Comments by "William Cox" (@WildBillCox13) on "TIKhistory"
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Hi TIK. The allies do count in my view. Here are a few of my thoughts on topic:
Of the 21,000 "88s" built (sFlaK 18/36/37), close to 20,000 were kept in the Reich, specifically Germany, to defend against Allied Air attacks. Miserable logistics included, those guns would have been welcome in the Ost. Consider that Rommel's 12 "88s" (sometimes fired while still in travel mode*) made him king of the desert on more than one occasion. 12 88s . . . out of 21,000. There's a direct allied contribution in my view.
Similarly, consider that, in France, the same effect was obtained with very small numbers of 88 guns employed.
That's just one direct impact the allies had. Then there are all the crews for those guns left behind. And all their transport and the fuel needed to move it. 160,000 men . . . not counting infrastructure, command, and control. Imagine if the Wehrmacht had an extra 160,000 men converting rail gauges and building new lines (and/or new carriages) in the east.
Another direct impact of the allied population against the Axis population is the number of fighters and the size in manpower of their support infrastructure that Germany was forced to retain for the defense of its major manufacturing centers. Astrakhan, here I come!
* With the legs up and still attached to its prime mover. Can't do that with a split trail!
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I enjoy your content. Always argument worthy. With that established . . .
Not a logistics man here, but I have read an account or two hundred and considered what I had read.
A couple of serious question: 1) did you encounter corruption during your service? 2) If so, did you factor it in to your considerations for this video?
My thought is that corrupt officers and noncoms will seek corrupt facilitators, perpetrating a rotten system. Likewise, the military has an active black market in almost every zone of occupation. Continual seeking out of corruption is counter to effective use of a general's time and effort (from his point of view-not yours), so it goes virtually unpunished.
Often unsaid is the truth that the Redball express did not run on gasoline/petrol; it ran on amphetamines. That leads to a LOT of problems in personnel, equipment, and significant errors of judgment. I ask the question: who was getting what he wanted from it? Who profited by the fuckups and foulups?
I suggest that, perhaps, you might agree as a capitalist to postulate that somewhere, someone was profiting like mad off a corrupt system. And I further suggest that was a bigger factor than over-planning.
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In times past, plagues acted to better enfranchise workers and promote mobility (by killing them off-don't you just love history?). This weakened the manorial system, to be sure, and opened partial control of manufacturing resources to towns, guilds, and other entities you might well term corporations*.
*Which brought bored or failing manorial lords into towns, where they then took up influential positions in these "corporations" until they became the policy makers. De facto owners. Landed gentry FTW!
So, no, it's not capitalism. It's Oligarchic fought economic warfare all taking place under the benign neglect of a de facto nobility also made up of landed money. The landed nobility always rules. The only thing that changes is the pomp and circumstance. The workers are cared about exactly like they were in France before le revolution. And after it. For the same sound economic reasons . . . from the ruling perspective.
When capitalism works, every job offered (by wise, caring, employers grown savvy through experience) pays a living wage. You know: supports an apartment, utilities, a phone, a car, triple play for the big screen TV, the console or PC's internet; the products society assigns subjective value to. The products society judges you by.
Since that hasn't happened (now or ever) capitalism is not a good thing for the workers who support its owners with their compensated work. Attaining a higher paying skillset means nothing when the number of such jobs offered is not up to the supply. Do I think other systems work better? No. I firmly believe that the systems are all the same, that the level of humanitarian influences that a nation's landed gentry are exposed to defines worker treatment.
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Wow, TIK! You don't take small bites. A lot to unpack here. I'll go out on a limb, just to show I'm not afraid.
We're all painting targets on ourselves, while talking heads rearrange the meanings of words to destroy their truth. Answer a question honestly, and someone uses crude, copied, tactics learned on hate preaching media to shut you down. No one is immune and no one who preaches hate is held culpable for the disunity they sow*. Which subtly acts to defuse opprobrium directed at those who preach hate.
In other words, the hate mongers slide out from under the taking of responsibility for their hate crimes against their fellows, their nations, and humanity.
Preaching hate against fellow nationals is simply stupid. If you believe in national identity, then your fellow citizen is your ally against the rest of the world. Help him, be helped by him, or get out of the way. Dogs in the manger sap the vital energy of any group of folks otherwise working to improve quality of life for all. It is the same for all social units, no matter what their leaders call them.
The real test will come when you are trapped under your burning car and the hand that reaches out to pull you free belongs to someone who you hate because of propaganda from hate-mongers poisoning your mind. Gonna refuse that rescuing hand? Cool! Then your type will die out. It hurts me to think we won't miss you when you're gone.
That is one way to make the world a better place for everyone else.
Defund hate. Work toward common goals as a nation, or a block, or as a global coalition of equals struggling against the tides of social Kaleidoscopism**.
Save the planet, instead of privilege and don't let today's underdog become a slave to the old ways of abuse and oppression. When he takes the reins at last, perhaps he'll do better than the generations before him***.
* Have we not seen hate-mongers touted as saviors and heroes before?
**Society is changing too quickly for any hard and fast rules at this time. What seems reasonable today will be held up to ridicule as rank favoritism or elitism, or intellectual delusion or moral weakness tomorrow.
We're all struggling to find a stable unit identity. Humans are hardwired to be social animals. We will always cluster into groups, factions, or opposing camps. It is our nature.
I cite all of recorded history as my proof.
***Generic pronoun, not a gender bias. Him/her and he/she, even generic person, are all fine. My mum was an English teacher. She would approve of my usage.
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Hi TIK! A few comments, if you don't mind.
Breaking Enigma: Without the Poles the British had exactly zero.
