Grand unified books thread

[Syt]

This was shared on the Paradox memes subreddit and ... I feel Sav could have made good money these days with his Anne Frank furry fanfic.

https://www.webnovel.com/book/continue-the-third-reich-in-another-world_27651572400569305

Konrad Schuster, an above average high school student, suddenly finds himself transported to a strange new world filled with swords and magic, tasked with continuing the legacy of the Third Reich (WW2 Germany) after he touched his Grandfather's old German military uniform!

He discovers a unique power that allows him to convert souls into source points. Using this power, Konrad can create anything he wants by simply imagining it! Soldiers! Guns! Tanks! Fighter Jets! Nuclear Bombs! As he explores this magical world, he must hunt and kill to expand his army and crush the locals with his overwhelming technological advantage!

But danger is never far away, and Konrad must be cautious. He knows little about this world, and every decision he makes has consequences. He must use his technological superiority to his greatest advantage!

Chapter release every 2 days

WHAT TO EXPECT: A highly competent ruthless protagonist that acts and behaves like a proper general. He becomes intimidating, commanding and doesn't hesitate if he needs to get his hands dirty. He is an evil protagonist. I hate beta MC and dense MC with a passion, so he is the exact opposite. His is cunning and dominating. TRIGGER WARNING: RACISM AND DISCRIMINATION (Against Demi-Humans)

I DO NOT SUPPORT NAZIS
Please don't take any views in my novel seriously, I just wrote this for fun, I don't support any Nazi ideals and behaviours. I just like the idea of a WW2 German army using modern equipment in a fantasy world.

[Savonarola]

This was shared on the Paradox memes subreddit and ... I feel Sav could have made good money these days with his Anne Frank furry fanfic.

https://www.webnovel.com/book/continue-the-third-reich-in-another-world_27651572400569305

Konrad Schuster, an above average high school student, suddenly finds himself transported to a strange new world filled with swords and magic, tasked with continuing the legacy of the Third Reich (WW2 Germany) after he touched his Grandfather's old German military uniform!

He discovers a unique power that allows him to convert souls into source points. Using this power, Konrad can create anything he wants by simply imagining it! Soldiers! Guns! Tanks! Fighter Jets! Nuclear Bombs! As he explores this magical world, he must hunt and kill to expand his army and crush the locals with his overwhelming technological advantage!

But danger is never far away, and Konrad must be cautious. He knows little about this world, and every decision he makes has consequences. He must use his technological superiority to his greatest advantage!

Chapter release every 2 days

WHAT TO EXPECT: A highly competent ruthless protagonist that acts and behaves like a proper general. He becomes intimidating, commanding and doesn't hesitate if he needs to get his hands dirty. He is an evil protagonist. I hate beta MC and dense MC with a passion, so he is the exact opposite. His is cunning and dominating. TRIGGER WARNING: RACISM AND DISCRIMINATION (Against Demi-Humans)

I DO NOT SUPPORT NAZIS
Please don't take any views in my novel seriously, I just wrote this for fun, I don't support any Nazi ideals and behaviours. I just like the idea of a WW2 German army using modern equipment in a fantasy world.

Heh, when I first read about "Fifty Shades of Grey," I thought I should have kept up with Fanfiction; obviously there's nothing too awful to be a bestseller.   

[grumbler]

This was shared on the Paradox memes subreddit and ... I feel Sav could have made good money these days with his Anne Frank furry fanfic.

https://www.webnovel.com/book/continue-the-third-reich-in-another-world_27651572400569305

Konrad Schuster, an above average high school student, suddenly finds himself transported to a strange new world filled with swords and magic, tasked with continuing the legacy of the Third Reich (WW2 Germany) after he touched his Grandfather's old German military uniform!

He discovers a unique power that allows him to convert souls into source points. Using this power, Konrad can create anything he wants by simply imagining it! Soldiers! Guns! Tanks! Fighter Jets! Nuclear Bombs! As he explores this magical world, he must hunt and kill to expand his army and crush the locals with his overwhelming technological advantage!

But danger is never far away, and Konrad must be cautious. He knows little about this world, and every decision he makes has consequences. He must use his technological superiority to his greatest advantage!

Chapter release every 2 days

WHAT TO EXPECT: A highly competent ruthless protagonist that acts and behaves like a proper general. He becomes intimidating, commanding and doesn't hesitate if he needs to get his hands dirty. He is an evil protagonist. I hate beta MC and dense MC with a passion, so he is the exact opposite. His is cunning and dominating. TRIGGER WARNING: RACISM AND DISCRIMINATION (Against Demi-Humans)

I DO NOT SUPPORT NAZIS
Please don't take any views in my novel seriously, I just wrote this for fun, I don't support any Nazi ideals and behaviours. I just like the idea of a WW2 German army using modern equipment in a fantasy world.

