Humanities desk
< March 10	<< Feb \| March \| Apr >>	March 12 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

March 11

Final charge of the Polish cavalry in World War II

Let me preface this by saying that I'm aware that this didn't actually happen like this (because Polish people get mad if it gets brought up in conversation). But I guess many of you heard the story, or maybe were taught it as truth at school (as I was).

Okay. The legend of the Polish cavalry in World War 2. How when the country was on the verge of defeat and the Nazis were everywhere and all was lost - in the last days of the war, the final remaining Polish knights left alive sat on horseback and faced the German panzer divisions across the battlefield and were all like "die on your feet or on live your knees, fuck these guys" and launched a massive frontal cavalry charge with their men with their swords and lances against the tanks, with nothing to lose.

They were annihilated, of course. And thusly the era of knights of olde came to a bloody end.

I've been told this was just an old war story (that loads of people believed at the time), but does anyone know what really happened? Was there a germ of truth anywhere? I've never been able to decide if this was a "these guys were idiots" or "these guys were heroes" story in the telling. Or did nothing like this ever happen at all?

Thanks in advance. --146.200.129.62 (talk) 00:30, 11 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

There were Polish "Uhlan" (cavalry) soldiers who rode to battle on horseback, dismounted, then used their anti-tank weapons (i.e.: Wz. 35 anti-tank rifle.

--2603:6081:1C00:1187:C8B1:983F:4DAE:B94D (talk) 00:51, 11 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The charge at Krojanty was against German infantry on the first day of the war. The article states, "The incident prompted false reports of Polish cavalry attacking German tanks". Clarityfiend (talk) 01:01, 11 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I was taught this in high school history class too in England (early 1980s). Something about how the Polish cavalry were attacking German (SS?) troop formations with lances and saber and doing well, but then the tanks arrived and got blown away after they charged the tanks directly. I honestly can't remember now whether it was because they knew they were dead anyway and thought "might as well, not going to surrender" or because they'd never seen tanks before and didn't know any better. It was a long time ago now. I think my teacher mentioned the Winged Hussars and the Polish history of horseback warfare. --Iloveparrots (talk) 02:34, 11 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Tanks were in extensive use in battle by the end of World War I, so I seriously doubt that two decades later Polish cavalry officers would have been unaware of what they were. So that part of the story can be seen as a fabrication. Xuxl (talk) 14:55, 11 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, the last Polish cavalry charge was in the Battle of Schoenfeld in 1945, which helped to rout 500 Germans for the loss of 7 Polish horsemen. Our article, Charge (warfare), also records a German cavalry charge against Polish tankettes in 1939. The Germans also employed a fully-horsed cavalry division in the Battle of France in 1940, which didn't achieve much except to look splendid in the German victory parade in Paris afterwards. Alansplodge (talk) 19:21, 11 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

More information at Polish cavalry#Cavalry charges and propaganda, which also records 15 other Polish cavalry charges in 1939, some of which were successful. The Germans re-enacted the charge at Krojanty for a propaganda film which was widely accepted as newsreel footage in the West. Fake news is nothing new. Alansplodge (talk) 19:36, 11 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In the USSR, after Stalin, how did the Party hold the Leader accountable?

Something I heard on the radio yesterday. There was some guy who was apparently an expert on Russian history talking about how, following the death of Stalin, the other senior Party members resolved that the excesses of Stalin's regime should never occur again and that going forwards, there should always be a way that the Leader's subordinates should be able to remove the Leader from power and appoint a new Leader, should he go crazy, or become incompetent - and that no-one should have absolote power (he was juxtaposing that with the lack of checks and balances on Putin from his own underlings/yes men and how there's no one in his inner circle who can offer him alternative opinions or dissent and how there's no one with any clout who can do anything against him). I wanted to know - how did that work in practice? How did the process of removing the Leader work? I know the USSR went through a fair few Leaders over the years. --Iloveparrots (talk) 02:05, 11 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In Nikita Khrushchev's case, his article states, "There were multiple reasons for Khrushchev's sudden downfall. It was not a coup, because it followed the Central Committee procedures for naming leadership that Khrushchev had himself introduced." Clarityfiend (talk) 03:10, 11 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I think, back in the day that Khrushchev was one of Stalin's advisors and he saw at first hand how absolute power could corrupt absolutely and he came to realise that Stalin was a monster. Actually, when Stalin was on his deathbed, I read somewhere once that some of his advisors were of the opinion that "I never liked him anyway - let him die" and others were thinking "I want to help him and always supported him, but the old man has lost his mind in his sickness and if I try to help him, he might order me taken out and shot, so I'll leave it". And many of the predominant physicians in Moscow were mysteriously unavailable? I think that's probably how many tyrants have ended their days over the past 4000 years of human history. --Iloveparrots (talk) 03:46, 11 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, Khrushchev had an entire de-stalinization speech after Stalin's death, deriding his cult of personality, modifying foreign policy and taking down statues of Stalin, but ultimately is often perceived by historians as not fully leaving the precedent Stalin set, with his reactions toward the Prague Spring and the Hungarian revolution. Xs zhang6 (talk) 22:55, 14 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Prague Spring occurred 4 years after he left office. --←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:03, 14 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

