ITT: Historians that are /ourguys/

If he is not your guy, consider suicide.

Christopher Browning, btw. Forgot to change the file name.

Unknown outside of the central/eastern Europe but it's a shame more people don't know about him. Sovietologist with probably the most extensive knowledge about the origins and diplomacy of WWII and basically all lesser known but important aspects of modern history. A briliant mind even if sometimes he talked too much about alternative theories and conspiracies but he always gave multiple perspectives.

That is completely irrelevant to what I said.

You stated he was influential. If he was influential, OTHER people would be citing HIS works. That has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of his scholarship.

Any of his work available in english?

I'm not a Brit but I know a lot of their historians. Hastings is fine. Seems reasonably unbiased (with the exception of his beliefs on WWI).

Well it was certainly one side of his family yes. One would think he would have taken a greater interest in the plight of Jews in Europe since he served in WW2, was himself the victim of minor anti-Semitic bullying growing up, and presumably had family who were not fortunate enough to have Southern men to turn for protection from the tendrils of the Nazi beast that sought their destruction.

Not really. I think just in Polish and Russian. But he's cited in English publications by people like Snyder so he's not unnoticed. His pupil continues his work now that he's dead and recently made an interesting trilogy on controversial topics regarding Jews/Soviets/Germans.

>Zychowicz

Isn't it the guy who wrote Ribbenrop-Beck?

Yeah. I haven't read it. I don't really care for alternative history. Polish population wouldn't agree on any deal with Hitler and let's leave it at that.

Even if it is true that Poland made probably the worst mistake by allying with France and UK.

>Even if it is true that Poland made probably the worst mistake by allying with France and UK

As opposed to not Allying with anybody?

Well what happened instead? UK, France and later USA left Poland alone while the country was being ravaged by Germany and the Soviet Union and alongside Czechoslovakia it was a country that basically lost the war despite fighting on the winning side, lost 20% of its population, had major cities destroyed and only regained independence 50 years later,
It's weird that we only got a book like Ribbentrop-Beck now.

and how would being on their own have prevented this?

>he was himself raised Jewish until adulthood

no he was not

Foote was raised in his father's and maternal grandmother's Episcopal faith.

there was no realistic way that the Allies could have helped Poland. The best was attacking Germany themselves, but history has shown that they weren't even willing to put up a spirited defense in their own part of the continent.

Well then shame on the Polish government to believe their lies.
According to Jodl in September 1939 eastern border of Germany wasn't protected enough and war could've ended in that year if the British honored their agreement.

Well Poland had really two options. Allying with the British or with Germany. We know how the first option turned out for Poland so according to the R-B theory Hitler wanted to be allied with Poland so that he would have his eastern border secured and also he'd have an ally against USSR (in this scenarion Ribbentrop-Molotov isn't necessary). The most important for Poland was the destruction of the Soviet government because Germany would still get beaten by the West eventually.

That was out of the question by 1939. Hitler had the express wish of doing to Poland what he had done to Czechoslovakia and any peace overtures were rightly interpreted by the Poles to be as worthless as the paper they were written on as Hitler had so proven in Munich.

Well if we want to be exact Hitler decided to attack Poland in April 1939. There's never too late in politics. According to Canaris (and we're talking about Canaris in 1939 not 1944) Hitler was furious learning about Polish agreement with the British.

But as I said. For Poles Hitler was a bandit and would never let the government to simply give up. It would be better in hindsight but nobody there had crystal balls or anything.

>Foote attended the local Reform synagogue and did so well in the religious school that he won a prize, a copy of David Copperfield that entranced him and helped to set him on his path as a writer.
>After his snub at Chapel Hill, Foote became an Episcopalian, saying that it was easier to be an Episcopalian than a Jew. He never denied his Jewish ancestry. But as he became renowned as the historian of the Civil War, and famous as the narrator of the documentary, the Southerner came to the fore, and the Jew receded far into the background.

books.google.com/books?id=ejDkN3Q_j1wC&pg=PA55&lpg=PA55&dq=shelby foote synagogue&source=bl&ots=bxy14M4Z_R&sig=RVPn4BPsZJDFYv3FJEeReVO37po&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiE_umL0JPWAhXBjFQKHfXbCT8Q6AEIPTAC#v=onepage&q=shelby foote synagogue&f=false

books.google.com/books?id=mevWTuhOYUEC&pg=PA20&lpg=PA20&dq=shelby foote synagogue&source=bl&ots=-Ow3EaRq4E&sig=xS1CdaQvevZYpWyRNGtoIG_8Fik&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiE_umL0JPWAhXBjFQKHfXbCT8Q6AEIRjAE#v=onepage&q=shelby foote synagogue&f=false

I was only half-wrong, Foote was raised Jewish until around age 11 and only became an active Episcopal in college.

Since we're on the topic of Foote. Why did he claim that the Confederacy never had a chance at victory?
By victory I mean of course chance at independence because there's no way they would ever capture the entire North. But (and I'm struggling to remember the details) but from the documentary I recall the moment in 1862 I think it was the Seven Days Battles when the Confederacy came close to completely destroying the Union army. Without it and later successes the North might've been fatigued by the war giving the South a chance at armistice. Doesn't meant that there wouldn't be a second Civil War like 20 years later.

>There's never too late in politics.
It's true, but perceptions are important. Hitler's treachery made people uneasy to negotiate with him, and that is all his own fault. Perhaps the Poles might have been able to have escaped the fate they did but the odds were very slim. At best they would have been a rump state like Slovakia.

Ultimatley because as a result of his research, he was convinced that the North would never allow a long term surviving south, no matter the cost. Even if they get enough of a "win" to allow McClellan to win the 1864 election and sign an armistice, they're not going to leave the areas they already took, and they're not going to like the south. Another war breaking out, and with a greater Union relative advantage, is more or less inevitable.

