Comments by "seneca983" (@seneca983) on "Drachinifel" channel.

@todo9633 Didn't you dishonor them as well by misspelling their name? ;) (My German is rather rusty but I think it should be "Königliche".)
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@GaryNumeroUno Aircraft were pretty new so I'm not sure how many AA guns ships would have. Also, Zeppelins could fly high enough that AA shells and early war aircraft couldn't reach them.
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Drachinifel didn't blame "the French". He blamed a single French officer.
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Maybe Gensoul had skill when it came to tactical matters that didn't involve anything he might feel is a personal insult.
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Better late than never.
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@BaseReality "Drach, having both your guest and yourself record themselves locally, rather than using a single recording, would avoid audio artefacts introduced from being thousands of miles apart." But if that's more of a hassle it might not be worth it. Here the occasional odd sounding voice didn't hurt because the speech was still just as easy to understand.
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"I don't think Admiral Gensoul actually cared so much about the fact that the British had sent a captain to negotiate with him. I fully believe he made a fuss about it to buy his fleet time to come up to steam" What could he possibly have accomplished with a delay? In any case, it shouldn't have been too difficult to manufacture a delay, e.g. by asking more orders, even if he had received Captain Holland and/or sent a full description of the situation to the Vichy governments. I see no reason for him to have forgone those two things.
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I think the British actions in this event were at least somewhat understandable. There are far better examples of Albion being perfidious. E.g. during and after WWI, the Sykes-Picot agreement was a brazen betrayal of the Arabs who had sided with the Entente and rebelled.
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There isn't an equivalent in the Finnish constitution. Where did you get that?
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No Danish navy? What happened to them? Were they not able to depart in time due to how quickly Denmark fell?
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16:15 Wait a minute! By what mechanism did the surge of water start a fire?
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@ineednochannelyoutube5384 Sounds plausible.
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Strange. English language Wikipedia says she was handed as reparations but the Finnish language Wikipedia says that she was sold.
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@XXStoogieXX : Well, they had that time, didn't they? And it wasn't utilized in any way that would even seem to have had a chance to make a difference. And in any case that doesn't respond to the second part of my comment where I argue that Gensoul could have deliberately caused enough delay even if he met with Holland personally.
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8:52 "the Continental Navy" What a funny name. :)
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If the name is supposed to be pronounced the German way, the sound isn't quite the same. In German, the 'ch' digraph is pronounced as [x] after back vowels (like 'a') and as [ç] after front vowels (like 'ü').
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Does bombardment from carrier-based aircraft count as shore bombardment?
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@chandlerwhite8302 : "the greatest strategic naval disaster of all time" What about the Athenian expedition to Sicily during the Peloponnesian War? Or what about Kublai's disastroys attempts of invading Japan?
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@chandlerwhite8302 : E.g. the failed expedition to Sicily did essentially decide the Peloponnesian war. The battle of Midway was a turning point of the Pacific War but even if it had gone differently Japan's long term prospects of winning the war were rather dim as illustrated in the following video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9ag2x3CS9M
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I didn't know that "riverine" was a word.
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There's no reason to not at least receive Captain Holland. And he could definitely accept one of the set-out terms of the ultimatum. The situation wasn't symmetric in this regard.
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@Volcanares : "Admiral Gensoul accepted to meet Captain Holland" Really? The impression I got was that he only sent Lieutenant Dufay to meet Holland. Dufay, of course, didn't have the authority to even reject any proposals. I see no reason to refuse to meet with Holland. If Gensoul would have had any alternative suggestions that would have required the authority of Admiral Sommerville to accept he could have just let Holland relay them. "Saying that the responsability of the british firing on the french is due to the french admiral is stupid. The responsability is to the british first, in that case Churchill who gave the order." I would give a twofold response. 1) I think the criticism of Gensoul is entirely valid even if you think the British were in the wrong for attacking. Had he acted better, there would have been at least a possibility of a better outcome. Any morally wrong action by the Brittish doesn't detract from this. Soldiers often have to deal with opponents making morally unjustified attacks and can still be evaluated on how well they perform considering. Gensoul simply performed poorly in this instance. 2) In a certain sense, the responsibility, of course, lies on whoever made the decision to initiate hostilities. That doesn't, however, automatically mean that initiating the hostilities was necessarily morally wrong. One can make at least a plausible case that the Brittish had a sufficient reason for what they did, though it's a pretty tough question.
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@Volcanares : "Yes, Admiral Gensoul met Captain Holland." If so, how long did it take? I don't recall such meeting mentioned in this video or on the Wikipedia page on the battle. At least initially he did send Lieutenant Dufay instead of meeting personally or sending a more senior officer. "What would you do in his position?" At the very least I would receive Holland as soon as he arrived. I would also send the Vichy government a message describing the whole situation including the whole ultimatum (and not just two of the given options). Ideally, I'd hope that one of the options given by the British could be accepted (such as sailing to the US). "it's their responsibility anyway" Yes, it is in the sense that you're using the word. I think in this video it was used to mean "blame" in the sense that some people involved ought to have done something different. Maybe the wording wasn't the best but I think it's a far more interesting question whether e.g. Gensoul or Somerville or someone else should have done something different rather than what's the meaning of the word "responsibility". "it was a mistake" At least in hindsight it was a mistake, but I'm not entirely sure whether it was a mistake also ex ante. "If the french fleet was really a threat, and you don't want it to join the axis power, that attack was the worst thing to do." That's certainly a risk. I guess the British government estimated that it was a smaller risk than leaving the fleet at Mers-el-Kebir intact. It's hard for me to make a judgment about that. "the french deserve respect for that" I agree.
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Btw, did these Barbary states (or other Muslim states with slavery) have any abolitionists arguing against slavery?
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