The book has already been written:  Lord of the Swastika (aka The Iron Dream) Wiki's summary

[Razgovory]

Yikes.

[FunkMonk]

"I do not support Nazis"

*Dreams about Nazis with modern weapons committing genocide*

[Sheilbh]

Review of what sounds like a really interesting book:

A Nasty Little War review – the west's chaotic campaign to undo the Russian Revolution
Journalist Anna Reid's thrilling history throws much-needed light on the dark, bloody and sometimes absurd attempt to overthrow the Bolsheviks by the US, Britain and others
Luke Harding
Tue 7 Nov 2023 09.00 GMT

On 11 November 1918, as the first world war ended, Pte Scheu of the US army found himself in a battle. Its location was the remote frozen village of Tulgas, 200 miles south of the Russian port of Arkhangelsk. Early that morning the enemy attacked. By lunchtime two men next to Scheu had been killed. The next day was worse. "Shells were just raining about. We knew we were in for a hit," he wrote in his diary.

The soldiers bombarding Scheu's platoon were Bolsheviks. The American crawled out and hid in a nearby building. Inside he found a wounded girl, her dead family and a decapitated priest. Canadian reinforcements scattered the attackers. Scheu heard about the armistice two months later. "It doesn't mean a damn thing over here," he observed bitterly. Also, he was having a good time back at base and met three "buxom lassies" at a "Russkie party".

Scheu was part of a now forgotten expeditionary force sent to Russia in 1918. It involved guns, tanks, and uniforms, worn by 180,000 troops from 16 countries. They included soldiers from Britain, France, America and Japan, as well as Czechoslovakia, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The intervention, as it was known, lasted two years. In almost every respect it was an abject failure, characterised by weak political leadership and delusional thinking.

A Nasty Little War by the historian and journalist Anna Reid brings this little-known period thrillingly back to life. It is a vivid and sparkling account, full of colour and dark drama. She chronicles the terrible moments of Russia's civil war – such as the pogroms against Jews – and the sometimes ridiculous behaviour of the interventionists. It was a "quixotic and tragic military adventure", she thinks. It combined – in the words of one officer – "intense seriousness" and "comic opera".

The war was the only time US troops have fought in Russia. The conflict raged across a vast area, stretching from Poland to the Pacific. It happened on stony tundra and green-gold steppe. The British led an occupation force that seized the northern ports of Murmansk and Arkhangelsk, as well as Baku on the Caspian Sea. The Japanese and Americans disembarked in Vladivostok, followed by others. There were skirmishes in Siberia and in the Black Sea port of Odesa, controlled by the French.

The allies sided with a bewildering number of factions. Their initial goal was to prevent equipment from falling into the hands of the Germans, after Moscow's new leaders – Lenin and Trotsky – signed a peace deal with Berlin. The Brest-Litovsk treaty of 1918 made huge territorial concessions. A troop ship set sail from Newcastle to the high Arctic. In one early shootout, the British fought alongside Red Guards and against the pro-German White Finns.

Germany's defeat saw a change in allied strategy. The new military objective was to help the conservative White Russians overthrow the communist regime. Western diplomats inside Russia were convinced the Bolsheviks would not last long. The prime minister in London, Lloyd George, could have sent a mighty army to march on Moscow. Instead, he dispatched a token force of a few thousand men. Most had been rated unfit for the trenches.

The Whites, meanwhile, turned out to be deeply unsympathetic. One artilleryman, writing home, described them as "generous to absurdity at times, laughter-loving frequently, devoted comrades at odd moments, delightful hosts and good talkers". They were also "lazy, untidy, pessimistic, boastful, ignorant, and dishonest". Militarily they were a "flop". Soon, they despised their western backers for not sending a bigger force to save "Holy Russia".

All sides, including the Bolsheviks, committed atrocities. The Whites, however, were especially savage. In the second half of 1919 they carried out a string of brutal pogroms in southern Russia and Ukraine. Cossack units bayoneted Jewish villagers, and raped and mutilated women. In reports back to London, British officers downplayed these crimes. As Reid observes, many felt the same prejudices, their private journals full of "witless antisemitic jibes".

Amid this horror, there was plenty of fun. Victor Cazelet – a 21-year-old captain – made friends with Baroness Buxhoeveden, an ex lady-in-waiting to the tsarina. After the royal family was shot in July 1918, the baroness rescued its pet spaniel. She rode with the British general staff in the one-time court train, now decorated with union flags, joining them in evening wear for dinner. "You will love the baroness. She is quite one of us," Cazelet wrote to his mother.