40 mile column of tanks outside Kyiv

I keep hearing about that tank column, and also about Ukraine trying to get MIG-29's from Poland, but also about Ukraine's air force even without those MIGs as being not exactly trivial. Is there some deep reason the tank column hasn't yet been blown to bits from the air? Thanks. 2601:648:8202:350:0:0:0:C115 (talk) 03:14, 11 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Russian Air Force and surface-to-air missiles? Plus, the column is 40 miles long! That would take a heck of a lot of ammo, even without opposition. Clarityfiend (talk) 03:35, 11 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure. You'd think they could have used artillery, or drones against the tank column, wouldn't you? Or utterly destroyed the roads and bridges that the tanks would be traveling on in advance? Idk, does the Ukrainian air force have, or have something equivalent to the A10 Warthog? Maybe that's something that the Americans should consider, if not. --Iloveparrots (talk) 04:01, 11 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

[1] and [2] may be of interest (despite the headline, the second link does briefly discuss the premise of this question). Note that both of those are about a week old and recently this has gone viral [3], [4] & [5] (there are a lot more). About the Russian air force, see [6], [7] & [8] Nil Einne (talk) 11:29, 11 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Note that drones (the big ones that can carry missiles) are also vulnerable to anti-aircraft guns and missiles. Ukraine has recently bought another batch of drones from Turkey, so it seems likely that the ones they started with have been lost. This is one of Ukraine's largest artillery pieces which has a range of just over 10 miles, so you would have to get your guns close enough - presumably the convoy is parked in territory already held by the Russians. Firing at beyond visual range needs aircraft or drones or a trained observer nearby to tell you whether you are actually hitting anything, artillery observer has some details.

Ukrainian Air Force#Current inventory says that they started the war with a theoretical strength of 96 combat aircraft, although how many were airwothy at the outset, or were destroyed in initial air strikes, or have been shot down since is unknown. US sources were saying that they still had "a majority" of their air assets last week, [9] but you don't conserve your strength by flying into a heavily defended area. Alansplodge (talk) 15:53, 11 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I hadn't heard much about the tank column's defenses. Military stuff isn't my thing but I wonder if by now there aren't small cruise missiles or even ballistic rockets that can take out tanks. 2601:648:8202:350:0:0:0:C115 (talk) 01:34, 12 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Considering how long the column sat there, it is highly likely the Ukraine forces were unable to muster adequate power to do much damage. It’s either that, or incompetence, which seems unlikely. DOR (HK) (talk) 03:02, 12 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Cruise missiles that can target exact locations are very sophisticated and very expensive. Most western nations don't have them, the US and UK are exceptions. As for ballistic missiles, the clue's in the name, they follow a trajectory like a bullet and are more likely to land in an empty field than to hit an individual tank. Alansplodge (talk) 22:56, 12 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Soviet doomsday machine close call