Superior tech: Everyone had so-called "Superior tech" at the start of the war. British RaDAR advantage. German tactical coordination of massed units by means of comprehensive radio net (more radios per unit IS technical superiority). German hydrophones-best in the world. We never got close. Japanese focus on deterring air attack by means of main Battery pyrotechnics. Japanese biowarfare. USA lead based avgas additives (no one else had anything like it) giving octane numbers as high as 135 compared to German B fuels of 85 octane. That equates to higher power per CC of displacement. US two stage superchargers and US turbochargers-these give altitude advantage. Reference the Japanese and German difficulty reaching high altitude bomber streams. One stage blowers is not enough for high altitude fighting.
Jet and rocket tech? It was all elementary and incomplete. Me 262 was infamous for engine nacelle fires. Me 163 killed more pilots than allied planes. US and Soviet attempts were no better. Whittle and Junkers ran almost neck in neck. BMW was still trying to figure out the whole affair when the war ended. Japan was a distant 4th.
Tanks. No one had better tanks, 'cause each tank was developed to specific place in the line. Ships. No one had better ships, though Great Britain had a definite lead in hardware design and upgrading. Planes. See above comment on avgas additives and superchargers. Add to that the USA's lack of tactical foresight. 20mm cannon were the way forward, not the much beloved .50cal Ma Deuce. Guns, No one had anything like the German two stage recoil system for large caliber guns. Nor did anyone have the insane level of engineering required to allow small crews to assemble the huge guns onsite without taking weeks in the process. Additionally, we used the 17cm K18 whenever we got hands on them. It was a great gun. We hadn't anything so advanced. Self Propelled Guns. Only the Soviets fielded large caliber armored siege artillery. The SU and ISU 152 had no equal anywhere.
Conclusion: Both Japan and Germany made virtue out of paucity. The US could throw money around. The two are mutually incompatible when it comes to the philosophical approaches to overcoming technical difficulty. Soviet engineering was uneven, to say the least. Promising aircraft were nixed due to failure of engines slated for their use. Soviet AFVs were limited in the big three of Gun/Armor/mobility by the engines available. US and Soviets had unlimited, uninterruptible, strategic oil reserves. Germany and Japan were on a shoestring, oil-wise.
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Dear TIK:
Character assassination is not reserved for any particular point of view.
I'm an on the fence viewer who enjoys all your content and often links it around-even when I am not convinced. Politics and economics are not my field(s) of study. The reasons nations go to war, however; especially the rhetoric versus reality; have been a source of ongoing fascination of mine in the four and a half decades of my majority. To say I have read all the traditional narratives is probably fair. As an old man, I recognize I am likely conservative in some views and likely to cling to classic analyses, rather than openly embrace the new revisionism.
Of these, I feel "Big Skedaddle" Werth and "I was there" Shirer are worthy of review. Chuikov and von Mellenthin are also read-worthy. Rommel and von Luck make more topically exciting reading (yes, even Infantry Tactics). Von Manstein teaches us the power of self-aggrandizement. Zhukov is Soviet command accounting* at its finest.
Speer and Doenitz (especially his postwar debriefing) are excellent apologists, though regarding their accounts, these contain many useful details I am likely to believe.
Ciano and Halder are monsters. Civilized, cultured, monsters. I discount their spin on everything, though am usually interested in the what, why, and how, of their presentations.
After all this, plus reading on Weimar, WW1 (dolchtoss lives on in Westmorland's account of Vietnam), Bismarck (the first true rock star), the Krupp vs Roon scandals, Franco Prussian war histories and more, I am still learning and not ready to declare myself a partisan of any vector of conformation bias.
With that as preamble, I can only say that, as with paleontology, there are fads in belief that permeate all epochal analyses. In fact, the harder the community hits back, the more careful I am with what I read. Velikovsky was right on so many levels, all while the stars of the scientific community threw rotten tomatoes at his ideas of an 'active universe". The bigger fools they.
My point? Keep reading, keep listening, learn to debate the points without passion or fanboi pressing. Keep your mind open and never, ever, buy into someone's account simply because you like the photo on the cover . . . or it's his (a favorite author's) next book in a series. This means you, TIK, and all the rest. And me.
In conclusion I reiterate: I enjoy and am informed by your content even when I am not altogether convinced. And don't forget to have fun . . . you'll only be young a short while.
For the rest, bashing without making any useful points is empty of meaning. Minecraft needs griefers. Try that a while, instead. You're welcome.
*As with Halder, so it goes with Zhukov concerning "the leader was an ass and I told him so on the spot . . . errrr . . . more or less."
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Excuse my contradiction to the meme, but school isn't for teaching details. School interests you in a topic after which you follow it as far as you feel fits your interest. I don't blame school for failing to teach me about the Fourth Fleet Incident, or the fact that the Soviet Union contributed so heavily to final victory. Since my 10th grade WW2 coverage I have read my whole life to fill in that knowledge base. At 67 I am still learning about the war, which is why I subscribed to you and MHV, MAH, WW2, Drach, Doctor Clarke, Mark Felton, and various other historian posters. I, too, am trying to throw off the blinders of official narrative that serve a national-not an historical-interest.
If we expected school to teach us everything, we'd be old when we graduated.
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Disclaimer: I sometimes disagree with your conclusions, but not your method. Now for a message from an old, old, man.
Courage/foolishness is/are the armor of entertainers great and small. Expertise is admirable, and coherence a gift from Above. You're strong in the latter two, TIK. Be pleased at your accomplishment. It's worthy.
If you'd like a suggestion from the peanut gallery . . . every artist is a lost soul seeking attention. So is every critic. Understand, pat them on the bum, and send them on their way. If criticism* is what you seek, on the other hand, refer to my fourth** sentence.
You are most welcome.
*By armchair historians, comedic hopefuls, and those with a serious interest in topic
** I hate edits.
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