Comments by "Steve Watson" (@stevewatson6839) on "TIKhistory" channel.

  1.  @TheImperatorKnight  That is being against Communist bastards rather than Canucks in general though. 😁
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  2.  @Kaze-30u  England owes Poland big time. You'll always get a pass from me. There are plenty of English folk who are only fluent in Sewer; you are doing well.
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  3.  @samsonsoturian6013  Start your own channel, mate. Where are you anyhow, "feudalism" wasn't the same across Europe, nevermind England. What we had is described as "Bastard Feudalism" which isn't at all the same thing.
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  4.  @henriklarssen1331  Paulus surrendered on the 31st of January. A week earlier on the 24th Roosevelt, at the close of the Casablanca conference, had declared the Allies policy of Unconditional Surrender. Not the brightest idea to have when you are reading your enemies mail and know they know the game is up. No, you offer your enemy a "Golden Bridge of escape" as the maxim from Sun Tzu has it. There is much point made of the inaccuracy of the "Madman Hitler" narrative by Lewis; in contrast this isn't the first bit of Roosevelt bonkers: despite also being able to read the Japanese mail; he had left them misunderstanding American terms for lifting the embargoes that led to the Japanese thinking Pearl Harbor; Strike South; and war with the US, however unlikely to succeed, was their only option. It wasn't only the Axis leaders that bore guilt; in the upper echelons I see no "heros" in WWII on either side.
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  5.  @goldenhide  "My soldiers can eat their belts, but my tanks gotta have gas!" - Some slap-happy Septic general.
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  6. There was a hospital in the American Zone that was still euthanising and sterilising a month or two AFTER the surrender. Doctors doing it off their own bat? Where have I heard of that just recently?
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  7.  @yw1971  Look at the French performance in the initial week of Case Red. They fought a hell of a lot better than they had up to that point. You don't win wars relying on your enemies being perpetually stupid. The BEF was going home without its heavy equipment and just as the Wehrmacht had no conceivable way of crossing the Channel, we had no conceivable way of re-entering Europe. A.H. didn't know Musso would be silly enough to enter the war at this point either.
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  8.  @DoctorMandible  Is there such a thing?
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  9. 50'000 sects and counting. Who's got the time or patience? You all hold to 90% of the same bollocks; the distinguishing balls is neither here nor there.
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  10.  @MisterW0lfe  There is more than enough guilt to go round about "Market Garden". The perils of coalition warfare; the penalties of inter-service rivalries; all accompanied by a boatload of stupid. Rectify a third to a half of the gratuitously silly and things would probably have gone a lot differently. Base problem? Eisenhower was a damned good staff officer but simply not up to commanding in the field; he wasn't a strong enough personality.
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  11.  @axelhopfinger533  He didn't see JC as having anything to do with Judaism. He was in good company: neither did Paul or the author of G. Jn. The rest of the New Testament is littered with material that says the vast majority of Xtians in the 2nd Century, Greco-Romans all, didn't actually give a fig for Judaism either. Xtianity might have begun as a Jewish sect/philosophy; but when it became the first religion it pretty much abandoned all that except as a founding mythology.
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  12.  @etiennepilorget8777  Acts 5: 1-11; the root of all evil. "... and a great fear came upon the whole church". "The Gentiles have a Law to themselves"; "If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife, and children, and his siblings, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple."; "You come from the father of the Devil; he was a liar, and his father before him". Not a game you can hope to play and win. I saw through Roman Catholicism in Catechesis when I was 9 or 10; before I was 15 I saw Jesus was not Lord; liar; or lunatic; but a literary figure born from a figment of the Apostolic imagination. That is was what happens when any thinking, reflective person born into Chalcedonian/Nicean Xtianity; which ever variant, reads the New Testament, whatever the translation. The Bible makes atheists of everyone who reads it critically and for what it actually says.
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  13.  @duncanmcdonald8726  Judaism, Xtianity, Islam, "Gnosticism", Marxism, Facism, Naziism, etc.; it is all the same religion. They just wear different frocks.