Also, if you're referring to Savage's station, that was nowhere close to destroying the Army of the Potomic, let alone the rest of the Union Army. And ultimately, the North tapped their pools of manpower and wealth a lot less than the South did, and there's little reason to suppose they couldn't have pushed harder if it came to that; big confederate victories usually galvanized spirits. The big sense of doom and despair was over the precursor trench war and the endless rolling months with casualties but no firm decisive outcomes.

The South was always doomed to fight an uphill against the North. The Confederate States simply did not have the money, manpower, and resources that the United States. The Confederacy's only real hope for survival was a political victory in the form of the Northern public tiring and demanding an end to the war (i.e. Vietnam) or England and France intervening. Hopes for both of those were ruined by the Confederate reversals of July, 1863 and the Emancipation Proclamation.

>Another war breaking out, and with a greater Union relative advantage, is more or less inevitable.

Well a lot of that depends on political fortunes in the North. If the war had ended in Union defeat, the Republican Party would've more or less collapsed and the Democrats, who were far more friendly to the Confederacy (many Confederate leaders were after all, former Democrats) would taken power in their place. Given the immense cost of the war on both sides, I imagine the Union would have not been politically inclined to resume its conquest of the South, and the Confederacy, knowing they had barely survived one war, would be inclined not to antagonize the North. That's not to say the Union wouldn't resort to covert means of undermining the Confederacy (i.e. arming a slave rebellion), but they would nominally respect Confederate sovereignty.

On a side note, the Civil War would have resulted in the collapse of slavery as an institution regardless of which side emerged victorious. Even at the height of Confederacy's military fortunes in 1862, slavery was already ailing because of the strain of war. Plantations destroyed, masses of slaves fleeing up North, bread riots, entire regions gripped by lawlessness. The Antebellum South was dead long before Appomattox. No doubt these social problems would have continued to plague the Confederacy even after independence, leading to slavery's eventual collapse, either through a massive shift in public opinion among white voters or another John Brown wannabe succeeds in starting a slave revolt that the Confederate government can't contain and its continuation becomes a threat to national security. Completely undoing a major reason (if not, the leading one) for the Confederacy's establishment to begin with, the preservation of the Antebellum system of slavery.

In this respect, the South lost the war before it began.

Reading about it I got the same impression, they were in an incredibly inferior position, it's incredible they survived as long as they did.
I don't like the "they were doomed to lose" idea because a lot of things can happen, but yeah, it would take a lot of things going their way for South to prevail.

I don't think Foote was saying Confederate victory was 100% impossible, but that it would've taken something amounting to a miracle (*cough* Russian Winter) to happen. And as someone who grew up going to Church and praying for them every Sunday, I can tell you that miracles are far and few in-between.

Why did the British elite support Confederacy?

I wouldn't they supported it. Britain after all wound up remaining neutral. Sympathetic would be a better word. And I would argue that sympathy existed for four reasons.

1. Cultural similarities between the South and Britain that run back to before the American Revolution. Both are stratified and aristocratic societies that place heavy emphasis on tradition.

2. Many Confederate leaders like Robert E. Lee were of aristocratic English descent.

3. A desire to weaken the United States, which had waged two incredibly costly wars against Great Britain within the last century.

4. Economic incentives. The British textile industry was reliant on Southern cotton until the Civil War forced them to turn other sources.

>Many Confederate leaders like Robert E. Lee were of aristocratic English descent.
Nah, horseshit. His ancestors were just wealthy commoners.

Still, they were prominent in English society prior to becoming founding members of Virginian society.

Actor Christopher Lee (peace be upon him) is actually a distant cousin of Robert E. Lee and himself had a disguised military career during WW2.

My wife is also related to him in some way.

...

He usually looks more dignified.

You lucky bastard...

an aristocrat is way different than being a gentry or respected member of society

Most Americans unironically believe that aristocrat is a synonym of wealthy person.

ironically i'm an american. but i've actually read a bit of british history to know that the claim to aristrocratic descent is just nonsense. aristocrats wouldn't have left britain in the first place kek. all the founding fathers would be considered landed gentry in britain

...

Do the Polish have seizures whenever they name their children?

out of respect for Dan, I'll just say that he always says that he's not a professional historian in all of his podcasts at the start.

but, he's still so good

Well no. His name was Paweł. Professor Paweł.
I think his last name comes from Ukraine.

He isn't listed today, because of the zion influence to drop him out of any platform.

...

>Over 50 replies
>Nobody mentions Houston Steward Chamberlain
Does this board have no game?

He was never listed, not by academics. He was referred to by guys like Kurt Vonnegut.

Dr. Paweł, I'm CIA.

they lasted as long as they did due to union leadership being unable to press their advantage/take-momentum/fighting-defensively.

Sherman's actions (and Farragut's liberation of New Orleans) basically proved the south was gutless when it came to actually holding /defending their territory.

The bad thing is how reconstruction was mishandled, state lines should've been redrawn and the planter-class should've had their land expropriated and/or "sent to settle alaska"

>Allying with the British or with Germany

let me guess. the holocaust never happened and winston churchill started WW2, right?

Show some respect for the Aryan language.

What you mean sanskrit?

>Polish
>Aryan
Kek

Recording? Was it some veteran(s) after the war?

Yeah. There are two. One is just raw recording. The other is more interesting. It shows a bunch of veterans. American Civil War seems so distant it's weird to even see its veterans recorded. It's even weirder to see the audience joking with them and telling them to charge the Yanks. Mindblowing.

youtube.com/watch?v=s6jSqt39vFM

...

>no one has posted the Great War with Indy Naidel