What's your primary "level" of historical interest?

This is a general forum for all types of posts related to Military models.

Moderators: dnichols, GHQ, Mk 1

Post Reply
Extra Crispy
E5
Posts: 992
Joined: Fri Jul 28, 2006 7:56 pm
Location: Edgewater, NJ
Contact:

What's your primary "level" of historical interest?

Post by Extra Crispy »

I sold off a bunch of old books about the Napoleonic Wars - mostly Ospreys and uniform guides. With the web they're just dispensable. Especially for me because my primary interest in military history is at the grand tactical level. It's my preferred gaming level, and about all I really read. About the most tactical book I read (well, for enjoyment) would be a book detailing the events of a major battle. The Bulge, Gettysburg, Salamanca. But even then I'm far more interested in what result the battle created than what regiments were where. Band of Brothers makes great TV, but I have no interest in reading about it.

Is your interest, reading or gaming, concentrated at a specific level of granularity so to speak?
Mark Severin
Owner, Scale Creep Miniatures
Author DeepFriedHappyMice.com

Tom
Posts: 8
Joined: Sat Sep 25, 2021 5:35 pm

Re: What's your primary "level" of historical interest?

Post by Tom »

I enjoy the strategic side of things when trying to understand the bigger picture.
Having said that I find it interesting occasionally at the tactical level. Particularly when the deeds of the combatants are described.
I very quickly get bored with description of where divisions moved or regiments formed, unless the significance is blatant.

redleg
E5
Posts: 3396
Joined: Fri Dec 17, 2004 11:02 am
Location: Riverside, CA

Re: What's your primary "level" of historical interest?

Post by redleg »

My interests seem to change from time to time. I go from tactical level to strategic level and from reading to collecting to gaming. Usually something piques my interest and helps me transition from one interest to another. I had been getting ready for a tactical level wargame that is coming up - reading rules and preparing orders of battle - but then I started reading Panzer Battles and now I'm suddenly interested in the operational level of WW2. Perhaps is it ADHD.
Redleg's Website: micropope.webstarts.com

Mk 1
E5
Posts: 2383
Joined: Fri Dec 24, 2004 3:21 am
Location: Silicon Valley, CA

Re: What's your primary "level" of historical interest?

Post by Mk 1 »

For me it is all about an absolute fascination with tanks.

When I was quite young, my oldest brother (14 years my senior) took me to see the premier of "Battle of the Bulge" at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood. They even had a tank in the parking lot (it was probably a Chaffee, as they were the stand-in for Shermans in the movie, but honestly I can not say with any certainty). I was VERY impressed. Big bad Tiger tanks that you couldn't kill. You shoot them, and shoot them, and they keep coming.

(I've had a real love for the look of the M47 ever since!)

So I started playing with tanks. Mostly Rocco Mini tanks and Airfix soldiers. I would read the description of every one of them on the box when I bought it. One day I bought an M107 SPG (not knowing what it was, just that it was one I didn't have yet and it looked cool), and my father saw it and said yeah, they took the armor off of them to make them faster so they could hunt down the Tigers, and they used to get them up to 50mph and more. And I looked at him like he was the foolish old fellow I always knew he was, because the box didn't say any such things about an M107. Didn't actually know at that time that he had been in the tank destroyers in WW2. Had never heard any stories from him, and he didn't like to go to the war movies with us.

But I was fascinated. Tanks tanks tanks. Been stuck ever since. Read every book I could get. Played with every toy I could buy. Climbed on every tank I could find. Introduced myself to every tank-writing author I could meet. Rode in every tank that was ever offered to me.

I want to understand them. That seems an odd thing to say in some ways, but that's just kind of it. I have a need to understand. What their stats were / are. How they were / are used. What works, what doesn't work. My "level" of historical interest is in understanding every d@mned thing there is to understand. Won't happen, of course. These days I feel like I'm probably forgetting more than most people will ever know about tanks. But that's it in a nutshell.

I'm the nutshell in the story, and I'm fascinated by tanks, and I want to understand them, and collecting helps me visualize what text gives me in words, while gaming is one of the best ways I know to gain insight, to apply a little bit of what I find in the stories I read.

So what is my "level" of interest? Any and all. Tactical, operational, strategic, my interests cover all, and my readings cover all. For miniatures gaming I stick mostly to 1-to-1 unit scales, which is quite tactical (platoon, company, and battalion levels maybe, but not more), but that's because I learn more at that level. More about the tanks.The stats tell me a T-34 has a better gun and better armor than a PzIIIh, but the Panzers beat the T-34s comprehensively on a daily basis. How? Everyone knows a Tiger or Panther can't be penned by a Sherman, and everyone knows Shermans were death traps, yet your odds of surviving the war in a Sherman were about 6 times better than in a Panzer. Why? I want to understand...
-Mark 1
Difficile est, saturam non scribere.
"It is hard NOT to write satire." - Decimus Iunius Juvenalis, 1st Century AD

Vergeltungswaffe
Posts: 47
Joined: Wed Sep 30, 2009 10:32 pm
Location: The Woodlands Texas

Re: What's your primary "level" of historical interest?

Post by Vergeltungswaffe »

While I dabble in Operational and Strategic, Tactical is my first love and the reason why I've played two orders of magnitude more CM than everything else combined for the last 22 years.
Those who beat their swords into plowshares will plow for those who don't.

Post Reply