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  14.  @petriew2018  Evil? even that is too simplistic. I'm getting the impression from some of the directly quoting Hitler literature that I've bought from Lewis' bibliography that it was dawning on him that a large number; and maybe most; of his assumptions and guiding principles were deeply flawed. What Lewis' work has brought out too is Hitler never actually had de facto control; there were a large number of competing authorities in the Reich, none of which could be said to be pulling in anything but the vaguest general same direction, and were more often than not in complete disagreement and pursuing their own agendas. A large part of this was Hitlers fault; and by commision as much as omission. It didn't help that the Allies, the UK in particular wouldn't stick to the script! 🙂 Shame about that. NOT.
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  15. Shirer was... a journalist and even Wikipedia writes the original manuscript of his "Berlin Diaries" bore no resemblance in its '34 to 38 entries to what was published. It had been extensively rewritten well into WWII.
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  16. Yeah, sure; Narvik is a short distance from Germany. It is BECAUSE it is a long distance they got away with it. We misread signals as Larvik further south and thought The Twins were going on an Atlantic raid.
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  17.  @andrewjohnston9115  You can't fight a war if you haven't got an army. You can't have an army if you haven't got the men. The BEF wasn't routed; it undertook probably the most dangerous of military manoeuvres: withdrawal in contact. It was largely successful in doing so, and the Navy were dazzlingly successful getting the men off.
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  18.  @kenrudd6362  Lewis is coming to a conclusion bases on the primary and secondary sources before him. If I were to do the same, I would come to the same conclusions. I'm simply thirty years older than him and have had time to incorporate more material is all. We have far more in common than in disagreement. Another set of eyes and intellect never goes amiss.
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  19. Thanks for answering one of my queries TIK. Tripling forces in Denmark makes sense, the Danes resistance was more subtle than blowing things up and you could actually rest and refit troops there, fed from local resources adjacent to the Reichs rail network still and also in a position to reinforce Norway if necessary. The figures I had in my head for Norway were quite a bit larger than you showed here. The Scandinavian deployments make more sense now the exagerated information I was relying on has been corrected. Take your time geting well, it should be obvious from Stalingrad the dire effects of running on empty. You are doing a great job; but YOU are more important than it. TTFN.
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  20. Churchill has a lot in common with Halder: he wrote the histories. I look at his record in government and all I see is one treason after another. The conduct of war after the breakout from Normandy looks very dodgy. Hell the conduct before doesn't make sense after Sicily, we had air superority and command of the sea. The Americans invaded North Africa from North America, so it wasn't as ifdistances were a problem. Why no landing well north of Rome? I don't buy the excuses or the level of stupid. I think there was something very wrong at the top both in Westminster and Washington.
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  21.  @TheImperatorKnight  Take as long as you need and add a month! You should know the worth of going on the offensive with reserves to spare and your corps manned to 120%.😉 We have your back; your sides; your front. We'd bloody well carry you if we could. Even when you are wrong; you are better than most of the rest of YT. Probably of that most combined. We value you as a person and as a historian. Be well.
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  22.  @samsonsoturian6013  On the Gripping hand, I think there is enough work here (The site overall) to award an actual PhD if it were to be put in the required format. I certainly have on my shelves a fair few academic works that are just a waste of good trees in fact - as well as relative, and in comparison, to Lewis' endeavours.
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  23.  @str.77  A typical reaction. However, I can read critically and you don't need anything more than reason. I'm always up to having my mind changed; but the evidence only accumulates to confirming and going far beyond my initial provisional conclusion. If you read with faith coloered specs; you'll come to faith coloured conclusions. The Roman Catholicism I learnt when I was 9 or 10 sounded, and was structured, like a mystery religion; but whatever the original mystery was had gone awol. The various socialisms in their turn are Judeao-Xtian heresy from which God has gone awol leaving only the New Jerusalem. You have to come to both without glasses that distort your vision.