Brighter personalities realised the intervention was probably doomed. They included Edmund Ironside, who commanded allied forces in the north. He arrived in Arkhangelsk to discover the British had fallen out with the Americans over supplies of whisky. The embryo White Army didn't want to fight. There was a mutiny. "I cannot see that we are likely to do much good here," Ironside admitted, writing: "Russia is so enormous it gives one a feeling of smothering."

By early autumn 1919, the Whites controlled much of Siberia and the south. Months later, its armies began to retreat. The Red Army beat them back outside Petrograd and occupied Omsk. Winston Churchill, minister for war, and an ardent anti-Bolshevik, argued for more aid. But Lloyd George concluded Bolshevism "could not be suppressed by the sword". Kyiv fell, then Crimea. The White commander, Anton Denikin, steamed away from home land on the Emperor of India, a British warship.

Left behind in this chaos were millions of civilians. There were heartbreaking scenes as they tried to escape Bolshevik retribution. In British-occupied Novorossiysk people packed the waterfront, hoping to find a place on a boat: a school and its pupils; entire Cossack villages; and a hospital with its patients. A paddle-steamer pulled out, only to capsize, hurling hundreds into the sea. "It was bloody awful," one witness recalled.

What lessons might we learn from the intervention, more than a century later? Reid stresses the difference between 1918 and 1920 and the post-2022 western coalition that is now supporting Ukraine. In an essay justifying his invasion, Vladimir Putin blamed the Bolsheviks for creating the Ukrainian soviet socialist republic. Its borders make up today's Ukrainian state. Russia, Belarus and Ukraine are an indivisible entity, he argues.

As Reid notes, Putin is the real inheritor of the White Russian legacy. He shares the same vaulting imperial mindset and addiction to violence. Like the Whites, he is contemptuous of Ukrainians and other non-Russian peoples. In 2005 Putin arranged for Denikin's remains to be taken from the US and reburied in a Moscow monastery. Reid is cautiously optimistic Ukraine will prevail. "This time, the cause is both good and viable. Resolve seems set to stay strong," she writes. Let's hope she is right.

Luke Harding's Invasion: Russia's Bloody War and Ukraine's Fight for Survival, shortlisted for the Orwell Prize, is published by Guardian Faber

A Nasty Little War: The West's Fight to Reverse the Russian Revolution by Anna Reid is published by John Murray (£25). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

I find it interesting because from a UK perspective I don't think we have a vision of Britain's experience in the inter-war period. I think we actually have images of Germany and America's interwar and apply that - which is wrong. So I think there is a perception of a (slightly Poirot-ish) roaring 20s, followed by depression and grimness with fascists lurking in the corner. When, actually, the 20s when the UK experienced its economic depression. We had our only ever General Strike, there was incredible amount of military activity - a lot is imperial (Ireland, the Middle East etc) but also what seems maybe more like 20th century superpower rather than previous era great power action like intervening in Russia's civil war, Lloyd George wanting to back the Greeks v Turkey etc, the first Labour government, genuine radical left politics (I think it's still the peak of CPGB activity especially in unions).

I'm wondering if it is similar elsewhere because reading this and some other stuff I've read recently I wonder if we need to think about the 20s again (perhaps a "global history" project ). I could be wrong but I think there is a more general view of the 20s through the US (art deco, cocktails, jazz etc) and Germany (Weimar cabaret, street violence). But looking at it slightly more broadly - there's so much going on everywhere. You've got so much going on.

There's the collapse of old empire's with the Russian civil war with huge international intervention, the Greeks invading Turkey for Megali Idea and Ataturk rallying the Turkish nation to force them out, the Soviet invasion of Poland and the miracle on the Vistula and the rise of the warlord era/collapse of China (Yuan Shikai falling during the war). There's challenges to surviving empires like Irish independence and civil war (arguably the first national liberation achieved by force from a European empire?), after the Jallianwala Bagh (Amritsar) massacre then Congress' non-compliance campaign and various uprisings against the British, French, Italians and Spanish in the Middle East and North Africa - plus arguably the formation of new ones, I think this is an era of expansive US intervention in Latin America. And the emergence of big structural factors that will drive 20th century politics: the creation of Saudi Arabia, the centrality of Anglo-Persian oil and new strategic importance on the Gulf and Suez for Britain especially.

