Delbrueck: Myths and myths

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

Logistics wouldn't allow for 300,000 troops, especially in the Greek wasteland at the time. Why then did the Persians retreat when their fleet went down; no fleet no logistics. There must have been some 70,000 Persians at Plataea and if that is half of the Persian army then the total army must be about 150,000 (I won't accept a single man over 200,000).

[Thorn777]

Good post, i never liked the guy... but for his time he was Ok-ish.

I'm assume you mean you don't like his work, in which case why exactly?

Maybe because a Delbrück is aking to what is a Rothschildt. Hans his cousin Gottlieb together with a bunch of others, including Max Warburg(not his real name,they where Jewish immigrants from Venice) whos brother instituted the FED in the US, created what is known today as the Bundesbank.

Then the Delbrück private bank had all kinds of shady things going during the times, including the WW's, and still exists today only servicing high profile customers.

Peer Steinbrück, the German social-dem party head next year challenging Angela Merkel also is related to them....

lol, I guess thats not what he meant...but I thought why not share.

[Col. Tartleton]

Logistics wouldn't allow for 300,000 troops, especially in the Greek wasteland at the time. Why then did the Persians retreat when their fleet went down; no fleet no logistics. There must have been some 70,000 Persians at Plataea and if that is half of the Persian army then the total army must be about 150,000 (I won't accept a single man over 200,000).

Why not just say the war didn't happen? Obviously the whole thing was made up.

[torongill]

Why not just say the war didn't happen? Obviously the whole thing was made up.

+rep for that

I think we have to add the personality of Xerxes - the guy was the King of Kings, the one and only, Sun on the Earth, keeper of the sacred flame, son of Darius, grandson of Cyrus, he of the big cock, satisfier of two thousand big-tittied women, etc etc. He appears to have had the ego of Caligula and the patience of a five-year old brat pitching a screaming fit. The Athenian participation in the Ionian revolt was a slight on the personal honor of the Persian king. That's why Darius had a special servant tell him every time before lunch "Sire, remember the Athenians." Marathon was another slap in the face(with a rotten fish, I might add). And when Darius the Great died, his son decided that he would do the one thing his daddy the Great couldn't - he would smash the Greeks like a bug. The invasion of Greece was supposed to be the military equivalent of Cameron's "Avatar". Instead, it was "Cutthroat Island".

[athanaric]

Maybe because a Delbrück is aking to what is a Rothschildt. Hans his cousin Gottlieb together with a bunch of others, including Max Warburg(not his real name,they where Jewish immigrants from Venice) whos brother instituted the FED in the US, created what is known today as the Bundesbank.

Then the Delbrück private bank had all kinds of shady things going during the times, including the WW's, and still exists today only servicing high profile customers.

Peer Steinbrück, the German social-dem party head next year challenging Angela Merkel also is related to them....

lol, I guess thats not what he meant...but I thought why not share.

Is this hidden sarcasm, or just some smear copied from Jürgen Elsässer et al.?

I think we have to add the personality of Xerxes - the guy was the King of Kings, the one and only, Sun on the Earth, keeper of the sacred flame, son of Darius, grandson of Cyrus, he of the big cock, satisfier of two thousand big-tittied women, etc etc. He appears to have had the ego of Caligula and the patience of a five-year old brat pitching a screaming fit. The Athenian participation in the Ionian revolt was a slight on the personal honor of the Persian king. That's why Darius had a special servant tell him every time before lunch "Sire, remember the Athenians." Marathon was another slap in the face(with a rotten fish, I might add). And when Darius the Great died, his son decided that he would do the one thing his daddy the Great couldn't - he would smash the Greeks like a bug. The invasion of Greece was supposed to be the military equivalent of Cameron's "Avatar". Instead, it was "Cutthroat Island".

That's if you take the Greek written sources at face value...

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

Why would I say it didn't happen it obviously did. But if you want we can believe every single detail of everything ever published and we should also believe that Kim Jong-Il was the greatest golfer in the world and that he never used the bathroom. We should also go on to believe every single propaganda piece ever done by the Soviet Union, China, North Korea and the British Empire.
Even today the logistics for a third of that are hard to do in a terrain like Greece's but e should also believe that the Persian Empire could field armies the size of Empires in the 19th century.
So if 300,000 was their field army then I take it their entire army was larger, no just no.

Why would Persia mobilize a large chunk of its populace to fight someone that isn't a threat?
Then expect there not to be wide spread revolt?

[torongill]

That's if you take the Greek written sources at face value...

Do we have others?

What I find always funny is that we have no problem believing the 110 000 Greek army, raised and supplied by the Peloponessian peninsula, or the 180 ships supplied by Athens alone, but God forbid someone says the Persians were more than 100 000.

