Comments by "" (@RedXlV) on "Henry Stewart History" channel.

@geofflepper3207 The thinking was that Russia would have been unbeatable by 1918-1920 if they hadn't been destroyed by war from 1914-1918. The industrial improvements that would've been needed to modernize Russia didn't happen, because all the men who would've been working on such things instead got conscripted to fight in the war. And what industrial capacity Russia had was all being focused on producing war materiel right now rather than on improvements that would only bear fruit 5+ years later. A nation at peace can focus more on long-term planning, while a nation at war (with enemy troops occupying large swaths of their country) can only focus on immediate survival.
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@theo-dr2dz Yep, Russian culture has always been primed to accept an autocrat, so long as that autocrat is perceived as "strong" and "getting the job done". Nicholas II could've kept the absolute monarchy intact, or at least created a pseudo-constitutional monarchy in which the emperor is still capable of exercising great power (like what Germany and Japan had). So long as he just did a little for to make workers' and peasants' lives better, like what Wilhelm I and Bismarck had done in 19th century Germany. Make reforms that are just enough to undercut the appeal of the radicals, without actually giving up any power. But Nicholas II didn't have a Bismarck to give him that kind of advice, and he certainly wasn't astute enough a politician to figure it out on his own.
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@yasvirid 11000 are the civilian dead who have been individually identified. Neither Ukraine nor anyone else outside of Russia has data on the civilian deaths in the areas still occupied by Russia.
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Convenient of Stalin to leave out the part where the Soviet Union initially entered the war on Germany's side. Operation Barbarossa wasn't merely an German invasion of the USSR, it was also a backstab of an ally.
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@gryaznygreeb There are effectively 3 tiers of citizen in Russia, as seen by how likely they are to get mobilized. Bottom tier are the ethnic minorities. Middle tier is ethnic Russians in the country as a whole. Top tier is ethnic Russians from Moscow. (I suppose you could also place ethnic Russians from other major cities like Saint Petersburg as an upper-middle tier.)
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@yasvirid Yes, let's please look at what Russia did to Mariupol. Russia essentially razed the city to the ground. Erecting new buildings to replace the ones that were bombed out (along with bringing in Russian colonizers to replace the massacred or displaced Ukrainian population) does not make it "better than before the war." And there were not "one million dead in a month" in Iraq. More like one million dead in ten years, and that includes all of the civilians who were killed by insurgents, al-Qaeda, and ISIS.
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Serbia was an incredibly useless ally, though. Russia would've been wise to cut ties with them years before WW1 broke out.
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@valiantvanadium6996 That makes complete sense. Long-term occupation of Germany was never going to be cheap, and Britain was essentially bankrupt in 1945.
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In retrospect, Germany's huge mistake was in trying to knock out France at the start of the war before shifting focus to Russia. They should have done the opposite, striking out at Russia first and fighting a defensive war in the west. Which would've had the added advantage that since they wouldn't be violating Belgian neutrality, there wouldn't have been a valid pretext for Britain to enter the war on France and Russia's side. And without British involvement, the U-boat campaign and the Zimmerman telegram never would've happened to draw America into the war. Against just France, the Germans probably could've held the line in the west until Russia was knocked out. Granted, the British still would've tried to find some other pretext to join the war, just to keep Germany from getting too powerful. But they'd need to find something that would actually be acceptable to the public. Germany brutalizing Belgium fit the bill. But the British people would generally not have the same sympathy for Russia.
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@paulsara9694 Stalin was far worse, for sure. Even the worst Romanovs weren't as bad as Stalin. You'd have to go back to Ivan the Terrible (who was a Rurikid, not a Romanov) for somebody as bad as Stalin.
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@davidpryle3935 At the time the war started, Germany was actually even less ready than Britain and France. That was even more true in 1938, when Britain and France foolishly agreed to let Hitler take Czechoslovakia without a fight. With better leadership, Germany could have been defeated by 1941 at the latest, and WW2 wouldn't have actually been a "world war".
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Giving France an occupation zone in Germany meant fewer British troops needed and fewer British pounds spent. A seat on the UN Security Council meant an additional non-Soviet vote on the Council.
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@bigenglishmonkey Paul Reynaud, the Prime Minister of France, was a vehement advocate for union with Britain. Unfortunately, Petain was all-in for surrender, and many others in the cabinet thought the union was just a British attempt to steal France's colonies. Reynaud mistakenly thought this meant the whole cabinet had decided on surrender, and resigned. Which unfortunately made the traitor Petain the new Prime Minister.
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Marshal Foch warned in 1919 that the next war would be in 20 years. He didn't live long enough to see that he was correct almost to the day.
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@matthewjones39 The Maginot Line itself wasn't the problem. The problem was the mentality that it alone would be enough to prevent any German invasion. Maginot himself never had any such illusions, he fully intended that the line would simply require any invasion to be concentrated into a narrow area, which would allow France to in turn concentrate its own army in opposition. He also intended for the line to extend all the way to the channel at Dunkerque, but political pressure from Belgium prevented that. The Belgians were afraid that if the entire French border were fully fortified, France would simply abandon them to their fate in the the event of a German invasion. The idea that Germany would be able to so quickly bypass Belgium's own fortifications was never anticipated.
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27:24 Honestly, this might have been Nicholas's biggest mistake. This would've been the point to say "Serbia is actually a pretty useless ally" and kick them to the curb. Bulgaria being both larger and more favorably positioned geographically could potentially have helped him achieve his dream of seizing the Dardanelles from the Ottomans. Yes, Bulgaria was the aggressor in the conflict, but this was a time when territorial expansion via conquest was still considered acceptable. And Nicky was still looking to expand his own territory via conquest. In those days it wasn't actually "who's the aggressor" that mattered, it was just "who's winning?" If he'd chosen Bulgaria over Serbia in 1913 and came to Bulgaria's aid when they were losing the war, it would've had the added advantage of preventing World War I the next year. Instead, it would've just been Austria-Hungary curbstomping Serbia, and that would've been that.
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As Anthony Eden said of the Italian Army in North Africa, "Never has so much been surrendered by so many, to so few."
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It's Russia. Nothing ever really changes.
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@mistermax3034 You mean in the war where Russia has been trying and failing for a decade to conquer a nation a fifth their size?
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