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  24.  @TheImperatorKnight  It's the "Disappearing Commisar" thingie, Lewis. The org behind Wikipedia is Commie after all's said.
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  25. That was Himmler's bag; not Hitler's.
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  26.  @kenrudd6362  No mate, Marx was a "secular" Jew; Marxism is a "secular" Judaism. Acts 5: 1-11 is near as damnit the root of all socialisms, communisms, and third positions. "... and a great fear fell upon the whole Church." And it ALL comes from (misunderstanding?) Plátōn.
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  27.  @Fanakapan222  Most of us are too busy living, mate.
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  28. So much for the rational guy who said Stalingrad must be held because they wouldn't be able to return once it was lost. Adolf really seems to have lost it completely later in the war.
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  29. The intellectual base was... completely fucked.
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  30. Peron and Peronists pretty much make Lewis' argument. You can find a similar fusion of what we ignorantly suppose opposites and rivals in Muhammad 'Abdu (1849-1905) an Egyptian thinker who can be found at the root of both Arab secularism and Sunni Muslim fundamentalism; both claiming him as a founder.
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  31.  @richardmartin7904  And what, pray, might that be? It is criminal to keep it to yourself; makes you as bad as the plonkers we oppose.
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  32.  @charlesentrekin140  Those feelings were reciprocated vigourously. We didn't think much of American tossers either.
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  33. Sounds good... until we find your only source is the Broadcasting Bullshit Corporation.
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  34.  @Liberty-Jamie  That "help" from the US wasn't actually any such thing.
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  35.  @str.77  I'd re-read the New Testament if I were you. Acts 5: 1-11 is socialism and its inevitable outcome of corpses in a nutshell. Look up "New Jerusalem" and the British Labour party for instance. Lewis takes these political ideologies/religions back to Plátōn and the "Hebrew" religion found in LXX and TaNakh turns out to map too closely to Greek political philosophy and Plátōn in particular. None of this is original to either of us in its'. We are basically just pattern matching as with tree-ring dating in Archaeology. As for me being 9; my noticing these things is no different than noticing the contradictions and illogic of Santa and the Tooth Fairy; both of which characters match more than enough typological characteristics to be called gods. Doesn't matter what you might wish if it quacks; waddles; swims; feeds; flys; etc like a duck, it is very probably a duck.
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  36.  @TheImperatorKnight  It is frustrating; but we all do it. You can see thru Halder's distortions but similar distortions of the "Table Talk"? We are all great at bursting others bubbles; our own, not so much. The first person we fool is ourself. Plenty of work has been done by psychologists on how difficult it is not to go along with outright nonsense if everyone around you is hellbent on nonsense and you don't even know you aren't being allowed to see otherwise. After seven or so years of almost everyone going along with barking wibble since it dawned the Donald might actually win the primary and we actually might see off the EUrine, and the even more accelerated and accentuated daft of the last three years; it is actually surprising how many folk have accepted your argument or accepted that you have an argument. I'm surprised you find it surprising you get vehement pushback; especially when you point out how suspiciously often things go tits up and what progress we've been making suddenly goes into reverse. You are fighting human psychology and several ruddy great arses, nevermind a thumb, on the scales.
