My commute to work is much longer than it used give be so I’m filling my brain with audiobooks.
I’m in the beginning of The Guns of August, a magnificent history of WWI.
It’s amazing to listen to this book and to see how WWI happened, how much of it was a continuation of the German invasion of France in 1870. Many of the German and French generals in WWI were young officers in 1870.
Then to see how the dominoes of WWI have continued to topple to today.
WWII was really WWI 2.0. Everyone took a break for a generation to repopulate, then went right back at it. WWII precipitated the Cold War. The fall of the Ottoman Empire of Turkey caused today’s Middle East mess.
But that is not the focus of this post.
In the book, I’m at the part were Germany invaded Belgium to engage the northern flank of France because of the German military philosophy of envelopment.
The Belgian government confiscated Belgians’ guns to prevent the Belgian civilians from shooting German soldiers to prevent reprisals from the German army against civilians.
That didn’t stop the Germans from killing civilians or burning their homes. The German army even executed Belgian priests because the Germans wanted to demoralize the Belgians into not fighting and letting them march through to France.
At that moment I thought just how different Americans are. If we were invaded, even if the government told Americans to turn in their weapons, we wouldn’t.
After the first German soldier shot an American civilian, the shit would hit the fan for the Germans.
You know Americans would make a game out of shooting German soldiers, one point for a body hit, three for a hit through the pickelhaube, five for an officer.
I’d suspect the biggest job for the US army would be to go door to door collecting the machineguns and grenades that Americans collected off the bodies of dead invading Germans.
The European attitude on guns is nothing new and this bit from The Guns of August really drives home how different we really are from them.
Don’t forget “mileage points”, wherein there is a point multiplier for distance.
F’rinstance, shoot him through the chest, 0ne point.
Shoot him through the chest from 1500 meters? 15 points.
As somebody else said of our “gun control” neighbors: “they are arguing about taking guns from folks who not only KNOW what ‘MOA’ means, the objects of teir confiscation dreams can, commonly, shoot to MOA.”
“I’d suspect the biggest job for the US army would be to go door to door collecting the machineguns and grenades that Americans collected off the bodies of dead invading Germans.”
I hadn’t even considered all the cool guns we could take from dead PLA soldiers if the Chi Comms invade.
I call dibs on a Norinco Type 98.
As they’d probably come through Oregon first, if I find one I’ll save it for you. 😉
Oleg Volk has a nice image associated with a quote attributed (perhaps not correctly) to Adm. Yamamoto: http://olegvolk.net/gallery/technology/arms/blade_of_grass_2298.jpg.html
On Europe and invaders: there is of course Switzerland, which views armed civilians entirely differently and as a result hasn’t been invaded in centuries.
I read “The Guns of August” many years ago and note that the German invasion of France was on the flimsiest of pretexts. So why invade France just because Archduke Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated by a Serbian terrorist? It is noteworthy that WW I was the reason that imperial Russia became the USSR.