Another question about the Cold War, while I'm here. I was in my favourite bar tonight when the song 99 Red Balloons came on the stereo. A friend of mine said to me "you know, the story she tells in that song nearly happened a few years later, you know". He was telling me that sometime in the 80s, a weather balloon from Norway turned up on the Soviet radar and for whatever reason their Dead Hand/doomsday machine computer system identifed it as an American nuclear missile. In other words, if the computer recognized a missile attack against the Soviet Union, then the computer would automatically launch a counterattack with the entire Soviet nuclear arsenal without human involvement (theory being that it would still allow nuclear retaliation if the entire Russian high command had been wiped out by a first strike). Anyway, there was a fairly junior officer on duty in the middle of the night at the control centre in the bunker wherever this was and he looked at the data and realized that this didn't make a lick of sense - why would they only send one missile if they were launching a preemptive nuclear attack, because due to the nature of nuclear war it was "use em all or lose em all"? So he correctly asserted that something was wrong with the system and ordered his men to disable the computer system and sever the comms link that would allow the "go" codes to be issued (hammers and axes and people running around in a panic), as this was something that had to be done on the spur of the moment as the Soviet president and his deputies were sleeping. Supposedly a few weeks before they were planning to run the Dead Hand machine 100% automatically, without human involvement (and any attempt to interfere with the machine, even from the Soviet side would lead to the activation of the machine).

And the world didn't end. And no one knew about it until 30 years later. And we all had a near miss.

So yes. Did this really happen? Or something like that? This does sound like Strangelove stuff, but then again, that was partially based on truth... --Iloveparrots (talk) 04:48, 11 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

See 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident. No Norwegian balloons, though. Also, Dead Hand didn't go into service until 1985. Clarityfiend (talk) 05:13, 11 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

A bit ironic that war crimes are being discussed on the "Humanities" desk. See also Able Archer 83. 2A00:23C5:CD8A:1100:7D8C:33FE:7E83:9F9C (talk) 11:22, 11 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

As I noted once before, we could really use an Inhumanities desk. Clarityfiend (talk) 09:55, 12 March 2022 (UTC) [reply]

Another possibility is the 1995 Norwegian rocket incident. It has the elements of Norway, weather research and the Russians nearly launching a retaliatory attack, but was after the Cold War is usually reckoned to have ended. Sadly, no red balloons either. Alansplodge (talk) 15:32, 11 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In the original German version it's called 99 air balloons, but since that isn't English (hot air balloons are the big ones) they had to come up with someting different. DirkvdM (talk) 15:00, 12 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The origin of "balloon" lent itself to various usages,[10] but "air balloon" in English would be a redundancy. We have hot-air balloons; we also have helium balloons, and water balloons. If it's just "balloon", it's assumed to be regular air, either from the lungs or from a pump. --←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:58, 12 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Ah yes, but the nuclear-response-triggered-by-balloons narrative only appears in the English-language version. In the original German-language version, the balloons are mistaken for UFOs and war escalates from there. Alansplodge (talk) 09:18, 13 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The translation also changes the order of events. In the German version the balloons are mistaken for a UFO, jet-fighters are launched to investigate, and the pilots fire on the balloons. The neighbouring country mistakes this for an attack, and also fires on the balloons. A war council is called, and war escalates from there. In the English translation, a computer error causes the balloons to be mistaken for "something out there from somewhere else"; a war-council is called and it is assumed war has started, jet-fighters are sent to investigate - and then the song cuts to the aftermath of the war. So both versions involve balloons being mistaken for a threat, with people then making decisions that lead to (presumably) nuclear war, but the English version also explicitly involves a malfunctioning early-warning system. Iapetus (talk) 10:24, 15 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Quote's author

I've recently spotted a quote in a book (in Russian) attributed to unnamed ancient Athenian tyrant addressing local philosophers: "I will act at my discretion. And you will explain the deep meaning of my actions to the people". Can't find anything similar either in English or Russian. Was it a thing and is the author known? Brandmeister^talk 11:40, 11 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It does ring a bell, could it be from a movie or television series, it has all the hallmarks of a scriptwriter. Or a dramatising historian. The other one of that ilk is the legend that Emiliano Zapata said as his last word as he was being followed by Hollywood movie machine people, something like: "Tell them I said something." -- Cimon Avaro; on a pogostick. (talk) 15:23, 12 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

O, dear. On reflection, I am unsure if that was Pancho Villa or Zapata, and wikipedia is unhelpful, as is wikiquote. But it was covered on QI. -- Cimon Avaro; on a pogostick. (talk) 15:57, 12 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]