That's just the stuff off the top of my head and I think a lot of it is not that well known given the size of those events - like, with this book, Western intervention in Russia. Or if you look at a map of Greece's maximum gains their war with Turkey.

Obviously in the really affected countries, like Poland, there is very strong awareness of that aspect - but I feel like it's not a period with enough interest or writing given how much it is given how much it seems like this period of intense disorder and a real crucible of the twentieth century around the world. It's perhaps in part because we know it failed. We know Japan and Germany (and the Soviets) as revisionist powers overturned it all and we live in the world that's the legacy of that conflict - but to an extent that almost feels like a 2.0 of the inter-war?

Obvs I will get the book - and even read it at some point

[crazy canuck]

You make a good point. For example, look at the labour strife in Canada and the general strike from May to June 1919 in Winnipeg.


A lot of what happened after the war, and prior to the depression gets overshadowed by what happened next.

[The Brain]

I recently read a book (in Swedish) on ashkenazi history from 1789 to 1917 that had Jewish symbols on the cover, and decided NOT to bring it with me on a train ride (I normally bring a book to read). The reason being the recommendations from Jewish organizations in Sweden not to display any Jewish symbols, given the rampant antisemitism in Sweden. Sign of the times.

The book was interesting, I had never really read about that era of Jewish history.

[Sheilbh]

Finally finished Beverly Gage's G-Man: J Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century.

I was surprised to learn that this is the first biography of Hoover since the early 90s, especially as is emphasised throughout he is an excellent bureaucrat. While his long-serving secretary burned many of his papers the volume of documents that shed light on Hoover must be growing all the time as classifications and seals list. Speaking of which I was not aware that the King tapes were under seal, which will end by the end of this decade.

Gage's central argument is that Hoover is driven by two sets of principles that are (especially now) perhaps in tension. On the one hand he is a federal bureaucrat who never voted because he always lived in DC. He believes in effective federal government that is professionalised and harnessing the best that modern science can offer and is dispensed fairly dispassionately. On the other he has a committed, convservative vision of America (including in relation to race) which he is very successful at propagandising for and pushing.

These two strands, arguably, don't really come into conflict for much of his career. It is striking that the greatest expansions of Hoover's powers come under FDR at the start and LBJ - two reforming liberals. I think that looking from the perspective of Hoover has also slightly changed my view of the Eisenhower administration a bit. And part of that is that I think, though Gage doesn't make this argument, that there is a sense in which Hoover is the last of the New Deal reformers.

He is ultimately most unpopular, particularly with Congress, in his signal failure to understand (far less respond to) the New Left, black power movements and the wider social shifts of the late sixties. This is perhaps mirrored by a new radical right working in the Nixon White House who want Hoover to do all sorts of shady shit for political benefit, which he resists through classic bureaucratic jiu jitsu of entirely agreeing with their proposals, but wanting them in writing from the AG or President. They then agitate to fire Hoover, though Nixon always recoils, as an old man who's lost his fire. I think there's an argument with both that he hadn't changed. Or, perhaps, I think Gage hints that in the New Left Hoover saw a return to the first red scare and the anarchist wave of the 1920s when he started his career in the FBI - on deporting "foreign radicals".

I believe she's discovered a lot about Hoover's early life and participation in a fraternity devoted to the old south, coming from DC as a southern town. She's pretty convincing on how this (all male) institution was some of the happiest times in Hoover's life and something that perhaps shapes the FBI he creates, especially at the beginning.

On race, I thought the picture was more nuanced than I expected. Obviously he is using COINTELPRO techniques on all civil rights movements and develops an obsession with King especially. But, for example, I was not aware that by the time civil rights legislation came in, the FBI had already been infiltrating the Klan for decadees. He also appears to have been genuinely engaged on certain issues, for example lynching, perhaps mainly because vigilantism went against his belief in order but also professional law enforcement. I think his central points in the 50s and 60s are true: the FBI often didn't have jurisdiction and they couldn't get all white southern juries to indict. If his superiors wanted him to do more they needed to give the FBI the legal tools to do it. But of course Hoover was not always a scrupulous observer of jurisdiction in other cases. Similarly though not directly related to civil rights, he was strongly opposed to Japanese internment on the grounds that, in his view, it wasn't effective (and the FBI had a better, more effective alternative) but also unconstitutional - scarred, as he was, by the Palmer raids.

