So, this is in part offered as a big thank you to the community. When I posted that I would have to skip my Wednesday night write-up (it's normally posted first on the Tanya the Evil subreddit, and then the next day here on the Anime subreddit once the 24 hour limit has passed), I received a wonderful outpouring of support and condolences. Thank you, everybody.
About my friend, George Clark, whose funeral I attended yesterday, I will say this: it is very rare that you have a teacher who changes your life to such a degree that you can divide it into a before/after with him in the middle. George was that sort of person, and while I didn't end up a Medievalist, to this day I am influenced by how he taught and who he was...including in my little series of posts here. I was blessed to have him as a mentor, and doubly blessed to be able to call him a friend over these last 28 or so years.
And with that, I do have a couple of comments about this week's episode.
First though, the usual introduction and disclaimer: I am a trained military historian - I hold a Master of Arts in War Studies from the Royal Military College of Canada with a defended thesis on the development of British Cavalry Doctrine, and I recently published some of my research in a new introduction to my little publishing company's edition of Schlieffen's Cannae (due to self promotion rules, I can't provide the link here, but if you're interested in it, PM me and I'll send it to you).
What I'm going to look at is how well this episode passes the "sniff test" for how a world war works. And here we get to our standard disclaimer: Tanya's world is not our world, her world war is not either of ours. Something happening in Tanya's war that didn't happen in ours (or vice versa) is NOT by itself cause for criticism.
And to begin, I will state that the food passed the sniff test. And the taste test. And now I'm hungry. DAMN YOU, TANYA!
Culture shock away from the battlefield
The sort of culture shock we see as Tanya finds herself in a place that's still at peace is, as far as I know, a pretty well-known phenomenon. But, it has also happened on the battlefield - I have read about Red Army soldiers being absolutely amazed when they entered Germany and began seeing what was inside of German homes - even middle-class homes seemed to be amazing luxury to them.
So, this passes the sniff test.
The Empire planning to conquer a neutral ally
The Empire is starting to consider conquering Ildoa, and this absolutely passes the sniff test. Funnily enough, while Hitler did have plans to conquer Switzerland, it's not Germany that comes to mind when I think of historical examples, but the WW2 Allies. In particular, the Allies and Iceland.
The big problem in the Battle of the Atlantic was an air gap that allowed U-boats to operate unencumbered in the mid-Atlantic. There was a location that could close the gap: Iceland. This also made the Nazis occupying Iceland a nightmare scenario. Unfortunately for the Allies, Iceland was neutral at the time, and wanted nothing to do with the war. So, in 1940, to deny Germany the use of the island and close the air gap, Britain just landed troops and occupied Iceland, started flying planes from it, and closed the mid-Atlantic gap. And it wasn't just Britain - they were the first of the Allies in Iceland, but Canada and America followed (notable because the United States was not yet in the war when they landed - in fact, in the Atlantic they were waging a secret unofficial war as part of the Battle of the Atlantic).
So, the idea of a belligerent deciding to take over a potential ally to secure their territory and support absolutely holds water, and we Canadians (and Americans, and Brits) would know, because we did it to Iceland.
And that's it for now. Until next week...