[athanaric]

Do we have others?

Well there are inscriptions by Xerxes himself and very likely some Babylonian sources. Not very impressive but anyway source criticism is a necessity, regardless of the nature or quantity of sources.

What I find always funny is that we have no problem believing the 110 000 Greek army, raised and supplied by the Peloponessian peninsula, or the 180 ships supplied by Athens alone, but God forbid someone says the Persians were more than 100 000.

Who's "we"? As far as I'm concerned, those numbers might very well be lower. Though you should remember that it's easier to raise a large force to fight on your home turf than transporting them over thousands of kilometers to crush some rebellion.

[torongill]

True, but I think posessing two of the three breadbaskets of the known world and preparing for five years beforehand would help. Decapitation is also a powerful stimulus to do what the King of Kings tells you to do.

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

Again with my main point: mother ing logistics. Without logistics you are as good as a bunch of random animals or an army of paraplegics. It doesn't matter if you could raise an army 400 million strong (more like hungry), but if you do not have the logistics then they are as good as dead.

[Thorn777]

Is this hidden sarcasm, or just some smear copied from Jürgen Elsässer et al.?

What part do you believe to be smear? And what has Elsässer to do with this? All mentioned is on clear and dry Wikipedia.

[conon394]

or the 180 ships supplied by Athens alone

Which is more or less backed up governemnt records etched in stone and the penalty for officials who produced said records for failure of accuracy was harsh to say the least. So I don't have problem with Herodotus on that score.

Why would Persia mobilize a large chunk of its populace to fight someone that isn't a threat?

Because it was a threat as the Ionian revolt showed and the Athenian action in Egypt and Palistine later. The West was the direction Persia had been trying to advane in for decades and failed - not the North and not India. After numerous failed efforts on cheap, and a revolt that almost saw Lydia repaper and Cyprus lost - a major show had to be made if the Empire was going to grow in the direction Persia seems to have wanted to go.

[athanaric]

What part do you believe to be smear? And what has Elsässer to do with this? All mentioned is on clear and dry Wikipedia.

Because of your insinuation that Delbrück were a shady figure because "he's a Jew". Really, what does his ethnic or religious affiliation have to do with this?

[Col. Tartleton]

Why would I say it didn't happen it obviously did.

Why is it obvious? Each account of it is more outlandish than the last.

But if you want we can believe every single detail of everything ever published and we should also believe that Kim Jong-Il was the greatest golfer in the world and that he never used the bathroom.

Why should we believe in Kim Jung Il at all? He's probably not a real person. After all the only accounts of him are about 1400 years old and they sound like myths and legends, not a real person.

We should also go on to believe every single propaganda piece ever done by the Soviet Union, China, North Korea and the British Empire.

No, obviously we shouldn't believe anything they say.

Even today the logistics for a third of that are hard to do in a terrain like Greece's but e should also believe that the Persian Empire could field armies the size of Empires in the 19th century.

Well I guess I'm going to be fairly skeptical that Russia could have tens of millions of soldiers in WW2 with only 2-4x population of the Persian Empire.

So if 300,000 was their field army then I take it their entire army was larger, no just no.

Based on what? What evidence do you have? A gut feeling?

Why would Persia mobilize a large chunk of its populace to fight someone that isn't a threat?
Then expect there not to be wide spread revolt?

That was already the problem. The Greeks were causing enormous problems for the Persians in terms of revolts and wars. Besides how was Greece not a threat? In a few generations the tiny kingdom of Macedon took over southeast Europe, northeast Africa, and most of west and central Asia. He even made startling pushes into South Asia.

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

Russia was fighting in Russia and then mobilized the entire country and every factory for war. Persians didn't have industrialization, roads like the Roman ones (or our roads) or a stable government in which everyone was content with the government. If Rome didn't have more than 300,000 or so I wouldn't expect Persia to come close to that number.

[Col. Tartleton]

Russia was fighting in Russia and then mobilized the entire country and every factory for war. Persians didn't have industrialization, roads like the Roman ones (or our roads) or a stable government in which everyone was content with the government. If Rome didn't have more than 300,000 or so I wouldn't expect Persia to come close to that number.

Edward Gibbon estimated Roman standing forces to be around 375 thousand professionals (bare minimum just counting the Legions with their attached auxiliary troops) in a state of 120 million under Hadrian. The Legions were a fraction of Roman manpower. By the late Empire I think it was almost twice as many on the payroll.

The Persians had about half as many people but could reasonably temporarily raise millions of men given a 5 year plan.

