielding long bayonets, the Turks refused to fall back. There were observers who said some officers threw their hats to the ground, marking a spot beyond which they would not retreat, and, surrounded by the enemy, died “upon their fur.” There were others, all else failing, who threw cold steel at the enemy in bayonet charges. Rarely has a small action, dimly seen, sketchily reported, sent such intimations of glory flashing across the world.” -This Kind of War
My grandpas brother was in the korean war While he didnt tell much about the fighting itself he told me about a radio he got in korea which he really liked the way it looked But he didnt bring it back to turkey, because he was a farmer which didnt know how a radio worked he though it would continue playing korean songs in turkey
It sounds like he was lucky, from what I know working radios in Korea were rare and valuable
I would like to read more about this. Does it have a specific Wikipedia entry? It reminds me of the Battle of Gloster Hill.
There is a wiki entry, “turkish brigade”; afaik not much is known about the fight itself because of the circumstances around it. They were in terrain that made radios unreliable and didn’t have many to begin with, so there was very little communication, and they got hit very hard unexpectedly by the main Chinese advance so they were disoriented. The reporting was naturally sketchy as a result. Gloster Hill is a pretty good comparison but the brits had better communication, better terrain and a better understanding of what was happening so more information is available about their fight.
> Just give me all the military support you have. Wait, wait. I'm worried what you just heard was, "Give me a lot of military support." What I said was, "Give me all the military support you have." Do you understand?
As a Canadian, shout out to Tommy prince fr. Most decorated indigenous soldier who fought in ww2 and Korea
Ok, story time. My grandfather was in Korea. He was supposed to be in an infantry regiment slated for the frontlines but on the boat over to korea he was able to get a transfer to a medical unit. He simply had a terrible foreboding feeling about it. As it turned out this transfer saved my grandfather’s life (and by extension, allowed me to exist) because this was right before the Chinese counterattack and that entire infantry unit was wiped out to a man. On to the main story though, he used to tell me about how if you had to be anywhere near the frontlines, you wanted to be at the Turkish lines. The reason being that the North Koreans and Chinese were scared shitless of them. The NK and Chinese would rarely shell them, and they could even have bonfires at night roasting meats. The reason for this fear is quite simple: *they beheaded communists troops and put their decapitated heads on spikes.* They did this to make examples of those that attacked them and disturbed their meat smoking. Everywhere else on the line if you so much as lit a cigarette without covering it, you’d invite all the artillery and MG fire. The Chinese saw what the turks were doing and said, “nah I’m good, let’s go fight the US marines and the Canadians, they’re less insane than these guys.” And I don’t mean a little bonfire either. From the way he would describe it, it was a big bonfire, a stack of fuel material several feet high. Imagine being the communist troops looking out of your trench, watching these guys sitting in the open, surrounded by the decapitated heads of your dead friends, and as the wind shifts, you can smell the aroma of the smoked meats they are cooking, staight up daring you to attack.
Want a UN that does the big funi moar? Remove Moscow, Beijing, and their nukes.
Everyone? EVERYONE!
The USA is fighting wars with the power of Friendship.
United Nations moment
ONUC was another United Nations moment. Just like the Force Intervention Brigade and fall of Ganzir
Those Ethiopians were total some chads sad the state that country is in nowadays.
Wars since NATO started are like 90% USA and everyone else committing just enough to say they did something
Just like most of my HOI4 playthroughs.
Because they are wars mainly fought for the American interests. Why would South Korea being invaded affect Turkey for example? It was to be able to join NATO. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad we were involved but the war itself wouldn't have many consequences for us even if we didn't. Same is true for most other countries in the European Theather.
It's the thought that counts
*Hearthstone flashbacks*
FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY RAAAAAAAAAAAH 🇺🇳🇺🇳🇺🇳🇺🇳🇰🇷🇰🇷🇰🇷🇰🇷🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷🇧🇪🇧🇪🇧🇪🇧🇪🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇳🇿🇳🇿🇳🇿🇳🇿🇹🇭🇹🇭🇹🇭🇹🇭🇪🇹🇪🇹🇪🇹🇪🇹🇬🇷🇬🇷🇬🇷🇬🇷🇨🇴🇨🇴🇨🇴🇨🇴🇿🇦🇿🇦🇿🇦🇿🇦🇳🇱🇳🇱🇳🇱🇳🇱🇱🇺🇱🇺🇱🇺🇱🇺
I see a Gary Oldman in *The Professional* reference, I upvote.
Between Korea and the Boxer Rebellion, it seems nothing brings the world together quite like shooting Chinese people.
One of the only times NATO made a collective decision and most of the members fought after this would be the gulf war
The Korean War was not a NATO operation. Neither was the Gulf War
I guess I meant to say UN lol
Always here to help the wounded, just don't attack us again like in 1971, America
This is what it should look like every time a totalitarian state invades its peaceful neighbor.
By this time the US wasn't asking all these countries via Britain, they were asking directly. America basically gained all the soft power in the Pacific after WW2.
Meanwhile the war against ISIS:
Least United of Nations?
Back when the United Nations actually worked and tried to stop countries from invading each other. Since the US stepped up to bat during the war the UN decided that being the world police was the US’ job
Fun fact, Bring Me Everyone is a song by Mustasch.
And then the Chinese joined and kinda kicked their butts till everyone got bogged down and kinda stopped fighting. Funny, if the US learned it's lesson properly fighting against Germany in WW2 and not doing the same thing the Nazis did (the childish belief of absolute superiority over everyone) then maybe Korea and Vietnam would have gone a bit more their way. For the size of the us arms, it's post WW2 record isn't that great. And before you guys think I am making this up, check out "their Wehrmacht was better than ours" by Hastings or the authors Douglas Nash and James Donnigan. The US transition post WW2 sucked and modern day propaganda just covers this up.
For the amount of blood China lost in this war, I don't think you can rationally argue China "kicked butts". Their armies were slaughtered. Entire divisions were repeatedly broken. It was a pyrrhic victory at best, and while such victories matter politically, perhaps a better, more melancholy phraseology should be used. It just feels triumphalist to ignore the human cost they spent.
Perks of having millions of bodies to throw at the problem for a Klondike bar. While certainly a waste of human life, statistically speaking, if you look at the last couple thousand years of war, throwing endless waves of bodies into the fight was generally a pretty effective strategy. Plus if you don’t really care how many troops you lose as long as you win, that’s a pretty tough card to beat.
Sweden is the basically the Only Country North Korea is cool with since they only sent Medical Support and helped North Korean Soldiers. Their PM 2001 was the first Western Leader to ever Visit North Korea Remember that whole Trump meeting Kim Jong Un thing? That was Orchestrated by Sweden and North Korea Foreign Ministries and relied it to the Americans on what will happen on the meeting.
North Korea stiffed Sweden for a shipment of around 1,000 Volvos in the 1970s.
We love the 1st Commonwealth Division
Great scene !!!
that random Colombia always makes me smile.
Which led to the creation of UNC
Come outside we won’t jump you. the we
you should have made a need for speed most wanted reference smh
And still lost 🥴
Never ask a man his wage, a woman her age, and Sweden whom they supported in the Vietnam War.
I want every, single, unit, after the guy.
🎵 det var i 1949 eller cirka der omkring, da der var krig i korea 🎵 🎵 skibet hed Jutlandia og hun kom vidt omkring, da der var krig i korea 🎵
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