Comments by "" (@VersusARCH) on "The Drydock - Episode 129" video.

32:19 - If you ask me - the Germans were unquestionably victorious at Jutland. Hipper mauled Beatty, while Scheer avoided destruction at the hands of Jellicoe. Many damaged German capital ships, but few sunk. Repair and hit them again... A plausible scenario that results with a greater German victory is a major, successful U-boat ambush that sinks a few British capital ships. The Germans actually tried and counted on this, but it failed.
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@gwtpictgwtpict4214 10 out of 16 capital ships of the High Seas Fleet were in fighting condition after Jutland too. British losses were mostly permanent (sunk). German losses were mostly repairable (damaged). The battle itself was a German victory. Greater British ship-building capacity and the fact that the RN was larger anyway was a consequence of macroeconomic circumstances over the preceding centuries, not the battle itself. Otherwise every battle won by the side that ultimately lost the war could be labeled strategic victory for the ultimate victor.
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@UNSCForwardontodawn Exchanging 1 capital ship to Britain's 3 Pyhrric? With 4 more Jutlands Germany would have arguably achieved fleet pairity...
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@bengrogan9710 The ships were repaired.
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@UNSCForwardontodawn No, I simply stated the simple fact that had additional battles like Jutland happened with the same ratio of losses like at Jutland, German fleet would be getting stronger, not weaker relative to the British fleet, therefore Jutland could not be qualified as a Pyhrric victory, but rather a clear-cut victory...
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@UNSCForwardontodawn Assumming you, for some bizzare reason just HAD to repair EVERY SINGLE ship in your fleet that was damaged in the previous encounter to sail out again... For Germany it would have to be hit and run (before pairity is hopefully achieved), regardless of momentary odds.
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@bengrogan9710 German High Seas fleet sailed out at least two more times after Jutland seeking to challenge the British Grand Fleet, except the fleets never met.
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@UNSCForwardontodawn As unlikely as 4 additional Jutlands might be (which is fair to assume) it takes nothing away from the fact that Jutland itself was a clear-cut German victory.
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@UNSCForwardontodawn Russia getting knocked out of the war combined with huge loans the Entente took from the US brought US into the war on the Entente side, U-boats were just used as a rallying cry by US and Entente propaganda and that narrative is still being uncritically repeated in the English-speaking historiography up to this day.
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@papajohnloki Still an overall German victory and we don't know what Jutland 2 would have looked like. A successful U-boat ambush with the German High Seas Fleet used as bait to lure the British Grand Fleet into it could result in an even greater German victory...
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@UNSCForwardontodawn Barbarossa was unquestionably a German victory. We are talking outcomes of operations here, not whether going to war with USSR as Germany did was brilliant. National policy is decided by heads of state. Operations by military commanders. We are talking how well the latter did.
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@UNSCForwardontodawn "Why would the U-boat do better next time?" you ask... What... You think only the RN is capable of evaluating its mistakes and improving?
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@UNSCForwardontodawn It is not my sainity that is the problem. It is your inability to realize that Barbarossa was only one of many military operations of which the invasion of the USSR consisted of and also there were other - non military operations (conducted by German police, industry etc.) that were the result of the invasion. Look, I'll make it simple. You are a cook on a US destroyer whose captain just smashed in into the Honda Point, a decision you had no connection with. In that situation you rescue two crewmen from drowning but the ship is a total loss nevertheless. Do you deserve praise or court-martial?
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@gwtpictgwtpict4214 Continue to believe in propaganda spins (interpreting facts in sucs a way so as to further your agenda) all you like. I need not add anything else and frankly can't make it simpler. By your logic the capture of HMS Guerrierre by USS Constitution was a RN victory... Farewell.
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@UNSCForwardontodawn Believe whatever you want...