Reading the book I can't help but wonder if some of the problems with Hoover's time at the FBI are a little structural. I believe the US is unusual in this: the same body does law enforcement and domestic intelligence. This comes up time and again (prosecutions of communists, prosecutions of the Klan, his hatred of King and general view of communists) that Hoover is getting lots of information as a spy chief that he cannot use as a policeman without compromising his intelligence sources. So you end up with illegal and unethical police actions to force the result Hoover (the spy) "knows" it merits. It's also very good on his particular skill at getting Congress to basically launch pincer attacks by doing publicly what he can't - and on this, interestingly, he is one of (if not the first) Washington player to turn on McCarthy when he turns off all access to FBI information very early. I can't remember if it was because McCarthy went back on a deal or just went off piste and Hoover decided he wasn't reliable.

It seemed a very fair take in the end and I think that central argument is well made - and is perhaps reflected in that dual role of the FBI. Which is there from the days of FDR who creates these responsibilities - that it has always had a life in the open and a life in the shadows. On the shadow life, the stuff on Hoover and Tolson is really interesting - primarily because of the extent that they were treated by others in their circle as a couple - with a cycle that I have to say sounds like something some bougie gays do now: antiquing in New England, I think summer in California and winter in Miami. When Tolson was ill, LBJ, Pat Nixon (and I think the Reagans) all sent notes to Hoover sympathising. Hoover was rather more reluctant in encouraging the lavendar scare than I'd thought, though it made sense for obvious reasons. And it is interesting and telling that all of his flirtations appear to have been with men in an institutional setting - and an institutional setting where Hoover is their superior.

Definitely worth a read if you're interested. Although probably only if you're interested - I don't think it'll likely change or challenge anyone's perceptions of Hoover, or that there's any ground breaking new revelations.

Edit: Also, as an aside, interesting but not surprising that the President who gets Hoover to bend his principles most is LBJ who has him spying on the 64 convention to stage manage it but also to stop any potential challenge to LBJ (which just shows how much he loved a sure thing). Hoover's very reluctant at the time and then afterwards in memos keeps on referring to it sligthly euphemistically as them going too far But there is a pattern that Hoover is perhaps happiest with a Republican President - but the domestic spying is authorised by FDR, RFK signs off on the King wiretaps and LBJ also supports both the harassment of King but also using the FBI for explicitly political ends. The only President who is a meaningful check and causes real issues for him is Truman.

Now just started something that would horrify him Homintern by Gregory Woods

[Jacob]

Just read A Short History of Drunkeness by Mark Forsyth. It's a breezy popular style history of the social phenomenon of being drunk at various times in human history and pre-history.

While the book has a bibliography, it's not a serious scholastic work. It does a good job painting evocative but occasionally irreverent pictures of the past - I certainly felt I learned something about most of the societies described.

[Josquius]

I recently read a book (in Swedish) on ashkenazi history from 1789 to 1917 that had Jewish symbols on the cover, and decided NOT to bring it with me on a train ride (I normally bring a book to read). The reason being the recommendations from Jewish organizations in Sweden not to display any Jewish symbols, given the rampant antisemitism in Sweden. Sign of the times.

The book was interesting, I had never really read about that era of Jewish history.

What if its an anti semitic book?

[Sheilbh]

What if its an anti semitic book?

Kafka, esq. 🔻
@metalgearobama
Reading Mein Kampf and shaking my head the whole time so the people on the bus know I disagree with it

[The Brain]

I recently read a book (in Swedish) on ashkenazi history from 1789 to 1917 that had Jewish symbols on the cover, and decided NOT to bring it with me on a train ride (I normally bring a book to read). The reason being the recommendations from Jewish organizations in Sweden not to display any Jewish symbols, given the rampant antisemitism in Sweden. Sign of the times.

The book was interesting, I had never really read about that era of Jewish history.

What if its an anti semitic book?

Antisemitic messages don't appear to increase the threat level against a person in Sweden.

[The Brain]

What if its an anti semitic book?

Kafka, esq. 🔻
@metalgearobama
Reading Mein Kampf and shaking my head the whole time so the people on the bus know I disagree with it

[The Brain]

Armada: The Spanish Enterprise and England's Deliverance in 1588, by Martin and Parker. This is a new edition of  a book published in 1988, expanded to include new finds over the last decades. Very readable, and from my limited knowledge vantage point it appears definitive. The only thing that I thought was somewhat lacking was the treatment of the state of naval combat in 1588. The book describes Mediterranean and Spanish/Portuguese ships and tactics, and English ships and tactics, but is almost silent on the Dutch, and completely silent on the French and Scandinavians. It would have been interesting to read for instance the authors' take on naval aspects of the Northern Seven Years' War (1563-70). According to Baltic historians the Swedish navy at the time favored the use of purpose-built big warships with artillery standoff tactics. I would like to know if British naval historians share this view.