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  37.  @goodmaro  "Capitalism"; an epithet I gather created by Marx to describe a strawman derived from his defective "economics". Not Free Enterprise, as I understand it. I thought Lewis was going to expand at least briefly on his bare mention of the two being different and standing for Free Enterprise rather than "Capitalism"; one being a praxis and the other an ideology? I think I'm supposed to gather this from the economics primer he showcased. I'm interested in the thinker and his how and why of his synthesis of his sources; not his sources per se. On a couple of subjects I'm familiar with Lewis has gone off on some wild ride of his own into the boonies, and I want to know if he is doing similarly with material I am not, if at all, as familiar with. Nought wrong with wild rides into the boonies when you are auto, or semi-auto, diktat at Lewis' age. I've made similar wild rides myself in the past. It can be rewarding even in the negative in giving you a different part of the elephant to fondle and so a different perspective on the whole; which is great from a personal perspective; but I don't want to be rehearsing my own bollocks. tah very much! 😇🤪
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  38. The greatest swordsman fears the tyro; because the tyro doesn't know "The Rules of the Game" and cannot be predicted. I have a book on WATU and Lindybeige has a video; at one point things were dire and they were tearing their hair out. So an 18 year old WREN got to play against the Admiral and handed him his arse. Panic over; Job Jobbed; Roll on the Rodney! The French high command in 1940; the Japanese Admiralty & Midway. Gamelin and Petain BOTH put their fingers on the Ardennes. Gamelin laid out a plan that looked like he'd breakfasted with Manstein. It was more or less the Sickle Cut. Petain said if they didn't take the necessary precautions in the Ardennes, the Boche would break through. Then when push came to shove the Boche did just as predicted; the Frogs didn't take the precautions; French First Army stuck its' head even further in the sack; the Air Farce wasn't deployed in numbers against the schwerpunkt; and France was to all intents and purposes lost in less than a weeks fighting. The Japs wargamed their Midway plan and it blew up in their faces in the rehearsal. They wouldn't have it and carriers miraculously resurrected and they declared the plan would work. The Americans showed them otherwise; and more or less as the wargame they had disregarded had shown them. There is more to all these realities than just accepting or rejecting the wargames of course. Read "Strange Victory" and " Shattered Sword" for just how messed up the French Army and Japanese Navy were at the top; and "The Rules of the Game" for just how messed up the RN was at the top going into WWI. As far as it could, the RN corrected itself; but there was still The Churchill Factor which would make it all pretty much for nought.
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  39. They can't share mine; it is simply far larger. /s
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  40. ​ @richardcutts196  Unlikely. More likely a Beck-Ribbentrop Pact. The Poles were fools not to come to terms with Hitler in my opinion.
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  41. Class=Commies; Nation=Fascists; Race=Nazis. The rest is commentary; go and study it.
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  42. Trawl the back catalogue; Roosevelt and his Bad Deal are covered in several places.
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  43. "Boris" Johnson's "The Churchil Factor" comes to mind.
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  44. "Boris" Johnson's "The Churchill Factor" comes to mind.
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  45. @LibertarianGalt Does Lewis WANT that? Some platforms are just as negative to Lewis' concerns as YouTube.
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  46.  @junior.von.claire  "Slapping incident per Patton" already has a TIK video. A few years ago now, so you'll have to dig, but it is here.
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  47.  @TheImperatorKnight  TIK, learn from those Lufwaffe centurions and double centurions. Lack of rotation is just as bad, if not worse, than too much.
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  48. Not if a certain arse-whipe general hadn't been put out to grass or transferred to somewhere he couldn't get in the road. The same could be said of one or two other legends in their own lunchtime on the German side. The German General Staff has always been its' own worst enemy.
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  49.  @alexatlantov4569  I suggest you take a look at what Poland-Lithuania looked like before the Commonwealth was partitioned. As TIK succinctly described at the outset Central and Eastern Europe were, and to some extent still are, a mess of interpenetrating ethnicities. The Baltics are not Russia, Belarus is not Russia, Ukraine is not Russia. If Lenin had stuck with Russia and as far as possible let the "Near Abroad" go i.e. pursued a real ethnicities/nationalities policy instead of the sham that he did, perhaps Poland could have sat back. It couldn't. Besides its territorial claims were as just as those of the Russians: Belarus and Ukraine were Commonwealth territory until the partitions after all. I presume you are a Slav of some description; "Ukraine" and "Krajina" both derive from "Borderland" as we say in English i.e disputed territory. I think the inhabitants of all those states/regions just wish their neighbours, ALL OF THEM, would just bugger off and mind their own business.
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  50.  @insideoutsideupsidedown2218  Dunno where you get the idea we are besties from. With "friends" like you lot, no one needs enemies.
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