EU (not remotely the Roman borders but bear with me) has 500 million people. 1.7 million actives. 2.6 million reserves. 750,000 paramilitary. Total 5 million. Far less than 1% are actually under arms. However males fit for service is going to be 1/6th-1/3rd of the population.

[ray243]

Edward Gibbon estimated Roman standing forces to be around 375 thousand professionals (bare minimum just counting the Legions with their attached auxiliary troops) in a state of 120 million under Hadrian. The Legions were a fraction of Roman manpower. By the late Empire I think it was almost twice as many on the payroll.

The Persians had about half as many people but could reasonably temporarily raise millions of men given a 5 year plan.

Why would the Persians be better able at raising men for war than the Romans?

Well I guess I'm going to be fairly skeptical that Russia could have tens of millions of soldiers in WW2 with only 2-4x population of the Persian Empire.

Remember the basis of every historian's training? Always analyse the source before making a judgement.

We have detailed primary sources indicating the size of the Russian army during the second world war. Those primary sources are raw data and statistics, meaning they will be much more reliable than a secondary source.

Most of the information we have on the Persian army are largely based on secondary sources, from people who might want to simplify or dramatise the size of the Persian army in order to write a morality tale.

[athanaric]

EU (not remotely the Roman borders but bear with me) has 500 million people. 1.7 million actives. 2.6 million reserves. 750,000 paramilitary. Total 5 million. Far less than 1% are actually under arms. However males fit for service is going to be 1/6th-1/3rd of the population.

Yeah, and we have mechanized, industrial scale agriculture. The Persian Empire didn't have that. Neither did the Romans, although they laid the groundwork. You gotta compare the percentage of people working in the agricultural sector. Both of these empires were very advanced for their time but neither had only a single digit percentage of the populace tied up in agricultural jobs.

[Col. Tartleton]

Why would the Persians be better able at raising men for war than the Romans?

Were they? Persia only needed to raise 5-10% of their population temporarily. At least half of which were noncombatants. The majority of which never saw combat.

Remember the basis of every historian's training? Always analyse the source before making a judgement.

I'd argue that the basis of every historian's training to is to analyze the audience and bias of the source.

We have detailed primary sources indicating the size of the Russian army during the second world war. Those primary sources are raw data and statistics, meaning they will be much more reliable than a secondary source.

Except we know the Russians lied about things for propaganda, they were writing in the official capacity. Likewise I don't necessarily take the Egyptian records as seriously as Greek and Roman scholars. Whereas Herodotus appears to be trying to get the most accurate account together and his own contemporaries critiqued and ridiculed his work. Who was he trying to convince? Certainly not us. Kind of a stretch to assume he was writing for an audience 2,400 years later. Was he writing down what he reasoned and put together or for a patron?

By and large it seems he wrote down what he heard from his sources and then throws in the occasional acknowledgement to the reader how crazy it sounds. He seems like a reasonable man for the period.

I'm sorry, but if Xenophon had 10,000 crack hoplites and that was a trapped and dreadfully outnumbered behind enemy lines action thriller scenario you do have to suppose the Persians had vast reserves of manpower.

Most of the information we have on the Persian army are largely based on secondary sources, from people who might want to simplify or dramatise the size of the Persian army in order to write a morality tale.

That's entirely speculation. The sources which suggest smaller numbers than Herodotus gives don't seem to have any idea what they're talking about.

The Persian army to my understanding was organized into 30 divisions/corps. These were at least 10,000 strong as we see in the Royal Division, the Immortals. The Line Corps may have been up to 60,000 strong, swollen for the expedition. That's 1.75 million combatants. Double that for the support infrastructure and we can assume the Persian mobilization was about 3.5 million army soldiers, plus naval forces.

Yeah, and we have mechanized, industrial scale agriculture. The Persian Empire didn't have that. Neither did the Romans, although they laid the groundwork. You gotta compare the percentage of people working in the agricultural sector. Both of these empires were very advanced for their time but neither had only a single digit percentage of the populace tied up in agricultural jobs.

However you have to consider that the Soviet War machine had to produce a lot more war material than the Persian Empire would per person. How much mechanical advantage was counteracted upon by the differences in war material are hard to say. The Persians were raising extra livestock and storing extra food supplies, the armies were . The Russians were building Main Battle Tanks and heavy artillery, Bombers and Fighters. Uniforms, bullets, bayonets, boots, bombs, shells, rifles, helmets, rations, transportation, gasoline.

[torongill]

Unfortunately it seems to me that some of the underlying reasons for disbelief among modern historians are "This simply cannot be done! Are you telling me that a bunch of illiterate fire-worshippers were able to do something which we with all our fancy technology and gadgets and gimmicks cannot?! You must be out of your mind!"