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@gwtpictgwtpict4214 Nope The problem with Jutland is the British propaganda LIE (more like implication actually) that the German intention was to set sail, sweep the RN in one battle, win command of the sea, blockade UK out of the war and then focus on defeating France. In reality the German naval staff had no illusions that such a scenario is even remotely possible. They instead, quite sensibly intended to nibble away the British naval superiority in number by a succession of lesser victories, ideally by defeating RN in detail - so quite literally WITH A FAVORABLE K/D RATIO in this particular case. Jutland unquestionably qualifies as such a victory as the Germans achieved a ratio (~3:1) by which the overall plan would have worked had they managed to produce more such victories (since RN had just under 2:1 advantage). Compare it to Verdun where while they did lose bit less than the Entente they failed to achieve K/D rate good enough for the attrition strategy to work - hence Verdun was a German defeat. The irony is that the whole British narrative is likely born out of their own nationalistic notion born during the Napoleonic war (when the two main rival navies were numerically larger but in organizational and, sometimes morale crisis and boarding was a thing) that the RN would just sweep everything before itself in a single decisive battle. When that failed with losses 3x that of the enemy the propaganda rationalized it by saying "look, the enemy wanted to sweep US in a single decisive battle and THEY failed - so we won since we still have the command of the sea Rule Britannia!". In reality the German fleet would have ran out of shells before it could sink the Grand Fleet even if it all went their way.
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@gwtpictgwtpict4214 Nope. It had geographic goals which were (mostly) taken during the operation, hence it was a victory. If Hitler believed that capturing those areas would make the USSR collapse he was certainly wrong in that but that has nothing to do with the outcome of the operation. Simply put - it would have taken more than that to win the war against the USSR. Hence planning further operations was in order, but those were progressively less and less successful to the point of outright disasters later in the war, the major reasons being factors of war economy and mobilization, totally outside of the realm of combat operations (of course the same things equally played a part in Herman victories too)...
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@gwtpictgwtpict4214 Wrong. Read the previous messages.
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@UNSCForwardontodawn No successful propaganda ever stated "This is propaganda, now listen:" History books are full of various types of propaganda you need to learn to spot them by applying critical thinking on facts only and ignoring conclusions the book is trying to shove into your head since that is one of the places of the book where the propaganda is most often found - be it by the propagandist author or by other propagandists whose spin the author has bought into and is repeating. Excellent example of propaganda BS is the notion (found in, among other places in Encarta Encyclopedia no less) that the sinking of the Lusitania was an important factor in US entry to WW1; in reality US entered the war about a full year later and just used it as a rallying cry, having no single better event during which Germans killed Americans to point to. K/D is always important, but that does not mean more than 1:1= victory, it differs from battle to battle, not to mention war to war - based on balance of power between the combatants, but could be other objectives too. But sufficiently favorable K/D was the HSF objective at Jutland and they achieved it. It was achieved at considerable risk - but due to the balance if power that was HSF's ONLY (slim) CHANCE to beat RN. Scheer effectively had ptsd after the battle so he to a degree chickened out instead of continuing with the strategy with the same drive as before Jutland (he actually did, but more timidly). But a cooler head would have drawn different conclusion - since, it is not just hindsight to say that Germany was slowly being starved into defeat by being almost completely cut off from world trade by Entente powers, in which the RN blockade played a very important part.
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@UNSCForwardontodawn I already had if you read my comments.
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@UNSCForwardontodawn Oh boy, you are suggesting "Battlefield" as a credible source for analyzing events... Textbook example of propaganda commentaries. Sometimes just off-topic-ing the entire episode like the Campaign in the Balkans. Sorry, kids, outgrown it more than a decade ago...
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@bengrogan9710 You are still flogging the same dead horse which is: confusing the overall war aim with an outcome of a single battle... Jutland was a successful step towards that goal but it would take many such steps to reach it and Germany failed to do so. The logic you are defending is the following: the US war aim in WW2 was unconditional victory of Japan. Japan did not unconditionally surrender after Midway, therefore US lost that battle. Or, conversely since Hannibal's war aim was to force Rome to sue for peace and Rome did not do so after Cannae - Hannibal lost that battle... Germans never intended to break the British blockade at Jutland. If they did they would have been escorting a huge cargo ship convoy heading for USA to buy and bring back war materiel to Germany. Where was that convoy?
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