MannerOfLoaf
Spaceman
Revisiting the Kilrathi Saga, I think the story had some interesting implications about the nature of the Kilrathi War - how it was fought and the things that would have kept it going for 35 years.
1 - In WC1 at the end of the Vega campaign Shotglass mentions watching Kilrathi POWs loaded onto transports where they'll be shipped back to Kilrah. This seems to imply a kind of formal or semi-formal prisoner exchange system that's been set up over the course of the war. It certainly makes a lot of sense to me - Confed and the Kilrathi seem to be the only 2 "big" powers in this region of space and Confed at least has at least one fairly wild, semi-autonomous frontier region in the Border Worlds. Trained personnel and equipment are expensive so I'd imagine it'd be in both sides interest to cycle prisoners between each other regularly to ensure that each side can keep control of their own domains. While it doesn't really square with the Kilrathi warrior ethic that brings me to my next question...
2 - How do the Kilrathi really feel about surrender or negotiation? Over the course of WC1 we see plenty Kilrathi troops with their hands in the air but by the time of the sequels and the novels that vanishes in favor of a warrior ethic that is comparable to the WW2 Imperial Japanese. Has something changed tactically during this time (maybe orbital bombardments became less effective or advances in surface-to-space weapons made it possible and desirable for planet-bound ground forces to fight as long as possible later in the war) or has there been a change in Kilrathi military culture? Which leads me to...
3 - How intense was the war prior to WC1? I've always been intrigued by the only early-war battle besides McAulliffe (and what we know about that is dubious, see below) - the Enyo Engagement. It seems so different from what I'd expect in the bitter and high-intensity war that is described over the course of the novels and games. Not only does hostage taking seem like an odd idea for the Kilrathi to have (unless earlier in the war they had different ideas about the status of prisoners and noncombatants of course) the whole character of it seems to be more of a large raid or even part of a private feud as opposed to a military campaign. This runs up against...
4 - How reliable is "Action Stations" in describing the start of the war? The description of an all-out Kilrathi blitzkrieg that seizes a large portion of the Confederation and brutalizes a large fraction of its citizens seems at odds with the conflict described above. In the author's forward he calls it a novel and differentiates it from a 'study of the beginning of the war' he is also writing. Moreover the author served with Admiral Tolwyn and certainly seems to think he was done dirty by the Confed establishment. Is this nothing more than some dubious piece of pro-Black Lance propaganda much like the defector Suvorov's "Icebreaker" or David Irving's "Hitler's War" - a pseudo-scholarly piece of propaganda intended to justify Tolwyn's horrific post-war crimes? Speaking of how Tolwyn was done dirty...
5 - Why did the Terran Confederation fall for the armistice offer (assuming of course that Fleet Action is reliable) considering that the Kilrathi had never before acted in good faith? There's a whole post I could write on this but I'm inclined to think that Confed also signed the agreement with the intention of launching a surprise attack on the Kilrathi as well. What mattered to Confed were the provisions that scrapped both fleets, since that would have meant that when the war restarted for the first time the human fleet would be at parity with Kilrah's (that is, zero ships on both sides). What doomed the Confed was not knowing about the Kilrathi's hidden shipyards and the many and major security lapses in their camp.
1 - In WC1 at the end of the Vega campaign Shotglass mentions watching Kilrathi POWs loaded onto transports where they'll be shipped back to Kilrah. This seems to imply a kind of formal or semi-formal prisoner exchange system that's been set up over the course of the war. It certainly makes a lot of sense to me - Confed and the Kilrathi seem to be the only 2 "big" powers in this region of space and Confed at least has at least one fairly wild, semi-autonomous frontier region in the Border Worlds. Trained personnel and equipment are expensive so I'd imagine it'd be in both sides interest to cycle prisoners between each other regularly to ensure that each side can keep control of their own domains. While it doesn't really square with the Kilrathi warrior ethic that brings me to my next question...
2 - How do the Kilrathi really feel about surrender or negotiation? Over the course of WC1 we see plenty Kilrathi troops with their hands in the air but by the time of the sequels and the novels that vanishes in favor of a warrior ethic that is comparable to the WW2 Imperial Japanese. Has something changed tactically during this time (maybe orbital bombardments became less effective or advances in surface-to-space weapons made it possible and desirable for planet-bound ground forces to fight as long as possible later in the war) or has there been a change in Kilrathi military culture? Which leads me to...
3 - How intense was the war prior to WC1? I've always been intrigued by the only early-war battle besides McAulliffe (and what we know about that is dubious, see below) - the Enyo Engagement. It seems so different from what I'd expect in the bitter and high-intensity war that is described over the course of the novels and games. Not only does hostage taking seem like an odd idea for the Kilrathi to have (unless earlier in the war they had different ideas about the status of prisoners and noncombatants of course) the whole character of it seems to be more of a large raid or even part of a private feud as opposed to a military campaign. This runs up against...
4 - How reliable is "Action Stations" in describing the start of the war? The description of an all-out Kilrathi blitzkrieg that seizes a large portion of the Confederation and brutalizes a large fraction of its citizens seems at odds with the conflict described above. In the author's forward he calls it a novel and differentiates it from a 'study of the beginning of the war' he is also writing. Moreover the author served with Admiral Tolwyn and certainly seems to think he was done dirty by the Confed establishment. Is this nothing more than some dubious piece of pro-Black Lance propaganda much like the defector Suvorov's "Icebreaker" or David Irving's "Hitler's War" - a pseudo-scholarly piece of propaganda intended to justify Tolwyn's horrific post-war crimes? Speaking of how Tolwyn was done dirty...
5 - Why did the Terran Confederation fall for the armistice offer (assuming of course that Fleet Action is reliable) considering that the Kilrathi had never before acted in good faith? There's a whole post I could write on this but I'm inclined to think that Confed also signed the agreement with the intention of launching a surprise attack on the Kilrathi as well. What mattered to Confed were the provisions that scrapped both fleets, since that would have meant that when the war restarted for the first time the human fleet would be at parity with Kilrah's (that is, zero ships on both sides). What doomed the Confed was not knowing about the Kilrathi's hidden shipyards and the many and major security lapses in their camp.